“She’s incredibly beautiful. She looked so elegant last night—I adored the necklace she was wearing. And she was perfectly civil to me even after I must have given her quite a shock. I’m so glad everything’s okay now.”
“I am too,” Charlie said, forcing himself to smile. He heard somewhere that people could sense the smile in your voice, even over the phone.
Astrid paused. She felt she needed to make one more gesture to make up for her faux pas. “The next time Michael and I are in Hong Kong, we should go on a double date. I want to get to know Isabel under better circumstances.”
“Yes, we should do that. A double date.”
Charlie ended the conversation and got up laboriously from his desk. He was light-headed, and his stomach suddenly felt like someone had poured a gallon of bacon grease into it.
“Alice, I’m just going to pop downstairs for some fresh air,” Charlie said into the intercom. He took his private express elevator to the lower street level and walked through the parking garage toward a side exit door. The moment he was outside, he leaned against the concrete wall and began inhaling and exhaling deeply. After a few minutes, he lumbered toward his favorite spot.
Sandwiched between Wuthering Towers and its neighboring skyscraper on Chater Road was a pedestrian alleyway where there was a small makeshift drink stand. A blue-and-white-striped plastic tarp stretched over the stall, anchored by two refrigerator units filled with soft drinks, packet juices, and fresh fruit. Under the single tube of fluorescent lighting was the owner, a middle-aged woman who stood all day preparing fresh soybean milk and juicing oranges, pineapples, and watermelons. There was always a queue during lunchtime and in the evenings when people left work, but in midafternoon, it was quiet.
“Playing hooky again?” the woman asked, teasing Charlie in Cantonese. She knew him as the office worker who always came down from one of the buildings for a drink at odd hours.
“Every chance I get, auntie.”
“I worry for you, son—you take too many breaks. One day your boss is going to find you here and fire your ass.”
Charlie cracked a smile. She was the one person in the vicinity that had no idea who he was, let alone that he owned the fifty-five-story tower that shaded her all day long. “Can I get a cold soybean milk, please?”
“Your color is no good today. Why are you as pale as a ghost? You shouldn’t be drinking anything cold—you need something hot to help awaken your chi.”
“I get like this sometimes, when I’m feeling a bit overworked,” Charlie explained rather unconvincingly.
“You spend all day in air-conditioning. Bad recycled air. That’s no good for you too,” the woman continued. Her cell phone rang, and she began jabbering for a few minutes. While she spoke, she poured some hot water into a FIFA World Cup mug and filled it with a few slices of ginseng root. Then she stirred a few spoonfuls of grass jelly and sugar syrup into the concoction. “Drink this!” she ordered.
“Thanks, auntie,” Charlie said, sitting on the plastic milk crate by a little folding Formica table. He took a few measured sips, too polite to tell her he didn’t care much for grass jelly.
The woman finished her call and said excitedly, “That was my stockbroker. Here, let me give you a hot tip. You must start shorting TTL Holdings. You know TTL? Owned by Tai Toh Lui, that fellow who dropped dead of a heart attack two years ago in a brothel in Suzhou? My stockbroker knows for a fact that his good-for-nothing son who inherited the empire has been kidnapped by the Eleven Finger Triad. Once everyone finds out, the shares will collapse. You should start shorting it now.”
“You should let me check on that rumor before you start shorting,” Charlie advised.
“Hiyah, I already told my broker to start shorting. If I don’t jump on it, I won’t make any money.”
Charlie took out his cell phone and called his chief financial officer, Aaron Shek. “Hey, Aaron—I know you’re golfing buddies with the CEO of TTL. There’s some rumor going around that Bernard has been kidnapped by the Eleven Finger Triad. Can you please check on that for me? What do you mean there’s no need?” Charlie paused for a moment to listen to Aaron, and then burst into laughter. “Are you sure? Man, that’s way better than the kidnapping rumor,