Thirty-Two
Sam throws his tablet to the side and stretches on the couch where he’s ostensibly been reviewing scripts. For the last twenty minutes, he’s been shooting little glances in my direction as if hoping to casually catch me looking up from my laptop.
The last time I did, he’d smiled and I’d blown him an over-the-top kiss, which he had pretended to catch out of midair and tuck into his pocket. Then he’d gone back to work as if nothing had happened, ignoring me as I groaned.
He gets up and begins pacing. I wait until he’s made multiple circuits of the room but he doesn’t say a word.
“You’re going to wear a path into that floor,” I observe finally.
“Are you done working?”
“Do you have something more interesting for me to do?” I glance up and see the wicked expression on his face. “Never mind.”
He assumes a look of extreme innocence. “I was going to suggest a sedate game of cards but what did you have in mind?”
I roll my eyes and close my laptop. “You hate cards because you suck at them.”
“True. I was lying about playing cards.” He nods out the window. “What are those?”
“Toronto Islands.”
“Real islands?” Sam looks at them with new interest.
“Sand spits they dumped a bunch of landfill on to make bigger.” I join him. It’s raining so the islands look mysterious under a thin fog. I haven’t been over there in years.
“Where’s the bridge to drive over?”
“You take a ferry.” I point to a little ship chugging across the water. “There’s one.”
“A ferry?” He looks at it longingly.
“You like ferries?”
He turns to me with a face that expresses his disbelief that anyone could not. “Of course. When I was in Hong Kong, I always took the Star Ferry to cross the harbor.” He tugs at his ear. “My mother hated me doing that.”
He goes over to the fridge and pokes around before coming back empty-handed to stare out the window again. His eyes follow the ferry as he rocks back on his heels, lost in thought. Sam looks trapped in this fancy hotel room, and I want to take that blank expression from his face.
“Let’s go out on an adventure,” I say impulsively. “You and me.”
Sam raises his eyebrows. “I am somewhat frightened.”
“I’m hurt by your skepticism. All my ideas are good ideas.” He opens his mouth and I steamroll over him. “Get your things.”
“You want to go now? In the rain?” He acts like it’s acid falling from the sky.
“Are you a witch that you’ll melt if you get wet?” I move past him to open the balcony door and stick a hand out. “It’s barely spitting.”
“I might be seen.” I can hear the waver in his voice and want him to say yes. It would be fun to go out. On a date? It’s not a date. Is it? What constitutes a date anyway?
“In this weather?” I shakes my head. “I don’t think so. The islands are busy in the summer but less so in bad weather.”
“An adventure, huh?”
I slide the balcony door back shut. “It’ll be good, I promise.”
He mulls it over and then grins and gives me a light, quick kiss that makes me blink with surprise at how natural it feels. “It will, with you.”
Sam goes to get ready and I first press my fingers against my lips because, wow, kissing Sam never gets old. Then I wonder if I’m a complete dumbass to be dragging Sam out in the rain for an outdoor adventure when I could have suggested we have indoor ones.
Maybe later.
Finally, I check for the umbrella that must come with the room because I know rich people don’t have to remember to bring things like that when they travel. I only have one so I knock on Fangli’s door. Mei answers and waits for me to speak.
“Do you have any umbrellas?” I ask. “Sam and I are going on a date so I need two.”
Her face freezes. “Pardon?”
“Not a date,” I rush to explain. “A walk. It’s not a date-date. Do you think Fangli will be mad?” I can’t ask if she and Mei want to come because we can’t be together.
“Excuse me.”
She shuts the door in my face. I stand there, shocked. Mei is never rude. Cold, yes, even abrupt, but never rude. Then the door opens and Mei hands out an umbrella.
“Oh, thanks,” I say. “Uh, everything good?”
“Have a nice day.” This time she waits until I turn to shut the door.
I let it go—Mei is an eternal mystery to me—and go to meet Sam.
“Where are we going?” He takes the umbrella I hand him. I realize Sam doesn’t have many surprises in his life—everything is scheduled—and decide to make him wait to know.
“You’ll see.”
It’s a twenty-minute walk, and Sam badgers me about our destination the entire way, laughing when I give him increasingly silly locations.
“The elevator at the end of the world?” he repeats. “You just said it was the invisible shopping center.”
“Could be the pioneer village near the underpass.” He gives me a doubtful look, since this could be a real place. “Kidding, the pioneer village is further north. We’re here.”
“The ferry terminal? We’re taking a ferry?” He lights up.
Sam is as excited to get on the ferry as I’ve ever seen him or any person. As predicted, hardly anyone is going over to the islands in this weather, and Sam relaxes a bit under his umbrella, holding it high to read the signs.
“Do we want Centre Island, Ward’s Island, or Hanlan’s Point?” he asks.
“Hanlan’s has the nudist beach.”
He wiggles his eyebrows at me. “I’m game if you are.”
“You’re wearing a face mask and a hat so low you look like the invisible man in disguise,” I say. “You expect me to believe you’d go to a nudist beach? Where the entire point is to be naked?”
“Well, I doubt they’d be looking at my face.”
Don’t look down. Don’t look down. I keep my eyes straight. “We’re going to Centre Island.”
The ferry arrives in a few minutes. Sam climbs the staircase to the upper level and leans over the side, breathing in deeply. “I love the smell of water,” he says.
“Ocean or lake?”
“Ocean but lake will do. I have properties on both.” He catches my glance. “Grossly overindulgent to have multiple homes?”
“You know it is.”
“They’re investments. I rent them out.”
“Slightly better.”
The ferry starts moving and Sam grins into the wind, his capitalist spirit silenced by the beauty of the view. Sam stands at the front of the ferry, watching the island as it approaches, then moves to the back. The city shrinks in the distance until it transforms into a graph, the CN Tower the western outlier to the normal distribution of downtown business towers. A few intrepid boaters are out, and one dude on a Jet Ski zooms by. I often forget that Toronto is a lake city and there are people who own things like kayaks and actively enjoy being on the water.
When we arrive, Sam’s content to let me play tour guide. Even though it’s been years since I’ve been to the islands and it’s rarely been while sober, I do a good job of getting us to the beach on the other side of the island. The rain has stopped but it’s deserted. We pull off our shoes and make our way across sand that’s been dappled by the raindrops, taking selfies and digging in our toes.
“Canada geese,” Sam says, pointing as if I can miss the flock ten meters away. “Pretty.”
“Don’t go near them,” I warn. “Geese are mean.”
He’s already approaching them and looks over his shoulder with scorn. “I can handle a goose, Gracie.”
I swipe the water off a picnic bench and sit down to enjoy the show. Sam is determined to get the perfect close-up of one of the geese, as if the zoom feature doesn’t exist for a reason, and he creeps closer. I pull out my phone and start the video to show Fangli later.
He’s already off-balance in a stealthy attempt to get to the goose without spooking it when it attacks, thrusting out its beak as if to give him a nip. Sam leaps back, phone flying off to the side. The goose hisses and advances on him and Sam—action star Sam Yao, hero of the silver screen Sam Yao—falls back on his butt and does some weird commando roll to get away from it.
I’m laughing too hard to film properly so I don’t capture Sam’s indignant expression when he pops back to his feet.
“It’s not funny.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Go ahead.” He dusts the wet sand off his knees.
“What?”
“Say it, Gracie. I know you want to.”
“I told you. I told you so.” I hop off the bench to find his phone, which I hand over.
“You did.” He opens his phone and we check the photo. Sam captured the goose in attack mode and the entire image is a wide-open hissing beak, slightly blurred, with open wings in the background.
That sends me into another laughing fit. Sam groans. “All that for nothing.”
“Nothing? That’s a classic goose shot. It’s gorgeous.”
“Like you.”
Does he mean that as a real compliment or a quick tease? I don’t want to say “thank you” if it’s the latter because that would be embarrassing. I decide to treat it like a joke. “I think the goose has better feathers.”
Sam reaches out to touch my hair, then realizes he’s covered with sand when a clod drops on my shoulder. “You’re much prettier than a goose, feathers or not,” he assures me as he rubs his hands on his thighs.
Is it still a joke? It’s safer to act as though it is. “High bar.”
I grab my shoes and keep going down the beach. Sam comes up from behind and almost hesitantly laces his fingers with mine, his hand wet from the rain and rough from the sand. I do my best to be casual but holding hands is almost more intimate than kissing. When I glance up, Sam smiles and kisses my temple.
Ugh, why is he like this? My heart can’t deal.
We walk like that for a bit, matching our steps to each other until the rain begins again and we let go to open our umbrellas as the wind picks up. I gasp as it catches my umbrella and promptly turns it inside out.
Sam keeps us dry as I check my umbrella over. “Broken,” I say.
He wraps his arm around me, heavy but warm on my shoulders, and holds the umbrella over both of us. “Shall we keep walking or do you want to go?” he asks. The rain has beaded on his hat and his mask is tucked under his chin, ready to pull on if someone comes.
“Keep going.”
I move but he tugs me back. “I forgive you for laughing,” he says.
“I forgive you for not listening to me about the goose.”
“Fair enough.” He bends down and kisses me, lips cool from the damp day. The rain patters against the umbrella as my hands come up to wrap around his biceps, bringing him even closer. The kisses meld together and the sound of the lake fades and Sam is all there is around me. He’s warm in the cool day, and his hands smooth down the droplets on my hair. When he presses tiny kisses on me, he leaves a longer pause between each one, making me chase after him.
His last kiss makes me shiver and I’m not sure if it’s from the chill or his touch. In any case, he pulls back, rubbing my arms. “Let’s walk to warm up,” he says.
We turn east to the walkway that traces the edge of the lake. The rain comes in fits and starts, the same as our conversation.
“You know what’s weird?” I ask.
“That the largest living thing on earth is a fungus?”
“What? No.” I hop over a puddle. “Seriously? Not a whale or a tree?”
“The humongous fungus in Oregon.”
“That is fascinating but not what I was thinking. Why would I be thinking of that?”
He picks up a rock lying on the boardwalk and tosses it out to the lake. “I was.”
“I might delve into that later but I was wondering about why interviewers don’t ask you or Fangli about politics or human rights in China. It’s strange. It’s in the news all the time.”
“That’s not strange. Reporters are more interested in Fangli’s manicure and how I get in shape for action roles. Generally fans want us to stick to our lane and reporters give them what they want.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t need to share all my personal thoughts with the world.” He eyes me with amusement. “Do Canadian actors speak out against your own country’s abuses?”
“Not often,” I admit after I think about it.
“Did you ever think to ask why we’re responsible for answering for our government when they’re not responsible for yours?”
“A good point.”
“Obviously, there are problems with my home,” he says. “Those are issues for us to solve, the same as yours are for you to solve.”
We walk along in the misty rain for a few more minutes, thinking.
“Do you come here a lot?” he asks. “This is a calming place.”
“Not as much as I should,” I say.
“Where do you usually go? Say you have a Saturday free. Your ideal Saturday.”
I tug at a branch as I pass, letting the wet leaf drag along my palm. The entire left side of the path is treed. “It would be summer, but not too hot. I’d take a book and go to a café I like in Kensington Market. They have those Parisian-style seats on the sidewalk and I’d get a Mexican hot chocolate and sit and read and watch the people pass.”
“All day?”
“Two hours.” After that I’d need to pee, and when you’re alone, you can’t leave your bag, so I’d might as well head out. “Then I’d wander through the market and look in some stores to buy things I don’t need, like a hat.”
“Would you see a show? Go to a movie?”
“Nope. I’d go see Mom. How about you?”
“My perfect day? Sleeping. I’d sleep in and turn off my phone and then sit on the couch and do nothing. I wouldn’t leave the apartment. Get food delivered.”
“What if you had to leave the house?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“It’s on fire. You have to.”
“If my apartment is on fire, then it’s not my perfect day.”
“It’s a thought exercise, Sam.”
He gives me a shy glance out of the corner of his eye. “You won’t laugh?”
“Cross my heart.”
“It’s not very exciting.”
“My day involved reading and drinking hot chocolate,” I remind him.
“I’d go for a walk in a park. There’s one at home called Beihai Park. The amahs weren’t allowed to take me because my parents were worried about security so I’ve never been.” He rolls his shoulders. “I’d see the water lilies. I heard they’re beautiful.”
Poor Sam. His life mixes extreme privilege with such a poverty of normal experience. He doesn’t wait for me to speak but says, “Your day. You’d spend it mostly alone?”
I consider this. “I might meet a friend for a drink in the evening but yeah, I guess. Same as you.”
“I’d meet you after I sleep in,” he offers. “You could come to the park with me.”
I bop his shoulder with my head. “I’d like that.”
We head back to the ferry, doing tandem silly walks as we try to stay under the umbrella. The ferry will be a few minutes so I go into the café to grab hot chocolate as Sam stays under a tree, keeping his face down.
When I hand over his paper cup, I notice his right arm is soaked. “What happened?”
He gives me a look over the top of his cup. “It’s raining.”
“I’m dry, though.” I shake my arms at him and immediately spill a bit of my drink.
“Good,” he says, glancing up. “There’s the ferry. Can we sit on the top again?” When I nod, he kisses me on the nose and his lips warm me all the way through. “I changed my mind,” he says. “About my perfect day.”
“No park?”
He shakes his head. “I’d do this again.”
Yeah, I think it was a date.