It wasn’t rocket science—talking to people, learning their names, remembering how important it was to stay flexible and that any good negotiation left both sides feeling like winners. She’d learned this by watching Umma at the grocery. Umma knew which drivers to be sweet to, slipping them candy to take home to their kids, and which ones to yell at or else they’d take all day unloading, blocking traffic and pissing off the ajummas next door. She made it her business to know which sales reps were on the way up and eager to give discounts on ramyun, and which ones had just been demoted and needed a bump in volume to justify a price cut. Her trump card when she needed an out was invoking her husband—the convenient idea of him, anyway; an iron fist, cold and unyielding, when anyone who knew Apa knew what a soft heart he had. “I need to check with my husband,” she’d say, and then five minutes later, having done her math to ensure the deal was a good one, she would return from the empty stockroom, all smiles and appeasement. “He said no, but I convinced him.” With her example, Umma had taught her daughter that if you wanted your business handled right, you handled it yourself. Because if you came to this country with one sheet, one pillowcase, and thirty-five dollars to your name, if your nearest family was five thousand miles away and in no position to help if you went belly up, and if you somehow started a business that could feed your family and pay for your children’s piano lessons, you didn’t outsource. Self-sufficiency wasn’t just a value, it was your only choice.

That was why Phoebe had handled the business end of The Starfighter. Like her mother, she knew when to play good cop and when to play bad. On set—where everyone knew how faint Ted’s hold was on reality (the clock, their budget, the mercury, the needs of mere mortals to eat and use the bathroom), and how little appetite he had for a fight, how derailed he could get by tiny insurrections and then how disappointed in himself he was afterward for the energy he’d spent, the shooting time he’d lost—she was firm. She made sure no one took advantage while Ted was submerged in his dream. Back in Burbank, where The Starfighter filled Omega’s coffers, Phoebe was a shape-shifter, charming one minute and apologetic the next. It was easier, frankly, to meet with the execs alone and play her trump card when she needed it. “Come on, guys. You really want me to take these numbers back to Ted when Silvertown is sniffing around? Jerry Silver came by the house himself. I’ll do what I can to make sure Ted knows how much you value him, but let’s be honest. Money talks.”