I could only imagine Linyue had been preparing that rigorous training ever since she’d given me the call that I was cast for this movie, or probably even since she booked me the audition, or honestly, probably from the moment I told her I’d like to go back into acting. I’d had a few smaller things to ease me back into it, lower-profile roles for TV, but this movie had been my long shot, and I made the mark. I wasn’t the lead actress, and frankly I didn’t want to be—for right now I was very content, enough of the main cast to get the red carpet treatment and the afterparty, but not so much that managing the professional aftermath would be a full-time job.
Specifically, I’d gotten the part of the crazy ex-wife who threatened to kill her ex-husband with a knife. Julie had been bouncing with excitement for weeks now to see me threaten to stab a man.
Julie and I both handled the event well, going through the entry smoothly and then working with the staff, coordinating how we moved through the event. I got pulled into interviews, tugged into live feeds to say hello, got an interview together with the lead actor who I’d threatened to kill with a knife where we all joked about it with the interviewer, and Julie did a good job of orbiting without being affixed to me, staying close to me and managing herself in the space when she needed to. She chatted with some of the industry figures as well, and even made friends with one of the interviewers who wanted to ask about our relationship, and we weaved together through the course of it, reuniting for the occasional joint appearance, checking in withthe event staff, on and on until finally, at last, we were in the theater for the showing.
Normally I felt awkward in a showing. I’d only had a couple of movie appearances before, but it was always strange seeing my face on such a big screen and knowing all my colleagues were also looking at my face and actively judging my performance. I never looked quite like me on the silver screen, and it was never actively bad, just strange. But this time, I got to sneak a glance in the low lights of Julie’s excitement next to me seeing me come on the screen, and that was enough that I actually started looking forward to my face showing up.
And she looked like a kid on Christmas morning when the scene finally arrived where I cornered my ex-husband with the knife gleaming in my hand. I guess I was glad to have a girlfriend who would support me if I decided to start murdering people.
“That wassohot,” Julie said, once we were out of the screening and on our way to the afterparty. “Can you threaten to stab me, too?”
I squeezed her hand. “Absolutely not, dear.”
“I’m not asking you toactuallystab me. You’re just hot with murder in your eyes!”
The afterparty was electric, the tension of the premiere finally dissolved out of me and leaving me in the celebratory mood of the space around us. It was a beautiful rooftop venue that took me back a little bit to when Julie and I had first met, and we mingled with the rest of the industry figures there, sipping champagne and clinking glasses to people who, predictably, Julie had eating out of her hand in no time.
Of course, also predictably, Julie spent the entire evening nursing a single flute of champagne. She was still a lightweight.
Linyue also made it in towards the end of the party—whether it was because she was my manager or because she had a terrifying forceful stare that could expel anyone who tried totell her no, that was anyone’s guess, but she found the two of us standing by the railing with a glittering Manhattan skyline beyond us, and she did something that I think she did every year or so just to make sure I was never too comfortable: she shook my hand.
“Good work today, Ms. Warrick. And congratulations.”
“Linyue, I’m sick of you,” I said lightly. “It’s been… practically all my life and you still shake my hand and call me Ms. Warrick.”
“Well, you can easily fix that,” she said. “A few thousand for a nice ring and you can be Mrs. Warrick.”
Julie cleared her throat hard, looking a little dizzy at the concept. I glowered at Linyue. “I don’t care if I’ve been married for twenty years, Mrs. Warrick is my mother. Don’t you dare.”
Linyue sighed irritably, turning to Julie. “Well, Ms. Branch? She’s hopeless. I’ll have to resort to asking you to marry her.”
Julie laughed awkwardly. “I think it kind of has to be a both-sides, consensual thing. Otherwise it’s got a different name. Kidnapping, I think?”
“Oh, will you take some initiative,” Linyue said without any actual harshness, despite her best efforts at a scowl. “Listen, I know you’re busy celebrating tonight—”
“Oh, god, Linyue, is this more work?” I said, and Linyue ignored me.
“—but on Monday we’ll have quite a bit to discuss, you and me and Ms. Adesina.”
“Have we gotten approval to move ahead?” Julie said, her eyes sharpening.
“Most likely. Thankfully, Cheng Shiyi is coming back to New York, so we’ll hopefully be able to sucker him into another partnership.”
I laughed, shaking my head. Poor Mr. Cheng didn’t realize how much Linyue talked about him like a dumb hunk of money. Of course, it wasn’t like he was just being taken for a ride—the Jewel investment had paid off handsomely for him, as the project took off and got its roots all across the New York music scene.
It had all been a lucky break for us, too. In the end, my father had to bring me on directly to talk about how to work with him, because he’d been softened up a little on already making an exciting, smaller investment that had paid off well, and he wound up backing Shiyun America fully. The company wasn’t quite out of troubled waters yet, but Mr. Cheng’s help had gotten us through the worst of it, not just financially but in the currency of guanxi, his connections with the Shiyun parent company helping reestablish some legitimacy around the American branch.
It didn’t hurt that Mr. Cheng loved making speeches at Jewel company events. As far as I understood, he and Krysten had formed a kind of unusual but close friendship, and he’d bragged about taking English classes to improve his public speaking specifically for the New York market. I could tell from his delivery that Krysten had also been helping him practice his English.
“Great,” Julie said. “I’ll be ready for it. Helena and I can probably coordinate with Estelle too and pretend we’re sneaking him off to another illicit rooftop party or something, you know how he loves it.”
“Ms. Fong can’t be trusted with anything,” Linyue said, even though I knew she was secretly soft for the woman, as evidenced by how she cracked. “But I suppose I can accept it as long as you two responsible adults are there.”
“Helena and who?” Julie said. I laughed, putting a hand to her back.
“Don’t worry, I’ve also tricked Linyue into thinking I’m a responsible adult.”
Linyue smiled. “On the contrary, you did no such thing. I meant Ms. Branch and Ms. Adesina.”
