“Any word on what they’re planning to do with us?”

“No. But if you can get to China, I would. I’m trying to arrange passage now for me and some of my men.”

“I don’t know why Trudy doesn’t go.”

“And you should as well, big guy. Nothing for you here, right? Listen, best of luck, and we’ll have a drink when this is all over, okay? Call me if you’re ever in New York.” They shake hands and Gubbins leaves, trailing palpable clouds of American prosperity and assurance.

Trudy comes over.

“You remember Sophie Biggs and her husband; we just saw them at Manley’s party,” she tells him. “Well, her husband knows some Japanese and so he spoke some to a few soldiers in the street and they thought he was being disrespectful and they shot him in the knee. And he was lucky, Sophie says. He’s not in good shape because the hospitals have been bombed and are operating on the barest of levels. Delia says they’re setting up checkpoints soon, so we’re not going to be able to get around without passes. Should we go back up and get our things? Should we stay up there or come back down here? It is rather more convivial down here in town. I was going a bit stir crazy up there.”

“I think it would be nice if we moved into town, yes. But there’s no room here. We shouldn’t sleep on the floor here when we have perfectly good beds at home. We should conserve our strength to prepare for whatever might be ahead. Who knows when we’ll get to sleep well again.”

“So you think we should stay at Angeline’s?”

“I just don’t know where we would stay in town. I’m not going to stay here.” He gestures around. “This is a riot waiting to happen. I think it’s going to get ugly here, and I don’t mean with the Japanese.”

“So cynical. Isn’t that my job? ” But she doesn’t disagree. “Isn’t it funny,” she says. “We’re at war but most of what we’ve done is wait around for something to happen.”

“You don’t want anything to happen, Trudy. We want everything to remain boring and uneventful.”

“But you know what I mean. We just sit at home and look at each other. Is that what war is? I wonder what Vivien Leigh is doing right at this very moment.”

He slaps her lightly on the bottom. “She’s fast asleep,” he says.

Edwina Storch comes over with Mary, her partner.

“How are you, my dear,” she says to Trudy.

“All right, darling. How are you all faring?”

“Can’t complain, but trying to figure out the new order and how to go about things.”

“It’s like quicksand, isn’t it?” Trudy says.

“You’re a survivor, though,” says Edwina, with an odd cast in her voice.

Trudy pauses.

“As are you,” she says lightly. “I’m sure we’ll all be raising a glass of champagne to each other after this is all over.”

“I certainly hope so,” says Edwina. “You’re at home?”

“No, at Angeline’s,” says Trudy. “Don’t know if that’s the best place, but that’s where we are for now.”

“Well, be well,” Edwina says. “I’m sure we will see each other soon.”

“I certainly hope so,” says Trudy. When the women leave, Trudy makes a face at Will, sticking out her tongue.

They gather up Ned and Angeline, Trudy kissing everyone in sight, and stop by a newly sprung market to buy rice, choi sam, and rambutans at an exorbitant price, then drive home carefully, avoiding the main roads, feeling like some strange, newly orphaned family.

The electricity finally goes out on New Year’s Eve. Will has been making quick, urgent drives to town to get information and supplies, trying to avoid running into any Japs. He’s been successful for the most part, with the exception of one day when he was in the car with Ned, leaving town with a sack of rice, melon seeds, and some tins of bully beef, feeling rather victorious at his successful scavenging. A Japanese soldier appeared suddenly on the road ahead of them and waved down their car. Will’s stomach had plummeted into the seat.

“Don’t say anything,” he warned Ned. The soldier had them open the trunk. He looked at the rice and looked at them, and then had them get out of the car. Gesturing with his rifle, he had them empty their pockets and take off their wristwatches.

“American?” he asked.

“English.”

The man laughed. He looked to be around twenty-two, with a wide, naïve face.

“We win!” He pushed up his sleeve to reveal five wristwatches, lined up on his pale arm.

There was no reply for that, so when the man took their money and their watches and the rice and beef, Will and Ned got into the car silently and went back home. They had felt lucky.

And then New Year’s Eve, Will wakes up and turns on the switch, only to find the electricity is gone. The telephone works intermittently.

Trudy rallies against the silence that greets these announcements.

“Who needs all those gadgets,” she says. “They’re more work anyway. And everyone looks better by candlelight.” She pauses. “I think we should have a party. A real bang-up New Year’s party, and invite all our fellow campers who are up here with us on the Peak. I’ll see what we have and we can do a potluck-style evening.”

The Millers live down the road, a fashionable American family of six who are hunkering down with their six or seven servants-two or three amahs, a baby amah, a cook, a houseboy, and a gardener. They come by every once in a while to share information and for human contact. Trudy goes with Will to invite them and insists they bring everyone, including the servants and the baby.

“They can hang out in the kitchen and be part of it, a bit. You don’t want to leave them alone-they might not be there when you come back!”

The bemused Millers agree to come and bring whatever they can spare, and to spread the word.

On the way home, Trudy says, “There’s that story of the village with the soup. Do you know it? ”

“No,” Will says. “Village? ”

“There was a village with a chief who wanted to throw a big party with a communal soup. He asked everyone to bring something for the soup-a meat or a vegetable or something good, you know. But everyone thought that everyone else would bring something so they just brought a stone, figuring no one would notice. And in the end, tragic as it is, the soup was not delicious, or something like that.” She stops. “I don’t know why I told you that just now. Except that the people in that village were definitely not Chinese, having so little respect for food.”

“You’re afraid the Millers will bring rocks to our party?”

“No, idiot,” she says. “I’m afraid people aren’t honorable.”

But of course the party is a wild success. Though no dress is specified, people come in their finest, a sort of last gasp to the world as they know it. They gather together at Angeline’s house, like moths to a flame, bringing surprising delicacies brought up from secret cellars-a case of champagne (“Why not?” the giver reasons. “Just figured it was now or some Jap would be bathing in it later”), five freshly slaughtered chickens, sardines, a small sack of rice, watercress, cheese, bananas. And this still being Hong Kong, people have brought their servants to prepare and serve it all.

“A veritable feast,” Trudy says, looking at the table.

“The proverbial groaning table,” says Will.

“I wouldn’t go that far, darling.” She kisses him on the cheek. “Doesn’t it feel like we’re on school holiday? You don’t need to go to work, I don’t need to pretend to do anything with my time. Anything goes.”

Young Ned Young, a little more comfortable in his situation now, pulls Will aside. “That Trudy is something else,” he says. “Where’d you find her? I never met anyone like her, for sure.”

Men in dinner jackets and women in evening gowns are lounging in chairs, on the floor, drinking beer and tea out of odd containers-jam jars and tins-eating crackers and sardines. There’s no music so people offer to sing and play the piano. The instrument’s terribly out of tune, but the music is sweet and the voices lovely.