Tash Aw - Five Star Billionaire

It did occur to her that the tone of both her paper and her email was a touch too businesslike, ignoring the personal rapport they had established, a connection that seemed to have been strengthening more quickly than their actual working relationship. This troubled Yinghui, for she realized that she was less skilled at navigating the murky waters of courtship than she had thought — it had been so long since her last romantic voyage, after all, and, contrary to what her girlfriends said, it was not like riding a bicycle: One did forget. She did not enjoy the sensation of not being in control; the symptoms of her lack of authority over the situation were irrational flashes of jealousy and suspicion — the feeling that she was walking on a slope of loose rocks that were ready to give way at any moment. So she decided to fall back onto more familiar territory — the dealings of business, where she was in total command.

Walter did not reply to her email all day; it was only after lunch the following day — a whole thirty hours after she’d sent him her thoughts on the way forward — that he replied with an email that read: Noted. Thanks . She tried to read between the lines, attempting to get a sense of the message he was conveying to her, for surely this meant more than two scant words, which in themselves signified little. It came across as a snub, a rapid shrinking of interest or a sharp change in direction. She read her paper again, looking out for anything she might have said to offend him, but could find nothing. Immediately, she picked up the phone and rang him: It was better to clear the air than to harbor minor grievances, she thought. That was something she had learned after many years in business — if something bothers you, simply challenge it, and you will see that the solution is much simpler than you might have thought. But his phone was switched off, and even though she left a message, it was not until much later that evening that he rang back. He was ringing from Beijing, he said, from a cab; she was relieved to know that his silence had been due to several hours in an airplane.

“So have you read my report?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said. She could hear him issuing directions to the cabdriver; excited voices on the radio; a cheery advertisement jingle. “I haven’t had a chance.”

“Sure. I just thought, maybe there were things we could be getting on with in the coming days.”

“I’m very busy at the moment. I thought I told you I had to attend a conference here, then another in Singapore, then I have some business to look after in Indonesia.”

“Perhaps I could take the initiative on a couple of things while you’re away.”

A pause at the other end. “Yes,” he said eventually.

“Can I ask you something?” Yinghui said in a strong, businesslike voice, making sure there were no emotive inflections in the way she delivered the line. “Has your interest in the project cooled somewhat in the last couple of days? You don’t seem as responsive or as committed as you were previously. I’m just wondering, because it sometimes happens that when the deal is completed, people lose interest for a while and then the whole momentum of the project slows down, and before they know it, everything grinds to a halt; I want to make sure that we capitalize on—”

“Of course I’m still committed,” Walter interrupted. “It’s just that … I’m wondering why you want to push on so quickly. There’s really no hurry.”

“Agreed, but the sooner we put things into place, the better, and there are so many details yet to be finalized — we need to sharpen our concept, start thinking of more-detailed financial models … we need to nail things down.”

She heard his voice muffle as he cupped his hand over the phone. When he came back on, she had the impression that he was laughing but couldn’t be certain; the line was momentarily interrupted by static, which made him sound distant and hollow. There was the final note of a soft, melodic chuckle — a woman’s laugh. Maybe on the radio; maybe a distortion of the phone line — Yinghui couldn’t tell.

“I don’t want to rush things,” he said. “We have plenty of time. I mean, loads of time. The purchase of the site hasn’t even been formally approved by the municipal council yet—”

“Would you like me to chase that down while you’re away?”

“No, no, I’ll handle that. My contacts there are used to dealing with me. I’ve got that under control. Listen, just relax, okay? I think you’re still on an adrenaline rush after securing that big loan. Take a few days off the deal and wait for me to come back to Shanghai. I’d really appreciate more time to chat things through with you. We don’t want to rush it through as if it were some ordinary development. This project needs someone with soul —that’s why I got you on board before anyone else.”

“I see. Yes, I understand.”

“I’d like to have a bit more of what we had in Hangzhou, you know, when we went away for the weekend.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Just, you know, to chat about everything and nothing. I find it so stimulating. Beneficial for work, I mean.”

Over the next few days Yinghui decided to concentrate on her existing businesses. She had been receiving daily reports on the state of each enterprise from her managers — the lingerie art gallery was continuing to progress without problems; the FILGirl brand was just beginning its operations, and trading figures in its first few days were encouraging. The Thai spa had had a magnificent start, and Yinghui had received breathlessly upbeat reports from the diligent girl she had recently promoted to manager. But these ventures felt to her like long-conquered lands, even though most of them were only in their infancy. Returning to them, even for a few days, felt like a return to a former, more restricted life.

When she visited the lingerie boutique, she found it coldly elegant, filled with professional women sipping coffee while typing into their BlackBerry phones; the small warehouse that held the stock of clothing for the Internet business hummed with a quiet efficiency. Yinghui had always prided herself on being a hands-on leader, and she still enjoyed giving the impression of being personally involved in the daily workings of her ventures, but now, standing in the warehouse chatting to the young man who organized the stock in neat categories according to clothing type, color, and age-range, she felt unmistakably, crushingly bored. Unconsciously, her mind was already beginning to generate ideas and calculations for her project with Walter — the ceaseless forward momentum of her brain sought to prepare an invisible dossier so that when Walter returned to Shanghai in a few days, she would be ready to impress him.

In fact, her old businesses scarcely felt as if they belonged to her. When she thought of them, they reminded her that she had accomplished everything on her own, that she, a single woman in the biggest city in the world, had built a modest empire by her skill and determination. It was something for which she had hitherto been lauded, and even she had believed in the myth of her success, but now, surveying the warehouse, lit by stark fluorescent lighting, surrounded by piles of cheap multicolored cloth, she wondered whether there was really anything to celebrate in her life so far. Could she cheer her own loneliness?

She thought of all the things that Walter had been saying to her — how he wanted them to take their time, get to know and understand each other, not rush into anything — and the more these phrases repeated in her head, the more she realized that they were a timid, awkwardly veiled invitation to a romance, that, being a gentleman, Walter had simply left open a suggestion of intimacy, waiting for her to respond. But she, blinded and scarred by the past, had clumsily declined to accept. As the sales representatives pointed out all the stock that had recently arrived, Yinghui decided that her boldness in work should now be matched by a similar courage in romance . The very sound of the word seemed thrilling and dangerous to her.