The Stand-In(17)

“Aw, thanks.”

We toast.





Seven


The next morning, I settle myself at my worn and scratched kitchen table with the index cards I spent three hours writing up last night.

Fangli drinks her coffee black. I flip over my flash card. Correct.

She was born November 10, 19…damn. I check the card and try to commit the year to memory by chanting it five times.

Her first movie was Along the River. Check. Released when? I forgot to add that in and ferret around online for the answer.

Fill in the rest of the line: “Forever is…” I pause and drag the pen against the table as I run through cheesy lines from her movies. “Only a day with you.” Got it.

This prep work is more intense than I thought. My cozy kitchen feels like it’s going to close in on me, and if I stay for much longer, I’ll start to see the crumbs I should have cleaned up but didn’t and the glass in the sink I ought to wash but won’t. There are so many things I should do.

A text comes from Anjali. Get the money.

Me: It’s on my list.

Anjali: Do it now. Don’t think, do.

She’s right.

Before I can psych myself out, I send a text to Fangli. Hey, sorry, we didn’t talk about a payment schedule. Would a 20% advance be okay? No worries if not.

I stare at the last line, almost hearing Anjali’s disgusted groan. Out comes No worries if not. Instead, I write Thanks and agonize over whether to add an exclamation mark or period before I go with the exclamation.

I send it before I can think twice, then stuff everything I need into a bag and head out the door, careful to wear a floppy hat and sunglasses. I’m both nervous to check my texts and desperate for a response, which results in me pulling my phone halfway out of my pocket several times before stopping dead on the sidewalk to look.

No problem at all, Fangli wrote. Mei will get it to you. Another 30% at six weeks and then the remainder on contract completion.

Oh. That was easier than I thought. I check it off my list with a light heart and send a triumphant text to Anjali.

On my way to Cheri’s coffee shop, I hesitate. It might not be safe to go there; if the photographer is waiting, I’ll get caught before I begin. I need to think about these celebrity things now and how they’ll affect Fangli, so I duck into another place before I hop on the bus. Today I’ll work in Mom’s room and keep her company. She might enjoy watching one of Fangli’s movies with me.

It’s a good morning. We get her favorite dim sum delivered and feast on har gao and congee and rice and noodles for lunch. I haven’t gone out for dim sum since Mom went into the home. It was something we did together, and to go alone would close a book of memories I’m not prepared to shelve. I offer some to the nurse at the station but she puts her hand out to refuse. “I don’t even know what they put in that sort of food,” she says.

While I never progressed past North American crowd favorites and refuse to eat phoenix claws (because they’re chicken feet), thousand-year eggs (because they’re gray), or fish eyes (because they’re fish eyes), these are delicious shrimp dumplings, for crying out loud. Sorry they aren’t chicken nuggets.

I polish off the dumplings and settle down to work. Getting into character might help and I decide I’m not Gracie Reed, jobless failure, but an ethnographer studying the lives of the rich and famous, trying to parse out and isolate every attitude and gesture. With my collection of note-taking implements in easy grasp, I go to the first URL on Mei’s list.

It takes about two hours of dedicated viewing—Fangli has done a lot of media, what the hell have I been doing with my life—before I come across a video montage of Fangli and Sam together. Or Samli, as their fans call them.

This I watch six times. Maybe seven. They move as one unit, and Sam’s smile when he turns to Fangli is more real than the one he presents to the cameras. When they hit the red carpet at the 1:56 mark, she stumbles and he catches her, pulling her tight and looking down into her raised face like a love scene from one of their movies before raising his hand to brush her hair off her face.

If I didn’t know firsthand what he’s like in real life, I would be sighing. Maybe I do a bit because deep down I have a fantasy of him looking at me like that, as if I’m the only person who matters in the middle of all that chaos. I stifle this immediately. I don’t like Sam and how he unnerves me. Plus, maybe the gossip is right and they are a couple. Best to assume they are.

Enough of reality, or this manufactured Hollywood version of it. I put in the period drama Mei triple-starred, The Pearl Lotus. The plot is straightforward enough: Fangli plays an empress trying to save the emperor from a nefarious plot hatched by an old and jowly evil general. Sam plays the noble and sharp-jawed rival general, returned from some war with his love for the empress burning bright.

Mom dozes beside me and I watch, enthralled, as the film unfolds. As stunning as the sets and costumes are—Fangli wears a gown of embroidered gold so lovely it’s a character in its own right—I can’t look away from Fangli and Sam. At the pivotal moment, Fangli has to choose between love and duty. If she sends him on a mission, it will save the emperor but ensure certain death for Sam. They both know whatever decision she makes, Sam will do it without hesitation—not out of loyalty to the emperor or China but for her.

They’re alone in a garden by a pond that has a pearly-painted gold lotus. Fangli, the empress, doesn’t hesitate to order the mission. There’s no change in her confident, arrogant demeanor, but her eyes show a devastated woman. Then comes the scene I pause and replay several times. Sam bows but instead of looking down, his eyes never leave her. Fangli stands straight and her face is calm, but the silk sleeves covering her arms tremble as if a wind passes over. Between them, without a word, the two lay out the agony of unrequited love and the pain of duty. The music is a single erhu playing a slow refrain.