Twelve
Fangli’s in her room when we arrive back at the hotel, but she comes into mine when she hears us. From her reddened eyes, I know she’s been crying but I don’t feel comfortable enough to ask her what’s wrong, so I take my cue from Sam, who pretends not to notice. Maybe this is normal for her. He goes to his own suite down the hall, leaving us alone with Mei, who is in the kitchen making tea.
Fangli shakes her head, her hair bouncing. “I can’t get over how much we look alike,” she says. “How was dinner?”
I take off the wig and toss it on the table, where it spreads like an octopus. “It wasn’t what I expected,” I say as I scratch my head. Gross, but the wig makes me itchy.
“How so?” Fangli accepts the tea Mei brings out and I breathe in the delicate flowery aroma. It’s not jasmine or chrysanthemum so I sniff again. Maybe chamomile. Mei reminds Fangli of her personal trainer appointment in the morning, picks up my abandoned wig without comment, and leaves.
I sit cautiously on a chair, not wanting to tear a seam in my dress. “I was worried people would come talk to me,” I say.
“That happens occasionally, but most people are respectful, particularly in your country.”
“Some aren’t?”
She looks at me over the cup before she places it back on the table. “I’m not a person to them. I’m an object, a product. Commodities don’t have feelings or emotions.”
“Ah.” I don’t know what to say. My last boyfriend had a verbal code for these situations, where you have to acknowledge the issue but don’t have a productive comment. I dust it off and deploy. “That’s rough. How do you feel about that?”
“It’s upsetting.” Fangli smiles. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Asking. Understanding. Not telling me I should be grateful, that it’s my duty to be seen and let fans come to me. That it comes with the territory of being rich and famous and I knew what I signed up for when I started acting.”
I think about this. Even for a movie star, it’s not right. “You need space to be yourself.”
“I wonder who that is at times,” she says softly. Then she shakes her shoulders like a wet dog and puts her tea down. “Tell me about your day.”
“Well, I mostly slept.” I grimace. “Sorry, didn’t mean to rub that in.”
“I’m only a bit jealous. The dinner?”
“Oh, incredible.” I describe the food in excruciating detail until I notice her confused expression. “What?”
“I meant with Sam. Was he…” She searches for a word.
“I can handle it.”
Fangli eyes me sympathetically. “I’m sorry he’s being difficult,” she says. “I’ll talk to him.”
“No, we’ve figured it out. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
She nods. “Thank you.” When she closes her eyes, her entire face draws in and grows tight.
“Tired?” I ask. I go to the fridge and grab two cans of seltzer. According to Mei, Fangli only drinks out of glass, so I open the cabinet.
“The can is fine.” She reaches out and plucks it from my hand.
“Mei said glass only.”
Fangli holds the can to the side of her throat to enjoy the cold before opening it. It leaves a faint red mark on her skin. “I don’t care, to be honest. The image consultant said it was better because it was more sophisticated.”
“Image consultant?” I can guess the point from the name but it seems utterly unnecessary.
She grins at me. “I see her every six months. She was trained as a futurist.”
This is intriguing. “What does she tell you?”
Fangli tilts the can to drink in gulps. “It’s quite an experience. I enjoy it.”
“She dresses you?”
“Not for that money.” Fangli laughs. “She comes in for half a day, and we talk about world events and trends she sees. She works with CEOs mostly.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I need to be exactly a little ahead. Not too much and not behind.”
“How?” I’m puzzled. “How do you do that?”
“Training.” She shrugs. “Plus at this point, I create trends. If I cut my hair like yours, you would see a spike in that look globally in the next three months, beginning with specific demographic segments in Asian urban centers before spreading out to Western and European cities. Advertisers map out my brand reach and potential for market penetration before they sign me to promote their products.”
“Whoa.” She says that like it’s no biggie but it hits me that being Fangli is a multimillion-dollar business. This must be why Sam is so worried; there’s a lot of money at stake if I screw up. No pressure.
“I try not to think about it.” She beams. “Now tell me about what you’d be doing if you weren’t here.”
“Like, if I had a real job that wasn’t pretending to be you?” I think of Todd and shiver. My fear of him… Wait. Fear? Was I scared of him? It’s such a big word, more suited to a life-or-death situation than his kind of garden-variety assholeness, but the word sits right. I’d been scared, but to be honest, it wasn’t only Todd’s actions but my own reactions that frightened me. I’d freeze when he approached me. What did that say about me that I didn’t stop him?
“Or anything.”
“I’d go see my mom. She has Alzheimer’s and lives in a nursing home.” I get that out quickly, not wanting any pity.
Fangli doesn’t give me the look I dread. She only nods. “She’s lucky to have a devoted daughter since your father passed away.”
It must have been noted in the dossier she’d received from the private eye, but she does me the credit of mentioning it straight out instead of pretending she didn’t know about Dad. “He died almost ten years ago.” Cancer’s a bitch. I try not to think about it.
“Ah. I never knew my mother. She died when I was a baby. My father remarried to a nice woman but we have little in common.”
“Is he alive?”
“Lives in Beijing. I see him when I go home but he refuses to leave China.”
“Why?” There’s so much of the world to see.
“He says the world is in China.” She rolls her eyes. “I have no idea what it means either.”
“He didn’t have a problem with you acting?”
Fangli stretches and pulls her mass of hair back into a loose ponytail that she immediately drops down. “I’ve only ever wanted two things in my life. A pet cat—which he refused when I was a child and now I’m not home enough to take care of even if I had one—and to act.”
“How did you know that’s what you wanted to do?” I’m intrigued.
“I always knew.” She flicks the tab of her can idly with a perfectly manicured finger painted with clear nail polish. “My school was chosen to put on a play in honor of a visit from the General Secretary. One of the directors from the Central Academy of Drama saw me and told my father that I would bring glory to China. It was the only reason my father let me apply. He wanted me to be a scientist.”
“Really.” I could be wrong, but I don’t think many North American actors are encouraged to go into the industry out of patriotism.
“That’s where I met Sam,” she adds. “We were in the same year at school.”
“Did you ever…” I wriggle my eyebrows with meaning as I test the ground. I’m nosy, okay? She doesn’t have to answer.
“Never.”
“You’re not a couple?” I feel lighter, which is weird because it’s not as if not dating Fangli means Sam’s open to me.
She shudders. “Sam is like my brother, but people find it impossible to believe a man and woman can simply be friends. I could never see him like that. Ever.” She makes a kind of hilarious choking face.
“Really?” I lean forward. “Not even when you met?” Because I imagine even in the blundering teenage years Sam would have stood out.
“At the Academy, there was no time for dating, and in any case, I had a crush on his best friend.”
“A love triangle?”
“We were young and neither Sam nor I are interested in each other, so more of a one-way love line than a triangle.” Fangli laughs. “Poor Chen. He started a technology company and I haven’t seen him in ages. He lives in Vancouver.” She raises her eyebrows. “The detective said you were single.”
“For two years,” I say. “Riley was—I mean, is, he’s not dead—a nice guy.”
“But?”
“I don’t know.” Talking with Fangli is so comfortable, like talking to the sister I always wanted. Or what I imagine sisterhood to be like. “It was never a raging passion but one day I cooked dinner and we ate and when I was doing the dishes, I knew if I had to do that every night for the rest of my life, I would shrivel to a husk.”
“You cooked and did the dishes?” Fangli frowns. “What did he do?”
I blink. “I don’t know. I always did them.”
“I see. Well, how did he take it?” Fangli leans forward, eyes wide.
“That’s the zinger. I agonized for a week before I decided the best way to tell him. I didn’t want to hurt him, so I wanted to avoid a restaurant in case the place would have bad memories for him. We lived together, but it seemed cold to sit him down in the living room. In the end, I asked him to go for a walk.”
“Why that?”
“I thought it would help distract from the message.”
She nods as if filing this away. “The zinger, as you called it?”
“Right. I do all this planning and then I tell him, Hey, it’s not you, it’s me but I think this is over.”
“Did he cry?” She leans further in.
“Nope.”
“Yell?”
“Not at all.”
Her nose scrunches up. “What did he say?”
Even now, I can’t believe it. “He said, ‘Okay, cool.’”
Fangli waits. Then she asks, “That’s it?”
“That’s it. ‘Okay, cool.’ Nothing else. We turned around and went home. I slept in the spare room and we were very genial roommates for three weeks before he found a new place. He shook my hand when he left.”
I hadn’t told Anjali that tidbit, too stunned and almost embarrassed when it happened. Fangli’s eyes are huge with disbelief.
“A handshake?” she repeats.
“Like this.” I give her the single firm and professional shake that Riley gave me before he walked out the door, like I was a new client he was confident was going to sign on because of the solid pitch he’d given.
I can see her try to control it, but Fangli’s lip twitches. The more she presses her lips together, the more I can feel my own starting to edge up.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, covering her mouth with her hand. “It’s not funny. But a handshake?”
I’ll give her this—she makes a valiant attempt to get herself under control. Then I give her a nod, that sharp, imperious, and excessively irritating dip of the head that Riley’d always given me whenever he’d finished explaining in detail why he was right and I was wrong.
That’s all it takes. Fangli snorts inelegantly into her hand, which sets me off. This in turn starts her giggling, which gets me cackling. Within seconds, we’re both doubled up, laughing until we can’t breathe. Riley might have been the trigger, but this is a simple and much-needed stress release.
“How long were you together?” she gasps.
“Two years.” I wipe the tears away, but when she hears that, her giggles start up again.
“Two years,” she finally whispers to herself as I rub my stomach, which hurts from laughing. She stands up. “What sort of a man does that?”
“Good question,” I say, sobering a little.
She looks at me closely. “One that doesn’t deserve you.”
“He’s out of my life,” I say. “It was easy to shake it off.”
That sets Fangli off again and occasional gusts of laughter follow as she waves good night and goes to bed. I can’t help but smile. I’d always had lingering feelings about that breakup, wondering how boring I was that “okay” was all the emotion Riley could summon. I’d felt lacking but Fangli’s contagious glee had shifted something in my mind. The humor plucked out the remaining sting. Did Fangli give me the validation that I didn’t know I craved, or was it simply relief at telling someone? Regardless, I could put it to rest.
Speaking of rest…I crack a yawn so big it nearly turns my face inside out. Bed for me, too.