Fourteen
I take the pants, the shirts, and the jumpsuit but say no to the dress. Sam lingers until the room is empty, and I try to forget he saw me two hours ago madly searching for my towel with half my face ripped off. When I was mostly naked.
“Art show tonight,” he says. “Fangli thinks you’re ready.”
“Fangli’s hardly even seen me as her.” I take off the wig to air out my brain for a few minutes. “Where is it?”
“Don’t you know?” He adjusts his sleeves.
I shrug. I haven’t been keeping track of what events are coming since Mei has been teaching me pretty much on the fly.
“The Museum of Contemporary Art.”
“Am I buying some art?”
“No. You’re interested in supporting local artists and you’re there to admire. It’s a private showing of a private collection.”
“Will there be media?”
“Possibly. There’s not much point in having expensive things and important people admire them if no one knows.” He yawns. “I can deal with that.”
“I can do it.”
He looks like he’s going to argue but instead checks his watch. “We leave in an hour.”
Then he’s gone before I can ask him for his key.
An hour. First I call the nursing home and they reassure me that Mom’s fine. Then I check my list, which is getting stressful and daunting again. What if I try sorting the tasks out by the time they will take? I spend a happy twenty minutes sorting and resorting the tasks from least to most time needed before deciding the value of the task was more important. Once they’re listed, I realize I’d spent the whole time working on the list instead of doing any tasks. It could be because one of those tasks, call the lawyer, makes me so uncomfortable I have trouble seeing the words. My eyes skitter over them.
Not a good start to creating my own productivity method. I add “find a way to deal with disagreeable tasks” on the list.
At least I’ve left myself enough time to get ready. I stick the plastic disks Mei found to my boobs, impressed at their enhanced perkiness. I should wear these all the time. She left me with instructions about freshening my face, and I dab and shade and line like a soldier applying camouflage paint before battle. The jumpsuit, which Trace and Hendon tailored with expert fingers before they left, slides over my skin like space-age armor, and I begrudge Sam slightly for having such good taste. I adjust the wig.
When I look in the mirror, this time I’m Fangli. Or Fangli in cute but comfortable shoes.
Mei ordered me to wait until Fangli arrives home so there aren’t conflicting reports of her being seen twice. I come out when I hear our adjoining door open and nearly exclaim out loud. If she looked beaten down that first day I saw her in the SUV, today she’s so drained she’s transparent.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She rubs her forehead. “A bit tired.”
This isn’t regular physical fatigue. I normally have the emotional sense of a squirrel but Fangli’s entire being radiates a feeling I’m very familiar with. She’s so tense she can barely move and so lethargic she doesn’t want to. I think she’s depressed. Not sad. Depressed, with all the loaded meaning the term brings.
“Fangli?” My voice is tentative.
She raises her head and tries to smile before her eyes widen. “Incredible. It’s like looking at my reflection when you have on makeup. Where did you get that jumpsuit? I want one.”
“Thanks.”
“You need better jewelry than those little gold hoops, though. Red for some color.” She calls to Mei, who appears in a few minutes and puts a pair of earrings and a bracelet into my hand.
“Please tell me these are fake.” The heavy cool weight of the bracelet slithers over my fingers when I pick it up.
Fangli shrugs. “It’s all insured. Put them on.”
The earrings are chandeliers that are surprisingly light for the number of gems in them, and the tennis bracelet of alternating rubies and diamonds soon warms on my wrist.
“Lovely,” Fangli approves. “Now you look finished.”
She stands up and we look at ourselves in the mirror. “How is it possible we look so alike?” I ask. “Do you have a photo of your parents?” Obviously Brad Reed of Brampton, Ontario, won’t look like Fangli’s father, but maybe our mothers are long-lost twins.
“Only my father.” We both pull out our phones, and when Sam comes in, we’re comparing and contrasting nose and eye shape.
Sam shakes his head. “If you weren’t only half, I’d think you were a real Chinese.”
My breath catches but before I can think of what to say, he turns to Fangli and speaks to her in Mandarin. His casual dismissal makes me… I don’t know. I’m sure German, which came up with schadenfreude and kummerspeck, has a word for the unnamable mix of emotions I have, but even as an adult, I don’t have the language. Why did it bother me less when Anjali said almost the same thing?
“Ready?” Sam turns to me and I decide it’s not worth the fight. What would I say? Tell him half is good enough to be real?
We’re both quiet as we descend. I’m not sure what Sam’s thinking but despite my choice to not mention what he said, the words keep turning over in my mind. A past therapist had once gently invited me to sit with the idea that I had internalized having less of a claim to call myself white or Chinese because I never felt I belonged to either group. I had ignored that because it’s not like I was going around feeling bad when no one gave me one of their Team White or Team Chinese T-shirts. But Sam’s comment has stirred up some apparently unresolved feelings.
I push those thoughts back down into the dark hole where they usually lurk. This won’t be the last time I hear something like this, and it wasn’t the first, but I don’t have the capacity to work through it, not when I’m about to go out in public impersonating an international celebrity. I firmly invite myself to sit with the idea that it’s time to concentrate on the job at hand.
This time when we go through the lobby, I channel my full Fangli attitude as I sweep through. It’s much easier when I don’t have to worry about tottering on pencil-thin heels and my boobs look aerodynamic.
The car is waiting and I’m a little horrified at how easily I’ve adapted to a life of deluxe perks. Thou art but an impersonator, I chant to myself. Two months and you’re back to the subway at rush hour, unseen and unknown.
Sam doesn’t comment on my performance, and I go under the assumption that no news is good news. Instead, he starts running through tips on how to handle the upcoming event. I would listen but his collar is slightly open at the neck and I’m distracted by wondering what he looks like with no shirt on. I bet there are images online but I definitely can’t check that on my phone here in front of him. Honestly, I wouldn’t even if he weren’t here. A few weeks ago, I’d have no hesitation about searching shirtless pictures of him, but now it’s squicky to even think of looking for them, as if I’d be violating his privacy—even if he’d posed for them.
I’d tucked Mei’s art dossier into my purse before I left, and I pull it out to give me something to think about besides Sam’s chest. Fangli’s favorite theme is rejuvenation and she built her collection around that, although it’s bizarre to me that a person my own age has an art collection, let alone a thematic one. I flip through the printouts again, frowning at a photograph of an upside-down face with the lips spread far apart in a pained scream, and try to see how it’s at all invigorating.
Sam sees my struggle and points to the artist’s statement. I read it twice but it might as well be written in Swedish for all that I understand it. “I’m not going to talk about the art,” I say. “I’ll furrow my brow and nod as I pace in front of it.”
“What if you’re asked what you think?”
I role-played this with Mei, so I feel confident. “That I’m fascinated and then ask them what they think.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Really?”
“Well, what would you say?”
“I’d pick an element and comment on it before asking them their opinion.”
I wave the pain-face picture at him and he plucks it out of my hand. “The placement calls to mind Yong Chen’s work on loneliness and juxtaposes the idea of isolation with that of rejuvenation. Is it an individual or communal activity?”
I try to release my clenched fists. “Because I am familiar with the works of Yong Chen.”
“Or you could say what you honestly think when you see it. How does it make you feel? What does it evoke?”
Before I answer, he’s barreling on to his next point, waving at the dossier. “Once art is out of the artist’s hands, it’s up to the viewer to determine meaning.”
“I disagree.”
“You do?” He raises those fine slanted eyebrows.
“Isolationism is passé.” I give a theatrical sniff and toss my wealth of fake hair. “You need to consider the context of the work and intent. Art isn’t created in a vacuum.”
“Yet interpretation is mediated by the experiences and values of the viewer.”
I’m getting into this. “Which are in turn affected by knowledge of the artist’s intention. Is ‘viewer’ even the correct word? Viewing implies distance and lack of engagement. Art should move us from viewing to active participation.”
“All art?” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. The pose drops his shirt down to reveal the shadowed muscles of his chest.
“Why do you act?” Looking down, I see his chest. Looking up, that face. There is no safe zone.
“I need to tell stories.” No hesitation when he answers. “Ones only I can give life to.”
“Do you want someone to watch and forget? Or to be changed?”
“The latter, obviously.”
I stare at him and he grimaces.
“That might be stretching it. Amused, at a minimum.”
“There you go.”
“You win.” He sits back up.
“We weren’t fighting.”
“No,” he says with surprise. “That won’t last.” He looks at his very pretty watch. “Almost time.”
Dread builds. Dinner the other night was fine since all I had to do was eat. This is going to be me on display, with people who are comfortable approaching me and expecting articulate conversation.
This is why I’m getting the semi-big bucks. Fangli is confident I can do it, and despite his multitude of personality flaws, Sam will have my back if it will help Fangli.
He’s getting into quiz mode. “What’s your latest art purchase?” he asks.
“A Murat Tekin painting,” I say. Triumphant, I scramble through my notes. “Damn. That’s the last I sold. Look at that price tag. Is this what art people talk about?”
“Depends on the crowd.” He sighs. “Why she can’t be interested in more traditional art, I don’t know.”
“What do you collect?” I ask. “Ming porcelains?”
“Ru ware from the Northern Song dynasty.” He glances at me out of the corner of those dark eyes. “My collection is currently touring. It’s in Berlin right now.”
“Oh.” I keep forgetting he comes from money as well as being famous. “That’s neat.”
He doesn’t grace this with a response, and I page through more screaming faces and outstretched hands as my anxiety ratchets up. At least I look right for the occasion and Sam’s single nod was a definite step up from his previous expressions when he saw me. The jumpsuit flows around my hips like water. It’s simple and perfect and the wig, with its heavy weight of hair, feels natural for the first time. I’ve even toned down my concerns about losing Fangli’s jewelry by about seventy percent.
The car takes us to the west end of town and turns down a residential street that transforms into an industrial zone. I peer out the window. “I know where we are.”
“You should. Don’t you live nearby?”
“I don’t go to a lot of modern art museums.”
“It’s contemporary art,” he corrects me.
I look at the dossier. “Aren’t they the same?”
Sam sighs. “Contemporary art is evolving and started around sixty years ago. It’s differentiated from modern art in that it’s more conceptually rather than aesthetically based.”
“Oh. Thus the screaming faces?”
“Thus the screaming faces.” He rubs his eyes. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“I can do it.” I’m confident now in the face of his doubt.
We turn a corner near a warehouse and then another before the car pulls up in front of a multistory building in the middle of what looks like an abandoned field. With a shock, I realize where I am. It’s right by the path where I go running. I must have passed this place a dozen times and only ever noticed the microbrewery next to it. This lack of awareness of my own surroundings saps my confidence and I grab Sam’s arm.
“You’re right. Let’s leave.”
He puts his hand on mine, I think to comfort me, but instead he shakes me off. “Too late.”
The door opens and we’re confronted by two strangers. Mei prepped me so I know they aren’t Fangli’s acquaintances, and I also know at this moment there is no way on earth I’m going to survive tonight.
“Showtime,” Sam says over his shoulder and gets out of the car.
I need out of here, now.