(Me, two months in, working for Mary, after I messed up some basic accounting: “I hope you didn’t hire me because you thought I’d be good at math.”

Mary: “No, no, I hired you because I thought you’d be good at meth. Boy do I have egg on my face!”)

“Let’s backtrack,” Clifford says quickly. “Let’s approach it from a new angle.”

“When you say ‘mildly exotic,’ are you talking about these ‘almond beauties’?” I ask dryly, pointing to my eyes. “They are one-half Filipino, from my dad’s side of the family.” My father’s mom, Nana Dalisay, is the one who raised me in a tidy bungalow by Santa Monica Beach starting when I was ten.

Speaking of the ocean, the more Clifford talks, the more I’d like to walk into one and just keep going. Wave good-bye to Nana and Mary along the shore and slowly submerge myself. My final act on earth will be giving the finger to Clifford as the water rises above my head.

Fat chance of that happening. Now I live in a city truncated by walls, even outside. Is the sky still there? Who can say? It’s buildings and windows all the way up for me now; claustrophobia by way of the outdoors.

Clifford proceeds to dig himself deeper. “Could you pretend to be fully or three-quarters Asian? Just for the photo’s sake? Not like as a representation of your true self or whatever. We are, after all, in the business of pretending, right? It’s all part of the same op?”

“Nope. Sorry.” I refuse to be the poster child for his cluelessness.

Clifford looks deflated, but his finger guns fly out of their holsters nonetheless. “Gotcha. Okay. All good.”

“Gotta run. I’m about to meet a new client.”

“Oooh, is she international? Could you snap some shots on the sly and send ’em to Aisha for—”

I’m always happy to refer clients to Aisha, our freelance photo expert, but not without a client’s permission, and not so they can secretly be part of an international ad.

I click off, ending the call. If he asks later, I’ll say the Wi-Fi in my apartment is spotty. Of course, he has about a million other ways of communicating with me, and right on cue, a new message materializes on-screen.

CliffBar: We got cut off somehow. Good luck with Bree! Go get ’em, Tiger.

I wait, wondering if that’ll be the worst of it or if there’s more to come. Sure enough . . .

CliffBar: Not like a Tiger Mom, though! LOL. Any kind of tiger. Rawr. See you at the meeting next week.

It’s only eleven a.m. but I’m in desperate need of alcohol.

* * *