The Misfortune Cookie

traditional Chinese folklore, ghosts and spirits could only travel in straight lines, so local merchants had built this street to be crooked in order to keep out evil spirits. Or, at least, that was the story that Brian, the protagonist of ABC, was supposed to tell my character, Alicia, as we strolled down Doyers Street together today.

Being a cop rather than a filmmaker, Lopez would probably be more familiar with the street’s criminal associations. The little L-shaped street was sometimes known as the Bloody Angle because of all the gang wars and murders that had taken place here over the years. But that wasn’t in Ted’s script, which took a decidedly romantic view of Chinatown.

Even with the heavy lacquer of industrial-strength hairspray holding my ’do in place and my hood pulled up to protect it, the wind out here was messing up my hair. I also felt my nose running and my eyes starting to water from the cold. John wasn’t around to fix my hair and makeup, so I decided I’d better go inside before I got any more disheveled—even though we obviously wouldn’t be doing any more filming for a few hours.

I opened the door of the restaurant and went inside, giving a sigh of relief as I entered the warm building. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning, but the place was already so crowded that the noise level meant I’d had to step outside to phone Lopez. And considering the way our conversation had gone, I’d certainly been right not to sit in here, shouting over the phone to him while surrounded by my curious ABC colleagues.

“Is your friend coming?” asked Bill Wu as I sat down again at our table. He played Brian, my boyfriend in the film.

I nodded. Then I added to the cop hovering near us, “Detective Lopez will be here within an hour.”

“An hour?” Officer Novak repeated in dismay.

“I’m sorry.” Fudging a little, I said, “He’s in the middle of a big Chinatown investigation. It’s the soonest he can get here.”

“If it’s so big, then why haven’t I heard about it? This is my precinct, after all.”

Novak looked so young and fresh-faced, I thought he was probably brand new to the force, and it seemed likely that lots of things went on in the Fifth Precinct that no one told him about.

Hoping to placate him, I leaned toward him and said in a confidential tone, “He’s OCCB.”

“Oh. Those guys.” He nodded, sighed, and tipped his cap back, apparently settling in for the wait. “I get it.”

I glanced around and saw that my ABC colleagues looked puzzled but impressed.

“You don’t really want to stand there for an hour, do you?” I pulled out the free chair next to me. “Please have a seat, Officer Novak.”

Everyone seated at this table chimed in, urging him to sit down.

Novak hesitated for a moment, then smiled and accepted the invitation—as well as the hot cup of tea I insisted on pouring for him.

An apple-cheeked blond guy, Novak had shut down today’s production when he discovered us filming in Doyers Street and blocking traffic without any permits. His intervention was how I learned that we were there without the proper permits. But he had been very nice about not charging Ted for violating various local laws and ordinances—after I said that if he would be patient and not call this in, then an NYPD detective would come vouch for us and help clear up this misunderstanding.

So it was just as well, really, that I hadn’t followed through on my intention to kill Lopez after he’d arrested me.

“So your police friend is going to straighten this out for us, Esther?” said Ted. “Excellent! Why don’t we go ahead and have lunch while we wait?”

Everyone agreed with this suggestion, including Officer Novak. Enticing aromas were wafting through the crowded little eatery, so it would have been hard to resist.

And, fortunately, I could actually afford to eat today. In addition to being cast in Ted’s film a few days ago, I had recently been surprised and delighted to find my final paycheck from Fenster & Co. in my mailbox. Due to the way I had accidentally destroyed whole portions of the department store’s fourth floor while Max and I were confronting Evil there, I had assumed they would withhold my pay. But the impersonal wheels of corporate bureaucracy had turned out to be a wonderful thing in this instance, and the retail empire’s accounting system had simply spat out my paycheck along with all the others. I quickly deposited it before the company could change its mind, then I paid a utility bill, set some money aside toward next month’s rent, and bought groceries.

Heigh ho, the glamorous life of a working actress.

Now, sitting in a cozy, no-frills Chinatown restaurant with Officer Novak and members of the ABC cast and crew, I ordered some soup dumplings, a delectable feat of culinary engineering in which hot broth is contained inside Chinese dumpling wrappers. It’s one of my favorite things to eat on a cold day. Then I sipped my tea while everyone else at the table placed their lunch orders.

Ted Yee, who was sitting on my left, had plenty of flaws, as I was quickly learning, but he was a good- natured guy and, more to the point, unabashed in his enthusiasm for my work. He had declared himself “blown away” by my audition for him the day after his uncle’s wake, and he’d hired me on the spot. Thack had called me the following day, after negotiating with him, to inform me of a pay rate that would barely cover my basic living expenses, but which was nonetheless at least double what Ted was paying anyone else. And I had been mentally prepared for the modest pay scale, since I knew the film’s only backer had just died.

Although Aunt Grace had indeed declined to invest any more money in the film, she didn’t try to demand that Ted repay any of the funds that Benny had already invested. Ted said there was enough cash left to cover another couple of weeks of filming; so I had a job for at least that long. He also said he was lining up another backer, and he was very optimistic about securing sufficient funds from this new mystery investor to finish the movie.

However, I had no idea how reliable that vague information was. Only a few days into this job, I had already realized that optimism and enthusiasm were among Ted’s greatest strengths, while things like realism, practicality, and organizational ability were nowhere among his strengths. He had, for example, completely forgotten to secure permits for filming on location today. And upon realizing it this morning, rather than reschedule, he had blithely gone ahead with the location shoot as if that were a minor detail. Whereas, in fact, it was a major oversight that got our production shut down within an hour.

Luckily for Ted, though, the young cop who’d insisted that, no, we really couldn’t take over a public street without the city’s permission, had agreed to wait around for a more experienced officer to show up and decide what to do with us.

And since Lopez had cost me my previous job by arresting my employer, I thought grumpily, the least he could do was make sure this employer didn’t go to jail, too. It wasn’t as if Ted was laundering money for the mob, after all. He was just careless. Much like the sort of man who lets a whole week pass without calling a woman after sex, for example.

Stop, I told myself. You can’t bring that up today. Just follow the script.

I would get Lopez to help us, and I would find out if he was in Chinatown to run Lucky to earth. Those were the two things I needed to stay focused on when he got here. No deviating into intimate matters. And definitely no shouting at each other in front of a whole restaurant crowd again. Been there, done that, determined not to repeat the performance.

The warmth of the restaurant and the hot tea I was drinking had succeeded in taking the chill off my bones, so I unbuttoned my coat. Underneath, I was wearing Alicia’s costume, which was Ted’s notion of what a “really hot” uptown white girl would wear while strolling around Chinatown on a windy January day with her date. I was dressed in a tight, low-cut knit top, a little black leather jacket, a miniskirt, sheer stockings, and boots that were designed to be sexy rather than warm. When not on camera, I wore a heavy coat over this ensemble so that I wouldn’t promptly succumb to hypothermia.

John had done a great job with my hair; I wished I could get it to look this good. It appeared shiny and soft (though, in fact, it took the full-force gale in Doyers Street to make it move at all), falling around my shoulders in lush, rounded waves. Ted wanted a much more heavily painted look for Alicia’s face than I did, and John was good at creating a look that satisfied Ted without making me cringe.