“Hey, my dude!” Suddenly, a whirling dervish of a man is hurricaning his way up to us, clapping Henry on the back. He’s on the shorter side, a little scrawny, with medium brown skin and a big toothy grin. “You made it.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it,” Henry says, giving the guy a genial half hug. “Rika, this is Mason Choi. Mason, this is—”
“Ahhhh, your new friend,” Mason says, shaking my hand and giving me a broad, cartoony wink. “I’ve seen the socials, I’m up-to-date.” His brow furrows as he takes a step back, sizing me up. “Are you an actress? Comedian? Do you do any storytelling gigs? I’ve got a YouTube channel where I spotlight all kinds of Asian American and Black creatives. You might have seen this one short we did that went viral—”
“Yo, don’t bombard her with the sales pitch,” Henry says, chuckling. “This is her first time here, let her take it in.”
“Okay, okay,” Mason says, holding up his hands. “You know how it is—I get excited about the prospect of new talent. Especially since . . .” He cocks his head at me, scrutinizing my features—like a lot of people do when they first meet me. But it’s not in that way where I’m a puzzle to be solved. It’s more like he’s looking for a connection he already knows is there. “You’re mixed, too, yeah?” he says, then points to himself, flashing that toothy grin again. “Blasian here—Black and Korean!”
“Yeah, Japanese—and some white stuff on the other side,” I say. “I don’t know exactly what white stuff because I don’t actually know my dad, but, um . . .” I bite my lip, realizing I’ve blurted out something extremely personal to a total stranger.
But Mason takes it in stride. “Aww yeah, Halfie Club unite!” he crows, clapping Henry on the back again. “I love it.”
“Mase, we were actually wondering if Grace is here,” Henry says, his eyes scanning the crowded room. “I heard she might show? I, uh, need to talk to her. About the movie.”
“Haven’t seen her,” Mason says, lifting one shoulder in a careless shrug. “But hey, let’s go ask Diya—she usually does the RSVP list.”
Mason beckons for us to follow him into the crowd. I take a deep breath and wade in. Mason waves to nearly everyone we pass by and seems to have a personalized greeting for each person—a complicated high-five/handshake here, an indecipherable nickname there.
As we push through, I feel a light touch against my lower back and realize it’s Henry—guiding me, making sure I don’t get sucked into the mass of bodies. My cheeks warm and my nure-onna instinct is to pull away, to tell him I’m perfectly capable of making my own way through a crowd.
But I don’t want to. I like the way his hand feels there.
Ughhhhhhhhhh.
Mason finally reaches our destination—a table with two women tossing back very full glasses of wine and laughing uproariously. Like Mason, they appear to be in their twenties. One has glowing brown skin and the most brilliant smile I’ve ever seen—actually, she looks kind of familiar, and I wonder if I’ve seen her on TV before. The other is pale with a smattering of freckles across her cute upturned nose and wavy dark brown hair pulled into a messy ponytail—and my heart skips a beat when I realize she also looks like she’s in Mason’s “Halfie Club.” Specifically my brand of Halfie Club.
“Heya,” Mason says to the women, slipping into an empty seat at the table. “Look who showed up.” He gestures to Henry.
“Baby Hank!” the woman I may or may not have seen on TV shrieks. “You came just in time—we ordered a whole mess of that pineapple shrimp curry!”
She grabs Henry’s hand and tugs him insistently into another empty seat. I slide into the last empty seat at the table, already wondering how quickly I can get the story on this “Baby Hank” business.
“And you’re that girl!” the woman exclaims, her eyes lighting up. She drops Henry’s hand and reaches for mine, pumping it up and down enthusiastically. “I’m Diya Dey, and this is Joanna Raine.” She gestures to the other woman, who smiles warmly at me. “And we need to know all about whatever’s going on here.” She waggles her finger—tipped with a perfectly pointed red nail—between Henry and me.
“Ease up, DD,” Mason says, rolling his eyes. “Give the kids some room before you start planning their wedding. This is Rika—” He gives me a prompting look.
“Rakuyama,” I fill in.
“Ah, Japanese?” Joanna sets down her wineglass and claps her hands together. “Me too!”
“Yesss, Halfie Club!” Mason says with a fist-pump. “Diya is an actress—you may have seen her in such illustrious roles as—”
“—as Convenience Store Owner’s Wife and Distraught Indian Woman Number Three,” Diya says, affecting an exaggerated Apu-on-The-Simpsons-type accent. “Just wait, I’m gunning to be the actual Convenience Store Owner next time. Maybe Distraught Indian Woman Number One, even.”
“Also known for a turn or two in my YouTube sketches,” Mason says, grinning at her. “And Joanna is a writer, a novelist—she writes this awesome fantasy series that’s being made into a TV show, so she’s currently going through that nail-biting process.”
“Wherein step one is answering the question, ‘But why can’t they all be white?’ over and over again,” Joanna says, toasting Mason with her wineglass.
“Holy shit,” I blurt out. “You’re all so cool.”
“Trying to be the change,” Mason says, sounding halfway between serious and sarcastic. “But it’s hard out there in the mean representational streets of Hollywood, so Diya and I started this meetup. It helps all of us to have a safe space to commiserate.”
“And by ‘commiserate,’ we of course mean ‘bitch out the system while downing mountains of awesome curry,’” Diya says, letting out an explosive laugh. “Baby Hank is one of our youngest members. We’re trying to make this world a little more welcoming for him and all the babies who come after.” She gives Henry
