Five Star Billionaire: A Novel (60 page)

“You don’t know anything at all. It’s not like you and your rich man. I’m telling you, you must not let go of him. At least go and seek an explanation.”

Phoebe shook her head. She did not need an explanation—everything was clear. In fact, it had been clear right from the start, only she hadn’t seen it. Of course no man like him would be interested in a girl like her; he would be interested only in real women of class like Boss Leong, even though, to the rest of the world, women like her seemed unstylish and unsophisticated. Because, even though you wear fashionable dresses that
show your beauty to the whole world, you will never have what Boss Leong possesses, which is an education. All those people who look at you—they know. They know that you are nothing; they know that when the man you are with is tired of you, you will fade back into obscurity. So when they look at you, it is not just with jealousy but with mockery. They want what you have now but they know that they will never end up like you. And while they will never be jealous of Boss Leong, they will never mock her either, because all the things that she has, she can never lose.

“Hey,” Yanyan continued, “this is not a matter of snaring a husband or becoming a rich man’s concubine. It is a matter of love.”

“You really have mental problems,” Phoebe said. “I don’t love him.”

“Yes, you do,” Yanyan said, throwing the tickets down at Phoebe. “I know you do, because I stole a look at your journal. You wrote,
This man is so sweet, he is so kind and nice to me, he—
”

“You looked at my journal?” Phoebe cried. “You are too outrageous.”

Yanyan shrugged and reached for her bubble tea. She was smiling—she didn’t care if she had invaded Phoebe’s privacy. Sometimes, Phoebe thought, Yanyan really knew how to give her a bad mood.

“Go on,” Yanyan said, “ring him and tell him you will meet him there after all. You should take control of the situation and not let him disappear from your life. If he wants to leave you, at least make him justify his actions. He should not just vanish like smoke. He owes you something. And if he doesn’t come, at least you can listen to the concert. Chang Chen-Yue is confirmed, and I hear rumors that Gary is singing too.”

Phoebe shook her head. She looked at the tickets lying by her toes. They were marked:
EXCLUSIVE PRIVATE SEATS
. She imagined what they would be like—big and velvet-covered, soft and bouncy.

THE ROAD LEADING UP
to the stadium was full of people, like a river flowing the wrong way. Phoebe stood by the west doors, the entrance marked on the ticket, at the exact place she had agreed with Walter. There was a sign saying
VIP AND ARTISTS ONLY
. There were men in security uniforms checking the handbags of women going into the stadium—women who dressed the way Phoebe used to dress, stylishly and with refined elegance. But today she had come simply in her usual clothes, her three-quarter-length jeans, which she knew were not fashionable but were comfortable
in the heat of the summer night. She had sold all her expensive clothes and handbags and shoes on the Internet and used the money to buy herself a plane ticket back to Malaysia. She knew she no longer looked as attractive as she did a few weeks ago, but she did not care. In fact, what she had not told Yanyan was that she did not intend to go to the concert. She would merely wait for Walter and return the tickets to him as a gesture of politeness. She wanted their story to be closed, for everything to be in its place when she left China. She was not hoping for him to say sorry and take her back. She knew that would not happen. She did not even want an explanation.

In the stadium, there were cheers and applause, rising like a swelling wave. Phoebe checked her watch—it was early; there were still ten minutes to go before the start of the concert. There was a constant stream of people coming in through the VIP entrance, though fewer now than before. Around her, hawkers were pushing their carts, selling grilled-meat skewers and dumplings and fruit and ice drinks. A young couple, teenagers, ran past, arm in arm, dashing toward the main entrance around the corner.

“Hey,” one of the hawkers called out to Phoebe, “you’ve been waiting a long time. You sure your friends are not around at the other entrance?”

She held up the special green-colored VIP tickets for him to see.

“Lucky you!” he said.

There was a deep rumble, like thunder—music had started inside the stadium. The first notes were accompanied by a huge cheer, and when Phoebe looked up into the sky, she saw multicolored laser lights crisscrossing, pulsing to match the excitement of the crowd. She could hear the heavy beats of a bass drum, starting up rhythmically, and more loud cheers. She looked down the road at the thinning crowd—the last few people were walking briskly up to the stadium. The path was lined with trees laced with twinkly white fairy lights, and the smoke of the street stalls looked silvery as it rose into the night air.

The music ebbed and flowed, and then, suddenly, there was a burst of bright sound—drums, guitars, and voices singing in chorus. The audience cheered and began to sing along. Phoebe recognized the song but couldn’t place the singer. It was a breezy, rhythmic tune that made her want to dance, and she could imagine the people in the audience bouncing on their toes, swaying to the music and singing along. There were three more songs like this, and then someone spoke, but Phoebe couldn’t quite make
out what was being said. The next songs were slow and sentimental, though Phoebe couldn’t make out what language they were being sung in. The voice was low and muffled and sad and made Phoebe want to leave. She had to say, she didn’t like this music. It was not very cheerful.

“Hey, little miss,” the man selling skewers called out again, “I think your friend is not coming. You should go in and enjoy the concert. Give me the other ticket—I will be your date for tonight!”

Phoebe smiled. “He might still come,” she said. “I’ll wait awhile longer.”

“Have a snack,” the man said, holding out a chicken-wing skewer.

“Thanks,” Phoebe said. She looked around her. There was no one left. Cheers went up in the stadium again—a chorus of happy people. The tune was a quick modern version of “Sweet Little Rose.” She thought about the evening she had spent with Walter, when she had taken him to eat baby lobster in the Changsha Noodle Stall and they had ridden on Yanyan’s scooter through the city. When they rode over the giant overpasses—the headlamps of the streams of cars flowing under them, over them, around them—Phoebe felt as if she were in an amusement park, on a roller coaster that made her giddy and dreamy and forgetful. In any other place, in any other time, that would have been a proper date and she would have been happy. It made her sad to know that she had not been able to be happy in a situation that was perfect for being happy.

She heard music she recognized. She turned to the skewer-seller and said, “Here. Take these. If you hurry, you might be able to catch Chang Chen-Yue.”

“Huh?” he said, staring at the two tickets.

“What? You don’t like Chang Chen-Yue?” she joked. “Take them.”

She walked down the road, the melodies from inside the stadium becoming fainter the farther away she got. The night seemed less muggy now that she was no longer surrounded by crowds. She took the metro, which was not busy at this time of the night. The coolness of the air-conditioning gave her goose pimples, and she realized her skin had become sticky from standing out in the heat for so long. She got off a few stops early and walked along Nanjing Xi Lu, past the boutiques that were now shut. She wanted to see the quiet lights, the gilding, and the clean wide pavements one last time. As she walked past the glittering windows of the shops, she remembered that she was carrying her “Journal of My Secret Self.” It did not seem so secret now that Yanyan had read it. She had wanted to throw
it ceremoniously into the Huangpu River, as she had always planned to do. In her dreams, she would be rich and successful when she cast adrift the journal that contained her darkest fears and ambitions. But now that she was leaving—now that she was a failure—it seemed meaningless and empty to perform such a grand ritual. She took it from her bag and dropped it into a rubbish bin.

The same street vendor she remembered from several months earlier was still standing before his pushcart, selling his homemade CDs of Cuban music, which he played through a loudspeaker strapped to his scooter. It was the same music he was playing the night Phoebe met Walter—soft and gentle as a spring wind, drifting in the night, even though there were only a few people around to hear it. She had learned from Walter that Cuba was not near Brazil or Spain, as she had once thought. He had played her different kinds of music in his car as they drove around the city, telling her which country each was from. And once, she had twirled her torso in the way she imagined Spanish dancers might, to which he had said, “You are really
too
funny.”

“
Y
OU WERE GOING TO BUY THAT BUILDING?” YANYAN SAID.
“YOU?”
The newspaper was spread out on the floor, and she pulled it toward her to take a better look at the small photo.

“Not me, exactly,” Justin replied. “My family.”

“Lucky thing you didn’t—it looks cheap and horrible. It’s just … a
factory
.”

Justin laughed. It was true that the photo did not show the building in its best light. Taken from afar, all one could see was a structure of irregular gray concrete blocks clad in wires and broken antennae. The article was not a large one, confined to the bottom corner of the newspaper, a mere whisper of the collapse of the deal to redevelop it. No reason was given for the demise of the project.

It was late at night, and they were sitting on the front steps of their apartment block, eating red-bean ice cream and groundnut
mochi
, a habit that had grown increasingly frequent over the summer. The nights were still warm but no longer muggy, touched by the freshness of the first winds of autumn. Before them, Suzhou Creek lay still and flat, reflecting the lights of the buildings as if in a black mirror. The days were now clear and bright, the sun high and unfiltered as it was in the Mediterranean, Justin thought. He wondered if it was always like this in Shanghai or if this autumn was exceptional; maybe he had simply never noticed it.

In his jeans pocket, he could feel his phone pressing against his thigh, more pronounced than usual; he had become unusually aware of its physical presence ever since he received a message from Leong Yinghui two days earlier. It was as if the unanswered message added to the weight of the phone, rendering it more valuable, more fragile and precious. He carried it with him all the time now, tucking it into his pocket so that he could feel its hard edges insisting themselves against his flesh, comforting in their solidity. He did not leave it on the table, and even when in the shower he made sure he did not lose sight of it.

And yet he did not reply to the message. He had found it on his phone upon waking one morning; it had been left at 1:52
A.M.
, long after he had gone to bed and turned the phone off. Her voice had been calm and matter-of-fact, without any trace of hesitation—in fact, it began so smoothly that he had the impression she had rehearsed the entire message before ringing him. She said simply that she had been involved in a large deal to purchase a landmark site that he might have heard of—a building called simply 969—and that she had taken out considerable loans secured on her existing businesses. It turned out—ha-ha—that her business partner had siphoned all the money from their business account. She’d woken up one day and he had just vanished, along with the money. Well, it was her fault; she hadn’t taken the requisite precautions. She had let her guard down, and you know what happens in Shanghai if you let your guard down. Maybe she was never destined to be a good businesswoman after all. She was sure that Justin wouldn’t recall, but years ago she and Justin had once said that business, when deconstructed, was philosophically unchallenging—remember that? What a joke. (Here, she half-laughed.) The mess she’d made of the deal had reminded her of what Justin and everyone else said many years ago, that she’d never understand business. He’d known her better than she thought; she realized that now. She’d spent days thinking about what kind of person she’d been back then and what she’d become. She wondered what Justin might make of her today—compared to before, she meant. (A noise—maybe a sniff, a runny nose? Her voice had begun to waver and soften.) Losing the money was painful, but what was worse was that she had been stupid, so stupid. (Here, a short pause, a muffled noise, as if she had cupped her hand over the phone.) Anyway, she didn’t mean to bore him with details of her misery. No, in fact she was going to go back to the drawing board, salvage what she
could from her businesses and see what happened. She knew she really wasn’t
that
bad at business. Maybe not great, but definitely not terrible. She was going to stick it out in China and rise from the ashes—again. (Then came a pause in the message—so long that the first time Justin listened to it he wondered if she had hung up.) It would be hard, but that’s life. She’d experienced worse in the past, as he no doubt remembered. So, if he wanted to meet for a drink sometime, just to catch up on old times, he should give her a call. Or maybe (laugh) it would be better if they didn’t catch up on old times and simply chatted about the weather, restaurants, that kind of thing. All the best.