Mohsin Hamid - How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Your schoolmate meets you as planned outside the service entrance of a private club that is tonight hosting a fashion show in a pair of pavilions on its expansive lawn. You are both screened for weapons by a uniformed gatekeeper brandishing a hoop-ended metal detector, then perfunctorily motioned through. The shirt you are wearing is a half size too tight at the throat and has begun to chafe when you swallow, but you ignore this discomfort. Your thoughts are on the pretty girl.

You are unable to gain access to the runway pavilion, so you wait at the after-party, or after-reception, rather, the actual after-party, of which you are entirely unaware, being scheduled for much later tonight at the home of the designer whose work is on display. There in the second pavilion, with its temporary bars and tables and plush, semi-recessed lounges, you pace about, hoping she will appear, a tray of drinks balanced on your left hand, precariously, it must be noted, for you have never done this before.

The pretty girl is by now a person of some substance in her industry, even if the term is admittedly an odd one in a profession characterized by its less-is-more physical bias. She is not quite a model of the first rank, but she is well known to photographers and designers and other models, and to readers of picture-laden weekend supplements of local newspapers, a group that because of your abiding desire to see her not infrequently includes you. She earns enough to afford an apartment of her own, a modest but reliable car, and a live-in maid who can cook, which is to say she earns as much as a retail banker her age, and perhaps twice as much as you do, even before the gifts she receives from her multiple, high-churn-rate admirers are taken into account.

She enters now at the side of one of these gentlemen, the handsome although late-blooming and aggressively insecure son of a textile magnate, managing as she walks both to slink and to carry her head with her jaw aligned precisely parallel to the floor, creating thereby an effect of imperious carnality that this year is widely sought after.

You do not know how to attract her attention, and for a moment you are gripped by despair, this venture seeming foolish and doomed to failure. But she is as alert as ever, her laconic expression notwithstanding, and she notices the stare of an out-of-place man in his late twenties with something familiar about him. She returns your gaze at once. Detaching herself from her companion, she approaches.

“Is that you?” she asks.

You nod and find yourself swept up in an embrace. The length of her body presses against yours, embarrassing you, this being a public place, but thrilling you as well. Her touch recalls a moonlit rooftop. When she kisses you on the cheek in plain view of all of these hundreds of people, you wonder if she might still be yours.

“I can’t believe it,” she says.

“It’s incredible.”

“So you’re a waiter now?”

“What? No, I just… I borrowed this.”

She smiles.

“I’m in business,” you explain.

“Sounds mysterious.”

“Sales, actually. I make a lot of money.”

“I’m happy to hear that.”

She glances around. The two of you are garnering considerable interest because such an enthusiastic meeting of a model and a waiter is unusual, and also because you are on the verge of dropping your tray. The pretty girl has no compunction about causing a scene, but she is aware of the gap in social status between you, and of the questions perhaps beginning to form in the minds of her colleagues and clients.

“Here,” she says, “put that down and follow me.”

She leads you to the main pavilion, past the now-abandoned runway, and out a backstage entrance, shaking her head at a security official who bars your way. She waves hello to a small knot of people from the fashion world, but otherwise the two of you are alone under the starless sky. A hot breeze, gently perfumed with diesel, tugs at your clothing. She lights a cigarette and looks you over.

“You’ve grown up,” she says.

“So have you.”

“Do you still watch movies?”

“Not that much. Sometimes.”

“I’m an addict. I go to sleep in front of the DVD player every night.”

“Every night?”

She raises an eyebrow and smiles inscrutably. “Not every night. Often. When I’m alone.”

“I live with my father. Well, he lives with me. But I have my own place now.”

“Are you married?”

“No. Are you?”

She laughs. “No. I’m not sure I’m the type men marry.”

“I’d marry you.”

“You’re adorable. Maybe I meant I’m not the type men should marry.”

“Why not?”

“I change.”

“Everybody changes.”

“When I change, I let myself change.”

“I know. You wanted to leave the neighborhood and now you’ve done it. You’re famous.”

“And you?”

“I want to be rich.”

She laughs again. “It’s that simple?”

“Yes.”

“Well, tell me when you are.”

“I will. But I don’t have your number anymore.”

She gives you her phone and you dial yourself, letting it ring twice and saving it under her name. The glow of her cigarette has reached the filter.

“I should get inside,” she says.

“I’ll call you.”

“I know. Take care of yourself.”

She kisses you afresh on the cheek, placing her hand at the small of your back. You feel the graze of her breasts against your chest, and then she is gone.

As the pretty girl rejoins her world, she finds her poise somewhat undermined by your encounter. You are like a living memory and she, who is implacably resistant to remembering, is unsettled by you. Your manner of speech, even though it has evolved in the decade since the two of you last spoke, still carries the cadences of how she once spoke, more than the cadences, the perspectives, the outlook of the neighborhood she once belonged to, a neighborhood she is glad to have fled and to which she does not want to return, even for a moment, even in passing. She tries to focus on her companion, the textile scion, but she is blurry at first, not entirely present, and this alarms her to the extent that she makes a conscious and ultimately successful effort to clear her mind.

You call her that night but she does not answer. You try again the following day with the same result. Later in the week you get hold of her, finally, yet she is distracted, busy getting ready for a shoot. Occasionally thereafter, when you manage to speak with her, you are able to have a brief conversation, but she is always occupied when you suggest meeting. You find this perplexing, and consider how best to proceed. You do not know much about women, but you know a fair bit about sales, and it is apparent to you that this is a case when you must let the customer seek you out, lest you devalue your product completely. So you wait. And she does call. Not often. Not even every month. But sometimes, and usually late in the evening, after she has watched a film, and her voice is languid with impending sleep, and perhaps with alcohol as well, and she speaks to you softly for a few wonderful minutes from the comfort of her bed. She does not invite you over, or propose an encounter elsewhere, but she keeps in touch with you and your life, and this, while at times quietly painful, gives you a measure of hope.

At work you join the scramble for your former colleague’s accounts. One prospect rejects your advances, but you have internalized the principle of perseverance and accordingly you revisit him the following season. The man in question runs a shop in a formerly desirable residential area near a much-revered tomb, now choked with traffic by day and scented with marijuana by night.

You arrive on your motorcycle with the strap of your satchel slung bandolier-style across your chest. Your target sits behind the cash register.