FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  Clasping his hands to his face once again, he slowly walked twice around his silent son. Then he stopped and threw up his hands, ‘Three days! Oi-oi-eh! Now also carpentry we are needing.’ Then he launched a volley of incomprehensible words at the goldsmith, who had remained silent, staring down at the polished cement floor. Finally, the old bloke turned back to me. ‘You are getting very lucky, sir. He, my son, say, this one time only, no surcharge for urgent job, normally two weeks, now only three days and carpentry also required. You are saving thirty Singapore dollar all at once together.’

  ‘So am I to understand, then, that the final price is a hundred and twenty dollars and you’ll have it ready by Thursday? Friday morning at the absolute latest?’

  The old man grinned his sticky brown grin. ‘You are very, very good at bargainings, sir. I am taking my hat off. But with surcharge for three nights and days ’round-clock workings and mouldings and pourings, and cuttings, and polishings, and altogether strivings and also carpentry,’ he took a hurried breath, ‘normally thirty Singapore dollars surcharge, total price 180 dollars.’ He paused to allow this sum of money to register. Then, head to one side, hands wide in a gesture of generosity, he said with a smile, ‘Now, surcharge we are very, very generously dropping, so you are getting a special once-in-lifetimes bargain.’ He brought his head back to an even keel and folded his arms, letting me know that he’d run out of patience. ‘Only 150 Singapore dollars, twenty per cent deposit on acceptance of quotings, all work personally guaranteed and certified most excellent and definitely first class, delivered by three-day miracle from Patel & Son, Calcutta-trained goldsmith!’

  I knew when I was beaten but managed to get them to throw in a small presentation box covered in black leather (probably free anyway), and I left feeling thoroughly bamboozled, without the foggiest idea if the chisel was a fair price or not. However, I was dead certain it wasn’t a bargain.

  Returning home, I placed the tissue paper carefully inside the box, then wrapped it around the cheongsam and shoes and took a taxi to the florist, where Connie Song had the roses ready. She also just happened to have a purple and white cymbidium orchid and I opened the box and placed it on top of the tissue. I admit it was probably excessive.

  Connie then offered to wrap the box in her gorgeous, shiny chocolate-coloured paper before tying the ribbon.

  ‘No, no, I’m already going too far with the orchid. These are just clothes being returned. Maybe just one of your terrific bows with the ribbon I bought, just to make sure the lid is secure,’ I suggested.

  ‘This nice ribbon, but too expensive for florist. People they don’t want to pay. I tie beautiful for you, Mr Simon.’

  I returned to the agency, where Alice Ho, seeing the roses, jokingly cried, ‘For me, Simon?’ I guess after all those months of having her reception area adorned with my boomeranged flowers, the aspidistra, now resting on its former plinth, didn’t quite measure up.

  I had practically achieved immortality in Alice’s eyes after the Karlene Stein interview, when her own personal reception desk had featured in the background, and later there’d been a reverse-angle cut where Alice’s face, almost in focus, had appeared in the background. Alice Ho, a powerful ally to have, was now most definitely on my side.

  I called Louie da Fly into my office. ‘Okay, mate, now here’s the drill,’ I began.

  He pointed at the roses. ‘Hey, boss, what bloody going on? Long stem? This much better, and red one also. What in box?’

  ‘Mind your own business, Louie da Fly. Now, listen to me carefully.’

  He looked at me sympathetically. ‘This no good business, boss. Always you pay, long stem, no stem, nothing happen. Maybe last time near Muslim temple, something happen, eh?’

  ‘Maybe when you’re grown up you’ll understand, mate. Will you shut up and listen to me?’

  ‘I grow up, already three,’ he said in a hurt voice, holding up three fingers. ‘Three womens, and I don’t pay. Also no flower.’

  ‘Louie da Fly, I don’t need to know about your love life. Here’s three bucks for the taxi, and don’t think I don’t know the fare is only a dollar fifty.’

  ‘I take rickshaw, thirty-five cent. Sank you, boss.’

  ‘Now, listen.’ I pointed to the box and the roses. ‘They go to Miss Mercy B. Lord, nobody else, you understand? Not the girl at the switchboard or the old lady. Don’t take any crap. If she’s not there, then wait in the tea-house. If you sat where you sat the day before yesterday, her office window will be directly opposite on the first storey, so if you get thrown out of the office, before you sit down to wait in the tea-house, stand on the street under the window and yell out. It’s worth a try, anyway.’

  ‘What I say for yelling, boss?’

  ‘Say, “Louie da Fly has flowers for pretty lady!” That’ll do.’

  ‘Air-condish, boss.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Window close, air-condish, no hear me, boss.’

  ‘Ferchrissake! Just see that she gets them personally,’ I yelled.

  ‘Yes, boss. Why you not say first time?’

  ‘Remind me to fire you when you get back, will ya?’

  ‘Too vallabil employ, boss.’

  ‘G’arn, scram!’

  ‘Okay, I go, quick quick for bloody sure, boss.’ Louie da Fly had become fixated on the great Australian adjective, convinced that peppering his speech with it gave his English added veracity.

  Louie da Fly returned an hour later without reporting to me but instead went straight back to work. The little bugger knew I could see him, wrapping stereos in newspaper and then tying them with coarse twine for delivery to the various Chinese newspapers, from my office.

  You may be wondering why I didn’t pull rank with the production staff. Being a director, I had the power to fire on a whim without bothering to give an explanation. The PAP government had little time for unions and, metaphorically speaking, they’d pulled out their teeth, nails and toenails, leaving them with no voice and a very tenuous grip on industrial welfare, limping along, going nowhere. The left-wing leadership had been locked up in 1963 during ‘Operation Cold Storage’, and six years later still languished in jail. The PAP government enforced a law inherited from their former colonial masters that allowed indefinite detention; somehow, they hadn’t got around to abolishing it.

  But for your average worker, there were swings and roundabouts. While the new government kept wages low and annual holidays short, they made up for this with a calendar peppered with public holidays – fifteen, plus two bank holidays – and they’d instituted a pension scheme and were building decent housing complete with excellent sanitisation almost as fast as it took to bake bricks and mix cement. No longer, as in British colonial times, could you smell the stench of Singapore from five miles out to sea. Affordable apartment blocks for workers were beginning to rise all over the island. There was no doubt that the average Singaporean was a lot better off than ever before.

  However, strikes were illegal, and at the clerk and general factotum level there had never been much protection. You owned your business, owed your employees nothing but their wages and were free to hire and fire pretty much at will. When they grew too old to be effective you showed them the door.

  But that was precisely the point. The agency before the Yanks bought in was totally autocratic. In fact, even after, very little had changed at the staff level. Sidney and Johnny ruled through fear. Ronnie, while still demanding a measure of kowtowing, was on slightly more familiar terms with staff. It was the Chinese way, but it wasn’t mine or, for that matter, Dansford’s. This egalitarian attitude, far from pleasing the older members of staff, totally disconcerted them. They simply didn’t understand the new practice of the gwai-lo who treated staff with respect. In fact, they seemed to silently resent the familiarity. Most people don’t like change, but the Chinese working class abhors it, even fears it. For centuries, change has only brought disaster with it. They are past masters of
adaptation, making the system work, no matter how draconian. As Dansford once remarked, ‘They just don’t dig it. There has to be a catch, but they can’t figure it out.’ I recall him shaking his head. ‘The irony is that, unable to understand our motives, they become even more mindlessly eager to please.’

  It was only with the young guys, the Willy Wonkas and Louie da Flys, that you could get the concept across that a harmonious office atmosphere with chi feng shui – positive energy, as Willy Wonka had once translated it – created a better working environment.

  But every once in a while you were forced to pull rank and jerk one of the kids into line. I guess that goes for anywhere. Even Willy Wonka, before he disappeared into the army, would occasionally need to be straightened out. I must say, the army had changed him, though I wasn’t sure if it was for the better. He’d visited us when on leave. The old Willy Wonka in one of his father’s oversized suits, excitedly jumping about, hands flying every which way as he talked, now stood more or less at attention and gave polite answers to questions. His short army-style crew cut and scrawny frame in a neat khaki uniform made him look vulnerable and a little disconcerted. The ‘polished brasses, shiny boots’ neatness imposed by the army, rather than lending him authority, gave him instead the appearance of a young cockerel that had lost most of its feathers in an unfortunate scrap with a large and domineering rooster. The delightful qualities the old Willy Wonka had possessed now seemed to have been starched and ironed out of him. The one good thing was that he hadn’t entirely wasted his time in the service of his country. After his basic training, he’d applied for and been accepted into the military film unit, making up for his disappointment at not being sent to Australia for film training. On the basis of his experience on the Citizen watch campaign, no doubt vastly exaggerated, he’d earned a single stripe as a lance corporal. I wasn’t at all sure that he was capable of carrying the crushing weight of responsibility thrust upon him by this lowest possible form of military authority. When eventually he completed his time in the military, we still had plans, along with Harry ‘Three Thumbs’ Poon, to develop a film studio. My hope was that Willy hadn’t lost his spark or his wonderful enthusiasm for the business of life.

  I walked over to the door of my office, opened it and yelled out, ‘Louie da Fly – at the double!’ Much to the amusement of the production staff, he jumped in fright, dropping the metal stereo he was wrapping and sending it clattering across the floor. Then, without stopping to retrieve it, he came running.

  With the errant dispatch boy standing to rigid attention in my office, I enquired, ‘Well? What happened?’

  ‘Ribbon fall off, boss.’ He pronounced it somewhere between ‘libbon’ and ‘ribbon’.

  ‘Ribbon? What ribbon?’

  ‘For box, boss.’

  ‘You little bastard! You opened the bloody box!’

  ‘Fall off from my hand, that box, from rickshaw, ribbon fall off. Inside come outside. Why you buy more rubbish no stem flower, boss?’

  ‘Don’t give me that bullshit! You took a peek!’

  ‘What peek, boss?’

  ‘Jesus! Looked! You looked. You opened the box.’

  ‘Only little bit, boss.’

  ‘You little shit!’

  Louie da Fly’s eyes widened and he looked decidedly hurt. ‘Not shit, boss … very vallabil employ.’

  I had the distinct feeling that if I stayed around long enough, I’d end up working for Louie da Fly. ‘Did you tie it up again?’

  ‘Very beautiful, boss.’

  ‘Yeah, I can imagine. So what happened? Did you give the roses and the box to Miss Mercy B. Lord personally?’

  ‘Ja, ja, of course! No crap!’ Louie da Fly looked at me quizzically. ‘What happen, boss? Last time switch-bor lady with big hair on top and old lady no teeths, they take flower. Now, Missy Mercy B. Lord, she come take flower himself.’

  ‘Herself.’

  ‘Yeah, big smiles for me … Very happy.’

  ‘Did she say anything? Ask you to wait?’

  ‘She say ribbon on box very pretty.’

  ‘You know, Louie da Fly, I really ought to give some serious thought to firing you.’ I sighed, but couldn’t hold back a grin. ‘She said no such bloody thing.’

  ‘Boss, how much you pay this ribbon?’

  ‘Never mind. Miss Mercy B. Lord said nothing to you?’

  ‘Ja, ja, she say she call telephone tonight.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘She say to tell usual, boss. I not know what means this, usual.’

  ‘Ferchrissake, Louie da Fly! Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Maybe big surprise, boss. Maybe pick up telephone, you got Missy you loves.’

  ‘Big surprise, my arse. When were you going to tell me?’

  ‘Maybe one hours, boss. Stereo for Chinese newspaper very urgent, I very vallabil wrapping boy.’

  I anticipated Mercy B. Lord would call me at the flat around seven o’clock, the time I usually got back from the agency when we were together. I stopped off and bought supper for two, her favourite Peking duck with a serving of rice and one of bok choy. Yeah, I know, in my dreams she was going to agree to come to dinner in the flat. Sure enough, punctual as mosquitoes after sundown, the phone rang at one minute past seven.

  I grabbed it and forced my voice to sound casual. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Simon, it’s Mercy B. Lord.’

  ‘Hello, Mercy B. Lord, lovely to hear your voice again. Louie da Fly said you’d be ringing me.’ I was trying to sound urbane, to keep my voice pleased but casual, but I could feel my heart beating faster. Just the sound of her voice set it thumping nineteen to the dozen.

  ‘Thank you for the roses, Simon.’ She giggled. ‘The red roses, and the gorgeous orchid. I now have two, one on either side of my bed.’

  ‘But only one person in bed between them when there should be two,’ I quipped, thinking the wicked giggle was permission to banter a little.

  ‘Now, Simon, I have several serious questions, so behave yourself!’ It was said lightly but was nevertheless a reproof, a caution to keep my head pulled well in. It wasn’t the first time her manner had changed within a single sentence, lightness turning to firmness. It reminded me of Chairman Meow. My dad called it ‘whipped cream’ – first the cream, then the whipping.

  ‘Right,’ I said, chastened.

  ‘Simon, what did you do?’

  ‘Me? Well, nothing, really. I had lunch with Molly Ong.’

  ‘Yes, she told me. But what happened?’

  ‘Molly may want you to be the Singapore Girl, but she also really likes you. She knew we’d broken up.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I told her the first time she phoned, when she rang to congratulate me on the win and wanted to talk to you as well. I guess about the idea for the Singapore Girl promotion … maybe offer you the new job.’

  ‘Simon, that’s not the question I asked.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, you ask what happened at lunch. Well, I admit we discussed the situation, the portrait, the predicament I’d placed you in —’

  ‘Then you talked about Beatrice, Sidney and me?’ she interrupted.

  There was no point in lying. I wouldn’t get away with it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Yes, we talked about … you know, your … unavailability two days a week. She said with the Singapore Girl job there was probably lots of travel involved – you know, tourism business, all over the world. Molly wanted to know why I named your painting the way I did.’ I was trying desperately to avoid using the word ‘Thursday’.

  ‘And what did you tell her?’

  ‘Nothing. What could I tell her? I still don’t know myself,’ I protested.

  ‘But you mentioned Beatrice?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And the Wings … Sidney?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said again, somewhat defensively. I was beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable. ‘Mercy B. Lord, I’ve fucked up big-time with the portrait
and placed you in an invidious situation, probably a dangerous situation. The Singapore Girl is a way out, and Beatrice and Sidney are obviously making it impossible for you to accept.’

  ‘You know that for sure, do you, Simon?’

  I winced inwardly but persisted. ‘Yes, I think I do. You said yourself that you’d love the job.’

  ‘And Molly Ong wanted me for it … so you put two and two together?’

  ‘Yeah, I admit I dobbed them in. After you said they’d put a tail on you and you were afraid, you know, the burqa … Then at the Ritz you said your life was fucked.’ I paused. ‘Mercy B. Lord, I’m truly sorry, but I love you and I want you back in my life and I don’t want you to get hurt and I don’t want your life to be fucked!’ It all just poured out of me.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked suddenly, the whip of the tongue gone and the cream back.

  ‘No. I bought Peking duck, with rice and bok choy for two. Actually, I was hoping …’

  ‘Yum! Turn on the oven – I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

  Perhaps when you’re in love, you read signs into everything. I opened the door to Mercy B. Lord not much more than fifteen minutes later, having turned on the oven as instructed. She was wearing jeans and a white shirt with leather open-toed sandals, nothing sexy. It was the shirt that carried the telltale sign: she’d left just one button beyond modesty unbuttoned, and while she wasn’t big in front, she was a B-cup, which was pretty big for an Asian woman, and I could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. She also wore no make-up – another sign – and I confess I wondered whether she carried a spare pair of panties and a toothbrush in her bag. I’d slipped a jockstrap on when she suggested coming over for dinner. That part wasn’t wishful thinking. I knew precisely what would happen the moment I laid eyes on her. No other fully dressed woman had ever had that effect on me. No, that’s probably not true – sexy is sexy – but I didn’t walk around with a hard-on the way I often did after a glimpse of her in the morning – a sideways glance at almost any time would do it. Bent over the kitchen bench preparing breakfast or dinner; reaching up to open the curtains; coming out of the bathroom barefoot, wrapped in a white terry-towelling gown with a turbaned towel on her head; in a Chinese grocery shop examining lychees, picking the plump, fleshy ones – anything would set me off. The one-eyed snake simply couldn’t be trusted and seemed to have a mind of its own where she was concerned. People say that carnal desire shouldn’t be confused with true love, but I couldn’t separate the strands that made up the whole of my loving her. I was completely, totally, in love, and making love to Mercy B. Lord was a fundamental part of the entire gorgeous whole, and my feelings hadn’t diminished in any way in the months we’d been apart. Now, as she stood in the doorway with the light falling obliquely on her face, I had trouble breathing.