YOUNG ASIAN MAN
What happened? What have they done? They’ve trapped us.
YOUNG ASIAN WOMAN
Or maybe we did it to ourselves.
YOUNG ASIAN MAN
Were we always this? Wasn’t there more?
YOUNG ASIAN WOMAN
There was. There can be more.
You hear them at night and you think: someday, you’ll get out.
EXT. THE ALLEY BEHIND THE RESTAURANT—PRESENT DAY
First drag’s the best drag. Second drag you remember you hate smoking. You hold the cigarette away from your body, watch the lonely ribbon drift up toward the billboard, thirty feet high in the sky:
MILES TURNER SARAH GREEN
BLACK AND WHITE
their perfect, huge faces, looking down on you. Even out here, the light hits their faces just right. Wherever they go that’s where they’re meant to be, the center of things always white and black and black and white. Even in the picture, the tension is unbearable, some spot halfway between their two noses the romantic center of gravity, the two of them facing each other, in profile. Both of them with such luscious lips. Are those their real lips? They can’t be. You take your thumb and index finger to your own lips, checking to see how meaty they are. How do you get lips like that? Lips that look permanently ready to be kissed, a perpetual state of plumpness. Supple. Pouty and tough. Those are some sexy cops with sexy lips. You wish your face was more—more, something. You don’t know what. Maybe not more. Less. Less flat. Less delicate. More rugged. Your jawline more defined. This face that feels like a mask, that has never felt quite right on you. That reminds you, at odd times, and often after two to four drinks, that you’re Asian. You are Asian! Your brain forgets sometimes. But then your face reminds you.
The door swings out, startling you. It’s her. Karen Lee.
“Easy there,” she says. “How’s death?”
“Are you talking to me?” you ask her.
She looks around, as in, who else, dude?
“Sorry. I’m not used to, uh, women like you talking to guys like, uh…”
“Women like me?”
“Women with options.”
She laughs. Studies you for a moment. “You’re not really smoking, are you?”
You look at your cigarette. “No.”
“Then why are you holding that?”
“I don’t know. Goes with the outfit, I guess.” You drop the cigarette, crush it out with your shoe.
“So. How are you?”
Whoa, you think. Is she messing with you? She’s messing with you. She has to be messing with you. A woman like this is not going to be interested in a Dead Not Quite Kung Fu Guy. A Generic Asian Man. If there’s one thing that you have to remember, it’s that. Sure, they’ll talk to you. Be your friend. But deep down, she doesn’t think of you like that—
“Hey, Will, you still there? Lost in your internal monologue?”
“Sorry. I guess so.”
“It’s nice out, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you from?”
“I’m from here. Chinatown. What about you?”
She flashes her eyes at you, and you almost die all over again. “Where do you think I’m from?” she asks.
“You want me to guess?
“I want to know your impression of me.”
“Okay,” you say. “I’ll give it a shot: you went to a good-to-very-good liberal arts college in the Midwest. No—back east. You know how to ride a horse, drive stick, use chopsticks. You did a semester abroad in Osaka, yeah? Or Kyoto maybe. Solid grades. You have an accounting degree to fall back on if your dreams don’t work out.”
“So far so good, except it was Taipei, not Osaka, history, not accounting, and I was dean’s list all four years, and to be honest, I’m not sure what my dream is yet—it might be grad school—so I don’t think I’ll be crushed if, as you put it, it doesn’t pan out for me.”
“But that’s the thing, Karen. For you, it always does. One way or another. Pretty Girl is never not going to be in demand. Kind of how it goes. Things work out pretty good for your kind. White People: Pretty Much Good, Pretty Much Always. Didn’t they teach that in history?”
“I’m not White.”
“White-ish. Close enough.”
“Yeah. That’s why I play Ethnically Ambiguous Woman Number One.”
“You may have a point. So what…are you?”
“What am I? Nice, Willis.”
“You know what I mean. Lee can be, you know, like Sara Lee, or General Lee. But it’s actually, like, Lee. As in, Lee?”
“Lee, as in my paternal grandfather was from Taichung. He moved to the States and lived with us after my grandmother died.”
“You’re a quarter Taiwanese?”
“If you want to quantify it that way.”
“Wow. Just—wow.”
“What did you think I was?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe you were part Latina? Or maybe just came back from Hawaii and had a nice tan? Do you speak?”
“E-hiau kong Tai-oan-oe.”
“From your accent I can tell you speak better than I do.”
“Do you need a moment?”
“This is very confusing for me.”
“If you think it’s confusing for you, imagine how I feel.”
“Seems like it’s worked out pretty well for you.”
“I’m sure it seems that way.”
“You’re like a magical creature. A chameleon.”
“Able to pass in any situation as may be required,” she says. “I get it all. Brazilian, Filipina, Mediterranean, Eurasian. Or just a really tan White girl with exotic-looking eyes. Everywhere I go, people think I’m one of them. They want to claim me for their tribe.”
“Must be amazing.”
“Yeah, I mean, I can be objectified by men of all races.”
“But you said it yourself. You can pass for anything.”
“Seems like it’d be easier to be one thing.”