“Just a note saying you ran into him by chance somewhere and for some reason you want to talk to him again.”

Hongmei gave her the email address and a rough outline of a message. This was a brainwave she’d had, to make her position in this roundelay less of a passive one. She was doing this on a whim. She wanted to see how he would react when ambushed by a female attacker. It was a test to see if he was interested solely in Hongmei or he just went for any Asian woman in a skirt. She wanted to make sure she was truly special in his eyes. Was it vanity? Either way, she couldn’t help herself.

Nini responded after reading the email by asking if she should attach a photo, one in which her acne couldn’t be seen. “Yes, how about a full-body shot!”

Hongmei disagreed. She thought Nini’s photo was too sensual.

Nini yelped, “What about my alabaster tits and ass? Don’t they count for something?”

Hongmei just laughed.

Nini asked, “Who is this?”

Hongmei replied, “A millionaire.”

Nini said, “So if I nab this one, he’s mine?”

“Yes, he’s yours.”

Nini phoned that night to say the millionaire was ignoring her.

She forwarded her email, and Hongmei read it twice and thought it sounded about right. She said to Nini, “Send another photo, this time with your hair down, wearing jeans.”

After hanging up, she saw a new message ping in her inbox. It was the secret talker.

He said he was imagining what she might be doing. Midnight—is that wine or tea in your cup? Hongmei’s hand closed tightly around her mug of tea.

He said he could see her in a voluminous housecoat, hair half tucked inside her collar. He said he liked her any way she looked. Beneath the baggy, soft fabric, her tiny naked body made him ache.

Hongmei suddenly felt warm all over.

He said that certain feelings, once you put them into words, weren’t actually like that at all. This was his difficulty. What he wanted to transmit to her was sheer emotion, without the smug interpolation of words in between. Taste, breath, touch . . . How could words possibly describe these things? The sensation of licking a peeled grape can only exist between your tongue and the grape—the fullness of that lick, its translucent quality, so juicy and ripe, belonging only to the grape and not any other substance. He said even this was a distortion, him strong-arming the wordless meeting of tongue and grape, a secret between the two parties that only they could know. Words were too slow, too clumsy, too practical and solid, too stark and violent.

Her mouth grew moist, and something seemed to change inside her chest.