Five Star Billionaire: A Novel (32 page)

In fact he divulges very little information about himself. He does not say what he does for a living, how it is that he lives in Shanghai, or which district he lives in. When she asked him where he was from, he said, simply,
Taiwan
, to which she replied,
Yes, I know
.

How?

Because when I asked you what your favorite fruit was, you said
fengli
instead of
bolo,
and only a Taiwanese would say that
.

For now she seems content with this lack of information. She says she does not want to pry—if he is married or holds an important public position, she understands and will not seek to know any more. All she knows is that he is nice to her, and that is what matters.
If you are obese or deformed, I don’t care. I don’t care who you are in real life. I like you because … you are like me
.

She is open, trusting, and always willing to show him photos of herself in a variety of settings—in People’s Park, at the top of the WFC, looking down at the crystal spire of Jinmao, at the Star Ferry pier in Hong Kong. All of these photos are taken by her, always from the same angle, the camera held at arm’s length, slightly above her face; they are never taken by a friend or companion, from which Gary deduces she does not have any friends.

What else does he know about her? Quite a lot, actually, because she loves to talk about herself, recounting every aspect of her life in some detail, describing not only her own emotional state but that of the people
around her. Sometimes Gary feels that he knows these people personally and that he is part of her life. Her name is Phoebe Chen, and she is the manager of an upmarket spa in Jing’an—she told him the name and the street, but he’s forgotten the address now (though he figured out that if he were a normal person who wanted to visit her, there was a direct metro line that would get him to her workplace in just over twenty minutes). She has always worked in the hospitality industry, in the luxury sector, such as five-star hotels and casinos, which is why she has lived in several countries across Southeast Asia. Her current workplace is not as high profile or glamorous as some of the other places she has worked, but it offers her numerous challenges and advantages, such as a share in the ownership of the business as well as control over her working hours. She works with a team of fifteen full-time and part-time therapists and beauticians; many of them are uneducated girls from the countryside—you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to manage them! Always in crises, always having problems. The other day, would you believe it, Little S. didn’t come in to work because she thought she was pregnant, and when Phoebe asked her why she thought she was pregnant, she replied, Because the fortune-teller told me that I would get pregnant on this date if I ate a herbal soup double-boiled with bird’s nest. How stupid—she pays so much money to someone who will tell her anything she wants to believe. But this is the sort of thing Phoebe has to put up with all the time these days.

Phoebe is not from Shanghai, but Gary isn’t clear where exactly her roots lie—somewhere in the south, it’s complicated, she said. If he listens carefully, he imagines he can make out a Cantonese accent. She is very bright, but she has not had a great deal of formal education at a high level. He can tell because educated girls type very quickly and use words that only his lyricist and other clever songwriters use. On the few occasions he’d engaged in chats with girls, he hadn’t been able to keep up with the speed of the conversation. No sooner would he press the “send” button than a reply would come through. And they would also type complicated sentences that took a long time to read and digest, and finally they would be impatient and say,
Why are you not responding, are you chatting with someone else?
Also, professional women tend to ask him questions he cannot possibly answer: How much is your salary? How much are your car installments each month? Do you have promotion ambitions?

With Phoebe, it is different. He can tell by the simple words she uses
that she is just like him, unlikely to have stayed in school beyond the age of fifteen or sixteen. The fact that she has succeeded in such important positions at such a young age means that she must be sophisticated and intelligent in ways traditional education cannot measure. He likes her occasional awkwardness, for it makes him feel less embarrassed about his own shortcomings, his own lack of articulate responses. If he asks her a difficult question or one she does not want to answer, or if they speak about something emotional, she sometimes responds by simply saying,
En
. And he understands what she means by this. Just a simple barely uttered word is enough for them—they do not need fancy words and complicated sentences.

The questions she asked were basic, but they made him think about parts of his life that he’d believed were so dull that they were beyond analysis, so ephemeral that they would not be fixed in memory.

What can you remember about your mother?

Not much. She loved music
.

En.

Don’t forget, I was only eleven when she died
.

En.

She used to sing when I couldn’t sleep
.

What kind of songs?

Love songs. In Minnan hua, which was her dialect. Qian wo de shou, that sort of thing. I understood the words, but I didn’t know what love was
.

But now you know?

—

Hello? Handsome brother, you still there?

Yes. I was just thinking …

What?

Maybe one day I will sing those songs for you
.

Ha-ha!

I’m serious
.

En.

There were other questions, too, more difficult to answer:

What kind of girl do you like?

Don’t know. Nice ones. Difficult to say
.

Ha? You are kidding. Are you … gay?? I don’t mind if you are. It’s just …

He took his time to answer, staring at the screen for some time. The
questions did not shock him. In fact, he has asked himself the same questions several times.
What kind of girls do I like? Am I gay?

There was a time when the press was full of rumors about his sexuality. The fact that he had never had a proper girlfriend was often cited as proof of his gayness. He once had to endure a press conference called specifically to refute rumors that he had become the high-class catamite of a (male) CEO of a well-known pharmaceuticals company. Shortly afterward, the gutter press was full of pictures of a look-alike actor taken from a Japanese gay porn film, and Gary once again had to appear in public to assure his fans that the photos were not of him, even though the impostor bore only a passing resemblance to him. It was so demeaning. Really, the newspapers have no shame these days.

The Internet raged with speculation of his proclivities, with teenagers filling the blog sites with evidence for or against his homosexuality. At the time he thought, These people have nothing better to do with their time. He felt disgusted by how much interest people took in his private life. But, above all, he wished he could have come out and said, for certain, Yes, I am gay, or, No, I am not gay. Because the truth was, he did not know the answer himself.

He tried, on a couple of occasions, to put his sexuality to the test. Never having wanted a girlfriend, he thought maybe he should experiment with boys. In his line of work, because of who he is, it has never been difficult for him to find willing participants in such tests. His first attempt took place when he was about twenty and just beginning to be aware that he was the only person he knew who had never experienced any form of physical intimacy, not even holding hands, cuddling, or kissing. An older producer—a man of about forty, who had always joked about getting Gary into bed—finally maneuvered him into the studio late at night. They were in the closing stages of putting together an album, those frantic days and nights when everyone was rushing to make the final changes to each song, when paranoia reigned and long evenings in the studio were the norm. Gary and the producer sat in the studio, fine-tuning a love song, listening to it on their headphones: a song of great quiet and stillness, Gary’s voice low and breathy over a simple piano arrangement. He knew that the man was going to touch him—the situation lent itself perfectly to the act—and he thought, This time, I will let it happen; I want to see how it feels. He could feel the heat of the man’s body impress itself on the bare
skin on his arm as the man moved closer; then he felt a hand on his thigh. He closed his eyes. He felt fingers on his neck; the hand on his thigh moved further up toward his groin. He waited to feel a frisson, a thrill of danger—but nothing came. His mind and body felt blank, empty. He sensed the man’s breath, quick and shallow, and smelled the sourness of his mouth, as if he had just eaten kimchi. In his ears he heard his own voice soaring to great heights, rich with sadness. He tried to concentrate on the sensations of the music but could not fight the rising sense of revulsion: the closeness of the man’s breath, the heat of his body, the insistent poking of his fingers. Gary stood up and reached for the volume control, pulling away as he did so. When he sat down in his chair again, the man had moved away, and they both understood that nothing like that would ever happen between them again.

The second occasion, a couple of years ago, occurred in his suite at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, after the last of his sold-out concerts there. They had had a big, drunken party, which lasted into the early hours of the morning. When Gary woke up, everyone had left, apart from a young dancer from the backup troupe, who was stretched out across the sofa. An engaging, outrageous, slightly effeminate character who was liked by many, this boy was also known to be promiscuous, for he was always boasting of his exploits in the G-bars across East Asia, always picking up strangers in cities where they performed. He spoke in strange, provocative slang that no one could understand: He had spent the night with a “bear” and a “little monkey” and had a great time even though he didn’t consider himself a “baboon,” but maybe that’s because he is neither
gonggong
or
gongshou
—that sort of thing. He often flirted harmlessly with Gary, saying how beautiful he was. Now he lay asleep on the sofa, his fashionable ripped T-shirt exposing half his chest, revealing his fine, taut muscles and flawless skin. Gary sat down next to him, sinking into the plush cushions, and ran his fingertips across the dancer’s collarbone; his flesh was like cool stone. It was dawn, and the day was just beginning to lighten with dusky amber hues. Gary looked out across the harbor, motionless at that hour. The first rays of sun were coloring the skyscrapers across the water, making it glint. He lifted the boy’s T-shirt and looked at his stomach, the smooth incised shapes of the abdominal muscles rising and falling gently. He laid his head flat on the exposed stretch of skin, hoping to feel some jolt of excitement, the warmth of intimacy. He waited, but still nothing came. The boy opened
his eyes; they were bloodshot but narrowed with pleasure. He stretched his body, raising his arms above his head and spreading his legs—an invitation for Gary to go further (it was clear even to Gary what this meant). Gary watched him for a moment, then, still not feeling the slightest charge of passion, stood up, went to the bedroom, and shut the door before falling asleep.

Now, when his newfound friend Phoebe asks him,
Are you gay?
he tells her about these encounters, changing the scenarios to more banal settings in order to disguise his identity but maintain the authenticity of the situation (the first one, for example, he says took place
in an office where I worked;
the second,
in a hotel with a colleague
).

I think you are closed to the world
, she replies.
You cannot let yourself be close to anyone. Therefore gay or straight is an irrelevant question. In order to fall in love, first you have to love yourself
.

En.

He thinks about Phoebe all the time—not the romantic thoughts that he imagines other men having about women, but something more meaningful. He has so many things to tell her about himself, and though for the moment he keeps his life hidden from her, he realizes that the reason he is so excited about his relationship with her is that it offers him a chance to do the most exciting thing of all: to reveal his true identity to her. He keeps thinking about how and when he will do this—how he will tell her absolutely everything about himself, from childhood to the present, and because she understands him so well, she will be moved by his honesty and love him even more. When he thinks about this, a huge rush of pleasure courses through him and makes him feel strong.

There is rarely a moment when he does not think about how wonderful it will be to tell her about himself; even now, as he steps onto the stage in this suburban shopping mall, he is imagining the sheer relief of sharing his life with someone, imagining the liberation and clarity and warmth.

“Hello, everyone!” he shouts as he skips across the stage. “Are you happy? I am so happy to see you!” The microphone has not been tuned properly, and his first words are swallowed up in a mangled squeal of screeching static from the speakers, which makes everyone cover their ears. Some of the teenagers are smiling and swaying to the music, but he can tell that something is not right: They do not recognize him. In the past, as soon as he appeared in public, even when walking swiftly through
a restaurant toward a private dining room, he could feel the quick flush of excitement rippling through the crowd as they spotted him. But now a few people turn to one another, and he can tell that they are discussing who he is—whether he is the real Gary or just an impersonator. As he begins to sing, he notices a group of schoolgirls huddled in discussion. One of them laughs, shakes her head, then they all walk away. There are so many copycats these days, bad singers who make a living by touring cheap bars pretending to be a celebrity. Everyone knows they are imitators, but no one cares, for they can sing along to the songs and they appreciate the kitsch appeal of someone who looks like Aaron Kwok or Jacky Cheung or Selina from S.H.E.