I hadn’t been in Ms. Wu’s store for a month or two, and when I pushed through the door, I expected a few changes. Like every other retail establishment in B-town, Wu’s is at the mercy of the elements, the Border, the independent haulers, and the luck of the draw for its stock. Ms. Wu probably did her own importing, rather than rely on the maverick buyers who set up temporary wholesale dealerships on Mondays in the old Raven Ice Company warehouse down by the river. Still, you never knew when a truck would go unaccountably astray in the Borderlands. It happened often enough that a fair percentage of the Ticker’s and my business was in rescuing lost truckers and their cargo from the Nevernever.

I counted on garlic, and jasmine soap, and ginseng tea, and glazed pottery jars of candied ginger; umbrellas, pearls, ebony boxes, bunches of leeks, and sticks of ink. I also counted on Ms. Wu, who looked like Claudette Colbert, smiled like a skinny female Buddha, and laughed more often than anyone else I knew. She would be concerned when I told her about Tick-Tick, but she wouldn’t frown; she’d say, “Of course,” and turn to the antique apothecary’s chest behind the counter and select things from it, put them in her bag and come with me to Tick-Tick’s. There she’d make my partner drink weird-smelling things, prescribe an unpleasant change in her diet, tell her to wear nothing but blue until all the symptoms were gone, mess with the feng shui of the room, and leave, and everything would be better.

Wu’s was much the same as it always was. The change was in Ms. Wu.

She’d never looked middle-aged, though it seemed as if she was; she’d always had one of those terrific 1930s movie heartthrob figures, and her silk-black hair never showed any gray. She dressed with practical elegance, and I’d imagined her coming from a wealthy Hong Kong family, bringing her sense of style and noblesse oblige to straitened circumstances on the Border.

Now she sat behind the counter with her head in both hands, her face hidden. Her white blouse sagged, and her trousers were wrinkled and limp. Her hair was dragged back into a twist at the back, and wisps of hair were springing out of it at odd intervals. There was a bell over the door that rang as I came in, but she hadn’t looked up.

“Ms. Wu?” I said.

She lifted her head and didn’t smile. “Orient.” She said it the way one might count off mileposts by the highway, saying them aloud to fix them in place. “Can I help you?”

“I hope so. Tick-Tick’s sick with something.”

For an instant, her face went slack with despair. Then she shut her eyes and said, “Tell me the symptoms.”