Tash Aw – Five Star Billionaire (страница 12)

His discomfort began when he noticed a few of the Chinese waiters huddling together and whispering. They were trying to hide their curiosity, but could not resist glancing at him. He did not want to leave the bar. It was not yet one o’clock and there were too many hours of darkness left ahead of him. And then the pleasant Australian couple sitting near him – who had just been holding hands and kissing – left, and their place was taken by a sweaty Western man who tried to engage Gary in conversation. The man was drunk, but Gary did not feel like moving from his spot. Soon the man would grow tired and leave him alone.

‘What’s the matter, cat got your tongue? Don’t feel like speaking, eh? Jeez, you Chinese are so goddamn unfriendly. Hey, look at me when I talk to you.’

Gary looked around. The bar was full and there was nowhere to move to.

‘Hey, I’m talking to you.’

Gary turned and said, ‘Fuck off.’

The reports that began to appear the following morning were full of inaccuracies as usual, and there were conflicting accounts from bystanders as to who had started the ensuing altercation, what it had been about, who had taken the first swing. What was in no doubt was that Gary had swiftly lost control and knocked the other man off his feet, even though he was heftily built. The internet was full of photos taken with camera phones – grainy and badly lit, but clearly showing Gary standing over the man with his fist raised. The now-infamous video – again captured on a mobile phone and freely available on YouTube the next day – shows Gary swaying and unsteady on his feet, then bouncing up and down like a boxer ready for a fight before stumbling towards the man on the ground and aiming a casual kick to his midriff as if toe-poking a football. When the man shouts out an inarticulate insult, Gary attempts to pick up a bar stool, presumably to attack him with it. But the stool is fixed and doesn’t budge, so Gary turns his attention to a signboard that says WOW! and rips it off the wall. When some of the waiters attempt to restrain him he fights them off and shouts, Don’t touch me. Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am? The camera wobbles and cuts out, and when it begins to play again Gary is seen surrounded by a group of consoling strangers. The rest of the bar is emptying and the music has stopped. His head is in his hands and his shoulders are heaving up and down as he sobs. In the grey-pink half-light of the video, he is briefly seen in profile, silhouetted against what seems to be a curtain made from shimmering glass beads that look almost electric in the way they sparkle. Although it is dark and his face is not properly lit, his features are unmistakable – the perfect straight nose that ends in a delicate point, the soft angle of the jaw, the hair that falls over his brow. His head is bowed, his shoulders hunched and defeated. It is this image that graces the cover of all the tabloid newspapers the following evening.

4

Forget the Past, Look Only to the Future

That morning’s emails bore no shocks, only positive developments. These days there were no longer any brutish demands from creditors or feeble excuses from non-paying clients, and the daily ritual of replying to emails each morning had become a pleasurable affair for Yinghui, to be carried out at an almost leisurely pace over a cappuccino. There were, amongst other upbeat messages, an invitation to the opening of a new hotel on the river in Shiliupu and an interesting proposition from someone wanting to build a carbon-neutral cultural centre in the middle of town. New contacts and possibilities revealed themselves nowadays without her even having to seek them out. What a change, she thought, as she finished her coffee.

Business was going well for Yinghui. The two upmarket lingerie stores she’d established were flourishing, and in little more than a year she had broken even and was now watching the profits accumulate, week by week, the spreadsheets filling out with handsome-looking figures bursting with promise. Occasionally, when she glanced at the documents her breathless accountant showed her, she ceased to take note of the substantial numbers, for their trajectory was so steep that she had difficulty imagining where they would take her twelve months hence. And yet she was not a person with a modest imagination – quite the opposite.

Her ad campaigns had been striking and wildly successful. She had used only Chinese models, never mixed-race ones, and they never flaunted their bodies in an overtly sexual way. Although they did display a good deal of bare skin, the models were styled beautifully, and the overall aesthetic was classy rather than trashy. The catchy taglines were mysterious and playful, like the images themselves.

Elegant Outside, Passionate Inside

Secret Exciting

Amazing Beautiful You

Although she had originally thought that the shop would cater mainly to the wives of high-ranking party officials and low-profile billionaires who wanted a discreet custom service, Yinghui soon found a huge demand amongst ordinary professional women who were willing to spend upwards of four hundred yuan for the simplest bra. The low lighting and shadowy spaces of the stores, together with the women-only entry policy and touches of luxury such as the Venetian chandeliers created an ambience that proved incredibly popular, with many clients lingering on the plush sofas, and leafing through the glossy magazines and catalogues as they chatted and decided what else to purchase. Before long Yinghui had taken over the adjoining shops and added a coffee bar in one store and a wine bar in the other, extending the opening hours and turning both venues into destinations in their own right. The lingerie was all but removed from the store itself and transferred into specially designed semi-private ‘modelling rooms’, and the newly vacated space was now filled with stylish mannequins, artwork, and giant floral displays.

The income and publicity generated by the two stores made it possible for Yinghui to seek business partners for new ventures on a much larger scale, and her financial projections were such that banks were suddenly willing to listen to her requests for loans. Her plans for expansion included a chain of small shops in metro stations, which would sell the basic Amazing Beautiful You range; twelve shops selling clothes for teenage girls called FILGirl (Fly in Love Girl); an internet-based cosmetics brand called Shhh … aimed at women over the age of forty; and a luxury spa modelled on a northern Thai village, the construction of which was nearing completion.

These exciting ventures made people in the retail industry take notice of Yinghui, and the expatriate community was especially interested to learn that a foreigner was able to negotiate the complex world of Chinese retail. She began to give talks to the various foreign Chambers of Commerce, speaking to budding entrepreneurs about the pressures of being a foreigner and a woman in a male-dominated world. As she became more visible she did an interview with the Shanghai Daily – a brief article, nothing more – in which she was asked to reveal the key to her success at a time when many businesses were experiencing difficulties due to the global recession.

‘I smile every day while coolly evaluating my business model,’ she replied, smiling coolly. ‘I remain 100 per cent optimistic even in a crisis while being decisive enough to act as required.’

Was she ruthless? the interviewer asked.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You have to be tough to succeed.’

Even as she said it she regretted the way she sounded – matter-of-fact, unthinking, as if nothing bothered her. She tried immediately to laugh and find common ground with the interviewer, a young woman in her mid-twenties. But as Yinghui joked about things in the news – celebrity gossip, cute pop singers, the latest films – she could feel the journalist withdrawing behind the safety of a polite smile, the gulf between them widening. She felt old, her laugh sounded fake and robotic; the girl merely smiled and listened as Yinghui’s jokes became more and more risqué.

That interview sealed her growing reputation in more ways than one. Her image hardened into this: a bold businesswoman, certainly; but also a super-efficient, humourless automaton who would coldly plunge a knife into you, but she wouldn’t bother to do it in your back, she’d stick it in your chest. She saw this written in a ‘joke’ email circulating in her office, copied to her by mistake. Ultrawoman, Dragon Queen, Terminatress, Rambo – these were some of the nicknames she discovered as she scrolled down the email chain, which was full of comments on her boring suits and severe hairstyle – ‘like a rural Party official dressed for an interview with Hu Jintao’, someone joked. Some months later, at a cocktail party thrown by an American law firm, she heard one Western man say to another, ‘Hey, look, there’s that Chinese lesbian.’