Crazy Rich Asians полностью

Michael never expected she would say yes to the date, but here they were, barely a week later, sitting at a restaurant in Dempsey Hill with cobalt-blue glass votives on every table (the trendy sort of place filled with ang mors that he hated) with nothing much to say to each other. They had nothing in common, except for the fact that they both knew Andy. She didn’t have a job, and since all his work was classified, they couldn’t really talk about that. She had been living in Paris for the past few years, so she was out of touch with Singapore. Hell, she didn’t even seem like a true Singaporean — with her Englishy accent and her mannerisms.

Yet he couldn’t help but feel incredibly drawn to her. She was the complete opposite of the type of girls he normally dated. Even though he knew she came from a rich family, she wasn’t wearing brand-name clothes or any jewelry. She didn’t even appear to be wearing makeup, and still she looked smoking hot. This girl wasn’t as seow chieh[52] as he had been led to believe, and she even challenged him to a game of pool after dinner.

She turned out to be pretty lethal at billiards, and it made her even sexier. But this was obviously not the kind of girl he could have a casual fling with. He felt almost embarrassed about it, but all he wanted to do was keep staring at her face. He couldn’t get enough of it. He was sure he lost the game partly because he was just too distracted by her. At the end of the date, he walked her out to her car (surprisingly, just an Acura) and held the door open as she got in, convinced he would never see her again.

Astrid lay in bed later that night, trying to read Bernard-Henri Lévy’s latest tome but having no luck focusing. She couldn’t stop thinking about her disastrous date with Michael. The poor guy really didn’t have much in the way of conversation, and he was hopelessly unsophisticated. Figures. Guys who looked like that obviously did not have to work hard to impress a woman. There was something to him, though, something that imbued him with a beauty that seemed almost feral. He was simply the most perfect specimen of masculinity she had ever seen, and it unleashed a physiological response in her that she did not realize she possessed.

She turned off her bedside lamp and lay in the dark under the mosquito netting of her heirloom Peranakan bed, wishing Michael could read her mind at this very moment. She wanted him to dress up in night camouflage and scale the walls of her father’s house, evading the guards in the sentry house and the German shepherds on patrol. She wanted him to climb the guava tree by her window and enter her bedroom without a sound. She wanted him to stand at the foot of her bed for a while, nothing but a leering black shadow. Then she wanted him to rip off her clothes, cover her mouth with his earthy hand, and ravish her nonstop till dawn.

She was twenty-seven years old, and for the first time in her life, Astrid realized what it really felt like to crave a man sexually. She reached for her cell phone and, before she could stop herself, dialed Michael’s number. He picked up after two rings, and Astrid could hear that he was in some sort of noisy bar. She hung up immediately. Fifteen seconds later, her phone rang. She let it ring about five times before answering.

“Why did you call me and hang up?” Michael said in a calm, low voice.

“I didn’t call you. My phone must have rung your number accidentally while it was in my purse,” Astrid said nonchalantly.

“Uh-huh.”

There was a long pause, before Michael casually added, “I’m at Harry’s Bar now, but I’m going to drive over to the Ladyhill Hotel and check into a room. The Ladyhill is quite near you, isn’t it?”

Astrid was taken aback by his audacity. Who the hell did he think he was? She felt her face go hot, and she wanted to hang up on him again. Instead, she found herself turning on her bedside lamp. “Text me the room number,” she said simply.

SINGAPORE, 2010

Astrid drove along the meandering curves of Cluny Road, her head swimming in thoughts. At the start of the evening at Tyersall Park, she had entertained the fantasy that her husband was at some one-star hotel engaged in a torrid affair with the Hong Kong sexting tramp. Even while she was on conversational autopilot with her family, she envisioned herself bursting in on Michael and the tramp in their sordid little room and flinging every available object at them. The lamp. The water pitcher. The cheap plastic coffeemaker.