“What are you working on these days?” Zanne asked. Phoebe startled at the expression of interest—such an ordinary thing, but she was used to being around children, who didn’t give a damn what she was up to. Zanne—it was an odd name, but it matched the rocker vibe. Whoever she was now—a producer? an AD?—people were probably a little afraid of her, too.

“I just directed a feature I wrote. Warrior Bride,” Phoebe said. “It’s about a girl forced to marry the evil governor, who uses her supernatural powers to get vengeance. Think Mulan meets Khaleesi from Game of Thrones.” Her elevator pitch had morphed over the years, always some riff on the formula of Asian + Not. She’d swapped out Mulan for Bruce Lee in the oughts and swapped her back in this year, with the promised live action reboot in production. Phoebe had delivered some version of her pitch so many times—last night as she lay in bed unable to sleep, in the shower this morning, at the Ivy with a producer years ago, all those meetings that always came to nothing—that she felt like a modern-day Cassandra, a woman whose ramblings no one heeded.

“Wow. That sounds amazing. When can I see it?” Zanne said.

In real life, Phoebe thought she was a pretty good judge of character, but in LA all the signals got scrambled. It was impossible to tell when someone was being genuine or not.

“Soon, I hope. Here.” She reached into her purse and took out one of the cards she’d had printed for the conference. A fury on horseback, hairpin in her teeth, her long hair and the sleeves of her wonsam flying free, and the words “Warrior Bride, a film by Phoebe Lee” running along the bottom of the card. Serena, the girl she’d cast in the lead, was half-Asian, half-Black, old enough to be Phoebe and Malcolm’s child, if they’d had any. Phoebe cringed at her own vulnerability—handing this stranger her card as if it were a photograph of a newborn—but she heard Umma’s voice in her ear telling her to Stand up straight! Be proud! “Depends how well it goes today.”

“And tonight, when the handshakes actually happen,” Zanne said.

“There are so many parties. Hard to tell which to focus on.”

“Bump to Pump, but you didn’t hear it from me. Anyway, it was nice to meet you.”