Twenty-One
Sam trounces me soundly at every game we try. Every fucking game. I do my best to keep my temper because having a tantrum like a child because you’ve lost at Plinko is not a good look, especially when your opponent is almost humming with contentment. I end up sublimating my resentment into a fight about who should buy the beer.
“A good winner is generous,” I say.
“Loser always buys.”
“You are a millionaire,” I point out.
“A low but accurate blow.” He holds out his fist. “How about we rock, paper, scissors?”
Three rounds later, Sam’s at the bar putting his money down. I take my pint with a smug smile that makes him laugh.
I’m not surprised when Sam echoes the thought that’s been revolving through my head for the last hour. “This has been fun,” he says.
“Except for me losing all the games.”
“As I said, fun.” He sips his drink. “Cheered me up. How’s Eppy?”
He remembered what it was called. I try not to beam. “Good. I think.”
“Problems?”
“Not problems. Challenges.”
“Thinking about how to layer in prioritization with time management?”
I gawk at him. “How did you know?”
“That’s what I look for when I’m trying to organize a list.”
I have a target market right here, and if Eppy can scale for a movie star, I figure it will work for the rest of us peasants. “What else do you look for?”
We spend a happy half hour—at least for me; Sam looks like he’s about to fade after the first twelve questions—going through his ideal to-do list. Finally he coughs to relieve his dry throat and glances at my drink. “Want another?”
“Are you buying again?” I drain the glass and glance at the screens of notes I’ve taken on my phone. Sam was a gold mine of ideas. He even knew a few platforms I hadn’t heard of.
“Only because I feel sorry for someone who couldn’t even win a glorified version of Pong.” He walks away before I can protest—that one game was way harder than Pong—and I do my best not to follow him with my eyes and fail miserably. The frazzled mom trying to corral three screaming kids does the same, and on her face, I see that fantasy that beautiful men create: Please take me from this. Look at me. Be my prince. Be mine. Make me feel special. See me.
By the time Sam returns, I’m pensive.
A woman to Sam’s left had been watching him between sips of her white wine, but before I can warn him, she downs her drink and hops to her feet. I manage to get out “Uhh,” and then she’s on him.
“I’m sorry, but are you Kai’s friend?” She looks up at him with big blue eyes under her heavy fringe of fake eyelashes. “I think we met the other day?”
“I’m not, sorry.” He gives her a pleasant smile.
“Oh.” She tilts her head and swings back her blown-out ombre hair. “I’m Lauren.”
I reach out and take Sam’s hand. “Nice to meet you!” I say, matching her smile with my own and throwing in a dash of yo bitch, step off. I know she gets the message because her face squeezes when Sam lays his other hand over mine.
“I guess I had the wrong person.” She retreats.
“Sorry,” I apologize to Sam, quickly pulling my hand away.
He grins at me. “Nicely done.”
“Do you get that a lot? No one ever tries to pick me up.”
“I don’t believe that,” he says politely. “To answer your question, it happens occasionally. I’m not often alone when I’m out so I think that limits it to the most brave. They don’t want me, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re attracted to the concept of me, but it’s a fantasy they’ve built. It doesn’t matter if they know who I am or not. It’s this.” He waves his hand at his face, then shrugs. “The fame helps. At least she didn’t recognize me. That would be a mess.”
I peer into his glass. “Did you get the Massive Ego IPA?”
“I got the Realistic lager,” he corrects. “My looks are an asset. Fully monetized.”
I know he’s right. It’s Sam’s public persona and the same as what Fangli said that first day about her fans. What kind of pressure does that create, to be on a pedestal that you never built and that is a by-product of doing a job to the best of your abilities?
“Huh.” I beam at Lauren, who is glowering at me. “What’s it like to be so good-looking?”
“You tell me.”
“Whatever, Sexiest Man in the World.”
To my surprise, Sam’s ears go bright red. Then he says, “If I may point out, Fangli is considered one of the most beautiful women in film. You are acting as her double.”
“No one ever thinks that about me,” I say. “I’ve always been more weird-looking.” It’s only been the last few years that people have decided to make a fuss about how attractive multiracial people are, as if admiring our appearance makes up for their unnecessary need to talk about how we look at all. I poke at the ring my glass left on the table. Fangli and I look the same but we’ve had very different experiences of what our faces represent to other people. Hers can be considered on its aesthetic merits. Mine is still a social statement.
“No.” Sam shakes his head.
Two pints means I have the courage to say what’s been bothering me. “You said I was.”
“What?” He puts his glass down and leans forward. “Never. Never would I even think such a thing.”
“The other day you said I was only half. You said, ‘If you weren’t only half, I’d think you were a real Chinese.’” I remember each word.
Sam is silent. “That’s not the same thing.”
“It is, a bit.” I pause and take my courage in hand again. “The same idea is there. Being different.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being different.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it if you want to be,” I correct him.
He gives me a confused look. “Don’t you want to? Why be ordinary when you have the choice to be so much more?”
“Because I don’t want it to only be because of how I look! Or because my mom’s from a different country.”
To my shame, my throat swells and tears prick against my lids. I bite down hard on my tongue, not wanting him to see how upset I am. But this is Sam, who’s trained to react to body language much more subtle than mine, and he takes my hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Excuse me.” I stand up to escape to the washroom, not wanting him to see me cry. Instead, Sam’s hand comes down on my arm. It’s a gentle touch, not controlling.
“Don’t leave. We’ll go outside,” he says. “We’ll talk.”
* * *
We end up sitting on a bench at the train museum right in front of the arcade and staring at some little kids as they play hide-and-seek. Although me and my big mouth started this conversation, I have no desire to see it through. Why did I even bring it up?
“I upset you,” he says quietly.
“Sorry. It’s no big deal.”
“You do that a lot,” he says. “Say you’re sorry when you have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I’m Canadian. We’re raised on apologies and maple syrup.”
He ignores my weak joke.
“Gracie, I truly apologize for what I said. I won’t make excuses as to what I meant, but let me say that I never want you to think you’re less than who you are. I don’t think of you as anyone but you, a whole and complete person.”
“Okay.” I look up. Sam’s frowning at the shiny engine car in front of us as if weighing his next words.
“You are not limited by your appearance. When I meant that you could be more, that it’s good to be different.” He frowns. “How you look was the last thing on my mind.”
A brief, disloyal, and guilt-inducing thought comes: Would I have the same perspective if I’d been raised by a Lu Lili, a woman who relished standing out rather than fearing it? Perhaps. It’s too late now. I am who I am.
“I understand,” I tell Sam. I do. I also know this conversation is now over because I don’t want to talk about it anymore. “We should get going. I need time to get ready for tonight.”
It looks like he wants to say more but Sam stands up and helps me to my feet. His grip is firm on my hand, and when he pulls me up, I lose my footing and stumble forward. Again, he sweeps me up, his hands warm on my back, and looks down in my face. My breath hitches and he releases me.
“That was like the time Fangli slipped and you caught her,” I say to break the tension. “It was all over the clips Mei made me watch.”
He nods. “Milan, I think. Two years ago. That got a good reaction.”
“What?”
Sam rears back, astonished. “You thought that was real?”
Now it’s my turn to be surprised. “You planned that?”
“The movie was about a doomed love affair.” He thought back. “Was it my idea or Fangli’s? Mine, I think.”
“I had no idea. Do we need to do something like that for tonight?”
“That’s more of a special occasion move. Tonight we go to see and be seen.” He smiles. “It’ll be a breeze.”
I try not to think of how ominous that sounds as we return to the hotel. Not until we’re back do I realize I’m hungry, so I call room service for a sandwich before I hop into the shower. The expensive shower gel cheers me in a way that only luxury products can, enveloping me in their fragrance, Chanel of course, thanks to Fangli. I come out with very soft skin and wrap my hair up in a towel to prepare for the spackling of my face that acts as a prelude to the makeup. I’ve applied the basics when I hear a knock. Must be room service.
I hunt around for a robe and open the door. There’s no one there, so I step out to see if they’ve already left and are at the elevators. A movement down the hall catches my attention and I take another step out because I don’t want that sandwich to escape.
Behind me comes a soft click as the door locks shut.
Then I stand there, wriggling the doorknob and refusing to accept reality. Shit. My phone is in there. I have no key. I go next door and knock on Fangli’s door; no answer. At least Sam has my key, but when I knock, there’s no answer there either. I go back and shake the door for a second time in case it’s magically unlocked in the last thirty-four seconds. It hasn’t.
I’ll have to go down to the lobby in my towel and robe. I weigh the pros and cons. Pros: getting in the room. Cons: public shame. Photos of a half-naked me as Fangli going viral. I lean my head against the door and ask the universe for guidance.
It does not deliver.
As I try to recall the layout of the lobby and if there’s any way I can sneak down a back stairwell and hiss at the concierge while hiding behind the downstairs door, a cart appears at the end of the hall. The universe has taken pity on me after all, because housekeeping can let me in. When I go over and find the woman cleaning the room, she looks me up and down with a bright smile.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I locked myself out of my room. Can you let me back in?”
The smile doesn’t slip. “Do you have a key?”
“No, I locked myself out. I need to get back in.”
“You need a key.”
“Right,” I agree. “It’s in the room. That I locked myself out of.”
“I can call security.”
“Thanks.” I know intellectually this makes sense, since you can’t have people simply claiming they stay here, but I’m in the hall in a towel and my patience is limited. She calls down and I go back to my door. Maybe room service has arrived and they can let me in.
Room service has not arrived.
While normally I would file this under the “Welp, what can you do” category of mischance, the fact that I am in the hall in half makeup means my anxiety about this rebounding on Fangli is inching ever higher. Sam said cameras are everywhere. I don’t need Fangli seeing footage of me-as-her looking like a drowned rat.
I pad barefoot down the hall, sticking to the walls as if I’m a mouse avoiding detection, looking down in hopes the security cameras are all near the ceiling and they’ll only catch the twisted towel on my head. An exquisitely cut black suit comes my way. Excellent. It’s Sam. I’ve never been so happy to see him.
He stops dead when he sees me, looking down at the robe. “What are you doing?” He looks as if he’s prepared for any answer.
“I need the key to my room,” I say. “I got locked out.”
“I gave it to Mei. I realized I was infringing on your privacy.”
“You had it this afternoon. You had it two hours ago.”
“Because I forgot to give it to you when you asked and didn’t want to make it worse.”
I groan. “You had to be a gentleman? Right now? Mei’s not answering her door.”
“She left after I saw her to meet Fangli at an appointment. Why were you out in the hall like that anyway?”
“Got bored and thought I’d go exploring in my new fancy dress.” I sweep a sarcastic curtsy that has the unfortunate result of swinging open my robe and revealing the towel underneath, which only reaches my upper thighs.
The elevator dings and Sam curses under his breath. “Let’s get you inside my room before someone sees.”
I glance back to see the front of the room-service cart appearing from the elevator. “I bet that’s my sandwich.”
Sam takes a deep breath. “I will collect your precious sandwich but right now, in this moment, I need you to get out of sight. Please.”
It’s reasonable. I nod and the towel drops off my head. I kneel to grab it but lose my balance after I twist the towel back on, forcing Sam to lean down and grab my shoulders to prevent me from toppling over. Awkward, but two seconds later, it’s all sorted out. He ushers me into his suite, and as the door shuts, I hear him talking to someone in the hall. I listen at the door and hear another voice. Security. I caused quite a fuss.
While I wait, I try to stop myself from snooping around Sam’s suite. It’s the same as mine but with the rooms backward—where my bedroom is on the right, his is on the left. I will not go into his bedroom. I will not. To stifle my urge, I take a seat on the couch hunched up in my robe and rub at my hair to towel-dry it before wrapping it again. A good thing no one saw us in the hallway.
The door opens. “You’re good,” says Sam, doing his best to avert his eyes from my robed self. “Food’s in your room. You have forty minutes.”
I jump up like a jack-in-the-box, knocking the towel off my head again in the process. Sam digs his finger into his temple like he’s warding off a headache and closes his eyes. That gesture will not make it onto the sizzling-hot-things-men-do list. I ignore him and wrap my hair back up again.
The security guard is waiting at my door, and I thank him with my face lowered so he can’t get a good look before I go back in. Forty minutes. I inhale the sandwich and brush my teeth before drying my hair to prepare for the wig. I’m getting good at the makeup, and I manage a smooth smoky eye and a sharp red lip in no time.
This time, the dress code is Extra Fancy. I refused to have a pedicure because the thought of someone messing with my feet makes me cringe, so the shoes are closed-toed but so pretty I decide the torture of wearing them will be worth it. They’re what a coworker called dinner and doma shoes—manageable only to take a taxi to the restaurant and back home.
After a brief but intense battle between my hips and the two pairs of Spanx that do their best to compress me like a sausage, I drop the dress over my head. It’s a black cheongsam design with navy beaded embroidery that gives it a pleasing weight and a high collar cut to show off my shoulders. I add the earrings—simple studs with diamonds as big as peas and the multitude of thin gold bracelets Mei has put out. There are so many it takes actual minutes to get them all on, but once I’m fully decked out, I wave my arms around like Wonder Woman with her gauntlets. Assuming they are real, and it’s much better for my stress levels to pretend they are not, I’m basically covered with money.
Once the wig is on, I glance in the mirror and do a double take.
Today I am indistinguishable from the real Fangli. This gives me confidence. I practiced her signature and her gestures and her smile. I can name her entire filmography and remember where she went to school and her favorite color, if any of those topics come up. More importantly, people are expecting to see Fangli and that’s what they’ll see. I decide to consider this my true debut in my alter ego.
I hear Fangli arrive back and tuck my lipstick, phone, and room key into the beaded clutch, which is much classier than stuffing them down my bra. When I knock on the connecting doors, I see Sam is already there and Fangli isn’t.
“Ready?” I ask. When I see his face, I know there’s trouble. “What?”
Mei murmurs and leaves as he passes over his phone. It’s a post of a woman in a white robe kneeling on the floor in front of a man, his hands on her shoulders in a pose that looks unmistakably sexual. I know that carpet. I know that hallway. I know those people because one of them is definitely me.
“What the fuck?” I turn the phone sideways as if that will give me more information.
“Language. The guy delivering your sandwich took it,” Sam says. “Fangli’s team is dealing with it.”
I can only stare. It looks bad, really bad. “Is it edited?” All I did was bend down to get a towel. The way it looks is terrible, as if I’m about to… My stomach churns. Poor Fangli. “What do you mean they’ll deal with it?”
“It hasn’t gone viral, so they’ll get it pulled and scrubbed. That asshole will be fired, of course. The hotel is already on damage control because of the hit to their reputation. No one will want to stay here if their privacy can be so easily compromised.”
I sit—very straight because of the dress—in a chair. “Fangli?”
“Doesn’t know,” he says. “She won’t.”
“Her team knows that can’t be her,” I argue. “She wasn’t here.”
“It’s the perception. The photo names her as Fangli.”
“What about you?” I go red as I look at the photo again. “I’m so sorry.” For the first time, I understand what he means by always being vigilant. I thought I was being careful by keeping my face pointed down to avoid getting caught on the security cameras, but I now see that I have no idea of the real scope of damage that can be caused by a simple accident. Fangli can’t have accidents, and by extension, neither can I.
But I did, and now I can only trust that Fangli’s team can contain it. A fury builds in me at the man who took the photo. What was he hoping to accomplish? Some upvotes at the cost of other people’s reputations.
Fangli’s voice comes to me. I’m a product, not a person.
“It’s not your fault.” He kneels down so we’re level and peers into my face. “I need you to know you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Look at this.” I shake the phone at him. “You told me to be careful.”
“I did and you are. It was an accident.”
My eyes go back to the photo and he gently takes the phone away.
“We’re dealing with it.” He holds out his arm. “Are you ready to go?”
“We’re going?”
“This isn’t our problem to solve. We have people for this. Your job right now is to make Fangli shine so no one will believe that garbage.” He tilts his head. “Can you?”
Hell no, says interior me. I ignore that voice and lift my chin as I rise out of the chair. I’ve got a job to do. I turn to Sam. “Let’s go.”