What does that have to do with me? Suddenly suspicious, I examine the interior of the car. Maybe it’s not a reality show but some new humiliating game show where celebrities pick putzes off the street and offer them a hundred bucks to run around naked or drink slime.
“I want you to pretend to be me for two months.” She smiles as if this is an incredibly normal thing to request of a stranger.
“Me be you? You want me to act in a movie?” I try to keep cool, remembering the exhilaration of inhabiting a character when I acted in school plays. But it’s been a long time and I assume there are significant differences between acting in a college version of The Crucible and starring in a high-budget film.
“No, no,” she assures me. “I’m in a theater production and my team insists I be seen around the city, but I want to focus on my work. I’m too tired to do the additional publicity so I want you to be my double for events.”
When I look at her closely, I see the paleness of her skin isn’t only makeup as I’d assumed. Up close, she looks gaunt, almost haunted.
“I don’t think we look enough like each other for that,” I say.
She waves the phone at me. “I beg to differ, especially with makeup. I can reimburse you well for your time.”
“How much?” I’m not going to do it, but I want to know. Beside me, Sam mutters under his breath and I take Fangli’s lead and ignore him.
“We know you have a job. Most but not all the events are at night or on weekends. I think a hundred thousand is fair.” Her voice is calm.
“Are you shitting me?”
Sam exhales. “Fangli never swears.”
“I’m not Fangli.”
Fangli’s look stops him before he can retort, and he settles back into the seat.
I turn back to her. “How do you know so much about me anyway?”
“I hired a private detective after I saw the photo.” She says it casually, like how else would she do it?
Now I laugh out loud. A private detective. This is too much.
“We think it’s a fair amount for the job,” she says.
A hundred thousand dollars means I can say yes to a room at Xin Guang if Mom gets in. It means I don’t have to worry about Mom being put in a shared room if I can’t meet the payments at Glen Lake. Tempting, but even though I’m sick of my current life, I don’t want to be played by a couple of rich movie stars who look at people like me as toys to be used. Mom’s voice whispers in my head. Don’t do anything too crazy.
“I’m not sure.” It’s always easier to avoid giving a definite no.
“Please.” Her face creases. “A hundred and fifty.”
That escalated fast. “I’ll think about it,” I amend. Fangli’s pleading face and that amount of money are hard to ignore.
She hands me a card. “Thank you.”
Unable to think of a polite way to refuse it, I accept the card.
“I’d like to hear from you within two days,” Fangli adds. “It’s vital we start right away.”
“Right.” That’s an ambiguous enough answer. I don’t want to do this. Do I? No, of course not. I might have wished for an escape earlier, but not like this. I want sustainable moneymaking and a reasonable exit strategy. Something stable and safe. This is anything but.
Sam doesn’t say anything as I leave.
Three
When I wake up the next morning, the first thing I do is check my task list for work. It has about twenty more items than I can hope to accomplish and I put my phone down, discouraged even before my feet hit the ground. I need a list that motivates me to do things instead of one that makes me feel I’ll never catch up. I slot the idea in the mental file I’ve been gathering over the last couple of years, my dream list for the ultimate, and elusive, organizer.
The card lying beside my phone reads Wei Fangli in English and Chinese with a phone number and no email. I turn it over in my fingers, pressing the corners into my skin. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars. There’s no way her offer can be on the up-and-up, because who in their right mind would try to hire a body double, a stranger, off the street? Out of curiosity, I google “Wei Fangli net worth.”
Well. She could definitely afford it.
There’s a picture of Fangli with the story, and I take my phone to the mirror to hold it beside my face. Our bone structure is close enough that we could be sisters. I lower the phone and check one of the open browsers on my laptop for the photo from the coffee shop, which I found last night after coming home. With my face partially covered by my muffin and hat, I can see the resemblance to Fangli.
I’m not saying this means I’m gorgeous. The image’s caption reads: “Wei Fangli’s unique features have a power beyond typical beauty,” which is courteous phrasing for “She’s sort of strange-looking but it works for her.”
Ditto, except my face never seems to work for me unless it’s as a gateway for people to stare and ask where I’m from. Or, my personal favorite, what I am. Whenever I was with Dad, people’s eyes would jump from his face to mine as they tried to determine where my features came from, because they definitely weren’t from western Europe. I didn’t look like them and they knew it, but they didn’t like not knowing why.
It’s all moot. Even for that money, there’s no way I could pull off pretending to be a movie star for two months. I don’t speak Mandarin, number one, nor do I have the…confidence…Wei Fangli has. Fangli is used to being in the public eye; she’s had years of training. When she walks in the room, she doesn’t trip on a rug and wonder what to do with her hands. There’s a whole series on “Doing Stairs like Wei Fangli” that analyzes how she floats down without looking where she’s stepping—and with an occasional scarf toss for good measure. I’m not clumsy, but I’m self-conscious enough that I would freeze. I couldn’t even handle a single paparazzo taking photos. What would it be like with a bank of them?
I toss the phone on my bed and get ready for the day. There’s a boxy black suit that’s my go-to, and I pair it with a thick camel turtleneck that makes the blazer tight under the arms. It’s too hot an outfit for June, but the office is always freezing. I stopped wearing my usual red lipstick but I’m expected to look polished, so I apply an unflattering neutral beige I picked out of the drugstore cheap bin. One swipe of mascara. Nothing else. I don’t bother to open the cabinet where I store my perfume collection, all those glass bottles filled with flowers and spice. I don’t wear any to work, not anymore.
A mirror check confirms I look like an upholstered couch. No wonder Sam Yao thinks it’s ridiculous for me to impersonate Fangli. He’s right.
Although I leave early, a delay on the subway means I arrive three minutes late. Brent raises his wrist to look at his watch as I walk in to make it clear he notices. I don’t make eye contact, but the incident adds to the tight ball in my gut as I turn on my computer. The only sound in the office is the tap of typing, and of course Brent is a heavy but shitty typist, so every few seconds, I hear the backspace key. Dat-dat-dat-dat-dat. Click. Click click. Dat-dat-dat.
Garnet Brothers is an investment firm, and the marketing department, where I work as a project coordinator, keeps moderately busy trying to find ways to subtly remind people that only idiots manage their own money. It’s a boring but well-established company, which is why I took this job over a more exciting yet riskier role with a tech start-up. The first hour of every morning is spent answering emails I didn’t want to deal with on my phone, and about half are other people’s problems that have been dumped on me to solve. Most are routine but two or three are complicated enough that I’ll need to check with Todd before responding. I decide I can get away with asking about them over email instead of booking a meeting. My gift to me.
“Gracie.” Todd’s smooth voice comes over my cubicle wall. When I turn, he’s standing too close behind me and his blue eyes glint with a cold light. “Come to my office. Now.”