Tash Aw - Five Star Billionaire

                Gon-di le pun le hua

                          deh mo de doo leh yoo-ha

                i-le en un-t-eh

                          dang mon g-he

                seh hua bu-he mu-a

                          tu me la-di

                labeh-hesu-a

                          u-ne ba-he

                don ye gon-mal

                          seh-tua mu-a

                la yu-heh

                          labeh-hesu-a

                mon ge-he gi baaaaaaa

He clapped as she finished. “Thank you, Édith Piaf,” he said. “Life is really en rose when you sing. It makes me happy.”

She did not fully understand what he meant, but she knew that she had been beautiful and impressive.

That night, in the “Journal of My Secret Self,” she wrote: I will become a woman of infinite class. I must not be afraid of using him. Maybe he is a nice guy. But even nice people can be used .

Yanyan said, “Are you writing secret things about your new love?”

“I don’t love him.”

“But he looks really great. And he’s so rich! We don’t even have to worry about paying our rent anymore. And look at the nice things he buys you. Can you imagine, he’s even got you tickets for the Sichuan earthquake charity concert. Do you know, those tickets were hot-selling six months ago? He gave you the tickets for free, to do whatever you want with them — how many men do you know these days who are so generous? Look at the list of performers; it’s unbelievable. Oldies like Tsai Chin together with cool guys like Chang Chen-Yue!”

“You can go. I have no enthusiasm for such things anymore.”

“Really? But you love music. Surely you two should go; you are perfect for each other. You should suggest that you go together with him.”

“What do you know? You’ve never even met him. He’s nice, but I have no feelings for him.”

“Then why are you in such a good mood all the time these days?”

Phoebe turned out the light. Yanyan’s questions put her in a bad mood. As she lay on her mattress on the floor, she wondered why she still stayed in this tiny room with Yanyan — it was beneath her now. She could afford to rent a place on her own, in a proper modern apartment block with fast lifts that were not littered with cigarette butts and corridors that were not dark and smelled of dog shit. She could be in a place with wardrobes to hang her clothes in and a bathroom with a powerful shower and a Japanese toilet with a heated seat and automatic wash and blow-dry. She would never have to step over a sleeping jobless roommate on her way to work; she would not have to take turns sleeping on the floor.

She listened to Yanyan humming a Chang Chen-Yue song; it was out of tune and kept her awake. But Yanyan sounded so happy, like a small child singing a song before she knew enough words to sing properly. She knew only one line in the whole song, which she repeated over and over again. Love me don’t go … It gave Phoebe a headache.

Lying on the floor and gazing out the window, she could see the night sky, hazy and purple with the lights of the city, as if it were forever dawn. She closed her eyes and tried not to think of anything. In her head she could still hear the words of the elegant French song she had sung at the KTV place. Seh tu-a pu mu-ah dang la wi, tu me la di la du-reh ne la wi … mon ge-he gi baaaa .

THE FIRST TIME JUSTIN HAD EVER SPOKEN TO YINGHUI WAS AT SUBANG Airport, just before she went through into the departure lounge to board the plane to London. She was pointing at the swifts swooping and darting in the heights of the cavernous tent-shaped ceiling, laughing as if she had spotted something surreal.

“I wonder if they shit,” she said, “and if so, why we don’t feel it. There are loads of them up there.”

“I don’t know,” Justin replied. “Guess it evaporates on the way down.”

All around them, Malay families were sending relatives off on the hajj; a small child was crying implacably as her mother went through the gates. Yinghui was wearing sky-blue jeans that were too baggy and short, with hems that ended at her ankle. She had tied a coarse coffee-colored sweater around her waist, which she fiddled with as she waited for C.S. to check his bags. When he finally arrived, they touched hands briefly; they had been boyfriend — girlfriend for only a couple of months and were not yet sure of how much affection they could display in public.

“Hey, thanks for the lift,” C.S. said, slapping Justin on the back. “See ya soon.”

“Least I can do for my little brother.” But C.S. and Yinghui were already walking through the gate, toward their new life. It was 1990; a Sheila Majid song was playing on the radio somewhere, and the air smelled faintly of kretek and curry leaves.

Justin had seen Yinghui once before, several weeks earlier at a neighborhood party thrown by a contemporary of his brother, a casual get-together for the boys and girls their age who had just finished high school and were soon to go abroad to continue their studies — to America, Britain, and Australia. There had been a bit of posturing, of course, the Oxbridge- and Ivy League — bound kids sorting themselves out in a subtle hierarchy, but in general the party had been marked by an atmosphere of camaraderie, everyone present united by elitism. They were all leaving, and they knew that, in Malaysia, to leave meant to be privileged.

But Justin was not leaving; he had not gone to college abroad or indeed anywhere. Already, he was as rooted in local life as his parents were. He was five or six years older than the rest of the kids at the party, sent as a chauffeur and discreet chaperone to his brother’s burgeoning tendency toward excess — Marlboro reds, experiments with alcohol, a fondness for the wrong sort of nightclub. An artistic temperament — that was how his parents explained C.S.’s behavior, always with a smile and a shake of the head. They were never troubled by his foibles; it was as if they thought that his every misdemeanor would be perfectly counterbalanced by Justin’s calm steadiness and utter reliability: one brother canceling out the effect of the other. Things would always be okay if Justin was around.

That was why he found himself at this party full of kids high on tequila and the anticipation of ivy-clad colleges; that was why, as usual, he was sitting at the edge of the room trying not to be noticed — the dull older brother of the mercurial C.S., the one who’d left school at eighteen after barely scraping through his final year. He knew all the people at the party, for he had grown up with them. He watched as two boys pushed each other into the swimming pool, noticed how a boy and a girl crept into a shadowy recess of the garden, framed by a pair of spreading palm trees; he caught sight of another pair sneaking upstairs separately, boy following girl after a gap of thirty seconds, hoping their assignation would not be noticed. But nothing escaped Justin: It was his job to take in the details of human weakness; it was his job to put things right.