ALT: Do you take them out to business dinners?
CW: LOL! I thought you meant get them laid! Yes, there are always business dinners…more lunches actually. We sometimes do a celebratory dinner when a deal closes. Why?
ALT: I’m just trying to educate myself. It’s funny—I’ve had to deal with all kinds of social events with intricate protocols my whole life, but when it comes to the corporate dinner, I’m totally ignorant.
CW: Well, you’ve never had to be a corporate wife.
ALT: Does Isabel usually come to your work dinners?
CW: Isabel at a client dinner? Ha! Hell would freeze over. Client entertaining rarely involves spouses.
ALT: Even for international clients who are visiting Asia?
CW: When international clients come to Asia, they generally don’t bring their wives. Back in my dad’s time in the 1980s and ’90s, yes, maybe some wives wanted to come to Hong Kong or Singapore to shop. But not so much anymore. On the rare occasions that they do, we rea
lly try to roll out the red carpet, so that clients can concentrate on work and not worry that their wives are getting ripped off at Stanley Market.
ALT: So you don’t feel that a crucial component of deal-making involves a “dinner with the wives.”
CW: Not at all! These days, most of my clients are single twenty-two-year-old monosyllabic Zuckerbergs. And many of them are women! What’s up? I’m assuming Michael is trying to enlist your help with some clients?
ALT: It already happened.
CW: So why are you asking?
ALT: Well, it was a total disaster, the deal fell through, and guess who got the blame?
CW: Huh? Why would you get the blame for a botched deal? Last time I checked, you weren’t his employee. Did you spill scalding hot bak kut teh*1 onto the client’s lap or something?
ALT: It’s a long story. Pretty funny, actually. I’ll tell you about it when I see you in Hong Kong next month.
CW: C’mon, you can’t leave me hanging like this!
Astrid took her hands off the keyboard. For a moment, she debated whether to make some excuse and beg off or to continue with her story. She didn’t want to trash her husband to Charlie, knowing he already had a colored impression of Michael, but her need to vent got the better of her.
ALT: Michael has apparently been cultivating these clients for a while, and the bigwig and his whole team flew in to finalize the deal. He brought his wife, so Michael asked me to organize a nice dinner someplace that would impress all of them. The couple are really into food, so I chose André.
CW: Not bad. For out-of-towners I also like Waku Ghin.
ALT: I love Tetsuya’s cooking, but I felt it wouldn’t be right for this crowd. Anyway, for the first time ever, Michael was obsessing over what I wore to dinner. I had on what I felt to be the perfect outfit, but he wanted me to change into something more ostentatious.
CW: But that’s not your style!
ALT: I wanted to be a team player. So I wore this irresponsibly large pair of earrings—emeralds and diamonds that really should not be seen in public unless you’re going to a state dinner at Windsor Castle or a wedding in Jakarta.
CW: Sounds amazing.
ALT: Well, it ended up being the wrong choice. We get to the restaurant late, and Michael insisted on driving his new vintage Ferrari and parking it right outside. So everyone is already staring at us as we walked in. Then it turns out the bigwig is from Northern California. Lovely, low-key couple—the wife was chic but in an understated way. She was wearing a beautiful tunic dress, strappy sandals, and these artsy earrings that some kid had made for her. I looked outrageously overdressed by comparison and it made everyone uncomfortable. Everything went south from there, and today Michael came home pretty upset. They nixed the whole deal.
CW: And Michael blames YOU?
ALT: He blames himself more, but I do see it was partly my fault. I should have followed my gut and stuck to the first outfit. Truth be told, I was a little cheesed off that Michael was second-guessing my choice, so I really put my foot on the accelerator to up the bling quotient with the second outfit. But it was way too much, and it put off the client.
Astrid’s phone started to ring, and she picked it up when she saw it was Charlie on the line.
“Astrid Leong, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! Clients don’t give a shit how the wives of their business partners are dressed, especially in the tech world. I’m sure there are many reasons why this deal did not work out, but trust me, your accessories had nothing to do with it. You see that, don’t you?”
“I get what you’re saying, and I agree…partly. But it was an unusual night, and a strange confluence of events. You just had to be there.”