Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan (54)

17

The Corsair speedboat collected Astrid from the jetty on the crescent-shaped beach and sped out into the deep emerald waters of Repulse Bay. Rounding the cove, Astrid caught her first glimpse of a majestic three-masted Chinese junk moored in Chung Hom Wan, with Charlie standing on its prow waving at her.

“How magnificent!” Astrid said as the speedboat pulled alongside the junk.

“I thought you could do with a little pick-me-up,” Charlie said bashfully, as he helped her climb on deck. He had watched anxiously from the sidelines for the past couple of weeks as Astrid progressed through several stages of grief—going from shock to rage to despair while holed up at his duplex. When it seemed like she had come to a place of acceptance, he invited her for an afternoon sail, thinking that the fresh air would do her some good.

Astrid found her footing and smoothed out her navy capri pants. “Should I take off my shoes?”

“No, no. If you were wearing your usual stilettos, that would be one thing, but you’re fine in those flats,” Charlie assured her.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to ruin any of this amazing woodwork.” Astrid admired the gleaming golden teak surfaces around her. “How long have you had this junk?”

“Technically, it belongs to the company, since we’re supposed to use it to impress clients, but I’ve been working on restoring it for the past three years. Weekend project, you know.”

“How old is it?”

“She is from the eighteenth century—a pirate junk that smuggled opium in and out of all the tiny surrounding islands of southern Canton, which is precisely the course I’ve charted for today,” Charlie said, as he gave the order to set sail. The massive tarpaulin sails were unfurled, turning from burnt sienna to a bright crimson in the sunlight as the vessel lurched into motion.

“There’s a family legend that my great-great-grandfather dealt in opium, you know. In a very big way—that’s how part of the family fortune was really made,” Astrid said, turning her face into the breeze as the junk began to glide swiftly along.

“Really? Which side of the family?” Charlie raised an eyebrow.

“I shouldn’t say. We’re not allowed to talk about it, so I’m pretty sure it’s true. My great-grandmother was apparently completely addicted and spent all her time horizontal in her private opium den.”

“The daughter of the opium king became an addict? That’s not a good business strategy.”

“Karma, I guess. At some point, we all have to pay the price for our excesses, don’t we?” Astrid said ruefully.

Charlie knew where Astrid was going with this. “Don’t go beating yourself up again. I’ve said it a hundred times now—there was nothing you could have done to prevent Michael from doing what he wanted to do.”

“Sure there was. I’ve been driving myself crazy thinking back on all the things I could have done differently. I could have refused when my lawyers insisted that he sign that prenup. I could have stopped going to Paris twice a year and filling up our spare bedroom with couture dresses. I could have given him less-expensive presents—that Vacheron for his thirtieth birthday was a huge mistake.”

“You were only being yourself, and to anyone but Michael, it would have been perfectly okay. He should have known what he was getting himself into when he married you. Give yourself a little more credit, Astrid—you might have extravagant tastes, but that’s never stopped you from being a good person.”

“I don’t know how you can say all this about me, when I treated you so horribly, Charlie.”

“I never held a grudge against you, you know that. It was your parents I was mad at.”

Astrid stared up at the blue sky. A lone seagull seemed to be flying in tandem with the ship, flapping its wings forcefully to keep up with it. “Well, now my parents will surely regret that I didn’t marry you, once they find out that their precious daughter has been dumped by Michael Teo. Imagine, my parents were once so a ghast at the prospect of you becoming their son-in-law. They stuck their noses up at your father’s brand-new fortune, made from computers, and now your family is one of the most celebrated in Asia. Now the Leongs are going to have to face the shame of having a divorcée in the family.”

“There’s nothing shameful about it. Divorce is getting so common these days.”

“But not in our kind of families, Charlie. You know that. Look at your own situation—your wife won’t give you a divorce, your mother won’t even hear of it. Think of what it’s going to be like in my family when they find out the truth. They won’t know what hit them.”

Two deckhands approached with a wine bucket and a gigantic platter overflowing with fresh longans and lychees. Charlie popped open the bottle of Château d’Yquem and poured Astrid a glass.

“Michael loved Sauternes. It was one of the few things we both loved,” Astrid said wistfully as she took a sip from her wineglass. “Of course, I learned to appreciate soccer, and he learned to appreciate four-ply toilet paper.”

“But were you really that happy, Astrid?” Charlie asked. “I mean, it seems like you sacrificed so much more than he did. I still can’t imagine you living in that little flat, smuggling your shopping into the spare bedroom like an addict.”

“I was happy, Charlie. And more important, Cassian was happy. Now he’s going to have to grow up a child of divorce, ping-ponging between two households. I’ve failed my son.”

“You haven’t failed him,” Charlie scolded. “The way I see it, Michael was the one who abandoned ship. He just couldn’t take the heat. As much of a coward as I think he is, I can also empathize a bit. Your family is pretty intimidating. They sure gave me a run for my money, and they won in the end, didn’t they?”

“Well, you weren’t the one who gave in. You stood up to my family and never let them get to you. I was the one who caved,” Astrid said, expertly peeling a longan and popping the pearly fruit into her mouth.

“Still, it’s far easier for a beautiful woman from an ordinary background to marry into a family like yours than for a man who doesn’t come from any wealth or lineage. And Michael had the added disadvantage of being good-looking—the men in your family were probably jealous of him.”

Astrid laughed. “Well, I thought he was up for the challenge. When I first met Michael, he didn’t seem to care one bit about my money or my family. But in the end I was wrong. He did care. He cared too much.” Astrid’s voice cracked, and Charlie stretched out his arms to comfort her. Tears streamed down her face quietly, turning quickly into racking sobs as she leaned into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she kept saying, embarrassed by her uncontrolled display. “I don’t know why, but I just can’t stop crying.”

“Astrid, it’s me. You don’t have to keep your emotions in check around me. You’ve thrown vases and goldfish bowls at me, remember?” Charlie said, trying to lighten the mood. Astrid smiled fleetingly as the tears continued to flow. Charlie felt helpless and at the same time frustrated by the absurdity of the situation. His smoking-hot ex-fiancée was on a romantic Chinese junk with him, literally crying on his shoulder about another man. This was just his damn luck.

“You really love him, don’t you?” Charlie said softly.

“I do. Of course I do,” Astrid sobbed.

For a few hours, they sat quietly side by side, soaking in the sun and the salty spray as the junk floated along the calm waters of the South China Sea. They sailed past Lantau Island, Charlie bowing respectfully to the giant Buddha at its peak, and skirted past tiny picturesque islands like Aizhou and Sanmen, with their rugged out-croppings and hidden inlets.

All the while, Charlie’s mind kept churning nonstop. He had coerced Astrid into coming on this afternoon sail because he wanted to make a confession. He wanted to tell her that he had never stopped loving her, not for one moment, and that his marriage one year after their breakup had been nothing but a mindless rebound. He had never truly loved Isabel, and their marriage was doomed from the start because of it. There were so many things Charlie wanted her to know, but he knew it was too late to tell them.

At least she had loved him once. At least he had four good years with the girl he had loved since he was fifteen, since the night he had watched her sing “Pass It On” on the beach during a church youth group outing. (His family had been Taoists, but his mother had forced all of them to attend First Methodist so they could mix with a ritzier crowd.) He could still remember the way the flickering bonfire made her long wavy hair shimmer in the most exquisite reds and golds, how her entire being glowed like Botticelli’s Venus as she so sweetly sang:

“Can I make a suggestion, Astrid?” Charlie said as the junk made its way back to Repulse Bay to drop her off.

“What?” Astrid asked sleepily.

“When you get home tomorrow, do nothing. Just go back to your normal life. Don’t make any announcements, and don’t grant Michael a quick divorce.”

“Why not?”

“I have a feeling Michael could have a change of heart.”

“What makes you think that will happen?”

“Well, I’m a guy, and I know how guys think. At this point, Michael’s played all his cards, he’s gotten a huge load off his chest. There’s something really cathartic about that, about owning up to your truth. Now, if you let him have some time to himself, I think you’ll find that he might be receptive to a reconciliation a few months down the line.”

Astrid was dubious. “Really? But he was so adamant about wanting a divorce.”

“Think about it—Michael’s deluded himself into thinking he’s been trapped in an impossible marriage for the past five years. But a funny thing happens when men truly get a taste of freedom, especially when they’re accustomed to married life. They begin to crave that domestic bliss again. They want to re-create it. Look, he told you the sex was still great. He told you he didn’t blame you, aside from blowing too much money on clothes. My instinct tells me that if you just let him be, he will come back.”

“Well, it’s worth a try, isn’t it?” Astrid said hopefully.

“It is. But you have to promise me two things: first, you need to live your life the way you want to, instead of how you think Michael would want you to. Move into one of your favorite houses, dress however it pleases you. I really feel that what ate into Michael was the way you spent all your time tiptoeing around him, trying to be someone you weren’t. Your overcompensating for him only increased his feelings of inadequacy.”

“Okay,” Astrid said, trying to soak it all in.

“Second, promise me you won’t grant him a divorce for at least one year, no matter how much he begs for it. Just stall him. Once you sign the papers, you lose the chance of him ever coming back,” Charlie said.

“I promise.”

As soon as Astrid had disembarked from the junk at Repulse Bay, Charlie made a phone call to Aaron Shek, the chief financial officer of Wu Microsystems.

“Aaron, how’s our share price doing today?”

“We’re up two percent.”

“Great, great. Aaron, I want you to do me a special favor . . . I want you to look up a small digital firm based in Singapore called Cloud Nine Solutions.”

“Cloud Nine . . .” Aaron began, keying the name into his computer. “Headquartered in Jurong?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Aaron, I want you to acquire the company tomorrow. Start low, but I want you to end up offering at least fifteen million for it. Actually, how many partners are there?”

“I see two registered partners. Michael Teo and Adrian Balakrishnan.”

“Okay, bid thirty million.”

“Charlie, you can’t be serious? The book value on that company is only—”

“No, I’m dead serious,” Charlie cut in. “Start a fake bidding war between some of our subsidiaries if you have to. Now listen carefully. After the deal is done, I want you to vest Michael Teo, the founding partner, with class-A stock options, then I want you to bundle it with that Cupertino start-up we acquired last month and the software developer in Zhongguancun. Then, I want us to do an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange next month.”

“Next month?”

“Yes, it has to happen very quickly. Put the word out on the street, let your contacts at Bloomberg TV know about it, hell, drop a hint to Henry Blodget if you think it will help drive up the share price. But at the end of the day I want those class-A stock options to be worth at least $250 million. Keep it off the books, and set up a shell corporation in Liechtenstein if you have to. Just make sure there are no links back to me. Never, ever.”

“Okay, you got it.” Aaron was used to his boss’s idiosyncratic requests.

“Thank you, Aaron. See you at CAA on Sunday with the kids.”

The eighteenth-century Chinese junk pulled into Aberdeen Harbour just as the first evening lights began to turn on in the dense cityscape hugging the southern shore of Hong Kong Island. Charlie let out a deep sigh. If he didn’t have a chance of getting Astrid back, he at least wanted to try to help her. He wanted her to find love again with her husband. He wanted to see the joy return to Astrid’s face, that glow he had witnessed all those years ago at the bonfire on the beach. He wanted to pass it on.