Wai Lan slides the metal latch and pushes the gate into the yard, letting the old woman through, then pushes it shut again from the inside.

“Let’s have a look, then.” The old woman sets the box down by the front door of her house and folds back the flaps. Wai Lan squats next to her and peers inside. The chicks are smaller than she imagined, no bigger than plums. She tries to count them, but they keep moving, hopping and tumbling into each other; she guesses fourteen. They are soft, furry balls of gold and chocolate brown.

“You’ll eat three or four and keep the rest for eggs,” Wai Lan guesses.

“Or give some away. Next time your mother comes to visit, ask if she’d like one for the Tuen Ng festival.”

Wai Lan nods, her enthusiasm inspired less by the hope of pleasing her mother, or of eating juicy, steamed chicken, than by her desire right then to touch one of the creatures, to pick it up and let the warm thing sit in her curling palm. She runs a finger along its soft, flossy fur, feeling its tiny bones, all of its fragility in her hand.

Yes, she will leave and arrive in cities again and again, time passing through the wiping of tables, through cold apartment keys, kind strangers and broken sentences, afternoons wandering hungry through department stores, sandwiches with bad meat, dark guarded walks, the ecstasy of solitude, wishing the city would shake her, ignoring the more destitute, falling for black eyes, natural disasters, losing everything, café water that smells like sweat, letting the pile of dishes grow, lonely sex, adding deadbolts—

III.

Wai Lan’s first interest beyond a boy—there had been many boys—had been Kwan Lau Ming, the young music teacher who’d been brought in to substitute for a month. It was April, but he wore a heavy three-piece suit. He was tall and his eyes were watery bright, the lashes almost girlish in their beauty. The students fell in love with him immediately, straightening their backs at the piano and pushing out their hopeful, adolescent chests for his attention. He gave them none, maintaining an expressionless reserve that his students decided was enigmatic. At the end of his final class, however, he’d made a point of speaking to Wai Lan.

“Miss Yip,” he said. “If you’re interested, you can practice on the piano at my home.”

“I can’t afford private lessons,” said Wai Lan.

“No charge,” he said. He handed her a small piece of paper. “This is the address.”