And you’re standing here beside me, I love the passing of time, the boy sang plaintively.
“Isn’t this Talking Heads?” Nick asked. “Listen …”
“Oh my God, it totally is! He’s singing ‘This Must Be the Place,’ ” Rachel said in surprise. She loved that Nick knew the song well enough to recognize this bastardized version.
“He’s not half bad,” Nick said, taking out his wallet and tossing a few dollars into the kid’s open guitar case.
Rachel noticed that Nick was mouthing along to the song. He’s scoring some major bonus points right now, she thought, and then she realized with a start that Sylvia had been right — this guy who she’d just spent six straight hours engrossed in conversation with, who knew all the lyrics to one of her favorite songs, this guy standing here beside her was the first man she could truly imagine as her husband.
12
The Leongs
SINGAPORE
“At last, the golden couple!” Mavis Oon proclaimed as Astrid and Michael made their entrance into the Colonial Club’s formal dining room. With Michael in his crisp navy Richard James suit and Astrid in a long, flapper-style silk voile dress the color of persimmon, they made an exceedingly striking pair, and the room rippled with the usual hushed excitement from the ladies, who covertly scrutinized Astrid from hair to heels, and the men, who gazed at Michael with a mixture of envy and derision.
“Aiyah, Astrid, why so late?” Felicity Leong scolded her daughter as she arrived at the long banquet table by the trophy wall where members of the extended Leong family and their honored guests from Kuala Lumpur—Tan Sri[21] Gordon Oon and Puan Sri Mavis Oon — were already seated.
“So sorry. Michael’s flight back from China was delayed,” Astrid apologized. “I hope you didn’t wait for us to order? The food always takes ages here.”
“Astrid, come, come, let me look at you,” Mavis commanded. The imperious lady, who could easily have won an Imelda Marcos look-alike contest with her dramatically rouged cheeks and fat chignon, patted Astrid’s face as if she were a little girl and launched into her trademark gushing. “Aiyah you haven’t aged one bit since I last saw you how’s little Cassian when are you going to have another one don’t wait too long lah you need a little girl now you know my ten-year-old granddaughter Bella absolutely worships you ever since her last trip to Singapore she’s always saying ‘Ah Ma, when I grow up I want to be just like Astrid’ I asked why and she says ‘Because she always dresses like a movie star and that Michael is such a hunk!’ ” Everyone at the table roared with laughter.
“Yes, don’t we all wish we could have Astrid’s clothing budget and Michael’s eight-pack!” Astrid’s brother Alexander quipped.
Harry Leong looked up from his menu and, catching sight of Michael, beckoned him over. With his silvery hair and dark tan, Harry was a leonine presence at the head of the table, and as always, Michael approached his father-in-law with no small amount of trepidation. Harry handed him a large padded envelope. “Here’s my MacBook Air. There’s something wrong with the Wi-Fi connection.”
“What exactly is the problem? Is it not finding the right networks, or are you having log-in problems?” Michael asked.
Harry had already turned his attention back to the menu. “What? Oh, it just doesn’t seem to work anywhere. You’re the one who set it up, and I haven’t changed any of the settings. Thank you so much for taking a look at it. Felicity, did I have the rack of lamb here the last time? Is this where they always overcook the meat?”
Michael dutifully took the laptop with him, and as he made his way back to his seat at the other end of the table, Astrid’s eldest brother, Henry, grabbed him by his jacket sleeve. “Hey, Mike, hate to bother you with this, but can you stop by the house this weekend? There’s something wrong with Zachary’s Xbox. I hope you can fix it — it’s too mah fan[22] to send it back to the factory in Japan for repair.”
“I might have to go away this weekend, but if not, I’ll try to stop by,” Michael said flatly.
“Oh thank you, thank you,” Cathleen, Henry’s wife, cut in. “Zachary has been driving us absolutely crazy without his Xbox.”
“Is Michael good with gadgets or something?” Mavis inquired.
“Oh, he’s an absolute genius, Mavis, a genius! He’s the perfect son-in-law to have around — he can fix anything!” Harry proclaimed.
Michael smiled uncomfortably as Mavis fixed her gaze on him. “Now why did I think he was in the army?”
“Auntie Mavis, Michael used to work for the Ministry of Defense. He helped to program all the high-tech weapon systems,” Astrid said.
“Yes, the fate of our country’s ballistics defense is in Michael’s hands. You know, in case we get invaded by the two hundred and fifty million Muslims surrounding us on all sides, we can put up a fight for about ten minutes,” Alexander chuckled.
Michael tried to hide his grimace and opened up his heavy leather-bound menu. This month’s culinary theme was “Taste of the Amalfi,” and most of the dishes were in Italian. Vongole. That was clams, he knew. But what the heck was Paccheri alla Ravello, and would it have killed them to include an English translation? This was par for the course at one of the island’s oldest sporting clubs, a place so pretentious and buttoned-up in Edwardian-era tradition that women were not even allowed to peek into the Men’s Bar until 2007.
As a teenager, Michael had played soccer every week at the Padang, the immense green field in front of city hall that was used for all the national parades, and he often stared curiously at the august Victorian structure at the eastern edge of the Padang. From the goalie post, he could see the glittering chandeliers within, the silver-domed dishes set on crisp white tablecloths, the waiters in their black tuxedo jackets scurrying around. He would observe the important-looking people enjoying their dinners and wonder who they were. He longed to walk into the club, just once, to be able to look at the soccer field from the other side of those windows. On a dare, he had asked a couple of his friends to sneak into the club with him. They would go one day before soccer, when they were still dressed in their St. Andrew’s school uniforms. They could just stroll in casually, as if they were members, and who would stop them from ordering a drink at the bar? “Don’t even dream, Teo, don’t you know what this place is? It’s the Colonial Club! You either have to be ang mor, or you have to be born into one of those ultrarich families to get inside,” one of his buddies commented.
“Gordon and I sold our Pulau Club memberships because I realized I was only going there to eat their ice kacang,”[23] Michael overheard Mavis telling his mother-in-law. What he wouldn’t give to be back out on the field with his friends right now. They could play soccer until the sun went down, and then head to the nearest kopi tiam[24] for cold beers and some nasi goreng[25] or char bee hoon.[26] It would be so much better than sitting here in this tie that choked him half to death, eating unpronounceable food that was insanely overpriced. Not that anyone at this table ever noticed the prices — the Oons owned practically half of Malaysia, and as for Astrid and her brothers, Michael had never once witnessed any of them pick up a dinner check. They were all adults with children of their own, but Papa Leong always signed for everything. (In the Teo family, none of his brothers or sisters would even consider letting their parents pick up the check.)
21
The second most senior federal honorific title in Malaysia (similar to a British duke), conferred by a hereditary royal ruler of one of the nine Malay states; his wife is called a
23
A Malay dessert made of shaved ice, colorful sugar syrup, and a variety of toppings such as red beans, sweet corn, agar-agar jelly, palm seed, and ice cream.