The Stand-In, page 2
Most of all, I hate the lost expression I see on Mom’s face whenever I open her door.
I pause and put all of it—work, Todd, money, the lawyer—out of my mind and arrange a pleasant smile before I push open the door and see Mom sitting on a beige vinyl chair near the window, staring at nothing as soft classical music plays from the television. I watch her for a moment, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth start to ache. She used to be a woman who knit and sewed and painted. She made her own yogurt and bread. She did aerobics back when people unironically wore leotards with little elastic belts and matching leg warmers. It hurts to see her so inactive.
She turns to me, the light from the window hiding her expression. “Ni hao?”
That Mandarin greeting means she’s not with me in the present but back in the past where I can’t follow her. I do my best to keep bright. I only know a few words but they’re enough to answer her. “Hen hao, ni ne?”
My mom has been in Canada for over thirty years but still speaks English with an accent. When I was younger, I didn’t notice—it was Mom’s voice, no more and no less—but how she speaks, the up and down of her tones, has become more pronounced over the last year. The doctor says it’s my imagination, but I think it’s because she’s back in China so often in her thoughts. Her earlier life there is a mystery to me. She rarely spoke of it, wanting always to look to the now and the future. She even refused to speak Mandarin to me at home, insisting it was better to fit in and accept where we are rather than where we’d been.
“The past is dead,” she would tell me when I asked. “It can’t be changed. Leave it in memory.”
I’m prepared for another frustrating visit where I do my best to pretend I understand what she’s saying, but then Mom switches to English. I’m wrong. She’s having a good day.
“You changed your hair,” she says.
I’ve had the same short hair for years but I touch my head like it’s a new style I’m unsure about. “Do you like it?”
Mom reaches out a gnarled hand and gestures for me to come closer. When I do, she runs her palm over my head with a disapproving snort. “You look like a boy. Why stand out like this?”
Standing out is one of Mom’s bugbears, probably from when she first came to Canada and had to assimilate. Her modus operandi was always to choose the middle way. Being too different and not blending in with the crowd makes you an outsider, which draws negative attention and its close companion, criticism. She hammered this into me all my life. I was a solid B-plus student all through school.
“I always had long hair when I was younger,” she says. “Everyone did and it was also the style your father liked best.”
Even though he’s been dead for a decade, hearing about Dad still brings tears to my eyes. “That’s how you met.” Apparently there were so few women with black hair long enough to stream out in a banner that it stopped my dad dead in his tracks. “Then she smiled at me,” he’d say, telling the story. “That’s all it took. I was a goner.”
“Asked me for a date, right there on Bloor Street,” Mom continues.
When I was younger, at this point in the story, Dad would interrupt, faux-aggrieved, to point out that Mom hadn’t told him she lived an hour outside the city. “I never would have offered to drive her home had I known,” he’d say jokingly, scooping her up in a bear hug that made her squeal and laugh every time. I haven’t heard her laugh like that since his death.
I’m feeling fragile and decide that self-care means not having to hear about my parents’ perfect, fairy-tale love. I treasure the story, I do, but right now, I can’t.
Instead, I turn the conversation to what she had for lunch (ham sandwiches) and how she’s sleeping (better now that she has that lavender sachet I brought last time).
Eventually she starts looking out the window and I can tell from her face she’s drifting from me, so I pick up the Asian celebrity magazine on her coffee table. It’s something I brought her a couple weeks ago, with one of China’s top action-movie stars, Sam Yao, in a tuxedo on the cover, flaunting his admirable bone structure and perfectly tousled black hair. His smoldering eyes taunt me with promises of passion and adventure that will never come true for someone as ordinary as me.
A glutton for punishment, I flip to the feature story, a fluff piece about how he enjoys, oh my gosh, stop the presses, travel and his work. I scan the article, each mention of unimaginable luxury and public adoration pricking like a thorn, then toss the magazine away, sitting in silence with Mom until it’s time for me to go.
Two
The next day is terrible. Nope. Harrowing, hideous, horrid, and hateful.
My, there are a lot of negative H words. I wonder why that is? It’s heinously horrendous.
Here’s another: You better hold it together and handle your shit because you need the money. A two for one.
Todd punishes me for calling in sick yesterday by ripping my proposal to shreds in front of the rest of the team, then tells Brent to take it over and do it right. The other men don’t seem to notice but Kathy, the admin assistant, gives me a pitying pout.
I ignore her look, put on a neutral face, and pretend it doesn’t bother me. It’s better to keep my head down than to protest; experience has taught me the only consequence of reminding Todd he signed off on that proposal two days ago will be negative. For me.
The day drags and I finally leave at seven after the office empties. According to my new task list—I’ve gone back to basics with a pen and paper—I should go to the gym and do the laundry I didn’t do yesterday. Instead I drop off my bag, pull out my sneakers, and start an aimless walk around the neighborhood. The summer sun hasn’t yet dropped behind the horizon, so I decide it’s safe enough to go on the running trail built along the train tracks near my place. It’s busy and I wind around a kid learning to inline skate and dodge a group of Serious Cyclist Dudes in bright jerseys and black shorts. Apparently the Tour de France has made a detour through Toronto—how nice.
I try to relax but the toxic mess in my brain infiltrates my body and I stare hard at a man strolling by with gigantic silver earphones. His face is so punchable that my hand curls into a fist.
The lawyer told me I need to get proof about Todd’s behavior, but how? Even if I could outwit him, not only is he a vice president, but his dad is golf buddies with the CEO. And Garnet Brothers Investments isn’t the most feminist organization out there. I bet even a dick pic would only get a “Boys will be boys,” and Todd’s smart enough to not say or do anything that I can call out specifically. Standing too close? Feeling uncomfortable? I was reading into the situation, end of story. The pay is also better than anywhere else I’ve looked so I’m stuck. Between Mom’s private room and saving for the new home, I’ve burned through all the cash I’d managed to put away.
I stop abruptly, causing a runner to shout “Hey” and shoot me a dirty look as they swerve to miss me. The walk should have calmed me—nature, outside, exercise, all that—but I want to scream. I’ll go to bed. A solid night’s sleep will get rid of this itchiness inside my skin.
By the time I reach my street, I’m almost in a daze as worry circulates through my brain. Mom. Work. Mom. Money. Work. Todd.
As I wonder what it would be like to walk and walk and keep walking forever, a glossy black SUV pulls up close enough to make me jump to the side. This is not the kind of car that usually comes by my street, which tops out at a Lexus owned by the dentist five doors down. I automatically take three safe steps back to put me out of snatching range and am off the sidewalk and on the grass staring warily when the car door opens.
“Grace Reed?” A very familiar face peers out and I gawk.
It’s familiar because, except for her long, lustrous tresses—like a shampoo ad or Agatha Wu strolling down Bloor Street on her way to meet her romantic destiny—this woman is my doppelgänger. We have the same face shape with a pointy chin and similar rounded dark eyes, except I know mine are shadowed with fatigue and hers are simply elegantly shadowed. Her skin is dewy and fresh. I may look dewy, but I certainly do not look fresh.
“Wow,” I say, peering at her. “I have to know, are you a bartender on the Danforth? People are always telling me my double works in some bar in the East End.”
The woman gazes at me with utter astonishment.
I talk on because my mouth won’t stop. “Duh, of course you’re not. Otherwise you wouldn’t be driving around in that fancy car. Hold on. How do you know who I am?” The surprise of seeing someone who so resembles me knocked that first and very pertinent question clear out of my head. I take another step back.
“You are Grace Reed?” says the woman again.
“Gracie,” I correct before my voice trails off. I know that face because—it suddenly clicks—this is Wei Fangli.
Wei Fangli, Chinese A-list movie star, is in my neighborhood. I should have recognized her except it’s so shocking she would be here, talking to me on my street, that I didn’t connect this woman with the celebrity at all.
Wait, Wei Fangli is here and knows my name?
She glances up and down the street. “Will you get in the car?” she asks. “I want to speak with you.”
“No, I don’t think so.” I take a last step back until the branches of a pine tree brush my head. Why would Wei Fangli be in a residential Toronto neighborhood? I look around and confirm it’s not a reality show and there are no cameras filming this interaction.
“Please.”
“How about you come out here?” A compromise, because I’m a little curious.
She’s considering this when a hand shoots out to touch her elbow. The hand is attached to a black-blazered arm connected to a man leaning forward.
Even in sunglasses, he is so incandescently beautiful that he shorts out my brain. He’s Asian, with jet-black hair falling over his forehead, a narrow nose, and a jawline with an angle sharp enough to measure with a protractor. Although he’s sitting, I can tell he’s lean with broad shoulders. His handsomeness renders me literally unable to speak, and I get a bit panicked before resentment sets in. How dare he look so good? Someone that attractive should have a little horn they toot to prepare normals like me for their arrival. Despite the shades, he’s also unnervingly familiar, but where would I have met a man like this? Nowhere but dreams.
He ducks back into the car before I can place him, and the two talk in low voices. Fangli finally stretches one leg to the ground, foot shod in a delicate high-heeled sandal that might snap under her weight. That shoe probably cost a month in rent.
How could I ever think she was my doppelgänger? Wei Fangli is flawless. She moves like a dancer and her posture is so perfect I feel my own chin lift in response as I try to straighten my back.
“As I said, I have a proposal for you,” she says, hovering in the car door. “I’d prefer privacy. Please get into the car. This will only take a few minutes.”
Why do I follow her into the car? Do I have a death wish? I might, but right now I’m also very sick of being Gracie Reed and doing normal, safe Gracie Reed things. Whatever happens now will at least be different, and after today, I want that desperately.
When I climb in, the car’s interior blows my mind. Two sets of pale leather seats face each other, separated by a shelf with bottles of water and a minibar. A breath of Chanel No. 5 lingers but I can’t tell if it’s from Fangli or the car itself. Beside me is the man, and after I sit down, I take a good look at his face, trying to keep my composure as I do. He recedes back into the shadows of the car as if removing himself from the conversation.
Like, this man is unreal and his lips are…wow. Despite the improbability of this entire situation, I’m laser-focused on them. They’re the Platonic ideal of lips and match the high cheekbones and jet eyebrows that form perfect straight slashes. Then he takes off the sunglasses. Dark eyes taper to lines at the corners and those lips turn down in a frown as he glances at me. There’s a feeling akin to the moment when the roller coaster finally dips after teetering at the top of the hill as I tumble from familiarity to recognition.
Sam Yao, the Sexiest Man in the World (officially, as named by Celebrity magazine last year), is sitting dourly in the seat next to me.
I’m in a car with Wei Fangli and Sam Yao. Even I know—through Mom’s magazines but whatever—that this is Chinese cinema’s golden dyad. And they want something from me.
“Why am I here?” I ask. I should probably be scared at this point, but there’s something about sitting in a luxurious SUV that takes off some of the edge. If I’d been stuffed into a white van or something, I’d be way more stressed.
“You know who we are?” Fangli asks.
“I know who you look like,” I say.
“I really am Wei Fangli.” She has an unexpected North American accent. “Would you like to make some money?”
I scoot back against the car seat. “Oh, wow. Right, this was not what I expected. I’m flattered and I am very pro–sex work but that’s not really my bag.”
Sam snorts. “You think we want to have sex with you?”
He’s clearly mocking me, but hearing him say the words sex with you is enough to send my imagination into overdrive.
“No?” When I manage to speak, I don’t even know the right answer. My work angst has been replaced by a new and unusual torment—being stupidly tongue-tied in the presence of fame.
Why did Fangli want me to get into the car?
Then she flashes me a photo on her phone and I see the reason. “This is you,” she says. It’s not a question.
The phone screen shows me ducking behind a muffin. “Possibly,” I say cautiously. I don’t know where this is going.
“This, too.”
This time I’m peeking from around the muffin and under the brim of my hat like I’m checking for ghosts, and there’s no point denying it. “Some guy took a bunch of photos.”
She points to the photo credit. “I know. They thought you were me, and social media is now wondering about my new bran diet. At least your hair is covered by the hat so I don’t have to worry about explaining a pixie cut.”
“I’m sorry.” Why am I apologizing for my own hair? “I mean, I was getting coffee. I didn’t tell him I was you.” Hopefully this reassures her that it wasn’t my intention to impersonate her.
Fangli laughs. “Of course not. His name is Mikey and he specializes in trying to get candid but embarrassing photos. The other paparazzi don’t respect him, but he makes a lot of money doing what he does and it got me thinking.”
Sam interrupts. “This is confidential and if you sell this to the media, you will regret it.”
I stare at him, totally nonplussed. “Is this an improv scene? Are you playing the over-the-top villain?”
“Think of how quickly we found you.”
Hot or not, he’s being a dick and I don’t like it. Not-Starstruck Gracie roars back and hip checks Nice Gracie out of the way. I glare at him with the pent-up anger I haven’t been able to release all day. “Screw you, buddy. I’m not the one asking for favors here, in case you haven’t noticed.”
This sparks a spirited argument between Fangli and Sam. I don’t speak Mandarin so the fight is indecipherable to me, and I take a moment to get my bearings. I am in a luxury vehicle with two actors, one of whom looks enough like me to be a little freaky.
Here I admit my secret shame. You know how there’s always a celebrity that you’ll blushingly deny you look like, but you secretly think you do look like, at least after a couple drinks when you’re looking in the bathroom mirror in dim light with your hair a certain way?
Once in a while, someone who knows Chinese cinema will mention that I resemble Wei Fangli, and on my supergood days, my spectacular days, from specific angles, I think maybe I do. It’s nice to get some external validation.
Fangli delivers what must be a devastating verbal blow because Sam slams back in the seat and crosses his arms as he very melodramatically gazes out the window. She stares at him and then turns to me.
“Sam is protective,” she explains.
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.
