ToW | Chapter 1

There are so many tourists that the sea breeze loses the taste of sea breeze. If you sniff closely…

It has the complicated scent of sweat-masking perfume curing itself into the fleshy bodies of men and women of every skin tone, the sweetness drifting from the sea salt toffee shop not far away, the fishy smell wafting out of the sourdough clam chowder, the mellow aroma leaking from the beer museum…

Jiang Qingzhou sits right in the middle of all these smells, a cigarette pinched between her index and middle fingers, adding yet another scent to the seaside promenade.

The sun at thirty-seven degrees north latitude spills gold over her face. Sunglasses cover half her face, and the corners of her mouth are turned up in a smiling curve.

Jiang Qingzhou had a face of clear strengths and weaknesses. She knew exactly how to smile most beautifully, knew just how high to lift the corners of her mouth, knew how to keep three parts intelligence, three parts sincerity, four parts tenderness in her eyes, and with that perfectly high bridge of her nose, anyone who saw her had to sigh and call her a beauty.

But if she took off her sunglasses now, you would see that her cheekbones were a little high, her jaw a little square, that she was a woman with a somewhat stubborn mind.

“Because the Hoffman brothers pulled their investment……” the woman with cropped blond hair slowly, tactfully said this, her pale blue eyes showing just the right amount of regret and comfort, as if afraid the Asian woman opposite might collapse at her words.

Jiang Qingzhou shrugged, took a drag on her cigarette, exhaled, then picked up her coffee and sipped it. After she swallowed, she was still smiling. “Thank you for telling me, Katherine.”

The woman called Katherine took her to mean that she could lose face but not poise…… well, fine. Everyone could part on polished terms, so she said a few more things like, “If anything else promising comes up, I’ll definitely contact you,” then stood up and went left, right, left with Jiang Qingzhou and planted three quick kisses, smack, smack, smack, before striding off.

She had worked with this Chinese actress for six years and still had not really figured out her temperament. Unlike Su Qi, who had no need to bridge skin color or East and West civilization, she understood that Jiang Qingzhou was not putting on an act. She really had no ambition.

“Sister…” Su Qi sat down beside her. “We turned down that Christmas release movie for this role……”

“Ah……” Jiang Qingzhou answered, taking another drag. “Yeah.”

Su Qi was a little irritated. She was Jiang Qingzhou’s personal assistant, and she had to make a living too. Back when Jiang Qingzhou was twenty-four, she starred in two hit dramas in China and became famous all over the country, then suddenly wanted to come to America to study…

Thirteen years later, Chinese audiences had already forgotten her, and American audiences had never remembered her face in the first place.

What had she played in Hollywood all these years? A Korean restaurant owner’s wife in the third season of Twilight Castle……

The lunatic woman in Jennifer Lawrence’s breakout film Ice Pot…… the main character’s childhood shadow in the famous soap opera New Yorkers, a stern Chinese teacher in the fifth season…… and a few commercials that needed Asian models……

“Sister……” Su Qi swallowed a trace of anger, eyes on the cold coffee in front of Jiang Qingzhou. “Sister Ai is in Los Angeles these next few days……”

She looked up at Jiang Qingzhou’s face. “Might she have a way?” That last sentence was almost a whisper, dissolving into the shrieks of the flocking seagulls.

Jiang Qingzhou shot her a glare from behind her sunglasses, and the smile finally fell from her mouth. “Are you confused or what?”

She knew that Ai Xiaosan had come to the United States. Why she had come, and how long she would stay, was unknown.

After all, they had not been in contact for ten years.

That day, a message had popped up on her phone. She had thought she was seeing things and checked four times over: Are you still in San Francisco?

Their last conversation ten years ago had ended with Jiang Qingzhou’s one line, “I moved to San Francisco.”

It was as if the conversation had picked up again, and yet it was still separated by ten long years of time.

The cigarette burned out. Jiang Qingzhou’s fingers twitched nervously, and her expression softened. “It’s fine. I’ll think of another way.”

What way? She did not quite have one yet. She only felt bad for Su Qi. The girl had been following her since she was little… and now her son and daughter were both in school, and even the car needed to be replaced with a bigger one.

“These Jews really never do anything unless there’s profit in it……” Jiang Qingzhou started rambling off topic. “When will Hollywood stop being run by Jews? From producers to investors, they’ve got the whole thing locked up.”

“Why did they pull out? This chance was really good. The story of a Chinese woman and a Jewish pianist during World War II, it’s completely a female lead role, sis! I have a feeling this film is definitely going to blow up.”

Jiang Qingzhou snapped out of it for a second. “An investor always has his own considerations.”

Her eyes somehow drifted back to that chat window:

——Are you still in San Francisco?

——Yes, are you still in Africa?

——Los Angeles, visiting my dad.

——How is he?

——Pretty good.

——That’s good.

Ten years ago, she moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco and told people she could not stand Los Angeles’s dryness. Su Qi was angry at her for not putting down roots in Hollywood, for not socializing, for being too willful, for doing whatever she wanted whenever she wanted.

Really, she just did not want to live in a city that carried Ai Xiaosan’s scent.