"Home is good, too."
Cassius finally squeezed out the words, his voice dry.
He fingered the remaining twenty-dollar bill in his pocket. Then, he stood up abruptly.
"Wait here," he told Shen Man. His voice was a little raspy. "If this is a graduation ceremony, we can't have champagne, but we sure as hell need beer."
Without waiting for her reply, he slid into his flip-flops and headed downstairs.
The Los Angeles night was never quiet. Especially not in Koreatown.
Neon signs flashed in Hangul characters he couldn't read. The greasy smoke from K-BBQ joints mixed with the skunky smell of weed on the sidewalk, choking the air.
On the corner, the 7-Eleven was blazing with light. It stood like a tireless lighthouse, guiding the homeless, the drunks, and the struggling dreamers like Cassius who were stumbling through the dark.
He walked into the store, hit by a blast of air conditioning.
The craft beers in the cooler, with their colorful labels, seemed to wave at him. He scanned the price tags, then lowered his gaze to the bottom shelf—the cheap stuff.
Budweiser. The King of Beers.
$9.99 for a six-pack.
Cheap, plentiful, and it got the job done. The fuel of broke students and blue-collar workers everywhere.
"A truly luxurious, Hollywood-style farewell banquet," he muttered with a self-deprecating laugh.
He grabbed a six-pack and a bag of chips on sale. It cleaned out his twenty bucks exactly.
---
Back at the apartment.
Shen Man had tidied up the coffee table, exposing the scratched, worn-out wood grain underneath.
When she saw the Budweiser in Cassius's hand, she paused, then let out a laugh.
"Alright. Keeping it real. Better than that pretentious crap anyway."
Crack.
Cassius popped a tab and handed it to her. Foam spilled over, wetting his fingers. He cracked one for himself and took a long pull.
Ice cold.
The bitter liquid slid down his throat, temporarily suppressing the anxiety in his chest.
They drank in silence, listening to the sirens wailing outside. The eternal background music of Los Angeles.
"Remember?" Shen Man suddenly spoke, her eyes glassy as she stared at a familiar water stain on the ceiling.
"Three years ago. We were on the same flight. You were so clueless at LAX, you almost followed the wrong pickup driver."
Cassius smiled, a bitter expression. "How could I forget? You made fun of my English. Said I couldn't even understand the announcement for the baggage claim."
Back then, they were dragging massive suitcases, their eyes full of stars. The USC campus looked like it was plated in gold.
They had posters of The Godfather and Taxi Driver taped above their beds. They talked about Spielberg and Nolan, convinced they were the next Ang Lee—the next big wave that would crash onto Hollywood.
"And the result?" Shen Man took another swig.
"We didn't make waves. We just drowned on the beach. Dammit! Every time I think about that indie crew, I get so pissed."
She was talking about the incident that almost broke her.
A "pheasant" crew—a sketchy, fly-by-night production—claimed they were making an "art film" and conned her into being the on-set producer. Halfway through, the white director, who was all "I got you, bro," took the remaining budget and vanished.
He left Shen Man alone at a shooting location in the middle of nowhere, where she was almost cornered by some local thugs.
"If you hadn't answered my call and driven out there like a maniac..." Shen Man's voice choked up. "You fighting those guys... God, it was ugly. You didn't look cool like Chow Yun-fat in a John Woo movie at all."
Cassius touched the corner of his mouth. He could almost feel the phantom pain of the split lip he got that day.
Because of that fight, he got put on academic probation. His visa status, already precarious, got worse, and it delayed his graduation.
But he never regretted it.
"I couldn't just watch you get bullied," Cassius said quietly, opening another beer.
The alcohol was hitting now. His body felt light, floating. The emotions he had kept bottled up were starting to uncork.
"Tell me, what are we hustling for?" Shen Man leaned back on the sofa, her cheeks flushed.
"For a windowless room that costs six hundred a month? For a twenty-dollar fee to play a corpse? Or to get yelled at for having an Asian face?"
No one had an answer.
The beer cans emptied, one by one.
"Cass... I can't hold on anymore... I'm so tired..."
Shen Man finally broke down, shedding all her armor.
Cassius wanted to comfort her, but his own vision was blurring. He scooted over and clumsily patted her back.
He didn't know who leaned in first, but their breathing, heavy with alcohol, tangled together.
It was a blur of confusion and desperation.
Everything happened naturally. On that creaking secondhand sofa, two young, exhausted bodies clung tightly to each other, as if trying to prove that they still existed, that they were still alive.
Their movements carried the roughness of alcohol and a sorrow that went down to the bone.
"You got lucky..." Shen Man murmured in his ear at the height of it, her voice thick with tears. "You bastard... live well. See it clearly for me... see what Hollywood really looks like..."
Cassius couldn't hear her clearly anymore. He felt the world spinning, a moment of release, and then he sank into a boundless darkness.
---
The next morning.
Cassius was woken up by a splitting headache. The nausea of a hangover clawed at his throat.
He clutched his forehead and sat up. The blanket slid off, revealing his bare chest. The sofa still bore the messy traces of last night's battle.
Fragments of memory flooded back. Beer. Tears. Confessions. The heat of skin.
"Shen Man?" he called out, his voice hoarse.
No answer.
The living room was terrifyingly quiet.
He looked around frantically.
The packed cardboard boxes were gone.
The coffee table was bare, except for a few empty beer cans and the unfinished bag of chips.
The door to Shen Man's room was open. It was empty. The mattress was stripped bare, exposing the naked springs.
It was as if she had never existed.
Only in the corner of the coffee table, weighed down by a can, was a page torn from a notebook.
It was Shen Man's handwriting—elegant but hasty:
> Cass,
> I'm gone.
> Don't see me off, and don't say goodbye. It's too cheesy.
> Let's just count last night as a Hollywood-style Happy Ending for these shitty past few years.
> I left the money by your pillow. It's not a handout—it's what you earned yesterday!
> Keep dreaming for me.
Cassius rushed back to his pigeon-coop room.
By his pillow, two twenty-dollar bills were neatly folded together, lying silently.
He looked at the forty dollars. Then he looked at the flimsy piece of paper in his hand. They felt so heavy he could barely hold them.
The room still held a faint scent of her cheap shampoo. But she was already gone, disappearing into the morning LA traffic, flying to a home six thousand miles away.
Bzzzt! Bzzzt!
His beat-up secondhand phone buzzed harshly.
The screen flashed a contact name: Foreman Jerry.
Jerry was a fixer. He rounded up extras for bottom-tier productions. He took a huge cut, but he always had work.
Cassius took a deep breath, answered the phone, and tried to sound sober.
"Jerry."
"Hey! Boy!"
Jerry's loud voice carried that typical, rough-around-the-edges Hollywood hustler vibe.
"You did good on LA P.D. yesterday! That tall, skinny AD, Rob? He just hit me up. Says he's got a gig today, and he specifically asked for you!"
Cassius's heart skipped a beat.
"Asked for me?"
"Yeah! It's background again, but interactive background. A customer in a coffee shop scene. You might get a blurry profile shot or the back of your head in the frame."
"Eighty bucks. Cash! You want it?"
"I'll take it!"
Cassius didn't hesitate for a second.
Eighty dollars.
That was the highest-paying extra work he had ever gotten.
And more importantly, the Assistant Director remembered him.
That, in itself, was a breakthrough.
---