by Kevin Kwan
“There’s nothing shameful about it. Divorce is getting so common these days.”
“But not in our kind of families, Charlie. You know that. Look at your own situation—your wife won’t give you a divorce, your mother won’t even hear of it. Think of what it’s going to be like in my family when they find out the truth. They won’t know what hit them.”
Two deckhands approached with a wine bucket and a gigantic platter overflowing with fresh longans and lychees. Charlie popped open the bottle of Château d’Yquem and poured Astrid a glass.
“Michael loved Sauternes. It was one of the few things we both loved,” Astrid said wistfully as she took a sip from her wineglass. “Of course, I learned to appreciate soccer, and he learned to appreciate four-ply toilet paper.”
“But were you really that happy, Astrid?” Charlie asked. “I mean, it seems like you sacrificed so much more than he did. I still can’t imagine you living in that little flat, smuggling your shopping into the spare bedroom like an addict.”
“I was happy, Charlie. And more important, Cassian was happy. Now he’s going to have to grow up a child of divorce, ping-ponging between two households. I’ve failed my son.”
“You haven’t failed him,” Charlie scolded. “The way I see it, Michael was the one who abandoned ship. He just couldn’t take the heat. As much of a coward as I think he is, I can also empathize a bit. Your family is pretty intimidating. They sure gave me a run for my money, and they won in the end, didn’t they?”
“Well, you weren’t the one who gave in. You stood up to my family and never let them get to you. I was the one who caved,” Astrid said, expertly peeling a longan and popping the pearly fruit into her mouth.
“Still, it’s far easier for a beautiful woman from an ordinary background to marry into a family like yours than for a man who doesn’t come from any wealth or lineage. And Michael had the added disadvantage of being good-looking—the men in your family were probably jealous of him.”
Astrid laughed. “Well, I thought he was up for the challenge. When I first met Michael, he didn’t seem to care one bit about my money or my family. But in the end I was wrong. He did care. He cared too much.” Astrid’s voice cracked, and Charlie stretched out his arms to comfort her. Tears streamed down her face quietly, turning quickly into racking sobs as she leaned into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she kept saying, embarrassed by her uncontrolled display. “I don’t know why, but I just can’t stop crying.”
“Astrid, it’s me. You don’t have to keep your emotions in check around me. You’ve thrown vases and goldfish bowls at me, remember?” Charlie said, trying to lighten the mood. Astrid smiled fleetingly as the tears continued to flow. Charlie felt helpless and at the same time frustrated by the absurdity of the situation. His smoking-hot ex-fiancée was on a romantic Chinese junk with him, literally crying on his shoulder about another man. This was just his damn luck.
“You really love him, don’t you?” Charlie said softly.
“I do. Of course I do,” Astrid sobbed.
For a few hours, they sat quietly side by side, soaking in the sun and the salty spray as the junk floated along the calm waters of the South China Sea. They sailed past Lantau Island, Charlie bowing respectfully to the giant Buddha at its peak, and skirted past tiny picturesque islands like Aizhou and Sanmen, with their rugged out-croppings and hidden inlets.
All the while, Charlie’s mind kept churning nonstop. He had coerced Astrid into coming on this afternoon sail because he wanted to make a confession. He wanted to tell her that he had never stopped loving her, not for one moment, and that his marriage one year after their breakup had been nothing but a mindless rebound. He had never truly loved Isabel, and their marriage was doomed from the start because of it. There were so many things Charlie wanted her to know, but he knew it was too late to tell them.
At least she had loved him once. At least he had four good years with the girl he had loved since he was fifteen, since the night he had watched her sing “Pass It On” on the beach during a church youth group outing. (His family had been Taoists, but his mother had forced all of them to attend First Methodist so they could mix with a ritzier crowd.) He could still remember the way the flickering bonfire made her long wavy hair shimmer in the most exquisite reds and golds, how her entire being glowed like Botticelli’s Venus as she so sweetly sang:
It only takes a spark,
to get the fire going.
And soon all those around,
can warm up in its glowing.
That’s how it is with God’s love,
once you’ve experienced it.
You want to sing,
it’s fresh like spring,
you want to Pass It On.
“Can I make a suggestion, Astrid?” Charlie said as the junk made its way back to Repulse Bay to drop her off.
“What?” Astrid asked sleepily.
“When you get home tomorrow, do nothing. Just go back to your normal life. Don’t make any announcements, and don’t grant Michael a quick divorce.”
“Why not?”
“I have a feeling Michael could have a change of heart.”
“What makes you think that will happen?”
“Well, I’m a guy, and I know how guys think. At this point, Michael’s played all his cards, he’s gotten a huge load off his chest. There’s something really cathartic about that, about owning up to your truth. Now, if you let him have some time to himself, I think you’ll find that he might be receptive to a reconciliation a few months down the line.”
Astrid was dubious. “Really? But he was so adamant about wanting a divorce.”
“Think about it—Michael’s deluded himself into thinking he’s been trapped in an impossible marriage for the past five years. But a funny thing happens when men truly get a taste of freedom, especially when they’re accustomed to married life. They begin to crave that domestic bliss again. They want to re-create it. Look, he told you the sex was still great. He told you he didn’t blame you, aside from blowing too much money on clothes. My instinct tells me that if you just let him be, he will come back.”
“Well, it’s worth a try, isn’t it?” Astrid said hopefully.
“It is. But you have to promise me two things: first, you need to live your life the way you want to, instead of how you think Michael would want you to. Move into one of your favorite houses, dress however it pleases you. I really feel that what ate into Michael was the way you spent all your time tiptoeing around him, trying to be someone you weren’t. Your overcompensating for him only increased his feelings of inadequacy.”
“Okay,” Astrid said, trying to soak it all in.
“Second, promise me you won’t grant him a divorce for at least one year, no matter how much he begs for it. Just stall him. Once you sign the papers, you lose the chance of him ever coming back,” Charlie said.
“I promise.”
As soon as Astrid had disembarked from the junk at Repulse Bay, Charlie made a phone call to Aaron Shek, the chief financial officer of Wu Microsystems.
“Aaron, how’s our share price doing today?”
“We’re up two percent.”
“Great, great. Aaron, I want you to do me a special favor … I want you to look up a small digital firm based in Singapore called Cloud Nine Solutions.”
“Cloud Nine …” Aaron began, keying the name into his computer. “Headquartered in Jurong?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Aaron, I want you to acquire the company tomorrow. Start low, but I want you to end up offering at least fifteen million for it. Actually, how many partners are there?”
“I see two registered partners. Michael Teo and Adrian Balakrishnan.”
“Okay, bid thirty million.”
“Charlie, you can’t be serious? The book value on that company is only—”
“No, I’m dea
d serious,” Charlie cut in. “Start a fake bidding war between some of our subsidiaries if you have to. Now listen carefully. After the deal is done, I want you to vest Michael Teo, the founding partner, with class-A stock options, then I want you to bundle it with that Cupertino start-up we acquired last month and the software developer in Zhongguancun. Then, I want us to do an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange next month.”
“Next month?”
“Yes, it has to happen very quickly. Put the word out on the street, let your contacts at Bloomberg TV know about it, hell, drop a hint to Henry Blodget if you think it will help drive up the share price. But at the end of the day I want those class-A stock options to be worth at least $250 million. Keep it off the books, and set up a shell corporation in Liechtenstein if you have to. Just make sure there are no links back to me. Never, ever.”
“Okay, you got it.” Aaron was used to his boss’s idiosyncratic requests.
“Thank you, Aaron. See you at CAA on Sunday with the kids.”
The eighteenth-century Chinese junk pulled into Aberdeen Harbour just as the first evening lights began to turn on in the dense cityscape hugging the southern shore of Hong Kong Island. Charlie let out a deep sigh. If he didn’t have a chance of getting Astrid back, he at least wanted to try to help her. He wanted her to find love again with her husband. He wanted to see the joy return to Astrid’s face, that glow he had witnessed all those years ago at the bonfire on the beach. He wanted to pass it on.
18
Villa d’Oro
SINGAPORE
Peik Lin walked down the stairs carrying a Bottega Veneta tote. Behind her were two Indonesian maids bearing a pair of Goyard suitcases and a carry-on valise.
“You do realize that we’re going to be there for one night? You look like you’ve packed enough for a monthlong safari,” Rachel said incredulously.
“Oh please, a girl’s gotta have options,” Peik Lin said, tossing her hair comically.
They were about to embark on the trip to Shenzhen, where Rachel had arranged to meet her father, an inmate at Dongguan Prison. She had initially been reluctant to set foot on another private jet, but Peik Lin had prevailed upon her.
“Trust me, Rachel. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Peik Lin said. “The hard way is to fly for four and a half hours on some third-rate airline and land in the clusterfuck that is Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, where we can wait in a customs line for the rest of the day with thirty thousand of your closest friends—the vast majority of whom have never heard of antiperspirant and won’t share the same concept of personal space as you do. Or, we can call up NetJets right now and fly on leather seats made from cows that have never seen barbed wire and drink Veuve Clicquot for the two and a half hours it takes to fly to Shenzhen, where upon landing, a young, fit customs officer will climb aboard our plane, stamp our passports, flirt with you because you’re so pretty, and send us on our merry way. You know, flying private isn’t always about showing off. Sometimes it can actually be for convenience and ease. But I’ll defer to you. If you really want to go the chicken-bus route, I’m game.”
This morning, however, with Rachel looking rather ashen-faced, Peik Lin began to wonder if the trip was a good idea so soon.
“You didn’t get much sleep last night, did you?” Peik Lin observed.
“I didn’t realize how much I’d miss having Nick next to me at night,” Rachel said softly.
“His gorgeous, rock-hard body, you mean?” Peik Lin added with a wink. “Well, I’m sure he’d be happy to come over and climb back into bed with you in a nanosecond.”
“No, no, that’s not going to happen. I know it’s over. It has to be,” Rachel declared, her eyes moistening around the edges.
Peik Lin opened her mouth to say something, but then she stopped herself.
Rachel looked at her intently. “Just say it!”
Peik Lin put her tote bag down and perched on the velvet brocade settee in the entrance foyer. “I just think you need to give yourself some time before you make any final decisions about Nick. I mean, you’re going through so much right now.”
“It sounds like you’re on his side,” Rachel said.
“Rachel—what the fuck? I’m on your side! I want to see you happy, that’s all.”
Rachel said nothing for a moment. She sat down on the staircase and ran her fingers along the cold smooth marble. “I want to be happy, but every time I think about Nick, I just go right back to the most traumatic moment of my life.”
Trump, the fattest of the three Pekingese, waddled into the foyer. Rachel picked up the dog and placed him on her lap. “I guess that’s why I feel like I need to meet my father. I remember watching some talk show one night where adopted children finally got reunited with their birth parents. Every single one of these kids—all of them were adults at this point—talked about how they felt after meeting their birth parents. Even if they didn’t get along, even if their parents were nothing like what they expected, all of them somehow felt more whole after the experience.”
“Well, in less than four hours, you’ll be sitting face-to-face with your father,” Peik Lin said.
Rachel’s face clouded over. “You know, I’m dreading the drive up to that place. Dongguan Prison. Even the name sounds ominous.”
“I don’t think they want it to sound like it’s Canyon Ranch.”
“It’s supposed to be medium security, so I wonder if we’ll actually be in the same room together, or whether I’ll have to talk to him behind bars,” Rachel said.
“Are you sure you want to do this? We really don’t have to do this today, you know. I can just cancel the flight. It’s not like your father’s going anywhere,” Peik Lin said.
“No, I want to go. I want to get this over with,” Rachel said definitively. She ruffled the dog’s golden fur for a moment and stood up, smoothing out her skirt.
They made their way to the front door, where the metallic-gold BMW, already loaded with their luggage, awaited. Rachel and Peik Lin got into the back, and the chauffeur pulled down the sloping driveway toward the gilded electronic gates of Villa d’Oro. Just as the gates were opening, an SUV suddenly pulled up in front of them.
“Who’s the asshole blocking our way?” Peik Lin snapped.
Rachel looked out the windshield and saw a silver Land Rover with tinted windows. “Wait a minute …” she began, thinking she recognized the car. The driver’s door opened, and Nick jumped out. Rachel sighed, wondering what kind of stunt he was trying to pull now. Was he going to insist on coming along to Shenzhen with them?
Nick approached the car and rapped on the back window.
Rachel lowered the window slightly. “Nick, we have a plane to catch,” she said in frustration. “I appreciate that you want to help, but I really don’t want you to go to China.”
“I’m not going to China, Rachel. I’m bringing China to you,” Nick said, flashing a smile.
“Whaaaat?” Rachel said, glancing at the Land Rover, half expecting a man in an orange jumpsuit and shackles to emerge. Instead, the passenger door opened and a woman in a pale orange trench-coat dress with pixie-cut black hair stepped out. It was her mother.
Rachel flung open her car door and jumped out hastily. “What are you doing here? When did you arrive?” she said defensively in Mandarin to her mother.
“I just landed. Nick told me what happened. I told him we had to stop you from going to China, but he said he wasn’t going to get involved anymore. So I said I had to reach you before you tried to meet your father, and Nick chartered a private plane for me,” Kerry explained.
“I wish he hadn’t.” Rachel moaned in dismay. These rich people and their friggin’ planes!
“I’m glad he did. Nick has been so wonderful!” Kerry exclaimed.
“Great—why don’t you throw him a parade or take him out for oysters? I’m on my way to Shenzhen right now. I need to m
eet my father.”
“Please don’t go!” Kerry tried to grab hold of Rachel’s arm, but Rachel jerked back defensively.
“Because of you, I’ve had to wait twenty-nine years to meet my father. I’m not waiting another second!” Rachel shouted.
“Daughter, I know you didn’t want to see me, but I needed to tell you this myself: Zhou Fang Min is not your father.”
“I’m not listening to you anymore, Mom. I’m tired of all the lies. I’ve read the articles about my kidnapping, and Mr. Goh’s Chinese lawyers have already been in touch with my father. He’s very eager to meet me.” Rachel was adamant.
Kerry looked pleadingly into her daughter’s eyes. “Please believe me—you don’t want to meet him. Your father is not the man in Dongguan Prison. Your father is someone else, someone I truly loved.”
“Oh great, now you’re telling me I’m the illegitimate daughter of some other guy?” Rachel could feel the torrent of blood rushing into her head, and she felt as if she was back in that horrific drawing room in Cameron Highlands. Just when things were beginning to make sense to her, everything was turned upside down again. Rachel turned to Peik Lin and gave her a dazed look. “Could you ask your driver to step on his gas pedal and just run me over right now? Tell him to make it quick.”
19
The Star Trek House
SINGAPORE
Daisy Foo phoned Eleanor in a panic, telling her to come quickly, but Eleanor still could not believe her eyes when she entered the living room of Carol Tai’s mansion, the one everyone called the “Star Trek House.” Sister Gracie, the Taiwan-born Houston-based Pentecostal preacher who had just flown in at Carol’s request, circled around the lavishly appointed space as if in a trance, smashing up all the antique Chinese furniture and porcelain, while Carol and her husband sat in the middle of the room on the woven silk sofa, watching the destruction in a daze as two disciples of Sister Gracie’s prayed over them. Following behind the diminutive preacher with tightly permed gray hair was a full brigade of servants, some helping to break the objects she pointed at with her rosewood walking stick, others frantically sweeping up all the debris and putting it into giant black garbage bags.