Shanghai Fools

by Vann Chow

  I gripped the VIP card sitting in my pocket from Mr. Qi and gave it a firm squeeze to make sure that it was still there, that I wasn't dreaming, and I gave Jenny a call.

  At the beginning she was reluctant to join me for dinner, after the humiliation that she suffered in front of me, the ex she dumped. But when the name 'Jumeirah Hotel' was mentioned, suddenly she could reschedule her other appointments. We arranged to meet in the restaurant at eight.

  The hotel was located next to the convention center in Pudong. The building itself was a piece of art, its body lit up in the night in an elegant, bluish glow. The famous 1000-words Huaisu poem was used as decorations for the wall. They were inscribed in white over the beige wallpaper, encircling the entire lobby and backlit by hundreds of LED lights. I was very impressed with it and was so engrossed in trying to read the text that I had almost forgot momentarily where I was.

  Needless to say, the view from the Shang-High restaurant on the fifteen floor was even more impressive. Jenny was already there when I finally made my way up, contrary to her typical lateness when we were dating. She was wearing a very elegant, body fitting black dress with lace along the halter-neckline. In her hand was a leather clutch with a big golden buckle that said 'money'.

  "This place is so beautiful." And she lashed out a torrent of compliments for this place, before she got to the point. "How did you find all the money to invite me here?"

  "It's just a dinner." I shrugged off her question. "

  "You should have taken me here when we were dating."

  "I'm sure your husband could do that now, instead of me."

  She sighed at the mention of her husband and took a gulp of the glass of red wine she had ordered before I arrived and started to explain to me how miserable she felt marrying this man that was supposed to be a hundred times better than me in all possible ways. I nodded along without interrupting her, since she obviously needed an outlet for all of the unnecessary information about all the grand promises he made to her and did not fulfill, including their wedding vows of staying loyal to one another. Only when her phone rang in my pocket did I find an excuse to stop her, and switched our phones before we forget.

  The waiter came a moment later to take our orders, in English. "What would you like to have, Miss?"

  The question drew a blank from Jenny, who had studied English forever and had scored much higher than me in all subjects including English of the College Entrance Exam that every high school kid needed to take. I searched her eyes for any indication of special wishes and when I found none, I opened my mouth and ordered what I thought would be her favorite appetizers and main courses for both of us. To prepare for this long-awaited dinner, I had studied the menu before coming here and had already picked out the dishes that I was sure we both liked. The premeditation was part of the act to make her feel sorry that she had given up a perfectly decent, good man like me, and the meaning was not lost on her, for she started sobbing after my little 'dinner ordering' play in English with the waiter.

  "I was so stupid to break up with you. I'm really unhappy now. And I am sure you feel the same, with your wife cheating on you like that." She reached out to touch the back of my hand. It sent a tingling sensation down my back. "We should have been together. We should have been a pair. Life was so miserable for the two of us after we separated, don't you think?"

  My life had been quite miserable for some time now, so I did not really feel the difference, to be honest. I admit that Jenny's breakup with me was a huge blow to me back then, but I had moved on, and had lived quite an exciting, colorful life since then.

  "It's destiny. I mean, what is the chance that our partners cheated on us with each other? No one would believe this even happened!" Her sobbing was mixed laughs of self-mockery.

  Her endearing tone of voice persisted throughout the amazing, delicious but unusually small dinner. She even tried to spoonfeed me her dessert and dab the corners of my mouth with her table napkin when she spotted a string of chocolate sauce on my chin. Suddenly, I felt Jenny's bare foot stroking up my lower calf. I bolted upright and tried to pull the two sides of my suit jacket together, so that no one would notice the huge boner I got from her electrifying touch.

  "Mr. Qi had left a message for you, sir." The waiter walked by and delivered a note to me, together with a key card. I unfolded the note to read its message, praying very hard to myself that it did not say something like, 'Surprise! You've been punked and you're paying the bill!'

  Instead, the note said, "here's the key card to my permanent room rental at the Jumeirah. Enjoy the evening and leave it at the reception when you leave tomorrow."

  "Did you book a room here, Jong?" Jenny immediately jumped to conclusion when she spotted the room key. "You're...incredible. I'm...I guess if my husband and your wife could do it, there is no reason why we can't. We used to love each other so much." She said, already decided for us that we would take the offer of the room.

  I did love Jenny once, and would always find her just as attractive as she was the first time I met her. The fact that she was the decision maker for everything in our relationship had made it easy for me, because I honestly did not know how to respond to the room offer. As my mind was lingering back and forth between a 'Yes, my body is ready (from months of deprivation)' and a 'No, I don't love her anymore', she already took my hand and led me in the elevator, which went up to the floor of the room number written on the room key.

  Only when I arrived in the room did I realize that it was not a room, but a suite with multiple rooms instead. Just when I was appreciating the amazing designer objects in the biggest hotel room that I would ever get a chance to stay in, Jenny had slipped out of her dress, baring all in front of me except a lace underwear in her favorite color pink, and crept behind me to kiss my neck.

  I never dared trying anything with Jenny while we were dating. Back then I had always thought that since we would get married eventually, I would just wait for that special moment to come. It never did. My very first sexual encounter occurred instead right after she broke up with me, with a girl I met on the internet I never wanted to see again. And so you must be able to understand what a huge arousement it was for me to finally feel Jenny's kisses and touches. I turned around and pressed my lips against hers, unable to control myself anymore.

  Chapter 26

  I did it.

  I didn't know how I could do it but I did it.

  And instantly, I was overwhelmed by a wave of guilt, as if my internal moral compass had been thrashed by evil demons controlling my body and I immediately lost all my bearings about the real life.

  I felt disgusted at my bad judgment for having slept with someone whom I did not love and misled her to think that we could still get back together. So ashamed was I that I couldn't even bare to look at Jenny, who was naked, moaning, enjoying herself and completely oblivious to my feelings, for even just one more second after I reached orgasm. I grabbed a pillow lying on the bed to cover my manhood, ran into the shower cabinet and turned on the water so that the noise of the waterfall would cover the sound of my sobs.

  "Are you okay?" Paula asked me over dinner. She had come home early today, and bought braised duck from a famous shop in the city center. "Do you want to talk about what happened?" She was referring to the curious incident at the house, not about Jenny and I obviously.

  "No, I don't want to talk about it." There was nothing I wanted more than to forget about what happened in the last couple of days. Paula's unfaithfulness had somehow got my moral judgment all messed up, and I ended up meeting, and sleeping with my ex-girlfriend, triggering back years of memories and feelings buried deep in me for her. Those months after she was gone I lived like a walking rag doll, unable to come out of depression and self-pity. It seemed like I had just wandered back into the realm of Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye. It was a dark, lonely place.

  The next couple of days, or weeks — I wasn't sure anymore — I passed in dull melancholy. Precisely because I
did not know what I was doing with my life anymore, I did not want people to notice me, and ask me difficult questions about my mood, my feelings or the reasons behind my strange behaviors. For the next couples of days, or weeks, as I said, I spoke as little as possible to anybody and did everything that was required of me impeccably — I coded almost fifteen hours a day, attended diligently all the conference meetings in between that I hated, answered all the technical questions I was asked in the best way possible, and went to the Toastmaster meetings twice a week as Marvey wanted. I even, believe it or not, gave a presentation every time at those meetings and won the best presentation of the evening three times.

  When I went home, I cleaned and helped around the house where I could. Everyone around me noticed something was wrong with me, but they also spotted the quiet disquiet expression that permanently hung on my face and backed off. It was only because of that that I could get the space and time I needed to heal emotionally.

  At the end of the second month working at Bilious, I had eighty-eight thousand Yuan in my bank account from not wasting any of my salary on unnecessary things and, (surprise!) a forty thousand Yuan check that came with a congratulation Hallmark card from Mr. Qi in the mail.

  'Congratulations for finding the one. Hope you two enjoyed the pre-wedding gift from me at the Jumeirah last time. Now marry the lucky girl properly.' Mr. Qi wrote on the card in concise language.

  This windfall cut my saving time tremendously, and despite my conscience telling me that I should return the check to Mr. Qi, I immediately went to the bank and cashed it out so that I could wire everything to my father-in-law as soon as possible. There were two very good reasons for this: for one, I wouldn't have time to think too much about how I really did nothing to deserve Mr. Qi's big gift and ended up giving him back all the money that would otherwise take me forever to save, and secondly, to prevent myself from using a single cent of it on any frivolous activities that I would be tempted to waste money on should it stay with me a moment longer.

  Since Lizhou was all the way on the other side of the country, I found a company online that would deliver typical betrothal gift basket in my stead for me. With just a few clicks, that part of the wedding custom was taken care of, with a pair of phoenix candles, wine, cakes and all wrapped in red gift paper. My father admonished my lack of enthusiasm on the matter and invited Paula and Jessie to have dinner at their apartment in Feng Cheng Tower, so we could Skype Paula's parent all together as a replacement for the lack of face-to-face interaction that typical betrothal ceremony required, and apologized for his son's careless mistake.

  Now that Mr. Zhu got my eighty-eight thousand and eighty-eight yuan sitting in his account, he was considerably more amiable. He was almost nonchalant about the traditions, saying at one point that everything else was 'just a formality'.

  "Dad, why don't we go to Sichuan together?" Jessie asked me. "My teacher said that's where pandas come from. I wanna go see giant pandas!"

  "You're looking at a panda right now, don't you see?" Paula laughed hysterically at her own cruel joke about my panda eyes. As I said, there was a lot on my mind lately and I hadn't been sleeping very well.

  "Don’t you use to live there? Haven't you seen enough pandas when you were there?"

  Jessie looked at his mother, his lips pouting, then he answered, "No, I have never seen any!"

  "Lizhou is on the North of the province, pandas are from the South," Paula yelped the rather crude made-up answer to her gullible son and ended the topic right then and there.

  "You probably never took him out anywhere, did you?" I teased, knowing Paula. For Jessie, I looked up quickly where the panda parks were located online. There was one about five hours away from South of Lizhou, near Chengdu, called the 'Resting Dragon National Reserve'. Impressive name.

  She cocked her head defensively and retorted, "Life is hard over there in the village. I work my hands to the bones to put rice on the table for my family, and you're asking me about pandas?"

  "You can't expect the same lifestyle over there in the countryside," my dad chimed in, sensing my insensitivity, since in his eyes, I had always been a spoiled city boy that 'never worked a hard day in my life'.

  "Well, don't get so defensive," I said. In the corner of my eye, I saw my mother shook her head and got back to the task of picking out the fish meat from its bones for Jessie, who hadn't mastered the art of fish-eating yet at the age of seven.

  "You're turning him into a softie," Paula commented. "When he grows up he won’t know how to eat anything by himself and he would think fish are without bones and heads and all come in fillets, that grapes are without skins and apples are white."

  I laughed, because I thought she was right. My mother was, however, not so amused. She had been looking after Jessie quite a lot since both Paula and I were, despite the difference in professions, workaholics. Putting food on the table was the number one concern for every working class parents in China and like most other families, our son spent a lot more time with his grandparents than with us because we were so busy.

  "You've been leaving him alone to raise himself like a wild boy in the jungle of a city. He'll soon become Tarzan. If he's to become my grandson, then I will see to it that he is taken care of properly. He's the future of our family." My mother squeezed Jessie's cheek lightly as if he was still a baby and said to him, "Drink the soup first. I spent all afternoon making the pig brain's soup for you. It helps with memory. It's way better than all the soft drinks overloaded with sugar your mother gives you."

  Decades of in-laws soap dramas on the television hadn't seemed to prepare the two women for their future lives together, because I sensed the rising temper heating up the atmosphere around the dining table. I wanted to say something about it but no word seemed fitting.

  "Confucius said 'Shi bu yan; Qin bu yu' (Don't talk when you eat; Don't speak when you sleep.) Let's eat," my father said, bringing out the ancient philosophy in the perfect moment.

  Chapter 27

  A few days after the betrothal gift was delivered, my father-in-law called me, with a ring of joy to his voice to deliver the good news that he had managed to arrange for us a wedding banquet in a restaurant in Paula's hometown next week. He had consulted the professional fortune teller who could do complex calculations based on Paula’s and my birthday to reveal next Saturday to be the best date for our wedding, according to the position of the moon listed on the Ten-Thousand-Year Calendar, a highly respected book an ancient Chinese astrologist composed based on his observations of planet and star moving patterns. And all that was left to complete the lie — no, I meant the wedding in traditional Chinese fashion — was for us to be there.

  Talk about Chinese efficiency.

  "Next week?!" Paula screamed. I had to hush her so she would not wake the neighbors from their sleep. We had done enough of that lately. "I am not ready for it! I haven't even seen my wedding dress!"

  All wedding dresses looked the same to me, I wanted to say, but I refrained myself. "Just take the next couple of days off and prepare what you have to prepare for the wedding."

  "I have to work. I would get fired if I don't show up for a week."

  I put my fingers over her lips that she babbled with a lot and said to her, "Don't go back there, then. It isn't like you're running your chance to win Best Employee of the Month or something from them," I said, suppressing yet another sarcastic joke I had in my head that I would rather not say. "Just enjoy yourself. Take this week off and enjoy your time with your friends and family. Make yourself feel like a real bride before I arrive. I may have a second wedding in the future with someone else, but you are only going to enjoy this once. Besides, remember the panda park? Take Jessie there as a summer holiday treat. He'd love it. I'll pay for all the expenses."

  "Sight-seeing...I haven't done that in a while."

  I brushed her hair backward gently and held her face in my hand. "Look, it's going to be our big day soon, so you deserve a nice time, and so does Jess
ie." Horror stories of adopted kids abound these days between them and their new parents. Jessie and I got along exceptionally well and I did not want it to change. I would do everything to keep things that way.

  Paula looked at me thoughtfully without speaking for a second, and accepted my suggestion without protest. "What about you? Why don't you come with us?"

  "I'll join you as soon as I can, as soon as I finish something."

  Chapter 28

  The thing I told Paula I was trying to finish was something that Mr. Qi had personally asked me to develop about a month ago on his yacht.

  He had a very interesting idea for a software he named 'ThriftyEP'.

  It would automatically log any transactions made by the customers and convert them into fancy charts, so the users could track their spending. Whenever the transaction would go over a pre-set limit, the application would invest an amount equal to the difference to an investment fund, one of the many operated by the bank. This feature was meant to increase awareness on spending habits while boosting the enrollment rate into our bank's investment funds. The idea was ingenious and simple. I was impressed.

  "Is this part of Project Dragon One?" It did not matter to me, really, but I had very few other topics to talk to my boss about. Socializing with people from work outside of working hours, according to the 'Handbook for Big Corporation Employee' my dad picked up for me at the bookstore, was one of the key means of ensuring smooth working relationships. I took the advice to heart.