Hongmei wondered where the secret talker was at this moment.

Back at the condo, she found no one on the lawn—everyone was watching the excitement. It was noon and so quiet she could hear her skirt rustling against her legs. Glancing at her watch, she noticed one of the elevators had been on the sixteenth floor for five minutes now. The other one had an OUT OF ORDER sign. All the residents must be watching the flag-burning from the roof. Not much happened in this town.

She decided to climb the stairs. On the seventh floor, she realized there was another set of footsteps, also heading up. She started stomping, ascending a few more levels, and the other person did so too, as if in response, the echoes taking a while to fade. She felt something prickle on her back—beads of sweat like countless little bugs wriggling from their eggs, poking their heads out, then crawling all over her. She tried to calm down. What was there to be afraid of, in broad daylight? Yet she’d never seen such a deserted day. She decided to tiptoe down and catch her chaser, but the other person retreated even faster. She thought, How come now I’m the pursuer? Rapidly, she drew closer to the other person. Now she was chasing full throttle, but the other pair of feet were nimble too, vaulting away in a series of dancing leaps. At the ground floor, there was nowhere to go. The foyer was more than a thousand square feet and empty, containing nothing but three armchairs for visitors.

Hongmei hadn’t expected him (or her) to scurry down to the underground parking garage. She wasn’t going to follow. What if it was a trap? Countless horror movies had shown her that parking garages were the perfect places to get murdered.

She trudged back up, heading to her apartment in defeat, legs trembling violently. At the fourth floor, she heard the metal garage door clang. He (or she) was back again. Another pair of exhausted legs, dragging him (or her) upward. She crept up, and he (or she) slowly followed.

Hongmei sat down on the steps at the ninth floor. Even the most fancy apartment buildings had dark stairwells with no windows, illuminated only by energy-saving lights, the permanent grayish glow spilling onto bare concrete steps. After a minute, she was about to stand when she caught a whiff of weed. A respectable resident of this building forced into this nasty place to satisfy a craving. Those footsteps hadn’t been following her at all; it was just some addict trying to avoid trouble.

* * *

Glen wasn’t home. He’d left a note saying he was off to watch the flag-burning. He’d scrawled these words—so the chaos was affecting him too. These last few years, she and Glen had been communicating more and more through notes. It saved time, and they were less likely to quarrel.