I am remembering a person I almost left behind.

The only thing that keeps him from being someone Left Behind is the leash of conscience that tugs his memory away from oblivion. But I don't have the guts to call him. I don't know if the line he once told me was always open to me is an offer that still stands.

He was - I use the past tense on him because my present doesnt dare claim him - a very curious man. A rather tiny one too, for I don't believe he was very much taller than me. The first and only time I met him, he was wearing weathered skin beaten brown by the suns of various continents and denim covered in sprays of emulsion paint. They were torn too, I think.

Scrutinising this memory, I realise that the only thing I truly remember are his eyes - large and beautiful, like a girl's, with a ring of black lash that seemed too dainty for the rest of him. But even then, I can't remember their real colour.

Oh, I remember his voice too. When I first heard it over the phone some time between 11 pm and 12 am, I remember thinking, "What a burly man he must be!" His voice was deep and like what Ms Kee would have called "like God's". God with a China-man's American twang.

"Oh, Charmaine." He laughed throatily, more to himself than to me. He had been waiting for my call, he said. He knew me before I knew him.

I believe he would be in his late thirties now. I could never decide if he was young or old. He tried to make me call him "Father", but mostly, we alternated between "Friend" and "Shi Fu".

For a number of weeks (I don't remember how many), we conversed exclusively over the phone. It was like Sophie's World and I was Sophie. Instead of letters, technology intervened and I got phonecalls. He was an artist, I was his new project. A live one, and one that would possibly succeed him.

My first lesson was so crisp I suspect he fried it into my brains. He never allowed me to call him Mr Lim. Only by his first name, and later, diminutive.

But what about Respect, I asked.

Respect isn't accorded by age. Besides, respect isn't about using pretentious addresses.

Nonetheless, it took me over a month to say the words exactly the way he wanted.

He told my art teachers he wanted to adopt me. He wanted to take me out of school and train me to become an artist. He wanted to take me to Venice.

But I stayed in school. I stayed in Singapore. I stayed Student-and-by-the-way-doing-Art. Not Artist. Not Apprentice.

He told me about his career, his ideas, his lovelife (he made me write poems on his behalf to court his lost love). He lent me books. He lent me movies.

I listened. I learnt. I lived.

I don't know what happened, but the phonecalls stopped. I got busy. I supposed he got busy too. Busier.

He dropped me a couple of messages a year later, now two years back. I can't say for sure if I replied them.

I hope he found a better Sophie.

I wish I could have been that better Sophie.