The Stand-In(54)

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.”