"Why aren't we staying at the Grand Hyatt?" Lulu moans, as we enter our lovely yet dusty Art Noveau-designed room at the historic Peace Hotel on the Bund in Shanghai. "This place looks very shop-worn....and it feels deserted!"
"The Grand Hyatt is expensive! I knew I shouldn't have spoiled you with that first class flight," I admonish her as I throw my suitcase down on the bed, which causes a cloud of dust to erupt from the bedspread. "And there's a very specific reason I chose this hotel."
"Don't tell me - you once slept with the owner and we're getting a discount," Lulu says as she opens one of her suitcases, only to find that it's been surreptitiously stuffed with Donna Karan lingerie in lieu of her personal clothing. "Oh bloody hell! I thought you had these damn bras and panties FedExed here!"
"Wow Lulu, you must think I'm made of money," I tell her. "And don't you worry about your clothes - we'll get you a nice cheongsam at one of the local markets. We'll give you a total Wong Kar-Wai makeover! Your wardrobe was starting to look a little dated anyway."
"I don't know how you talked me into this trip," Lulu groans as she sticks her head in the minibar and starts rooting around like a pig digging for truffles. "Now tell me again why we're staying in this flea trap while Jack-the-struggling-freelancer is at a 5-star hotel."
"We're staying here at the Peace Hotel," I begin grandly, "because this is where Madame Mao and the rest of the Gang of Four where headquartered during the Great Cultural Revolution of 1966. Our mission, my dear fashion comrade, is to stage another kind of revolution -- an underwear revolution."
Lulu emerges from the minibar clutching a small bottle of Moet. She stares at me blankly and is silent for several long moments. "Oh. My. God. It's worse than I thought. You have lost your mind," she says finally.
"Don't be so dramatic Lu," I say as I pluck the mini-bottle of Moet from her grasp and begin unwrapping the cork. "It's called an angle. That's what we publicists do, okay? We create angles. If it weren't for my angles, you'd still be peddling those handbags on a blanket on St. Mark's Place."
"And if it weren't for your plastic surgeon, you wouldn't have any angles," Lulu retorts as she snatches the bottle of Moet back from me.
"Why don't you put that bottle down," I say, ignoring her cutting remark. "I need you to help me start unpacking all this underwear so we can hang it up and start steaming out the wrinkles. Then I need you to get on the phone and call the Minister of Fashion to make sure everything is set for the show at the Jade Buddha Temple."
"If you were a real Maoist, you wouldn't be treating me like a slave in the colonies," Lulu snaps, throwing herself down on a worn-out and chipped dragon head-adorned chaise. "I need a few hours and a few glasses of champagne to get over my jetlag. You and your Red Panty Brigade are just going to have to hold off on the revolution until I'm good and ready."
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