Tash Aw - Five Star Billionaire

No doubt they, too, could look into his apartment, and he is sure that they cast casual glances across from time to time, but all they would see is yet another bored single man, of whom there are plenty in Shanghai, strumming his guitar or playing on an electric keyboard or idly zapping through the channels on his forty-two-inch TV while chatting on the Internet. He is just like hundreds of other young people in this apartment complex, and because there are so many people living so close to one another, no one ever looks into the next person’s life very closely. Everyone is busy preparing for tomorrow; no one has time for him.

He likes it here.

Gary begins each day full of hope, optimistic that his agent will ring and give him news of a new record deal or a small concert somewhere, maybe in Thailand or Indonesia, where he is still quite popular, because not many people have access to the constant barrage of negative publicity in the Chinese-language press. But his agent has not rung much, barely once a week, if that. At first Gary rang her often, chasing down possible leads; he began to realize how much he missed singing, how keenly he felt the loss of his stage personality, the rush of adrenaline he felt when performing. Soon, however, he stopped calling, because it was embarrassing to chase after her, awkward to keep reaching her answering machine and leaving messages in which he merely mumbled pleasantries because he did not really know what to say. It was, to be truthful, humiliating to know that not so long ago, if he rang anyone in the record company, his call would have been answered immediately, with great enthusiasm. He knew the way the business worked. If you are a success, you wish that everyone would leave you alone; when you are no longer a success, you lose the right to wish for anything.

For his part, Gary has been concentrating on his music. He has been writing a few songs and rearranging some traditional melodies in a more modern style. (He imagines that in interviews later in his life, when journalists ask him where he got the inspiration to write and reinterpret these songs, he will say, “It all goes back to that dark period in my life, when I was all alone, listening to these songs on other people’s karaoke sets in the apartment block.”) He has been trying to remember why he loves music, trying to forget about performing. It is not easy. He is happy because he is writing music after a long pause, but he is sad because he knows that he might never perform again.

He is also spending a lot of time online, but not looking at the unedifying and frankly rather sordid porn sites he used to frequent, which are banned and difficult to access, anyway. No, it is because he has found himself in a sort of online relationship. Is she a “girlfriend”? Or a “soul mate”? Is he in love with her, or are they close friends who understand each other deeply? Of course he does not love her, but he finds that he does have feelings toward her. It’s just that he cannot put a name to these feelings. He knows that she feels the same, that she does not consider him to be a boyfriend or lover, but that she, too, is happy whenever she receives a message from him. He keeps his computer on all the time, waiting for her to log in. Even when he is practicing the piano, he has the computer propped up on a small table next to him, in case the familiar box with her smiling face pops up with a note saying: Little Cat is here!

They chat every day, sometimes three or four times a day, and in the evenings they talk for up to two or three hours, way past midnight, and the following morning he will receive a message saying, So so so so tired but … so so so happy. Going to work now. Think of me and wish me success at work today!

It is the first time in his life that he has been so close to another person. He has never had conversations lasting more than five minutes, unless they concerned music or work. He has never had the opportunity to chat about simple, silly things like what kind of food he likes, what his favorite animals are, what he thinks of the plight of migrant workers, or about the fate of children orphaned in the Sichuan earthquake. She asks him questions such as, Who causes more misery to the opposite sex, men or women? before offering opinions such as: Women seek to change men, men seek to educate women, and they end up making each other unhappy . When he first started chatting with her, he realized that he had no opinions on anything. Or, rather, he did have feelings and opinions on many subjects, but he never had the chance to articulate any of them. He has never been in a position to examine his thoughts about important issues in his life. Until now no one has ever asked him: How are you feeling this morning? No one has ever said, Is everything all right with you today; you seem a little sad. This girl has the ability to discern sentiments in him that he himself is incapable of noticing. But the moment she mentions something — you seem a little depressed today; you seem optimistic this evening — he realizes that it is exactly how he feels. Depressed. Optimistic. Brooding. Assured .

And yet he has never met her in person or even heard her voice. On one or two occasions she has suggested swapping phone numbers so that she can text him while she is at work, but each time he changed the subject rapidly. He still cannot get rid of his manager’s advice, permanently recorded on his sixteen-year-old memory, saying: The first rule of self-protection is never to give your mobile number to anyone.

In fact he divulges very little information about himself. He does not say what he does for a living, how it is that he lives in Shanghai, or which district he lives in. When she asked him where he was from, he said, simply, Taiwan , to which she replied, Yes, I know .

How?

Because when I asked you what your favorite fruit was, you said fengli instead of bolo, and only a Taiwanese would say that .

For now she seems content with this lack of information. She says she does not want to pry — if he is married or holds an important public position, she understands and will not seek to know any more. All she knows is that he is nice to her, and that is what matters. If you are obese or deformed, I don’t care. I don’t care who you are in real life. I like you because … you are like me .

She is open, trusting, and always willing to show him photos of herself in a variety of settings — in People’s Park, at the top of the WFC, looking down at the crystal spire of Jinmao, at the Star Ferry pier in Hong Kong. All of these photos are taken by her, always from the same angle, the camera held at arm’s length, slightly above her face; they are never taken by a friend or companion, from which Gary deduces she does not have any friends.

What else does he know about her? Quite a lot, actually, because she loves to talk about herself, recounting every aspect of her life in some detail, describing not only her own emotional state but that of the people around her. Sometimes Gary feels that he knows these people personally and that he is part of her life. Her name is Phoebe Chen, and she is the manager of an upmarket spa in Jing’an — she told him the name and the street, but he’s forgotten the address now (though he figured out that if he were a normal person who wanted to visit her, there was a direct metro line that would get him to her workplace in just over twenty minutes). She has always worked in the hospitality industry, in the luxury sector, such as five-star hotels and casinos, which is why she has lived in several countries across Southeast Asia. Her current workplace is not as high profile or glamorous as some of the other places she has worked, but it offers her numerous challenges and advantages, such as a share in the ownership of the business as well as control over her working hours. She works with a team of fifteen full-time and part-time therapists and beauticians; many of them are uneducated girls from the countryside — you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to manage them! Always in crises, always having problems. The other day, would you believe it, Little S. didn’t come in to work because she thought she was pregnant, and when Phoebe asked her why she thought she was pregnant, she replied, Because the fortune-teller told me that I would get pregnant on this date if I ate a herbal soup double-boiled with bird’s nest. How stupid — she pays so much money to someone who will tell her anything she wants to believe. But this is the sort of thing Phoebe has to put up with all the time these days.