We Are Now Beginning Our Descent by James Meek Page B

mouth. He began to inhale gently and lowered his mouth to the woman’s lapel where the crimson mote lay. With the tissue paper fluttering against the stiff cloth he sucked in sharply, pulled away and folded the cloth in his right hand. He picked apart the folds with his fingers and pointed to the minute speck of lipstick. The woman looked down at her lapel. There was no mark. She laughed and clapped her hands a couple of times.
    ‘Well, thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘That was smooth. Do you always put a tissue over your mouth when you do that?’ They both laughed and blushed.
    ‘An old girlfriend taught me,’ said Kellas. ‘The only other time I tried it, I made a terrible mess.’
    ‘Either way, it’s an introduction, right?’ Her name was Elizabeth Chang. She was from Shanghai – ‘CBC,’ she said, ‘Chinese-born Chinese’ – her family lived in Boston, she was studying art history at Oxford. It was her second degree. She was on her way to visit a friend in New York. There were diamonds set in the gold of her earstuds. She was big, not fat but tall and broad and strong. She had a deep, hearty laugh, like an older woman’s, which made Kellas feel comfortable, and she laughed readily, at the slightest hint of a joke.
    ‘Oh, my God, my friend’s a writer!’ said Elizabeth after she asked what he did, and he told her. ‘She’s just got an amazing deal with Karpaty Knox for her first novel.’
    ‘That’s my American publisher,’ said Kellas. ‘I’m signing the contract for my book there this afternoon.’
    Elizabeth congratulated him.
    ‘Thanks. Karpaty Knox, you know, and my British publishers, they’re owned by this old French publishing house, Éditions Perombelon. The guy who runs the operation, Didier, he made his Anglo-Saxons buy it. He liked the plot. He had me go over to Paris to meet him. How much is your friend’s deal worth, if you don’t mind me asking?’
    ‘A million dollars.’
    ‘That’s a lot of money,’ Kellas said, after a moment. ‘How old’s your friend?’
    Patricia Lee Heung, the friend, was the same age as Elizabeth, and, like her, had been born in Shanghai and emigrated to America with her family as a teenager. Her novel was called Red Hearth, White Crane . It was a multi-generational saga about a young woman whose Chinese mother dies in childbirth, is persuaded by her communist lover to help assassinate her American father, suffers persecution by Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution, escapes to America, rises to wealth as a luxury Chinese cookware manufacturer, getsromanced by a handsome young American who marries her and tricks her out of her fortune, returns to China as capitalism becomes legal, and meets her former communist lover, now a recently widowed software billionaire. He begs her forgiveness, and they marry, with a glamorous wedding. The book ends with the children from their previous marriages graduating top of their class at Harvard together.
    ‘That being tricked out of your fortune, it’s a bitch,’ said Kellas.
    ‘Listen to you, Mr First Class Traveller! You don’t like that kind of book, do you?’
    ‘Is it a kind of book?’
    ‘Yeah, the kind of book where brave good-looking people overcome their problems, get rich, fall in love, get married, have children and live happily ever after. That’s the kind of book American and Chinese people want to read.’
    ‘That’s one and a half billion bookmarks. Better alert the trade.’
    ‘Maybe they should be reading yours. What’s it about?’ She’d become a little aggressive on her friend’s behalf. She was enjoying herself. Kellas looked out of the window. An unbroken plain of biscuity cloud spread to the horizon. The champagne was getting warm, but he kept on drinking it.
    ‘It’s a thriller,’ he said.
    ‘Uh-huh.’
    ‘It’s set in the present. It’s about a war between Europe and America.’
    ‘That’ll never happen!’ Elizabeth looked as if he’d uttered something profane. Her