He must’ve felt close to her, deep down, and so displayed this intimacy in public for everyone to see.

“Can’t I wash your clothes?” he asked.

“Do you do laundry for other female students?” she retorted.

“Depends on whom,” he said.

“Who?” she pursued.

“I can’t say. If I feel like doing it, then I will. Everyone makes me feel differently.”

Hongmei tapped away at the keyboard, telling the secret talker that after that day, she understood what “ostracize” truly meant, a word Glen had taught her. The other students began ignoring her in class and in the cafeteria. Perhaps they were jealous, or she was getting too close to the foreigner. Yet Glen still invited her to read in class and praised the accuracy of her pronunciation, sometimes too much, more than a professor ought to compliment a student. For instance, he might say, “Wow, you have an exquisite voice.” Glen openly gave in to his feelings, and she was the one who suffered for it. Every one of her classmates, male and female, thought she was shamelessly flinging herself at their tutor. Only several years later could she finally and openly admit to this person that she now understood she had indeed been pursuing her professor. From the very first class, she had spread a net for Glen. She couldn’t be without a target; she was a woman who pursued men. She had also hunted down her first husband. She told the secret talker that she knew what sort of woman she was, a source of disaster, always causing trouble—at least that’s how she saw herself. When in pursuit, she could be as fearless as a man, no matter the cost, no matter the consequences.

She added, The man I’m talking about is Glen, as he was then. Next I’ll tell you how tragic his courtship was.

Take a breath, Hongmei told herself. Who’d have thought what we actually caught was each other as we are today?

You seem disppointed, the secret talker interrupted, misspelling the word again.

Yes, it did feel a bit like she’d been tricked. She wrote, Not long after I’d moved from my little village to the military academy in Nanjing, I experienced this faint disappointment. The world outside my little village wasn’t as big as the educated youth had made it sound, nor even as big as I’d imagined. I wanted to see somewhere larger. I mean the unknown, like when Glen first showed up, and his every word and movement uncovered new ground. Even his smallest, most overlooked gesture. For instance, holding his sunglasses in his mouth while tying his shoelaces, or turning his baseball cap to the back when aiming a camera, picking up the napkin from his lap to wipe his mouth . . . It was after one of these gestures that I knew very clearly I’d fallen in love with him.