FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  Quite what was appropriate wasn’t clear, and as she appeared to have no family, it was hard to see whose venerable ancestor Beatrice might become.

  ‘Dr Foy, do you know her age?’ Mercy B. Lord asked.

  Dr Foy nodded. ‘She has been in my care for fifty years. She is a venerable and most worthy eighty-one years of age.’

  Unable to help myself, I quickly calculated that she would have been born in 1878, and so was of the same generation as the children of Ah Koo and Little Sparrow – my great-grandparents’ generation.

  Dr Foy indicated the office door and said to Mercy B. Lord, ‘You have checked her pulse?’

  She nodded. ‘I also held a mirror to her mouth. There was no breath.’

  The old doctor gave a curt nod. ‘We will go in now, please.’

  An hour later, Mercy B. Lord had written a note to Johnny Wing for Mohammed to deliver after he took the doctor home. Then she’d left me to wait for the ambulance, handing me an envelope with the death certificate Dr Foy had issued and the address of the Beatrice Fong mansion. I was to give it to them to bring along with the body.

  ‘Simon, ask them to wait if I’m not there. Tell them I will reward them. I need to drop in to Chinatown to get the white cloth, gong, paper lanterns and so on to prepare the house. I suggest you go home after the ambulance has left.’ She showed me how to lock the doors to the Beatrice Fong Agency, then added that she wouldn’t be home because she would be required to sit with the corpse until morning to guard the old woman from evil spirits. She’d call me at the ad agency after she’d gone to the bank to fetch her instructions. She’d have to wait at the house for the funeral director and the priests to arrive so she could brief them. ‘I daresay it will be sometime in the afternoon, but I’ll call as soon as I’m free, Simon.’

  The following day was my second-last at the agency and I had a fair bit of tidying up to do. While Sidney had been back from the States for three days, he hadn’t spoken to me, but Ronnie came into my office first thing to say they wanted to have drinks with the staff at the grotty hotel over the road on my last evening, but that he, Johnny and Sidney couldn’t be there because they would be attending the funeral of Beatrice Fong, who had died overnight. He looked at me quizzically. ‘But of course you knew that, didn’t you?’

  I ignored his question. ‘Mate, I’d be happy if you didn’t have a farewell bash for me. I’ll say my goodbyes to the staff individually.’

  ‘You will lose face, Simon.’

  I laughed. ‘Well, I lost it coming in, why not going out?’

  ‘As you wish. Maybe we could have a drink somewhere after you’ve left?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Ronnie couldn’t help wanting to be the good guy.

  ‘Simon, you’ve done a hell of a job.’

  I laughed again. ‘I guess Sidney and Johnny wouldn’t agree. By the way, I’ve worked out my share of the profits due to me for the last year. According to my contract, I will need to be paid before I leave tomorrow.’ I pulled open the drawer, picked up an envelope and handed it to him. ‘Would you see Sidney gets this, please? It’s been countersigned by Dansford.’ I’d made the Wing brothers more money, kept the Americans happy enough, and as per the profit-sharing clause of my contract, I hadn’t done too badly myself. I’d have enough to be able to look around, and I knew there were three readymade business choices.

  ‘I don’t know about tomorrow, Simon, the funeral …’

  ‘Perhaps he can prepare the cheque today?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. But you know what Sidney’s like with money. He’ll want to do the maths.’

  ‘Oh, it’s been checked and endorsed by New York. Arthur Grimes has signed it as well.’

  Ronnie laughed. ‘Well, I can see you’ve learned something useful from us, Simon.’

  ‘Yeah, to cover my arse with both hands.’

  ‘Ah, then they won’t be free to accept a cheque today,’ he quipped. ‘Sorry, Simon, a director’s bonus cheque has to be signed by all the other directors and Johnny is away on private business today.’ He shrugged. ‘Stateside rule, buddy. This time you can’t blame Sidney.’ He gave me a smug smile then turned to go. ‘We’ll have that drink soon. Maybe one evening at the Nite Cap? Lots of new girls …’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks – all my evenings are taken up.’

  ‘What, indefinitely?’ A slight pause, then, ‘What about a Thursday night?’

  That crack brought me very close to jumping from my chair and smacking him in the teeth, but I managed somehow to keep my voice calm while the anger rose in my chest. ‘Sorry, mate. Thursday night I paint.’ I attempted a self-deprecating grin, shaking my head. ‘I’m trying, though I don’t know how successfully, to do justice to a head-and-shoulders portrait of a very beautiful woman. As for future Thursdays, it could be that Mercy B. Lord might like to come to Australia for a holiday – an extended holiday – you just never know, do you?’ This last bit was pure invention but it had the right effect.

  The invariably polite Ronnie suddenly lost his cool. ‘Simon, you were warned on your second day in Singapore to keep your fucking hands off her. Beatrice Fong may be dead but I would be very careful if I were you. That old woman can bite back from the grave!’ He turned and left, slamming the door of my pathetic little glass and plywood office so that it positively vibrated.

  I spent the remainder of the morning briefing Dansford on the outstanding creative work, then in a meeting with the production staff, giving them last-minute instructions for the Big Lather point-of-sale material for the launch in the Philippines. The new creative director, this time a guy from the States, had been delayed a month on family matters, so I couldn’t brief him face-to-face. I had written a long report, a sort of ‘what to do when the shit hits the fan’ list, together with a list of suppliers and production facilities, trustworthy and otherwise, in Singapore.

  At noon Dansford and I caught a cab to Texas Oil to present the results of the test market for Texas Tiger ‘Greased Lightning’ engine lubricating oil. Alejandra Calatayud, the finished artist, had done a sensational job of the tiger illustrations, and the test-market results, based almost entirely on her display posters, indicated we had another potential winner on our hands.

  As the Texan cowboy who rode the Asian tiger, Michael Johns was credited with making Texas Oil the number-one petrol brand in every South-East Asian country except Burma, where Shell still ruled. With the likely success of the new engine lubricant, he was going back to Houston in an even bigger blaze of glory.

  He’d invited us to a double farewell lunch, for my departure from the agency and his in a month. He was returning to Houston to be briefed for his next assignment, running Texas Oil in South America. ‘Say, Simon, you wouldn’t like a job in South America, would you?’ he’d joked on more than one occasion.

  Dansford and Big Loud Mike got stuck into the martinis, and we all had large barbecued steaks and a monster potato baked in foil and garnished with fresh cream and chives, the Texas Oil boss’s favourite meal. Things were beginning to kick along very nicely for the two of them, and I could see a very late night coming up and knew I must find an excuse to leave after nursing two beers. Mercy B. Lord would have been up all night sitting beside the corpse of the ancient crone, guarding it from evil spirits, then working her butt off all day, first visiting the bank then making the funeral arrangements. What she didn’t need was her lover arriving home after midnight pissed.

  I was beginning to formulate an appropriate excuse to get away when, thankfully, the waiter came over with a note for me from a printer, asking me to come in urgently to check the four-colour proofs of the new Texas Tiger service-station driveway posters. We’d inadvertently mixed a dark purple shade into the sky, and as purple can fade badly in direct sunlight, they wanted me to okay it before they pressed the button for the print run. Errors are expensive and printers always like to cover their arses. Big Loud Mike insisted I stay, but I explained what might happen if the printer got it wro
ng and he finally relented.

  ‘I guess that’s the professionalism we pay you for, buddy. I want you to know I’m mighty grateful.’ He glanced over at a hovering waiter, then nodded to him. The waiter returned shortly afterwards carrying a large hatbox, which he placed on the table. Michael Johns removed the lid and produced a new Stetson, which he presented to me. ‘That there Stetson is guaranteed genuine and from the original factory in Garland, Texas, son,’ he announced proudly. Then, dipping back into the box, he withdrew a silver belt buckle he’d had made in the western style, with the traditional steer horn motif replaced by a roaring tiger’s head with ruby eyes. ‘Simon, buddy, what can I say? You came when we were in the shit, losing market share to those bastards from Caltex Boron. Oh man, you dealt me four aces and the joker with Texas Tiger – the gasoline that makes your engine roar. It was an unbeatable hand and I got to be a big hero in Houston.’ He pointed to the hat. ‘That there Stetson is a token of my personal esteem. But, my good buddy, while I get all the glory, you are the true “Tiger” hero.’ He held up the silver buckle. ‘I have the honour of appointing you the first recipient of the Grand Order of the Texas Tiger Buckle!’ He handed it to me. ‘Mah friend, on behalf of the Texas Oil Company, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Come to Houston, Texas, and we gonna have the mayor give you a goddamn street parade!’

  I left the two of them to play on, grateful for the printer’s call. Michael Johns pissed could be very forceful and I didn’t want to embarrass Dansford by insisting I depart, although I suspected they were both, after an afternoon of martinis, rapidly approaching the ‘impossible to embarrass’ stage.

  While it was a considerate and generous gesture and an unexpected surprise, a Stetson on a Chinese tree stump isn’t a good look and everyone at the printers nearly pissed themselves when I arrived wearing it. As Dansford had originally landed the Texas Oil account with his bevy of Chinese dolly birds in hot pants, I decided he deserved the hat for his contribution. Mercy B. Lord and I had just seen the new film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In colouring and even in appearance, Dansford vaguely resembled Robert Redford, and on the notorious day of the pink-hair cocktail party he’d appeared wearing a cowboy outfit and fake Stetson, and the toy hat had looked great on him. Dansford, slim, tall and angular, was the perfect ‘Howdy, pardner’ cowboy type.

  I arrived back in the agency from the printers just before five to find a near hysterical Alice Ho in reception. ‘Simon, you call Miss Mercy, urgent, urgent. She cry on phone when you not be here!’

  I tried to stay calm. ‘Where is she? Beatrice Fong’s house?’

  ‘Ja, ja, dead lady house.’

  ‘Do you have the address?’ I was kicking myself that I hadn’t looked inside the envelope Mercy B. Lord had given me for the ambulance drivers.

  ‘I not suppose, Simon. Mr Johnny, he say no give to you.’

  ‘Alice, ferchrissake, she’s alone in the house … with a dead woman!’

  Alice scribbled the address, handing it to me. ‘You not say I give, Simon. I call for you now?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ I was trying to remain calm, but Alice must have sensed my concern. ‘And don’t worry, I could have got the address from Mercy B. Lord.’

  ‘I don’t know what is she crying. She not say to me. You run-run your office, Simon.’

  I picked up the phone that started ringing moments after I got to my office. ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘Oh, Simon!’ Mercy B. Lord cried, and began to sob.

  ‘Darling! What is it? Please!’ But the pathetic crying continued. Then she finally gulped my name again, followed by a fresh outburst of tears. ‘Take it easy, sweetheart! Are you hurt? Are you okay?’

  A pathetic little ‘yes’ followed, then a sniff and more tears.

  I’d phrased it badly. ‘What, hurt?’

  ‘No, okay,’ she sniffed.

  ‘Safe?’

  ‘Yes,’ she sniffed again.

  ‘Now take a deep breath. Go on, please do as I say.’

  There was a silence punctuated by three or four sniffs, followed by a pathetic little wail. ‘Sorry!’ Another sniff.

  ‘Now, relax. I’m coming over right away, I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

  ‘No! You mustn’t!’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Simon, Beatrice’s lawyer phoned an hour ago.’ More sobs.

  ‘Darling, I’ll be there soon.’

  ‘No!’ she screamed.

  It was my turn to be alarmed. ‘What is it! Mercy B. Lord, please tell me!’

  ‘Beatrice has left me her entire estate!’ She started to howl again.

  ‘Darling, don’t cry. That’s marvellous news!’

  ‘No!’ Mercy B. Lord wailed. ‘It isn’t!’

  ‘Why? What is it?’

  ‘Johnny Wing is the executor and her proviso is that I never see you again. She wants me to marry …’

  ‘But, but …’ There was a pause then a muffled sound – anger, surprise, dismay – it could have been any of these, and later I would attempt to read meaning into it. But then she spoke again, and this time her voice sounded strong and deliberate, even cold. ‘Simon, this changes everything. I can’t ever see you again!’

  I heard a gasp, then the rattle-clunk sound of the receiver being replaced.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE PRONOUNCED THUMP OF the receiver being replaced at Mercy B. Lord’s end left me utterly bewildered. I leapt from my chair and ran through the production department and into reception, then out onto the street. Alice Ho, taken by surprise, shouted after me, ‘Simon, where you go? Not so hurry! What happen? You come back?’

  If I’d had to wait for a taxi I may have given myself time to think, but one pulled up in front of me to drop off a woman, and I barely allowed her time to scramble out before I jumped into the back seat. Then, furious, I had to wait for her to pay the cab driver, which she was attempting to do while hugging four shopping bags, groping blindly for her purse somewhere within a voluminous handbag. ‘Get going, I’ll pay her fare!’ I shouted. But the elderly cabbie stubbornly waited to be paid before calmly turning around to inquire, ‘Where you go?’ I shouted the address in Katong that Alice Ho had given me and told him I’d double the fare if he hurried.

  ‘No, no, cannot! I get fine,’ he said, moving into the stream of traffic. ‘I cannot. Police, they make trouble for me.’ He chuckled. ‘Licence gone kaput!’ I wanted to kill the silly old bastard.

  I was becoming increasing rattled. Nothing whatsoever made sense and so my mind lobbed another component into the Mercy B. Lord mystery mixture – the all-too-human paranoia. Was there some deep, dark conspiracy behind all this? Could it possibly concern my family? Had I stupidly assumed that I’d been accepted at face value, a young Chinese-Australian creative director in an Asian advertising agency trying to make a career for himself, when really ‘they’ knew all along that I came from one of the five wealthiest families in Australia and the only one with a Chinese background? Hadn’t Elma Kelly expressed surprise upon meeting Chairman Meow that our family’s circumstances were unknown in Hong Kong? Hadn’t she remarked that the mandarins kept their eyes on the wealthy Chinese worldwide? And what about Long Me’s constant fear of being kidnapped? This prospect, far from being a sign of paranoia, was evidently a very real concern for the extremely wealthy. I was a mental and emotional mess, and certainly no closer to having any answers.

  We finally arrived in Katong. Judging from the relatively traffic-free roads and large walled villas and mansions, it was an old and wealthy area. I flung a handful of Singapore dollars into the driver’s lap, then raced across the road to the gates of what I supposed was now Mercy B. Lord’s house, only to come to an abrupt halt. The tall wrought-iron gates were heavily chained and padlocked. I could clearly see the front of the house about thirty yards down a gravelled driveway, where, on a wide semi-circular apron at the top of the front steps, five men dressed in white were crouched, pl
aying some sort of dice game. I concluded these were the men charged with staying awake to frighten off evil spirits to prevent them from entering the house. Chinese funeral tradition required them to gamble in order to stay alert. I shouted to get their attention and when one looked up, I beckoned urgently to him. Two of the men broke away from the game and sauntered up the drive to confront me. From their casual demeanour it was obvious they didn’t think themselves in any way subservient. They were not unlike myself in build, the same short, square, peasant type, their bare legs and arms heavily tattooed. One was blind in one eye, his entire left eyeball a dirty white colour.

  ‘Let me in,’ I demanded in Cantonese.

  ‘What your name?’ the one with only one good eye demanded.

  ‘Ah Koo,’ I replied. ‘You tell the missy Si-mon Koo.’ I repeated both syllables. ‘Si-mon.’

  ‘You wait, I ask,’ he instructed in a not overly friendly voice, then he moved away without the usual acquiescent nod of the head or the one pace backwards before turning to go.

  My initial bewilderment, then paranoia, was turning into anger. I tried to stop it, but anger and self-justification are close partners. I didn’t deserve this treatment. After all I’d been through, to be simply dismissed, albeit at the end of a weepy phone call, seemed unjust. I wanted an explanation; I told myself that’s why I’d come. I was owed that much at least. Mercy B. Lord had never mentioned that money was important to her. Was that because all along she was conning me? They were conning me, setting me up? I could feel the anger rising, a slow, hot thing in my chest. I knew I must stay calm, but fuck it, I couldn’t. I was turning into some sort of avenging angel and now, instead of wanting an explanation, I visualised myself rushing to confront Mercy B. Lord, marching up to the front door, shouldering it open and storming into the house, ignoring Beatrice Fong’s wizened corpse while yelling out for Mercy B. Lord to come and get what was coming to her. Nobody was going to humiliate me like this. I had switched from anxiety and bewilderment to self-righteous anger.