“I think that—”
“No. Fangli is tired, that’s all.” He shuts me down and we ride in silence until the hotel.
Before we get out, I make one last attempt. “You don’t think that, Sam. She needs help.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I fix the smile on my face for the strangers in the lobby before I get out of the car.
Sixteen
Sam comes into my suite for a debrief but I ignore him as I take off the new shoes and wiggle my toes with pleasure against the cool wooden floor. Even though they were flat, they pinched. That jumpsuit was a definite winner; I might buy it off Fangli to keep for my own when the two months are done since Mei warned me I wouldn’t be able to wear it again while I was here. Fangli doesn’t wear the same outfit twice for events.
“You need to practice Fangli’s autograph,” Sam says when he comes back to the table with water. “That could have been bad, and I don’t know how Mei let it slip through the cracks. She’s usually so organized and perceptive about what needs to be done.”
I have to agree, even though it bugs me to admit he’s right. “Do you have a copy of it?”
“Here.” He scribbles three characters on a sheet, the strong lines swooping over each other. “Wei, there’s her family name. Then Fang, for fragrant, and Li for jasmine.”
I took Mandarin in university, and back then my painstaking strokes were like a toddler with a crayon compared to this confident scrawl. No wonder I got a D grade. He rolls up his sleeves （ding, ding, add that to the hot man list）， then shakes the pen at me. I hitch a chair up to the table and admire his forearms. His wrists are broad and I realize I have never noticed a man’s wrists in my life, let alone known I had a preference for broad ones with very slightly visible veins.
As expected, my first attempts are terrible because I have awful handwriting in any language and even my own name looks like a wiggly line decorated with a dot that hovers between the c and the e but rarely right over the i. Sam looks up from his phone to see my progress.
“That’s not very good,” he observes.
I hand him the pen. “Do it again,” I say. “Slower.”
This time, I watch as Sam dips the pen down and writes Fangli’s name on the paper. He hands the pen to me and I chew on my lip as I analyze it. Tracing the characters into muscle memory might help, so I try to remember where Sam started the character.
“Here.” He takes my hand and guides it to the beginning. His touch is warm but I shiver.
“I have it.” I grab my hand back. When I trace the line, I’m ashamed to see it’s shaky. I’m reading more into his casual touch than he means, and it makes me react badly.
“I can do this on my own,” I say, standing up from the table and whacking my thighs against the edge. Ow. Back down I go.
“Clearly not. Sit down and keep trying.”
This makes me stiffen and forget the stripe of pain across my legs. “You’re not my boss, you know. I can handle this.”
“What would you have done on your own? Fake a last-minute broken wrist like you did a sore throat?”
“That was a good solution to the problem.” Or…I could have explained that I’m only speaking English while in Canada, like I was supposed to. The pressure made me forget what we had planned for this exact situation.
He shoves back from the table. “Wrong. You were hired to do a job and you didn’t do it. Mei spent hours with you, hours she should have been spending doing her goddamn job, and you threw it away.”
I never thought that Mei also had work to do full-time for Fangli. “Part of her job is to help me.”
That’s a jerk thing to say, and I know it the fucking second it comes out of my mouth. Embarrassed, I double down, stick my chin out, and go on the offensive. “None of you mentioned autographs. I was unprepared.”
He looks at me in honest surprise. “Are you unable to think independently about what might come up and plan for it?”
“Hey, sorry I’m not rich and famous. People don’t go around asking for my autograph. You should have told me.”
“That people ask for autographs is only common sense.”
“Not to me and apparently not to Mei.” Digging myself in deeper.
“Don’t blame Mei.” Sam puts one hand on the table. “You’re not even trying. This is more than pulling on a wig. You need to make an effort. Acting is work, and it doesn’t matter if you’re on the stage or attending that party.”