Was she one of the six? I pictured the pimp making her kneel, grabbing her hands behind her back, and drawing a knife down her back to split the silk blouse into open curtains. What had he done to her ear? She leaned close to Dora without moving her hands and said something quickly in Chinese.

Dora asked us. “Dumplings?”

I shook my head. Stella said, “It’s fine. We ate at home.”

Dora turned to the woman. “Shi,” she said, then something that sounded like: “shay shay.” She told us. “She’s bringing some.”

Stella started: “We said we didn’t—.”

“She wanted to bring them,” Dora said. “So I let her.”

“You speak Chinese?” I asked.

“I know the word for dumpling. And the word for yes.”

“Is she one of—”

“One of my clients? No.” Dora drummed her fingers against the table, anxious. She said, “I would never, never let a client wait on me like that.”

“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

Now I had to play back everything I’d pictured, like putting a film on rewind: tied hands, knife across the ear, slashed silk. It seemed like I’d hurt that girl myself, just thinking of these wrong things being done to her.

We sat there, quiet. Finally Stella broke the silence. She wanted to know what we remembered from our youth. Had there been games? Secret codes? Anything?

“Well,” Dora said, “there was the tree village.”

She explained how we’d planned a secret civilization. The most important thing about our plan was tree houses, everybody got one, and the second most important thing was justice: equal everything for everyone. We’d had pulley buckets for water and fallen fruits. We had sketches. The justice part was hazier, never sketched or planned, mainly a conceptual dimension, Dora said, sounding like the lawyer she’d become. I remembered waterslides made possible by gravity and rope ladders. We spoke nervously, me and Dora, afraid to let this go. But at least we were together in this fear. What would we talk about next?

It was harder to talk about our lives now. Dora didn’t bring up mine, which was fine with me, or what had happened in the years between our lives splitting apart. I wouldn’t have told much even if she’d asked. She wouldn’t have understood. She said she’d been to Peru recently. Another business trip.

“Did you get much time to explore?” I asked. “After your work?”

“How do you mean?”

“Were you just working? Or did you have some time for yourself?”

“I put quite a bit of myself in my work.”

“Come on,” Stella said. “You know what she means. Did you take any side trips? See any sights?”

“Oh,” she said. “Sightseeing. I went up to Machu Picchu.”

“How was it?” I asked.

“It was great,” she said. “A lot of fog. A lot of llamas.”

“That sounds nice,” I said. “I’ve never left the country.”

Dora laughed softly. “You were always good at that.”

“At what?” Stella asked.