That was her study—from the quality of the light, it was probably a drafting lamp. Right? she asked. She said she’d never realized how good alcohol could taste, when enjoyed on a lawn in the middle of the night. Facing Hongmei’s window, she had drunk slowly, now and then raising the bottle in an unrequited toast to the woman upstairs.

Hongmei found this wraithlike woman terrifying. She pulled her legs up onto the chair and found her toes cold and white. No wonder the urge to unburden herself had been so strong last night—she must have sensed this. That bottle hadn’t been raised in vain, the amber Courvoisier along with her deep red cosmopolitan. The secret talker said her addictions of twenty years ago were under control now.

The security guard’s patrol cart had passed by her once every ten minutes, slowing down as it did so, then speeding up again. Soon, it was every eight minutes, and then every five. The guard had been afraid she would murder someone, or get murdered herself.

Then the light in the window went out, and she drank her last mouthful of cognac. She got up from the bench and went around to the back of the building, the security guard following in his cart.

On the other side, she saw another window lit up, long and narrow—the bathroom. She had stopped there.

Hongmei felt another tremor. That’s when she’d been looking sensually at herself in the mirror. No wonder she’d felt so strange—another pair of eyes had been staring through hers. Possessed by a strange body, which used her gaze to stare at her drunken flesh, watching as her private self emerged from the shadows. A strange body!

Downstairs, the watcher had tilted her face up. The light in the narrow window had stayed on a full half hour. That’s when scalding water had poured over Hongmei’s head. In the lamplight, the water had turned into glittering crystals on her narrow shoulders and the slight protrusions of her breasts. It had felt good because of the little shock it imparted when it touched the skin. The secret talker told Hongmei that even the greatest comfort on Earth contained discomfort within it, and there was always a moment of surprise from the senses. She said in that half hour Hongmei had been in this state of shock, every strand of hair fully alive, her muscles swelling, the round scar on her arm as red and itchy as when she was seven.

Hongmei hated her in this moment, the secret talker. Just as she used to suddenly find herself loathing Jianjun. She could also turn Glen into a temporary enemy.

She wrote back immediately, saying, Enough! Stop exercising this obsession with me. She said, I’m not prey for seducers like you. I’d never have a fling with another woman.

The response: Don’t be so sure.