Shanghai Fools: A Novel

by Vann Chow

  Needless to explain, I was pissed. That was my sofa bed they were doing it on!

  Unfortunately, the man was more pissed than me.

  Perhaps the embarrassment of being walked in on was the reason for the extra boost of adrenalin in him, because he managed to yank my flatscreen television off its stand and hurled it at me even in such delicate moment of weakness.

  Being a nimble, regular football player, I had no trouble dodging the mass being hurled at me. Our entire, cheap television table, however, was overturned and dragged out of place by all the cables and equipment connected to the television and had snapped into two parts right in the center as it crashed on top of the coffee table.

  Paula let out a loud scream and cringed into a ball, her breasts hanging unflatteringly over the neckline of her pulled-down dress.

  To be honest, I didn't really care that much who Paula was screwing with. When I met her I know what kind of job she had and what kind of money she could bring home if she continued her preferred choice of profession after our fake marriage, allowing me to avoid assuming any unnecessary financial burden for my 'housemate'. It was an unspoken agreement between the two of us that she would continue to do things that no seemly wife would do for the sake of money and I was to simply turn a blind eye to it because it was, technically, none of my business. However, when some random guy came into my house, screwed my legal wife, on my own bed, ruined the entertainment center I set up for Jessie and broke the only piece of furniture that had any real value around here, I could not keep my cool anymore.

  I jumped over the pile of broken particle boards that used to be my television cabinet, grabbed the man's shoulders and punched him everywhere I could, fending off his futile struggle.

  "Che na liang bei!" I kept repeating these toxic curse words in Shanghainese I reserved for the most despicable of humans I did not prepare to come across in my life, to which the guy told me to 'stop!' in the same dialect, while trying to hit back himself. It did not matter that I have been speaking English all day nor did it matter at the moment what the state wanted us to speak. Only Shanghainese came out of our mouths, befitting the situation. I hit him harder when Paula tried to get in between us to stop me from killing her lover of the night.

  Our neighbors heard the commotion, and as any dutiful neighbor should, they all came to look. Some were cheering us on, none was trying to interrupt us — until apparently the wife of the man barged in.

  "You!" She drummed her weak hands over his face. "How could you cheat on me! How could you cheat on me with a prostitute like this! You're such a disgrace." Her voice sounded strangely familiar. I was too busy to control the flailing arms of the man to look who she was, until the man called her name out. "Jenny, Jenny, stop! I can explain it!"

  "Explain what?!" She asked rhetorically. "The whole neighborhood is here. What else do you want to explain?"

  "Jenny?" I stopped and looked at her in surprise. She was my ex-fiance.

  "Jong?!"

  Momentarily we forgot the issue at hand. She looked at me in what appeared to be an expression of amusement, as if to say that 'Oh, thanks the Gods I did not marry you. Look at who and where you ended up with!', which quickly melted into an expression of mortification, when she realized that her husband, the man lying on the floor under my crotch, had sat up and was about to strangle me.

  Repeated loud bangs on the metal gate of our home reverberated in the tiny apartment where we lived. "Stop it! Both of you! Get away from each other!"

  Three city guards had rushed in and started prying us apart. I had some previous, rather reprehensible experience dealing with the police and knew that the best thing to do at that very moment was to go limp and not do or say anything stupid. The other guy was not so smart and he, perhaps instinctively as with every man who knew he was guilty of something, resisted arrest and ended up being beaten fon his head and his back by one of the more aggressive officers with a club.

  Immediately, they registered me as the victim and him as the assailant. They pushed him to the wall and quickly cuffed his hands behind his back.

  "Who are you? Who are all of you? Someone come forward and explain to me the situation here." The more senior of city guards looked around and demanded of us. As luck would have it, he was none other than Brother Fei.

  "Brother Fei!" I called out to him, who cocked his head in amazement. "Oh, Jong, you little one (People like to call younger men who always seemed to be getting in to trouble, 'the little one'. It was not meant to be offensive.) What's going on again this time?"

  "Thank goodness you're here." He was there when I was being chased by Shirley's thugs at the airport about a year ago, having stolen her communication records and downloaded them into my phone, ready to expose her and her father's evil deeds to the public by uploading them all online. Brother Fei and his team saved me, by stalling the group. I did not even have a chance to thank him properly yet, since I had not been in soccer practice for some time now due to my injuries.

  "Tell me what's going on? Is this... sister-in-law?!" He asked in disbelief as he eyed Paula who was trying to adjust her dress to make sure all her private parts were covered. Since we were like brothers, my wife would be his 'sister-in-law'.

  I nodded in embarrassment.

  "Take her inside and cover her up. I will take care of things out here," Brother Fei worked out the plan decisively. "All of you! Go home! There's nothing to see here," he shouted at the nosy neighbors and drove them away.

  "Jong, I am sorry," Paula started crying when we were in the privacy of her bedroom. "This is not what you think it is."

  "Don't bother explaining," I said. "I don't care what you're doing with your body and how you make your money. It's your own choice." It might sound a bit cold but I really honestly didn't care, as long as nobody get hurt from all her frolicking. My mind wandered back to Jessie who was supposed to be sleeping in his room. I hoped he didn't see or hear any of this.

  "No, that's not what I want, but I have no choice..." Her sobbing got worse.

  "Of course, you didn't have a choice," I said sarcastically. "They are waiting for us outside. Get dressed, quick."

  When I came out of Paula's room, after pretending to have a row with her like a normal couple would when in fact we just sat awkwardly across from each other on the bed after the conversation, we came out of the room, having worked up our emotions just enough to redden our eyes and saw that Jenny and her husband had been ushered into the back of a police car.

  Brother Fei, standing at the entrance of the door, asked me. "Do you want to make this just between the two of you guys? Or do you want to involve sister-in-law?"

  I immediately understood what he meant. If he logged that we were having a fight because the man was committing adultery with my wife, it would be in the system forever. That would be the most logical and it had its advantages. For example, this could serve as grounds for divorce later on. But in Chinese society, family's woes should never be broadcasted, and Brother Fei understood that mantra. He was giving me a chance to do something about it before it was too late.

  "I'll go alone," I said, and he reared me into the back of another patrol vehicle with him, leaving Paula, and Jessie, who finally came out of his bedroom, behind in the trashed apartment.

  In the back of my mind, I was hoping that Paula would finally clean up our apartment, because it was now quite necessary. Of course, like many of my hopes for Paula, it always ended in disappointments.

  Chapter 24

  It was demo day at the end of the first month of my employment at the Norwegian bank. We were supposed to be doing this in a conference call at the office with many other senior managers of the bank calling from everywhere in China. However, at seven fifteen in the morning, I got an email from Mr. Qi's secretary that I should meet him at the yacht wharf instead of the office and present my latest progress from there.

  "I don't think I will be able to make it at 9 AM," I called Mr. Qi to apologize. "The yacht wharf is a
n hour's drive away from my house, and I do not have a car at the moment."

  Instead of being reprimanded for my lack of flexibility, I heard Mr. Qi yawned.

  "I can't make it to the office myself from here at nine. I was partying here till five, at least. What do we do?" Then he laughed at our plights. When he finished laughing, he said, "Where do you live? I will send a car to pick you up. Maybe you will still make it on time."

  I agreed to the arrangement and quickly emailed my address to his secretary. Not soon after, I was picked up by a Mercedes-Benz and sat in it for about an hour until we reached the yacht wharf in Dian Shan.

  "Have an orange juice," Mr. Qi offered me when I got on to the upper deck where he was sitting, enjoying an English breakfast with freshly squeezed orange juice. "You must be flustered. Sorry to have to get you here in such a rush." Actually I felt no rush at all. It would have been a bigger fight for me to make sure I get on the typically overstuffed bus and metro to work than to sit quietly in a Mercedes Benz that had ample of leg room, so I could start up my computer and do some last minute preparation for the product demonstration. I took the drink eagerly, knowing full well that this might be the last drink I would ever be offered on such a beautiful yacht in my life.

  A beautiful woman climbed up from under the deck in a bathrobe and walked over to greet us. I could not see her face very well because of the sun and the huge sunglasses she was wearing, but I could see her lean, long legs going in and out of view seductively as she walked very clearly.

  Mr. Qi gave this woman a kiss and squeezed her butt with one of his hand, to which she did not protest but seemed to enjoy quite naughtily. I averted my eyes from these flirtatious behaviors and tried to look out into the ocean to enjoy the view.

  "Marsha, meet Jong," Mr. Qi said. I was not ready for an introduction because I did not think I was important enough to be introduced to any beautiful woman living on a yacht, but to my surprise, she knew who I was.

  "Oh, this is the guy you were talking about!" Marsha took off her sunglasses and took a good look at me.

  She turned out to be the Marsha, Marsha Ling, the biggest movie star at the moment originally from Harbin (okay, one of the many, but to me, she was the biggest now), having starred in Jackie Chan's latest Hollywood action movie.

  "I am following your Weibo," she said. "It's incredibly witty. It's sensational."

  Oh God. I had forgotten about the whole Weibo affair. It was good to hear that at least the person behind it was posting something that even Marsha Ling found witty and interesting.

  Since I did not have anything to add about the fictitious Weibo account I did not own, I switched topic. "Mr. Qi, do you think we should prepare a bit for the meeting. It is in 9 minutes. Do you know where I can set up?"

  "Oh yes," Mr. Qi was busy chewing on his crispy bacon. "In the office downstairs."

  "Let me take you there," Marsha kindly offered. I followed her, hugging my laptop in my arms like my safety pillow for support, and followed her beautiful long legs down the ladder into the level below the deck, all the while wondering to myself how could such a beautiful woman trust a sex-depraved young man like me enough to take him alone anywhere. Before I finished asking myself that question, I saw that remnant of the party that Mr. Qi was talking about on the phone. There were glasses and food everywhere in the interior and what appeared to be a giant swan ice sculpture some hours ago melting and dripping water everywhere, making the floor very slippery to walk on.

  On the couch and on the floor, there were at least five or six people in swimsuits, passed out. I thought I spotted some famous-looking people among them, but I wasn't sure and I did not want to ask who they were. It was already such an interesting feat to simply be invited on a yacht, to catch a glimpse of the life of the rich and famous.

  "Watch out not to step on them," Marsha warned me with a smile.

  When I eventually set myself up in Mr. Qi's yacht's office and connected the conference number a few minutes before it was due to start, Marvey dialed in, realized that I was somewhere else instead of the office, and started yelling at me. "You didn't have to be so defiant."

  "What?"

  "I've only just explained to you the situation yesterday, and today you're not even coming to the office. When Mr. Qi sees you, he would be so upset!"

  "Hi, Marvey!" Mr. Qi had sneaked into his office just in time, now cleanly shaven, fully clad in a business suit and refreshed, to rescue me from more of Marvey's prejudice. "Don't give Jong a hard time. He has been preparing for the demo with me all night, so I kept him at my place and told him we could just dial in together over the internet."

  Mr. Qi gave me a knowing smile to which Marvey smiled back somewhat suspiciously at me.

  Today's meeting was, as I said, a demo day. Demo day in a software company was the day when you shared the fruit of your work in the past weeks or months, depending on how regular they schedule these things, to the rest of the company. The invitation was sent out to the whole company, although usually only the senior managers of the relevant departments would show up, to ask questions about the products and make adjustments to their plannings according to the progress made. I had never worked in a bank before, so I would not know what exactly to expect, but what I did not expect, was how pleased Mr. Qi seemed to be about the four applications I showed him. He used it live on Skype so that the whole conference could see his activities on the applications and apart from a few suggestions here and there, there was not much he was not happy about.

  The other managers and coworkers from the marketing team whom I had expected to be very critical of my demos, perhaps positively primed by Mr. Qi reviews of my work, even made some positive remarks, before sharing their further demands for improvement, as usual. Over the video conference, I could see Marvey's slight frown dissolved into a relieved, happy expression.

  And when the Chairman of the Shanghai branch of the bank wrapped up the call thanking everyone for our hard work this month, especially Mr. Qi and I, and our new intern Miss Marvey Simons, I felt my cellphone buzzed as if a million times in my pant's pocket. I knew without checking that it was Marvey, probably saying sorry to me for being so critical lately, in a series of complex coded messages only used by women.

  This proved that communication skills were over-rated. I did not choose to be a programmer so that I have to talk to people all day, and it seemed like I could continue my ways of working with the unspoken consent of my boss and my boss's boss.

  And since I was spared to live another day, and Mr. Qi said I could take the rest of the afternoon off (since he himself was reluctant to go back to the office himself after what must have been an awesome yacht party). I felt like taking Marvey out somewhere, to celebrate, and to talk things over. I fired up my table reservation app while I was waiting for Marsha (Marsha!!!) to cook me my brunch, and Mr. Qi caught sight of it. He asked me, "Are you after Marvey?"

  "No, no, no, no..." I denied with as much honesty as I could fake. "We are just friends."

  Mr. Qi snorted. "Let me invite you two to dinner tonight." He threw me a VIP card to a place called Shang-High and said, "I have a table reserved for me permanently. All the expenses will be directly charged to my account. Feel free to use it tonight."

  "I couldn't possibly accept that..." This was really too much, even when I did not know the menu of this Shang-High restaurant, just from the name alone I knew it would not have been cheap.

  "You've done well. In just a month you have accomplished more than what the last guy had done in half a year." He pushed the card closer towards me as Marsha delivered a hot plate of food exactly like what Mr. Qi was having earlier in front of me, and said, "Just take it, and bring whoever you want to enjoy the meal with you. You deserve it." He beckoned Marsha to sit down next to him and said, "And if you continue in this fashion, I will have to give you more than just food." He squeezed his girlfriend on the waist as he said that, who giggled at his touch.

  "I'm married," I said, an e
xplanation that should get me out of any midnight visit with him and his entourage to some, probably very high-class but nonetheless inappropriate brothels in the future. I had to pre-ampt him on this because I had no interest in seeing my wife nor her colleagues at their workplace at all.

  "When did you have your wedding? How come I didn't hear anything about it?" It felt weird that he complained of not being invited as if we were best pals and I had forgotten about him. I quickly explained that we hadn't had the money to host a wedding celebration yet, so we kept the marriage a secret.

  "Such nonsense! You're still saving for it?!" He commented angrily, without elaborating on why that was so senseless about it to him. Almost all single males, or their parents in a lot of cases, living in Shanghai were saving money to pay for the bridal gifts if they were about to get married. It was nothing so unusual about my experience, I thought, until I saw the Breitling on Mr. Qi's wrist again, and realized that there would always be some people in this world that did not understand the common man's plight.

  Chapter 25

  I searched the restaurant online. The address belonged to one of the most expensive hotels in Shanghai. When I wanted to give Marvey a call and invite her to dinner, I realized that the cellphone I had in my pocket was not mine at all. It had belonged to my ex-girlfriend Jenny. Our phones must have been swapped somehow during the ruckus that broke out at my home yesterday evening and I did not suspect anything because, guess what, I was the one who bought us the matching Xiaomi model in white, and pale pink color covers for our phones since pink was her favorite color. I couldn't believe that I had forgotten about that.

  The swap reminded me of our relationship, and the sad, unfortunate ending it got. I had always wanted to know what happened to her after we broke up, and now I had the perfect excuse to call her. It was destiny. Out of all days, I had a free dinner reservation at a place that would definitely wow her. Jenny was someone who had always been so fond of dining out in one of these fancy places that served foreign food with an extremely ungenerous portion, where she could eat with silver cutlery and dab her mouth like a lady with white serviettes. Needless to say, when she was dating yours truly, Mr. Frugal, we had never been anywhere like this. The most extravagant dinner we had ever had was maybe a buffet at my previous company's retreat, to which partners of employees were invited along. This was one of the reasons why she left me : the fact that I was poor.