Crazy Rich Asians (52 page)

Charlie led Astrid straight to the Marais, a neighborhood he had discovered on his
own after tiring of tagging along with his family to the same shops within a three-block
radius of the George V. As they strolled down rue Vieille du Temple, Astrid let out
a sigh. “Aiyah, it’s adorable here! So much cozier than those wide boulevards in the
Eighth Arrondissement.”

“There is one shop in particular that I stumbled on the last time I was here … it
was so cool. I can just picture you wearing everything this designer makes, this tiny
Tunisian guy. Let’s see, which street was it on?” Charlie mumbled to himself. After
a few more turns, they arrived at the boutique that Charlie wanted Astrid to see.
The windows consisted of smoked glass, giving nothing away as to what treasures lay
within.

“Why don’t you go in first and I’ll join you in a sec? I want to stop in at the pharmacy
across the street to see if they have any camera batteries,” Charlie suggested.

Astrid stepped through the door and found herself transported into a parallel universe.
Portuguese fado music wailed through a space with black ceilings, obsidian walls,
and poured-concrete floors stained a dark espresso. Minimalist industrial hooks protruded
from
the walls, and the clothes were artfully draped like pieces of sculpture and lit with
halogen spotlights. A saleswoman with a wild, frizzy mane of red hair glanced briefly
from behind an oval glass desk with elephant tusk legs before continuing to puff on
her cigarette and page through an oversize magazine. After a few minutes, when it
seemed like Astrid wasn’t leaving, she asked haughtily, “Can I help you?”

“Oh, no, I’m just looking around. Thank you,” Astrid replied in her schoolgirl French.
She continued to circle the space and noticed a wide set of steps leading downstairs.

“Is there more downstairs?” she asked.

“Of course,” the saleslady said in her raspy voice, getting up from her desk reluctantly
and following Astrid down the stairs. Below was a space lined with glossy coral-red
armoires where, once again, only one or two pieces were artfully displayed. Astrid
saw a beautiful cocktail dress with a silvery chain-mail back and searched the garment
for a tag indicating its size. “What size is this?” she asked the woman standing watch
like a pensive hawk.

“It’s couture. Do you understand? Everything made to order,” the woman replied drolly,
waving her cigarette hand around and flicking ash everywhere.

“So, how much would it cost for me to have this made in my size?” Astrid asked.

The saleswoman made a quick assessment of Astrid. Asians hardly ever set foot in here—they
usually kept to the famous designer boutiques on the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré
or the avenue Montaigne, where they could inhale all the Chanel and Dior they wanted,
God help them. Monsieur’s collection was very avant-garde, and only appreciated by
the chicest Parisiennes, New Yorkers, and a few Belgians. Clearly this schoolgirl
in the rollneck fisherman’s sweater, khakis, and espadrilles was out of her league.
“Listen,
chérie
, everything here is
très, très cher
. And it takes five months for delivery. Do you really want to know how much it costs?”
she said, taking a slow drag from her cigarette.

“Oh, I suppose not,” Astrid said meekly. This lady obviously had no interest in helping
her. She climbed the stairs and headed straight out the door, almost bumping into
Charlie.

“So quick? Didn’t you like the clothes?” Charlie queried.

“I do. But the lady in there doesn’t seem to want to sell me anything, so let’s not
waste our time,” Astrid said.

“Wait, wait a minute—what do you mean she doesn’t want to sell you anything?” Charlie
tried to clarify. “Was she being snooty?”

“Uh-huh,” Astrid reported.

“We’re going back in!” Charlie said indignantly.

“Charlie, let’s just go to the next boutique on your list.”

“Astrid, sometimes I can’t believe you’re Harry Leong’s daughter! Your father bought
the most exclusive hotel in London when the manager was rude to your mother, for chrissakes!
You need to learn how to stand up for yourself!”

“I know perfectly well how to stand up for myself, but it’s simply not worth making
a fuss over nothing,” Astrid argued.

“Well, it’s not
nothing
to me. Nobody insults my girlfriend!” Charlie declared, flinging the door wide open
with gusto. Astrid followed reluctantly, noticing that the redheaded saleslady was
now joined by a man with platinum blond hair.

Charlie marched up and asked the man, in English, “Do you work here?”

“Oui,”
the man replied.

“This is my girlfriend. I want to buy a whole new wardrobe for her. Will you help
me?”

The man crossed his arms lazily, slightly bemused by this scrawny teenager with a
bad case of acne. “This is all haute couture, and the dresses start at twenty-five
thousand francs. There is also an eight-month wait,” he said.

“Not a problem,” Charlie said boldly.

“Um, you pay cash? How are you going to guarantee payment?” the lady asked in thickly
accented English.

Charlie sighed and whipped out his cell phone. He dialed a long series of numbers
and waited for the other end to pick up. “Mr. Oei? It’s Charlie Wu here. Sorry to
disturb you at this time of night in Singapore. I’m in Paris at the moment. Tell me,
Mr. Oei, does our bank have a relationship manager in Paris? Great. Will you call
the fellow up and get him to make a call to this shop that I am at.” Charlie looked
up and asked them for the name, before continuing. “Tell him to inform these people
that I am here with Astrid Leong.
Yes, Harry’s daughter
. Yes, and will you be sure your fellow lets them know I can afford to buy anything
I damn well please? Thank you.”

Astrid watched her boyfriend in silence. She had never seen him behave in such an
assertive manner. Part of her felt like cringing
from the vulgarity of his swagger, and part of her found it to be remarkably attractive.
A few long minutes passed, and finally the phone rang. The redhead picked it up quickly,
her eyes widening as she listened to the tirade coming from the other end.
“Désolée, monsieur, très désolée,”
she kept saying into the phone. She hung up and began a terse exchange with her male
colleague, not realizing that Astrid could understand almost every word they were
saying. The man leaped off the table and gazed at Charlie and Astrid with a sudden
vigor. “Please, mademoiselle, let me show you the full collection,” he said with a
big smile.

The woman, meanwhile, smiled at Charlie. “Monsieur, would you like some champagne?
Or a cappuccino, maybe?”

“I wonder what my banker told them,” Charlie whispered to Astrid as they were led
downstairs into a cavernous dressing room.

“Oh, that wasn’t the banker. It was the designer himself. He told them he was rushing
over to personally supervise my fittings. Your banker must have called
him
directly,” Astrid said.

“Okay, I want you to order ten dresses from this designer. We need to spend at least
a few hundred thousand francs right now.”

“Ten? I don’t think I even
want
ten things from this place,” Astrid said.

“Doesn’t matter. You need to pick out ten things. Actually, make that twenty. As my
father always says, the only way to get these
ang mor gau sai
to respect you is to smack them in the face with your
dua lan chiao
^*
money until they get on their knees.”

For the next seven days, Charlie led Astrid on a shopping spree to end all shopping
sprees. He bought her a suite of luggage from Hermès, dozens of dresses from all the
top designers that season, sixteen pairs of shoes and four pairs of boots, a diamond-encrusted
Patek Philippe watch (that she never once wore), and a restored art nouveau lamp from
Didier Aaron. In between the marathon shopping, there were lunches at Mariage Frères
and Davé, dinners at Le Grand Véfour and Les Ambassadeurs, and dancing the night away
in their new finery at Le Palace and Le Queen. That week in Paris, Astrid not only
discovered her taste for haute couture; she discovered a new passion. She had lived
the first eighteen years of her life surrounded
by people who had money but claimed not to, people who preferred to hand things down
rather than buy them new, people who simply didn’t know how to enjoy their good fortune.
Spending money the Charlie Wu way was absolutely exhilarating—honestly, it was better
than sex.

Tyersall Park

Rachel was quiet all the way home from the wedding ball. She graciously returned the
sapphire necklace to Fiona in the foyer and bounded up the stairs. In the bedroom,
she grabbed her suitcase from the built-in cupboard and began shoving in her clothes
as fast as she could. She noticed that the laundry maids had placed thin sheets of
scented blotting paper between each folded piece of clothing, and she began tearing
them out frustratedly—she didn’t want to take a single thing from this place.

“What are you doing?” Nick said in bafflement as he entered the bedroom.

“What does it look like? I’m getting out of here!”

“What? Why?” Nick frowned.

“I’ve had enough of this shit! I refuse to be a sitting duck for all these crazy women
in your life!”

“What on earth are you talking about, Rachel?” Nick stared at her in confusion. He
had never seen her this angry before.

“I’m talking about Mandy and Francesca. And God only knows who else,” Rachel cried,
continuing to grab her things from the armoire.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard, Rachel, but—”

“Oh, so you deny it? You deny that you had a threesome with them?”

Nick’s eyes flared in shock. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t deny
it, but—”

“You asshole!”

Nick threw his hands up in despair. “Rachel, I’m thirty-two, and as far as I know
I’ve never mentioned joining the priesthood. I
do
have a sexual history, but I’ve never tried to conceal any of it from you.”

“It’s not that you concealed it. It’s more that you never told me in the first place!
You should have said something. You should have told me that Francesca and you had
a past, so I didn’t have to sit there tonight and get totally blindsided. I felt like
a total fucking idiot.”

Nick sat down on the edge of the chaise lounge, burying his face in his hands. Rachel
had every right to be angry—it just never occurred to him to mention something that
happened half a lifetime ago. “I’m so sorry—” he began.

“A threesome? With Mandy and
Francesca
?
Really
? Of all the women in the world,” Rachel said contemptuously as she struggled with
the zipper on her suitcase.

Nick sighed deeply. He wanted to explain that Francesca had been a very different
girl back then, before her grandfather’s stroke and all that money, but he realized
that this was not the time to defend her. He approached Rachel slowly and put his
arms around her. She tried to break away from him, but he locked his arms around her
tightly.

“Look at me, Rachel.
Look at me
,” he said calmly. “Francesca and I just had a brief fling that summer in Capri. That’s
all it was. We were stupid sixteen-year-olds, all raging hormones. That was almost
two
decades ago. I was single for four years before I met you, and I think you know precisely
how the last two years have gone—you are the center of my life, Rachel.
The absolute center
. What happened tonight? Who told you all these things?”

With that, Rachel broke down and it all came flooding out—everything that happened
at Araminta’s bachelorette weekend, all of Mandy’s constant innuendoes, the stunt
that Francesca had pulled at the wedding ball. Nick listened to Rachel’s ordeal, feeling
sick to his stomach the more he heard. Here he thought she had been having the time
of her life. It pained him to see how shaken up she was, to see the tears spill down
her pretty face.

“Rachel, I am
so
sorry. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am,” Nick said earnestly.

Rachel stood facing the window, wiping the tears from her eyes. She was angry at herself
for crying and confused by the tidal wave of emotion that had swept over her, but
she just couldn’t help it. The shock of the evening and the pent-up stress of the
days leading up to it had brought her to this point, and now she was drained.

“I wish you had told me about the bachelorette weekend, Rachel. If I had known, I
could have done more to protect you. I really had no clue those girls could be so … so
vicious,” Nick said, searching for the right word in his fury. “I’ll make sure you
never see them again. Just please, don’t leave like this. Especially when we haven’t
even had a chance to enjoy our holiday together. Let me make it up to you, Rachel.
Please.”