Bar Nun

Last week, Amanda caught up with a friend she’d not seen in years. She and Evelyn Wee had met at their first Torts class at Harvard and they immediately bonded over their District 9 addresses, and a deep-seated love for Prada that made Mother Teresa’s devotion to God seem like a one-night stand. And as luck would have it, they were both the same size which, as every BFF knows full well, essentially doubles your wardrobe.

For the rest of their time at Harvard, the two were inseparable. They double-dated the blonde quarterbacks of the football team; they were study partners; they competed for examination prizes; and they went on long weekend shopping trips to New York to shop at Bloomingdale’s. And before Amanda came back to Singapore after graduation whilst Evelyn went to London to work for a Top Three investment banking firm, the two went to Tiffany’s and got each other matching Elsa Peretti diamond bracelets.

“Really?” Saffy said, years later. Her bosom trembled. “Huh. My girlfriends and I just signed each other’s year-books!”

“We went to MacDon-ner to makan!” Sharyn said. “Where got money to go Tiffany, one?”

“Oh my God, I can’t wait to see her!” Amanda sighed, her lovely eyes half-closed with the kind of delirious job you normally associate with an ice-cream commercial. “I can’t believe she’s actually moving back after so many years!”

Saffy pursed her lips with deep dissatisfaction. “If I had the choice to live in London, I’m not sure I’d move back to Singapore.”

Amanda shrugged and adjusted her bootleg “Passion Made Possible” tee-shirt. “Evelyn says the whole place is topsy-turvy right now, what with Brexit and everything, so it’s a good time to leave and come home. I wonder if Goldman Sachs transferred her back?”

“Even the name sound like got money,” Sharyn observed.

“So, where’s Evelyn staying?” Saffy asked.

Amanda frowned. “That’s the thing. The YWCA!”

“Hah?” Sharyn said.

Much later, Saffy said the YWCA should have been the first clue that Evelyn Wee was not the same woman with whom Amanda had gone shopping at Tiffany’s. Because when Amanda came home from her reunion lunch at the Ritz-Carlton, she looked as if someone had made her wear top-to-toe Giordano in public.

Saffy and I were on the couch streaming a marathon session of Dr Pimple Popper when Amanda pushed open the front door, staggered over to the nearest armchair, and collapsed.

Saffy and I exchanged glances.

“Oh. My. God.” Amanda moaned. “Evelyn’s a nun!”

“Well, remember that time I went through a man-free phase and…” Saffy began.

“No!” Amanda snapped. “I mean she really became a nun!”

Saffy looked confused. She turned to me. “What…”

“And not just any nun,” Amanda went on. “A Buddhist nun!”

Saffy’s bosom inflated. “Wait! Evelyn’s a nun?”

“Oh. My. God.” Amanda repeated.

For days, it’s all Amanda can talk about. She says the fact that she was physically in a YWCA may have weakened her defences so considerably that when Evelyn answered the door in her crimson robes and shaved head, the world, for a long moment, blacked out around her.

“Apparently, she went to an ashram in India two years ago, had a vision of the Goddess of Mercy when meditating, and that was that!”

Sharyn sucked in her breath. “You see, lah! Dat’s why hor, my pastor say cannot do yoga or meditate!”

Saffy gave her BFF the side-eye. “He also says TV is the devil’s channel, and you’ve just installed one in your bathroom!”

Sharyn blushed and waved her hand. “Ay, you don’t anyhow tell people, can?”

“I have to say that Evelyn looks very peaceful, though,” Amanda said. “She always used to have this intensity about her. I just don’t understand though how you go from banker to Buddhist like that! And, she’s also a vegan now!”

“Well, to be fair,” I said, “I think that kind of goes with the whole Buddhist nun thing.”

“But her favourite food group is a rare filet mignon!” Amanda bleated.

Apparently, Evelyn is on her way to Sri Lanka where she’s leading a meditation retreat. She’s invited Amanda, a prospect that fills everyone with alarm, not least Saffy who’s been privately moaning to everyone that if Amanda comes back a nun, how are we going to pay our rent?

“Good to see you’ve got your priorities set, Saf,” I told her.

“You better get used to eating boiled chickpeas, my friend, because if Amanda moves into a nunnery and we have to pick up her share of the rent, that’s all you’ll be able to afford!”