Of course.
“Are you there?” he asked.
Yin, yang, Mars, Venus, men, women . . .
“Esther?”
“We’ve got a new backer,” I said, “so we’re going forward with filming. Thanks for your help. We appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome. I want to help you.”
“It’s the honorable thing to do,” I murmured.
“Well . . . if you say so.”
“And you’d like to get laid again.”
“Whoa,” he said in surprise, “that kind of came out of nowhere.”
“Am I wrong?”
“Of course you’re not wrong.” He said quietly, “But I’m not going to ask for payment in kind.”
“Not if you value your life.”
“Well, yeah,” he replied, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I know who I’m dealing with, after all.”
“And now it sounds like you need to deal with Ted.”
“Not that way. He’s not my type.”
“Ted!” I called. “Ted.” I caught his eye and pointed to my phone. “Detective Lopez says he’s been trying to reach you. It’s important. Get off the phone right now so he can call you, okay?”
“Oh, excellent!” Ted gave me a thumbs-up. “Gotta go, Susan. Detective Lopez has news for me!”
I had a feeling their conversation would take a while. Which was fine, since I decided I was by now in no mood to try on slutty dresses. I’d tell Ted to concentrate on Lopez tonight, and I’d go home. Choosing a costume from the store’s stock could wait a few days, since the scene where Alicia would wear a Chinese-style outfit wasn’t in the coming week’s shooting schedule.
“Mission accomplished?” Lopez asked me.
“Yeah, Ted’s off the phone now,” I said, watching the director disconnect his sister. “And I’d like to find my way out of this place before dawn, so I’d better set off on my expedition now. Especially since I need to find Max, first.”
“You’re with Max?” he asked, his tone carefully neutral. Max had often been a subject of discord between us, and I guess Lopez was trying to avoid more conflict at the moment. “Is he involved in the film, too?”
“Yes, I’m with Max. No, he’s not involved in ABC. And I’m not answering any more questions tonight, officer.”
“Just one more question. Please? So I’ll know.”
“All right, one. What is it?”
“Are you speaking to me?” he asked. “Seriously. I really don’t know, and . . . Well, I’d like to know. Just for informational purposes.”
“Am I speaking to you?”
“Yes.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“At this point, I don’t even know,” I said honestly. “I just don’t know.”
15
Yuanfen
Fate, mutual destiny; the force that brings two lovers together or binds two people in a relationship.
“Oh, yeah. This is the one. This is the dress,” said Danny Teng, dai lo of the Red Daggers. “She should wear this in the movie.”
His reptilian gaze slid over me as I stood before a mirror in Yee & Sons Trading Company while wearing a short, tight, sleeveless, Chinese-style polyester dress. It was mostly black, with one red panel. Although the neckline was perfectly respectable, the side-slits in the skirt went up so high that I kept worrying that Danny could see my underpants.
Then again, maybe my half-naked feeling was just due to the way he was undressing me with his eyes.
With my hair hastily piled atop my head and a pair of black go-go boots completing this ensemble, I studied my reflection for a moment, then said to Ted, “I look like a Eurasian hooker.”
“You look hot,” said Danny.
“Does he really get a say in this?” I said in disgust to Ted.
“Huh?” Ted, who had been studying my outfit, blinked and asked me to repeat the question. Then he responded mildly, “Oh. No. This is a directorial decision, Danny.”
“Hey, just giving my opinion as a red-blooded male,” said Danny, relaxing in a chair with his feet up and his hands folded behind his head. “But if the reporter lady wants to keep trying on more dresses, no problem here.”
For the past week—ever since Ted had announced he had a new backer—Danny had spent time on the set with us every single day. Sometimes he was there for over an hour; sometimes, to everyone’s relief, he left within twenty minutes. But at some point each day, he showed up and hung out for a while, making a nuisance of himself by smirking at the men and ogling me and Cynthia. And Ted wouldn’t get rid of him. Our director just asked us to tolerate Danny’s occasional presence and left it at that, offering no explanation for this rude, distracting thug hanging around our set each day.
At first, I had assumed Ted must owe Danny money, and Danny had come to collect. But by the second day, I realized the truth: Danny Teng must be Ted’s new “silent” backer, and he was monitoring his investment.
Oh, great.
Danny sure didn’t look like a guy with money to invest, but I supposed that was probably normal in his line of work. I mean, being well-groomed probably wouldn’t fit in well with a Red Dagger’s daily tasks of extortion, assault, and loan-sharking. Danny’s sleazy appearance was much better suited to credibility when conducting that sort of business.
And Ted, I now realized, was an even bigger idiot that I had supposed. No wonder Susan was always so angry at him!
After all, it only took a very short acquaintance with Danny Teng to realize he would slit someone’s throat without a second thought just for getting on his nerves. So what would he do to Ted if the film lost money? Or didn’t get finished? Or turned out to be lousy (as seemed not unlikely)?
We were all concerned about the situation, but Ted just vaguely kept assuring us that everything would be fine and there was no reason to worry. Since I was worried, though, I was pushing John about the investors’ event he had proposed. John, who shared my concerns about Ted’s (and everyone else’s) safety while Danny Teng was involved in the film, had by now introduced Ted to his NYU film contact. But until Ted took some of the necessary steps, such as preparing a budget and a sample reel, there wasn’t much for anyone else to do besides nag. Which didn’t really work on Ted; if it did, after all, then Susan or his mother would have gotten somewhere with him by now.
We had so far endured more than a week of Danny’s daily visits to the set, and it looked like things would be this way for a while.
Being none too bright, Danny wasn’t quite able to process the information that I was an actress, not a reporter—as he had assumed at Benny’s wake. So now he vaguely seemed to think I was an investigative journalist who was performing in Ted’s film in my copious spare time. I didn’t try to clear up this misunderstanding, since it sometimes meant I could get rid of Danny by asking him for personal quotes about his life of crime for my “newspaper.”
This evening, alas, Ted and I had Danny all to ourselves. Earlier in the day, we had been filming on Hester Street with the regular crew and several cast members. But since tomorrow was the firecracker festival, the first day of the Chinese New Year, this was a busy time for everyone in the production except me. It was sort of like Christmas Eve was for gentiles, I supposed—and me, once again, spared the frantic bustle by virtue of being Jewish. (So at least there’s some advantage, once in a while, in being one of the Chosen People.) Ted had halted work shortly before dark and let everyone else go.