* * *
* Cantonese for “You really didn’t have to.”
† Malay egg noodles in a spicy-sweet curry gravy.
‡ Cantonese for “pretty boy.”
§ Hokkien for “afraid to lose.”
‖ Mandarin for “prissy” or “high maintenance.”
6
Nick and Rachel
SINGAPORE
When Rachel awoke the morning after the tan hua party, Nick was talking softly on the phone in the sitting room of their suite. As her vision slowly came into focus, she lay there silently, looking at Nick and trying to take in everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Last night had been magical, and yet she couldn’t help but feel a burgeoning sense of unease. It was as if she had stumbled into a secret chamber and discovered that her boyfriend had been living a double life. The ordinary life they shared as two young college professors in New York bore no resemblance to the life of imperial splendor that Nick seemed to lead here, and Rachel didn’t know how to reconcile the two.
Rachel was by no means an ingenue in the realms of wealth. After their early struggles, Kerry Chu had landed on her feet and gotten her real estate license right when Silicon Valley was entering the Internet boom. Rachel’s Dickensian childhood was replaced by teenage years growing up in the affluent Bay Area. She went to school at two of the nation’s top universities—Stanford and Northwestern—where she encountered the likes of Peik Lin and other trust-fund types. Now she lived in America’s most expensive city, where she mingled with the academic elite. None of this, though, prepared Rachel for her first seventy-two hours in Asia. The exhibitions of wealth here were so extreme, it was unlike anything she had ever witnessed, and not for a moment would she have fathomed that her boyfriend could be part of this world.
Nick’s lifestyle in New York could be described as modest, if not downright frugal. He rented a cozy alcove studio on Morton Street that didn’t seem to contain anything of value aside from his laptop, bike, and stacks of books. He dressed distinctively but casually, and Rachel (having no reference for British bespoke menswear) never realized just how much those rumpled blazers with the Huntsman or Anderson & Sheppard labels cost. Otherwise, the only splurges she had known Nick to make were on overpriced produce at the Union Square Greenmarket and good seats to a concert if some great band came to town.
But now it was all beginning to make sense. There had always been a certain quality to Nick, a quality Rachel was unable to articulate even to herself, but it set him apart from anyone she had ever known. The way he interacted with people. The way he leaned against a wall. He was always comfortable fading into the background, but in that way, he stood out. She had chalked it up to his looks and his formidable intellect. Someone as blessed as Nick had nothing to prove. But now she knew there was more to it. This was a boy who had grown up in a place like Tyersall Park. Everything else in the world paled by comparison. Rachel longed to know more about his childhood, about his intimidating grandmother, about the people she had met last night, but she didn’t want to start the morning peppering him with a million questions, not when she had the whole summer to discover this new world.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Nick said, finishing his call and noticing that Rachel was awake. He loved the way she looked when she was just waking up, with her long hair so alluringly disheveled, and the sleepy, blissful smile she always gave when she first opened her eyes.
“What time is it?” Rachel asked, stretching her arms against the padded headboard.
“It’s about nine thirty,” he said, striding over and slipping under the sheets, wrapping his arms around her from behind, and pulling her body against his. “Spooning time!” he declared playfully, kissing the nape of her neck several times. Rachel turned around to face him and began to trace a line from his forehead to his chin.
“Did anyone ever tell you …” she began.
“… that I have the most perfect profile?” Nick said, finishing her question with a laugh. “I only hear that every single day from my beautiful girlfriend, who is clearly deranged. Did you sleep well?”
“Like a log. Last night really took it out of me.”
“I’m so proud of you. I know it must have been exhausting having to meet so many people, but you really charmed the socks off everyone.”
“Arggh. That’s what you say. I don’t think that aunt of yours in the Chanel suit felt the same way. Or your uncle Harry—I should have spent a full year studying up on Singapore history, and politics, and art—”
“Come on, no one was expecting you to be a scholar of Southeast Asian affairs. Everyone just enjoyed meeting you.”
“Even your grandmother?”
“Definitely! In fact, she’s invited us to come stay next week.”
“Really?” Rachel said. “We’re going to stay at Tyersall Park?”
“Of course! She liked you, and she wants to get to know you better.”
Rachel shook her head. “I can’t believe I made any sort of impression on her.”
Nick took a stray lock of hair hanging down her forehead and gently tucked it behind her ear. “First of all, you have to realize that my grandmother is exceedingly shy, and sometimes that comes across as being standoffish, but she is an astute observer of people. Second, you don’t need to make any sort of impression on her. Just being yourself is quite enough.”
Based on what she’d gleaned from everyone else, she wasn’t so sure about that, but she decided not to worry about it for the moment. They lay entwined in bed, listening to the sounds of splashing water and children shrieking as they did cannonballs into the pool. Nick suddenly sat up. “You know what we haven’t done yet? We haven’t ordered from room service. You know that’s one of the things I love most about staying in a hotel! Come on, let’s see how good their breakfast is.”
“You read my mind! Hey, does Colin’s family really own this hotel?” Rachel asked, picking up the leather-bound menu by the side of the bed.
“Yes, they do. Did Colin tell you?”
“No, Peik Lin did. I mentioned yesterday that we were going to Colin’s wedding, and her whole family almost had a fit.”
“Why?” Nick asked, momentarily perplexed.
“They were just very excited, that’s all. You didn’t tell me that Colin’s wedding was going to be such a big deal.”
“I didn’t think it was going to be.”
“It’s apparently front-page news in every newspaper and magazine in Asia.”
“You’d think the newspapers would have better things to write about, with everything that’s happening in the world.”
“Come on, nothing sells like a big fancy wedding.”
Nick sighed, rolling onto his back and staring at the wood-beamed ceiling. “Colin is so stressed. I’m really worried about him. A big wedding is the last thing he wanted, but I guess it was unavoidable. Araminta and her mum just took over, and from what I hear, it’s going to be quite a production.”
“Well, thankfully I can just sit in the audience,” Rachel smirked.