Chapter 25
25
Tuesday 26 April
One of those weeks at work that makes me wish the zombie apocalypse would come already.
Thursday 28 April
Put out one fire only to have another one pop up on another file. According to a carefully worded report from the Luxembourg law firm working on the same deal, there was a slight hiccup with one of the proposed acquisitions by our client, a Singaporean private equity firm called Sungguh Capital. But in the hierarchy of clients, the one whose closing I’m working on has bigger money balls, and the deadline for the closing is tomorrow, so I red-flagged it in my inbox.
Out of (morbid) curiosity I opened the Flagged folder, just to see what items I had pending.
OMG.
Friday 29 April
7:15 p.m.
Done. Going to a seedy karaoke dive bar in Katong with Suresh, who was involved in a separate, equally hellish closing that
was done the evening before. Dive bar was Suresh’s suggestion. The two of us look like extras from an undead movie because of our respective closings, but it’s OK because the dive bar will be populated by older men and it’s very dark, making me look fresh and vigorous in comparison. He gets me.
1:10 a.m.
Got hit on left and right and bought zero drinks the entire night, although I’ve been very careful not to binge-drink as I have a date in less than twenty-four hours and don’t want to balloon. Am living the dream. A dream where the bar is set very, very low.
Saturday 30 April
10:04 a.m.
Up early. Strange. I didn’t even think I was that excited about going on a date with Eric Deng. Who knew.
10:35 a.m.
HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR.
11:07 a.m.
Going shopping, as have nothing to wear.
11:15 a.m.
Texted Valerie to come with, but when I checked her Last Seen time stamp, it seems she’s not looked at WhatsApp for the past thirty hours. Wonderful.
1:20 p.m.
Bought a dress. Fine, three dresses. And LV bag. Must accessorize to impress. Plus the bag can be used in my professional life, thus is multifunctional and will pay for itself over time.
6:45 p.m.
Showered, exfoliated, depilated. Staring at the slinky, backless or cleavage-revealing clothes I bought. All are terrible choices, too date-clothesy when really the image I want to project
is: yes, I am attractive, but would you and I be better off if I were to become your lawyer?
7:05 p.m.
Doorbell! Shit! Must find some item of clothing that is black and body-hugging but has a lawyerly hem!
11:55 p.m.
Back from Les Deux. Interesting evening. The whole thing about conducting myself properly with Eric Deng, him being a possible client and all, gave the date an electric charge of the forbidden, i.e., sexual. Also maybe because lots of Montrachet wine, haha. The second bottle was all that was needed for me to shift gears. Suddenly the age gap is not that big a deal. We both like oysters, for example, and democracy (Eric’s family fled China in the ’60s). Surely that is a good enough basis on which to start a relationship.
We talked about many things: his family history (well-connected, powerful and rich, but lost everything when they fled, although they quickly rebuilt their fortunes in Indonesia) and mine (migrant laborers on both sides, clawed their way into middle class); our common interests (politics, human rights, and poetry); favorite food and drink (Sichuanese and Malaysian food for both of us (!)), pet peeves (him: people who go barefoot on commercial planes—well, on the rare occasions when Eric has to fly commercial business; mine: kept wisely silent, as there were too many to list without seeming unstable).
At one point during the dinner, he put down his fork and said, “You know, I’ve got a confession to make.”
“What is it?” I said, immediately wary. Can’t say I hadn’t been waiting for this. It had been too easy, the last info dump.
“I admire what you do, a lot. It seems so exciting.”
“Really,” I said in a neutral voice.
“Well, when I was at university—”
“Which one?” I asked eagerly.
“Oxford.”
“Nice, very nice. Good one, that.”
“Thanks. May I continue?”
“Sorry, yes, please.”
“I had read law and wanted to go whole hog, become a barrister, but my father stepped in and asked me to come home.”
“Why?”
“He wanted me to stay in the family business of hospitality and real estate, not waste time as a barrister. So I did. I came home. I resented him for it at first, but have made peace with it now.”
The idea that being a lawyer is “not good enough” to a Chinese family—well, that just shows you the difference in status between his family and mine.
“It’s not that fun,” I assured him. “Ruling an empire sounds way more interesting.”
Eric smiled ruefully. “When I first took over it wasn’t great for me. I felt like a cake topper. The company already had a very established growth plan and an excellent management team, and my father was always peering over my shoulder as the chairman. It’s only in the last decade, after his Alzheimer’s, that . . . I could spread my wings, make my mark. The green hotel brand, Lana, is my other child, really. And I guess in hindsight, it was the right choice.”
Hmm. I suppose in a way our paths had some similarities, although he was persuaded to run a multibillion-dollar empire, but there you go.
Food was very good, so good that if he had made his move after the second bottle of Montrachet I might have let him kiss me. But he didn’t. He played it very coy and proper, gentlemanly. We made plans to see each other when he gets back from Chengdu. Will just wait and see. At least I’m dating someone who won’t filch my jewelry—the watch he was wearing, a beautiful A. Lange & Söhne chronograph, cost more than the down payment for my
two-bed apartment—if anything, he should be worried about me filching
his
things.
The conclusion at the end of the evening is: I’d definitely prefer to date him than do business with him. And that’s saying something. The wheel of my dating fortune was, it seemed, finally spinning me upward; my luck was turning at last.
Monday 2 May
Valerie and Ralph finally resurfaced on my radar. By Monday morning, she had proclaimed her love for a “mystery man but shh!” on social media, to wit the whole world, because she had 17,300-plus followers on Instagram (How? Who? Why?)
and
more than two thousand friends on Facebook,
including Ralph Kang.
I missed Linda terribly—she would never have done anything sappy or publicly embarrassing like this. She also didn’t fall in love as quickly as dropping money into a collection box. Her personal motto was “It’s only love if you would give him your liver”—inspired by what Singaporean heartthrob and actor Pierre Png did for his then-fiancée/now-wife, actress Andrea De Cruz, in 2002, a courageous and loving feat so chivalrous that it exploded the ovaries of every single girl and woman who heard of it, even us young adults across the Causeway in faraway Kuala Lumpur. It’s been almost a month since I last saw her. A month since she last called me a dingus bat. A month since she had last pinched me for pronouncing a word in American instead of British (the Queen’s?) English.
I missed her.
“Ahem,” Suresh said over my shoulder. I let out a shriek and dropped the photo frame on the floor. “Should I leave you two alone?” he said, in reference to the very unglamorous headshot I was mooning over, a framed photo of Linda as a teenager. It was
comforting to see her as she once was, frizzy-haired with braces and tadpole eyebrows, the Vicky Adams before Spice Girls and David Beckham.
“Buzz off, buzzkill,” I said, wheeling around in my swivel chair to glare up at him, instead of maintaining an otherwise indecent eyeline. “Don’t you have your own woman troubles?” He and Anousha were still arguing over a free house. Goddamn spoiled rich people.
Suresh grinned. “Touché. By the way, bad news. I just ran into Mong in the pantry.”
“What did he want?”
“Apparently the both of us have to be in Luxembourg tomorrow on his behalf. Remember that due diligence report that Loesch sent to you last week, the one that made you stress-eat a pack of gummy bears?”
“Hmm,” I said. I eat a lot of gummy bears, sometimes even when I’m not stressed.
“Sungguh Capital wants us to check up on an issue that the Luxembourg lawyers have identified in their due diligence report on VizWare’s Luxembourg holdco.” Sungguh was coinvesting in some newfangled drone technology used in Spanish and Portuguese farms called VizWare, and the Luxembourg holding company (or “holdco,” in lawyer-speak) was, erm, holding everything in a very sexy (if your fetish was tax efficiency), totally legal tax optimization structure. It was a big acquisition and Suresh was also working on the file, although I, haha, was lead senior associate. Hahaha.
“Why can’t Mong ever come to us to just tell us a charming factoid or a knock-knock joke?” I muttered.
“He wouldn’t be the Mong we know and love if he did.”
I sighed. “Don’t I know it. But why do we have to personally fly up? It’s just a delayed filing of some accounts. It seems like something we can sort out over the phone.”
Suresh shrugged. “The investment committee prefers that we
fly over to speak to the Luxembourg lawyers, do our own informal due diligence. Also the Singapore desk rep from our London office, Tristan Langford-Bauer, will be on hand to give his input on the acquisition. He’s very familiar with Luxembourg holding structures and is a tax expert, and since he is attending the ALFI conference anyway, he thought he’d lend a hand. So we’re going to Luxembourg!”
“Urgh. But it’s so far.”
“Yes, but the client has promised to put us up in a fancy place and fly us business. We leave tonight.”
I pumped the air with my fist. “We’re going to Luxembourg!”
Suresh patted my back. “Don’t worry, it won’t be all fun and games. We’ll also have to attend the same showcase and the gala dinner because Langford-Bauer thinks it’s important for the Singapore office to be there, mingle, blah blah, rich people, blah blah.”
I rolled my eyes. “That sounds exciting.”
“I look forward to traveling with you and finding out all your weaknesses that I will later exploit,” Suresh said, poker-faced.
“Ditto,” I said, puffing out my chest to appear larger to my opponent. In a purely nonsexual way.
Anyway, Luxembourg. Land of hills and medieval cobblestones, asset management firms and farmers, Pinot Gris and good pork. So Suresh was coming along, but how bad could it be?