The Millennial Reincarnations: A Novel

by Daniel Mark Harrison

  “I’m completely physical – look! You can touch me if you like –”

  The girl reached out a hand and rubbed Mason softly on the inside palm of his hand. “Your skin feels good. Not like the rubbery skin of a coal miner from Xianxi; more like an investment banker; a man of class.”

  Not for the first time, Mason thanked his personal gods that his passion was computers, which kept his skin a silky smooth. Chinese women hated the hard-worn peasant-like leather that was many a rich Chinese millionaire’s price for his success.

  “Computers,” said Mason.

  The girl laughed. “Of course I know who you are. You’re going to be the richest man in the whole of China soon! It’s an honor to have you with us this evening. Come this way,” she said, beginning her unsteady trot towards a private dining room that lay just inside, behind an exclusive-looking concierge.

  “This is the private member’s lounge. If you wish to gamble, it’s one million Hong Kong dollars per hand. The games are just beyond the dining room. We have –”

  Mason raised a hand, silencing her. “I never gamble, only on my own business. That way, I always win. With the party on my side, how can I lose?”

  “Like I said, Master Bold Sharp Blade, I don’t talk about politics.”

  No, thought Mason, of course not – you’re from Macau – probably a Hong Kong immigrant who catches the ferry every day. You’ve never believed in the idea of the People’s Republic. You want free elections and you don’t say so, but you want secret ballots –

  “Young Bold Blade!” said Zheng Hongqi loudly.

  “Mr. Zheng –”

  “Cousin Redflag, please: that is what everyone calls me,” said the fattening, balding gentleman that stood in front of him. “The curse of being the older cousin of the one in line to the throne of Zengky Bank.”

  For a moment, Mason turned his attention back to the young girl, resolving himself to put aside his prejudices for now. Perhaps it was better, as she said, to not talk politics at all. Only makes you angry at these democratic South Chinese types.

  “Will you join me in my room later, it’s five –”

  “Oh-four! Very nice to meet you Master Bold Sharp Blade. I hope so – as long as we –”

  “I understand the rules,” said Mason quickly.

  Cousin Redflag let off a roaring guffaw of laughter and raised his eyebrows up-then-down, up-then-down.

  “Have a seat, Bold Blade,” he said.

  Cousin Redflag waved the girl away. “What brings you to Macau? What is it that I can do you for? Pretty girlies maybe – I have plenty for your choosing here – as you can see. The Macau ones are specialties in South China. Hybrids,” he explained, in reference to the part-Portuguese nationality.

  Mason wasn’t in the mood to enter into a typically half-hour long back-and-forth on the virtues of various provinces’ female beaus, however. He was tired. After discovering that Chanel had left for Macau, he’d quickly boarded a government jet out of Shanghai, putting his company’s best researchers on the case to find out what she might be up to. It had taken less than an hour – pretty much the time of the flight down here – to ascertain what her purposes were. He was determined to get there first. She wouldn’t bother doing anything until tomorrow, he figured … by then, it would be too late.

  “I want to buy two of your Shanghai properties. The first is the top three floors of the Golden Lily Towers. The second is a self-contained British colonial townhouse in Tangqiao subdistrict,” he said, cutting straight-to-the-point.

  “Both expensive locations for properties, these days. Hard to find quality in these areas,” said Cousin Redflag, attempting to begin the typically long arc of Chinese negotiation.

  “No, it’s not really, but I don’t care what your price is – I’ll happily pay it. This is a personal thing for me.”

  Cousin Redflag flashed Mason a broad grin. “You’re a clever one – good to do business with. Now I can see why they say what they do about you. True Chinese, lots inside here,” he said, snapping two fingers against the balding area of his skullcap.

  “You can tell me your price in one week, and I will deposit it into a casino account here. But first, I need to know I can trust you. That you won’t undo me on this sale, or use it against me. I have a bad experience with Zhengs.”

  Cousin Redflag let out another big guffaw of laughter.

  “Young bold sharp one, you and many in this country. Even us Zhengs – we have bad experiences with the other Zhengs!”

  “Will you prove first your loyalty – your commitment – to getting this transaction done then?”

  “How do you suggest?”

  “The tenant of these properties is a gentleman named Taylor Milliken. He’s –”

  “Of course I know who I am renting these properties to, young bold one! I am not so rich for nothing inside here,” he said, tapping on his skullcap again.

  “Very good. I’m sorry if I offended your mianzi, sir.”

  “Go on.”

  “I know that last year, around September, he was two days late on the rental payment as a result of a bank error. This still gives you the right to eject him from the property, if you wish.”

  Cousin Redflag raised his eyebrows in a show of genuine surprise this time.

  “How did you come by that information?”

  “I just did.” The perks of having Konrad Von Kyburg-Winterthur at my constant disposal, thought Mason sourly. “I want you to give him notice. I don’t expect you to do so on both properties – that’s too much. Just on Milk – that’s the one at the top of Golden Lily Towers. The rooftop bar. Give me your assurance that you will do this, and then give me your price for both properties, and I in return will give you my assurance that I will pay whatever that price is.”

  Cousin Redflag thought for a moment, pressing his fingers against the temples of his head. He didn’t have to think too hard about it.

  “Sure. We speak next Friday?”

  “Done.”

  “What are you doing the rest of the evening? There are games here if you fancy your luck tonight. You looked like you were getting lucky just now with Missy, eh?” laughed Cousin Redflag, cordially.

  ‘Thank you for the invitation, Cousin Redflag, but it’s been a long day. Pig-fucking idiots in Shanghai. All pig-shit-for-brains. Makes your head hurt.”

  Cousin Redflag guffawed again.

  “Very good, young bold blade. I send Miss Chow for you – to your room?”

  Mason squinted. “Miss –”

  “The tall one. Hybrid.”

  Mason’s face lit up. “Yes, thank you. That would make the night come around faster, I think.”

  “I’ll send some special magic pills up to you, too – don’t worry. Herbal stuff, Chinese. Expensive – premium and good for the heart as well as for fucking. Not like those murdering American big pharma monkey shits. With this, you will have no side effects, and you will bring her round – no problem. I swear. This’ll make your dick stand on end like a like an iron-rod stalk for four days straight, bold blade.”

  “Thank you,” he smiled. “That’s most welcome.”

  “And tomorrow morning. I’ll kick the American in the balls for you. By tomorrow night, his dick, I think, will really need some serious pill-popping to get it up. No more fun for my cousin Minzhen without a club to fuck in the back of, I guess.”

  And now Mason joined Cousin Redflag in laughing and guffawing heartily, even after they had parted and he reached the door of Room 504, where he found Chow lying on his bed, dressed in a high school girl’s uniform, with what could only have been her identical twin sitting up against the bedpost beside her in a matching pair of skimpy, transparent lingerie.

  Ω

  After the initial meeting of the sorority, Milana’s fame began to rise quicker than she had ever thought possible, promoted chiefly by the high esteem she was held in inside the sorority.

  Ever since she had volunteered to get off for that video at C
hanel’s house, the sorority Maidens – Crystal, Ai An, Jingfei – who was Easton’s second cousin – Jingfei’s best friend Biyou– and Leiticia, the sister of Jasmine, had instantly all looked up to her more than they did their own biological sisters even.

  Having saved them from the fate of masturbating solo into a camera in front of their peers, she quickly became loved by her younger sisters, so much so, that they began a club with her namesake attached to it – the Milanaire Club, attracting another, outer circle of sisters.

  The Club was actually a set of several individual Clubs, all registered at the various international schools across the city. This way, the kids avoided having to go through the process of obtaining permissions from local governments, regional jurisdictions and the usual red tape, which in China was thick, like a sticky masking tape.

  In many ways, high-society observers noted, Milana was becoming the new Sofia.

  The Milanaire Club was a club for anyone who attended one of the registered international schools where the individual organizations that comprised the whole were formed, and it quickly became the membership to have among the international school girls’ community; a sort of unofficial sorority with an unlimited headcount. Milana was installed at the top of the Club as its Chairwoman, while her sister Lora was President. It made her happy to see her sister reap the benefits of the insatiable local popularity brought about by her own notoriety as Second Lady Zheng.

  Once a week, Milana chaired meetings of the Milanaire Club, at whatever school it was being held that day, where the girls would gather together in order to talk about boys, other girls, their lives, and their various day-to-day preoccupations with living in this burgeoning polluted cosmopolitan environment. Somewhere within these long chats, Milana doled out advice to the girls on getting by, getting ahead and getting off.

  Her advice was for the most part highly generalized, but to her fan club, who hung on her every word, it was equivalent to Gospel truth.

  Some day, these girls – who now numbered more than one hundred in total – hoped that they too could become as brave as she was, take their clothes off in front of a camera and bare themselves, sacrificing the painful – and yet seemingly, also pleasurable – one-time exposure of their individual sexualities for the quick rise to notoriety and accumulation of mianzi that they all desperately yearned for.

  Ω

  It was at the end of one of these meetings one afternoon that Milana was walking out of the school with her latest fan, Iris Milliken. Given that Iris’ brother was dating Chanel, and that they were both American, despite the fact that there was two years between them – Iris was sixteen – they had become fairly close. “My brother wants to meet you, so he’s waiting outside for us today,” said Iris, rolling her eyes.

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s the same age as me – he’s my twin,” said Iris. They walked up to him together and Iris said: “So here you go Milana – your biggest male fan, Landon.” Iris rolled her eyes again. Milana took in Landon’s appearance. He was a smart, cute looking guy, in looks somewhere between Taylor and his sister.

  His cheeks were more feminine-looking than Taylor’s, more like Iris’ – while his eyes and his dirty sandy hair, and his big, wide chest: that was all Taylor.

  She had met Taylor a couple times now at the end of some sorority events; he was a nice boy, she thought, although not particularly sharp.

  “Hi, there,” said Landon, who gaped at her with wide eyes. At that, Iris tugged at his sleeve and said “sorry about that, Milana – so I’ll catch you up tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” Milana smiled sweetly, air-kissing Iris and Landon goodbye. When the two Milliken kids had gone, and the school was empty, right as she was walking out she noticed a pretty Chinese girl waiting outside the gates of the international school where the conference was taking place.

  She was standing all by herself, yet she looked older than the girls from the international school club. Milana thought that she recognized the girl, somewhere vaguely from the past, but couldn’t put a name to her face.

  “Hi, Milana?” said the girl, stopping her with an arm outstretched as she walked past. “Can you come with me somewhere? I have something to show you that I really think you should take a look at?”

  “Who are you?” asked Milana.

  “Please – you’ll find out. I don’t mean you any harm, but I do have something that you need to see.”

  Milana’s heart raced with all the possibilities. What had she done that could require this cloak-and-dagger approach, she wondered.

  “Please,” said the girl, a little more impatiently this time.

  “Come with me. There’s something I want to show you. It won’t take long.”

  Maybe it was because the girl was attractive, in that petite, Chinese way, or perhaps it was simply because in Shanghai the end of an afternoon spelt hours of boredom as often as it did hours of excitement – it could go either way – whatever the reason, Milana followed the girl to her chauffeur-driven Bentley and slid across the pre-heated leather seats.

  “Donghu Lu,” the girl told her driver, giving him the address.

  “That’s where our house is, but this one’s new – he just started today, so he’s getting used to the roads,” the girl explained, throwing a cursory sideways glance at Milana.

  “We can talk once we reach my house. It’s private.”

  “Who are you?” asked Milana again, her heart skipping a beat this time.

  The girl fiddled with the lining of her skirt, before placing her hands back down inside her lap neatly.

  “You can call me Number One Sister,” she said.

  CHAPTER VII

  Two Face

  Ω

  September, 2008

  I WAS sat on the balcony of my pied-a-terre drinking a bottle of Merlot 2012 when the bell rang. The last person I expected to see at 10pm at the end of a weekend was stood there on my doorstep: Lixue Lai. Bold Sharp Blade’s sister, of all people! I was upset with her – traumatized even, that she had had left me, abandoned me in my hour of need. Even then, she still had time to change her mind and come to Malibu with me, but she didn’t.

  Face. It was a gluey sticker, and once it was torn off the blank canvas that was my reputation, the marks it left on the surface still stuck to my fingers with the remnants of its gluey backside.

  Ω

  For a long while I left this girl outside – this Chinese girl by the name of beautiful snow, like the color of her skin, the one who I was in love with, sexually, emotionally, intellectually. She waited patiently, as Chinese girls are taught since birth to do – for the right partner, for the right opportunity.

  While standing compliantly outside my front door without saying a word, I was meanwhile inside, in the cool, so angry that I could not even speak a sentence. I watched her from my window as she walked about and knocked, and knocked again on the low door to my small – but prohibitively expensive – mews house.

  When I eventually opened up, I did so putting a finger to my lips to indicate she should be silent. Lixue Lai said nothing. But the act of saying nothing irritated me in a way, and so feeling the annoyance building up I began to interrogate the billionaire playboy’s sister mindlessly.

  “What the hell is going on over there?” I said, in a voice that was far too loud.

  Across the road, we could both hear the creaking of an open window.

  “Ai! Aiiiyah!!” came a voice in Chinese from the window. “It’s the middle of the night. Knock it off, you two!”

  “Just the other day I had Easton knocking on the door of my hotel room in Malibu but you – where the hell were you? I would tell you to fix it but you’re clearly way out of your depth!” I was yelling now, screeching even, exorcising the pain in the pit of my stomach like demons into the midst of the night.

  “Aaaaaaaaaiiiiiii!!” came the cry again from the creaky window, this time accompanied by the rage of a sleep-deprived face.

  “C’
mon then – Deolai!” I swore back in Chinese, sticking a middle finger up at the hostile interlocutor. At that point Lixue Lai pushed me inside my house. My head was spinning with the alcohol whizzing around it, and in such a condition I fell back easily and more or less compliantly allowed her to come on in and close the door silently behind her.

  “I mean what the hell is going on? You do see my point, right?” I complained to Lixue Lai. “You left me! You left me here – alone! In China – with nobody!”

  She drew me into her chest and patted my hair. “Not now. In the morning. I need to sleep first. I have come straight from the airport. We’ll talk later – go to bed. You’re drunk.” The way she said drunk was in such a tone one reserves for those objects of a special sort of derision.

  “I’m dru-nk,” I muttered under my breath, before collapsing on my bed and falling into a somewhat disturbed but still dreamless reverie.

  Ω

  I awoke to find Lixue Lai was gone. But it was as if I had had an extensive dialog with her: an entire conversation was somewhere in my mind, though I couldn’t recall what had been said. All I could see was a vast spectrum of rainbow-colored lights flashing about the skies, breaking madly from underneath a set of clouds that were torn apart like the deep-water bait of sharks, parting in a stunning, extra-terrestrial rainfall, on a planet far off that of which I was from, on a planet where reality was – so very real.

  Ω

  That day in Church, the one that took place only a few years after 9/11 had savaged American civility back beyond all recognition to something of a slave-trading brutality, remained with me for years afterwards. I didn’t speak of it, and I changed the name of the girl I was only partially sure now I had actually met that morning so as to disguise my true vulnerability, but it hung on my heart like the ghosts of Ground Zero hang on the side-panels somewhere of the 101st floor of that new middle finger New Yorkers have now built that faces the rest of the world, from Europe to the Middle East and Africa, and eventually, of course, to the Far East, where I live now.