He was afraid that if he walked out from behind the shelter of words, he wouldn’t be able to control himself. Your body grants tacit consent to men, he wrote, but luckily only a very few of us are able to see this.

His language was turning creepy and Nietzschean again, she thought.

As she had passed his bench, she finished the apple she had brought and tossed the core into a trash can, pulled a Kleenex from her purse to wipe her mouth and hands. The dog walker came back, and she turned around to avoid a second bout of small talk, but her plan was foiled by the dog, which jumped up and rested its front paws on her thigh. Beneath this show of eagerness, it humped her leg. Neither she nor the owner had acknowledged this fact. Instead, they had chatted about how great the morning was!

The man was certain Hongmei had known the dog owner for many years, and the two of them were keeping a tight lid on their relationship. He said the instant Hongmei had turned from the trash can, she was a different person: conventional, reasonable, and respectful of pallid petit bourgeois friendships. Who could have imagined a woman like her coming from such a small village, one that had sacrificed two hundred thirteen girls and now sent its female inhabitants far and wide?

She told the man she was glad he’d given her the opportunity to get to know herself. The clarity of his vision, that almost supernatural intuition, made her wish for the first time to open herself up. Her secrets weren’t kept just from other people but also from herself.