by Vanessa Hua
Viann was always pushing me to think beyond the next line and the next script.
“You settle because it’s easy.”
If I didn’t watch out, I could end up in the kiddie movie ghetto. My robot-detective flick had been a box-office hit and my fans were getting alarmingly young. Like the toddler who had tackled my legs the other day. I almost hadn’t recognized his mother: Uncle Lo’s ayi, as stout and sturdily built as a peasant. She wore a clingy black dress, her hair fell in artful waves, and she slung a limited-edition bag over her shoulder, the kind sewn by French artisans, delivered on unpredictable schedules and in scarce quantities. I hadn’t seen his housekeeper lately, hadn’t seen her in a long while, actually— had it been years? I’d posed with her son, and the ayi had been so nervous that she’d fumbled with her phone. Starstruck, though hadn’t she seen plenty of celebrities around Uncle Lo? My own phone had vibrated, and when I checked the screen, the toddler lunged for it. Every kid loves getting his picture taken, and so I obliged, tucking him into a one-armed hug for the shot.
Maybe I’d go into directing, or get out of the movie business entirely. Padding into the kitchen, I grabbed a tin of shortbread, manufactured by the baked goods company Viann’s great-grandfather founded more than a century ago. I bit into a buttery, crisp wedge, and began the presentation I’d been rehearsing in my head. “What about different flavors? Chocolate chip. Peanut butter and jelly.”
“We’re not a kid’s snack. You Americans and your sweets.” She had an annoying habit of declaring my quirks emblematic of my national origins.
“No preservatives. Moms will love it.” I ate another, wiping crumbs off my mouth with the back of my hand.
“We’re not in lunchboxes.” Her family’s signature product sold in upscale department stores and duty free shops.
“Not yet.”
“Not ever.” She’d take over the family business someday. Although she often hinted I might help expand the brand overseas, nothing I said appealed to her, and I wondered if I should become a consultant elsewhere, advising Americans on how to sell to the Chinese: how to attract followers on social media, how to navigate the backroom deals, how to position luxury cars and handbags, and which Hollywood has-beens to Hasselhoff.
In Hong Kong, you needed to be underhanded to gain the upper hand, to land the role, the cover, and the girl. I had more choices than my parents, whose only ticket out of Taiwan had been in science and engineering. More choices than my sister, too, who dutifully joined my mother’s optometry practice. My phone rang non-stop, a tinkling rendition of my No. 1 single, “I am the Sun, You are the Dawn.” When I answered, my bellowing agent directed me to The Look’s website. Viann peered over my shoulder. Scroll, scroll, scroll—click and up popped a photo of her best friend Brigitte, her distinctive star-shaped mole, and her collagen-plump lips around my cock. I might have denied everything if it weren’t for the next photo, a selfie in the mirror of me entering Brigitte from behind.
Risky, to take the pictures, and riskier to keep them, but I’d believed that someday, if—when—the cosmic prank ended and I reclaimed my destiny as a loser, I’d have the pictures to remind me of my time in the stars. Clever-clever, never thinking the photos would sink me.
The phone slipped from my hand, hit the marble floor, and ended the call. As Viann jerked on her silver sequined dress, I flung open the safe where I stored my DVDs with the only copies of these photos. Still there. How then? Months ago, I’d deleted the original files from my hard-drive. Then I remembered my laptop had died. Last week, the technicians, recommended by Uncle Lo, had recovered my files. Maybe they’d found more, for someone else. For Uncle Lo?
Not him, not the man who talked me up to Viann’s parents and in his magazines. He wasn’t Viann’s uncle by blood, but by long association, and her parents were always hinting she should date his son. I’d overheard Uncle Lo rooting for me. “A pretty girl needs a pretty boy. You don’t want ugly grandchildren!”
“Smarts last longer than looks,” Viann’s father had muttered.
“Be good to the boyfriend, and he’ll be good to your daughter,” Uncle Lo said.
I tried to live up to his faith in me. I admired him. Feared him too, a man coarse and self-made, who’d escaped China by clinging to an inner tube and swimming to Hong Kong. Yet I couldn’t deny that The Look was Uncle Lo’s flagship publication, and nothing on the cover would appear without his approval. The repair technicians, hadn’t he called them “top class”? His guys.
Viann seemed to be searching for her shoes, her body stiff as a mannequin’s. I’d ruined everything she’d planned for me. For us. I’d ruined her and yet my regret circled back to Uncle Lo. I brushed my fingers along the spines of the DVD cases. Maybe someone else was going to break the story, and Uncle Lo couldn’t afford to get scooped. He might have even published the photos to protect me. Yes. From what I could tell, he’d held back the worst, leaving out the foursome and the leather sling. The more I tried to justify, the emptier the excuses sounded, falling away until only one remained: he wanted me gone because he wanted Viann for his son.
She hurled her spiked heel and it spun at me end-over-end like a throwing star. I ducked and it hit the smoked glass of my windows, which rattled but did not shatter. The sidewalk was a long way down from my penthouse. I begged her to stop, told her that the other women meant nothing, that she was everything to me. I didn’t know any other lines. When I tried to take her into my arms, she scratched tribal slashes across my cheek, stomped out sans shoes, and hailed a cab. Her solitary, straight-backed figure would play big in the tabloids, The Look with the splashiest spread of all.
~~~
All afternoon, I’ve been watching the cul-de-sac from the bay window for would-be vigilantes. Restless, hopped up on energy drinks and cigarettes, I’ve been debating if I should cancel on tonight’s date with Jenny. My mouth tastes foul, like an ashtray drenched with the sticky remains of a popsicle.
I spot a Chinese woman, dressed in black, sleek as an eel. Her companion, built like a fire hydrant, reaches into the trunk of their car—for a baseball bat? A silenced gun? They walk towards the house. I drop the curtain and fall to my knees, sneezing after dust puffs up from the baseboard of the living room. Mummified flies stud a thick spider web between a pot of orchids and the wall. Behind the couch, I find the celadon green glazed bowls that I sent as a gift years ago, in the original bubble wrap, along with stacks of bills, held together with rubber bands. Bills past due, bills for credit cards, for the car, for my parents’ mortgage. Bills from an orchid grower, and from the hospital for a colonoscopy.
Ba has his secrets too: rare orchids that cost $5,000 a stem, requiring expensive nutrients, climate control, and care that rival a preemie’s. My parents are in trouble, and I can’t deny a certain bitter satisfaction. Their way of life—that my parents can’t forgive me for rejecting—has not worked for them, either.
Ma enters with my bespoke tuxedo. Ba left for the plant nursery while she stayed home, one of them always on call for the next month until my sister goes into labor. She’s steamed the tux by blasting the shower in the bathroom, but it remains wrinkled; I’d left it crumpled in my suitcase after my last hosting gig. She asks why I am on the floor—confused, suspicious and faintly disgusted.
Heels click up the walk. The henchmen will rough me up or worse, tie up Ma and trash the house. Leaping to my feet, I hustle her into the kitchen. When I reach for the cleaver on top of the chopping block, Ma backs away, fist to her mouth.
“They’re after us!” I drop the cleaver, and push Ma out the sliding glass door and onto the cracked concrete patio.
“Who? Who?” Ma holds onto the tux, its legs dragging on the ground, but when I try to take it, she won’t let go.
“Out front.” We run, awkward as partners in a three-legged race. The greenhouse, we could hide in Ba’s greenhouse. Then I picture bullets shattering the glass, shards raining down, blinding and slashing us. Grabbing a bucket, I p
ush Ma toward the cinderblock fence and tell her to climb over.
The people after us might have guns, hurry, go, I say. Ducking her head, Ma steps onto the upended bucket. I boost her up, my hands tight on her waist as she swings one leg and the next over the wall. I climb over and hold out my arms to catch her. She perches before pushing herself off, the tux trailing after her. She slips out of my arms and pitches onto her hands and knees, the tux pooling into the outline of a suicide jumper. Her blouse slides up to reveal the elastic waistband of her underwear and the doughy flesh of her lower back. Her permed curls, dyed Dracula black, are a mess.
I did this to her. Kneeling, I help her up, asking if she can walk. She nods, spittle in the corners of her mouth. A car backfires—or a gun goes off. I dash to the neighbor’s house and pound on the back door, while a dog barks on the other side, its nails scrabbling on a tile floor. Ma bends in half, trying to catch her breath. “Police. Call the police,” she gasps.
A terrier launches itself through the doggie door and nips at my calves. I kick it off, and it flies yipping, legs churning through the air. When the terrier regroups, it goes after the legs of my tux. Shit! We tug, the terrier growling, teeth bared, its brass tags jingling against its collar. With a mighty rip, the terrier tears the hem, whipping the black scrap in victory.
Ma pushes me towards the alley, the terrier in pursuit. I knock a garbage can into the terrier’s path, giving me time to unlatch the gate. Diapers, potato peelings, and a bloody meat carton spill to the ground. As I slam the gate shut, the terrier leaps onto its hind legs. I plunge through the bushes and into the yard of Jenny Lin, where she and her mother are climbing out of their Mercedes, their arms stuffed with silver shopping bags.
Back when I resisted friendship with Jenny, so too did my parents with hers. My parents considered themselves scholars, in contrast to the Lins, who ran McDonald’s franchises. Junk food, my mother had sniffed. That the Lins prospered—with their luxury cars and remodeled Tuscan-style house—must have galled my parents.
Leaves are strewn through Ma’s hair and a twig has scratched her cheek. My suede sneakers stink of rotting garbage, and my tux hangs soiled and defeated in my arms. Jenny rushes over, asking if we need help while Mrs. Lin clutches a plastic garment bag to her chest like a shield.
“I—we—” I say. My hook-ups—my entire existence in Hong Kong— had been possible because of the camera’s omnipresence. Framing the shot, zooming in, I watched as though outside of myself, performing the playboy, on and off the set, in and out of the bedroom. The lens now shuttered, I no longer know how to act.
“Want to come in?” Jenny asks. “Rest for a few minutes?”
“You have to get ready for tonight.” Ma pats her hair back into place. She has regained her dignity after being tossed through the spin cycle.
“I’m not home that often,” I say.
“Jenny comes to dinner every week.” Mrs. Lin says.
“Unfortunately, I have to bow out,” I say.
“Kingsway can go.” Ma takes my tux. If I were a child, she would have pinched my arm to silence me. She doesn’t like Mrs. Lin acting as though Jenny is too good for me.
None of us notice the strangers until they are upon us. Not a henchman, but a photographer and Maisie Chan, senior writer from Hong Kong’s classiest glossy. Published by Uncle Lo’s rival, a fact I register with perverse satisfaction.
I straighten and attempt a pensive, humbled expression. The photographer snaps Jenny in the doorway, turning her into an instant, unwitting celebrity. Mrs. Lin gives me an appraising look, but Ma seems fed-up. A television camera crew, or Hong Kong’s Oprah, or Oprah herself would not impress my parents. I could show them my online feed, pictures of my fans, but my parents would never understand what I achieved, would never consider my success honest and deserved, and the longer I remain here, the more I’ll come to forget too.
“How long do you plan to stay?” Maisie points her digital recorder at me.
“No comment.” My reply to that question and every follow-up. Whether I’d been in contact with Viann or the other women. Whether I’d been blackmailed.
Frustrated, the reporter asks if I could comment on the rumored biopic. News to me. Good news.
“Can’t say.” I add a cocky smile, to imply a major deal, an international cast, and flashy locations. To awe Jenny, Ma, and the reporter.
“By Zen Ecstasy, yes?” Maisie says. An adult entertainment company. “Is porn the best move for your comeback? Or the only move?”
I gape as the photographer clicks away. I grab at the lens, he sidesteps me with a fullback’s brawny grace, and I almost tumble to the ground. I must seem drunk and deranged. Bowing my head, I take a deep breath and when I look up, offer a rueful smile. I softly promise Maisie an exclusive interview, tomorrow at our home. Summoning the dregs of my charm, I shake her hand with my right and stroke her arm with my left. Maisie melts.
“I’ll make lunch for you.” I promise her never-before-seen candid childhood photos.
After she and the photographer drive off, I shrug with a nonchalance I do not feel. “The rumors are crazy in this business. Crazy.”
“Crazy,” Jenny echoes.
Taking me by the elbow, Ma says it’s getting late. As we leave, I overhear Mrs. Lin asking what I’d done.
“I’ll tell you later,” Jenny says. I haven’t fooled her. She must have discovered the latest details online, but is too polite to back out, she might pity me, her fallen classmate, or she wants a racy story of her own to tell. I can’t start over fresh with her. It isn’t a chance I’m certain I want, or even a chance I’m certain I had, but the loss stings all the same.
We walk home in silence. In the living room, I wait for Ma to berate me, and when she doesn’t, I understand that she has resigned herself to such behavior from her unredeemable son. I envy my nephew’s bright blank future.
“Let’s go to the House of Prime Rib,” I say desperately. The only non-Chinese restaurant my parents patronize, with dark wood paneled walls, white table clothes, burgundy leather booths, and silver carts bearing magnificent sides of beef—fancy and hearty enough to justify the expense. There, I’d tell my parents I would rescue them.
In the slanting afternoon sunlight, Ba’s orchids glow with the saturated colors of stained glass in a cathedral, of jewels on the throat of a queen, of the rings of a gaseous giant in space. Our fixations define us, have overtaken us both, and I have to save him as I myself want to be saved.
“I’ll get a reservation,” I say.
“Daddy’s cholesterol,” Ma says. No prime rib, not tonight, no longer. In the six years since my last visit, my parents have grown old and the house has fallen into disrepair. She fingers the tux’s torn pants. “I’ll find a pair of Daddy’s to match the jacket.”
When I protest, she cuts me off. “Distance tests a horse’s strength.” Clearly she’s decided I dropped out of the race before it began. Our lives have each met failure, though my parents never slid into the shadows that bred darkness. They’re probably going to refuse my help, refuse my tainted money, and the loss of their respect hurts most of all.
Ma sighs. “You can only defend yourself with the character you have. The rest we must bear.”
~~~
When I enter Master Wang’s Foot Clinic, a bell tinkles, but the masseuse on duty doesn’t look up, engrossed in her cell phone. I blink, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. Padded recliners draped in towels take up most of the space, and a water fountain bubbles in the corner, drowned out by the movie on the large flat screen, “When a Wolf Falls in Love With a Sheep.” I’d turned down the lead role. If only I could land a part like that again.
I’m supposed to be on the Bay Bridge by now, awkwardly flirting with Jenny on our way to the reunion. Instead I’m here, dressed in my sponged-off tux jacket paired with my father’s pants, inches too short and ballooning at the waist. I had walked to Jenny’s house but felt compelled to keep going. As I passed the tennis co
urts, the bus stop, and headed down the hill toward the village, sweating in my overcoat, I was already telling myself I could catch a train and meet her in San Francisco later.
After I clear my throat, the masseuse drags over a wooden bucket lined in plastic, and returns with a kettle of herbs steeped in steaming water. The smell hits me with the musty, ancient knowledge that I associate with herbalists. A reflexology poster on the wall diagrams the secret pathways coursing through our bodies. The health of our spleen and our eyes rests upon the soles of our feet. Superstition, not science, yet now nothing but this touch will do. I can’t remember what this storefront housed in my childhood, but I am amazed China has seeped into the suburbs. It feels like I could be in Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangkok, Tokyo, or Taipei, any city where these copycat foot massage parlors have proliferated. My life in Asia is distinct, a universe apart from my hometown, and this breach seems a violation.
The masseuse gestures for me to take off my shoes and roll up my pants. None of the privacy, none of the luxury, none of the oils or hot stones of a Western-style massage, but only $25 per hour. I drop the overcoat onto the recliner beside mine.
Sullen, with dead eyes, the masseuse might be in her early twenties. With her hair dyed auburn and wearing tight bootcut jeans, she’s in the target demographic of my songs and movies. I wonder how she ended up in my hometown, if she moved for adventure, opportunity, or debt, if she lives illegally in the back, and if she finds the suburbs baffling, boring, or serene?
The foot bath scalds, but when she asks, “Ok?” I nod, welcoming the pain.
The movie’s music blares. “Could you turn it down?” I ask. She gives me a blank look, until I ask again in Mandarin. “Do you have anything else?”
In her native tongue, the masseuse turns giggly and chattering. She brings out a binder of DVDs, and on the last page, I find one of my early lead roles, playing the undercover bodyguard of a daffy heiress. My fame has reached the land of my birth. I hold the disk gently between my thumb and forefinger, rainbows winking in the silver—light, fragile, and ultimately disposable.
