***
True to her promise, Fangli is soon back in my room. Her face is scrubbed clean and she wears a huge bathrobe that drags behind her like the train on a gown. She could attend the Met Gala as is. I’ve sorted through the clothes again and noticed they come in several categories: Major Event, Very Fancy, and Regular Fancy.
“Do you like them?” She points at the wardrobe.
“You must like shopping. Is that one of the things I’ll need to do?”
She looks honestly shocked. “I don’t go to stores. They send people to me.”
We stare at each other. “How do they know what you want?” I ask.
Fangli shrugs. “They bring the collection. I like to pick my own garments. Otherwise a stylist would create my looks.”
“Right.”
She comes over and picks up the same dress I’d been holding when Sam came in. “This is my favorite.”
“Me, too.” We smile at each other.
“Claudie at Chanel designed it for me after I signed on as their brand ambassador. It’s one of a kind.” She sounds utterly guileless, and despite myself, I burst out laughing. I think I like Fangli.
She sits down on a chair and crosses her legs in a manner I know I’m going to have to replicate and will find difficult. “I thought we’d chat tonight, get to know each other. I ordered dinner.”
“Thanks. Umm, how was your day?” I pause. “I don’t know much about what you’re doing in Toronto besides acting in a play.”
“All things you should know.” She settles into the chair and I groan inwardly. She’s so fucking graceful, goddammit.
Fangli talks for about an hour as I make notes and nibble on the smoked salmon salad that arrives. It has distractingly good deep-fried capers. She’s here in a play that’s showing on King Street. Operation Oblivion is a World War Two historical drama, and as she talks, I can’t believe I’ve never heard this story before. Apparently there was a group of Chinese-Canadian volunteers called Force 136 recruited for dangerous special missions in Asia.
“This was not covered in my history class,” I say. I think through the dates. “Chinese weren’t even allowed to vote in Canada then.”
“As part of their training, they had to swim with fifty-pound packs,” says Fangli. “Very few of them knew how to swim because they were banned from most Canadian pools.”
Although Force 136’s recruitment happened on the other side of the country, the story follows Sam’s character as he finds one of the first recruits, who is dying in Toronto, and falls in love with Fangli, who works in a Chinatown restaurant.
“Don’t you usually do movies?” I ask. “And shouldn’t those roles go to Canadian actors?”
“Yes, they should and we’re only here for part of the run because Sam is friends with the director and he thought it would be good publicity. We both started in theater back in China.” She recrosses her legs. “I love being on the stage, so it was a nice break. Being in front of an audience is a different experience.”
“I can see that.”
“Do you act?”
“I did in school.” I shrug. “It was only for fun.”
“You enjoyed it?”
“Loved it.”
Her smile lights up her face. “Then you understand why I’m here. How is your practice coming along?”
I take a deep breath. “Take a look.”
Grabbing a pair of heels out of the closet, I pop them on and take a few steps before I stop, smile, and wave. Fangli’s eyes open wide.
“Do it again.” It’s Sam, from the door. I do it again, a little more self-conscious now that he’s here. A lot more.
“It looks strange.” He frowns. “Not like it needs practice but wrong.”
“I practiced in front of the mirror.”
His eyes narrow. “Practiced how, exactly?”
This is embarrassing. “Ah. You know. Like practice.”
He folds his arms and waits for me to answer.
I try to wait him out and fail. He can stand like that for hours, I bet, stubbornly refusing to give in. Fangli watches with those leaf-like eyebrows delicately raised.
I admit defeat. “I propped the tablet near the mirror and copied what I saw.”
“You’re a human uncanny valley.” He and Fangli share a look. “Unbelievable.”
Uncanny valley? “What? I’m not an android.”
He sighs, grabs the tablet, and leads me to the mirror. “Watch.” He taps for a second, finds a video of Fangli smiling and waving, and then plays it.
“I’ve seen this.” I’m insulted. I did my homework.
“You’re not watching.” His voice is the perfect degree of smoky deep. Sam looks in the mirror and our eyes meet in the glass. Then I shift my gaze to his right hand, which waves the same as Fangli does in the video.
“Very elegant,” I say, trying to regain myself.
“Like the Queen,” Fangli interjects. She does the wave in person.
“Except totally wrong.” He turns. “Fangli’s right-handed and that’s how she waves. You’re looking in the mirror and copying it, but that means you’ve been waving your left hand. Everything is backward because her wave was filmed.”
I stare at my hand, astounded. “Are you putting me on? That’s why it felt so weird?”
“Yes.” He gives Fangli an eloquent look that I read as saying what an idiot I am.
“Shit.” I deflate. All that work and I did it backward. I bury my head in my hands.
“A fixable problem,” declares Fangli. “You and Mei can work on it in the morning.”
She leaves and Sam hesitates. Then he shakes his head. “Right-handed,” he says.
He calls out after Fangli and I wish I knew what they were saying.
Wow, if there was only some way to learn Mandarin, maybe with a handheld device that’s conveniently attached to my hand for about eighteen hours a day and can provide access to a thing like language lessons given at my own speed for $2.99 or less.
I whip out my phone.
In six minutes, a Scottish gent and a lady from Beijing cheerily work me through how to say where I’m from in perfect Mandarin. I freeze as they shift into telling me how to ask where others are from and pause the app. I could have done this years ago when Mom started getting bad. I could have been speaking to her all this time. I put that thought aside. I did the best I could.
Then I’m alone in my luxury room waving in the mirror at myself and practicing my new language skills by telling my reflection I’m a Canadian in poorly accented Mandarin.
Good times.
Nine
I’m strolling into a Rodeo Drive boutique wearing a huge black hat and shoulder pads big enough to block traffic when the bright summer sun pierces through my closed eyelids. Burrowing in the soft, fluffy bed, I try to go back to sleep but can’t because Mei is standing by the foot of my bed barking my name.
“It’s time to get up.”
I throw the covers off and squint out the window. The sun’s up but it feels suspiciously early. “What time is it?”
“Seven.”
I groan. “One more hour.” I was up late, alternating between deciding which clothes matched best with the multiple Louis Vuitton bags and learning how to ask people their names in Chinese.
“Ms. Wei is an early riser. She’s already at a meeting.” Mei might not mean to sound smugly virtuous on Fangli’s behalf, but that’s what I hear.
I haul myself up and shuffle off to brush my teeth. When I get back, I examine the outfit Mei has laid on the bed. “Are we going out?”
“No.”
Yet she’s chosen pants with ironed creases. “Can’t I wear yoga pants since it’s only us?”
“No.”