Ride the Titanic! (27 page)

‘We need to talk,’ Xia says.

‘I’m here.’

She steers me by my elbow out of my office and into the hallway of the top floor; a chaotic scene of drooping wires, curing concrete, and work lights looped from pillar to pillar like gigantic Christmas tree lights. We halt at the end of the corridor that overlooks the Vegas skyline. The night sounds rise like the faraway lilt of an endless party filled with happy screams, car horns blaring, music of all kinds blurring into one jumbled multi-beat song.

‘If there’s a heaven,’ I say, ‘The holding room before you go inside will look like Vegas.’

‘What if you’re going to hell?’ Xia says.

‘Not planning on it. You?’

‘No, but my father is because I’m going to kill him. Postal Savings and CITC are calling their loans.’

‘We’re not that far behind schedule. Did he say who did it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Grayson’s assholes?’

‘No. He did it himself.’

‘He’s your father.’

‘And I’m his only daughter. He wants me to take over the company one day, and he’s convinced that this project of mine – ours – is going to kill me before that day arrives.’

‘He’s pulling the plug just like that?’

Instead of answering she points out the window. ‘A lot of half-built dreams out there that you’ll never see:
The Beau Rivage, Countryland USA, the Crown Las Vegas
. And as of tomorrow
Ride the Titanic
.’

‘What’s our loan amount?’

‘A billion and change.’

‘Is that all? You had me worried.’

‘It’s not funny.’ She stomps away, and then turns, angrily wiping away her tears. ‘I wanted this to work.’

‘It still can. You’re always saying, ‘It’s only money.’ Why is this any different?’

‘Count the zeroes, idiot.’

‘I did, idiot, and I also counted them before I first met you. But that didn’t stop me from throwing ice on you to get you to buy into my idea. Remember?’

‘Your point being?’

‘We sell ourselves to other banks like we sold you. Me, Joe, Lewis. We do our dog and pony show again, only this time
My Pretty Pony
, Xia, joins
The Three Stooges
.’

She purses her lips, lost in thought. I think about kissing them. But before I can stuff that thought back inside my psyche she walks back to the open window.

‘Don’t jump,’ I say. ‘The first bounce is a killer.’

She ignores me and continues staring out the window. The noise rises and falls like ocean surf. She turns to me. ‘It will never work. By now the financial word has spread;
Ride the Titanic
is radioactive.’

‘For now, maybe, but what if. . .’ A new thought stops me cold.

‘What now, genius-boy?’

‘I’m thinking ice water.’

‘How so?’

‘What other banks could handle us?’

‘I told you. . .’

‘What other banks!’ I grab her by the shoulders and her muscles tense like rubber cords. ‘I don’t know anything about high finance crap, but I got an idea that might keep us out of the dead dream heap, providing you don’t jump out the window and join them, because if you do, we’re sunk deeper than the dream we’re trying to build.’

She searches my face for a long moment. ‘What is it about you that makes me want to kiss you when you act like this?’

‘Please. . .we’re talking about banks. . . what banks do you know that could handle our loans?’

Her scary, dreamy look gives way to sharp focus. ‘There’s Hua Xia in Beijing. Bank of Communications in Shanghai, too. They’re both forward looking, independent.’

‘Let’s do Shanghai first. Never been there.’

‘Do what?’

‘Make the banks who are stiffing us look radioactive instead.’

She smiles as my idea dawns on her. ‘This would cause great embarrassment to my father.’

‘It will. And once you burn a bridge you can’t go home unless you swim.’

She gets that dreamy look again and rests her hand on my chest. ‘I like the shore I found.’

‘Uh. . .my shore is married, remember? Three kids, two cars, a dog and a mortgage. We both know that and you don’t want that.’

‘I don’t want bridges. I want you.’

I swallow because I don’t know what to say and my throat is closing faster than a fist before a fight. Don’t ever go to Las Vegas if your morals need a little work.

I finally gasp, ‘Make you a deal,’

‘I’m listening.’

‘When all this is over. . . I mean. . . when the hotel’s up and running and the ride is raking in the cash, we’ll do something about. . . about. . . us, I mean. Figure something out. Arrive at some. . . . agreement.’

‘Seal it with a kiss?’

‘You mean now?’

‘Now is all we’ve got.’

She closes her eyes and lifts her beautiful face. I have no choice; I kiss her as chastely as I can. Even so, it feels wonderful and terrible all at once.

But mostly wonderful.

Joe spends most of the time on our Shanghai-bound flight admiring the workmanship of the
Gulfstream’s
chrome-accented, exotic wood and leather-upholstered interior.

‘Zebrawood, right?’ he says, waking me from a fitful dream, where Xia’s hand is on my shoulder pulling me down on top of her naked body. I open my eyes. Joe’s thick-fingered paw rests on my shoulder. If I don’t stop fantasizing about Xia at Geena’s expense, his hand will be holding a shotgun to blow my brains out.

‘Zebras?’ I slur. ‘Where?’

‘ZebraWOOD, you dumb Mick.’ He rubs the curved panel surrounding the plane’s window. ‘Look at the stripes. Gotta be. And what a perfect finish. Just beautiful. Like Xia.’ He lowers his voice to a confidential whisper. ‘Let me tell you that gal’s a real looker.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I know so.’

‘Don’t let your wife catch you.’

‘Just because the horse is in the barn, don’t mean he can’t whinny.’

I try to go back to sleep – this time with Geena, not Xia. We have five hours left in our thirteen-hour flight from Las Vegas to Shanghai’s Pudong International, and I want to be as rested as I can before meeting with the loan officers. I assume Xia is doing the same in her private suite, located aft in our eleven-seat jet, that currently holds just five passengers, including me, Xia, Joe, Lewis, and at the last minute, Massimo. If nothing else, his boundless enthusiasm will inject excitement into our presentation.

Prior to leaving Vegas, I spent a tense hour listening to Xia’s twanging, half-musical, half-slurring Cantonese as she wrangled, soothed and seduced a short-notice meeting with the board of loan officers for Bank of Communications. She managed to get four of the five to agree. But without the fifth, we don’t stand a chance. The Chinese are big on consensus, as long as it’s theirs.

‘We’ll go there anyhow,’ she said.’ I’ll keep trying on the way.’

‘What’s the rush?’

‘Word’s spreading fast. We need to spread ours even faster.’

The need for speed trumps my need for sleep, so I make my way aft and knock on Xia’s door.

‘You decent?’

No answer. I knock again, enter and close it while a wave of Cantonese fills the small space like the clang and clamor of a four-alarm fire. As opposed to my sweatpants and hoodie, Xia wears an embroidered dressing gown as she reclines on a bed, unfolded, origami-like, from its original couch configuration. She smiles, pats a place next to her, motioning me to sit. Then she bursts out laughing at something the person says, then abruptly lowers her voice to a delicate purr, twangs a friendly, upbeat goodbye, hangs up, laughs, tosses the phone into the air, catches it and kisses it.

‘Success?’ I say.

‘Just got his wife to get him to agree to be there.’

She falls back against the pillow. ‘I’ve GOT to get some sleep.’ Her red fingernails hiss softly as they stroke the silk sheets. ‘Come dream with me, Michael. I promise to be a good girl.’

‘You also promised to wait.’

‘Oh, but I am.’

I shake my head. ‘Listen, love’s got to be a two-way street.’

‘No lectures, please. All I want to do is sleep. . . with you.’ She stretches her arms, yawns, and closes her beautiful eyes. ‘I really mean it. C’mon.’

Something in her voice eases the tension in my shoulders and I yawn.

‘C’mon Michael. . .’

‘This door got a lock?’

She doesn’t answer because she’s already asleep. I lock the door, stretch out beside her and put my arm around her waist. She stirs, smiles and cuddles up against me. Just before I fall asleep she stirs slightly and whispers, ‘A one-way street is still a street.’

The five-person team of Chinese executive loan officers sits before us like Russian
matryoshka
dolls, the biggest an impossibly large woman with an impossibly large smile that seems painted on, along with her other doll-like features that stay frozen from the start of Xia’s bold opening remarks –fortunately in English – to her dramatic finish.

I sit beside her at the enormous table in the bank’s conference room on the zillionth floor of a featureless skyscraper wedged in a forest of identical skyscrapers in the heart of downtown Shanghai. From where we sit, floating high above the smog, not a sign can be seen of the Chinese masses teeming away in the mist, forgotten by their straight-laced superiors sitting in this room, who never suspected that Xia would begin our presentation – not about the ride – but about the evil banks who called our loans.

Xia fires our opening salvo by simply saying, ‘Postal Savings is in financial trouble, and they’re using our project as a scapegoat to hide the truth from solvent banks such as yours. CITC is in the same boat, and they’re both going down. And we have the numbers to prove it.’

She pauses for effect. On cue the four male
matryoshka
dolls swivel their top halves to look at mother doll, whose smile doesn’t fade. Instead it seems to increase. ‘What kind of numbers?’

‘Lewis? If you please.’

He opens his laptop and turns on the small video projector, while Max and Joe unfold the portable screen and mount it on the polished surface of the vast mahogany conference table. The four male dolls lean forward slightly in anticipation, while Mother Doll smiles patiently as Lewis, thanks to a masterful, PowerPoint presentation of graph after graph of bogus information, portrays the utterly false situation that Xia created with the help of her financial analyst friends who love her more than they love their own skins, because if anybody ever finds out, they’ll be nailed to the Great Wall of China and left to die.

Xia continues. ‘As you well know, when a bank cannot meet its obligations to its depositors, it becomes either insolvent or illiquid. As you can see by this first chart, Postal Savings is in the first boat, and CITC is in the other. Lifeboats, I may add, that have been provided by other banks such as yours to help keep the panic from spreading to rest of the world. . .down there in the smog.’

The tiniest of cracks appears on the porcelain-like face of Mother Doll. Call it a frown.

‘But this is quite impossible.’

‘Because it can’t happen, or because you haven’t been told by your superiors that it is, in fact, happening right now, and you’re being kept in the dark?’

Her head tilts to one side. ‘We are in possession of reliable information that states your loan agreement with these banks has become. . .’ she pauses, rattles something in Cantonese, Xia translates in English,

‘Untenable.’

‘Yes, exactly. Based on construction delays, your profit projections have fallen too short to allow a continuance, hence their termination. Both banks for that matter.’ She taps a sheaf of papers in front of her. ‘I have the report right here.’

Xia folds her hands, looks at them for a moment, and then clenches them into fists.

‘That report you have about our progress is a lie, told by my father who doesn’t want me to succeed. He claims he’s concerned for my safety and well-being, but I know what’s really behind his actions. I am a woman in a man’s world, and as long as I am his obedient daughter that is acceptable. But when I tried to grow beyond it, the banks got that report, which is, I repeat, a complete fabrication. One lie after another that – unfortunately for my partner and me – the banks believe is true.’

Her smile is like a gleam of light. ‘It would seem that your father is not the only liar in the Zhu family.’ She points at the last PowerPoint slide glowing on the screen. ‘Despite Mr. Lewis’ convincing charts and equally convincing presentation, you are also lying about these so-called bank failures.’ She turns to her associates. ‘For one terrible moment I actually believed Ms. Zhu. That’s how good her performance was.’