Tash Aw - Five Star Billionaire

As soon as the main building work was completed, she and C.S. spent every evening at the site, scrubbing and oiling the sustainably grown hardwood work surfaces, sealing the concrete floors with varnish, and cleaning the brick and cement dust from the walls. They agonized over the color of the walls but finally decided to leave them nude and unplastered: The bare concrete looked starkly chic, the ideal backdrop to their carefully chosen furniture (they had planned an artful mélange of mismatched chairs and tables salvaged from sixties’ vintage shops, coupled with old Nyonya pieces C.S. had found in his family’s numerous storerooms). They left the heavy metal shutters drawn tightly shut as they worked, and in the harsh glow cast by the naked lightbulbs (their Noguchi paper lampshades had not yet arrived), they argued over the placement of the library of books and the newspaper stand; they got takeaway char kway teow from the shop around the corner and ate it cross-legged on the newly polished floor, their wooden chopsticks scraping noisily on the Styrofoam boxes; and when it got late and they felt they had quarreled too much and worked too hard, they had sex standing up — as she bent over and leaned on the pristine new counter, she worried, slightly, that the sweat on her hands and elbows would leave marks on the smoothly grained wood. Later, still high on exhaustion but calmer after their lovemaking, he would paraphrase a Slovenian philosopher whose lectures they had attended as students in London: “You know,” he would say, kissing her dust-and-paint-covered hair, “it’s a sign of true love that we can insult each other.”

“In that case: You are a dirty piece of shit,” she would respond, laughing, smelling the turpentine on his fingers.

They had that phrase written on a signboard in plain letters, along with other quotes stolen from European auteurs they admired, which they then hung randomly on the walls:

ALL GREAT NOVELS ARE BISEXUAL

Q: WHY ARE YOU CRYING? A: BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT

TRUE LOVE = INSULTING EACH OTHER

They didn’t care if anyone would get these quotes; in fact, they were sure that few, if any, would understand them or know where they were from. They themselves found the signs amusing, and that was all that mattered. On a whim, they decided to call the café Angie’s, after a movie they had seen that year, one of those so-bad-it’s-good films that C.S. loved. They had lost interest midway through the film and had engaged in surreptitious light petting to while away the time, and they later promised that, when they were finally living together, they would own a cat called Angie. Or a car. Or a café.

Right from the beginning, his friends loved Angie’s. Their friends loved Angie’s, for Yinghui realized that C.S. brought many people into her life — into their joint lives. She was not the only one drawn to his blend of nonchalance and intellect, his elegant skinniness, his don’t-give-a-shit attitude summed up by the permanent dark circles under his eyes and his charmingly disheveled hair. Standing at the counter, pretending to tally up the figures on the cash machine that she never fully mastered, she would watch him slouch on the battered fake Alvar Aalto sofa, his feet stretched out on the floor, surrounded by a coterie of eager disciples, predominantly young women. He would often be content to let others do the speaking; sometimes he would even stare into space or close his eyes as if he was thinking of something else entirely, but then, in the midst of the fiercest debates, he would begin to speak, and everyone would automatically fall silent and turn to him. His one-liners were pithy and original and always provocative; often there would be a ripple of embarrassed laughter at what he said. Each night, just after nine-thirty, she would pull the shutters half shut and lock the doors before opening a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. She would settle down with C.S. and a few of his close friends— their close friends — and chat until the early hours of the morning, sometimes until they heard the call for Fajr from the nearby mosque. Often she would stretch out on the sofa, lay her head on his lap, and doze off to the sound of his voice.

She felt that she could spend every evening like this, for years and years to come, and very possibly forever.

The business side of Angie’s was more bothersome. Yinghui struggled with the accounts, the indecipherable debits and credits and never-ending trail of invoices from suppliers, which she would often forget or even lose altogether, yet pride prevented her from hiring a bookkeeper. She had set out to run this business herself, to prove that she was not useless. Once, she enthusiastically offered to organize a party for the launch of one of C.S.’s friend’s latest poetry collection. The evening was a huge success, with readings interspersed with music by a soulful folk guitarist whose slangy lyrics spoke of urban migration and loneliness. The next morning Yinghui realized that she had not agreed on a fee for any of the food or drink she had provided; her business had paid for everything and she was left staring at the enormous bill. The Indonesian cleaners were late; the whole place was filled with the sour reek of stale beer; there were cigarette butts all over the floor; and someone had accidentally dislodged the plug to the ice cream freezer, leaving Yinghui to contemplate a few hundred ringgits’ worth of melted organic homemade coconut ice cream.

“Sweetheart, why are you so grumpy?” C.S. said, putting his arm around her. “It’s really not a big deal. Next time, if you don’t want to do stuff for our friends, just don’t do it. No one’s forcing you.”

“It’s not that,” she said, shrugging away from him. “It’s … well, Angie’s is a business, too, you know, not only a place for your friends to hang out.”

“So it’s ‘my friends’ now, is it? Don’t do it, then; no one asked you to throw a party for Ramli.” He put a Tom Waits tape into the cassette player, the same music they had had at the party the night before, and the music started playing loudly on the expensive German speakers: Colder than a well-digger’s ass, colder than a well-digger’s ass … “Anyway, Jojo was there last night. She’s Ramli’s publisher, for God’s sake; you could have just asked her for some money if you’re that worried about it.”

“Money’s not the issue,” she said, staring at a pile of dried-up prawnsambal canapés that had fallen onto the sofa.

“I know this is about independence and proving your worth and all that crap,” he said, sweeping aside the bits of food from the sofa before stretching out on it. “But, frankly, if the going’s tough, why don’t you ask your dad to help you out for a while? We’ve got to get real here. Your old man’s rolling in it at the moment — everyone knows he just got a share of that big oil concession up north in Terengganu.”

“ Fuck you,” Yinghui said. She realized she was wiping the counter with a damp cloth even though it was already clean. It was the only part of the café that was not filthy, the only bit she was in control of. “How fucking dare you bring that up? That’s rich, coming from you. Anyway, I said it’s not about money.”

“Ya, sure. So what is it about, then?” His foot was tapping in the air to the rhythm of the music.

She looked him in the eye and then, fearing she would start to cry, looked away again. “No one even thanked me.”

He stared at her for a while, waiting, she thought, for her to cry. But then he came and stood behind her, circling his arms around her waist and drawing her toward him. “Hey, hey,” he whispered, “shhh, you silly thing. Everyone knows this place can’t exist without you. Everyone loves you; it goes without saying, huh? We’re all so grateful and happy. What would we do if you didn’t keep this place running? Where else would we go? Oh, my God, we’d be screwed. The reason this place is so cool is you. Everyone knows this. Especially me. Especially me.”