to find out. Anyone could see that he was prime target number one, and over the years there had been plenty of girls Nicky thought he had kept hidden from his mother. All of them had been inconsequential in Eleanor’s eyes, since she knew her son wasn’t ready to marry yet. But this time was different.
Eleanor had a long-held theory about men. She truly believed that for most men, all that talk of “being in love” or “finding the right one” was absolute nonsense. Marriage was purely a matter of timing, and whenever a man was finally done sowing his wild oats and ready to settle down, whichever girl happened to be there at the time would be the right one. She had seen the theory proven time and again; indeed she had caught Philip Young at precisely the right moment. All the men in that clan tended to marry in their early thirties, and Nicky was now ripe for the plucking. If someone in New York already knew so much about Nicky’s relationship, and if he was actually bringing this girl home to attend his best friend’s wedding, things must be getting serious. Serious enough that he purposely hadn’t mentioned her existence. Serious enough to derail Eleanor’s meticulously laid plans.
The setting sun refracted its rays through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the recently completed penthouse apartment atop Cairnhill Road, bathing the atrium-like living room in a deep orange glow. Eleanor gazed at the early-evening sky, taking in the colonnade of buildings clustering around Scotts Road and the expansive views all the way past the Singapore River to the Keppel Shipyard, the world’s busiest commercial port. Even after thirty-four years of marriage, she did not take for granted all that it meant for her to be sitting here with one of the most sought-after views on the island.
To Eleanor, every single person occupied a specific space in the elaborately constructed social universe in her mind. Like most of the women in her crowd, Eleanor could meet another Asian anywhere in the world—say, over dim sum at Royal China in London, or shopping in the lingerie department of David Jones in Sydney—and within thirty seconds of learning their name and where they lived, she would implement her social algorithm and calculate precisely where they stood in her constellation based on who their family was, who else they were related to, what their approximate net worth might be, how the fortune was derived, and what family scandals might have occurred within the past fifty years.
The Taipei Plastics Chus were very new money, made in the seventies and eighties, most likely. Knowing next to nothing about this family made Eleanor particularly anxious. How established were they in Taipei society? Who exactly were this girl’s parents, and how much did she stand to inherit? She needed to know what she was up against. It was 6:45 a.m. in New York. High time to wake Nicky up. She picked up the telephone with one hand, and with the other she held at arm’s length the long-distance discount calling card§ that she always used, squinting at the row of tiny numbers. She dialed a complicated series of codes and waited for several beeping signals before finally entering the telephone number. The phone rang four times before Nick’s voice mail picked up: “Hey, I can’t come to the phone right now, so leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Eleanor was always a little taken aback whenever she heard her son’s “American” accent. She much preferred the normal Queen’s English he would revert to whenever he was back in Singapore. She spoke haltingly into the phone: “Nicky, where are you? Call me tonight and let me know your flight information, lah. Everyone in the world except me knows when you’re coming home. Also, are you staying with us first or with Ah Ma? Please call me back. But don’t call tonight if it’s after midnight. I am going to take an Ambien now, so I can’t be disturbed for at least eight hours.”
She put down the phone, and then almost immediately picked it up again; this time dialing a cell-phone number. “Astrid, ah? Is that you?”
“Oh, hi, Auntie Elle,” Astrid said.
“Are you okay? You sound a bit funny.”
“No, I’m fine, I was just asleep,” Astrid said, clearing her throat.
“Oh. Why are you sleeping so early? Are you sick?”
“No, I’m in Paris, Auntie Elle.”
“Alamak, I forgot you were away! Sorry to wake you,