FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘My shirt?’ I asked, glancing down. It was a new one, unlike any of those purchased in Australia. This one had short sleeves and, as was the custom for expats, was custom-made and carried the owner’s initials on the left-hand breast pocket. This was no doubt an affectation to show that the shirt was tailor-made. Rather than have my initials, I had asked that mine be in Chinese calligraphy and read ‘Fortune Cookie’. I admit I was rather proud of the difference, a sort of private joke, a bit of a send-up, because most expats sported at least three initials. The Chinese tailor questioned me closely about the word ‘cookie’ and I explained it was a small, round, delicious cake with a saying or a wish inside. ‘It very expensive, yes?’ he’d asked. ‘No, very cheap,’ I’d replied. I must say, he did a nice job of the three shirts I ordered.

  But as I reached the last button, Mercy B. Lord, having great difficulty restraining herself, asked, ‘Do you know what the calligraphy on your shirt says, Simon?’

  ‘Yes, Fortune Cookie – my nickname in Australia. It’s meant to be a bit of a joke.’

  ‘It says, “Very cheap, small, round, delicious wish cake”!’ She giggled again. ‘Are you going to let me taste it and make a wish, sir?’

  Whereupon we both broke up, consumed with giggles. ‘Certainly. If you’re a good girl, and relax and do exactly as I say, the result will be simply delicious and everything you wished for,’ I finally managed. ‘Back into bed, beautiful. Let the fun begin.’

  It had all gone so well but now I had to deliver, and my most ardent hope was that I wasn’t overstating what was to come. I knew enough to know that what worked for one woman might not work for another; that, unlike men, women had complex needs and desires. In the case of Mercy B. Lord, it was an overdeveloped desire to please, which undid all my earlier efforts. ‘You must show me, Simon. I must make you happy.’ She was clearly a neophyte, eager and willing enough, but awkward and distracted by her desire to please me. ‘I want to do what you like. Please show me.’ In her present frame of mind it was clearly going to be difficult or impossible to arouse her; her own desire would be squandered in an attempt to satisfy me.

  ‘Sit up, darling.’

  Mercy B. Lord, looking anxious, did as she was told, sitting on her heels, the sheet covering the lower part of her body. ‘What have I done wrong, Simon?’ she cried.

  ‘Mercy B. Lord, I have wanted you countless times, made love to you in my imagination. You are even more beautiful than I ever imagined, but …’

  She gasped in dismay and brought her hands up to cover her mouth. ‘Oh, Simon, I don’t know what to do!’ she wailed.

  I kissed her lightly on the forehead. ‘Well, then, it’s fortunate that one of us does.’

  ‘You said “but” … but what? You’re disappointed – I know it!’

  ‘No, of course not, but there are two rules you simply must obey.’

  ‘There are?’

  ‘Yes. The first is you have to allow a man to make love to you – to please you. That’s rule number one.’

  ‘But I must please you!’

  ‘Later! That comes later.’ I assumed a stern expression. ‘You are not permitted to worry about pleasing me, and doing so is really very simple. When the time comes, you’ll know.’

  ‘We’re supposed to please each other?’

  ‘Darling, I am already pleased. Very, very, very pleased. And don’t worry. If we get this right, as I know we shall, I will be even more pleased. But there’s another rule, rule number two. You have to tell me what pleases you and guide me around your body. Sometimes a quarter of an inch, even much less, makes all the difference – with my finger, my mouth … my penis. Will you promise?’ I was immensely grateful to the Australian bunnies who had generously educated and directed me in the matter of their sexual tastes.

  ‘But, Simon, I don’t know. It only happened once when I was fourteen, with a boy at school. Afterwards I bled. I thought the blood was a punishment from God for sinning! I said a thousand Hail Marys but I didn’t go to the priest, to confession. I thought I’d probably go to hell!’ She smiled.

  ‘There’s often a little blood when your hymen breaks, darling – it’s a small membrane at the entrance to your vagina – it’s perfectly natural. Now, if you relax and take the pleasure as it comes, it will be a lovely experience, I promise.’

  All the bunnies I’d bedded in Australia had been experienced, and, as I said before, I was grateful for their instructions on how to please them most. I had no idea how long it might take to win the confidence of a neophyte, and it was a good hour before Mercy B. Lord was sufficiently relaxed again to enjoy my caresses. I smiled when I recalled my florid fantasies, but the reality was much more powerful. I had explored her delicious body and finally elicited a tentative response. With a little more exploring she became moist and fully responsive, crying out joyously when we discovered an erogenous zone that was her particular turn-on. Then, quite suddenly, her breathing quickened and she gasped, ‘Now! Please, please, now, Simon!’

  I entered her and her pelvis came alive. She moaned and cried out in our urgent, compulsive, blinding, wonderful act of lovemaking as we climaxed simultaneously. We had achieved the near impossible in our first coupling. Then, a little later, I used my tongue a second time for her exclusive delight and she was able to surrender to her own pleasure.

  Afterwards, as I held her in my arms, she said, ‘Simon, did Dr Kwan really say, you know, that I was bright?’

  ‘Yes, more than once, darling.’

  She snuggled even closer. ‘In that case you may buy me the red shoes.’ She sighed and promptly fell asleep in my arms and my joy was beyond imagining. Even so, I found myself doing my habitual mental arithmetic: it was Tuesday 30th May 1967, that is 3 + 0 = 3. 1+ 9 +6 + 7 = 23. 23+3 = 26. 2+6 = 8! Yippee! Eight is the luckiest number for the Chinese. The numbers hadn’t let me down.

  The following morning Mercy B. Lord left the flat, saying she had a client in from Germany and so couldn’t see me again until Friday as Beatrice had agreed she’d have dinner with him on the Wednesday. ‘Oh, Simon, it’s going to be awful not seeing you until Friday evening.’

  ‘Will you think about moving in … permanently?’

  She looked at me, then down at her feet. ‘Simon, I can’t. Please don’t ask me to explain. I simply can’t, that’s all.’

  ‘You mean what happened last night was a one-night stand?’ I said, failing to disguise the hurt in my voice.

  She looked up, alarmed. ‘I didn’t say that. It was lovely, but we have to be discreet, that’s all.’

  ‘You mean Beatrice?’

  ‘I can’t answer that,’ she said, now close to tears. ‘Simon, we mustn’t be seen being lovey-dovey in public, only as friends.’

  This was the moment where I could have persisted. But one look into her pleading eyes and I let it pass. Besides, ‘lovey-dovey’ was such a quaint old-fashioned term. ‘I will do no more than politely guide you by the elbow on Saturday when they show us to our table,’ I promised. Then, in an attempt to lighten the mood I put on an upper-class English accent. ‘I will henceforth demonstrate no more than those public gestures expected of a gentleman, my dear.’

  ‘No, you’re not allowed to pinch my bottom in public, Simon!’ she laughed.

  We had invited Dansford Drocker to join our celebration, as he had always been supportive of the research project. When questions had arisen that we couldn’t answer, he’d contacted New York for advice. In fact, he’d been an enormous help while remaining absolutely discreet.

  I had deliberately chosen Saturday night in the hope that Dansford would arrive at the Goodwood Park Hotel relatively sober. He was pretty incorrigible most nights, but on Fridays, given that he wasn’t required to come into work the next day, he was usually particularly outrageous.

  Dansford wasn’t a destructive drunk or one who abused people. He stayed happy and didn’t fall about, throw up in public or disgrace himself in any other way. In fact, his capacity for holding
his grog was astonishing and I have never met anyone who could match him. It was just that you didn’t know what to expect from him next. His pranks, performed on the spur of the moment, were becoming the stuff of legend.

  He had an excellent voice and could sing opera and popular ballads, both sentimental and current, play the alto saxophone in a brilliant imitation of Jimmy Dorsey, was a truly good jazz pianist, knew and sang all the Frank Sinatra hits remarkably well, was a good stand-up comic, could conduct a band or take over an orchestra, and in a dozen ways disrupt a restaurant, a boring cocktail party, government reception or dull concert to the joy of almost everyone present. But all of this and more occurred only if he was intoxicated. Sober, Dansford was a softly spoken, modest, well-bred, Harvard-educated Bostonian and a gentleman to his bootstraps.

  Dansford’s Friday nights in particular produced gems for the anecdote-collectors. Early Saturday evenings offered the best chance of him behaving more or less decorously. He would have spent most of the day at home, alternately sleeping and throwing up from the climax to the week’s outrageous behaviour. Up until about 10 p.m. on Saturdays he was tolerably good … well, good by his own remarkable standards of bad.

  However, it must be said that he was generally popular with expats, with the exception of a few old fuddy-duddies. As a general rule, most of them had left for a nightcap at home well before Dansford attained his outrageous zenith.

  He was also greatly loved in the various bars around town, where he was a generous tipper and big spender. In fact, the proprietor of Bill Bailey’s bought an alto sax and installed a piano just for Dansford to play, an investment they claimed paid off handsomely, as every drunk in town seemed to make a point of ending the evening’s revelry there in the hope of catching a Dansford Drocker spontaneous late-night shindig. He always opened, perhaps as a tribute to his host, with the ballad ‘Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey’, which he sang in the turn-of-the-century manner in which it was first composed.

  Admittedly, drunks are not, generally speaking, a discerning lot, but many a drunken sailor in their home ports all over the world insisted that they’d never heard better jazz or boogie-woogie played on the piano or alto saxophone than very late at night by a drunken American at Bill Bailey’s in Singapore.

  When I invited Dansford to our celebration dinner he’d insisted that he pay for the drinks – wine, in particular, was very expensive at the time. ‘Simon, my friend, I’ll be drinking most of what we’ll consume, so it’s only fair that the evening’s libations are my shout. We shall have French champagne. Then we shall have wine. Others will watch enviously as the four of us dine.’

  I’d accepted his gracious offer knowing it was pointless arguing: Dansford Drocker didn’t tolerate anyone paying for his self-indulgence – that is, unless they were rich Chinese or high government officials, the former because they would otherwise lose face and the government wallahs because they took more from him in taxes than they returned in tangible benefits.

  I don’t know why it is, but a woman who has recently made love to a man for the first time holds herself somewhat differently. Mercy B. Lord was just as stunning as formerly in the black cheongsam – she still wore no jewellery, her hair was done in the same Vidal Sassoon five-point style – but she was subtly different, and it was more than just the outrageously high red patent-leather heels. Whereas she was a breathtakingly beautiful woman before, she now seemed to have gained a confidence and sexuality that made women look and men dream. Most would have concluded that she must be a famous model and that the short, thickset guy with her could only be her manager, because she belonged on the arm of someone like Marlon Brando. People like me didn’t pull women like her unless they were obscenely rich.

  Henry Kwan arrived early and alone, straight from marking student papers. Day dress was the just-about-universal white short-sleeved shirt, tie and cotton slacks in various subdued tones of buff, fawn or light khaki. As a concession to the occasion he’d added a light khaki cotton jacket. On semi-formal occasions such as dinner at the Goodwood Park Hotel, one of the best eateries in Singapore, men pretty well wore what they pleased, provided it included a tie. Some didn’t even bother to wear a jacket. But the women were expected to be dressed ‘to the nines’, supposedly to please their blokes, although Mercy B. Lord once told me that dressing up had nothing whatsoever to do with men.

  I wore a new pair of slacks and a light blue long-sleeved shirt from Australia, having given up the Mickey Mouse and psychedelic ties for plain colours. Tonight I was wearing a red tie Mercy B. Lord had purchased at Robinsons at the same time as she’d bought her splendid shoes. ‘It’s almost the same red, Simon,’ she’d laughed and kissed me on the cheek. ‘People will know I belong to you, darling.’ How nice the single word ‘darling’ sounds when it’s newly minted. In Australia, wearing an outrageous tie was a matter of being seen to be different. Here, the three-lettered monogrammed shirt pocket was the way expats differentiated themselves. I guess it was meant to convey, though to whom I’m not sure, that you knew your way around and were not some gawky tourist. I’d given my three offending shirts to the amah who came in daily to clean the flat and do the laundry. Nobody, unless they’re short, fat and outrageously camp, wants to be known as a very cheap, small, round, delicious wish cake!

  No more ostentatious gear for you, mate, I’d told myself, pulling on my new pair of strides. But then it suddenly struck me that the trousers I was wearing had been purchased from a trendy menswear boutique in Orchard Road, a part of town that was beginning to dress up a bit itself. The shop, owned by the husband of Jasmine Koh, Singapore’s top model, was named the Purple Zip, and the only difference between the other trousers sold in a town renowned for its good Chinese and Indian tailors and my new pants was that they came off the rack and featured a purple zipper in the fly. Additionally, they came in a fancy purple shopping bag that carried the shop’s name and slogan, The only way to fly. The other difference was that the factory-made strides I’d bought cost roughly three times as much as a pair of tailor-made slacks of identical or superior cotton. In other words, I’d fallen for a coloured zip nobody but me would ever see, and then only when I sat on the toilet with my trousers around my knees. If I regarded people who wore monogrammed shirt pockets as wankers, then what did a purple fly zipper on a pair off-the-rack daks make me?

  Anyway, Mercy B. Lord seemed happy with the way I looked after I’d added a cotton two-button (there I go again) navy jacket. It was enough to make me worthy of my stunning companion.

  We found Dr Kwan waiting at the bar drinking a beer. Dansford invariably arrived late and I’d warned my cousin that we’d have to have a drink for half an hour or so, then we’d ask to be shown to our table. Waiting any longer for Dansford was pointless.

  Mercy B. Lord had taken a taxi to the flat, kept it waiting and we’d taken it on to the hotel. This time her entrance caused only a sudden hush. The dining room was less intimate than on the previous occasion at Raffles, and the patrons, already half-pissed from Saturday-afternoon cocktails, were more talkative. I sensed Mercy B. Lord’s sigh of relief that this time there would be no clapping or crying out.

  To our surprise, we’d hardly seated ourselves at the bar when Dansford arrived. He wore a beautifully tailored grey lounge suit, Brooks Brothers button-down shirt and a blue Macclesfield silk tie (sorry, I can’t help myself), his usual silk knee-high hose and, to add a supposedly casual touch, black Gucci loafers. While he admitted to having stopped off at Bill Bailey’s for a drink or two (read six or seven), by his standards he was practically sober.

  ‘Champagne! A bottle! Cristal!’ he shouted out to the barman even before he’d greeted us.

  ‘Steady on, mate!’ I cautioned. Cristal was, I knew, horrendously expensive.

  ‘Hello, everyone. Glad you haven’t ordered your drinks,’ Dansford said. Then, turning to me, ‘No, Simon, we must begin with champagne!’

  The head waiter, which is what he was called at the Goodwoo
d Park, was an Irishman, the only non-Chinese or Indian in the place – always the traditional waiters in Singapore’s better establishments. He was passing the bar at that moment and stopped when he heard Dansford’s order. Immediately he took over from the surprised Indian barman. ‘Excellent choice, sir. We have a bottle on ice. Shall I serve it at your table?’

  I subsequently got to know him quite well. His name was Denmeade, Owen Denmeade, and he was a one-time ship’s purser on P&O. He admitted to me later that the only reason they had a bottle of Cristal both in stock and cold was in case Long Me Saw, the older brother of the famous Asian movie impresario Long Long Saw, dropped in with a couple of movie stars on his arm.

  Dansford’s extravagant lifestyle obviously cost him more than his no doubt liberal chief executive’s salary and must have been topped up with a private income. I wondered if he was a latter-day remittance man whose family paid him to stay away.

  Unfortunately, our table wasn’t that far from the bar and Dansford’s directive to the barman must have been heard by most of the nearby diners, because a number of eyes followed us and, alas, were destined to stay on us and increase in number as the evening progressed. When the head waiter popped the cork, not in the usual discreet manner but with a loud bang as it issued from the bottle of Cristal and hit the ceiling, there was a round of applause. Furthermore, the presence of a stunning-looking woman in a black cheongsam and the hope that Dansford would come up with something probably made for compulsive viewing. We toasted the research project and then I made a little speech congratulating the inestimable Dr Kwan on his tireless and brilliant efforts and insights. I added a few well-chosen, though carefully neutral words of congratulations and thanks to Mercy B. Lord, ending with a thankyou to Dansford for his cooperation. It seemed like a hopeful start to the evening.

  Unfortunately, my hopes were not realised and most of the fun that night was had at our expense by the rest of the diners. I’d been lulled by Dansford’s timely arrival into thinking that everything was hunky-dory, but I’d underestimated the number of drinks he’d consumed; the champagne proved to be the tipping point. We’d each drunk a glass while I made my little speech of appreciation, and Dansford had downed three before we’d even decided to consult the menu.