Five Star Billionaire: A Novel

by Tash Aw

  “But that means … women,” Justin protested, shaking his head.

  “Don’t be such a fucking prude,” said Sixth Uncle. “How many years have I been training you? Aiya, you’re so frustrating. You do a great job, but you can’t follow it through. I keep telling you, this side of the business is just as important as all the high-level finance stuff. You’ve got to keep the boys on our side.”

  And so they’d had a big meal at a Chinese restaurant, where there was shark’s fin soup and only X.O-and-Coke to drink, and afterward they stumbled in to Ichiban Karaoke Bar—Justin remembered the name because he was struck by the sign on the door, written in a surprisingly elegant hand. Sixth Uncle had hired the place in its entirety for the night (“Until daybreak, no problem,” Justin had heard the manager say to Sixth Uncle). While the men sloped into darkened corners, accompanied by various women, Justin sat at the bar with Sixth Uncle.

  “You’ve got to get off your ass with the Cathay site,” Sixth Uncle said. “Four months already and nothing’s happened. The longer you leave it, the harder it’ll get. Look what’s going on already with your brother’s girlfriend and her bunch of heritage-building friends. All their stupid campaigns in the press, written by their journalist friends. Bunch of bloody faggots. They think they’re in Europe or what? Saving old buildings, my foot. Ei, this is Malaysia, my friend! They’re wasting their time, but still—we can do without it.”

  Justin could barely hear what Sixth Uncle was saying; a man and woman were singing a duet—“Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”—but the man was drunk and couldn’t keep up, kept missing the beat and misreading words and breaking into laughter instead. “I doe go breakin’ my haaarrr, ha ha ha …”

  “Come on, boy,” Sixth Uncle continued, pressing his forehead against Justin’s. Justin could smell the sour stench of garlic and alcohol on his breath. “I got faith in you. Is that a song title? I got faith in you. I’ve told your dad, give you more time. But you have to think of something to replace the Cathay with—fast. Don’t let these spoiled Bangsar kids screw things up for you. You remember, years ago in Japan, I told you—your brother is a good-for-nothing? I was right, wasn’t I? Look at him, letting his girlfriend twist him around her little finger. Screw the both of them. You’ll sort them out, ya? Promise? Good boy.”

  As Sixth Uncle vanished into the shadows, Justin wondered how much longer he would have to stay before slipping away unnoticed. He thought of what Yinghui and C.S. were doing at that precise moment: quarter to midnight on a Friday evening. They would be at the café that Yinghui had just opened, spread out on comfortable sofas, listening to Lou Reed or Cuban music, chatting about films and travel and love. She would be sitting with her legs on his lap, her bare feet moving in the air to the rhythm of the music as she talked; she would not even realize that her feet were moving, or that Justin was watching her, noticing how her second toe was far longer than her big toe, how she had a habit of curling her feet into tight arcs every now and then, particularly when she laughed. Now and then she would get up and make some herbal tea from plants that Justin had never heard of and didn’t think were even drinkable, like nettle, or Indian chai, which they served in the café, inspired by their journeys to the subcontinent.

  I woe go breakin your haaarrr.

  Someone thumped Justin on the back—the man in charge of the sewage systems in the residential estate. “Thanks for a fantastic evening, boss!” he shouted over the music before walking away.

  In two hours’ time, Justin would still be in this karaoke bar, and Yinghui would be dozing on the sofa in her café. C.S. would be talking about a boring book he’d read; he would not realize how delicate Yinghui looked when she slept, would not notice how she had a habit of folding her arms in a loose “X” across her chest, as if protecting herself from danger.

  A woman came and sat next to Justin. “You look lonely,” she said. She was maybe ten years older than Justin—not yet forty, but her eyes were bloodshot and heavy and made her seem older, her slim jaw beginning to turn jowly, and she had drunk too much. Justin thought: She’s had a hard life.

  “I’m fine,” he said, retreating slightly into his personal space, away from the sudden warmth of her body. Her bare arm had pressed against his for a second—enough time to make him feel at once repulsed by and sorry for her. “Listen, I don’t really want company. Is that okay? Sorry.”

  “Sure,” she said, but she did not leave. She stared at the aquarium behind the bar; its glass was hazy with moss and it was full of goldfish with tattered fins. Justin looked at her—the shiny spandex top she wore was too tight for her and made her arms seem thicker than they actually were. Her skirt was too short and her high heels too big for her; they kept slipping off her feet as she leaned forward on the bar stool. It was as though she had dressed the way she imagined women dressed when they went to a karaoke bar. He was sure that she didn’t usually dress like this.

  “Would you like a drink?” Justin asked.

  She nodded but did not make any effort to appear pleased. When she looked at Justin, he could see how tired her eyes were. “X.O?” she said.

  Justin signaled to the girl behind the bar. “Two Coca-Colas, please.”

  The woman laughed. “Ya, I’ve drunk too much tonight. Your friends, they are a crazy bunch; they bought me lots of drinks. I’m not used to it.”

  “I can see.”

  “So,” she said, reaching across to rest her hand on his thigh. “You really look lonely, you know. You out-of-towners, you need company. I know you do. I’ve had experience of life.”

  Justin felt the heat of her hand through his jeans. Between his legs: the beginnings of an erection. He moved away from her touch and felt her hand lift away.

  “Are you from Kota Bharu?” he said. Their Cokes arrived, and they raised their glasses to each other in a brief toast. The first bars of a sugary old love song started playing from a nearby room.

  “Hey, I love this song,” she said. “It’s one of my favorites. You don’t know it? It’s called ‘Just Like Your Tenderness.’ I love classic old songs like this.” She started to hum along, her voice surprisingly fine and perfectly tuned. “… just like your tenderness …” she added with a little flourish at the end. She listened quietly until the song was over; all along she kept staring at the fish tank. “I live a few miles outside town,” she said eventually. “Guys like you would call me a kampung girl.”

  “Married? Kids? Family?”

  She looked at Justin with watery eyes. He thought maybe he had gone too far, asked too familiar a question. But she smiled and shook her head. “Divorced. You? A handsome young guy like you is sure to have someone.”

  Justin shook his head. “I’m a bachelor.”

  “Bet you have a lot of girls everywhere you go.” She reached for her small handbag and fumbled with the clasp; on its flap it read GUICCY. She took out a pack of Winstons and reached for the box of matches that was perched on the edge of a plastic ashtray on the counter. It took her several strikes of the match before she managed to light it, the sudden amber glow of the flame illuminating her face. As she took a long drag on the cigarette, Justin noticed the lines on her neck, the flesh pallid and waxy. He wondered how her skin would feel, whether it would be clammy and maybe a bit cold or warm and smooth. “What are you looking at?” she said, peering at him sideways as she exhaled a gentle stream of smoke in the opposite direction.

  “Nothing.”

  He felt her hand on his thigh again, and this time he did not move away. A song had just finished playing in the background—a long final off-key note accompanied by raucous men’s laughter and hearty applause. “Can we go into a private room?” she said. “It’s a bit noisy here.”

  He ordered two more Cokes and arranged for a small room to be opened up especially for them. When they were inside, settled down on the velour sofa, he began to scroll through the menu of songs, pretending to choose something they both liked. “What do you want to sing?” he asked, even
though he knew that they had not come into the room to perform duets.

  “Anything,” she said, sitting close to him. She eased her hand up his thigh until he felt it between his legs, warm and insisting. He placed his hand on her thigh but hesitated. The heat of her body and the slight stickiness of her skin excited but also sickened him; the purple glow of the TV set accentuated the blank look on her face, the absence of any intimacy. He was alarmed and a bit frightened at the thick knot of desire in his throat, which made his breath heavy and coarse. He hated that he could get aroused in a place like this, a small musty room that smelled of cheap air freshener and old tobacco—and yet he did not leave or ask her to stop. She was just doing what she thought he expected of her, what all men like him expected—he knew that she didn’t really want to be there with him. He felt like saying, I don’t want this either—but, then again, he thought, maybe I do. Maybe I am like all the other businessmen who pass through this small sleepy town, guys who want a quickie and who might leave a couple of hundred ringgit for her at the end of the evening, so that she could buy herself some clothes in the night market on the weekend. This is what his life had become, he thought: That was the kind of existence that awaited him, stretching infinitely into the future.

  “Don’t be nervous,” she said softly. “It’ll be nice, you’ll see.”

  After she had gone, Justin sat in the gloom with his head resting in his hands for a few moments. The Coke had left a sickly taste in his mouth, like cough medicine, and made him feel like throwing up; his head began to spin from all the alcohol he had drunk throughout the evening, and he wanted to go back to the hotel. He thought of Yinghui and C.S. again, reclining on the sofa at Angie’s, facing each other with their ankles lazily interlaced as they leafed through magazines. It was Saturday night—they might be listening to the Velvet Underground at that very moment; once it got past midnight, Yinghui would get up and put on “Sunday Morning” and start to sing along. Yeah, yeah, I’m so predictable, she would say, laughing as she returned to the sofa. She knew all the words; just the previous Saturday, Justin had watched her mouthing the words to “Pale Blue Eyes,” her lips moving gently even though her eyelids were half closed with slumber. When she sang, “Sometimes I feel so happy,” she really did look completely contented. She and C.S. would never know what it was like to be in Justin’s place, here in a karaoke bar in a small town up north—and Justin was glad, because he didn’t want her to experience all that men were capable of inflicting on others in this world he inhabited.

  “You dirty rat,” Sixth Uncle said, patting him heavily on his back. “Chatting up old women—I didn’t know you liked the mature type. Naughty boy!”

  “It wasn’t anything, we were just talking. And singing.”

  “Talking, my foot! All the guys were taking bets on whether or not you were going to score with the old woman. I said, man, he’s going to score a hole in one. I had fifty bucks on you, big brother.”

  “She wasn’t old.”

  “You shoulda invited her to the hotel, bit of takeaway—imagine, that poor woman, she’d be still talking about it in ten years’ time if you’d taken her back to your room.”

  Justin stood up and pushed past Sixth Uncle on his way to the exit. He wondered if, in the morning, Sixth Uncle and the rest of the men would remember the musty-sweet smell of Ichiban Karaoke Bar, its darkened corridors and worn-out carpets; whether they would recall the rising alcohol-induced nausea in their throats, their overfed guts, the feeling of women’s flesh through synthetic fabric; and whether they would regret it.

  The walk back to his hotel was not a long one, and he began to stroll through the muggy night, thinking that the warm air would do him good. He stood up straight, trying to get fresh air in his lungs, but after twenty paces or so he bent over and threw up violently in the drain along the road. In the dark, against the oily-black tarmac, his vomit appeared pale and milky and copious. Trails of bitter spit dripped from his chin.

  It was this that he remembered now, as he settled into the padded room with Little Tang and his friends late on this early-summer evening in Shanghai. Acrid sick, luminous, like a starburst against the night sky.

  23.

  NOTHING REMAINS GOOD OR BAD FOREVER

  THE VENUE IS DARK AND SMOKY AND SMALL ENOUGH FOR GARY TO see the imperfections in the unpainted walls—the way some bricks are chipped and cracked, the way the mortar has fallen away in other places, leaving a few bricks protruding precariously, as if they are about to fall. It is just before 10:00 P.M. and the room is full of men and women predominantly in their thirties, though he can make out some trendily dressed youngsters and a couple of people in their fifties who look like aging hippies. He has never performed to such a mature audience before—at every one of his concerts in the past, he looked out at a sea of teenage girls, unwavering in their screeching devotion to him. By contrast, everyone before him now is seated and patient. There is a low buzz of conversation and—maybe he is imagining it—a faint tremor of anticipation. They are scrutinizing him as if he were a fascinating zoological example of a little-known species that has never before been on public display; they are impatient to see what he will deliver.

  As he sits on the low, cramped stage, waiting patiently for the café owner and his friends to remove the superfluous drum kit to make a bit more room for him, he catches sight of the clock: The hands sit at exactly ten o’clock. Usually, at this precise moment, he is at home, waiting for his Internet friend Phoebe to come online so that he could tell her about his day and catch up on all the crazy things that she had been up to at work. This is the first time in three months that he has not been waiting patiently in front of the computer at the appointed hour, but he knows that he is, in all probability, not missing anything. She has not been online for more than two weeks now. Even though he sometimes waits all night, constantly keeping an eye on the MSN chat window, he sees no trace of her.

  Although he still keeps a vigil for her—more out of habit than hope—he knows that it is unlikely he will ever see her again. He has seen enough of the world to know that there will be no fairy-tale ending to the friendship he had begun to enjoy with Phoebe Chen Aiping. He knows what life is really like: The moment you fall, you are left behind, especially in a place like China. People rush ahead of you; they have no time to look back. Unlike the songs he used to sing, the story he shared with Phoebe will not erupt in a sugary, joyous chorus. All those new, strange experiences he had hoped to enjoy with her—simple things such as just going for bubble milk tea, as she once suggested—will now remain unexplored.

  Every evening for the last two weeks, while waiting in vain for her to appear, he has assembled the story of his life in photos, putting together a sequence of images, interspersed with Internet news articles, all of which would prove to her who he is. He has been doing this diligently, filling up the dead hours between 10:00 P.M. and daybreak, even though he realizes that it will ultimately be futile. The fragments that make up his history are pitiful, he realizes, and anyone looking at them will think: What a sad, empty life this boy has had; he has hardly lived at all. But for Phoebe, that paltry montage would have been enough—enough to show her that he has changed, that he has survived. Now that she will no longer see the evidence of his life, he wonders why he bothered doing it. Maybe it was not so much to convince her that he was a wonderful person; maybe it was, in fact, to convince himself that he has had a life.

  There is no explanation for her sudden disappearance, and he does not seek one either. He is not stupid enough to want an answer, and even if he were, in all probability, she would not be able to explain her departure herself. To her, abandoning her friendship with him most likely involved no thought at all. That is what people are like in the world today. Friendship, love, even family—all can be forgotten in an instant. Phoebe Chen Aiping. He wonders if that is even her real name.

  He adjusts the microphone on the stand before him. The clock hands are moving past 10:00 P.M. and the audie
nce is settling down, hushed now as the room darkens and the spotlight falls harshly on him. He coughs to clear his throat and hears the rawness of his breath in the microphone. The lights are trained at an angle that makes him squint. The people in the audience are fascinated, tense—he can feel their anxiety, as if they are worried for him. The ad on the door that evening, handwritten in heavy ink marker, had anounced simply: Surprise Artist—Gary Gao. There had been no advance publicity for the event, no hype; the people who came to this café-bar were accustomed to hearing earnest young folk or jazz musicians perform a set or two at the end of the evening. But tonight they are confused—the name on the signboard sounds vaguely familiar, carrying echoes of not just celebrity but frothiness. Wasn’t he a pop star? No, it must be a different person—someone like that would never perform in a place like this.