Pei Yan went downstairs with the rest of his team. A car pulled up outside the hotel and braked hard. The man who jumped out headed straight for the lobby. It was none other than Mr. Billy Cao.
Sure enough, he had come rushing to find Pei Yan. Billy Cao’s bronze-gold face practically glowed when he saw him, as though he had found a savior. "Mr. Pei, Mr. Pei, wonderful, wonderful! I came to pick you up. We can go straight to the studio for an audition and makeup test…"
"Audition for what?" Pei Yan stretched the words out, raising one eyebrow in apparent surprise.
"Eh? The big production your agent and I just agreed on over the phone, Knights of the Distant Stars. The male lead role is practically made for you. The producers very sincerely hope…" Billy Cao spoke at top speed. His face had changed several times within only a few hours.
"Oh. I heard Zhuang Xiao turned it down?" Pei Yan looked at him.
"Uh, yes…" Billy Cao’s voice blurred.
"You want me to pick up his role?" Pei Yan said.
"We can still discuss that. The writers can absolutely kill that character at the beginning of Season Five. That’s how long-running series usually handle it, then we create a brand-new role tailored specifically to you!" Billy Cao said confidently, lowering his voice with a placating smile.
"Mr. Zhuang isn’t doing the show anymore, so I’m dropping it too. Saves me from following season after season and letting it string me along… You understand what I mean?" Pei Yan looked coldly at him.
What did he mean? Billy Cao’s expression shifted.
"It means I’m not doing it either." Pei Yan was expressionless.
"…"
"Mr. Pei?!"
Billy Cao instantly went green. This time things were genuinely bad. There was about to be a hole in the cast. Where were they supposed to find another cheap, useful Asian kung-fu actor at the last minute?
"Mr. Pei, there’s still room to move on the salary… Mr. Pei, one million per episode, ten episodes, ten million dollars. How does that sound? That’s already an extremely high rate!
"Mr. Pei!!!"
"…"
Pei Yan had nearly reached the hotel entrance when he suddenly turned back. A spark lit in Billy Cao’s desperate eyes. He thought the twenty-percent increase had moved this hungry young star on the rise.
Pei Yan came back and leaned close. "Mr. Cao, I still have to thank you for doing me a huge favor this time."
Billy Cao did not understand. "What happened? I, I can represent you. I can negotiate the details with the company and review the contract!"
"No, no. You blew up Zhuang Xiao’s contract. That means this stretch of his schedule is empty and he’s got nothing to shoot in Los Angeles, right? Temporarily unemployed?" A sly expression slowly appeared on Pei Yan’s face. "Then doesn’t that mean he’ll be forced to consider coming home and taking projects… ? Perfect."
Billy Cao: "…"
Pei Yan grinned with open arrogance. "Thanks, Mr. Cao. I’ll be formally welcoming Mr. Zhuang back home.
"I’ll introduce him to a few roles with higher pay. It’s not like he’ll ever run out of things to act in!"
With that, Pei Yan swaggered away.
Billy Cao was speechless, his face hideous. It was as if Zhuang Xiao and Pei Yan had coordinated things in advance and were joining forces today to smash his rice bowl.
That was why you should never casually destroy someone else’s livelihood. They were all grasshoppers tied to the same rope. They should have been helping one another in the first place. Betrayal and bad faith could eventually threaten the bowl you ate from too.
Billy Cao turned back to Johnny Wu and Zhang Huan for help. One after another, they shrugged and spread their hands, indicating, "Can’t persuade him," "Powerless," "Can’t help you, old buddy!"
Pei Yan got into a taxi outside the hotel and told his agent, I’m going to find Mr. Zhuang and tell him personally that I rejected it too. I don’t want him misunderstanding me.
He had just shut the door and was about to leave when Johnny Wu clung to the window and quietly asked, "Baby, where did you sleep last night?"
"The guest room at Zhuang Xiao’s place." Pei Yan wore an expression of complete obviousness.
"Guest room…" Johnny Wu looked mildly disappointed. You went soft, kid. Useless when it mattered.
"What did you think, that I could sleep my way into his master bedroom?" Johnny Wu had already seen every bit of Pei Yan’s intentions, so Pei Yan no longer bothered hiding them.
"I thought you got a taste of something… True friendship indeed," Johnny Wu said.
"I can’t beat him in a fight. I don’t dare sleep with him. Happy?" Pei Yan looked heartbroken and bitter.
"I’m also afraid you’ll make trouble. Don’t do anything reckless. Don’t stir up that kind of scandal, but…" Daddy Johnny hesitated, then, genuinely loving the child, whispered, "Back in my day, I… was the one who forced myself on him…"
"You?!" Pei Yan nearly sprayed Uncle Johnny in the face. The taxi driver in front was getting impatient.
"You could beat that big architect of yours? He looks much stronger than you." Pei Yan stared wide-eyed at this flirtatious old goat of an Uncle Johnny.
"Baby, it isn’t about whether you can beat him…" The experienced old goat shot Pei Yan a deeply meaningful look. "It’s whether he’ll really turn on you and beat you. Would he actually hit you? Could he still slap you across the face now?"
Understanding dawned on Pei Yan. "Oh."
Right. In the old story, Liu Xianglian beat Xue Pan half to death and shoved his head into a muddy pond because that was Xue Pan.
He was much better than Xue Pan, right? Much more handsome?
What if the one who had come along was Jia Baoyu instead? Would Liu Xianglian still have hit him? Maybe the entire ending of the story would have reversed.
Elio’s Notes: Liu Xianglian, Xue Pan, and Jia Baoyu are characters from Dream of the Red Chamber. Pei Yan is joking that the handsome Jia Baoyu might have received a very different response from Liu Xianglian than the obnoxious Xue Pan did.
Pei Yan continued firing messages all the way there.
【I want grilled fish tonight. A live, fresh fish. Do we need scallions, ginger, and garlic? I’m going to buy scallions, ginger, and garlic right now.】
【What other ingredients and seasonings do we need? Tell me.】
【Do I really have to sleep at Liang Youhui’s? He’s gay.】
【I’m this handsome. I don’t feel safe sleeping at his place. I’m afraid he’ll take advantage of me.】
Some of what he said had become downright shameless. By his own personality, these lines were far too naked. Not his style at all. Even he found them embarrassing. But with Zhuang Xiao, apparently he had thrown his face away entirely.
He bombarded the man with a stream of WeChat nonsense. Apparently he finally managed to annoy Zhuang Xiao for real.
While Pei Yan was still tapping frantically at the keyboard, the phone went ding.
Zhuang Xiao replied: 【Who have you ever been afraid of? Liang Youhui can’t beat you anyway!】
Pei Yan rolled sideways across the taxi’s back seat, laughing "hehehe" out loud, his feet nearly kicking up against the side window. The driver reminded him to wear the rear-seat seat belt unless he wanted a fine.
Pei Yan continued: 【I’m seriously going to buy scallions, ginger, and garlic. I’m heading to 99 Ranch. Where are you?】
Zhuang Xiao sounded irritable today, temper running badly. He sent a voice message directly: 【In the garage getting the car. I’m going to 99 Ranch. Didn’t you say we’re eating grilled fish tonight? Where’s the fish?!】
Pei Yan replied by voice too: 【Ask Liang Youhui for the fish! He should still be out on the boat fishing!】
Even through the phone screen, Pei Yan could feel that he had probably made Zhuang Xiao spit blood.
Laughing, he said: 【See you at the supermarket.】
99 Ranch Market was right beside the Japanese izakaya where they had eaten and drunk the night before. It was the only local Chinese grocery chain Pei Yan knew.
He got out of the taxi, grabbed a shopping cart, and went in.
Back home, he did not even personally shop for groceries. This busted cart rattled anxiously in front of him and sounded like it was about to fall apart under the force of his pushing.
Near the entrance was a row of little shops selling and renting Chinese DVDs, Japanese and Korean skincare and cosmetics, and cheap imported handicrafts. The place had the atmosphere of Beijing’s old Tianyi wholesale market.
Pei Yan pushed the cart past and found himself drawn to a bare-chested still from an old kung-fu movie on the wall. He moved closer, studied it with great interest for quite a while, then took several discs off the video shop shelf along with the promotional poster that came with them.
The style was pure nineties nostalgia. He could treat them as souvenirs from his extravagant "flying taxi" holiday.
When he came back out of the video shop and headed toward produce, the atmosphere around him suddenly felt wrong. Several young women passed nearby.
They looked exactly like local Chinese international students. One girl suddenly turned around. "Eh?"
"Look at that guy…"
"Hey, hey, the one in the white hoodie… baggy pants…"
"Who?"
"Doesn’t he look like our Yan-baby? He looks way too much like him."
"Your Yan-baby shopping for groceries at 99 Ranch? You’ve lost your mind…"
"True. My husband Yanyan is back home shooting Dragon Battles Heaven’s Pass. He wouldn’t run here to buy groceries. That would destroy his character image… Although actually, a cold, arrogant, tyrannical guy secretly shopping and cooking is kind of adorably contradictory…"
The girls whispered excitedly and began following step for step.
A shiver ran all across Pei Yan’s back. He had sunglasses, a baseball cap, and his hood up. The only thing missing was the big black face mask. Southern California’s air quality was so good and the atmosphere smelled so fresh with the fragrance of imperialist America that wearing a mask would have looked way too pretentious. Was his mouth just too handsome and giving him away?
He moved like lightning, darting around the fresh bread and bakery section, abruptly changing direction past milk, eggs, and tofu in the refrigerated cases, then striding past breakfast cereal, coffee, and peanut butter toward the fresh-food section…
The girls were still one step too slow. In a chase they had no chance of outrunning Young Hero Pei. By the time they reached the refrigerated cases, all they found was an abandoned shopping cart spinning slowly in place…
Still breathing hard, Pei Yan quickly sent Zhuang Xiao a voice message: 【Don’t come. There are fans in 99 Ranch. I’m evacuating.】
Zhuang Xiao answered instantly: 【I’m already inside.】
Luckily Pei Yan had remembered to remove everything from the cart. If someone found what he had bought, photographed him showing up in a 99 Ranch in Irvine only fifteen miles or so from Zhuang Xiao’s home, with groceries in one hand and Zhuang Xiao’s discs and poster in the other, he would be completely dead. Both of them would be finished…
He had pulled out all the strength he would use filming an espionage drama. He did not even know what he was nervous about. Ultimately, he was simply guilty.
He had never felt guilty before, nor was he afraid of his fans seeing him. At airports he "walked the runway" with his bald head fully exposed, swaggering sideways like an arrogant eight-legged crab. Fans asking for autographs and photos were never refused. He was generous.
He was about to reply when a hand suddenly landed on his shoulder from behind and pressed down firmly.
Pei Yan spun around in shock…
Zhuang Xiao stood very close, his own face mostly hidden under a cap and hood. They exchanged a hurried look. Everything they had meant to say vanished. Both looked like thieves fleeing a crime scene, still startled as they signaled each other with their eyes: Run.
Zhuang Xiao carried a plastic shopping basket containing nothing but scallions, ginger, and garlic. The two of them shot away at speed and swept past a row of fresh-food refrigerators.
Zhuang Xiao asked, "Where’s the fish? Did Liang Youhui really catch one?"
Pei Yan said, "No idea. You think he can? Do we need to go night fishing ourselves at dusk?"
"I don’t think he can," Zhuang Xiao snorted.
Pei Yan laughed.
Zhuang Xiao raided the refrigerators for frozen lamb chops, Korean-style short ribs, pork belly, then grabbed two bottles of barbecue sauce. He figured that was enough for a meal. Pei Yan started edging toward the cash registers up front when Zhuang Xiao grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back. "Are you fucking stupid? Your fans are waiting at the registers to trap you."
Pei Yan drooped and obediently turned back.
Zhuang Xiao did not go anywhere near the supermarket entrance to pay. He went instead to the little counter in the fresh-food department and called into the back kitchen, "Hey, shifu…"
The butcher in the fresh-meat prep area carried a boning knife and had a fierce, fleshy face. He nodded at Zhuang Xiao too. "Hey, A-Xiao."
An old Teochew immigrant accent. Their own people.
Zhuang Xiao said, "Bought a pile of meat for barbecue. I’ll come pay you tomorrow."
The butcher said nothing, cool as hell. His eyes jerked sideways. Go on, then.
Pei Yan’s horizons broadened again. So this was how a great hero traveled the jianghu and "bought groceries"! Zhuang Xiao immediately dragged him through the staff passage, out the rear entrance, and into the street…
The alley behind the market was narrow, hemmed in by buildings, silent and empty. The two looked at each other and laughed. Espionage was exciting.
Some useless explanations no longer needed saying. About Knights of the Distant Stars, both men had already chosen to give it up. No need to wring their hands and explain why.
Zhuang Xiao knew Mr. Pei as he understood him was not that kind of person. The kid was arrogant and explosive, but he did not walk the road of petty villains.
From inside his ridiculously oversized hoodie, Pei Yan began pulling things out.
"Why is that thing so baggy? What are you hiding?" Zhuang Xiao frowned.
"Baggy enough that I could probably fit another you and your Fatty Bao in here!" Pei Yan laughed.
He pulled out a disc and handed it to Zhuang Xiao.
Then another disc, handed over.
Then another, and finally a large poster that had already picked up a crease…
All that clutter had stuffed the pouch of his hoodie until he looked five months pregnant. Zhuang Xiao burst into rare laughter. "What are you trying to do?"
Pei Yan was perfectly calm. "Big star, sign every one for me."
Zhuang Xiao could not stop laughing. "What’s wrong with you?"
"I’m sincerely asking for an autograph. I’ve never asked you before," Pei Yan said.
Zhuang Xiao’s gaze brushed lightly over his face. Something strange moved there, and he deliberately avoided an emotion quietly surging underneath. Pei Yan thought Zhuang Xiao might want to say, I’ll sign them at home, as many as you want, but he simply would not say it. A person accustomed to maintaining a reserved, steady exterior was frighteningly good at suppressing expression and emotion, not leaking a drop.
Zhuang Xiao bent down and picked up the bags of fresh food. "Hurry up. The frozen stuff will thaw in the sun and go bad."
With that he turned and walked toward the parking lot.
They had been outside the supermarket for one minute. What exactly was going to thaw and spoil?
*
After putting the groceries into the refrigerator, Zhuang Xiao glanced at the clock on the wall. "We’ll call Youhui over for barbecue tonight. It’s still early. I’ve got some work to do first. Come out with me."
Zhuang Xiao opened his garage door with the remote.
Pei Yan swept his eyes over several very nice cars inside, but Zhuang Xiao chose the little pickup.
The pickup cab sat high and had only two seats. Pei Yan rode in the passenger seat, his ass bouncing all the way until countryside roads soon appeared. They were out in the far suburbs, in a valley where endless orchards and farms stretched along both sides of the road.
Fine horses and fat sheep wandered lazily through the fields, and blue sky and white clouds filled the horizon.
"What are we doing? What kind of work?" Pei Yan asked.
"Since I’m free, I’m going to get some rich soil from a farm and spread it in the vineyard’s back lot," Zhuang Xiao said.
"You do that yourself?" Pei Yan turned and stared at him as though the idea were unbelievable.
"Usually our own people do it. Today everybody else is away, and you’re here." Zhuang Xiao suddenly smiled, letting the handsome shape of his mouth relax.
"Fuck… so I’m free cheap labor you grabbed off the street?" Pei Yan cried, realizing he had been tricked.
"You eating our barbecue? Staying in the free Airbnb?" This time Zhuang Xiao shot him a provocative look, smiling at the corners of his mouth.
"Terrible choice of friends," Pei Yan grumbled, secretly delighted.
So many things here were things Pei Yan had never seen or imagined. Zhuang Xiao spent half the year filming in Southern California and the other half living this "semi-reclusive" life. Between the vast sky and earth lay beautiful scenery that could quiet the mind and let a person temporarily forget many worldly troubles…
Zhuang Xiao went to a farm selling manure compost, loaded the pickup with a truckful, and hauled it away.
This kind of heavy work was usually something the brothers of the Zhuang Stunt Team did together. But Sha Yunfei had taken the stunt crew to Hong Kong for a shoot, Sa Risheng had gone home to visit his anda in the hospital, and Fatty Bao was on a plane to the United States. So the strong laborer Hero Zhuang had casually grabbed was Pei Yan.
Elio’s Notes: Anda is a Mongolian term for a sworn brother or close sworn companion.
That load of manure nearly drove Young Hero Pei into collapse.
He covered his nose all the way and carried on inside the cab. "I can’t take it. I’m going to expose you. I came all the way to America and didn’t get to enjoy the superior wealthy capitalist lifestyle. I came here to dig manure and shovel fertilizer with you!"
He complained nonstop, without one nice sentence, while inside he was so happy he could have bounced straight out the window…
Zhuang Xiao opened his window and lit a cigarette.
Pei Yan immediately put on an expression of exquisite impending death. Zhuang Xiao laughed. "Best Actor, are you? Stop acting crazy."
Pei Yan said through suffocation, "It stinks! Close the window!"
After a while Zhuang Xiao said, "It isn’t the dirt. I think I ran over a skunk just now. Couldn’t dodge it. Sorry."
Both of them collapsed into laughter. Pei Yan desperately rolled the window back up. "I’d rather smell your cigarettes. You still smell better than a skunk!"
A skunk stink bomb rode beneath the wheels. The fragrance of soil and the breath of clouds followed them all the way, and a journey had never been so cheerfully comfortable…
The truckload of rich soil went to a vineyard estate in the valley. The land and business belonged to Liang Youhui. It was a famous winery with more than a century of history, producing expensive wine exported to Europe, Canada, and mainland China. Wine was exactly how Liang Youhui made his money.
Only now did Pei Yan learn that Zhuang Xiao had investments in both the winery and real estate. Zhuang Xiao himself did not drink, yet he was a major shareholder in the Liang family’s winery and received dividends every year. The returns from those investments had long exceeded the meager fees he earned acting in films.
Working as an action director or bit player in Hollywood was purely for some kind of feeling and pursuit. Supporting a household on it was brutally hard. A supporting role might pay only three or four hundred thousand dollars. Stunt performers and doubles earned even less, sometimes less than what a kid like Liang Youhui could make selling wine to high-end Southern California restaurants, galleries, and clubs as an agent and middleman. One large contract could bring hundreds of thousands in signing fees, and now that he owned a winery, he could supply directly.
Summer was passing and autumn not far away. The grapes were nearly ripe, production would soon begin, and before long the thick fragrance of wine would fill the air.
Walking between rows of grapevines, Pei Yan turned and asked Zhuang Xiao, "If there were an opportunity… I mean if. If the pay were right and the script were good, would you consider going back home to film?"
Zhuang Xiao did not answer immediately. A faint fragrance floated through the valley and the sun blazed on the horizon. It was scenery straight out of heaven. Who would not be reluctant to leave?
Pei Yan added, "If by coincidence it was a role you liked, with a team you liked, something where we could work together… if everything fit…"
Zhuang Xiao told the truth. "Good pay, a good script, and a role and team I all like. Opportunities like that genuinely aren’t common."
Pei Yan understood and stopped wasting words.
He had some plans in mind, but right now he could not offer promises or guarantees, so he kept quiet. Besides, he could not tell Zhuang Xiao, I can help you with this or that. Someone like Zhuang Xiao would definitely hate the word "help."
In a very good mood, Pei Yan stood between the vineyard rows and called Liang Youhui. "Youhui-baby, I’m heading home tomorrow. Come over tonight and let’s stay up till morning!
"You eating barbecue?
"I’m telling you, if you’re late there’ll be nothing left. You think I’m eating everything and still saving some for you?
"If you’re late, we’ll just barbecue you tonight! Skin you and roast your pork belly and rump!!!"