How do you define real love? The Navel Gazer finds the answer in an unexpected place.

ORDINARILY, I wouldn’t touch a book like this with a 10-foot pole. But it was the topmost book from my housemate’s pile, and the bus ride to my client’s is long, and it IS the month of love ...

As the bus starts moving, I start flipping through Richard La Ruina’s The Natural, a.k.a. the “idiot’s bible to scoring with hot girls”. It falls open to the back cover, the mugshot of the author gazing back at me.

“Of course, he can reel them in,” I roll my eyes.

“He looks like Tom Cruise!”

I’m all ready to tear his arguments apart when I plunge into the first chapter, “From Geek to Natural”. Two pages later, I’m eating my words – and lapping his up. Gosh, he’s one helluva storyteller.

I hang on to his every word as he spins a moving tale about how he was so luckless with girls that he didn’t have his first kiss until he was 25.

When he trots out the ultimate cheesy line about how if you were to look up the definition of “loser” in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of him (“Sad but true”), I’m all ready to ruffle his locks and coo: “Awww, poor baby.”

What’s wrong with women that they don’t see what a wonderful guy he is? But I speak too soon. At the end of Chapter One, he starts slipping into Player mode and chronicles his moves and strategies.

I quiver with outrage when he waxes lyrical about loving the opportunity to change lives right after he talks about sleeping with strippers. The nerve!

I put down the book. Not only because I can’t stomach it anymore, but because my bus has already arrived at its destination.

My client is waiting for me with a jar of cookies that she had just made the night before. As she hands over the purchase order to me, her eyes fall on the book peeking out of my handbag. She arches her eyebrows inquiringly. With some embarrassment, I take out the book and show her.

“Oh! Love! We’re all looking for the right one, eh?” she winks.

I smile awkwardly, never having trespassed onto such personal territory with clients.

“You know when we are young, we all look for handsome guys, kan?” says my client. “Handsome, charming, rich ... I used to wonder how and why I ended up with my husband. Poor. Not very handsome. And so shy. I made the first move to hold his hand, you tahu tak!”

We laugh companionably.

“But I’m convinced I made the right choice in picking him now. Even though I had other more qualified candidates,” she continues.

“And why did you pick him?” I ask.

“Good question. I don’t know. I just feel ... comfortable and safe in his presence. He reminds me of my father. A quiet man. Not the type to warm up to people easily, and hardly the type who could charm the birds off the trees. But, he had his virtues.”

“Such as?” I egg, not caring if I am overstepping boundaries anymore.

“Hmm. He would do little things for me that show he cares and that I am always in his thoughts. He is a good man. To be honest, I never thought about these things consciously – never drew up a list of his pros and cons, if that’s what you’re thinking! We ended up getting married. It was fate more than anything else. And now that we’re together for so long, I think I love him even more than I did. Now that we’re older, I depend on him for other things.”

Here, she pauses, as if searching her brain for the right example.

“Like when I take out my spectacles and can’t find them: Mana cermin mata ku ’yang?”

She makes a show of somebody else handing her imaginary glasses.

“When you grow old, you turn to each other for the little things. Like, I had a function this Friday that required me to wear baju kebaya but I couldn’t quite remember what I had to do.

“So I was asking my husband: Bang, ada benda yang kena buat tapi tak ingat. And he went: La, baju kebaya ke?” Her face is animated, as if Bang is right beside her while she tells me all this.

“I think that’s why I chose him in the end, even though he didn’t check all the boxes. We never run out of things to say to each other. And we make each other laugh,” she says, fixing amused eyes on me.

“I know that to you young people that may sound terribly ordinary. Not romantic at all,” she laughs.

“But to me, this comfort ... this gift of being able to just trust someone completely and know that he will be there for you. It’s ... you know what the Westerners say about love ...” Then her eyes light up as she remembers. “Magic.”

Goosebumps. I feel goosebumps all over my body. The temperature in the building must be freezing – that’s why everybody’s swaddled in sweaters – but I’ve never felt so warm in my life. Her words are still ringing in my head when I hop onto the bus back an hour later, purchase order in one hand, book tucked in my bag but not quite forgotten.

The irony is, I could have actually fallen for a guy like La Ruina – that is, the sweet, shy geek he tried so hard to bury, and not the suave, slick, smooth operator persona with the complicated moves. In contrast, Suhaila’s formula sounds so pure, so sweet and so simple. But isn’t that how love should be?

Alexandra Wong thinks love should not be complicated. Send feedback to star2@thestar.com.my

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