Market, Sungei Road. You look to the elementary-coloured flats at Rochor Centre, then beyond the wire fence: State Land/No Dumping.

Tables present jade, quartz, ammonites, petrified wood. Time pieces beam in the sun.

Arranged piles: cameras, Discmans, phones, calculators. Rusty wrenches worth saving and selling. Cotton collections, shoes, rice cookers. Vinyl handbags and pop yeh-yeh.

Trays of amulets. Plah keang — sliver of Buddha, incense ash, clay. Size like a fingernail. Malay palms place it in yours. His lips breathe protector. You flip aubergine bills from your back pocket. Above the canopy of trees, orange and white HDB blocks peer below encroaching clouds. The sun on the Rochor rainbow, locates you.

Storm cracks. Tarps whip, umbrellas snap.