The Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy

“Astrid, that’s total BS. I’m mad at Michael that he would try to make you feel like you were in any way responsible!”

Astrid sighed. “I know I am not ultimately responsible, but I do see that if I had done things a little differently, the outcome might have been more positive. I’m sorry it’s upset you. I didn’t mean to do that—I guess I was just selfishly venting after Michael and I got into a fight. I feel bad for him, I really do. I know he worked so hard to try to get this deal off the ground.”

“Cry me a river! Michael’s company is still doing fantastic—his stock hasn’t lost a single point over this. But he’s somehow managed to make you feel bad about it, and that’s what worries me. You just don’t see how preposterous this whole line of reasoning is. You did nothing wrong, Astrid. NOTHING.”

“Thank you for saying that. Hey, I gotta run. Cassian is screaming about something.” Hanging up the phone, Astrid closed her eyes and let the tears seep out. She didn’t dare tell Charlie what Michael had really said when he came home that afternoon. He had come into Cassian’s bedroom, where Astrid was crouched under the desk with three chairs barricading her in, and she was wearing the emerald earrings, pretending to be a captured Guinevere to Cassian’s King Arthur.

“Those goddamn earrings again! You lost me the biggest deal because of those earrings!” Michael scoffed.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Astrid asked, peering out from her hiding place.

“The deal fell through today. They weren’t anywhere near my asking price.”

“I’m so sorry, hon.” Astrid emerged from underneath the desk and tried to give him a hug, but he pulled away after a second. She followed him down the hallway to their bedroom.

As Michael began changing out of his work clothes, he continued: “We really screwed up that client dinner. I don’t blame you, I blame me. I was the fool who asked you to change. Apparently, your look didn’t go over so well with everyone.”

Astrid couldn’t believe her ears. “I don’t understand why any of that would matter anyway. Who really cares what I was wearing?”

“In this business, perception is everything. And a crucial component of deal-making is the all-important client dinner with the wives.”

“I thought we had a lovely time. Wendy was raving about every dish, and we even swapped numbers.”

Michael sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands for a moment. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t really matter what the wife thinks. I was trying to show the guys that I run the leading tech company in Singapore. That we are the blue-chip choice, and we have the blue-chip lifestyle to match it. And they needed to pay us what we’re worth. But it all backfired.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have driven the Ferrari. Maybe that was too obvious,” Astrid said.

“No, that’s not it. Everyone loved the Ferrari. What they didn’t get was your style.”

“My style?” Astrid said incredulously.

“All this strange vintage stuff, no one gets it. Why can’t you just wear Chanel once in a while like everyone else? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I think we need to make some big changes. I really need to revamp my image completely. People don’t take me seriously because of how we live. They think, ‘If he has one the most successful tech companies in Asia, why doesn’t he live in a bigger house? Why isn’t he in the press more? Why does his wife still drive an Acura, and why doesn’t she have better jewels?’?”

Astrid shook her head in disbelief. “Every serious jewelry collector knows about my family’s collection.”

“That’s part of the problem, hon—no one outside of a tiny inbred circle has even heard of your family because they are so goddamn private! At dinner my client couldn’t imagine that those rambutan-size rocks you had on were real. So instead of making you look more expensive, it looked like you were wearing cheap costume jewelry. Do you know what their general counsel told Silas Teoh over drinks last night? He said that when we first walked into dinner, all the guys thought my date was some girl from Orchard Towers.”

“Orchard Towers?” Astrid was confused.

“That’s where all the

escorts work. With those boots and earrings you were wearing the other night—the guys thought you were a high-class whore!”

Astrid stared at her husband, too stung to speak.

“We need to go big or go home. I need to hire a new PR consultant, and you need a new look. And I think tomorrow you should call that MGS friend of yours who is a realtor, what’s her name again? Miranda?”

“You mean Carmen?”

“Yes, Carmen. Tell her we need to start looking at new houses. I want a place that will make everyone who comes over lao nua*2 the moment they drive up.”

* * *

*1 Literally translated as “meat bone tea,” this is not the name of a summer event on Fire Island but rather a popular Singaporean soup that consists of melt-in-your-mouth pork ribs simmered for many hours in an intoxicatingly complex broth of herbs and spices.

*2 Literally translates as “dribble saliva” in Hokkien. In other words, to drool over something with envy.

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