by Kevin Kwan
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 b
ut 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.
* * *
* Hokkien for “big cock.”
10
Tyersall Park
SINGAPORE, 3:30 A.M.
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.”
Rachel kept silent. She stayed facing the window, suddenly noticing a strange set of shadows moving on the darkened expanse of lawn. A moment later, she realized it was just a uniformed Gurkha on his night patrol with a pair of Dobermans.
“I don’t think you get it, Nick. I’m still mad at you. You didn’t prepare me for any of this. I traveled halfway around the world with you, and you told me nothing before we left.”
“What should I have told you?” Nick asked, genuinely perplexed.
“All this,” Rachel cried, waving her hands around at the opulent bedroom they were standing in. “The fact that there’s an army of Gurkhas with dogs protecting your grandmother while she sleeps, the fact that you grew up in friggin’ Downton Abbey, the fact that your best friend was throwing the most expensive wedding in the history of civilization! You should have told me about your family, about your friends, about your life here, so I could at least know what I was getting myself into.”
Nick sank onto the chaise lounge, sighing wearily. “Astrid did try to warn me to prepare you, but I was so sure that you’d feel right at home when you got here. I mean, I’ve seen how you are in different settings, the way you’re able to charm the socks off everyone—your students, the chancellor, and all the university bigwigs, even that grouchy Japanese sandwich guy on Thirteenth Street! And I guess I just didn’t know what to say. How could I have explained all this to you without your being here to see it yourself?”
“Well, I came and saw for myself, and now … now I feel like I don’t know who my boyfriend is anymore,” Rachel said forlornly.
Nick stared at Rachel openmouthed, stung by her remark. “Have I really changed that much in the past couple of weeks? Because I feel like I’m the same person, and how I feel about you certainly hasn’t changed. If anything, I love you more every day, and even more at this moment.”
“Oh Nick.” Rachel sighed, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s true, you have stayed exactly the same, but the world around you—this world around us—is so different from anything I’m used to. And I’m trying to figure out how I could possibly fit into this world.”
“But don’t you see how well you do fit in? You must realize that aside from a few inconsequential girls, everyone adores you. My best friends all think you’re the bee’s knees—you should have heard the way Colin and Mehmet were raving about you last night. And my parents like you, my whole family likes you.”
Rachel shot him a look, and Nick could see that she wasn’t buying it. He sat down next to her and noticed that her shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. He longed to run a hand up and down her back soothingly, like he did almost every night in bed, but he knew better than to touch her now. What could he do to reassure her at this moment?
“Rachel, I never meant for you to get hurt. You know I’ll do anything to make you happy,” he said in a quiet voice.
“I know,” Rachel said after a pause. As upset as she was, she couldn’t stay mad at Nick for long. He had mishandled things, for sure, but she knew he wasn’t to blame for Francesca’s bitchiness. This was exactly what Francesca had been hoping to achieve—to make her doubt herself, to make her angry at Nick. Rachel sighed, leaning her head on his shoulder.
A sudden gleam came over Nick’s eyes. “I have an idea—why don’t we go away tomorrow? Let
’s skip the tea ceremony at the Khoos’. I don’t think you really want to stand around and watch Araminta get piled with tons of jewelry from all her relatives anyway. Let’s get out of Singapore and clear our heads. I know a special place we can go.”
Rachel eyed him warily. “Is it going to involve more private jets and six-star resorts?”
Nick shook his head rapidly. “Don’t worry, we’re driving. I’m taking you to Malaysia. I’m taking you to a remote lodge in the Cameron Highlands, far away from all this.”
11
Residences at One Cairnhill
