the network would hire you on full-time as, like, a staff stylist. I don’t know. Maybe your job now is better. I’m just throwing out ideas.”
Stefan smiled, snapped a cape around her neck, and pumped up her chair—a comforting routine. Her once-thick mane had never fully recovered from a goose-related “accident” many years before, and instead of struggling through life a victim of partial baldness, she relied on Stefan, who in his docility had also become a close friend and confidant, to add both length and volume with top-notch extensions. These babies today were from the Lulu batch—much coveted and cut from the head of the girl with the loveliest locks in all of China. As the old saying goes, a woman’s power resides in her hair. And if you can’t make your own power, make do. Yes, Kelly was soon to be set. The best of the best.
“And all of those losers I grew up with, they’re going to be so sorry. I mean, what are they doing now? Crashing their Ferraris into over-passes? Snorting horse tranquilizers? Dancing the night away in the same clubs they’ve been dancing all their nights away in since high school? Oh, and that Jenny Tao—her dad is the CEO of Happy Mart—all she’s doing is directing dumb art films that her parents fund and no one goes to see. I heard her dad tried to pay Spielberg to meet with her to give her career advice, but Spielberg refused, even though he was going to pay him, like, ten million dollars just to have coffee with her.”
Stefan raised an eyebrow, lifted the corners of his mouth, and then ran his fingers through her hair. “So, let’s get these old ones out first, and then we’ll see what we have to work with.” His whispery voice tickled her ear canals. She nodded in response, shut her oversharing trap and her eyes, and let him begin his work in peace.
A pair of tiny scissors slicing through elastic string. Fingers untwisting, tugging. An MGMT song from her hooked-up iPod played softly on the speakers. Stefan’s was a totally private salon, owned by China’s number one hair extension company and catering to those who sought and/or required total privacy: film stars, pop stars, national icons. She belonged here. The best of the best.
She relaxed. Relaxed, relaxed, relaxed.
Until that meditation track began to echo through the blankness of her mind—breathe in, breathe out—and then a goose honking in rhythm in the background, and anxiety shot up from her fingertips and from her toes, and she opened her eyes and grabbed for the distraction of her iPhone to run a few research-related searches. Childhood obesity. Risk factors. Basics of nutrition. Fitness for beginners. She read and read, scrolled and scrolled, and she wouldn’t let herself stop reading and scrolling until a phone call came through. She picked up, and the person on the other end answered before she could say a word. “Hello? Is this Kelly Hui?”
“It is.”
“This is Government Official Fang. Were you able to meet with your father?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror. Her old extensions were all out. Stefan was examining her natural roots. “And I think we have a deal.”
The official inhaled sharply, excitedly.
“On one simple condition,” she added.
The official cleared his throat. “What’s that?”
“I want a hands-on role in running the camp.”
Silence.
“Hello?”
“While we appreciate your generous financial contribution, Ms. Hui, the actual administration of the camp is a very gritty and difficult job, and one that I’m not sure somebody like you would actually be interested in.”
Stefan met her eyes in the mirror.
“What does that even mean?” Kelly rolled her eyes, making her best are-you-kidding-me? face for Stefan’s benefit. He winked back at her, cheerfully humming softly along to the one guilty-pleasure Lady Gaga song she’d loaded on her iPod. Fucking shuffle. “Somebody like me?”
The official cleared his throat. “My meaning is that you seem like a very busy and very classy woman. Based on our research and the experience of some of my colleagues, fat camps can be very ugly, very stressful places.” Perhaps sensing skepticism in her silence, he added, “Let me put it this way. Have you ever had a two-hundred-pound child bite your ankle because you wouldn’t allow him an extra ration of dressing with his lettuce?”
“No,” Kelly said. “But one of my classmates in Los Angeles had her arm licked by a crazy guy on the subway and—”
“Well,” the official interrupted, as though he hadn’t even heard her, “this very thing happened to a man my colleagues met in their research. Let’s call him Mr. Li. This Mr. Li served as a first-time fat camp administrator at a private camp in Shanghai—he was hired with experience as a hospital dietitian. On only the fifth day of the camp, when Mr. Li refused to allow one of the children to add extra salt to his boiled vegetables—”
It was Kelly’s turn to interrupt: “I thought you said it was dressing on lettuce.”
“Look, what it was is irrelevant. The point is the child became belligerent, falling to the floor, kicking, screaming, carrying on, before savagely sinking his teeth into Mr. Li’s ankle. The child’s jaw had such a hold on him that it took four counselors to unhinge it. Mr. Li was then rushed to the hospital where he had to undergo rabies vaccination, which, as you may know, is a series of shots that takes two weeks to complete. And he still has the incisor marks on his ankle, and, ahh, don’t even get me started on how much the hospital bills came to—”
“Oh,” Kelly grunted, adjusting her posture in the mirror. She eyed Stefan’s extension handiwork, which was coming along quite beautifully if she did say so herself. “Well, rest assured that if I am savagely bitten by a rabid little rascal, I can certainly cover my own medical expenses. As you may be aware, in addition to being ‘busy’ and ‘classy,’ I am also very ‘wealthy.’”
“Indeed,” the official said flatly. He audibly yawned. Kelly thought she could make out the sounds of an action movie playing in the background. Was he speaking to her from a cinema? No wonder they didn’t care what their offices looked like—they didn’t actually work there. Or anywhere.
Kelly sighed. Her scalp was uncomfortable. Her ear was getting sweaty. “So, how about we arrange for transfer of funds and then you send me all the details about date and location and so forth.”
“Ms. Hui, look, what I’m trying to tell you is—”
“No address, no money.” Kelly hung up to the muffled boom of an explosion.
KINDHEARTED BOY LOOKING FOR NICE GIRL! ENJOYS SURFING THE WEB, CHATTING WITH FRIENDS, AND COLLECTING SEASHELLS…
A COUPLE WEEKS LATER, ACROSS TOWN, ZHAO, THE TWENTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD son of a cleaning woman and a late construction worker, sat at his bedroom desk, opened a web browser, and entered the address of the dating website he frequented. He’d not yet sent any messages to any girls, but he felt confident that he might soon work up the courage, or cowardice—whichever it may be—to do so. He browsed a few profiles, all pretty and therefore all out of his league, and then stood up and smoothed out his shirt. Oh, well. It wasn’t the day for finding a girlfriend anyway. Today was the day of his big interview.
He’d been matched to the position by an online agency he’d registered with out of desperation a few weeks before. Sure, it was paying for a job (the agency guaranteed placement within three months), but wasn’t it true that everyone had to pay for his job in one way or another? Money was at least a clean way of doing so—this method didn’t involve unethical acts or shady dealings, just a simple online escrow payment.
And anyway, he needed this: two months before, he’d walked out on his job as an assistant at a fitness equipment sales company. He was far too old to still be a mere assistant—all the other assistants were girls fresh out of college. He’d been promised promotion eight years before when he was hired; however, he was overlooked time and time again. He was a good worker, efficient if not sharp, and therefore attributed his lack of upward mobility