Crazy Rich Asians (36 page)

“What’s all the screaming on the deck?” Colin asked with a groan.

Alistair simply rolled his eyes and sat down in one of the chairs by the Regency drum
table. “One of the girls slipped overboard during the oil-wrestling contest. Not to
worry, her breasts make an excellent flotation device.”

He began sipping his coffee, but then made a face. “The Aussie bartender lied to me.
He told me he could make the perfect flat white, and this isn’t even close. This is
just a lousy latte!”

“What is a flat white?” Mehmet asked.

“It’s a kind of cappuccino that they only do down in Oz. You use the steamed, frothy
milk from the bottom of the jug, holding back the foam at the top so that you get
this smooth, velvety texture.”

“And that’s good?” Mehmet continued, a little intrigued.

“Oh, it’s the best. I had to have at least two a day back in my uni days in Sydney,”
Alistair said.

“God, now I’m craving one too!” Colin sighed. “This is a fucking nightmare. I just
wish we could get off this boat and go have a decent cup of coffee somewhere. I know
this is supposed to be one of the coolest new yachts in the world and I should be
so grateful, but frankly, it feels like a floating prison to me.” His face darkened,
and Nick looked at him uneasily. Nick could sense that Colin was slipping
fast into one of his deep funks. An idea began to take shape in his head. He whipped
out his cell phone and began scrolling through his contacts, leaning over to Mehmet
and whispering in his ear. Mehmet grinned and nodded eagerly.

“What are the two of you whispering about?” Alistair asked, leaning over curiously.

“I just had an idea. Colin, are you ready to bail out of this pathetically lame bachelor
party?” Nick asked.

“I would like nothing more, but I don’t think I can risk offending Bernard and, more
important, his father. I mean, Bernard pulled out all the stops to entertain us in
grand style this weekend.”

“Actually, Bernard pulled out all the stops to entertain
himself
,” Nick retorted. “Look how miserable you are. How much more of this do you want to
endure, just so the Tais won’t be offended? It’s your last weekend as a single man,
Colin. I think I have an exit strategy that won’t offend anyone. If I can make it
happen, will you play along?”

“Okay … why not?” Colin said a little trepidatiously.

“Hear, hear!” Alistair cheered.

“Quick, quick, we have a medical emergency. I need you to stop this boat, and I need
our precise coordinates right now,” Nick demanded as he rushed into the yacht’s pilothouse.

“What’s the matter?” the captain asked.

“My friend is suffering from acute pancreatitis. We have a doctor below, who thinks
he might have begun bleeding internally. I’m on the line with the life-flight rescue
chopper,” Nick said, holding up his cell phone anxiously.

“Wait a minute, just wait a minute—I’m the captain of this ship. I’m the one who decides
whether we call for medical evacuations. Who’s the doctor below? Let me go see the
patient,” the captain gruffly demanded.

“Captain, with all due respect, we don’t have a moment to waste. You can come look
at him all you want, but right now, I just need the coordinates from you.”

“But who are you speaking to? Macau Coast Guard? This is highly irregular protocol.
Let me talk to them,” the captain sputtered in confusion.

Nick put on his most condescendingly posh accent—honed from all his years at Balliol—and
glowered at the captain. “Do you have any idea who my friend is? He’s Colin Khoo,
heir to one of the biggest fortunes on the planet.”

“Don’t get snooty with me, young chap!” the captain bellowed. “I don’t care who your
friend is, there are maritime emergency protocols I MUST FOLLOW, AND—”

“AND RIGHT NOW, my friend is below deck on your ship, quite possibly hemorrhaging
to death, because you won’t let me call for an emergency evacuation!” Nick interrupted,
raising his voice to match the captain’s. “Do you want to take the blame for this?
Because you will, I can guarantee that. I’m Nicholas Young, and my family controls
one of the world’s largest shipping conglomerates. Please just give me the
fucking
coordinates now, or I promise you I’ll personally see to it that you won’t even be
able to captain a piece of Styrofoam after today!”

Twenty minutes later, as Bernard sat in the diamond-shaped Jacuzzi on the uppermost
deck while a half-Portuguese girl tried to swallow both of his testicles under the
bubbly water jets, a white Sikorsky helicopter appeared out of the sky and began to
descend onto the yacht’s helipad. At first he thought he was hallucinating from all
the booze. Then he saw Nick, Mehmet, and Alistair emerge onto the helipad, holding
a stretcher on which lay Colin, tightly bundled up in one of the yacht’s silk Etro
blankets. “What the fuck is happening?” he said, getting out of the water, pulling
on his Vilebrequin trunks and rushing up the steps toward the helipad.

He ran into Lionel in the corridor. “I was just coming to tell you—Colin is feeling
horribly sick. He’s been doubled over in pain for the past hour and throwing up uncontrollably.
We think it’s alcohol poisoning, from all of his boozing over the past two days. We’re
getting him off the boat and straight to the hospital.”

They ran to the helicopter, and Bernard looked in at Colin, who was groaning softly,
his face locked in a grimace. Alistair sat beside him, mopping his forehead with a
damp towel.

“But, but, why the hell didn’t anyone tell me sooner? I had no idea Colin was feeling
this sick.
Kan ni na!
Now your family is going to blame me. And then it’s going to get into all the gossip
columns, all the papers,” Bernard complained, suddenly becoming alarmed.

“Nothing’s going to leak. No gossip, no newspapers,” Lionel
said solemnly. “Colin doesn’t want you to get any blame, which is why you have to
listen to me now—we’re going to take him to the hospital, and we won’t tell anyone
in the family what’s happening. I’ve had alcohol poisoning before—Colin just needs
to get detoxed and rehydrated. He’ll be fine in a few days. You and the other guys
need to keep pretending that nothing’s wrong and keep partying, okay? Don’t call the
family, don’t say a word to anyone, and we’ll see you back in Singapore.”

“Okay, okay,” Bernard nodded rapidly, feeling relieved. Now he could get back to his
blow job without feeling guilty.

As the helicopter lifted off from the yacht, Nick and Alistair began laughing uncontrollably
at the figure of Bernard, his baggy swimming trunks whipping around his pale damp
thighs, staring up at them in bewilderment.

“I don’t think it even occurred to him that this isn’t a medical helicopter but a
chartered one.” Mehmet chuckled.

“Where are we going?” Colin asked excitedly, throwing off the purple-and-gold paisley
blanket.

“Mehmet and I have chartered a Cessna Citation X. It’s all fueled up and waiting for
us in Hong Kong. From there, it’s a surprise,” Nick said.

“The Citation X. Isn’t that the plane that flies at six hundred miles per hour?” Alistair
asked.

“It’s even faster when we’re just five people with no luggage.” Nick grinned.

A mere six hours later, Nick, Colin, Alistair, Mehmet, and Lionel found themselves
sitting on canvas chairs in the middle of the Australian desert, taking in the spectacular
view of the glowing rock.

“I’ve always wanted to come to Ayers Rock. Or Uluru, or whatever they call it now,”
Colin said.

“It’s so quiet,” Mehmet said softly. “This is a very spiritual place, isn’t it? I
can really feel its energy, even from this distance.”

“It’s considered to be the most sacred site for the Aboriginal tribes,” Nick answered.
“My father brought me here years ago. Back in those days, we were still allowed to
climb the rock. They stopped letting you do that a few years ago.”

“Guys, I can’t thank you enough. This was the perfect escape
from a very misguided bachelor party. I’m sorry I put all of you through Bernard’s
bullshit. This is really all I ever hoped for—to be someplace amazing with my best
friends.”

A man in a white polo shirt and khaki shorts approached with a large tray from the
luxury eco-resort nearby. “Well, Colin, Alistair—I thought that the only way to get
you coffee snobs to stop bitching and moaning was to get you a decent flat white,
one hundred percent made in Australia,” Nick said, as the waiter put the tray down
on the reddish earth.

Alistair brought the cup to his nose and inhaled the rich aroma deeply. “Nick, if
you weren’t my cousin, I’d kiss you right now,” he joked.

Colin took a long sip of his coffee, its perfect velvety foam leaving a white frothy
mustache on his upper lip. “This has got to be the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. Guys,
I’ll never forget this.”

It was just past sunset, and the sky was shifting rapidly from shades of burnt orange
into a deep violet blue. The men sat in awed silence, as the world’s largest monolith
glowed and shimmered a thousand indescribable shades of crimson.

Dr. Gu

Wye Mun sat at his desk, studying the piece of paper his daughter had just handed
him. The ornate desk was a replica of the one Napoleon used at the Tuileries, with
a satinwood veneer and ormolu legs of lions’ heads and torsos that descended into
elaborate claws. Wye Mun loved to sit in his burgundy velvet Empire chair and rub
his socked feet against the bulbous golden claws, a habit his wife constantly scolded
him for. Today, it was Peik Lin who substituted for her mother. “Dad, you’re going
to rub off all the gold if you don’t stop doing that!”

Wye Mun ignored her and kept scratching his toes compulsively. He stared at the names
Peik Lin had written down during her phone conversation a few days ago with Rachel:
James Young, Rosemary T’sien, Oliver T’sien, Jacqueline Ling. Who were these people
behind that mysterious old gate on Tyersall Road? Not recognizing any of these names
bothered him more than he was willing to admit. Wye Mun couldn’t help but remember
what his father always said: “Never forget we are Hainanese, son. We are the descendants
of servants and seamen. We always have to work harder to prove our worth.”

Even from a young age, Wye Mun had been made aware that being the Chinese-educated
son of a Hainanese immigrant put him at a disadvantage to the aristocratic Straits
Chinese landowners or the Hokkiens that dominated the banking industry. His father
had
come to Singapore as a fourteen-year-old laborer and built a construction business
out of sheer sweat and tenacity, and as their family business blossomed over the decades
into a far-flung empire, Wye Mun thought that he had leveled the playing field. Singapore
was a meritocracy, and whoever performed well was invited into the winner’s circle.
But those people—those people behind the gates were a sudden reminder that this was
not entirely the case.

With his children all grown up now, it was time for the next generation to keep conquering
new territory. His eldest son, Peik Wing, had done well by marrying the daughter of
a junior MP, a Cantonese girl who was brought up a Christian, no less. P.T. was still
fooling around and enjoying his playboy ways, so the focus now was on Peik Lin. Out
of his three children, Peik Lin took after him the most. She was his smartest, most
ambitious, and—dare he admit it—most attractive child. She was the one he felt confident
would surpass all of them and make a truly brilliant match, linking the Gohs with
one of Singapore’s blue-blooded families. He could sense from the way his daughter
spoke that she was onto something, and he was determined to help her dig deeper. “I
think it’s time we paid a visit to Dr. Gu,” he said to his daughter.