I wanted to know his story—his real one—and ask him his thoughts on my mess, my parents, my decisions. He seemed to understand what it was like to have parents like mine. To have that pressure, that need to please them even though you were hurting yourself to do it.

But the real him was off-limits. Partly because of his rule and partly because he had clearly rejected me when I’d poked him, but mostly because that would be like adding accelerant to this on-fire mess of a plan.

I tried to distract myself from these too-complicated, no-solution issues. And, of course, my masochistic mind wandered to the time in second grade when I’d farted during a schoolwide moment of silence.

When I finally did fall asleep, my subconscious combined the two, forcing me to dream-live through farting in front of Andrew and my parents at the Thanksgiving table.

Upon waking the next morning, I felt just as drained as yesterday, but at least this weekend and Andrew felt like the past. What magic sleep had, even fart-filled sleep.

Drew CHAPTER 19 FOOL

November 30

After each job, especially holiday ones, I felt drained. Social situations are rough for anyone, but as an operative, I was pretending to be someone else 24/7, even worrying about accidentally talking in my sleep and ruining my cover. (My boy James Bond deserves a pay raise.)

Non-holidays were less busy, for obvious reasons, so I was going to have a lighter load until Christmas (and whether Jing-Jing—er, whoever she was—hired me or not, I told myself it didn’t matter). I still had jobs in between, but they were usually one-evening dinners, a Saturday get-together, or a church visit plus brunch, which were all more forgiving than a multiday holiday immersion.

Chinese New Year was by far the busiest (and most lucrative) holiday, the one around which Rent for Your ’Rents originated. The practice of bringing home a fake boyfriend for Lunar New Year was more common in China, with women going to the classifieds to find actors for hire. Our founder, known to everyone as just Mr. J, saw a need in the Asian-heavy California communities and started with just a few operatives—himself, his brother, and a close friend. Six years later, we had approximately a hundred operatives in several locations. I’d even recruited a couple of artist buddies, though we were a small subset (the majority being aspiring actors, of course, who made up almost all of the LA branch).