Parts of the camera they rented for him were wrong and had to be exchanged. One of the makeup artists didn’t show up. They were shooting under the Manhattan Bridge with two assistants holding up a tarp for the shivering and pissed-off Latvian teenager to change behind. Each day was long and exhausting, and the entire crew stayed at a Holiday Inn on the Lower East Side to save time on the commute. Yang barely had a moment to take a proper shit, much less think about the actress. So imagine his surprise when he returned home on the fourth day—exhausted, sore, and with forty pounds of equipment strapped to his back—and even before he opened his door, he heard singing. It was Chinese singing. It was the actress singing!
It was clear that they’d been drinking all day. Four of his roommates sat around their enormous dining table, which was covered with torn-up bags of Asian snacks, with a dozen opened bottles of beer between them. As Yang approached, they immediately wanted him to translate the funny story the actress was at that moment broadcasting.
“What was that? What did she just make me say?” Julian the French painter asked while swaying in his seat like a schoolboy. Richard the bartending saxophonist was blushing from ear to ear next to Jesus, the young kid from Mexico who sold handmade jewelry. Jesus had his arm around his new girlfriend, Gwen, a gangly redhead who carried a plastic harp everywhere she went. Seth was there, of course. Seth who had a website with the description “famous original Brooklyn street artist,” who nobody knew what he did all day, and Bryan with his thumb in between a book of Chekhov stories, holding court as usual with his two cats piled on top of each other under his seat.
Apparently the actress, with the coordinated efforts of volunteer translators on the other side of the world, had managed to become friends with all of his roommates. She’d shown them fan-made reels across all streaming platforms. With their encouragement she’d set up a makeshift stage, where she’d wrapped a scarf around her head and danced a Mongolian folk dance with the Swiffer as a prop horse. “She has also been cooking everyone awesome Chinese feasts,” Julian said with a big smile, adding, “Even better than the stuff you make.”
“Oh,” Yang said and sat down. Julian placed a plate in front of him. It held a chicken leg.
“You’re back already!” the actress said, bringing him a bottle of beer. She hooked her arm around his neck and kissed him on the cheek.
“You look awful,” she said. She appeared to study his face closely. “You poor thing! You need to get some rest!”
“I know,” Yang replied. After taking a bite of chicken, and speaking Mandarin so that nobody else in the room understood, he said, “I worked nonstop for three days straight. I thought for sure you would have found a hotel by now.”
Elbowing Julian off his seat, the actress said, “Well, I was thinking, I want to live here. It’s so fun here!”
He thought she was joking. She looked so silly and carefree sitting there next to all his roommates.
“You can’t live here,” he said. “I live here!”
When he went into his room and flipped on the light, he saw that she had unpacked both of her suitcases and moved aside most of his clothes in the closet. It was only then that it hit him: she was not in fact joking. It was already dark outside and all he could think about was going to bed early. Other friends had joined the dinner theater happening in the kitchen and some of them booed in protest when he led the actress by her arm back into his room.
“Let’s figure this out,” he said, lowering his voice. “Do you need me to help find you a place to live? I can go ahead and book a hotel room in Flushing for you; they even accept RMB there, maybe even your WeChat money. It won’t be a problem.”
“It’s not that.” She took one of his chairs and began turning it in circles. “I just really like the vibe here. It has that, you know, that genuine Bohemian cool.”
He looked around at his dim bedroom with its broken wooden chairs and the mattress on the floor. “You don’t want to stay here. This is just a warehouse! It isn’t even a nice one. It’s actually pretty crappy here.”
“But I don’t mind at all! I really like it!” she said. “This is where real Brooklyn artists live, right? The guys told me they like having me live here and I am welcome to stay in your room as long as I like.”
“Which one of them said that?” He couldn’t wrap his mind around what was happening. “If you stay in my room, where do I sleep?”
“This room is big enough for both of us,” she said. She moved to put her hand on his bicep. “There are already so many people here, what’s one more? Now that you’re back we can both sleep in here.”
She went to close his door with her extended foot and then with a quick twirl she stood smiling at him. “We can sleep together, you and me,” she said.
“What? What are you talking about?” asked Yang, standing perfectly still as she slowly moved toward him, slipping off her cardigan and letting it rest in a colorful puddle on the floor.
When he looked up from it, she was already unbuttoning her flannel shirt and revealing the top of a black lace bra. She ripped the last button off the shirt, which up close he recognized to be in fact one of his shirts.
“W-Wait a minute, what are you doing?” he stammered as their arms came together. Usually a woman undressing would arouse him on principle, but her complete disregard for the words coming out of his mouth was frightening.
“Let’s just sleep together,” she whispered into his face.
“No, that’s okay,” he said, walking backward into his own table, which had her jacket draped over it.
“Let’s do it,” she said, shaking out her hair. “I know you want to.”
“No, really, I don’t want to,” he replied honestly. There was something almost chemical happening, he could smell it. It had a smell.
Suddenly she was on top of him, trapping his knee with her crotch. Her sharp tongue licking inside his ear and her ice-cold fingers unbuckling his belt as he tried to buckle it back.
What was happening? Was he dreaming? He had to hold her away from him by the shoulders to make her stop.
“Fine, if you don’t want to sleep together, why don’t we just sleep beside each other?” she asked impatiently.
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m a light sleeper.”
“I’ll be quiet then,” she said with narrowed eyes.
“If there is someone else in the room I can’t fall asleep,” he said, picking his shirt off the floor and pausing to take a good look at her belly button to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
He wasn’t and now her perfectly lined eyes looked offended.
“You don’t want to sleep with me?” she asked. “So many people want to sleep with me! Almost everybody I meet wants to sleep with me. I am famous! And super hot!”
“You are. I know,” he said after a pause. “But I’m not interested” was what he wanted to say, but he was beginning to suspect she was insane. That was a possibility, knowing now that she had not been sent from his unconscious to torment him. “I’m sorry.” When she stepped up to him again, he instantly put his hands up in front of his face.
“Who are you to reject me?” she said, poking a hard finger into his chest. “Who do you think you are? What a joke!” She wrapped her arms around her chest and turned her face away from him.
“I just don’t want to sleep with you!” he said, looking down as his half-buckled jeans. “I don’t know you!”
With her back to him she replied sharply, “Fine. Well, I am going to bed soon, so can you leave?”
He didn’t feel like arguing anymore. He was exhausted, his lower back ached, and he smelled like a bag of coins after wearing the same clothes three days in a row. Without another word he left his room, walked down the hall, took a shower, and lay facedown on the lumpy futon in Seth’s room.
He had a hard time staying asleep that night. He woke up wanting a cigarette even
though he’d quit smoking a long time ago. The molars on the left side of his mouth ached for the first time since he could remember. He sat up in the dark and tried to press the pain away with his palm. Please don’t let it be a cavity. He wouldn’t even know where to go to find an affordable dentist. The whole apartment was dark and he tried not to wake anybody up as he walked past his room, down the hallway, and into the bathroom. He turned on the light and opened his mouth in front of the mirror. He turned his face this way and that, mouth wide open, looking for something, perhaps a big black hole inside.
Even though Seth wasn’t sleeping in his own bed, Yang stayed on the futon out of respect. Seth was probably wrapped around one of the NYU undergraduates he was always meeting online. Yang had been the same way once. Who was that guy who had had such an easy way with women? What had happened to that tall, chill dude with no grievances and nothing to escape from?
Ever since Yang was a boy, the girls on the playground always chose him to swing one end of their jump rope as they hopped around in front of him. But he never understood why, nor did he get why they did some version of it for the rest of his life. He’d be able to stand still for a minute before he got bored and tried to mess with them, trip them, make them fall. Then the girls would report him to the teacher and he’d be scolded, “What girl is going to like you if you do things like that?”
The answer was every girl.
They cheered for him during basketball games, slipped him cryptic letters in class, and sent him texts late in the night after they were old enough to drink.
How many times had he gone to the adult shop around the corner from his old apartment in Beijing to buy those morning-after pills? While this girl or that girl, with his jacket wrapped around her, stamped her pretty feet on the sidewalk and blew into her hands.
Yang would weigh the colorful plastic packs in his palm “They better work,” he said to the shopkeeper. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
Let the owner glare at him all he wanted, Yang of the past couldn’t care less what the old guy thought of him. Then one day they didn’t work and his girl got pregnant.
Their son or daughter, if there had indeed been one, would now be going to school. It would be safe to assume the baby’s mother went back to working at the accessories stall or that she’d returned home to where she’d come from. Maybe she was doing just fine. Surely there were tracks in the sand that could lead Yang back to that version of himself, though he tried to cover them as best he could.
Deep in his dreams that night, the woman once again visited Yang. There was that familiar pleasure that revealed itself to him, as if he was looking at one of his favorite photographs. The nude body, captured just so, was mysterious and intoxicating. She could bring him just up to orgasm without even touching him. This time he tried to use all his strength to hold the woman up by her wrists, but he could not get her to uncover her face. Two belly buttons. One and then another. She was born once and then born again. Resurrection after resurrection.
The next morning the actress was in the kitchen like nothing had happened. She was recording Bryan learning how to count up to ten in Mandarin. She’d curled her hair, and her clothes had a vaguely eighties vibe, as if she was starting to take on the apartment’s old school aura. There was freshly made porridge simmering on the stove and three roommates had already gathered there waiting with empty bowls.
“So I was thinking about it,” she said, her phone’s camera pointing at him. She poured some green tea from a kettle and brought it to Yang in a mug. “I think what’s best is if I give you money for rent here and you go find somewhere else to live.”
Yang put the mug down and took one of the clean spoons Gwen was handing out. Why was she bringing up money? Had the actress been snooping around his room?
“No!” he shouted, startling the other roommates. “I don’t want to find somewhere else to live.”
“But I want to live here,” she said.
“You can’t live there. I live there. This is my life,” he said, pointing to himself. “There are plenty of other places to live. Please go find your own!”
Turning her chair to face him, the actress explained that her fans loved his apartment. An influential Hong Kong gallerist had started tuning in regularly and even gifted her a coveted cartoon yacht to show his appreciation for her work. Brooklyn life had been one of the most successful twists of her feed. She couldn’t just leave now; even he should be able to understand that this was a huge opportunity. She smiled her charming smile and Yang recognized right away that it was the smile that got her favors at airports, free hotel upgrades, and complimentary tickets. The smile that got fans to send her digital flowers, red packets, and diamonds that were adding up to thousands of dollars. He was almost about to agree to something he’d regret when Gwen interrupted them.
“Holiday Inn Express,” said Gwen suddenly from the other side of the table. “She’s looking for a place to stay, right? Whenever I travel I like to stay at Holiday Inn Express.” She held her spoonful of porridge aloft, looked at Jesus as if waiting for his nod of approval. “Only Express though. Because they’re like mom and pop owned and have funky themes. Like yeah. They’re so great. She’ll love it.”
“Really?” Yang asked, turning toward her. He felt a profound sense of gratitude. Of course intelligent, sensitive Gwen would come to his rescue.
“Yeah, Gwen loves Holiday Inn Express,” Jesus repeated slowly to the actress.
Yang nodded encouragingly at him to continue.
“It’s like this ongoing joke between my friends”—Gwen nodded, getting more and more animated—“like, you loovve Holiday Inn Express.”
“Didn’t one of your friends even steal your love of Holiday Inn Express?” asked Jesus. “Like she just pretended your thing was her thing.”
“Yeah, she put it on Instagram after I posted about it, about how much she loves it,” said Gwen. “But she has, like, way more followers than me.” She looked around the table and then added, “She also wrote out one of the recipes I found in Gourmet in her own handwriting and then posted it and pretended like it was her recipe and like—”
“Gwen says you will love Holiday Inn Express!” Yang interrupted in Mandarin, but the Livestreaming audience had already chimed in and the actress’s screen came to life with thumbs downs chiming.
The actress shook her head emphatically. “We have those everywhere in China, too.”
Yang looked imploringly back at Gwen and Jesus, but they seemed to have lost interest already. He could see that they weren’t trying to do him any favors. Yang turned to Seth, who had just walked in the doorway. “Seth, please help me out. I’ve got to find this actress somewhere of her own to live.”
“Sure thing, buddy,” Seth said. He winked at the actress, who didn’t understand a word they were saying. “I’ll be more than happy to take this smoking-hot babe off your hands.”
In the afternoon Yang gathered all his dirty clothes and went down the street to the laundromat where the Chinese ladies who worked the wash and fold patted his cheeks when they saw him. They asked whether he was sleeping enough or drinking too much. Yang liked being around them, listening to them talk to one another about their lives. One of them was working to support a husband with lung cancer even though she never saw a doctor for her own limp. The other looked just like his second-grade teacher. Her daughter worked with her on the weekends. Both women had overstayed their visas and were now in the black, undocumented. Yang vowed to make nice portraits of them one of these days, perhaps after fashion week when he could save up enough to focus on the personal projects he’d been neglecting. When he compared himself to these women, his situation with the actress seemed so stupid he could almost start laughing at himself.
That evening when Yang came home from English class, something he had to attend in order to keep up his student visa, he was barely surprised to see the actress still the
re. She was in the center of the old factory’s double-height landing trying to ride the bicycle that Julian, though he would never admit it, had stolen from a memorial for a cyclist hit by a car.
Bryan, completely under her spell, was filming the whole thing.
The actress looked like a newborn calf, her knees buckling out of her torn jeans. Then she straightened up and started pedaling in circles around Bryan with complete ease.
She rode down the hall and into Richard’s room and he suddenly stopped playing the saxophone. “What’s going on?” he asked, shuffling after her out into the hallway to join them.
“I thought that bike didn’t work. Didn’t you say there weren’t any gears on it?” Richard asked.
Bryan shrugged. “Maybe she fixed it.”
Seth was shirtless and lighting up a glass bong when Yang knocked on the door to his room. He smiled at Yang sheepishly through his half-closed eyes.
“What happened, man?” Yang asked. “You said you would help me.”
Seth shook his head and moved his hands as if he were juggling invisible balls. “I tried, my friend, I really did,” he said, standing up and brushing crumbs off his pants. “I took her to three different places we found together, but she refused to stay in any of them. She said they were all too shitty or something. What was I going to do?” He patted Yang on the back.
“I hated every one of those places Seth took me to,” the actress said when he found her lounging comfortably in his room. “The apartments in Manhattan were newer, but these people just wake up, go to the gym, then work all day and don’t come back until after dinner. It’s so boring.”
“Boring?” Yang asked. “It’s a place to live.”
“I just don’t believe that my audience would appreciate it. It’s too sensible. This competition for eyeballs is a tough business,” she said.
She then put down her phone and her voice softened. “I do feel bad that you insist on sleeping on that terrible sofa,” she said, wiping the surface of her phone screen with the palm of her hand. “Are you sure you don’t just want to sleep together?”
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