Hongmei said the secret talker left her mentally and physically exhausted, so she often dozed off in class, yet she stayed awake all night long. This was the last stage of her PhD, and she was already on the brink of collapse.

Sure enough, this appeal to pity yielded results. The woman apologized and said, In that case, I’ll love you from a distance. If you feel stifled or despairing, just come outside and you’ll sense me. Your elegance will never flow away in vain; I’m the reason you’re beautiful.

Afraid of getting stung again by pretty words, Hongmei quickly logged off and created yet another new email address, which she told only seven people about, asking them to keep it a secret. If she got any more messages from the secret talker, suspicion would fall on this group.

Next, she printed out every email she’d ever received from the secret talker and read them one more time. “Disppointment” or its variants appeared eighteen times, and four more in Nini’s messages. Twenty-two in total, missing the same letter each time.

She had several days of peace, during which her inbox remained empty. On day five, she got a message from Jianjun, just a few lines, saying his wife had had a baby.

After Hongmei had left Jianjun, her hysterical love and desire for him had subsided, and with his marriage, promotion, and renovation of the three-bedroom apartment he’d been newly allocated, it had evaporated altogether, like the new liaisons she kept seeking out. Just some encounters based on tacit understandings, ambiguous smiles, hugs and kisses disguised as politeness. These were mostly shared with Glen’s colleagues or friends, those possessing their own homes and dishonest hearts. Their enchantment with her was based on a misreading, and she tried to maintain these beautiful misunderstandings as long as possible.

Back to her regular life with Glen. The scary part was over, and they could treat the stillness and monotony as peace and try to enjoy it that way.

* * *

Nini showed up uninvited, speaking loudly in Chinese as soon as she came in. Nini was taking a break from love, and her current boyfriend was just someone to go sightseeing with. So she had a lot of free time to dedicate herself to the mystery of the secret talker. She’d found a girl in her twenties in San Francisco, she said, who looked exactly like the one in the photo. Hongmei asked, “What photo?” and Nini switched to English: “The father killer!” Glen, forking a piece of grilled fish just then, heard this explosive word and let the fish fall back onto the plate. He stared at the two Chinese women, trying to understand.

Nini said, “I’m describing a horror film.” She knew Glen wouldn’t believe her, but he also didn’t know how to deal with her.