“Uh-huh,” Astrid reported.
“We’re going back in!” Charlie said indignantly.
“Charlie, let’s just go to the next boutique on your list.”
“Astrid, sometimes I can’t believe you’re Harry Leong’s daughter! Your father bought the most exclusive hotel in London when the manager was rude to your mother, for chrissakes! You need to learn how to stand up for yourself!”
“I know perfectly well how to stand up for myself, but it’s simply not worth making a fuss over nothing,” Astrid argued.
“Well, it’s not nothing to me. Nobody insults my girlfriend!” Charlie declared, flinging the door wide open with gusto. Astrid followed reluctantly, noticing that the redheaded saleslady was now joined by a man with platinum blond hair.
Charlie marched up and asked the man, in English, “Do you work here?”
“Oui,” the man replied.
“This is my girlfriend. I want to buy a whole new wardrobe for her. Will you help me?”
The man crossed his arms lazily, slightly bemused by this scrawny teenager with a bad case of acne. “This is all haute couture, and the dresses start at twenty-five thousand francs. There is also an eight-month wait,” he said.
“Not a problem,” Charlie said boldly.
“Um, you pay cash? How are you going to guarantee payment?” the lady asked in thickly accented English.
Charlie sighed and whipped out his cell phone. He dialed a long series of numbers and waited for the other end to pick up. “Mr. Oei? It’s Charlie Wu here. Sorry to disturb you at this time of night in Singapore. I’m in Paris at the moment. Tell me, Mr. Oei, does our bank have a relationship manager in Paris? Great. Will you call the fellow up and get him to make a call to this shop that I am at.” Charlie looked up and asked them for the name, before continuing. “Tell him to inform these people that I am here with Astrid Leong. Yes, Harry’s daughter. Yes, and will you be sure your fellow lets them know I can afford to buy anything I damn well please? Thank you.”
Astrid watched her boyfriend in silence. She had never seen him behave in such an assertive manner. Part of her felt like cringing from the vulgarity of his swagger, and part of her found it to be remarkably attractive. A few long minutes passed, and finally the phone rang. The redhead picked it up quickly, her eyes widening as she listened to the tirade coming from the other end. “Désolée, monsieur, très désolée,” she kept saying into the phone. She hung up and began a terse exchange with her male colleague, not realizing that Astrid could understand almost every word they were saying. The man leaped off the table and gazed at Charlie and Astrid with a sudden vigor. “Please, mademoiselle, let me show you the full collection,” he said with a big smile.
The woman, meanwhile, smiled at Charlie. “Monsieur, would you like some champagne? Or a cappuccino, maybe?”
“I wonder what my banker told them,” Charlie whispered to Astrid as they were led downstairs into a cavernous dressing room.
“Oh, that wasn’t the banker. It was the designer himself. He told them he was rushing over to personally supervise my fittings. Your banker must have called him directly,” Astrid said.
“Okay, I want you to order ten dresses from this designer. We need to spend at least a few hundred thousand francs right now.”
“Ten? I don’t think I even want ten things from this place,” Astrid said.
“Doesn’t matter. You need to pick out ten things. Actually, make that twenty. As my father always says, the only way to get these ang mor gau sai to respect you is to smack them in the face with your dua lan chiao* money until they get on their knees.”
For the next seven days, Charlie led Astrid on a shopping spree to end all shopping sprees. He bought her a suite of luggage from Hermès, dozens of dresses from all the top designers that season, sixteen pairs of shoes and four pairs of boots, a diamond-encrusted Patek Philippe watch (that she never once wore), and a restored art nouveau lamp from Didier Aaron. In between the marathon shopping, there were lunches at Mariage Frères and Davé, dinners at Le Grand Véfour and Les Ambassadeurs, and dancing the night away in their new finery at Le Palace and Le Queen. That week in Paris, Astrid not only discovered her taste for haute couture; she discovered a new passion. She had lived the first eighteen years of her life surrounded by people who had money b
ut claimed not to, people who preferred to hand things down rather than buy them new, people who simply didn’t know how to enjoy their good fortune. Spending money the Charlie Wu way was absolutely exhilarating—honestly, it was better than sex.
* * *
* Hokkien for “big cock.”
10
Tyersall Park
SINGAPORE, 3:30 A.M.
Rachel was quiet all the way home from the wedding ball. She graciously returned the sapphire necklace to Fiona in the foyer and bounded up the stairs. In the bedroom, she grabbed her suitcase from the built-in cupboard and began shoving in her clothes as fast as she could. She noticed that the laundry maids had placed thin sheets of scented blotting paper between each folded piece of clothing, and she began tearing them out frustratedly—she didn’t want to take a single thing from this place.
“What are you doing?” Nick said in bafflement as he entered the bedroom.
“What does it look like? I’m getting out of here!”