“I will never say anything about your weird OCD habits again, not after meeting Edison Cheng.”
• • •
At four forty-five, Eddie was rushing around his apartment like a madman, yelling at his maids. “Laarni, that’s the wrong one! I said Bebel Gilberto, not Astrud Gilberto!” Eddie screamed at the top of his lungs. “I don’t want the Girl from fucking Ipanema to be playing when Bao Gaoliang arrives—he’s one of my most important clients! I want track two of Tanto Tempo!”
“Sorry, sir,” Laarni called from the other room as she nervously tried to find the song on the Linn music system. She scarcely knew how the damn thing worked, and it was even harder to use the remote with the cotton gloves that Mr. Cheng made her wear whenever she came near his precious stereo, which he kept harping was worth more than her entire village in Maguindanao.
Eddie stormed into the kitchen, where the two Chinese maids were sitting by the small television watching Fei Cheng Wu Rao.* They jumped up from their barstools when he entered. “Li Jing, is the caviar ready?” he asked in Mandarin.
“Yes, Mr. Cheng.”
“Let me see it.”
Li Jing opened the Subzero fridge and proudly took out the sterling silver caviar server that filled up an entire shelf.
“No, no, no! You’re not supposed to refrigerate the whole thing! Only the caviar gets refrigerated! I don’t want the whole damn caviar tray to be sweating like a Cambodian whore when it comes out of the fridge! Now wipe it dry and leave it out. Right when our very important politician guest arrives, you put the ice in here, see? And then you lay the glass caviar bowl over it. Like this, see? And make sure you use crushed ice from the fridge, not the cubed ice from the ice machine, okay?”
These maids are useless, absolutely useless, Eddie lamented to himself as he walked back to his dressing room. It didn’t help that his maids never seemed to renew their contracts after the first year. He had tried to steal away some of his Ah Ma’s impeccably trained staff while he was in Singapore, but those servants were more loyal than the Nazis.
Eddie checked for lint on his herringbone jacket for the tenth time in his gilt Viennese Secession mirror. He had paired it with his tight DSquared jeans, thinking it made him look more casual. The doorbell suddenly chimed. Fucky fuck, Bao Gaoliang was early!
“Laaaarni, cue the music! Charity, turn on the accent lights! And Charity, you’re having a better hair day—you answer the door!” Eddie yelled, as he rushed into the formal living room. Nick looked on in amazement as his cousin began doing karate chops on all the tasseled throw pillows, frantically trying to create the perfect fluffed-up look.
Rachel, meanwhile, went to the front door. “I’ll get it, Charity.”
“Nicky, you really need to train your wife to let the maids do what they’re supposed to do,” Eddie said to his cousin sotto voce.
“I wouldn’t dream of trying to change her,” Nick responded.
“Hiyah, this is what happens when you go and live in America,” Eddie said disparagingly.
Rachel opened the door, and standing in front of her was her father looking like he’d aged ten years. His hair wasn’t as meticulously combed as it normally was, and there were heavy bags under his eyes. He reached out and hugged her tightly, and Rachel knew at that moment that there was nothing to feel uncomfortable about around him. They entered the formal living room arm in arm.
“Bao Buzhang, such an honor to have you in my home,” Eddie said cordially.
“Thank you so much for inviting me over on such short notice,” Gaoliang said to Eddie, before turning back to Rachel with a tender look. “I am so relieved to see you looking so well. I’m very sorry that this trip has turned out so badly for you. It was truly not what I had intended when I invited you to come to China. I’m not just talking about your, er, incident. I’m talking about myself, and all the complications that have prevented me from spending more time with you.”
“That’s okay, Father. I have no regrets about this trip—I’ve enjoyed getting to know Carlton.”
“I know he feels the same as well. By the way, I really must thank you for what you did for Carlton in Paris.”
“It was nothing,” Rachel said modestly.
“Which brings me to what I’m really here to talk about. Listen,