Chapter 15: Enterprise of the Year

Su Yu fell asleep in the gala car before it left the driveway.

He did it with a neck pillow, a blanket from the nursery and a tuxedo that had cost the tailor four evenings.

"Pillow," said Lu Chen, from the opposite seat.

He wrote a line in the notebook.

"Asleep before the gate. Zero effort."

"I'm conserving," said Su Yu, with his eyes shut.

"You have a presentation in four hours."

"I have it in my head. It's all in here."

"It's all in the folder in your lap."

"You wrote it with your own hand, a few lines at a time, between night feedings."

Su Yu opened one eye and patted the folder.

Inside were the harbour tender plan, forty pages of cargo routes and berth schedules, in his own crooked writing.

Some of them had milk on them.

He closed the eye again.

"Wake me at the hotel."

"The hotel is the gala."

"Then wake me at the gala."

The venue was the grand ballroom of the city's oldest hotel, with eight hundred guests and a stage the size of a small tennis court.

Mrs. Su went in first, with Su Lan in a carrier on her chest.

She had a look that dared anyone to say a word about it.

The Chairman followed her, carrying the bag of oranges.

Lu Chen took Su Yu by the elbow and walked him past the ballroom doors, down a service corridor and into a room marked Artists.

He locked it.

"Ten minutes," he said. "The first nominee goes on at nine."

"For what?"

Lu Chen took off his glasses and set them on the dressing table.

"For this," he said.

He took Su Yu's face in both hands and kissed him, hard, with a promise in it.

Su Yu's eyes opened all the way.

"You planned this."

"I planned everything. It's written down."

Su Yu laughed into his mouth, and then he did not laugh, because Lu Chen's hand was inside his trousers.

He lifted Su Yu onto the edge of the dressing table, among the makeup lights.

He pulled the trousers and the shorts down together.