Five Star Billionaire: A Novel (42 page)

This is what he keeps in mind as he goes through the dance routine that accompanies the chorus: two steps to the front, quick twirl, two steps back, forearms swiveling like a penguin’s. Every time he performed this move at his old concerts, the entire audience would burst into song and dance along. Now he is the only one dancing—a twenty-six-year-old man doing a child’s dance routine, singing, “I want to hold your ha-a-and.” It embarrasses him to think that he has spent nearly ten years of his life performing this kind of song in public; he is ashamed that he has not moved on.

At least he will be able to go home and tell Phoebe about this humiliating experience. She will laugh and make jokes about it, and he will feel better. He finds that he loves sharing experiences with her; she makes it easy for him to talk about things that have happened in his life. Recently they have been exchanging stories of places they’ve visited, drawing up lists of all the countries they would like to see in the future. He has told her the truth—that he’s been to many cities in China and Asia but that he never gets to see anything, because his work schedule is too heavy. Last night, just before signing off, she talked about going to Europe.
I shall go to sleep dreaming of Paris
, she said. And he felt like telling her about the only time he had ever traveled anywhere on his own and how exciting it had been. Yes, he will tell her later this evening about that experience, how he had been shooting a music video in London and polishing up some songs at a studio there. On the day he was due to fly back to Taipei he bought a cheap ticket to Ibiza instead, because he had read an article in the in-flight
magazine on the way over. He was there for only two days and a night—one long night, during which he went to a vast open-air club by the beach and was surrounded by hundreds of beautiful young men and women from all over the world. The music was so loud that it erased everything inside him: The deep rhythmic pounding of the bass line filled his head and rib cage, and the tinny notes of the keyboard were like a pulse in his brain. The notes and melody repeated and repeated and repeated, mesmeric in their constancy, replacing his heartbeat, replacing every thought in his head; he did not have to think or feel anything. He danced without being aware of what his body was doing, without caring how he looked. He was just like everyone around him—he could feel the sticky warmth of their bodies, the brush of downy arms on his skin now and then. No one knew who he was, no one cared. At daybreak, when the shirtless boys and girls wearing sunglasses and cowboy hats had finally gone to bed, Gary sat on the rocks by the water’s edge, watching the waves wash delicately onto the pebbles. He wondered if he would ever experience such freedom again, but even as he asked himself this, he knew that as long as he continued with his career, he would never feel such liberation. He held his phone at arm’s length, slightly aloft, and took a picture of himself, the sky behind him stained with the deep amber of dawn.

This is the photo he will show Phoebe tonight, when he finally reveals his true identity to her.

AT HOME AFTER THE
appearance at Amanda KTV, he takes a long shower to make himself clean again—yes, he really feels dirty even after a short performance of five songs—and prepares himself for the evening’s chat with Phoebe. He tidies up the empty instant-noodle and takeaway cartons that lie scattered across the living room and wipes down the slightly grimy surfaces of the tables. He has a quick glance at his laptop—10:00
P.M
. She should be online sometime soon. He checks his appearance in the mirror, making sure his hair is combed neatly. And he thinks: This is crazy; she is not even going to see me. But somehow it matters that everything is perfect for tonight’s chat.

10:15: She is still not online. He begins to strum a tune on his guitar, something he has written recently. He hums the tune—his mind can’t settle; he is thinking too much about what he is going to tell Phoebe tonight,
all the good news he has. He needs to work up to revealing his identity; he can’t do it straightaway. He has decided to start by telling her about a great new musical opportunity that has come his way, which might change his life entirely. Remember that concert at Red Rooster Hot Pot, when the speakers failed and he had to sing unaccompanied? There was a young man in the audience, a guy who owned an underground jazz and folk club who just happened to be passing by (he was taking his grandmother on an outing); he heard Gary’s voice and thought, There is a very moving quality to this voice, a certain sadness. So he spoke to Gary afterward and, after a few phone conversations, offered Gary a chance to perform at his club, a tiny place in Hongkou that seats only thirty people—a completely low-key, acoustic performance for an audience of students, artists, and writers. Nothing fancy at all. Gary is very excited, for it will be a perfect opportunity for him to try out these new folk songs he has been writing with Phoebe’s encouragement.

10:40: She is still not online. Work has been really busy for her recently; she must have been held up at the spa.

He puts down the guitar and looks at the lyrics he has written for the song. He deletes a word or two here and there and tries to think of something more suitable. It is a song based on a traditional Chinese melody that Phoebe said she liked; it is also a song that his mother used to sing to him, and, although he never particularly loved it, he was moved by this coincidental link with his past, which he took as a sign of something important—a good omen that signaled a happy future for him, which is why he wanted to reinterpret it. Soon, when they graduate to speaking on Skype or MSN video chat, he will strum her the tune without singing the words and see how long it takes her to recognize it. The opening of the song is really unexpected, slower and more modern than the traditional version, and he’s sure that it will be a while before she realizes what song he is playing, and then she will be amazed.

Now it’s 11:30
P.M
.—she is still not online. She’s probably gone out with friends after work; she probably mentioned it but he just forgot.

He looks out the window. Most of the apartments are dark, but there are still a few rooms lit by stark overhead lights, and one or two are illuminated only by the ghostly glow of the TV screen. There is no movement; the children have long since gone to bed, and the adults have stopped their karaoke and magazine-reading and are dozing in front of the TV. Gary
begins to feel very tired all of a sudden. He is not as he was before, when he would stay awake all night after a big concert, unable to sleep, still buzzing from the evening’s performance, constantly thinking of ways to amuse and distract himself in the early hours of the morning. Nowadays all he wants to do is come home and chat with Phoebe in the comfort of his home. Because she is not there, he suddenly feels deflated and empty. There is nothing to do but sleep.

When he wakes up on his faux-leather sofa, it is just before 6:00
A.M
. The sky is lightening with the dusky dawn, and he can feel that the city is preparing to burst into life. He looks at his laptop and sees that Phoebe is still not online. He wonders if she has been online at all during the night.

It is the same story that night and the night after. He waits all night, but she does not come online.

T
HE MEETING DID NOT LAST AS LONG AS YINGHUI HAD EXPECTED
. The banker was Singaporean, a woman a couple of years younger than Yinghui who, it turned out, had been at university at the same time as she (they vaguely remembered each other from the Malaysian and Singaporean Students’ Association’s monthly meeting). She had moved back to Singapore after graduation and worked there for a few years for a local bank before being transferred to Shanghai recently—about a year ago.

“That’s a long time for Shanghai,” Yinghui remarked. “Some people don’t last more than a couple of months. How are you finding it?”

“Um, okay,” she replied. “Not bad. A bit stressful.” The corners of her mouth and eyes were pinched, sleep-deprived, despite the veneer of a professional smile and discreet makeup. Yinghui recognized a restlessness in the banker’s face, a mixture of excitement and apprehension that people exhibited when still new in Shanghai, in search of something, even though they could not articulate what that something was. Maybe it was money, or status, or—God forbid—even love, but whatever it was, Shanghai was not about to give it to them. The city held its promises just out of your reach, waiting to see how far you were willing to go to get what you wanted, how long you were prepared to wait. And until you determined the parameters of your pursuit, you would be on edge, for despite the restaurants
and shops and art galleries and sense of unbridled potential, you would always feel that Shanghai was accelerating a couple of steps ahead of you, no matter how hard you worked or played. The crowds, the traffic, the impenetrable dialect, the muddy rains that carried the remnants of the Gobi Desert sandstorms and stained your clothes every March: The city was teasing you, testing your limits, using you. You arrived thinking you were going to use Shanghai to get what you wanted, and it would be some time before you realized that it was using you, that it had already moved on and you were playing catch-up.

“Don’t worry,” Yinghui said. “You’ll get used to it eventually.”

The banker had diligently gone through the file and met with her colleagues to double-check some details. Yinghui began to deliver parts of the speech she had rehearsed, but the banker nodded absently as she spoke, turning the pages of the file as if everything Yinghui said merely confirmed what they both already knew: that hers was a tightly run business with crystal-clear accounts and no sloppy gray areas.

“Could you explain a little more about the reasons for wanting a loan? We were all expecting an expansion of your existing business model, or something along similar lines, but the project you’ve detailed seems to be … quite different in flavor.” She leafed through the pages of the file that Walter had given Yinghui.

“It’s a very exciting opportunity,” Yinghui began, “a truly fascinating and groundbreaking project. Maybe even a first for China.” She proceeded to repeat the contents of the folder, describing the history of the impressive address right in the middle of the city, its potential, et cetera.

“Who are your business partners for this project?” the banker interrupted.

Yinghui stared at her—perhaps somewhat rudely, she thought, but she could not help herself. Of all the tricky questions she had expected to be asked, this was not one of them. “It’s all there, in that document you’re holding.” She had spent a good two weeks putting the loan papers together; the information contained within them was thorough and perfectly clear—she wondered if the banker was being deliberately obtuse.

The banker continued to look at her, awaiting a response.

“Well, as you can see,” Yinghui said, trying her best not to sound patronizing, “it is an idea developed by the entrepreneur Walter Chao.
He’s … a friend of mine. There will be other parties, of course, but they will come on board later, once we have decided on how we are going to proceed with the venture.”

“We? Oh, so you have a personal relationship with this guy, then.”

“Walter Chao?” Yinghui raised her eyebrows slightly. She was beginning to get annoyed by the lack of diligence the banker was displaying. “Of course I do. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him.”

“No, I haven’t,” the banker replied flatly, unapologetically. “Do you have evidence of his track record?”

Yinghui tried not to sigh. She needed a loan from these people, she reminded herself, and until the deal was done, she had to be as charming as possible. “I’ve included a sheet on him in the file. It’s right there, yes, that page there.”

“But this is a Wikipedia page. From the Internet.”

“I thought I’d just give you an introduction.”

The banker turned the pages of the file briskly but carefully, as if checking for something she might have missed. “Sorry, but we’re bankers; we like certainty. We normally like to see official company reports, annual accounts, that sort of thing. We can’t base our opinion on anyone based on Google searches. The Internet is, well, not very reliable.”

Yinghui continued to smile. “Of course. Reputation goes beyond the Internet.” She hoped she did not come across as being too superior or condescending.

“But that’s the thing: None of my colleagues has ever come across Walter Chao personally. We are very experienced in the region, but we have no record of having dealt with this guy. We keep extensive files and are very thorough in our research.”

Yinghui began to doubt whether she wanted a loan from these people. The banker suddenly seemed studious but amateurish, narrow-minded, and unimaginative. Yes, she remembered this girl from university now: a dull, bespectacled girl who had nothing of any note to say, who confined herself to her room, where she read the books required for her studies (economics? management?) and nothing else. “Maybe he’s not yet well known in China,” Yinghui said.