He told her to meet him in a neighborhood in San Francisco called South of Market, in a bar called The EndUp. He said he owned a little apartment with a terrace in the city with a beautiful view, and if she wanted, he could invite her over. He didn’t want her to feel scared. The EndUp was very trendy and always packed with men and women flirting with each other. He and she could have a proper conversation there, or they could just flirt, or not flirt. This was a place where you could be serious or casual.

She left a note on the refrigerator saying that she was going to San Francisco to meet a couple of friends from China and would be back late. Glen had also left a folded note for her, but she didn’t read it and just put it in her pocket. Seeing Glen’s writing would weaken her. She couldn’t lose her resolve.

She drove for almost two hours, arriving and finally finding parking in the South of Market district at three in the afternoon. The antiwar protest had created traffic congestion, blocking the entrance to office buildings, so the workers trying obediently to get to their jobs were now waiting in the streets for the police to escort them inside in small groups. She remembered Nini saying she was coming into town with dozens of students, and she started scanning the crowds. Sure enough, there was Nini on Market Street. She and her boyfriend were both in white T-shirts, smeared with red paint to look like blood, a gory sight at first glance. Nini had recently become a bit of a heroine within the movement and was frequently interviewed on TV.

“Did Glen come with you?” she yelled.

Hongmei lied, saying Glen had classes and couldn’t come.

“I just saw him!” Nini turned to her boyfriend. “Isn’t that right? He was standing over there, taping it.”

Hongmei’s heart went boom. Glen must be secretly watching her.

Nini said she wanted to eat fruit with shaved ice and dragged Hongmei and her boyfriend into a shop. When they saw her “bloodstained” shirt, everyone started yelping in shock. Nini nonchalantly told her boyfriend to get the desserts and then turned back to chat with Hongmei. She said her boyfriend had almost fallen madly in love with the girl who’d destroyed her father. But, by the way, she could make one thing clear: the girl spelled “disappointment” correctly, which is to say the secret talker had indeed just been making use of her identity.

Now that Nini was a star of the antiwar movement, all the tycoons in every industry had seen her getting led away by the police, singing “The Internationale” sweetly at the camera. Not one of them would go out with her now.

Hongmei asked if she still wanted to marry a rich man.