Midnight In Madrid

for Peter. He was their boss, even though he was only a few years older.

From that, Alex made a deduction: they were all there on the same assignment, having to do with The Pieta of Malta. And from there she deduced that this must have been a case of some significance to the Chinese to have assigned so many people to it from such a distance.

The group spoke English, occasionally lapsing into Spanish. The two girls mostly kept quiet, sipped drinks, and smoked. Sabrina, the blonde, was seated right next to Alex. At one point she turned and spoke in a low voice.

“Are you working?” Sabrina asked.

“What?”

“You’re working tonight?” she asked again, giving a nod toward Peter who was telling the rest of the table about the trip that afternoon.

“Yes, I am,” Alex answered, going along with it. After all, she was being paid to be there.

Sabrina smiled, nodded, and gave Alex a wink. At first Alex was uncomfortable with the insinuation, then, after a glass of wine, almost found it amusing. By coincidence, Peter’s arm found its way around Alex’s shoulders at about the same instant.

All right, she decided, no harm, no foul. She would play along, keep her ears open, and listen. The less any outsiders knew about her real job, the better.

A waiter appeared, took another round of drink orders in Spanish from Peter and Alex, who ordered red wine, and left dinner menus at the table. The talk around the table progressed. And quickly, Alex realized that she was looking at the face of the new China.

Peter, at forty-one, was maybe five years older than the other two men. But right before her eyes, China’s first generation of only-children were waving good-bye to the old line Communist Party and saying hello to Moet, Prada, and Rolex. To listen to Peter and his two friends, laughing more heartily as the evening went on, was to believe that Shanghai was becoming the biggest boom town in history since Las Vegas. Around the table, they began swapping one-upsmanship stories of the prosperity of their new nation.

“Hey, my sister was in Chinese Vogue last month,” Peter said. Quickly and proudly, he reached in his wallet and pulled out a clipping, cut neatly from a magazine. He produced a picture of an Asian gazelle who had his face and his features. Everyone leaned forward to check out the picture of Peter’s sister.

Her name was Jennifer, Peter said, and she worked for IBM in Shanghai. Like all young Chinese on the cutting edge of fashion and trends, she had adopted an English-language first name, as American-like as possible.

The picture, in color, showed a world-class babe in her early twenties, done up in a white cashmere sweater, a raspberry leather miniskirt, and designer leather boots.

“Jennifer loves Chanel,” Peter said with brotherly pride. “Ten years ago in China no one knew what Chanel was. Now my sister is addicted. She shops forever.”

“She’s very pretty,” Alex said.

“Look at her,” Peter said. “Immaculate hair. Perfect teeth. Manicured nails. Fluent in English, Japanese, and Cantonese, and she is feminine as feminine can be. She is the new Chinese woman in miniature,” he laughed. “The economic miracle made flesh.”

“Very nice looking flesh,” Ming chipped in.

“Is she married?” one of the other girls asked.

Peter laughed. “Married? No, no! She’s having too much fun. She has five boyfriends at the same time, and they all spoil her mercilessly!”

“Five?” Alex said. “Five! I don’t think I’ve had five in my life!”

Alex’s remark set off laughter around the table.

“Peter is just showing off because he has a sister,” Wong said. “Peter was privileged. Hong Kong born. The rest of us are from one-child families.”

“Because he’s from Hong Kong he thinks he’s better than the rest of us,” Ming added.

“I know I am,” Peter said, halfway through his second drink, an oversized gin and tonic.

“Peter already owns seven cars,” Ming volunteered to Alex, as more drinks went around. “Did he tell you that?”

“No, he didn’t,” Alex said. “Are you kidding me? Is that true? Seven?”

“It’s true,” Peter acknowledged with a grin.

“What do you own?” she asked.

“Not much,” he answered. “A few old wreckers.”

Around the table, the lie didn’t fly.

“Ha!” Ming said.

“Peter owns a Porsche 911, a Mercedes, a BMW X5, a Mitsubishi Evolution, and a Toyota Yaris,” said Wong, lighting a cigarette. “And that doesn’t include the company Jaguar that’s at his disposal in Europe.”

Peter shook his head with a grin and tried to dismiss the subject. But he confirmed it was true about all the cars.

“That’s only five that you named,” Alex said to Charles Ming. She turned to Peter. “What else do you have back in the ‘worker’s paradise’?”

“Okay, okay,” Peter said. “I also have a Peugeot, which I bought a year ago when I was in France, and I have an American ‘collectible.’ My favorite.”

“What’s that? Some hot Corvette or Mustang?”

“No, it’s a 1970 Ford Colony Park station wagon.”

“You drive around Shanghai in a Colony Park station wagon?” she asked.

“When I can,” Peter said.

“He’s never home to drive them, but he owns them,” Ming taunted. “So his six-dozen girlfriends borrow them.”

Wong added that Peter had inherited wealth. “His father owned five merchant ships, five hotels, and two hundred apartments. Some Communist!”

Again Peter brushed things off. “You know what they say about communism,” Peter said. “It’s the longest and most difficult route between capitalism and capitalism.”

“You’re going to get into trouble for giving away state secrets,” Wong warned.

Again, the table laughed although Holly and Sabrina seemed a little left out. “Peter needs to be ‘reeducated’,” Ming taunted in good humor.

Peter, meanwhile, was making a hand signal to the waiter, who gave a quick nod of understanding.

“China today is crazy,” Peter said, turning back to Alex, and explaining. “The money. The poverty. The urbanization. The exhaustion of our natural resources. The opportunities in China are beyond anything that anybody in Europe or America has ever seen. It’s insane, but everyone goes along with it.”

“My family was happy if we had food,” Ming added, but less jokingly. “You in Hong Kong were already wealthy. Many of us in China were still struggling.”

Ming continued. “My cousin is nine years older than me. She grew up during the Cultural Revolution. I grew up after it. She works in a factory that builds coffeemakers and sells them to the West. I cannot even imagine how hard her life has been. And she is my cousin. Peter’s sister is what’s known as a ‘Shanghai princess,’ a girl who has been raised in wealth and privilege.”

Ming, it turned out through further conversation, was moving up in the world. He had just moved in Shanghai from a scrappy little neighborhood to a place named New California Estates. It was a private Western-style compound with huge villas made of fake adobe and a whole miniarmy of private guards. He showed Alex a picture of his home. Ming’s minivilla had a manicured lawn, a deck overlooking a man-made lake, a barbecue pit, an ornamental well, and a perfectly groomed Labrador retriever.

“My dog’s name is Clinton,” Ming said.

“Named after the American president,” Wong chided.

“The dog is a female. It’s named after the ex-president’s wife,” Ming said. Ten years earlier, Ming said, his family had nothing; now not only did he have this house but he also bought an apartment for his parents. The economic thaw had started during the Clinton years in America, and so many young Chinese felt gratitude. Naming a pedigreed dog after the ex-first lady, to Ming’s way of thinking, was the very least he could do. Alex thought of several smart remarks but didn’t make any of them.