I look over at Mei when I feel her shifting next to me, pulling a pack of Marlboros out of her purse. She lifts one out of the box, slipping the thin stick between pouty pink lips, then flicks her BIC with her thumb and leans forward for the flame. She offers me one, angling the box toward me slightly. I decline with a tight shake of my head and roll my window down when she glances away.

Mei spends most of the ride replaying the same clip of herself on stage in a bride-like costume on her phone, tugging on her cigarette and inspecting her trimmed nails. She doesn’t say a word to me in the fifteen minutes of traffic we fight through, and I’m kind of relieved. She doesn’t seem like the easy-to-talk-to type. Nothing about her is soft or kind. Not the way she snarls at her driver; not the way she snapped at me before I got in.

We finally pull up in front of what has to be the most pretentious department store in Manhattan, and Mei looks up from her phone. When she steps out of the car, I get a better look at her. She’s lean and hard, muscular but thin. I can make out the soft knots of her spine, a column of ellipses, as she steps in front of me, steering us through the tourist-heavy crowds outside the store. Her high-cut jeans fit as though they were made specifically for her body. My eyes pause on her square-toe sandals. They’re delicate, thin straps weaving together that could be dental floss, a modest heel, but they still look sexy on her.

As soon as we step inside the store, a couple of sales associates dressed in all black and wearing too much perfume rush over to us. An older woman in her forties and a younger woman, maybe thirty.

At first my heart flutters. I don’t understand what’s happening. And then I remember who I’m with and it suddenly all clicks. The women can’t look any happier; their smiles are practically stretching their faces, eyes wide with excitement, effusive to the point of savagery. They greet Mei by her name and lean in to kiss her cheeks, one at a time.

“She’s with me,” Mei tells them, and immediately they’re all over me. Asking me how I’m doing. What size I am. If they can help me find anything. I didn’t think this kind of thing happened in real life. Or maybe this is just how people treat you when you’re rich and are not immediately assumed to be a threat.