{"product_id":"the-expatriates-isbn-9780143108429","title":"The Expatriates","description":"\u003cb\u003eTHE INSPIRATION FOR \u003ci\u003eEXPATS\u003c\/i\u003e—AN ORIGINAL SERIES STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN—NOW STREAMING ON PRIME VIDEO\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e“Devastating and heartwarming, and exquisite in every way, this is a book you’ll fall deeply in love with and never want to put down.”\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eKevin Kwan, author of \u003ci\u003eCrazy Rich Asians\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Piano Teacher\u003c\/i\u003e, a searing novel of marriage, motherhood, and the search for connection far from home.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the glittering city of Hong Kong, expats arrive daily for myriad reasons—to find or lose themselves in a foreign place, and to forget or remake themselves far from home. Amidst this hothouse atmosphere, a tragic incident causes three American women’s lives to collide in ways that will rewrite every assumption of their privileged world: Mercy, a young Korean American and recent Columbia graduate, once again finds herself compromised and adrift, trying to start her life anew; Hilary, a wealthy housewife, is haunted by her struggle to have a child, hoping to save her uncertain marriage; meanwhile, Margaret, once the enviable mother of three, tries to negotiate an existence that has become utterly unrecognizable after a catastrophic event. Faced with unthinkable choices, these three women form a profound connection that defies the norms of the sequestered community—finding in each other a strength borne of need, forgiveness, and ultimately hope.   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAtmospheric and utterly compelling, \u003ci\u003eThe Expatriates\u003c\/i\u003e showcases Lee’s exceptional talent as one of our keenest observers of women’s inner lives. | “A female, funny Henry James in Asia, Janice Y. K. Lee is vividly good on the subject of Americans abroad. . . . [\u003ci\u003eThe Expatriates\u003c\/i\u003e is] vibrant social satire: Inside these dark materials lies the sharpness of a comic novelist, and Lee’s eye for the nuance and clash of culture, class, race and sex is subtle and shrewd.” \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e—New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“Devastating and heartwarming, and exquisite in every way, this is a book you’ll fall deeply in love with and never want to put down.”\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eKevin Kwan, author of \u003ci\u003eCrazy Rich Asians\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Irresistible . . . Lee’s wizardry is her ability to whip drama, pathos and humor into a scrumptious page-turning blend. Raise a glass: The first great book-club novel of 2016 has arrived.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eUSA Today,\u003c\/i\u003e 4\/4 stars\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I raced through this enthralling story.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eLiane Moriarty, author of \u003ci\u003eBig Little Lies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Gorgeously wrought . . .a must-read.” \u003cbr\u003e —\u003ci\u003eMarie Claire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Powerful [and] nuanced . . . poignant and compelling . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Expatriates\u003c\/i\u003e moves with urgency, but also takes time to slowly reveal a complex story. Lee’s storytelling is intricate, precise and rich enough to keep the reader seduced until the end.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eSeattle Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“We found ourselves racing through this exotic, sexy, heartbreaking book. . . . We couldn’t wait to find out what happens to each of the women.” \u003cbr\u003e —\u003ci\u003eGlamour\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“At turns illuminating, entertaining, cringe-inducing, piercing . . . With meticulous details and nuanced observations, Lee creates an exquisite novel of everyday lives in extraordinary circumstances. . . . How Lee’s triumvirate reacts, copes, and ventures forth (or not) proves to be a stupendous feat of magnetic, transporting storytelling. . . . Mark my words: \u003ci\u003eThe Expatriates\u003c\/i\u003e will appear repeatedly on year-end award nominations and all the 'best of' compilations.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“An emotionally gripping page-turner.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eElle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Captivating.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eUS Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A nuanced reminder of how shockingly easy it can be to lose everything in a moment and of how to reinvent one’s life after a fall.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—San Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One chief pleasure of \u003ci\u003eThe Expatriates\u003c\/i\u003e is watching how the lives of Hilary, Mercy and Margaret converge and are changed by that convergence, and how they each metabolize grief. A more subtle yet lingering benefit is getting to know Lee's acutely observed Hong Kong, a city on the cusp of change that must eventually affect the lives of expatriates and locals alike.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Los Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Janice Y.K. Lee’s absorbing, poignant novel . . . [is a] nuanced story of the ordinary heroism needed to move past some of life’s worst experiences. It’s a great read and a testament to the strength and resilience we all have.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Redbook\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Combines a page-turning plot with intimate perceptions about Americans in Hong Kong.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—More\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"We imagine we know these [expatriate] women, who are distanced from their work, friends, and family, but we don’t. Janice Y. K. Lee does. Set in Hong Kong, \u003ci\u003eThe Expatriates\u003c\/i\u003e looks inside the lives of three women . . . all in crisis, all needing one another in ways they, and we, can’t imagine.”\u003cbr\u003e —\u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“A novel about displacement and belonging . . . A thoughtful portrait of motherhood trade-offs, the book also offers sharp insights into the tensions between moneyed expats and the impoverished locals who serve them.”  \u003cbr\u003e —\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e, “The Best New Books”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“Janice Y. K. Lee nails family drama and gentrified Hong Kong.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—New York \u003c\/i\u003eMagazine\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“[Lee] gently conveys her sad characters' loneliness, suffering and anguish.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Minneapolis Star Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“One of the novel’s strengths is Lee’s exploration of the sometimes subtle interplay between different layers and types of privilege; another is her empathy for the loneliness that her characters must endure. The result is a shrewd and moving study of how race, gender and education constrain the options that life gives you.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The Financial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Everyone’s buzzing about \u003ci\u003eThe Expatriates\u003c\/i\u003e. . . . These women and their stories will pull at every string in your heart.”\u003cbr\u003e —Bustle  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Sex and the City\u003c\/i\u003e meets \u003ci\u003eLost in Translation\u003c\/i\u003e.”“\u003cbr\u003e—TheSkimm \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Brilliantly plotted and written, utterly absorbing.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eDaily Mail (London)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Like Jodi Picoult and Kristin Hannah, Lee is a perceptive observer of her compelling characters and brings them vividly to life in this moving novel.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—BookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Captivating . . . Lee’s women are complex and often flawed, which makes the stories of their strength all the more compelling in this tale of family, motherhood, and attempts at moving on.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e—Publishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A richly detailed novel that rubs away at the luster of expat life and examines how the bonds of motherhood or, really, womanhood, can call back even those who are furthest adrift.” \u003cbr\u003e —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e | Janice Y. K. Lee was born and raised in Hong Kong. She received a BA in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard College. A former editor at \u003ci\u003eElle\u003c\/i\u003e magazine, Lee lives in New York with her husband and four children. | \u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrologue\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTHE NEW EXPATRIATES arrive practically on the hour, every day of the week. They get off Cathay Pacific flights from New York, BA from London, Garuda from Jakarta, ANA from Tokyo, carrying briefcases, carrying Louis Vuitton handbags, carrying babies and bottles, carrying exhaustion and excitement and frustration. They have mostly been cramped in coach; a precious few have drunk champagne in first; others have watched two movies in business class, eating a ham-and-Brie sandwich. They are thrilled, they are homesick, they are scared, they are relieved to have arrived in Hong Kong—their new home for six months, a year, a three-year contract max, forever, nobody knows. They are fresh-faced; they are mid-career, hoping for that crucial boost up the ladder; they are here for their last job, the final rung before they’re put out to pasture. They work at banks; they work at law firms. They make buttons, clothing, hard drives, toys. They run restaurants; they are bartenders; they are yoga teachers; they are designers; they are architects. They don’t work. They are hoping to work. They are done, done, done with work. They arrive in January, after Christmas; they arrive in June, after the kids get out from school; they arrive in August, when school is about to start; they arrive whenever the company books their ticket. They come with their families or with their wives or their boyfriends, or resolutely single, or hoping to meet someone. They are Chinese, Irish, French, Korean, American—a veritable UN of fortune-seekers, willing sheep, life-changers, come to find their future selves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese days, they always come by air, disgorged from the planes that encircle Chek Lap Kok airport. The new expatriates wait in line, somnambulant in the fluorescent light, with their pallid skin and greasy hair, wondering if jet lag will ever be less horrendous. They present their passports, clear immigration, collect their bags, and emerge from the terminal to scatter—disappearing into the Airport Express train; queuing up for double-decker buses, taxis; stepping into the back of black Mercedes sedans bearing the emblem of the Mandarin Oriental, doors opened by white-capped chauffeurs. They are swept away and driven along the highway, so clean, so new, past villages that are just remnants of what was there before all the buildings went up, those giant complexes built to house the ever-burgeoning local population, those people who will be their colleagues, their employees, their employers, their drivers. All the expats disperse, are quickly absorbed into their new home, each quickly becoming just one more face in the crowd.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe new expatriates are tired. They have arrived, but they are not sure to what. The immediate journey has ended, but the longer one has just begun. They rest their heads on the window of the bus, on the leather headrest in the car, on the velour of the train seat, on the way to their bed in Chungking Mansions, at the YWCA, at the Four Seasons, at a friend’s house, at their serviced apartment, at the house on the Peak that has been leased for them. They quiet the children, they drink a bottle of water, they drum their fingers on the seat. Hong Kong flashes frantically by. The road stretches long before them. They are exhausted. Their eyes close, and they dream of what lies ahead.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart I\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMercy\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA SLOW-ROASTED UNICORN. A baked, butterflied baby dragon, spread-eagled, spine a delicate slope in the pan. A phoenix, perhaps, slightly charred from its fiery rebirth, sprinkled with sugar, flesh caramelized from the heat. That’s what she wants to eat: a mythical creature, something slightly otherworldly, something not real. A centaur. Yes, the juicy haunch of a centaur. Mercy lies in bed, not quite asleep, not quite awake, sheets crumpled around her, feeling the gnawing hole in her stomach, relishing it, savoring it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe sun streams in through her small, smudged window. By the looks of it, it must be past 11:00 a.m., a time when most people—respectable people, people with jobs—have been at work for several hours and may already be contemplating what they should eat for lunch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe can hear the muted sounds of the streets below. Sheung Wan, an area too quickly being discovered by the rent-hikers—those young, industrious careerists in their well-cut suits and shiny leather shoes who leave at eight thirty in the morning with wet hair and sheaves of papers shoved in briefcases. They have discovered this relatively cheap neighborhood, a short walk from Central, and have succeeded in slowly gentrifying it. The rent-hikers live among aging locals who view their encroachment with bemused silence. Every morning they pass the crazy charwoman in the lobby who barks incomprehensible Cantonese invectives at them as they walk through, fingertips pecking on their phones, pretending not to notice. These superbly energetic men and women have tried to get the charwoman replaced, started a petition, which was photocopied and slipped under Mercy’s door for her signature, but all their efforts have come to naught. The crazy woman stays all day and night, sitting on her plastic stool, bucket and mop beside her, shouting at them and at herself. It is believed she lives in a little room off the lobby, but no one has been able to ascertain the truth. No one has ever seen her do any cleaning, or leave, or come back. It’s one of those Hong Kong mysteries, where she might be the landlord’s demented aunt, a homeless person who has made the lobby her home, or indeed an insane millionaire who owns the building. All this conjecture and information is conveyed through messages posted in the elevator. Then suddenly one day, a direction to an online message board, to which they all migrate, leaving the wall in the elevator mercifully blank. All that remains of the shrill, slightly hysterical dialogue is a strip of yellowing Scotch tape on the plastic wall.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMercy is hungry. She should eat. But she wants to eat a centaur’s thigh, roasted over a bonfire, turned on a spit by fairies, their sparkly little faces perspiring from the heat. She is certain she will not find this when she ventures out into the small, tight streets around her. They are filled instead with equally improbable things: shiny cow innards; disembodied pigs’ heads with floppy ears, stacked up in bloody piles; dried seahorses in burlap sacks. She does not find the food grotesque, instead is bewildered by how one begins to eat such items, existing as they do in such peculiar and indeterminate forms, or indeed, alive, or in quantities that would feed a village.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen she gets up, she determines, she will turn on her space heater to warm the chill of the December air. She will take out a head of organic Boston lettuce from her little refrigerator and pull apart the leaves, soak them for ten minutes, then transfer them into a spinner, where they will be centrifuged, and the sandy water discarded. She will toss the leaves in a wooden bowl with a micro spray of olive oil, a drop of balsamic vinegar, the insanely expensive balsamic vinegar that she bought at the gourmet store, so viscous it drips in a slow, thick stream. A tomato. A Persian cucumber. These will emerge, pristine, from her tiny refrigerator, chilled, perfect. She will slice them thinly and fan them into beautiful patterns, a vegetable mandala, courtesy of the mandoline, a feast for the eyes. She will hand-crumble Parmigiano Reggiano onto the top, and then, from on high, she will brandish the mill and grind coarse crystals of pink salt from the Himalayas into fine, sparkly shavings that will float, like snowflakes, onto the pale green surface of her salad.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe will bring the salad to the table by her bed, which she will have set with a scalloped linen placemat she bought on a trip to Hanoi, with a matching napkin, and a glass with a bottle of Fiji water just next to it, ready for pouring. She lives in a two-hundred-square-foot studio, but she does not have to live like a savage.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMercy will sit on the bed and take up her instruments: her heavy silver fork and knife, stolen from Gaddi’s restaurant on a memorable night in better times. The lettuce, slightly glossed with oil, will yield as she presses the tines of her fork into it, the hole bleeding a slightly darker green as she breaks the cells of the leaf, violent death in its own microscopic way. From there, she will lift it into her mouth, a light sliver on her tongue for an instant before her teeth grind it into a small, slippery pulp that will slip down her throat. She will swallow. She will cut another piece. She will put it in her mouth and chew again. Swallow. Drink water. Drink more water. Spear another leaf. Repeat.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is important to do things right. Otherwise, when you live alone, it can devolve very quickly. Stand on ceremony. Observe the rites. That’s how you get through the day.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMargaret\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIT’S A TRICKY PROJECT. The house sits atop a sloping meadow, and the clients want to flatten out the land and make an English garden—totally wrong for the landscape and the surrounding area. It is woodsy and natural there in rural Connecticut, where they are. She wonders why they didn’t buy a tidy, flat plot of land near potato fields instead, or a suburban house in Darien—a tabula rasa, where they can put up high hedges and rose gardens in symmetrical rectangles and live out their Anglophilic fantasy undisturbed by the illogical terrain of the hills. They have friends in the area, they said. That is why they bought in Litchfield. But this is not her problem. Her problem is persuading them to listen to the land.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt sounds pretentious or mystical, but it’s true: The land dictates what will happen to it. So it is not a problem in the end. A lot of clients try to have their way, but eventually, always, they have to yield. If not to her, then to nature. No one has enough time or money to bend nature to his will. Nature is patient, can wait for centuries.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMargaret leans over the desk, wielding her ruler and pencil. This is the part she loves most, the clean beginning, when it is only her and the land and the blank paper, all possibility, no problems. She has her drawings spread around her. She always starts by hand and ends up on the computer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe problems come later, when concept collides with reality and human nature.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA stone fruit orchard on the east side of the garden. This will appease them. She sketches in some trees. These clients will buy them mature. So much easier. So much more expensive. An allée of trees will provide shade for an afternoon promenade. It is part of her job to idealize life, to proffer a gracious, perfect existence in its most optimistic aspect. She knows all too well that soon the constraints of reality, budget, and deadline will alter her plan until it’s almost unrecognizable. She also knows that this particular project will never get off the ground. This is not a real project. These are friends of friends who forwarded her photos and surveys and asked for her opinion. She’s doing this as a favor for her friends, and she suspects that they suggested her so she will have something to do, to fill the hours, to try to still her mind. Still, she loses herself in the work.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey arrived three years ago in Hong Kong, Clarke and Margaret Reade, with their three children. He is with a U.S. multinational, she says if anyone asks, which they always do. The sound of that term always gives her a frisson: anonymous, vaguely threatening, nationalistically contradictory in terms. It reminds her of when she reads in the paper about companies with names like Archer Daniels and Monsanto, names she has only vaguely heard of but that own everything that touches people’s daily lives, like toothpaste and children’s aspirin and milk.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut here they always just ask, Which one? as everyone here works for a U.S. multinational. They don’t see anything funny about the term. And she tells them M_ D_. Oh, yes, they say, do you know John McBride and Suzie? From Winnetka? I think John works in sourcing? So he’s up in the Pearl River delta a lot? They natter on and on while she wonders if she’ll ever find anyone who understands. So many people here seem hermetically sealed, as if they live in Hong Kong but are untouched by it. They live in an almost wholly American section of the former British colony, now China, and are only inconvenienced sometimes by the lack of good tomatoes or how hard it is to find a really good hamburger.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe looks up. It is noon. A gift when time passes and she is unaware. She has a lunch in town in an hour, and she has to get ready.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is with a party planner, of all people. Clarke is turning fifty, and she wants to throw him a big celebration but has no idea how to do it and, really, no inclination either.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe showers, thinking about all she has to do. This is the last day of school before the Christmas holiday, they have a dinner party to go to tonight, and then they are leaving for vacation the next day. Suitcases need to be packed, children readied. Dressed, with wet hair, she leaves, bidding good-bye to Essie, her Filipina helper, flags down a taxi on Repulse Bay Road, slides into the plasticky backseat, fastens her seat belt. Loud Cantopop fills the interior of the cab.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Four Seasons Hotel, please,” she says. “Can you turn down the radio?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe nods. The taxi flag goes down. They careen around corners; she holds on to the handle on the side, thighs sliding on the vinyl. Outside, despite the December date, all is green and sky and sea. They drive through the Aberdeen tunnel to emerge on the other side, where gray office buildings crowd the skyline. Margaret is reminded again how life on the South Side is the suburbs and Central, the town.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePriscilla is thin and blond, with a mess of clattery bangles down her sinewy, tanned forearm. They jangle as she lifts her arm to shake hands with Margaret in the cavernous lobby of the Four Seasons. An enormous Christmas tree looms above them. Priscilla’s hair is expensively highlighted, with strands of gold.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Nice to meet you, Margaret.” She smiles. Chiclet teeth.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Nice to meet you too,” Margaret says. “Thank you for coming.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Of course.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey go to the coffee shop, order drinks. Priscilla doesn’t know, Margaret realizes. She doesn’t know about G. Okay. She recalibrates to this. She doesn’t know how she knows if people know her story or not, but she always does.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Have you lived in Hong Kong long?” asks Priscilla.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Three years now. And you?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Six. Do you like it?” Expats always ask one another that, after they declare their time, often with a searching look.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I do,” Margaret says. “I do.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Good,” Priscilla says. “I hate it when people complain all the time about being out here. They miss the most ridiculous things. Like Safeway or a special type of diaper. I just want to say, look around!”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMargaret is taken aback by the woman’s vehemence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Sorry,” Priscilla says, noticing. “I just think you should try to be happy where you are and not complain all the time. People here have the most extraordinary lives, and they focus only on what they’re missing.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I suppose so.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“What brought you here?” Priscilla asks, gesturing for the waiter.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The usual. Husband.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“And you work as well?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Used to. Not so much anymore.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“What kind of work?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Landscape architecture. I design gardens for people.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“How lovely.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yes, it can be.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Hard to do here in Hong Kong, though. No one has any land.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yes, but everything’s over e-mail now anyway, although I barely work anymore. Although China could be interesting.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yes, China, of course.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey both stop to ponder its enormity and possibility, as happens thousands of times every day in Hong Kong, where China’s proximity and power is both celebrated and feared.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMargaret tenses, waiting for the next question. She has cultivated a very accurate sense of when it might come in an introductory conversation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“And children? Have any?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe looks down at the menu. “I’ve never been here. What’s good? I’m starving.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePriscilla takes it in stride. “The chopped salad, the Hainan chicken. Everything is good here.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Oh, lovely. Chopped salad!”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey murmur the conversational inanities and order from the waiter.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“So how does this work?” she asks, after they have ordered. “I’ve never used someone like you before.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“You tell me what you want, I try to make it happen.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“You can guide me, though.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Of course. This is for your husband’s fiftieth, is that right?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yes, in May.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Any ideas on themes or what he’d like?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Half-life?” She laughs, but Priscilla does not. “Mid-century?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePriscilla has taken out a big yellow pad on which she writes “Clarke Reade’s 50th birthday” with a Sharpie. She looks up, all business. Margaret wonders why she always thinks everything seems absurd. Like it seems absurd to write the client’s name and event on a yellow legal pad. With a Sharpie. No one else seems to find it the least bit strange.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Thoughts?” Priscilla tries again.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I haven’t the slightest idea, I’m afraid,” Margaret says. “Is there something you can suggest?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter going over possible themes and venues and dates, they get the check. Margaret opens her bag, unsure of the protocol, but Priscilla waves her away. As they take leave of each other, Priscilla asks again. “Do you have children?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMargaret gathers her jacket from the back of the chair, where she has hung it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yes,” she says. “They’re at TASOHK, you know, the American school.” She nods, looks away, past Priscilla and her bright smile.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd that’s it. She has survived the moment. She walks quickly to the glass doors of the hotel lobby and pushes through to the cool air outside. She gulps and breathes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMercy\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHONG KONG was supposed to have been a new start—if one could say one needed a new start at the age of twenty-four, which is how old she was when she came, three years ago. It is safe to say that life has not turned out the way Mercy thought it was supposed to.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut she cannot say she wasn’t warned. Her mother came home ashen-faced one day when Mercy was thirteen. She wouldn’t tell Mercy what had happened, but her father, dependably drunk and abrasive in the evenings, told her the bad news. Superstitious mother had gone to a fortune-teller to waste his money and find out about Mercy’s future. Idiot fortune-teller had clucked his tongue at her reading, said he had rarely seen someone whose life would be so muddled. She would have bad luck. Things would always go topsy-turvy. She was not a bad person, but things would never go her way. Understand? Her father poured some more whiskey, face already tomato red.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKorean \u003ci\u003eajumma\u003c\/i\u003e, busybodies that they were, were all amateur fortune-tellers themselves and liked to read faces. One Sunday, at their church in Queens, she had overheard her mother’s friends talking about the composition of her face having no \u003ci\u003ebok\u003c\/i\u003e, no good fortune. Thin, jutting eyebrows, cheekbones that were too sharp, a chin that was so pointy it would cut away all the good. She’s pretty, one said. Pretty in a cheap way, said another. That makes it worse. That will invite the bad luck. And the bad men.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLater, she found the fortune-teller’s predictions in her mother’s underwear drawer. She recognized the characters of her name and opened the red paper booklet. It was written in Korean and Chinese characters, so she couldn’t read it, but she took it out and asked a Korean man, a stranger on the street, what it meant. In Flushing, where they lived, it was almost like living in Seoul, there were so many Koreans. The man gave her an odd look but translated a few lines.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This means, you are riding a fast horse with no saddle. The rider will fall.” He hesitated. “And here it says, a crow cannot soar like an eagle.” His eyes dropped, and he handed the book back to her. “I have to go.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eA crow cannot soar like an eagle\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was always there in the back of her mind, but what did you do with a fate like that but dismiss it as old Korean folklore that had nothing to do with her?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt Columbia, she had been disheartened to see how hard it was to do well, to stand out. When she got in, she thought, I’ll show those Korean ladies who has bad fortune. But it was harder than that. In her freshman class alone, there had been an Oscar-nominated actress, a boy who’d had two poems published in the\u003ci\u003e New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, someone who had sailed around the world and been written up in \u003ci\u003eNational Geographic\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd this is the thing too. In college, Mercy had gone above her station, as she thinks of it in gloomier moments. Perhaps this was part of her misfortune. There was a whole new kind of person there, people she had seen in movies and read about in books. Rich people; really, really rich people. Kids who had drivers, who had never done a load of laundry, whose parents had private planes. Her own parents were not dry cleaners or deli owners, as some curious new “friends” had asked. Her dad had an unsuccessful import\/export company with an office that was always littered with samples of ugly, Korean-made poly sports apparel, and her mom, long-suffering, helped out at her aunt’s Korean restaurant and told Mercy she had only one child because she could see that life wasn’t going to get any better. Mercy never apologized about her family but never volunteered information either.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMercy never knew why she was included in this new crowd. An accident, she thought, born of the fact that she was pretty, looked surprisingly good in a forty-dollar strapless dress from Forever 21, was always up for a dare, and that her freshman-year roommate was a friendly, pudgy Chinese girl from Hong Kong, who went downtown one Saturday in October and bought a cherry-red Mercedes convertible and whose parents had a three-bedroom pied-à-terre on East Seventy-fourth Street. Philena was a homely, uncomplicated rich girl who liked to have lots of people around, always, and included Mercy without drama, paying for everything with her black American Express card.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat first year of university, Mercy studied her classmates, the rich ones, a special breed unto themselves. She noted the soft, flabby skin of the boys, their whiskey breath, the petulant way they talked to their mothers, the way things always got sorted for them. They came from all over the world: Abdul, from Saudi Arabia, who went to London every weekend and would sometimes invite a girl from school, who would come back with six new pairs of shoes and a dress from Harrods and a story about a party at Elton John’s country house, although privately Mercy thought the whole thing made them little better than escorts; or Cal, from LA, whose father was a director and who hung out with Julianne Moore on the weekends; or the boys from Manhattan, so many of them, with their hedge fund fathers, bony, raspy-voiced mothers, and limitless credit cards. The rich boys were thin-skinned, with a puffed-up bravado that was millimeters thin; if you nicked it, they collapsed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMercy borrowed Jimmy Choos from Philena and went to the apartments of upperclassmen (oh, the irony of that term!) in doorman buildings, where you walked in to the heady smell of pot and dirty laundry and the drone of some basketball game always in the background. There were half-empty bottles of Johnnie Walker and Jim Beam on the Corian kitchen counters, props for an always ongoing party. The boys\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48338550948069,"sku":"NP9780143108429","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143108429.jpg?v=1769572650","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-expatriates-isbn-9780143108429","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}