Crazy Rich Asians (4 page)

Besides, Eleanor enjoyed passing through the kitchens. The old
amahs
squatting over enamel double boilers would always open the lids for Eleanor to sniff
the smoky medicinal herbs being brewed for Carol’s husband (“natural Viagra,” as he
called it), and the kitchen maids gutting fish in the courtyard would fawn over how
youthful Mrs. Young still looked for sixty, what with her fashionably shagged chin-length
hair and her unwrinkled face (before furiously debating, the moment she was out of
earshot, what expensive new cosmetic procedure Mrs. Young must have endured).

By the time Eleanor arrived at Carol’s bedroom, the Bible study regulars—Daisy Foo,
Lorena Lim, and Nadine Shaw—would be assembled and waiting. Here, sheltered from the
harsh equatorial heat, these longtime friends would sprawl languorously about the
room, analyzing the Bible verses assigned in their study guides. The place of honor
on Carol’s Qing dynasty
Huanghuali
^†
bed was always reserved for Eleanor, for even though this was Carol’s house and she
was the one married to the billionaire financier, Carol still deferred to her. This
was the way things had been since their childhood as neighbors growing up on Serangoon
Road, mainly because, coming from a Chinese-speaking family, Carol had always felt
inferior to Eleanor, who was brought up speaking English
first
. (The others also kowtowed to her, because even among these exceedingly well-married
ladies, Eleanor had trumped them all by becoming Mrs. Philip Young.)

Today’s lunch started off with braised quail and abalone over hand-pulled noodles,
and Daisy (married to the rubber magnate Q. T. Foo but born a Wong, of the Ipoh Wongs)
fought to separate the starchy noodles while trying to find 1 Timothy in her King
James Bible. With her bobbed perm and her rimless reading glasses perched at the tip
of her nose, she looked like the principal of a girls’ school. At sixty-four, she
was the oldest of the ladies, and even though everyone else was on the New American
Standard, Daisy always insisted on reading from her version, saying, “I went to convent
school and
was taught by nuns, you know, so it will always be King James for me.” Tiny droplets
of garlicky broth splattered onto the tissue-like page, but she managed to keep the
good book open with one hand while deftly maneuvering her ivory chopsticks with the
other.

Nadine, meanwhile, was busily flipping through
her
Bible—the latest issue of
Singapore Tattle
. Every month, she couldn’t wait to see how many pictures of her daughter Francesca—the
celebrated “Shaw Foods heiress”—were featured in the “Soirées” section of the magazine.
Nadine herself was a fixture in the social pages, what with her Kabuki-esque makeup,
tropical-fruit-size jewels, and over-teased hair. “Aiyah, Carol,
Tattle
devoted two full pages to your Christian Helpers fashion gala!” Nadine exclaimed.

“Already? I didn’t realize it would come out so quickly,” Carol remarked. Unlike Nadine,
she was always a bit embarrassed to find herself in magazines, even though editors
constantly fawned over her “classic Shanghainese songstress looks.” Carol simply felt
obligated to attend a few charity galas every week as any good born-again Christian
should, and because her husband kept reminding her that “being Mother Teresa is good
for business.”

Nadine scanned the glossy pages up and down. “That Lena Teck has
really
put on weight since her Mediterranean cruise, hasn’t she? It must be those all-you-can-eat
buffets—you always feel like you have to eat more to get your money’s worth. She better
be careful—all those Teck women end up with fat ankles.”

“I don’t think she cares how fat her ankles get. Do you know how much she inherited
when her father died? I heard she and her five brothers got seven hundred million
each
,” Lorena said from her chaise lounge.

“Is that all? I thought Lena had at least a billion.” Nadine sniffed. “Hey, so strange
Elle, how come there’s no picture of your pretty niece Astrid? I remember all the
photographers swarming around her that day.”

“Those photographers were wasting their time. Astrid’s pictures are never published
anywhere. Her mother made a deal with all the magazine editors back when she was a
teenager,” Eleanor explained.

“Why on earth would she do that?”

“Don’t you know my husband’s family by now? They would rather die than appear in print,”
Eleanor said.

“What, have they become too grand to be seen mingling with other Singaporeans?” Nadine
said indignantly.

“Aiyah, Nadine, there’s a difference between being grand and being discreet,” Daisy
commented, knowing full well that families like the Leongs and the Youngs guarded
their privacy to the point of obsession.

“Grand or not, I think Astrid is wonderful,” Carol chimed in. “You know, I’m not supposed
to say, but Astrid wrote the biggest check at the fund-raiser. And she insisted that
I keep it anonymous. But her donation was what made this year’s gala a record-breaking
success.”

Eleanor eyed the pretty new Mainland Chinese maid entering the room, wondering if
this was another one of the girls that the
dato’
had handpicked from that “employment agency” he frequented in Suzhou, the city reputed
to have the most beautiful women in China. “What do we have today?” she asked Carol,
as the maid placed a familiar bulky mother-of-pearl chest beside the bed.

“Oh, I wanted to show you what I bought on my Burma trip.”

Eleanor flipped open the lid of the chest eagerly and began methodically taking out
the stacked black velvet trays. One of her favorite parts of Thursday Bible study
was looking at Carol’s latest acquisitions. Soon the bed was lined with trays containing
a blinding array of jewels. “What intricate crosses—I didn’t realize they did such
good setting work in Burma!”

“No, no, those crosses are Harry Winston,” Carol corrected. “The rubies are from Burma.”

Lorena got up from her lunch and headed straight for the bed, holding up one of the
lychee-size rubies to the light. “Aiyah, you have to be careful in Burma because so
many of their rubies are synthetically treated to boost the redness.” Being the wife
of Lawrence Lim (of the L’Orient Jewelry Lims), Lorena could speak on this topic with
authority.

“I thought rubies from Burma were supposed to be the best,” Eleanor remarked.

“Ladies, you need to stop calling it Burma. It’s been called
Myanmar
for more than twenty years now,” Daisy corrected.

“
Alamak!
You sound just like Nicky, always correcting me!” Eleanor said.

“Hey, speaking of Nick, when does he arrive from New York? Isn’t he the best man at
Colin Khoo’s wedding?” Daisy asked.

“Yes, yes. But you know my son—I’m always the last to know anything!” Eleanor complained.

“Isn’t he staying with you?”

“Of course. He always stays with us first, before heading to Old Lady’s,” Eleanor
said, using her nickname for her mother-in-law.

“Well,” Daisy continued, lowering her voice a bit, “what do you think Old Lady will
do about his guest?”

“What do you mean? What
guest
?” Eleanor asked.

“The one … he’s bringing … to the wedding,” Daisy replied slowly, her eyes darting
around at the other ladies mischievously, knowing they all knew to whom she was referring.

“What are you talking about? Who is he bringing?” Eleanor said, a little confused.

“His latest girlfriend,
lah
!” Lorena revealed.

“No such thing! No way Nicky has a girlfriend,” Eleanor insisted.

“Why is it so hard for you to believe that your son has a girlfriend?” Lorena asked.
She had always found Nick to be
the
most dashing young man of his generation, and with all that Young money, it was such
a pity her good-for-nothing daughter Tiffany never managed to attract him.

“But surely you’ve heard about this girl?
The one from New York
,” Daisy said in a whisper, relishing that she was the one breaking the news to Eleanor.

“An
American
girl? Nicky wouldn’t
dare
do such a thing. Daisy, your information is always
ta pah kay
!”
^‡

“What do you mean? My news is not
ta pah kay
—it comes from the most reliable source! Anyway, I hear she’s Chinese,” Daisy offered.

“Really? What’s her name, and where is she from? Daisy, if you tell me she’s from
Mainland China, I think I’ll have a stroke,” Eleanor warned.

“I heard she’s from Taiwan,” Daisy said carefully.

“Oh my goodness, I hope she’s not one of those Taiwanese tornadoes!” Nadine cackled.

“What do you mean by that?” Eleanor asked.

“You know how notorious those Taiwanese girls can be. They
swoop in unexpectedly, the men fall head over heels, and before you know it they are
gone, but not before sucking up every last dollar, just like a tornado,” Nadine explained.
“I know so many men who have fallen prey—think about Mrs. K. C. Tang’s son Gerald,
whose wife cleaned him out and ran off with all the Tang heirlooms. Or poor Annie
Sim, who lost her husband to that lounge singer from Taipei.”

At this moment, Carol’s husband entered the room. “Hello, hello, ladies. How is Jesus
time today?” he said, puffing away on his cigar and swirling his goblet of Hennessy,
looking every portly inch the caricature of an Asian tycoon.

“Hello,
Dato’
!” the ladies said in unison, hurriedly shifting themselves into more decorous positions.

“
Dato’
, Daisy here is trying to give me a stroke! She’s telling everyone that Nicky has
a new
Taiwanese
girlfriend!” Eleanor cried.

“Relax, Lealea. Taiwanese girls are
lovely
—they really know how to take care of a man, and maybe she’ll be prettier than all
those spoiled, inbred girls you try to matchmake him to.” The
dato’
grinned. “Anyway,” he continued, suddenly lowering his voice, “if I were you, I would
be less worried about young Nicholas, and more worried about
Sina Land
right now.”

“Why? What’s happening to Sina Land?” Eleanor asked.

“Sina Land
toh tuew
. It’s going to collapse,” the
dato’
declared with a satisfied grin.

“But Sina Land is blue-chip. How can that be? My brother even told me they have all
these new projects in western China,” Lorena argued.

“The Chinese government, my source assures me, has pulled out of that huge new development
in Xinjiang. I just unloaded my shares and I’m shorting a hundred thousand shares
every hour until market closes.” With that, the
dato’
expelled a big puff of smoke from his Cohiba and pressed a button next to the bed.
The vast wall of glass facing the sparkling swimming pool began to tilt forty-five
degrees like an enormous cantilevered garage door, and the
dato’
lumbered out into the garden toward the main house.

For a few seconds, the room went absolutely still. You could almost hear the wheels
in each woman’s head whirling into overdrive. Daisy suddenly jumped up from her chair,
spilling the tray of noodles onto the floor. “Quick, quick! Where’s my handbag? I
need to call my broker!”

Eleanor and Lorena both scrambled for their cell phones as well. Nadine had her stockbroker
on speed dial and was already screaming into her phone, “Dump all of it! SINA LAND.
Yes. Dump it all! I just heard from the horse’s mouth that it’s
gone case
!”

Lorena was on the other end of the bed, cupping her phone close to her mouth. “Desmond,
I don’t care, please just start shorting it now.”

Daisy began to hyperventilate. “
Sum toong, ah!
^§
I’m losing millions by the second! Where is my bloody broker? Don’t tell me that
moron is still at lunch!”

Carol calmly reached for the touch-screen panel by her bedside table. “Mei Mei, can
you please come in and clean up a spill?” Then she closed her eyes, lifted her arms
into the air, and began to pray aloud:
“Oh Jesus, our personal lord and savior, blessed be your name. We come to you humbly
asking for your forgiveness today, as we have all sinned against you. Thank you for
showering your blessings upon us. Thank you Lord Jesus for the fellowship that we
shared today, for the nourishing food we enjoyed, for the power of your holy word.
Please watch over dear Sister Eleanor, Sister Lorena, Sister Daisy, and Sister Nadine,
as they try to sell their Sina Land shares …”

Carol opened her eyes for a moment, noting with satisfaction that Eleanor at least
was praying along with her. But of course, she couldn’t know that behind those serene
eyelids, Eleanor was praying for something else entirely.
A Taiwanese girl! Please God, let it not be true
.

Rachel Chu