“No,” I say. “No. Sorry. I can’t wear that. I… I have an injury.”
The two salesclerks and Vicky Huang surround me, studying me. “I think you would look very nice,” one offers timidly.
I shake my head. Stand up. “Let’s take a look.”
We wander around the store. I hate this kind of shit. You know, I hang out with artists. I wear jeans and T-shirts most of the time. And the price tags I glimpse… crazy.
Here, though, here’s some stuff that might be okay. I pull out a black jacket. Kind of a suit coat, long and narrow and sort of slouchy. Some skinny black pants with a low rise. A white blouse that’s pretending to be a men’s dress shirt, except it’s not. Black leather ankle-high boots.
“Hen lihai,” one of the salesclerks says. Fierce. Sometimes that’s a compliment.
I TRY THE CLOTHES on. As usual, I don’t look at myself in the fitting-room mirror when I’m half undressed. Seeing my leg, the other scars, I just can’t.
But once I get the clothes on, I take a look.
I look… not bad. Maybe even… I don’t know, kind of cool. Like I could be playing in a band or something. Or hanging out at one of Lucy Wu’s fancy openings. The black jacket hangs just so. The white blouse is open just above my bra, showing a little cleavage. I have nice tits, it’s true.
“Let me see,” Vicky Huang demands from outside the curtain.
I step out, reluctantly.
Vicky Huang looks me up and down. The salesgirls flank her.
“Keyi,” she finally says.
“Zhen ku!” one of the salesgirls whispers, giggling.
Pretty cool, in other words.
I WHIP OUT MY credit card, but Vicky Huang won’t hear of it. “Not to worry,” she says. “This is Mr. Cao’s business.”
I put up the polite argument, but I don’t argue too hard. The stuff’s Armani and Marc Jacobs. The money this outfit costs would pay my rent in BJ for like two and a half months. And my rent ain’t cheap.
I can tell that Vicky’s stalling for time; she retreats to a corner of the shop and makes a hurried phone call, and then we end up chatting with the salesgirls, who ask if they can get us anything, water, tea, cola. “Coffee would be great,” I say. I mean, why not? And they find a pretty awful cup somewhere, Nescafé, probably, but I drink it anyway.
As the salesgirls bag up my purchases, Vicky Huang turns to me.
“Before you dress for dinner, maybe you would like to have a shower.”
I’m not sure it’s a request. Besides, I stink.
“Yeah. Thanks. That would be great.”
And of course we end up going to a fucking spa.
THE TWO OF US ride the escalator into the basement. It’s deserted, of course. More empty storefronts, unfinished and open, with framed entrances and nothing inside. There are signs for a Carrefour supermarket and a Watsons down at one end, but no actual stores. Maybe it’s just a promise. Or a wish.
At the other end is the spa. Spring Victory Wellness Center.
Well, okay.
I’m pretty sure the workers got here about five minutes ahead of us. They wear white smocks and white caps, like nurses. One of them opens the door for us, and as we enter, I see a girl rushing around lighting scented candles.
White walls, white towels, greenish glass. The scent of eucalyptus.
“This way, miss!”
I FOLLOW THEM. I have a bath. I sit in a steam room. I let them give me a massage, a facial, plus do this crazy thing with a milk bath and sea salt and a loofah. I draw the line at them giving me a hairstyle like Vicky Huang’s.
By the time all this is done, I’m so relaxed that I just want to sleep for a week.
Instead I put on my new outfit and agree to wear a little mascara, eye shadow, and lipstick. After I’ve done all that, I exit into the lobby, where Vicky Huang waits.
She gives me the once-over. “Good,” she says. “I think you are ready to meet Mr. Cao now.”
Maybe I should be a little more nervous. Vicky Huang seems to be. As she drives, she’s leaning forward, jaw clenched, hands clutching the steering wheel tight. But after everything that’s happened, I don’t have the energy. I feel like someone’s wrung me out and hung me up to dry.
Stay frosty, I tell myself. You don’t know what you’re getting into here.
We drive a ways through the broad, empty city. Past banks of twenty-story apartment buildings, some finished and empty, some half built, then farther out, where there are rows of houses, three, four stories tall, on narrow lots, circling an artificial lake. Empty. Then a golf course.
Finally we arrive at a gated compound surrounded by a stone wall. Two guards man the gatehouse, wearing the same sky blue uniform as the flight attendant and the airport workers. The gate, this huge white wrought-iron thing, slides open.
We head up a very long drive.
In front of us on a rise is a French palace.
I don’t mean that it looks kind of like a French palace, the way that some Chinese buildings kind of look European. I mean, it’s this huge, fucking French palace! Down to the white marble and the gold trim and the big fountain out in front with winged horses and Neptune and Venus or whoever the naked man and woman are supposed to be, and fat cherubs shooting jets of water out of their asses.
“The home of Sidney Cao,” Vicky Huang says proudly.
She parks in the big gravel drive, next to a fire-engine-red sports car, which looks like something Batman would drive. “Lamborghini Aventador,” Vicky says. “First in China.” She smiles. “You don’t even have one in America yet.”
There’s a butler at the door, of course. Dressed like an English butler on a PBS show. “Welcome, welcome,” he says in English. “Please, come inside.”
Inside, it’s even crazier.
The entrance hall is, like, acres of white marble and gold trim. White marble stairs. White marble columns. Paintings on the walls, all kinds of… I don’t know, Renaissance things. Or whatever’s after the Renaissance. Dudes in ruffles and long, curly white wigs. Women with even bigger white wigs and huge skirts holding weird little dogs. Statues in alcoves. More cherubs. Roman busts.
This is so over the top that I think it might be on another planet.
THE BUTLER GUIDES US down a long hallway. More paintings and murals on the wall, like of forests and wigged people riding horses and hunting deer. Fancy-ass carved chairs that you’d never want to sit in. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Vicky Huang says in a hushed voice.
“Yeah. It’s really something.”
Finally the butler pauses at a set of large wooden double doors. Pushes one open for us. “Cao Xiansheng. Ninde keren daole,” he announces. Your guests have arrived.
I follow Vicky inside.
It’s a wood-paneled room lined with bookshelves, a thick carpet, leather chairs, and a big wooden desk. Also, an actual fucking deer head on the wall. Like we’ve gone from the Palace of Versailles to one of those English movies starring the Queen.
Rising from his desk chair is Sidney Cao.
“Huanying, huanying!” Welcome!
I guess I don’t know what I expected, but probably not this. Sidney Cao’s a normal-looking middle-aged guy wearing a golf shirt, slacks, and a designer belt-Gucci, with the interlocked Gs. He has receding hair, high and bony cheekbones, a prominent nose with a bump at the bridge, and crooked front teeth.
He comes out from behind the desk and extends his hand to me. I take it.
“Thank you for coming!” he says.
Then he does this little bow, kisses the back of my hand, straightens up and grins.
“I, uh… thanks. For inviting me, Cao Xiansheng.”
“Please, call me Sidney,” he says in English. Then, “Have you eaten?” he asks in Chinese.