Chapter 13
13
11:20 a.m.
A barrage of texts from Valerie, which helpfully, in lurid detail, chronicled everything that had transpired last night.
*Eric Deng!*
she marveled.
Eric Deng, Indonesian luxe hotelier and real estate tycoon. You snagged yourself a *tycoon*
The way she described it, we were on our way to buying a ranch together and making a flock of little Erics and Andreas, instead of staying back exchanging maybe two hours of casual chitchat after discussing the finer points of
A Little Life
while I vacuumed the rest of the Fine de Claire oysters into my mouth, which I reasoned would have died for naught if left to expire, uneaten and unappreciated, in some dump. We’d done a little drinking (Valerie and I also stayed to help finish the champagne with DeeDee and Ralph Kang, one of Eric’s friends, while Eric drank water—he was cutting down his alcohol intake on orders from his physician, on account of Eric’s gout), and a little flirting. Ralph is gaga for Valerie, although she’s doing her best to ignore it. She met him while I was hanging out in the garden with Eric, who was leaving the next day to spend some time in Vietnam for the launch of his newest hotel. There was this slightly awkward moment when we were saying our goodbyes and Eric had leaned over to air-kiss me (I think), but I was so startled that I jumped three feet back into a wall, which of course killed any hint of sexual tension. We ended up giving each other handshakes. Handshakes are what
you give accountants and aunts you don’t like very much—you know, the ones that give you five-dollar
ang paos
during Chinese New Year and ask you how long you intend to be alone and/or barren, before driving off at the end of the night in their latest Mercedes.
Valerie also provided me with a one-liner bio for Ralph Kang, which wasn’t much (somehow, I don’t think he had always been named “Ralph Kang”). He was a cousin of her original target, the white suit she had mistaken for Wilson Lam, a famous Hong Kong actor. Apparently, Ralph was some hotshot tech multimillionaire in his mid-fifties, but Valerie is not impressed by money. She’s way more superficial than that: she is impressed by good looks and class.
Yet somehow Ralph had cornered her into agreeing to have dinner once he got back from San Francisco, where he’s got a couple of start-ups he’s mentoring.
“Please come out with us the next time he’s back in town,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to say no to Ralph and I don’t want to hang out alone with him. I need a wing person and I can’t ask Lin— I mean, you and I had a blast together, didn’t we, and I introduced you to Eric and now you’re going to see him again, aren’t you? By the way, you owe me one hundred and fifteen bucks for your half of the two Grab rides, and what did you think about that house?”
“Wha—?” I said, lost in the slipstream. Then, “One hundred and fifteen?” in shock.
“Yes, because of surge pricing and premium charges. Now stop trying to change the subject,” Valerie said, blithely changing the subject. She grabbed my wrist. “And just tell me if you would be up for having dinner together. Eric is Ralph’s friend and investor, isn’t that a lovely coincidence? Say you’ll do it,” she rasped, digging her manicured fingernails into my wrist.
I said I would. This way I would have a plan B to meet Eric again, since I realized once Val and I left that he’d never actually gotten my number after asking me out in front of everyone. He
struck me as a man of his word; still, it was always good to have a backup plan, just in case.
2:35 p.m.
Have spent a pleasant lunch hour looking up, OK, stalking, Eric Deng. There is very little information about him online, and almost zero social media footprint. His LinkedIn profile has a decent headshot from some annual report, basically says he’s an “investor,” and shows that he has less than fifty connections. The lack of freely available information, even if it’s curated to death like the best of whatever is available online these days about someone, is very worrying. How will I know what type of music he enjoys, if he thinks Pollock is art (yuck), if he is a cappuccino or flat white or espresso kind of guy? What are his political views? His religious views? And, more important, is his mother still alive?
I guess I’ll never know.
2:38 p.m.
Of course, I could ask him. But where’s the fun in that.
Wednesday 9 March
7:45 a.m.
Got a text from Orson asking me out to dinner tomorrow. Am tempted to say yes, even though I know he’s too young for me.
8:15 a.m.
Dilemma. Called Linda for advice. She got mad and told me to save myself for the wonderful age-appropriate men she’d vetted from the Tinder slush pile that she’d been painstakingly chatting to for the past three weeks, or else. Honestly, Diary, she’s starting to sound a lot like my mom (but maybe I’ll wait till I have access to my Facebook and Tinder accounts first before I tell her that).
9:25 a.m.
Texted Orson and agreed to a dinner date, just not tomorrow as I have to set aside sufficient time to exercise feverishly over the next few days in preparation for potential shag. Have instead proposed dinner next Thursday.
Orson agreed to the date and suggested we meet at some swish new cocktail-and-tapas bar that has just opened at the revamped National Gallery.
Decided not to tell Linda about the date in case she talks me out of it.
8:45 p.m.
Met Linda for dinner at Lau Pa Sat for Tinder handover. It’d been another long day at work, but I did not succumb to the usual temptation to eat a large portion of greasy
char kway teow
; instead I downgraded to a small serving of
char
kway teow
, shared with an unusually focused, silent Linda, who was texting feverishly with what I assumed were my Tinder matches.
“Can I ask you something?” she said, after she came up for air. Without waiting for a reply, she continued. “Would you date a married man if he was separated from his wife?”
“Err . . . ,” I said, jolted out of my own reverie by her question. “I don’t know. I think I would need more details.”
“Let’s say they are in the midst of a divorce.”
“Always a convenient lie to fall back on,” I sneered. “Beloved by cheating scum all over the world.”
“They live apart.”
“So? That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of husbands live apart from their wives temporarily, especially if they’re posted abroad.”
“They are both Singaporean, and they’ve been living apart for a year,” she said. “Anyway, whatever. It’s not important.”
I made a halfhearted attempt at prying more information out of her but got nothing. Not that I was terribly interested, to be honest. I wanted to daydream about Orson.
She sighed. “Anyway, just as I promised, I’ve distilled your
options down to the four worthiest candidates. Your log-in details for your Facebook and Tinder profiles are posted on our private chat. Enjoy!”
I opened WhatsApp and saw that she had set both passwords as
Iwannawang.
10:35 p.m.
Settled down on my couch with a glass of wine and launched Tinder. Looked at my four matches and read the chat histories. Linda mimicked me so well I was a little worried. Am I that predictable?
Some of the opening gambits from the four men were quite novel. The first match asked if a beer and a whisky drinker could ever truly mix and that he was “hop-ping” to find out. Another couldn’t believe that I checked so many boxes on his perfect mate list so he was hoping to take me out and see if I were a genetically modified being from the future sent back in time from his desperate mother in an effort to lure him away from his work as a senior investment banker (show-off, but quirky). Then there was the opener from the third, which went, “I’m sick of being a sexy, intelligent third wheel. Help me end this nightmare now!” The fourth one said I seemed like someone that even a hardened serial killer would spare for the sake of humanity, and he was looking forward to sparing my life in person (I liked this one best). They all had nice, witty, or cute profiles, were decent-looking and age-appropriate, and responded well to Linda’s version of my oddball humor, which boded well for our dates if they happened at all. There was potential here. It made me wonder if I really was missing out. I’ll just take this app for a trial run, see if there are other contenders that Linda might have missed.
11:55 a.m.
Oh, hey, Filipino Jason’s on Tinder. Maybe he’s straight? Or looking for a platonic friendship? Or beard-hunting? His family is pretty Catholic. I’ll swipe right just for fun.
12:05 a.m.
Ha, we matched. Sent him an eggplant emoji as a joke. Wrote:
Isn’t it way past your bedtime?
12:17 a.m.
He wrote:
I do my best paralegal work at night *stalk stalk*
Jason had a sense of humor. Who knew.
Maybe I’ll swipe right on a few other profiles, just to see what happens.
12:35 a.m.
Yikes. So many dick pics. So many
unimpressive
dick pics.
12:40 a.m.
Complained about Twitter wasteland to Suresh, the only person I knew who would be awake at this hour, because work. Somehow, since our last after-work drink, we’d become friendly, if not friends.
He replied:
It’s 12:40 a.m.—what were you expecting? And call me old-fashioned, but I’d prefer a good setup by friends or a work romance to online dating.
Well, he can talk; he’s got someone waiting for him at home, even if it’s across the globe!
12:45 a.m.
Interesting that he mentioned work romance. I would never go there, but that’s because I have principles. And common sense.