"She did tell me that her parents ordered her to go into hiding. But if they adore Astrid as much as I know they do, I don't understand how they could be so coldhearted. I mean, she's done absolutely nothing wrong! None of this was her fault," Charlie tried to reason.
Alex leaned back in his chair and grabbed a fistful of wasabi peas from the little bowl on the table. "The thing you have to understand about my parents is that the only thing that matters to them is their reputation. They care about appearances more than anything else in life. My father has spent his whole life crafting his legacy-being the elder statesman and all that shit, and my mum just cares that she's the queen bee of the establishment crowd. So everything in their world has to be according to their exacting standards. They excommunicated me for defying their wishes and marrying a girl whose skin tone was just one shade too dark for them."
"I still can't believe they disowned you for marrying Salimah. She's a Cambridge-educated pediatrician, for God's sake!" Charlie exclaimed.
"How accomplished she was didn't matter to them one bit. I'll never forget what my father said to me when I told him I was marrying her with or without his blessing. He said, 'If you don't care about your own future, think of the children you will have with that woman. For eleven generations, the blood will never be pure.' And that's the last conversation I ever had with my father."
"Unbelievable!" Charlie shook his head. "Were you surprised that he harbored those feelings?"
"Not really. My parents have always been racist and elitist to the extreme, like so many in their crowd. Peel away the veneer of wealth and sophistication and you'll find extremely provincial, narrow-minded people. The problem is that they all have too much money, and it's come so easily to them that they think they're bloody geniuses and so they are always right."
Charlie laughed as he took a swig of his beer. "I'm lucky, I guess-my father always told me I was an idiot who was wrong about everything."
"By sheer dumb luck, my father was born in the right place at the right moment in time-when the whole region was going through enormous, unprecedented growth. And oh yeah, he also inherited an empire that had already been set up four generations before him. I think he looks down on people like your father-people who are self-made-because at the heart of it he is a deeply insecure individual. He knows he did absolutely nothing to deserve his fortune, and so the only thing he can do is disparage others who have the audacity to make their own money. His friends are all the same-they are frightened of the new money that's rolling in, and that's why they cluster in their little enclaves. I'm so glad I got away from all those people."
"If Astrid ever comes back to me, she'll never have to put up with her parents if she doesn't wish to. I want to build a whole new life for us, and I want her to live anywhere in the world she wants to live," Charlie said, his voice thick with emotion.
Alex raised his glass to Charlie. "You know, I always thought it was a pity the two of you didn't get married the first time around. You and Astrid let my parents scare you off too easily then. I swear to you, if I knew where Astrid was, you'd be the first person to know. But my sister is a smart girl. She knows how to disappear, and she knows where everyone's likely to be looking for her. If I were you, I'd be looking in all the unlikeliest places, rather than all her old haunts or cities where her best friends are."
After seeing Alex off, Charlie went back to his suite and found that the butler had already performed the turndown service. The shades were drawn, and the television was set on the channel with New Age music playing softly. He threw off his shoes, unbuttoned his shirt, and sank into the bed. After dialing room service to order a hamburger, he reached into his pocket and took out the letter that Astrid wrote to him from Paris, reading it yet again.
As Charlie stared at the words, the glow coming from the flat-screen TV at the foot of the bed shined through the piece of paper, and Charlie saw for the first time something on the heavy stationery that he'd never noticed before. Near the bottom-right corner was a faint watermark with a distinctive, ornate monogram pattern:
It suddenly occurred to Charlie that while the envelope had been from the Hotel George V in Paris, the letter itself was written on someone else's expensive custom stationery. Who in the world was DSA? On a lark, Charlie decided to call his friend Janice in Hong Kong, who was one of those people who seemed to know everybody on the planet.