Crazy Rich Asians (13 page)

As a teenager, Michael had played soccer every week at the
Padang
, the immense green field in front of city hall that was used for all the national
parades, and he often stared curiously at the august Victorian structure at the eastern
edge of the
Padang
. From the goalie post, he could see the glittering chandeliers within, the silver-domed
dishes set on crisp white tablecloths, the waiters in their black tuxedo jackets scurrying
around. He would observe the important-looking people enjoying their dinners and wonder
who they were. He longed to walk into the club, just once, to be able to look at the
soccer field from the other side of those windows. On a dare, he had asked a couple
of his friends to sneak into the club with him. They would go one day before soccer,
when they were still dressed in their St. Andrew’s school uniforms. They could just
stroll in casually, as if they were members, and who would stop them from ordering
a drink at the bar? “Don’t even dream, Teo, don’t you know what this place is? It’s
the Colonial Club! You either have to be
ang mor
, or you have to be born into one of those ultrarich families to get inside,” one
of his buddies commented.

“Gordon and I sold our Pulau Club memberships because I realized
I was only going there to eat their
ice kacang
,”
^‡
Michael overheard Mavis telling his mother-in-law. What he wouldn’t give to be back
out on the field with his friends right now. They could play soccer until the sun
went down, and then head to the nearest
kopi tiam
^§
for cold beers and some
nasi goreng
^‖
or
char bee hoon
.
^a
It would be so much better than sitting here in this tie that choked him half to
death, eating unpronounceable food that was insanely overpriced. Not that anyone at
this table ever noticed the prices—the Oons owned practically half of Malaysia, and
as for Astrid and her brothers, Michael had never once witnessed any of them pick
up a dinner check. They were all adults with children of their own, but Papa Leong
always signed for everything. (In the Teo family, none of his brothers or sisters
would even consider letting their parents pick up the check.)

How long would this dinner take? They were eating European style, so it would be four
courses, and here that meant one course per hour. Michael stared at his menu again.
Gan ni na!
^b
There was some stupid salad course. Who ever heard of serving salad
after
the main course? This meant five courses, because Mavis liked her desserts, even
though all she ever did was complain about her gout. And then his mother-in-law would
complain about her heel spurs, and the ladies would volley chronic health complaints
back and forth, trying to outdo each other. Then it would be time for the toasts—those
long-winded toasts where his father-in-law would toast the Oons for their brilliance
in having been born into the right family, and then Gordon Oon would turn around and
toast the Leongs for their genius in having been born into the right family as well.
And then Henry Leong Jr. would make a toast to Gordon’s son Gordon Jr., the wonderful
chap who was caught with the fifteen-year-old schoolgirl in Langkawi last year. It
would be a miracle if dinner ended before eleven thirty.

Astrid glanced across the table at her husband. That ramrod-straight
posture and tense half smile he was forcing himself to make as he spoke to Bishop
See Bei Sien’s wife was a look she knew well—she had seen it the first time they were
invited to tea at her grandmother’s, and when they had dinner with the president at
Istana.
^c
Michael clearly wished he were somewhere else right now. Or was it
with someone
else? Who was that someone else? Since the night she had discovered
that
text message, she couldn’t stop asking herself these questions.

MISS U NSIDE ME. For the first few days, Astrid tried to convince herself that there
must be some rational explanation. It was an innocent mistake, a text to the wrong
number, some sort of prank or private joke she didn’t understand. The text message
had been erased by the next morning, and she wished it could just as simply be erased
from her mind. But her mind would not let it go. Her life could not go on until she
solved the mystery behind these words. She began calling Michael at work every day
at odd times, inventing some silly question or excuse to make sure he was where he
said he would be. She started checking his cell phone at every fleeting opportunity,
feverishly scrolling through all the text messages in the precious few minutes that
he was away from his phone. There were no more incriminating text messages. Was he
covering his tracks, or was she just being paranoid? For weeks now, she had been deconstructing
every look, every word, every move of Michael’s, searching for some sign, some evidence
to confirm what she could not bring herself to put into words. But there had been
nothing. Everything was seemingly normal in their beautiful life.

Until this afternoon.

Michael had just returned from the airport, and when he complained of being sore from
cramming into a middle seat in the last, non-reclining row of an older China Eastern
Airlines plane, Astrid suggested that he take a warm soak in the tub with Epsom salts.
While he was out of commission, Astrid went snooping through his
luggage, aimlessly looking for something, anything. Rifling through his wallet, she
came upon a folded piece of paper hidden underneath the plastic flap that held his
Singapore Identity Card. It was a receipt for dinner from the night before. A receipt
from Petrus. For HK$3,812. Pretty much the price of dinner for two.

What was her husband doing having dinner at Hong Kong’s fanciest French restaurant
when he was supposed to be working on some cloud-sourcing project in Chongqing in
southwest China? And especially
this
restaurant, the sort of place he normally would have been dragged to kicking and
screaming. There was no way his cash-strapped partners would approve this sort of
expense, even for their top clients. (And besides, no Chinese clients would ever want
to eat French nouvelle cuisine if they could possibly help it.)

Astrid looked at the receipt for a long time, staring at the bold strokes of his dark-blue
signature against the crisp white paper. He had signed it with the Caran d’Ache fountain
pen she had given him on his last birthday. Her heart was beating so fast it felt
like it was going to jump out of her chest, and yet she felt completely paralyzed.
She imagined Michael sitting in the candlelit room perched atop the Island Shangri-La
hotel, staring out at the sparkling lights of Victoria Harbour, enjoying a romantic
dinner with the girl who had sent the text message. They started off with a splendid
Burgundy from the Côte d’Or and finished with the warm bitter-chocolate soufflé for
two (with frosted lemon cream).

She wanted to burst into the bathroom and hold the receipt in his face while he was
soaking in the tub. She wanted to scream and claw at his skin. But of course, she
did no such thing. She breathed in deeply. She regained her composure. The composure
that had been ingrained since the day she was born. She would do the sensible thing.
She knew that there was no point making a scene, demanding an explanation. Any sort
of explanation that could cause even the tiniest scratch on their picture-perfect
life. She folded the receipt carefully and tucked it back into its hiding place, willing
it to disappear from his wallet and from her mind. Just disappear.

Philip and Eleanor Young

Philip sat in his favorite metal folding chair on the dock that stretched out from
his waterfront lawn, keeping one watchful eye on the fishing line that went straight
into Watson’s Bay and the other eye on the latest issue of
Popular Mechanics
. His cell phone began to vibrate in the pocket of his cargo pants, disrupting the
serenity of his morning. He knew it would be his wife on the line; she was practically
the only person who ever called his cell. (Eleanor insisted that he keep the phone
on his body at all times, in case she needed him in an emergency, although he doubted
he could be of any help since he spent much of the year here in Sydney while she was
constantly traveling between Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai, and God knows
where else.)

He answered the phone and immediately the hysterical torrent from his wife began.
“Calm down and speak slower,
lah
. I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Now, why do you want to jump off a building?”
Philip asked in his usual laconic manner.

“I just got the dossier on Rachel Chu from that private investigator in Beverly Hills
who Mabel Kwok recommended. Do you want to know what it says.” It wasn’t a question;
it sounded like more of a threat.

“Er … who is Rachel Chu?” Philip asked.

“Don’t be so senile,
lah
! Don’t you remember what I told you last
week? Your son has been dating some girl
in secret
for more than a year, and he had the cheek to tell us about it just
days
before he brings her to Singapore!”

“You hired a private investigator to check up on this girl?”

“Of course I did. We know nothing about this girl, and everyone is already talking
about her and Nicky—”

Philip looked down at his fishing pole, which was beginning to vibrate a hair. He
knew where this conversation was leading, and he wanted no part in it. “I’m afraid
I can’t talk right now, darling, I’m in the middle of something urgent.”

“Stop it,
lah
!
This
is urgent! The report is even worse than my worst nightmare! Your stupid cousin Cassandra
got it wrong—it turns out the girl is
not
one of the Chus from that Taipei Plastics family!”

“I always tell you not to believe a word out of Cassandra’s mouth. But what difference
does it make?”

“What difference? This girl is being
deceitful
—she is pretending to be a Chu.”

“Well, if her last name happens to be Chu, how can you accuse her of pretending to
be a Chu?” Philip said with a chuckle.

“Aiyah—don’t contradict me! I’ll tell you how she’s being deceitful. At first, the
private investigator told me she was ABC, but then after more digging he found out
that she’s not even
truly
American-born Chinese. She was born in Mainland China and went to America when she
was six months old.”

“So?”

“Did you hear me?
Mainland China!
”

Philip was baffled. “Doesn’t everybody’s family ultimately originate from Mainland
China? Where would you rather her be from? Iceland?”