"We gather in friendship," announced the Chinese host, Mr. Ming, the vice-chairman of the Bank of Asia. Having agreed to lend Charlie fifty-two million U.S. dollars to build his Shanghai factory, Mr. Ming in no way could be described as a friend; the relationship was one of overlord and indentured. But this was to be expected, and Charlie smiled along with the others as the banker stood and presented in high British English an analysis of southeastern China's economy that was so shallow, optimistic, and full of euphemism that no one, especially the central ministries in Beijing, might object. The Chinese executives nodded politely as Mr. Ming spoke, touching their napkins to their lips, smiling vaguely. Of course, they nursed secret worries-worries that corresponded to whether they were entrepreneurs (who had built shipping lines or real-estate empires or garment factories) or the managers of institutional power (who controlled billions of dollars not their own). Privately the entrepreneurs disdained the tedious, risk-adverse probity of the managers, who, in turn, stood burdened by the institutional reputations of the dead. True, the managers had not made something from nothing, but they had carried bucket upon bucket of obeisance to nurture a gigantus. As with the distinction between a sapling and an ancient tree, their spreading, limb-heavy corporations had known fierce political winds, diseases of managerial orthodoxy, the insect-hollowing of internal bureaucracy. And yet, Charlie decided, the men were finally more like one another than unlike; each long ago had learned to sell high (1997) and buy low (1998), and had passed the threshold of unspendable wealth, such riches conforming them in their behaviors; each owned more houses or paintings or Rolls-Royces than could be admired or used at once. Each played golf or tennis passably well; each had purchased a Canadian or British passport; each possessed a forty-million-dollar yacht, or a forty-million-dollar home atop Victoria's Peak, or a forty-million-dollar wife. Like the wealthy businessmen on New York's East Side, the Chinese executives hired more or less the same doctors and antique dealers and feng shui mystics to advise them. Each had a slender young Filipino or Russian or Czech mistress tucked away in one of Hong Kong's luxury apartment buildings-licking her lips if requested-or had a secure phone line to one of the ministry buildings in Beijing, or was betting against the Hong Kong dollar while insisting on its firmness-any of the costly mischief in which rich men indulge.
The men at the table, in fact, as much as any men, sat as money incarnate, particularly the American dollar, the euro, and the Japanese yen-all simultaneously, and all hedged against fluctuations of the others. But although the men were money, money was not them; money assumed any shape or color or politics, it could be fire or stone or dream, it could summon armies or bind atoms, and, indifferent to the sufferings of the mortal soul, it could leave or arrive at any time. And on this exact night, Charlie thought, setting his ivory chopsticks neatly upon the lacquered plate while nodding to the uniformed boy to take it away-on this very night he could see that although money had assumed the shapes of the men in the room (including him, of course-his shoes, his dental work, his very shit), it existed in differing densities and volumes and brightnesses. Whereas Charlie was a man of perhaps thirty or thirty-three million dollars of wealth, that sum amounted to shoe-shine change in the present company. No sir, money, in that room, in that moment, was understood as inconsequential in sums less than one hundred million dollars, and of political importance only when five times more. Money, in fact, found its greatest compression and gravity in the form of the tiny man sitting silently across from Charlie-Sir Henry Lai, the Oxford-educated Chinese gambling mogul, owner of a fleet of jet-foil ferries, a dozen hotels, and most of the casinos of Macao and Vietnam. Worth billions-and billions more.
But, Charlie wondered, perhaps he was wrong. He could think of one shape that money had not yet assumed, although quite a bit of it had been spent, perhaps a hundred thousand dollars in all. Money animated the dapper Chinese businessman across from him, but could it arrive in the world as Charlie's own grandchild? This was the question he feared most, this was the question that had eaten at him and at Ellie for years now, and which would soon be answered: In a few hours, Julia would tell them once and forever if she was capable of having a baby.
She had suffered through cycle upon cycle of disappointment-hundreds of shots of fertility drugs followed by the needle-recovery of the eggs, the inspection of the eggs, the selection of the eggs, the insemination of the eggs (recorded on videotape-another needle squirting into a dish), the implantation of the eggs (also recorded on tape with an ultrasound screen), the anticipation of the eggs. My eggs, my eggs — Julia's sad mantra. She'd been trying for seven years. The blockage of her fallopian tubes might be due, she'd said, to her use of an IUD years prior. Abortion, Charlie knew, could also cause the problem, but he'd never asked and his daughter had never told. Now Julia, a woman of only thirty-five, a little gray already salting her hair, was due to get the final word. At 11:00 a.m. Manhattan time, she'd sit in her law office and be told the results of this, the last in vitro attempt. Her ninth. Three more than the doctor preferred to do. Seven more than the insurance company would pay for. Almost as if she was trying for all of them, after what had happened to Ben, trying to bring new life to the family. Good news would be that one of the reinserted fertilized eggs had decided to cling to the wall of Julia's uterus. Bad news: There was no chance of conception; egg donorship or adoption must now be considered. And if that was the news, well then, that was really goddamn something. It would mean not just that his only daughter was heartbroken, but that, genetically speaking, he, Charlie Ravich, was finished, that his own fishy little spermatozoa-one of which, wiggling into Ellie's egg a generation prior, had become his daughter-had run aground, that he'd come to the end of the line; that, in a sense, he was already dead.
And now, as if mocking his very thoughts, came the fish, twenty pounds of it, head still on, its eyes cooked out and replaced with flowered radishes, its mouth agape in macabre broiled amusement. The chief waiter displayed the fish to the table, then whisked it away to a sideboard, where another waiter brandished gleaming instruments of dissection. Charlie looked at his plate. He always lost weight in China, undone by the soy and oils and crusted skin of birds, the rich liverish stink of turtle meat. All that duck tongue and pig ear and fish lip. Expensive as hell, every meal. And carrying with it the odor of doom.
Then the conversation turned, as it also did so often in Shanghai and Beijing, to the question of America's mistreatment of the Chinese. "What I do not understand are the American senators," Sir Henry Lai was saying in his softly refined voice. "They come over here and meet with us and say they understand that we only want for China to be China." Every syllable was flawless English, but of course Lai also spoke Mandarin, Cantonese, and a dialect spoken by his parents, who fled Shanghai in 1947 as the Communists approached. Sir Henry Lai was reported to be in serious talks with Gaming Technologies, the huge American gambling and hotel conglomerate that clutched big pieces of Las Vegas, the Mississippi casino towns, and Atlantic City. Did Sir Henry know when China would allow Western-style casinos to be built within its borders? Certainly he knew the right officials in Beijing, and perhaps this was reason enough that GT's stock price had ballooned up seventy percent in the last three months as Sir Henry's interest in the company had become known. Or was it that GT had developed an electronic version of mah-jongg, the betting game played by hundreds of millions of Chinese? Lai smiled benignly. Then frowned. "These senators say that all they want is for international trade to progress without interruption, and then they go back to Congress and raise their fists and call China all kinds of names. Is this not true?"