The day of filming was exhausting and stretched Nola's ability to remain attentive to everyone’s demands. The Vanity Fair reporter, a woman with monochromatic brown hair, skin and clothes, followed her. Nola had been able to ignore the woman’s note-scribbling for the magazine cover story all week, but today it annoyed her. She demanded that the tailing stop.

For hours after sunrise, Nola swayed, kicked and twirled up and down the stone-paved section of the twenty-foot-wide wall until her leg and back muscles screamed. She focused on keeping her smile broad, looking for her marked spots as she danced, never lowering her gaze. She swung the silk robes and gauze dresses so the cameras could not see how limp they had become in the raw, dewy air of dawn and humid heat of midday. Without sunglasses, her facial muscles hurt from the effort of not squinting at the bright sun.

The musicians were moved about and set up time and again, but since studio-quality music would be dubbed in later, they didn’t need to concentrate as much as Nola did. While the dancers and backup singers also had costume changes, neither group appeared in every scene. Soon, the magnificent undulating wall hugging the curves of the mountains lost its enchantment. A headache drummed in the back of Nola's head and in her temples. She missed Lulu and worry gnawed at her.

At mid-morning, Nola took a break to lie down in her trailer. While Leslie’s hair, makeup and clothing stylists went in and out of the living room area, she flipped through a book about China’s glorious past. How little it had in common with the horrific realities of the modern-day country she was seeing. Where was the solution? She needed a stroke of insight to get her and Lulu out of their hopeless situation. Overwhelmed, Nola burst into sobs.

“You’ve always been such a trouper, never had any difficulty being ‘on’ for hours,” Wade said as he crouched in front of her, looking up into her face. “This baby is getting you down; you’re exhausted.”

Nola wanted to kick his face. “I’m working as hard as ever. The baby is not getting me down. It’s your refusal to help—”

“I rest my case.”

Leslie sent him and everyone else away and closed the door. He handed Nola a cup of fragrant green tea and massaged her neck. At her request, he summoned an interpreter to call the hotel and check with the maid on how Lulu was doing.

“Everything is fine,” the interpreter reported. “Lulu just had a mashed banana. The maid will take her for a walk in the hotel garden.”

“How normal,” Nola mumbled, “except that it’s all wrong. I should be the one to feed her bananas; I should be the one to take her for a walk.”