bridge. Everyone in Palm Beach attends
the same parties, Greene explained, and
wakes up the next morning to read about
the selfsame parties in the town newspa-
per, printed on glossy paper so as not to
smudge the gloved hands of its readers.
“Palm Beach is a small town,” Greene said.
“I imagine if you want to do something you
shouldn’t be doing, you go out of town.”
Luxury items—champagne, caviar,
tru es—have no inherent value. They
are made desirable through scarcity. But
for the tiny stratum of society for whom
nothing is unattainable, the common-
place, paradoxically, can attain a luster of
its own. If calling up an escort like J’Anine
is akin to ordering Wagyu beef from room
service, then visiting Orchids is like swing-
ing by the McDonald’s drive-through.
Sometimes you just want a burger.
IV. THE MEN
W
henever I encountered
men of Palm Beach in
their natural habitat, in
hotel lobbies, inlet tiki
bars, and private clubs,
they were exceedingly eager to share
stories of their visits to spas like Orchids.
In midtown Manhattan, at a smoke-
illed club frequented by seasonal
residents like Rudy Giuliani, I fell into
conversation about Kraft with a man at
its mahogany bar. I explained that after
many months of working on this story
for Vanity Fair, I still could not gure out
why Kraft had acted with such abandon.
The man, who identied himself as the
son of a famous politician, explained
that men go to massage parlors formany reasons. In fact, he told me, he
was heading to one himself in a few
days. If I liked, I would be welcome to
accompany him as his guest. (The trip
did not take place.)
At a bar in Jupiter, a Patriots fan named
Billy told me that he is a regular at
Orchids, and had visited the spa only two
weeks before the raid. His father and
uncle had served in World War II, he
explained, at a time when the U.S. mili-
tary tacitly endorsed prostitution as good
for morale. Over the years, many soldiers
returned from Japan and Korea and Viet-
nam with a highly sexualized view of the
women they met.
“Marry an Asian woman,” Billy recalled
being told. “You’ll be happy for the rest
of your life. Asian women know how to
take care of a man. You come home and
she cooks dinner, takes your shoes o,
never complains.”
Billy was 42 when he was rst taken
to a “jack shack” on his way to a Patriots
game in New England. After moving to
South Florida, friends he made at a local
bar told him about Orchids.
“A lot of my friends think Asian wom-
en are very attractive,” Billy said. “That’s
what I think myself. The girls are beauti-
ful. They are thin, in shape. That’s why
American guys like that.”
Indeed, on one of my rst nights on
the island, I was sitting at a hotel bar,
working up the courage to crash a recep-
tion for alumni of the Harvard Business
School, Kraft’s alma mater, that had
already begun out on the deck. An older
gentleman approached me and asked
where the function was. I pointed to the
deck. He told me he couldn’t hear what I
was saying. I suggested he try the deck.
He became upset and walked away.
Later, the man approached me
again, this time to apologize for having
behaved rudely. By way of explanation,
he told me that he had thought I was a
member of the hotel’s service staff. I
introduced myself as a reporter in town
on a story, and we began chatting about
Kraft and Jupiter. Suddenly, he leaned
toward me—this older man who only
moments earlier had treated me with
disdain—and began making sexually
explicit comments. “I had all these fan-
tasies about you,” he confessed.
On the island, there were only two
preordained roles for a young woman of
Asian descent. Being a reporter was not
one of them.STRIP-MALL SERVICE
After Florida police raided
Orchids of Asia Day Spa
(above), co-owner Hua Zhang
(right) was charged with
procuring prostitution. Zhang
started as an esthetician
in China (below).110 VANITY FAIR NOVEMBER 2019
PHOTOGRAPHS: LEFT, FROM TOP, BY BARRY CHIN/THE BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES, FROM PBSO/MEGA, COURTESY OF ZHANG HUA.RIGHT, TOP,THE PALM BEACH POST/ZUMAPRESS.COM; BOTTOM, BY AL DRAGO/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX