Tash Aw - Five Star Billionaire

The food arrived. The waitress found that the table was too small and reached for Phoebe’s handbag, asking politely if she could move it. Walter stood up and hung the bag on Phoebe’s chair. He looked at it briefly and said, “Might be time for you to get a new bag. The zipper’s broken on this one.”

It was true; Phoebe had not thought of it. The zipper had broken months ago, and Phoebe had stuck a safety pin through it so that she could open and close the bag.

“I’ve been too busy to replace it.” When she heard her voice, she thought she sounded sad and depressed, which was not at all how she wanted to sound. She’d intended to be bright and seductive — she did not know how she had let herself be in this mood, so sullen and crushed by life.

“You work too hard,” Walter said, folding his napkin on his lap as he sat down. “Let’s just enjoy our dinner and not think about anything else for a couple of hours.”

Phoebe nodded. The smell of the food on the table made her feel hungry in the way she remembered her childhood hunger, boundless, as if it could never be sated. She lowered her head and began to eat. She did not care that she had lost all her elegant bearing; she was too tired to remember all the tips she had read in the chapter “Seduction at the Dinner Table.” Her head and shoulders slumped over the table; her hair fell forward and shrouded her face. She was looking like a real mess, she was sure. All she wanted to do was eat.

“Don’t eat so quickly,” Walter said in a soft voice. “You are guzzling your food, like all the poor village girls where I grew up! You don’t have to rush; you have all evening.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the reflection of the oil lamps dancing on the surface of the black, black water.

EVEN THOUGH PHOEBE TRIED to hide it, all the girls at work could tell that she had a new boyfriend and, what’s more, that he was rich.

“You really have the look of a settled-down woman. When is he going to marry you? This guy has serious money. Wah , a wallet too? It matches your new LV bag! He must be so considerate.”

They asked all sorts of questions: How much did he earn; what car did he drive; was he, um … had they, um … how was he when performing intimate relations? Phoebe did not know how to answer. She accepted all his gifts, enjoyed going out to dinner with him, but she did not yet know how much she liked him. He was definitely not the soul mate the fortune-teller had said she would meet. That must have been a mistake — the fortune-teller had clearly said, your soul mate will be a sensitive and romantic soul. She’d written it down, so Phoebe had proof of what she said. Phoebe even considered ringing the fortune-teller and asking for her money back.

When the other girls forced her into revealing a photo of Walter, she let them see the one she’d taken on her mobile phone, which showed him dressed in a light-gray jacket and open-necked shirt, an outfit that made him appear rich. He was standing in front of his car, and although you could see only part of it, you could clearly make out that it was a large black 4×4 with smoky windows. She chose that one because she knew it would impress the other girls, that they would notice only the clothes and car and not his average looks, and that would be enough to make them say, Wah, handsome brother! They would not notice the lines around his mouth and his narrowed eyes as he tried to smile. He was the only person Phoebe had ever met who looked in pain when he attempted to express joy. Sometimes when they were in the car, driving in silence — they always drove in silence, because it seemed he had very little to say to her, and she was fed up with trying to start a fascinating conversation — she would look at him and wonder if he had ever experienced joy. And she decided that most probably he had not, because he did not make her feel joyous.

And, what’s more, they hadn’t even done it yet. After four weeks, all they had done was hold hands, and on two occasions he had put his arm around her shoulders — once after their very first date, when they were standing on the Bund, looking across at the skyscrapers in Pudong. There was a cool breeze coming off the river, and the smaller boats on the water were rocking from side to side on the waves. Maybe it was cold and he needed her body for warmth. He rested his arm heavily on her shoulders without moving it for a very long time, and, frankly, it felt very uncomfortable after a few seconds. The other time was when they were on top of the Financial Tower at night, looking at the city spreading out below them until it disappeared from view in the distance, the roads fanning out in every direction, leading to points neither of them could see. He had put his arm around her and begun to draw her toward him. She thought he was going to kiss her, on the cheek at least, or whisper something suggestive in her ear, but all he said was:

“It didn’t look like this where I grew up.”

He never sought more-intimate physical relations, never accidentally laid his hand too high up on her thigh or on her bare knee when she wore short skirts, never even insisted on a good-night kiss. He must have sexual problems, she decided. Anyway, it was better that he didn’t push for closer body contact, because she did not judge him to be physically desirable. For the time being, it was nice to play the role of the morally correct, educated girl. After all, it was what he was expecting from her. She must have been good in this role, because he said, “It’s strange, but I really feel at ease with you. There’s something about you I can’t quite place — you’re just so different from the other women in Shanghai. I can’t understand you yet.”

Her books had been right: Men wanted only what they couldn’t obtain.

She made the decision — it was an easy one to make: She would use Walter for as long as she could; she had to be ruthless. She would accept the gifts of luxury handbags and Italian shoes and British raincoats and jewels from Hong Kong. She would not only enjoy the fine dinners but also use the opportunity to learn about the Western countries he had visited. She would listen carefully to his stories about getting lost in Rome and his description of the view from the Eiffel Tower, and she would store them away for use one day, when she was at dinner with someone else, her true soul mate. She would accept all his offers of evenings at the opera and ballet; she would use him to make herself better. Make use of men as they would make use of you .

One evening, driving to dinner in his car, she wondered where in this never-ending city her true soul mate lived, whether some element of fate had failed to fall in place — like a fine piece of thread that comes unstuck from a tapestry — and maybe that had been enough for her to miss her connection and now her true soul mate was driving around in a car with someone else he, too, liked sort of but not really . Nonetheless, having a steady male companion of any kind was an achievement in Shanghai, even if he was not a soul mate. What the other girls said was true; even Phoebe could see a change in her own habits. She was nicer to the girls at the spa; the silly things they did no longer gave her such a bad mood. Whenever their performance was lacking, she did not get a headache, she merely gave them advice calmly but authoritatively. She also started to leave work early, taking evenings off without worrying that something would go wrong in her absence.

On a Sunday morning she and Walter saw some people dancing in a small public park, right next to a busy highway. When they stopped at the traffic light, Phoebe could hear the same kind of Spanish-sounding music she often heard playing on loudspeakers on the streets, except quicker and more exciting. The people were spinning and shaking their shoulders and hips — it looked thrilling. Phoebe felt her body wanting to move to the rhythm of the music. The light turned green, and as they drove off, Walter said, “That’s salsa dancing. Let’s try it sometime.” Secretly, Phoebe signed up for evening classes in a dance studio in Zhabei. She wanted to be well prepared by the time Walter took her on their first salsa date — she did not want to make a fool of herself.