Our Man in China

“That’s the only number you’ll need.” That’s what Sebastian had told Eric when he landed the China job. “Vincent Kwok’s father is some big property tycoon,” Sebastian had continued. “Made a shitload of money in the Eighties, and is now expanding into China. I think the guy lives in Shanghai now…But don’t worry, Vincent spent plenty of time in the US – in fact he’s more like a Brit. Euro. He’ll think you’re totally American though,” his business school classmate’s laugh had made Eric uncomfortable. “That kid is seriously hooked up – drives a Porsche, owns half of Hong Kong, screws only models. And in China too, for that matter. He told me his motto once: ‘A woman in every province.’ That, is what Vincent calls a ‘mainland connection’.” And, were it not for Vincent Kwok, Eric would not be standing where he was now, at the entrance to Rolar, the most exclusive night club in Hong Kong, with the paparazzi and a few turn-aways behind him. Vincent’s friends, all dressed in black, were pressed around him, as if afraid of being left behind, their feet shifting impatiently, their fingers buttoning and unbuttoning their blazers. Eric put his hands in his pockets. They felt light. A cripple with sores on his wasted limbs had been sitting on the pavement near Rolar and Eric had given the man all his change. The man had thanked him in a dialect he did not recognize, and Eric now remembered that some quarters and dimes had been in his pocket, too – he had only just landed from New York that afternoon – and he wondered what a Hong Kong tramp would do with quarters and dimes. The bouncers were giving the group unwelcome stares, their Caucasian necks thicker than the rest. Eric saw that the one in front, with his white face and self-important expression, had a plastic device in his ear. His air made Eric feel territorial, and slightly uncertain. Vincent suddenly emerged, ghost-like, from the pool of black. “Vinny,” the bouncer smiled sycophantically when he saw him. Eric stretched his neck, straining to hear what they were talking about, but all he could make out was random sounds (though he did catch the name “Maggie Luk”). He watched as Vincent gestured indifferently behind him without looking back. Within seconds Eric was floating forward with the rest of the group, the click of metal and sealed doors sounding behind him. He was really in, just like that – and he turned around to look at the bouncers’ heads and their ear pieces and short necks behind him, on the other side of the dark glass windows. I must tell Jennifer about this, Eric thought triumphantly. A hallway lined in heavy red curtains greeted them. The group, still no one had spoken to Eric, made their way down this corridor, the blazers unbuttoned for the final time. As Eric saw ahead another set of curtains, these ones black, he heard a voice call out. “Darling,” the accent was glossy, foreign. “Mariana. Hello.” Vincent had stopped – and the others with him – and he drawled, as he did, in his British-Hong Kong accent, the A’s monotone, extended. He kissed each cheek of the woman’s and held her with both hands clasped at her back, staring deeply into her eyes. Her fingernails, Eric noticed, were white-tipped. “We missed you darling,” she cooed. Her gaze was sleepy, but her words bold. “Father summoned you back?” The question made Vincent go quiet. Two people, boys, brushed past the entwined couple, one of them unzipping his jacket as he did so, and he glanced back, confirming. Vincent, still silent but never missing such things, crept his fingers up Mariana’s spine. “Come find us in the front, ‘kay?” She breathed as she slithered away, passing through the black curtains. “Maggie’s expecting you.” As if swallowed by the drapes, Mariana disappeared into the club. At the very front of Rolar’s main dance floor was a raised stage, erected for the owners John and Frank, their girls and their friends – and tonight, with Maggie Luk, as the centerpiece. John and Frank were the ones who came up with the idea of Rolar and whose families owned the land – but in reality the club had nearly thirty owners. There was Gilbert and Spencer, and the other Frank Siu, Frank’s sister Peggy, their cousins Kay and Ray; there was Justin Chang and Justin Chan – but not the Justin Chan with the Mercedes CLK 230, but Justin Chan with the yellow BMW M3 and distinguishable plates, though that was only because of his stepmother, and besides, as people always said when he was out of earshot, those plates were useless outside of Macau. Nevertheless, John and Frank, as owners of modeling agencies, realized that a night club, along with just great fun for their friends, was the best way to date each other’s girls since they had already slept with all their own. It was also John and Frank’s idea to build a platform at the club’s front, exclusively for them, the very one that Vincent was now making his way towards. Eric had heard of this section. It was ‘Members Only’, and now he saw seven or eight girls dancing there against a wall-to-wall screen, their silhouettes willowy and expressions half-hidden. Waiters collecting empty champagne buckets slipped between them, the condensation wetting their red button-down shirts. Eric tried to keep pace with the group but kept falling behind. He felt engulfed by infinite Chineseness: a dark ocean of black hair, pale skin tones, slender figures and equal heights, the faces identical. A blonde head was occasionally peppered in, like an island misdrawn on a map. Here Eric felt like part of a family, no longer a quota or some afterthought of color added to the mix. And, thanks to his height – which was the real sweetener – he towered above the majority. What Eric did not know, however, was that there were distinct territories at Rolar. Opposite John and Frank’s exclusive divide sat the Hong Kong Tatler entourage: the Botox-considering wives of wealthy Hong Kong tycoons and fluttering around these tai tai’s were their divorced socialite friends, gay interior designer and shop assistant sycophants, and some B and C celebrities. Adorned in screaming logos and reflective hair accessories and, if they had checked the paparazzi had not infiltrated with a camera phone, they would sometimes be found tucking their overpriced, pink slip-on mules under the table and dancing atop it. In the very back, the “Section by the Stairs” which Eric would never even realize existed, was a section that John and Frank knew best to let be. This was triad member territory, where aspiring gangsters with stiffly gelled hair and animal-inspired titles like Little Chicken and Big Dog sized up their counterparts and awaited text messages from their bosses – who even with a gun at their temples would never be found at Rolar, patronizing instead the privacy of Kowloon’s karaoke bars that the lao wai would never find. And finally, separated innocently from all this, was a hip-hop room where a younger, much younger, set of Hong Kong impressionables bounced in chain-bejeweled denim and texted each other on rhinestoned phones. A few teenage girls would sometimes escape into the main room, though only venturing out in groups of threes or fours, huddling and giggling, and closely behind an equally-naïve male friend who promised to introduce them to his older, and by default, richer cousin.