“Right now you’re here, and your eyes are a sight.” Gently, Leslie pressed her lids. “Realign your solar plexus. That’s where fear and anger reside. Healthy emotions, but they must be channeled.” He watched her readjust her posture. “Seek the center of your being.”

“That’s Lulu.”

He dabbed Preparation H around her eyes. He often used this secret weapon for filming at the ungodly hour of dawn. “Think of the time before Lulu. Way back. The first moment you were conscious of who you were. Not in words. In a picture.”

Memories were exhumed. She saw herself as a three-year-old, hungry, crossing the woods alone to get food from the big house. She had taken care of herself in the face of neglect. She had survived. Why couldn’t she do it now?

A thought struck her. “How fortunate! We’re going to the opera tonight.”

Leslie looked toward the ceiling. “Have I missed some voices?”

Nola straightened up in her chair, holding a tissue against her nose to block the odor of the ointment. “Kong Ruiji is hosting the evening for me, right? He’s trying to look as friendly as a sticky cake. He’s a smart politician who knows a photo opportunity when he sees one. This is my chance to talk to him. Could he refuse me to my face?”

“He may seem friendly,” Leslie said, “but you were the one to notice that it’s not for nothing that he runs China.”

As the last rays of sun painted the sky mauve and orange, the thirteen-hour workday was finally over. In the small plaza accessing the Great Wall, TV and video crew members, musicians and stylists loaded their equipment into the vans. Nola waved at them and, with Wade right behind her, slid into her limousine. She was startled to find Roberta Fisher in the seat facing her. Lounging like a queen on her throne, her flowered tunic fanning around her, Roberta held a cut-glass tumbler filled with Scotch. The limousine reeked of her cigarette smoke that clung to her hair and clothes, and of the too-strong Youth Dew perfume with which she had tried to mask the smell.

“Don’t you have some rumors to nip someplace?” Nola asked.

“Soon it will no longer be my business. You’ll be on your own to throw sand at your PR machine as your little heart desires.” Roberta flicked her finger at the driver, who pulled away while Yoram, sitting beside him in the front seat, spoke into his sleeve. The car swerved onto the two-lane road leading back to Beijing. Roberta glanced at Nola and Wade, swished the drink too close to the rim, and gulped it. “Yummy.”