Five Star Billionaire: A Novel

by Tash Aw

  “We don’t want to be exploitative,” Boss Leong said. “While we look for someone, we will pay you double overtime—in recognition of your hard work.”

  On three separate occasions, young women came in off the street seeking work as a receptionist or administrator. She recognized the look they wore—hungry, hard-eyed, desperate. They had decent qualifications and could easily have done the work Phoebe was doing. Each time, she apologized for the lack of work. “But if you let me have your résumé, I will contact you if there is a vacancy. Could you, um, please leave now? Sorry, but our exclusive clients don’t like seeing random people like you wandering in here.”

  Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, Phoebe answered the telephone, greeted people at the door, organized the schedule, served lemongrass tea to waiting clients, and made sure that the masseuses and beauticians maintained a harmonious existence. She gave the masseuses a daily lecture on the importance of professionalism and propriety, especially when dealing with male clients and even more so with Japanese and Western clients, who might have preconceptions of the services on offer. Once, she saw that an American client had discreetly given his phone number to his masseuse as he paid the bill. The next morning, at the daily staff gathering, she took great pleasure in announcing that the girl would be fired for being in breach of basic rules, and it should serve as an example to everyone else. Everyone said, “Phoebe is so professional; she is just like the manager here. Surely she will soon be on a manager’s salary.”

  Her new workplace also made it possible for her impeccable personal grooming to shine as brightly as her impressive work ethic. The spa’s uniform suited her; it was a slim black tunic made of raw silk, cut in the Southeast Asian manner that fit snugly around her waist and flared out over her hips. On the advice of Boss Leong’s PA, who also acted as the manager of operations, Phoebe changed her hairstyle, piling it up in a big bun in imitation of Singapore air hostesses. Sometimes she would catch sight of herself in the mirrored wall that lined one side of the reception area and be amazed that the person in the reflection was Phoebe Chen Aiping. Lit by soft spotlights and candles, she looked as if she had been born into this elegant world. She did not look the tiniest bit out of place.

  When the manager arranged for a photographer to shoot images of the spa and of the personnel, Phoebe persuaded him to take a few photos of her dressed in her uniform. His results overjoyed Phoebe. The moment the photographer sent her the portraits, she placed them on her profile page on the various dating websites she belonged to, replacing the ones Yanyan had recently taken of her standing on the banks of Suzhou Creek, which now looked amateurish—her smile was too forced, her provocative outfits too lavish for the humble setting of the public riverbank. The images that represented her now were classy and romantic, and it was just a matter of time before she found the right kind of man.

  With the long hours she was spending at work, Phoebe was no longer able to spend so much time on the Internet, and, besides, real life, as Boss Leong had said, was so much more fascinating. But the problem with real life was that it did not offer opportunities to meet real-life men. Every day there would be men in the spa, and often they would be rich, good-looking men. But Phoebe demanded professionalism from all her staff, and she knew that the best way to achieve the desired results was to lead by example. (On the way to work every day, she read her books, which taught her many instructive tips. For example, she should perform duties way above her position, in order to gain promotion more quickly: Behave as if you are the boss, and soon you will be the boss.) Therefore, she forbade herself any form of intimate involvement with her clients, even though, after less than two months, there were already regular clients who came back time after time because they were drawn to Phoebe’s charming manner and the excellent personal service she provided. For example, there was the man who came to pick up his wife after her weekly massage, who always made sure he came a few minutes early so that he could sit and watch Phoebe. Even though he pretended to read a magazine, she knew that he was appreciating her elegant movements and petite figure, which were accentuated by her slim-fitting black dress. She granted him a small, courteous smile only as she brought him a cup of tea. She did not wish to encourage him further.

  Then there was the Taiwanese man who came twice a week, once for a Balinese seaweed-wrap massage, the other for a Shanghainese pedicure. Phoebe had seen on his form that he was only twenty-six, yet he dressed in immaculate designer clothing and always engaged her in lively, amusing chats, often making daring jokes. He had a smooth, clear complexion, and Phoebe had to admit that the moment he walked in the door she felt happy and thought, This man would make a wonderful husband. One day he came in with another man who looked just like him, a local boy who laughed and joked in Shanghainese with the manicurist who had treated his friend. As he did so, he traced his fingers over the outlines of the Taiwanese boy’s hands, which were smooth and waxy and glowing after his manicure. Phoebe looked away as she handed them the credit-card machine; she did not want to look at them touching each other. “Phoebe fancies a gay guy,” the other girls teased later. “His boyfriend is more feminine than you!”

  In a city of 20 million people, it was impossible to meet men—all the girls at the spa agreed. They came from all over China, they were all here to make money and find a partner, but they were beginning to realize it was hopeless. All they could do was concentrate on their work and send money home so their parents could build a nice house in their village that would attract a nice boy; then they would go home and marry him, a slow-witted son of a farmer who had never ventured outside their province, maybe had never even gone to the provincial capital. And the girls, they would give up their dream of getting married to a successful doctor or banker. Their adventure would last a few years, and then, when they gotten too old, they would just go home. “Going out”: That was something that belonged to their youth, a scary, thrilling ride that began in their late teens and lasted into their twenties; but they did not want to be thirty-five and unmarried, alone, childless. They looked at all these well-educated women in Shanghai who dressed well and had good jobs but were still single, unwanted—remaindered. What use was that? They had made a bit of money, their parents had a fridge and color TV, there was enough money for an extension in the house, and they could even afford to hire help during the harvest season. Soon they would go home, to Anhui or Hunan or Sichuan or the frozen Northeast. They had gone out, but soon they would go home.

  Phoebe listened to their stories. She listened and thought, I am not going to go home. She could not go home, not yet, maybe never. She did not even know where she would go back to. She thought of her mother, living alone in that small town in the north of Malaysia, a town that was shrinking, becoming less and less alive as each year passed. It was the opposite of the villages of China that these girls spoke of, which grew and grew with the money they earned in the big cities on the coast, the fields of rice and wheat slowly turning into industrial parks and high-tech factories, the villages becoming towns, the towns cities, because the girls who left would, one day, go back and get married, as certain as the seasons passed. No, the town where Phoebe had grown up was smaller now than it had ever been, and soon it would be dead. Her mother had never moved, and soon she, too, would be gone. Phoebe had left; she had gone out. But she could not go back.

  She stayed late at the spa, past midnight, after everyone had left, and used the fast new computers to upload the best photos of herself on her Internet profiles. She joined every dating site she could find, concentrating on upscale ones that charged a fee for joining. She changed her age from twenty-four to twenty-two and made sure she responded only to men of quality who offered her excellent long-term prospects. Some nights she slept only four or five hours, because she chatted late into the night. It didn’t matter; she was young and didn’t need sleep.

  In her “Journal of My Secret Self,” she wrote: Phoebe Chen Aiping, every second of the day offers a beautiful opportunity
to achieve success. Therefore, you have 86,400 chances to change your life every day.

  14.

  EVEN BEAUTIFUL THINGS WILL FADE

  HE HAD BEEN EXPECTING HIS OFFICES TO BE DARK WHEN HE ARRIVED, certain of an atmosphere of mourning or at least mild depression at his prolonged absence. But instead Justin found it quietly busy, filled with the sounds of clacking keyboards and the soft rhythmic ke-chunk of the photocopier. Even his own office was lit—as soon as he stepped out of the lift, he could see the conical Alessi light shades glowing brightly against the mahogany-lined walls.

  The office manager was sitting in his chair when Justin walked into the room; the man was on the phone, using one of Justin’s fountain pens to scribble notes on a pad in front of him. He signed off quickly when he saw Justin. “Hello, boss,” he said, putting the phone down; he did not stand up. “What are you doing here? Your family said you were … ill.”

  “I’m all right now.”

  “Yes,” the office manager said, “you look … just the same.”

  Justin looked around the room and noticed that all his files had been rearranged; the leather-bound directories and coffee-table books of chic hotels had been cleared away, as had the framed photographs of his family and himself. They had been replaced with brightly colored plastic trays bearing stacks of paper that were too large for the custom-made hardwood shelves. There were piles of cardboard boxes in the corner of the room, as if excess stock from a small warehouse had spilled over into his office, and everywhere he looked he saw plastic jars filled with tea, the olive-colored leaves sitting at the bottom. There was nothing of Justin’s left on the desk, except the penholder that had been emptied of its contents and a paperweight he had been given at the launch of an Italian fashion label on his arrival in Shanghai. His desk diary was gone, as was the miniature sandstone carving of a dancing Hindu celestial his brother had bought him from the Met museum shop some years before.

  “The thing is,” the office manager said, “we didn’t think you were going to come back. Your brother said you were no longer in charge of affairs, and we were to await further instructions, but then he never gave us any. We waited and waited. Meanwhile, people here were getting restless, and the landlord wanted to renegotiate the lease and increase the rent. I read on the Internet about your family’s troubles in Singapore—you know, about the collapse of the stock market. So I had no choice.”

  A young woman came into the office. She was dressed in shin-length acid-washed jeans and a silvery T-shirt that said SMILE in English. “Boss Wu, the bottled-water distributor is here for your meeting.”

  “Who’s that girl?” Justin said once she’d left the room. “And why are we now selling bottled water? We are a property-investment firm.”

  “She’s a new girl I hired. Jenny left because we were slow paying her salary. Anyway, she was too expensive. Shanghainese nowadays earn so much money. That girl is from Hubei—she’s a friend of my sister’s from back home. You won’t believe how much I save on her salary! As I said, I thought your business was finished, so I let the landlord terminate the lease. But we still had three months here before we got kicked out, so I thought I should change the direction of the business to try to make some money.”

  “Change the direction,” Justin repeated blankly. He noticed that the cartons stacked around his office were marked ALL-NATURAL BABY FOOD.

  “Yes, I’m now trading in domestic consumables—business is great! Excuse me, but I have a meeting now. Is there anything I can do for you?” He stood up and gathered a few pieces of paper and a hardcover book that resembled an old-fashioned ledger.

  Justin shook his head. Outside, the skyscrapers of Pudong were clad in a cobalt-blue glass that reflected the sky, warping the shapes of the clouds so that they looked like streaks of oil on tarmac, brilliant and purple; when they shifted in the wind, the sun burst through, blinding Justin for an instant.

  “Your personal items are in that box over there, I think. No, that one over there. The girls cleared everything away before they left. Okay, I’ve got to go now. Goodbye.”

  A translucent blue plastic crate sat on the leather sofa, surrounded by samples of health-food supplements with bizarre names that Justin had never heard of—cat’s claw, dong quai, fo-ti, horny goat weed. He lifted the lid on the crate and looked at its contents—his desk diary and three silver-framed photographs lay inside, together with his personal organizer and the two mobile phones he used when in Malaysia and Hong Kong: the sum total of his life, barely able to fill a single packing crate. Another person might have had a painting or two, or colorful crayon drawings by their children, he thought, or else postcards sent by friends from sunny places, maybe a flag from their hometown or souvenirs of travel to foreign countries. He looked at his possessions: hard-edged, cold, functional; black and silver, plastic and metal. Even the photographs of his family were posed studio images. He looked at them for a while, wondering if he should take them. Eventually he slipped them into his briefcase, leaving everything else behind.

  Back at his apartment, he ran through his contacts list, briefly considering each name—how well he knew the person, whether he could ring them after so long, how awkward it would be. He felt a sense of urgency as he scrolled down each page, a feeling he could almost describe as strength, which he had not felt for many months. But as he worked through the list of names, the sense of fortitude began to turn to panic, and he realized that it was not in fact strength but desperation that drove his actions. Each time his eyes alighted upon a name that seemed hopeful, there was always a reason not to ring that person—an unbridgeable distance. The truth was, he now knew, he had no friends.

  He found one business contact, someone who had never been a proper friend but whom he had known since school days, a fellow Malaysian who owned a number of factories in Wenzhou that made the tiny clips on bra straps—60 percent of the world’s supply of bra-strap clips, he had once claimed; local businessmen admiringly called him “Bra Button King.” Justin had lent him 1,000 ringgit when they were both nineteen years old, when he was starting his first business buying and selling used office furniture.

  “Justin. Hey, man. I didn’t know you were still in Shanghai. I thought, all that stuff going on at home, surely you’d be back in KL. Must be tough there, huh? Ei, sorry, man, I’m quite busy at the moment. Can I call you back? Still the same number, right? Let’s have lunch soon, ya? Of course, I promise. Call you soon.”

  He rang two or three other people, but it was the same every time: They’d heard the news, were sorry to hear about his family, and, yes, they’d of course love to meet up but things were so busy in China these days, you know what things are like, just nonstop. They promised to call, but their voices were full of a fake cheeriness that signaled to him that they would not, of course, call back. He had done the same so many times in the past; he never thought he’d be on the receiving end of it.

  This was what life was like in China, he thought: Stand still for a moment and the river of life rushes past you. He had spent three months confined to his apartment, and in that time Shanghai seemed to have changed completely, the points of reference in his world permanently rearranged and repositioned in ways he could not recognize. Just as he had lost his car and driver, he was also navigating his way through life without a map—as if the GPS in his brain had been disconnected, leaving him floundering. Everyone in this city was living life at a hundred miles an hour, speeding ever forward; he had fallen behind, out of step with the rest of Shanghai.

  He was arriving at the end of the Rolodex, the cards flipping over hopelessly toward the “X, Y, Z”s without a sign of anyone who might help him. He was speeding through the “Y”s when he stopped, reaching for the card printed with a feminine, scrolling typeface: Leong Yinghui. It was not filed under her surname, but he knew that it had not been an error; he had done so by pure instinct, for he could not think of her in any other way than simply Yinghui. It was familiarity and habit that misplaced the card, n
ot carelessness.

  He thought he had lost her card, and maybe a part of him had even wanted to do so, uncertain and possibly afraid of what a reunion with her would involve. Throughout his winter solitude, when his thoughts had been blank and his body numb, he sometimes wondered what he had done with her card. Images of her came to mind, but even the prospect of getting in touch with her again was not enough to get him out of bed to search for it. All the yearning and regret that might once have stirred him into action was now gone; he couldn’t feel anything for her. That was when he had known that he was really ill, that it was not some passing cold-weather virus but something darker, something he would not be able to shake off easily.

  He had met her in what he now recognizes as the first stages of his breakdown, when he was already in a state of permanent distraction, his mind always cloudy, his vision and thoughts unfocused. He had been dragged to an event by Zhou X., the actress whom he had met at the charity auction at the start of his time in Shanghai. “I need someone to accompany me to an awards ceremony tomorrow evening,” she had said brightly on the phone. “Some female-business-award thing. No one wants to go with me; everyone says it’s too boring! I don’t want to go either, but my agent says it’ll make me appear serious and hardworking. Please come.”

  On the way to the event, Zhou X. spoke constantly; she had recently returned from Europe, where she had been filming in Berlin and Paris and sound-editing in London. She had opinions on everything: European food is awful, meat, meat, meat, always in huge burned lumps, often not even cooked. She went to a Chinese restaurant in Paris; the rice was like little plastic pellets. German people are fat. Dutch people are tall. French people are elegant but rude. English people dress very messily. London is dirty but they have nice parks. The hotels are old. People are lazy and always on strike. But she bought a nice handbag in Paris—limited edition, not available in China. Europe is good for luxury items, not so good for life.