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best suite "with an Oriental motif." It so happened that the suite’s decor was imitation Qing Dynasty. Chinese vases and rice paper lampshades abounded. Worse, a giant pair of scrolls of Emperor and Empress Kang Xi stared down at us in the sitting room, bringing back my boyhood terror upon seeing my great-grandfather and his third concubine before the family altar. I wondered if the clerk felt that anyone sounding Chinese would not have had enough good taste for the American Waldorf.
    Marlene promptly pronounced the suite tacky. For birthday wish, she had this to say: “I wish I were back in Shanghai, if only for a day.”
    I remember staring at her and forcing myself not to bring up the name Hong Tao. Three decades ago, Hong Tao was my pal at Columbia and Marlene was his girlfriend. Their disagreement over the future of China led Tao to return to Shanghai. It took me years to win Marlene over, but I am afraid I never completely won her heart. With all her family either in Hong Kong or in the States, her mentioning of Shanghai on a night like this could only bring me to one conclusion.
    Her beauty, it turned out, was as transient as my pride of having made a pile in America as an immigrant. Before we attempted sex that night, I buffed my slippers on the “WT” monogrammed bedside towel and made a silent wish of my own: power to go along with my money.
    Nothing came of the sex. It seemed to me that all her height had gone to her width. Seeing her lying there like a sacrificial lamb was instantly off-putting. I gave up, bid her good night, and sank into my half of the king bed. My more immediate wish was that we were back home, in our own separate beds.
    Within twenty months of my last attempt to romance her, she died of a rare form of cancer. I paraded her through the array of treatments: chemotherapy, herbal potions, yoga, and uptown shrinks. Lotus even offered her own mother to help take care of my dying wife for a handsome sum, which I accepted, only to be fired by Marlene within a week. “She is a butcher’s wife from Chinatown, not a servant. Nobody knows how to be a proper servant any more, not in New York, anyway. What is this world coming to?”
    In the end, nothing worked for Marlene. All the modern miracles stopped short of saving the "shining pearl on the palm" of a Hong Kong tycoon, the wife of a New York Seventh Avenue big shot in the making. She died unsung, un-mourned, unmentioned in The Gotham Tribune obituary page.
    I had wanted to draft something for Lotus to type up and send over to the paper. But when she said, "Are you sure you want to publicize this, Boss?" I changed my mind. I knew well that my success was partially attributable to my in-law's influence, at least during my pioneering days. I hated being reminded of that. Now that both the old man and my fair lady were gone, I had never felt freer. The watchful, disapproving patriarchal eyes from Hong Kong had finally closed.
    That sense of independence has continued since, until I accepted the Siew invitation to come here tonight. But I know I'm paying my dues for a different type of autonomy.
    The dinner is on the second floor in the grand ballroom. Surprised that I'm ushered to the center table, I look around to search for other Chinese faces planted by the Siew clan. There are pretty women and cheerful men everywhere. But no other Chinese.
    Like a beam from a searchlight, Leonardo DellaFave’s shining crown is the first thing I see. In a flashback, it reminds me those of the monkeys’. Short, stout, and lively, DellaFave is a political Danny DeVito. Gigi DellaFave, in two-inch heels and a black see-through gown, appears twice his height and half his age. The tabloids have hinted that this second wife was once a call girl.
    The pair sits down at our table and begins to exchange pleasantries. "New York's back to the Republicans where it belongs," someone says. "Y-y-es," others echo. I stand up, conscious of my boarding school reach across the