“I know.” He says it without shame.
I flop down on the chair next to him and he winces. I guess Fangli isn’t a flopper either. “The problem is when I know I’m being watched, I forget how to move. My hands are too big and flappy.”
Sam motions for me to get up. “It’s because you consider your body a flaccid thing you inhabit instead of a tool to be trained. When Fangli walks down the street, it’s the same as if she’s walking a red carpet or on set. Be conscious of your body, like a dancer. Every muscle has a job. Every gesture has a purpose.”
I don’t like Sam talking about bodies, but I power through. “How?”
“I can’t describe it better than that. Each movement is a decision. You don’t simply walk. You decide every step, every tilt of your head. You think of how you want to look and you make that happen. Your awareness has to be external—what are people seeing? What do you want them to see?”
I look thoughtfully in the mirror. I overthink things on good days, so this advice could well blast me right out of orbit. Think about things more than I do?
“Go again.”
I do.
“That was worse than before.” He rubs the back of his hand against his forehead. “How can a woman not walk?”
“I’m not used to an audience.”
“There’s always an audience,” he says dismissively. “You’ve had the privilege of being able to ignore it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You can walk down the street and be seen but not noticed.”
Great, now I have Sam Yao stressing my invisibility as a person—exactly what every woman wants to hear.
He keeps talking. “From the moment she leaves her room, every action Fangli takes can be recorded and shared globally. Her public self is a role she plays the same as in a film. Outside these walls, Wei Fangli is a character. She has to think about how she looks all the time because a single unguarded moment can bring international public humiliation and ridicule.”
The unspoken threat is there—as Fangli, that large-scale mortification can be all mine if I bungle this. I grit my teeth and try again. Again.
By the sixth time, I grasp the edges of what he’s telling me. It’s a sense of being conscious of my environment and how I inhabit it. I recall a behind-the-scenes segment of an actor about to walk the red carpet. She’s told exactly where the marks are and shown photos of the scene. Standing near the wall, I survey the room as Sam scrolls through his phone, a slight frown on his face and his attention off me. This time I don’t see it as a way to get from point A to B. I think of where I want to be within it. The room is my setting, not simply empty space with a few bits of furniture acting as obstacles.
“That’s not so bad.” Sam looks up from his phone to watch me, and I stumble slightly as I meet his eyes. He shakes his head and goes back to his phone.
Sam is a character. Fangli is a character. I need to be one as well. I’m not Gracie doing laps of the hotel room. I need to be Fangli.
Inhabiting a new persona is liberating, and Sam tilts his head when I walk by again. “Better.”
By the time Sam indicates I have passed Module 1: The Art of Walking, I have blisters from the adorable sling-backs. “Good enough,” he congratulates me. He checks the time. “Keep practicing. I need to get to the theater.”
I collapse on the bed to see a text.
You alive? It’s Anjali.
Not fish bait yet, I text back.
Prove it’s you.
I send her a photo of me lounging on my closet chair wearing a pair of embroidered heels too high for me to walk in. I don’t know the brand—the name is in Japanese—but I assume they’re pricey.
I accept that with respect. Hotty Hotterman treating you ok?
Not too bad. Today with Sam could have been worse. He wasn’t actively mean.
When’s your first event?
Few days from now. I have time.
We text casually back and forth as I try on more of the clothes and try to decide what feels easiest to wear. I send shots to Anjali, who has a bad habit of liking the most uncomfortable outfits best.
Beauty is pain, she writes. Fangli is a fashion icon. She’s not schlepping to the store in pj’s.
She probably has people to do that for her anyway. Mei had told me Fangli will go straight to her suite after the show, so after some more strolling around the room, I eat and go to bed, legs and feet aching and face slathered with a retinol serum Fangli’s dermatologist has apparently recommended for dire cases.
That’s the end of my first day. I learned to walk.
Ten
“Why are you here?” I demand. Sam is sitting in my suite’s living area when I come out of the bedroom, dress swinging around my legs as I halt. I forgot to shave them and pray he doesn’t look down. Mr. Physical Perfection doesn’t need to see that stubble.
He doesn’t put down his phone as he sips his coffee. “I have some time so I’m here to run your boot camp.”
I grab a coffee for myself, yawning. It was another night of fitful sleep as I ran through my many anxieties. My old therapist used to try to get me to have some perspective on my problems. That worked well enough when all I had to understand was that the world would not end if I returned a phone call Tuesday instead of Monday. My coping techniques are markedly less effective when facing a situation where public disgrace at a global level is a real possibility if I screw up.
“Where’s Fangli?” I ask.
“Resting.”
Although it would be nice to see her, the entire reason I’m here is so she can get a break. “What’s on tap today?”
“Conversation.” From the flat tone, I can tell he’s as thrilled as I am to spend the next several hours making small talk.
I try to rally. “Should we start with an icebreaker?”
He doesn’t change expression.
“Icebreaker it is.” I try to smile. He’s making it hard for me to do what Fangli hired me to do.
“No icebreakers.”
“Childhood memories?”
“No.”
“Best vacations? Favorite food? Two truths and a lie?”
I’m on the receiving end of an eye roll that would put a sulky teenager to shame and bite my lips together to keep from laughing.
“What?” he demands.
“Nothing.” I walk over to the table. “Tell me what you come up with, then.”
We sit. Sam’s here under duress but it’s not my job to make this go smoothly. I blink. That’s not something I usually think. Sam brings out the worst in me.
Or maybe the best. This isn’t my usual reaction, which would be to fuss and worry and fill the empty silence with whatever came into my head.
To pass the time, I take out my phone and check the news, which is bad. An email from Garnet Brothers gives me such a punch my whole body jerks with sudden coldness. I forward it straight to Fred the Lawyer.
“What happened?” Sam’s attention is on me.
“Nothing. Why?” I avoid his eyes.
He frowns. “You were looking at your phone and yelped like a small dog. It’s obvious you had a message you didn’t like.”
“This is what passes for conversation with you?” I ask. I don’t want to talk about the email, let alone with Sam.
“It can.” He smiles, the slow, predatory grin I remember from binge-watching his movies. It’s intriguing to see it in real life. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t think I do,” I say. “That’s the face you get when you’re about to fuck someone over.”
“It’s what?” The smile disappears. “Fangli doesn’t swear.”
“Again, I’m not actually Fangli. Your expression. It’s the ‘you underestimated me and now I’m going to wreak some havoc’ look. From your movies. You did it before fighting the Triad guy in Dragon Claw, and you did it when you were confronting the man who betrayed you in Glass House. Oh, and you did it a bunch of times in Alley Boom Down. It was almost a tic.”
When his eyes widen, I see they’re very dark brown and not the black I thought. “How many of my movies have you watched?”