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1

This stranger on the internet was asking Qiao Hongmei if she remembered him. He said he had watched her walk into the restaurant with a tall American man. She’d stood there with her arms loosely folded, weight on one leg, the picture of indifference. She’d been face-to-face with him for half a minute, waiting for the hostess. In those thirty seconds, he’d smirked at her. His seat had faced the door, and he’d reckoned she shouldn’t be deprived of his smile. He’d been holding an open menu, ready to order, when he heard her say in her foreign accent, “Thank God it’s not too crowded.”

He’d looked up, and there she was, Qiao Hongmei. And so he’d shot her an admiring grin. Very few people could resist his smile. Men or women, friends or strangers, all fell prey to his high-wattage, unerring smile. Well, that’s what he told her.

Hongmei had to stop reading for a moment. This stranger evidently had taken note of her every move and gesture the night before. His tone was a little presumptuous, but she liked his writing style, almost like a blend of Neil Gaiman and Emily Brontë.

He said that as Hongmei had followed her husband to a table by the windows, he had smelled the floral aroma wafting off her long hair. Her eyes had dropped demurely as she passed each table, perhaps checking out the food, perhaps the diners’ faces, before she’d turned around and looked straight at him. He reckoned staring too hard at someone made them sense danger, particularly a perceptive woman like her. He said she looked twenty-eight, thirty at most, though he knew she was older. Hongmei had glanced around, her eyes alighting momentarily on his face. At least he thought they had, this internet Romeo.

He’d watched as her husband had helped her take off her coat, stroking her cheek as he did so. She’d flinched a little, and he’d noticed that too. That was great, he said. It showed her skin wasn’t numb yet; she was still capable of rejecting a meaningless caress. He asked if she had designed her own outfit—long trousers in a soft, wrinkled hemp fabric and alarmingly sexy beaded sandals that left her feet almost naked, light dancing through the nearly colorless crystals.

She shuddered, goose bumps rising. She looked around her study, then down at her feet beneath the desk. Were they that revealing? Could feet be seductive too? It seemed so. The crystals on the thin straps of her sandals glistened like dew, like sweat. Her husband had never asked how those beads had gone from the bedroom curtains to her feet, where their hints of sensuality were now there for anyone who could detect them. She pretended not to have any views on this, but he’d seen right through her.