“It’s perfect.”
“Now, how would you feel if you could never have this chocolate cake again?”
“I’ll just have to be invited back to your yacht.”
“This isn’t my yacht, Nicky. None of this is mine. And don’t think I’m not reminded of this every day of my life.”
* * *
*1 Also blond, most likely Swedish.
*2 She’s naturally referring to Espen Oeino, one of the world’s leading naval architects, who has designed superyachts for the likes of Paul Allen, the Emir of Qatar, and the Sultan of Oman.
*3 Hokkien for “play money.”
7
BELMONT ROAD
SINGAPORE, MARCH 1, 2013
The man with the machine gun tapped on the tinted glass of Carol Tai’s Bentley Arnage. “Lower your window, please,” he said gruffly.
As the window came down, the man peered in, carefully scrutinizing Carol and Eleanor Young in the backseats.
“Your invitations, please,” he said, extending a Kevlar-gloved hand. Carol handed over the engraved metal cards.
“Please have your handbags open and ready for inspection when you get to the entrance,” the man instructed, gesturing for Carol’s chauffeur to drive on. They passed through the security roadblock, only to find themselves bumper-to-bumper with other fancy sedans trying to make their way toward the house with the red lacquered front door on Belmont Road.
“Aiyah, if I knew it was going to be this lay chay,*1 I wouldn’t have come,” Carol complained.
“I told you it wouldn’t be worth the headache. It never used to be like this,” Eleanor said, glaring at the traffic jam and thinking back to the earlier days of Mrs. Singh’s jewelry tea party. Gayatri Singh, the youngest daughter of a maharaja, possessed one of Singapore’s legendary jewelry collections, said to rival that of Mrs. Lee Yong Chien or Shang Su Yi. Every year, she would return from her annual trip to India with another stash of heirlooms spirited away from her increasingly senile mother, and starting in the early 1960s, she had begun inviting her dearest friends—women hailing from Singapore’s elite families—to come over for tea to “celebrate” her latest baubles.
“Back when Mrs. Singh was running the show, it was such a relaxed affair. It was just a bunch of nice ladies in beautiful saris sitting around the living room. Everyone took turns fondling Mrs. Singh’s jewels while gossiping and gobbling down Indian sweets,” Eleanor recalled.
Carol scrutinized the long queue trying to get through the front door. “This looks anything but relaxed. Alamak, who are all these women all dressed up like they are going to a cocktail party?”
“It’s all the new people. The whoest-who of Singapore society that no one has ever heard of—mainly Chindos,”*2 Eleanor sniffed.
Ever since Mrs. Singh lost interest in counting her carats and began spending more time in India studying Vedic scriptures, her daughter-in-law Sarita—a former minor Bollywood actress—had taken over the affair, and the homey ladies’ tea party evolved into a high-profile charity exhibition to raise money for whatever happened to be Sarita’s cause du jour. The event was breathlessly chronicled by all the glossy magazines, and anyone who could pay the exorbitant entry fee had the privilege of traipsing through the Singhs’ elegant modernist bungalow and gawking at the jewelry, which nowadays consisted of some specially themed exhibition.
This year’s show was devoted to the works of the acclaimed Norwegian silversmith Tone Vigeland, and as Lorena Lim, Nadine Shaw, and Daisy Foo peered into the glass vitrines in what was now the “gallery,” converted from the former table-tennis room, Nadine could not help but register her dismay. “Alamak, who wants to see all this Scandinavian gow sai*3? I thought we would get to see some of Mrs. Singh’s jewels.”
“Keep your voice down! That ang moh*4 over there is the curator. Apparently she is some hotshot from the Austin Cooper Design Museum in New York,” Lorena warned.
“Aiyah, I don’t care if she’s Anderson Cooper! Who wants to pay five hundred dollars a ticket to see jewelry made of rusty nails? I came to see rubies the size of rambutans!”
“Nadine has a point. This is such a waste of money, even though we got these free tickets from my banker at OCBC,” Daisy said.
Just then, Eleanor entered the gallery, squinting at the bright lights. She immediately put her sunglasses back on.
“Eleanor!” Lorena said in surprise. “I didn’t know you were coming to this!”
“I wasn’t planning to, but Carol was given tickets by her banker at UOB, and she convinced me to come. She needs cheering up.”
“Where is she?”
“In the toilet, of course. You know her weak bladder.”