Scarlett wrapped her arms around her belly. What if…what if the baby…? From deep within, bubbles exploded. Her daughter was hiccupping, safely suspended in the warm dark. Her contractions ended as abruptly as they had begun. Because she'd changed position after hours of driving, or because her body wanted to remind her that labor—false or not—remained out of her control? She slumped in her seat. Daisy tugged on Scarlett's track pants, her hands frantic, as if she feared she'd have to catch the baby sliding out from between Scarlett's legs, wet and red on a slick of blood. Scarlett batted her away. "Stop. It stopped." She felt oddly humiliated, heat rising in her cheeks. She hoped when the time came, she could tell the difference between a false alarm and an imminent birth. She got out and dragged the mutilated scarecrow from the windshield. She was intact and so, too, her baby. She squinted, shading her eyes with her hands, and checked the van, which wasn't leaking any fluids. She rubbed her belly. Her daughter wasn't kicking much at least, maybe lulled by the rocking motion of the van. The workers nearby continued stuffing lettuces into bins strapped at their sides, but they might have radioed their supervisor. She and Daisy had to leave. They switched seats, Scarlett at the wheel. She checked the traffic and got onto the freeway. Soon the van grew heavy with momentum, as if she were being shot from a cannon, a sensation at once frightening and reassuring. Set in motion, she couldn't be stopped, not by Mama Fang, not by Boss Yeung. Last summer, in a manager's meeting, Scarlett had come to Boss Yeung's attention by speaking up and suggesting the factory use scraps as packing material. A cost-cutting measure. He'd nodded in approval and asked her to remind him of her name. A rare honor, and as they moved down the agenda, she could tell everyone at the meeting was studying her. Cowlicks swirled his thick hair like the whorls of a hurricane. She'd quickly caught herself and turned back to her notes. Not for the first time, she'd been staring at him, but she was too old for crushes, and he was too old for her. After the meeting, in the hallway that ran along the shop floor, she told a co-worker about her lessons at Phoenix Driving School that Saturday. She noticed Boss Yeung off to the side, listening—to her! He carried himself purposefully, with an economy of motion. He said nothing, but when she arrived at the school, he was seated in the waiting room. What a charge she'd felt, jolted alive. He wanted to check out the school's methods, he said. "You don't want to start any bad habits." Scarlett pushed the memory away. The engine vibrated through her, numbing her bottom as she went rigid with concentration, holding steady on the gas pedal. Her right leg quivered with fatigue, and she rolled her shoulders back. Discomfort would keep her alert, not drowsing like Daisy. The teenager startled awake every few minutes, struggling to watch over Scarlett as Scarlett watched over her. "Have you picked out a name?" Daisy asked. Scarlett didn't have the luxury of thinking that far ahead. "You can't know until you see them," Daisy said. "I have a list. A short one." A list. Scarlett was less prepared than a teenager for the birth of her daughter. When she tried to come up with names, her mind blanked. At Perfume Bay, the guests turned the selection into a game. Lady Yu had narrowed her choices to Stanley, in honor of Morgan Stanley, or Warren, after Warren Buffett, excellent role models for her son. Countess Tien had been partial to the name Kingsway, in the hopes he might follow the "king's way" or Goodwin, to ensure his every victory. "If I was having a girl, I'd call her Marie," Daisy said. Scarlett didn't reply. She wasn't asking for suggestions. "Marie Curie." Daisy said the name with a reverence Scarlett didn't know the teenager possessed. She listed Madame Curie's achievements: the discovery of radium, two Nobel prizes, and a portable X-ray machine she drove onto the battlefield. Was Daisy a future scientist or a teenager in search of a hero? Maybe both. Unlike Scarlett, she'd had her choice of idols. "What are you having?" Daisy asked. "A girl." Scarlett straightened. Each time she admitted it, the hazy edges of her daughter sharpened. "Lucky! I wanted a girl," Daisy said. "Even though people say that girls steal your beauty." "You don't get to choose," Scarlett said. All children stole the bloom from their mothers, more so than from their fathers, who could escape moments after conception. "My parents tried twice," Daisy said. "But…" In the silence that followed, Scarlett guessed that Daisy had a younger sister, not the brother her parents had wanted. After Scarlett, her parents had also wanted a son. He arrived too small and too early and died within the hour, the same year Ba returned from the mines and wasted away. She had always wished for a sibling to help her bear the burden of Ma, her temper and her expectations. With a younger brother or sister, Scarlett might not have kept to herself so much, without a friend to call upon for help. She might have had more patience with Daisy, with most people. — Early afternoon, and they were only halfway to San Francisco. In a couple of hours, traffic would thicken, but for now, the road ahead was smooth and fast as a jet runway. Get to Chinatown, and then she'd know what to do. Even though Daisy couldn't reach her boyfriend, William, by phone or via social media, she vowed to find him on campus. The assurances seemed as much for herself as for Scarlett. Scarlett stopped listening, emptying herself into the monotony of the crumbly dirt and prickly withered grasses dry as the Gobi Desert. The emptiness of the landscape made her uneasy, this undeveloped stretch of golden hills. By her village, the steepest slopes were terraced, every bit of land cultivated, and factory cities in southern China grew so large that they merged with their neighbors. Roadkill sprawled at the shoulder—a raccoon or puppy—a stuffed bear, its head nearly torn off and fur spattered in engine oil. She circled her palm on her belly, uneasy, her fears rising like floodwaters. She wanted to deliver in a clean hospital with skilled nurses and doctors, but what if she couldn't gain entry? What if authorities checked the plates of the stolen van, and she went into labor in jail? On the road, with only a vague destination in mind, their possible futures multiplied, the worst scenarios as palpable as the best. Daisy stifled a sob. For all her bravado—stowing in the back of the van, coaxing the security guard—the teenager had to be terrified, far from home, cut off from her boyfriend and about to become a mother. Scarlett should rub her back, but she felt paralyzed. She feared she lacked the kindness, the tenderness that her own baby deserved. Maybe like so much else, she had to pretend until what felt awkward became second nature. She touched Daisy's arm, and the teenager stiffened. It seemed her family wasn't one who hugged and kissed, either. "The disconnected number," Daisy said. "What if—if—if he's—gone." "People change their numbers all the time," Scarlett said. "They lose their phone, get new ones." "He always had his phone with him." Daisy smiled. "One time, when he answered, it was echoing. I could tell he was in the bathroom." "You'll find him. If he wants to be found." Daisy gasped. Scarlett shouldn't have taken such a harsh tone, but the teenager needed to hear what no one else would tell her. They both fell silent. As they approached the pass, winds buffeted the van, rattling the windows. A mattress reared up on the roof of a sedan behind them, straining against the strap, about to take flight. Scarlett clenched her hands on the wheel to keep the van from swerving into the next lane. Around her, drivers did the same. "Look," Scarlett said. "Wah!" Daisy exclaimed. On the ridge, wind turbines marched across the hillside, giant pinwheels twirling against the indigo sky, the bright white propellers a mesmerizing blur not quite of this world. — Chinatown disappointed her: the sidewalks mobbed with matrons toting pink plastic shopping bags, the tenements squat and dingy, and saggy panties hanging in the windows. The neon-lit malls and high-rises that crossed the skies in Shenzhen and Dongguan were imperial by comparison. Daisy was unable to hide her apprehension, and Scarlett wondered if the girl would call home for help rather than stay in this ghetto. The street grew so steep she could only see sky through the windshield. She felt dizzy, as if the van, its engines roaring, might take off into the air and rocket to heaven. Scarlett was used to nosing cars into traffic, pushing through as she might with her elbows at a wet market, but she'd never driven a barge of a vehicle—or tried to park one. That spot was too short, this one next to a fire hydrant, that one a driveway. The van was elephant-wide, elephant-long, and if she attempted to parallel park—she'd never learned how—she'd drive onto the curb, plunge into the crates of bok choy and spiky durian, and slam through the fish tanks. Daisy pointed at a spot ahead, a miraculously long one Scarlett could pull into. No—a bus stop. They'd get towed. Scarlett fought the urge to scream, feeling trapped. She was cotton-mouthed, her bladder throbbed, and she was going to piss herself if she didn't find a toilet in the next few minutes. Daisy tapped on the window, at a sign above, P for parking. Scarlett drove the van into the dark maw of a garage, hit the button for the ticket, and slowly descended down the spiral ramp, trying not to clip the side mirrors against the walls. She found a spot in the corner, parked across two spaces to prevent herself from getting boxed in, and turned off the ignition. She felt as a seafaring voyager must, grounded on the beach, about to take her first shaky steps on land. From the underground garage, the elevator rose up until reaching the surface, its doors parting onto Portsmouth Square. First they'd find a bathroom, and then ask around for a place to stay. They entered the park thronged with gamblers: men squatting with their cards, onlookers huddling around them. To the right of the elevator, Scarlett discovered a dead end stacked with cardboard boxes towering above her head. Daisy gasped. An elderly woman slumped in a wheelchair, her eyes glazed and her gray hair tangled, her body musty with dried sweat, with neglect. "Are you okay?" Daisy asked. The woman didn't move, didn't speak. She was drooling, her mouth open. She must have been abandoned by her daughter, granddaughter, some caregiver eager to escape this mute burden while running errands or gossiping. "Do you need water?" No answer. Daisy waved her arms toward the plaza, trying to catch the attention of whoever was watching over the woman, but no one started toward them. Where was her family? Maybe she'd never had children or they were long gone. Or maybe she had beaten or starved her children, and now she was getting what she deserved. It was none of their business, and they couldn't help her. Getting to San Francisco had taken nearly everything Scarlett had left in her. Daisy, who'd never had to fend for herself, could afford generosity and goodwill. Scarlett brushed her hand against her belly, wondering if she'd go into labor in five days—or in five minutes. They had to consider their babies first. No one else would. Her bladder was about to burst, and she tugged on Daisy's elbow. Daisy jerked away. "We can't leave her." "She's not ours to take," Scarlett said. Daisy wasn't selfish as she'd thought, but softhearted, which carried its own perils. Sunshine blasted onto the woman's face—had she been here all day? Scarlett wheeled her into the shade of an overhang, and Daisy blotted at the drool on her chin with a paper napkin. The abandoned woman seemed an ill omen. If people here so easily ignored her, why would they help two strangers? After a trip to the plaza's ghastly, brimming portable toilets, Scarlett studied the crowd. The back of her neck prickled, and she felt eyes upon her—a wizened old man in a checkered cap walked briskly across the plaza. He was watching her. She looked away, letting go of the breath she didn't realize she was holding. Boss Yeung couldn't have found them yet, not unless he had spy satellites and government agents at his disposal. No one knew they were here. No one knew who they were. No one knew that Scarlett had been a scorned mistress, Daisy an exiled daughter, and no one would ever have to know again. She closed her eyes and let the neighborhood wash over her: the sound of traffic, the scent of exhaust, fresh ginger, and a whiff of garbage. By a bronze statue of a galleon atop cresting waves, a group of ladies played cards. Their laughter mean-spirited, their eyes appraising, their hair coiled in tight perms, they seemed the sort who would love to gossip about two pregnant women in matching velour tracksuits and slippers. She and Daisy would attract attention anywhere they went. Maybe Scarlett could throw Mama Fang off. Pretend that she and Daisy had parted ways, forcing that scheming woman to launch two different searches. Or she could make Mama Fang think they were elsewhere, in Chicago or Boston. Call her, tell her the van had died and that they'd been robbed, and beg her to fetch them from Reno, from Phoenix, from San Diego, all the cities in the shotgun scatter where they could have ended up. All the lesser cities whose names she had memorized from the atlas Boss Yeung had given her. But how? She feared Mama Fang might trace their call through technological sorcery. She had to be panicking, Boss Yeung furious. Maybe regretful, too. Scarlett lifted her chin. Let them stew. In the playground, a granny pushed a little girl in a swing. With thick round glasses and beaky nose, the old woman resembled an owl. "Is this the best park for kids?" Daisy asked her. "How old is she?" The granny didn't answer. She might be hard of hearing, or maybe she only spoke Cantonese; its sharp tones—love songs that sounded like arguments—sliced through the air in this neighborhood. "We're new." Scarlett asked where they might find a rental. The granny shrugged, said she didn't know, and turned away. Her indifference stung. At the factories, girls from Scarlett's province used to make room for her at their table in the canteen, even if she never went out shopping and strolling with them, even if she spent her meals studying, flipping through flash cards, and never joined their gossip. Even if they weren't friends, they might have cousins in common, and as children, they had toiled and slept under the same big sky. The granny pulled the little girl to her feet and started to lead her out of the park. The girl stomped her feet and refused, and when the granny tugged again, the girl thrashed and knocked over a toddler boy who started bawling. The granny ducked her head and dragged away the girl, now shrieking. Once she'd been an infant, like the baby inside Scarlett. All that work to keep her alive. How many baths, how many meals, how many diapers, how many fevers, how many tears—only to have your child grow up and flee into the world, with all its dangers and temptations that you'd tried for so long to keep out. Daisy walked toward the women in sturdy shoes and sensible slacks dancing in unison under a trellis, their silk fans swishing like koi. They practiced the same steps over and over, as if preparing for a performance. Undeterred, she inched closer, causing the woman on the end to stumble to avoid swinging the fan at her. The leader—her hair dyed jet-black, cut into a severe bob—barked at her to get back in line and glared at Daisy. Scarlett would try the knot of men in the corner in windbreakers, shiny slacks, cheap loafers with athletic socks, and bowl haircuts. Bumpkins. As she approached, a pockmarked man hissed with disgust and tossed aside his cards. He lit a cigarette and regarded Scarlett with suspicion. Apparently women weren't welcome at this particular game, which gave off a seedy air, as if the men were clustered around pictures of naked centerfolds. As Daisy set off to buy a bottle of water, Scarlett watched the game, which had been popular at the electronics factory. She never played and had considered it a waste of time until she and Boss Yeung spent a rainy weekend at the beach. He taught her how to cheat: how to shuffle, to keep the top card for yourself, nudging it slightly aside. How to mark your cards with your fingernails with the barest crescent, the way she marked his back, scratching in wide, slow arcs. "Is this how you win at cards?" she had asked. "I want you to protect yourself. To know it when you see it." Boss Yeung disdained gambling—slot machines and the horse track—but considered cards a game of skill. She'd learned how, though she knew she'd never play cards with anyone except him, and in the end, she hadn't caught the clues that would have revealed his intentions toward her. Here, she quickly spotted a man cheating. His stubby finger nudged the top card, lightning fast, and he told joke after filthy joke to distract the other players. They were calling him Shrimp Boy, maybe because of his bulging eyes. She should walk away—weren't these men getting what they deserved with their idle games? But she couldn't stand Shrimp Boy's smug grin. And if she helped another player, wouldn't he help her in return? The next time, just before Shrimp Boy shuffled, she caught the eye of the pockmarked man. She cast her gaze at Shrimp Boy as he flicked the top card. The pockmarked man scowled and challenged Shrimp Boy, and all at once the men were scuffling, a finger thumped against a chest, a shove against the shoulders, with the clumsy menace of bears forced on their hind legs. Scarlett backed away. With one arm, she shielded her belly and with the other, the roll of bills in her jacket. They could turn on her next, push her down and steal her money. Then the men were laughing, backslapping, telling ten generations of the other's ancestors to fuck off. Maybe they'd played cards so many times that occasional cheating livened up the game. But then she noticed the old man in the checkered cap she'd seen earlier. The others were calling him Sifu, master, a title of respect for his skills and experience. He settled the tempers of the two men, cajoling, joking, reminding them of the bites they'd snatched from each other's bowls over the years. Daisy returned with a bottle of water. The pockmarked man gave her an oily smile, eying her ballooning breasts and the curve of her belly, irrefutable signs of her fertility and her lack of innocence. "Did you find us a place to stay?" Daisy asked. "I have just the place for you." The pockmarked man laughed and elbowed Shrimp Boy. He spoke in Cantonese, which Daisy didn't understand, but his crude tone couldn't have been clearer. Daisy reddened. "The only company you keep is with your hands," Scarlett shot back in Cantonese, one of the insults she'd picked up at the factory. Shrimp Boy roared. Though she should have held her tongue, she'd been bullied for too long. The next time the pockmarked man saw them, he'd know not to harass them, not to catcall or follow them. "He uses his right hand during the week," Shrimp Boy said. "Left hand for special occasions. Calls it 'going to the disco.' " "Whores," muttered the pockmarked man. Daisy kicked over the cardboard box serving as their table and playing cards fluttered into the air. Aiya! Scarlett hooked her arm into Daisy's. The men gaped but did not fight back against the crazy pregnant women who might spew afterbirth in retaliation. "Women get like this," the pockmarked man said, "just before the baby comes." "Your mother's still like that." Shrimp Boy grinned, and with that, the men returned to insulting each other. Scarlett dragged Daisy toward the elevator to the parking garage, fuming at herself. That girl was a lit match to Scarlett's spilled gasoline. Daisy's temper must have caused her parents so much grief. At the edge of the park, they passed a dozen women sitting cross-legged on mats, wearing sun hats big as flying saucers. Their heads bowed, their hands clasped in meditation, beneath a portrait of the Celestial Goddess printed on a vinyl banner. She resembled Imelda Marcos turned into an interstellar ambassador, with flowing purple robes and a diadem twinkling on her forehead like a third eye. Boss Yeung's wife also devoted herself to the Celestial Goddess, meditating five hours a day, abstaining from meat, dairy, garlic, and onions, and contributing to her master's charities: vegan restaurants, a line of cubic zirconium jewelry, and a satellite television network. Believers claimed they'd been cured of cancer, been reunited with loved ones, and come into enough money to pay off their debts. Mrs. Yeung must have prayed for a son. But if the goddess had intervened, she had a sense of humor—getting Scarlett pregnant instead. Who knows, his wife might even join protests like this one, along with her regular attendance at retreats hosted by the goddess. "Stay or go, she's not really there," he'd once said of his wife. Gone, even when he was in the same room with her. Had he loved her until he lost her to another plane of consciousness, or was it until she failed to produce an heir? Had she always been softheaded, or did she only seek out the assurances Boss Yeung no longer offered her? A woman with a vampire's aversion to the sun—in a giant visor that obscured most of her face, flowing pants and tunic, and long white gloves to prevent her skin darkening like a peasant's—was handing out flyers to passersby. Scarlett turned away. "I wish you safety and happiness," the woman said. "Do you know you will need to do one thing if you would like to have a safe and happy future?" Scarlett didn't answer. When they finally reached the entrance to the garage, she jabbed the scuffed down button. She wasn't leaving, but she didn't know where else to go. Berkeley wasn't far, Daisy said. She'd checked the map, and they could walk around campus to find the father of her child. "I'm not driving," Scarlett said sourly. She passed her hand over her face, the smell dusty and metallic, the smell of discomfort and disorder. "We can sit down, get something to eat, and then we can go." "I'm not going. You can." The elevator chimed and the doors opened. They didn't get in. It was obvious that Daisy didn't want to part ways yet, not with the clouds gathering in the early evening and the winds starting to whip up, not on the first night in a strange city. Scarlett regretted her threat. She did and she didn't want to be alone. The elevator doors closed. Turning away, Daisy winced at the sight of the granny still sitting in the wheelchair. She had fallen asleep. Daisy walked over and tucked the lap blanket around the granny, and when she stirred, Daisy patted her withered hand. Scarlett and Daisy turned at the sound of footsteps—the Sifu, who introduced himself as Old Wu. "You're related to Granny Wang?" "No more than you," Scarlett said. "You were kind to help her." He'd seen them earlier, he said, wheeling Granny Wang into the shade. Old Wu explained that even after her stroke, she'd had days when she could still get by with her cane, days where she remembered your name. Bad days, too, where she slept most of the time and couldn't make her legs go. The neighbors took turns wheeling her into Portsmouth Square, for the sunshine, for the sound of the children and their laughter to heal her. If her daughter found out, she'd force Granny Wang to leave Chinatown and move to a distant suburb where you had to drive from place to place, where the shops didn't stock dried shrimp and bitter melon, where your grandchildren chose their devices over you, and there were few Chinese—a fate worse than death. It was worth lying to your flesh and blood to maintain your independence. Old Wu seemed to take this sort of proprietary interest in his fellow residents, whether they'd been here a day or a decade. He cocked his head at Scarlett, smiling, and she could have wept, the tumult of the last twenty-four hours catching up to her. Boss Yeung no longer loved her; maybe he never had. She swayed, weak in the knees, and had to steady herself on the railing. "Do you need a seat?" He reached for a cardboard box. "I've been sitting all day." The jumbled pile of boxes teetered in the breeze. "I doubt anything is sturdy enough to hold me up." He smiled again, and she felt emboldened to ask where they might stay the night. Evergreen Gardens, he answered quickly, where a room had opened up down the hall from him. A reasonable price, with a landlord who didn't ask much of you, if you didn't ask much of him. Their first night in Chinatown, they curled like shrimp, back-to-back, with borrowed extra pillows propped between their legs. The cotton sheets were scratchy, spotted with faded stains and reeking of mothballs, and the mattress on the floor was mushy as a toadstool. She and Daisy kept tumbling into the hollow down the center, arms brushing backs, feet grazing legs. "Sorry." "Didn't mean to—" As the transgressions multiplied, they stopped apologizing. Scarlett's skin crawled. Before getting pregnant, she'd slept on her back, her arms and legs spread like a starfish, in the same position until morning. Boss Yeung complained, but it had never driven him out of bed. At Perfume Bay, she'd grown accustomed to sleeping on her own again, in the soothing hush of the suburbs after nightfall. Here the walls were thin enough to hear a fart next door, here shouts and laughter floated up from the street. She squirmed. She'd gone soft, weakened by age, by pregnancy. She used to take pride in her ability to nap in any position, in any condition, on a bus, in the canteen, leaning against a wall for a few minutes. She rubbed her fist in the small of her back, trying to ease the ache. Old Wu had lent her a jar of Tiger Balm, the menthol and camphor cure for every ailment from a cold to an amputation. She and Daisy washed up under a dribbling shower, but had to change back into their Perfume Bay tracksuits, musty with sweat and smoky from dinner. With a roomy waistband and matted velour, the tracksuits were slovenly and yet infantile, designed for those who couldn't be trusted with zippers or buttons. Scarlett wanted to toss it, torch it, but she was too practical for such a dramatic gesture. She had to make the money last; she couldn't count on finding Daisy's boyfriend. She had to sell the van, at a bargain price to any buyer willing to overlook the missing papers, lost front license plate, and cracked windshield. She wasn't yet sure if mothers could deliver for free, or if they might get charged for medical supplies, the bedpan, the pads, whatever she and Daisy might need during their stay at the hospital. Tomorrow, Scarlett would start asking about where to give birth. The ultrasound technician had sounded so sure that hospitals couldn't turn you away, but what if she'd been wrong? She'd parked in a dim corner of the garage, which seemed secure—an attendant until midnight, sturdy gates, and security cameras—but all of a sudden she pictured thieves prying off tires, breaking the window, and rifling through the glove compartment. Police cruising through the garage, shining a flashlight onto each license plate, in search of the stolen van. If he wasn't already en route, Boss Yeung soon would come after them. He'd have the help of his friend Uncle Lo, a man of vast resources, to hunt them down. And wouldn't Daisy's frantic parents search for their runaway daughter? The baby kicked, her head down, in ready position, impatient to squeeze herself into the world. Daisy flipped her pillow, in search of a cool spot, and her hair whipped into Scarlett's mouth. Scarlett gagged. She couldn't stand the proximity with a near-stranger, not now, not night after night until their delivery. She sat up. Enough! Daisy tugged on the sheet and Scarlett tugged back so hard that the teenager was left exposed. She expected Daisy to snap at her. Scarlett wanted to fight, to shout, to vent all that roiled within her, steam howling out of a teakettle. Instead, Daisy clutched her pillow. "I've never shared a bed." She stroked the edge of the pillow as she would a lover's arm. She and her boyfriend probably never had a chance to spend the night together, spooning. Daisy didn't realize that you might share the same bed, but dream different dreams. A man who held you in his arms might at that very instant be plotting how to part you from your child. Scarlett had known none of that when she'd started her weekend driving lessons with Boss Yeung. They traveled in an hour what once would have taken a week to walk, days by donkey cart. She studied maps—taking in the highways from Harbin to Hong Kong, Shanghai to Kunming—that crossed China like lines on a crone's palm. She'd never felt more self-contained, self-sufficient than in the car with him on the weekends, stopping and going as they pleased, the climate, music, direction, and speed at their fingertips. A couple of weeks later, they became lovers on a visit to a local tourist attraction, century-old towering brick homes. For decades, men from this county had been going abroad to find work. Only the luckiest had returned with gold heavy in their pockets, and with it they commissioned the domed roofs and terraces they'd seen abroad. Boss Yeung had noted the intricate pattern on the tile floor, red and black eight-pointed stars. "Imported. From Italy." He had an eye for quality and refinement, and he'd judged her valuable, too. They were alone on the top floor. As she ran her fingers along slits in the walls, he came up from behind. "To take aim on the enemy below," he said, his arm brushing against her. She exhaled, and leaned back slightly toward him. The air thickening between them, they clutched each other in the sticky heat. They left for the nearest love motel, one they'd passed a few kilometers away. Their room had been tricked out in purple velvet, with a karaoke system bristling with as many knobs as a starship. Parched with desire, she drank deeply of all his textures: his soft lips, his prickly stubble, and the smoothness at the back of his neck, where his years hadn't yet reached. He never acknowledged their age gap and neither did she: the silver hairs in his crotch, the creak in his neck, the menus he squinted at before handing to her to read, her ease in squatting down to retrieve something he'd dropped. He'd lived out his youth, settled, and started his business before she'd been born. The years that had shaped him most were years she would never know. The age difference had been part of the attraction: she made him feel young, and he made her feel young, too. As old as she felt, he was older, and for a time, she found him wiser. She failed the written test for her license three times. Everyone said the questions were confusing and that you had to bribe the examiner to pass. She didn't need a license, Boss Yeung had said. "What if there's an emergency?" she'd asked. "What if—what if something happens and you can't drive?" He had grimaced. He didn't like contemplating any future that debilitated him. The next day, he had presented her with a recording he'd made of the exam, reading aloud questions and the answers. She listened through her headphones every day, while she slept, his voice becoming dear to her. She never wanted to hear that voice again. She threw the rumpled sheet back over Daisy and herself, but their feet poked out of the tangle. The teenager tottered up—now what?—and yanked the sheet off the bed. Before Scarlett could protest, Daisy snapped the sheet up and let it float down, a calming sight in the half-light from the street. The heat of their bodies dissipated and when the sheet settled upon her, Scarlett felt tidy and smooth. "My mother used to make the bed over me," Daisy said. Scarlett suppressed the silly urge to ask Daisy to float the sheet over her again, even though she craved the feeling of a sheet falling over her like snow. She was drifting off when she awoke with a start. Daisy was turned toward her, her expression guilty. "You touched my face," Scarlett grumbled. "It was an accident." "Don't touch me again!" "You were breathing so loudly. I thought—if you turned away—it wouldn't be so loud." Scarlett couldn't help but laugh. Daisy shrank back. Scarlett knew why the teenager had touched her because she'd done the same to Boss Yeung, many times when he was starting to snore. The sound was maddening! Scarlett rolled over, drawing the sheet over her shoulders. A siren went by and down the hallway, the communal toilet flushed, and the tidal pull of sleep drew them under. — The tasseled lamp was hers for the taking. The stack of cookbooks, the cracked radio, and wooden chair, too, if Scarlett wanted. All were heaped on a corner at the edge of Chinatown. The selection was best at the end of the month, Old Wu explained, when people moved out of their apartments, leaving couches, computer monitors, microwaves, and dumbbells in their wake. If you knew when and where to go, you could find treasures daily. They were on their way to the Pearl Pavilion, a banquet hall that welcomed skimming, side deals, and other loose interpretations of the rules. Old Wu suggested they sell the van to the manager in the lull between lunch and dinner. Every hour in the parking garage racked up more fees and every hour, Mama Fang and Boss Yeung were drawing closer. Daisy was at the library, searching online for William. "Can't we come back for this?" Scarlett didn't want to show up to the negotiations carrying a lamp like an itinerant peddler. "It'll be gone," Old Wu said. You had to be prepared, willing to snatch something up no matter where you were going. You wouldn't have a second chance. Blink, hesitate, and the treasure would disappear into the hands of the decisive. At Perfume Bay, she had been coddled, her every minute, her every bite and breath scheduled and monitored. The shock of all the choices before her now felt like plunging through ice. She tucked the lamp under her arm and followed Old Wu, who crowed about his top finds: outside of a luxury mattress store, he'd once discovered crumpled twenties, eighty dollars total. After testing out mattresses, a rich shopper must have been so relaxed that the bills tumbled out of his pocket! Another time, Old Wu spied a baggie full of green leaves, oily and densely packed, pungent as a skunk—da ma! Marijuana. He didn't have much use for it, but he made sure it didn't fall into the hands of a child or an addict. He smiled slyly. He'd given it to his neighbor Joe Ng, the one who'd gotten into a fight at Portsmouth Square. For all his boasting talk, Joe lived with his mother at Evergreen Gardens, and the rascal benefited from da ma's relaxing medicinal qualities. Only the poorest and most desperate in China picked through trash, grannies searching for glass bottles and aluminum cans to redeem. Wearing thick gloves, sticky with spilled juice, they batted aside wasps to fill clanking burlap bags. At the parks, some of them hovered nearby, taking the empty can from your hand. If the pampered wives of Perfume Bay had seen Scarlett carrying the lamp, they would have jeered at her. But if those women were forced to fend for themselves, they would have given up within the hour. Old Wu took the lamp from her. After retiring from the restaurant trade, he'd turned scavenging into an art, transforming the streets of San Francisco into a shopping spree. You had to see possibilities where others did not, he told her. Maybe you never imagined yourself with a chrome stool, topped with a red leather cushion, but you understood how it might fit into your apartment or your neighbor's. You couldn't be greedy. Just as you were to leave a few grains of rice at the bottom of your bowl to seed your next meal, you shouldn't rake the sidewalk clean. They skirted the edge of Chinatown, quicker than fighting the crowds on Stockton Street, and passed a narrow house, trimmed in gold and purple, where toys were arrayed on the front steps beside a sign, FREE ! Wooden puzzles with missing pieces, nested cups, a plastic pail and shovels, and a green-striped caterpillar. She'd seen that caterpillar—many, in fact—at the toy factory where she used to work, before she'd taken the job at Boss Yeung's. The caterpillar seemed brand-new, straight out of the box, soft and cuddly, not a thread frayed, the colors bright after its long journey: rolled off the assembly line, packed onto a cargo ship, off-loaded onto a truck, and driven to a store here. Not a trace left of the factory's harsh chemical reek of plastic and rubber, the dizzying paint fumes, the stink of the industrious. Maybe she knew one of the women whose hands had touched this caterpillar, stuffed in the fluffy fibers, attached the shiny eyes, and sewed the body closed. Did Scarlett process her paperwork, or eat with her in the factory canteen? She tucked the caterpillar under her arm—her daughter's first toy. Long before she'd known she would come to America, her touch had rippled across the ocean. The goods had been designated export-quality, unavailable for sale within China—too expensive, too fine for locals—but she had never considered the endpoint. She had often puzzled over the exact purpose of the items they manufactured. Did the strange objects—green plastic bowler hats, necklaces of bunny-shaped beads—fill a pressing need or create one by coming into existence? This house must bulge with plenty, shelves, bins, and boxes overflowing with toys. Back in Chinatown, they slipped through an alley on cobblestones slick with garbage, and passed a market where turtles and frogs flopped in plastic buckets. The bubbling tanks sounded like beakers boiling over in a mad scientist's lab. They were a block away from the Pearl Pavilion. According to Old Wu, legions of tourists ordered neon-orange chicken and heaps of fried rice during the day. At night, at its banquets, the restaurant served shark's fin soup, chewy slices of abalone, and hand-pulled noodles. He asked a busboy where they could find Manager Kwok. In the back, in his office. A dirty dish cart sat by the kitchen, piled with scraps grander than any feast Scarlett's village had ever celebrated. Fistfuls of rice, beef, bell peppers, and bean curd sat untouched. Hunger dug at her. As a child, she'd eaten meat only once a year, and this much wasted food made her want to cram the leftovers into a take-out box so she and Daisy could feed themselves for days. Manager Kwok, slouching in a baggy pin-striped suit, looked up from his paperwork and smiled. "Sifu! You're too late for lunch, but we can find something in the kitchen." Old Wu had explained to Scarlett why the manager owed him. Years ago, he'd worked as a busboy at a restaurant where Old Wu, the cook, kept the staff well fed. "I didn't come for the food—I came for you," Old Wu said. "Don't believe everything you hear," Manager Kwok told Scarlett. He had the uneasy swagger of a man in charge in practice though not in name, at the whim of an absent master. She'd heard the rumors: the owners of the Pearl Pavilion lived in Hong Kong and used the restaurant to wash dirty money clean. Manager Kwok's mildewy office, cramped and dim compared to the immense, brightly lit dining room, had fake wood paneling and a stained swamp-green carpet. A cigar humidor and a model of a motorcycle, with swooping fenders and bulbous tires, perched on top of a liquor cabinet. Old Wu shifted the lamp from one arm to the other. "You lift that off the back of a truck?" Manager Kwok asked. Old Wu set the lamp onto the floor and pulled out a chair for Scarlett, who awkwardly cradled the caterpillar in what remained of her lap. In the toy's midsection, bells tinkled. "You want to book a red egg and ginger party?" he asked, referring to the meal that celebrated a baby's survival and marked his first hundred days. Boss Yeung must have something grand in mind: a banquet in Hong Kong in a hall that overlooked the harbor, with Italian marble, floor-to-ceiling windows, abundant gold leaf and crystal chandeliers. The baby dressed in silk satin prince's robes, tiger hat and tiger shoes to ward off evil, cradled in Boss Yeung's arms and no one else's. "We can do any menu you want. Roast pig? Roast duck? We're using the recipe that Sifu taught us! How many? Ten tables, we'll get you a discount." He nodded at Old Wu. "In addition to the discount we reserve for our friends." "Don't you need a second delivery van? I have a bargain," Old Wu said. Scarlett bristled. For all his kindness, she'd had enough of other people speaking on her behalf. In business matters, she knew better than him. Hadn't she cut costs at Boss Yeung's factory? Manager Kwok leaned back in his chair, the leather squeaking under him. He tented his fingers together, his nails buffed to a shine, the pinky on his right hand kept long as a talon. "I don't have the budget for it." The cost of food had gone up and banquet bookings had gone down. "The engine's powerful, very powerful," Old Wu said. The manager checked his phone. "Built like a tank. Hit by another car, won't get a scratch. The other car will crumple." The manager laughed politely. He didn't look up from the cracked screen of his phone. "I'll try the Jade Dragon," Old Wu said. "But I wanted to give you the first chance." The seat dug into the back of Scarlett's thighs. Old Wu had told her the manager wasn't above serving stolen liquor at banquets, and she had to appeal to his greed. "The van's old, probably older than the one you have." Manager Kwok studied her. "That's not much of a sales pitch." "It's reliable and roomy. Sell the one you have and buy mine. An easy profit." She'd let him realize that he could pocket the difference. "No profit comes easy." But he rubbed his chin, considering.