“So, my China doll?” She winked at Lisa, then stared at me. “You want a minute? I can wait.”

Finally Lisa came to my rescue. “Give her a chocolate mousse, please.”

“Gotcha.” She wagged a finger at Lisa and chuckled flirtatiously. Her silver hippie earrings trembled like virgin breasts savagely squeezed.

She pushed herself up, and her leather-wrapped, narrow bottom wriggled away. I noticed a few holes, big and small, in her fishnet stockings.

I felt an army of ants crawling up my spine. “Lisa, you don’t find this place…weird?”

“Oh, no, I’m an artist, Meng Ning. Nothing surprises me.”

“Even men with breasts who wear dresses and flirt with you?”

“If you look at a thing as it is, it just is. “

“You like men dressed up like women?”

She squinted at me with a curious expression. “I thought I’d expand your horizons. You know, Michael won’t bring you to a place like this. He’s too serious-and too protective of you. I know him well. Sorry, Meng Ning. If you don’t like it here, I can take you somewhere else.”

“No, Lisa. I also like expanding my horizons.” It surprised me that suddenly my voice sounded so loud and vehement.

After more drinks and more talk, I began to feel at ease and got into the rhythm of the bar. Waitresses floated between tables like fish in water; men drank, smoked, cracked jokes, turned heads at passing buttocks, and threw glances at us.

Under the warm light of our table’s gilt brass lamp, Lisa’s skin took on a golden sheen, looking almost translucent. I felt her body emit waves of energy toward me. During our conversations, her eyes sometimes focused intently on me and sometimes far in the distance-darting between men in tight jeans, bomber jackets, and cowboy boots. Judging from the few wrinkles making their debut around her eyes, she was like a flower at its ripest moment of perfection, which was also perilously close to wilting.

Lisa turned back to look at me. “You know, Meng Ning, I’m actually part Chinese. My grandfather was a missionary and met my grandmother in Shanghai. My mother spent her childhood there.”

Now Lisa’s eyes were unreadable, like a cat’s. “I never lived in China, but Mom used to tell me strange tales about her life there.”

“Tell me her tales.”

She made a face. “OK, but don’t blame me if they’re too weird.”

“Go ahead.” I took a big gulp of my Cuba libre.

“One time her parents took her to a zoo where she saw a man talking to a flower-”

“That’s not very strange-”

“Meng Ning, there’re more to the story; would you let me finish?” Lisa feigned annoyance, then continued. “The man was a street performer. He told the audience that every day he had to feed and wash the flower like a person. Just when he was about to demonstrate how, the flower opened up to reveal a pretty girl’s head-”

“Oh.”

“While everyone was exclaiming in wonder, the man stuck a lighted cigarette in her mouth. The girl’s head started to smoke, blowing out clouds of smoke in circles, triangles, squares, even a heart. After that, she went on to perform other tricks, like singing, eating, and making funny faces. Of course everybody tried to look and see whether she was hiding her body somewhere. But all they could see under her head was a stem.”

Mesmerized, I asked, “Is this true?”

She shrugged. “So I was told by my mother.”

“What other things did she tell you?”

“She also saw a baby’s head with a dog’s body. It could perform all kinds of tricks, like somersaulting, walking on two legs, chasing his own tail-”

“Oh, no! Lisa, your mother must have made this up.”

“No, she didn’t. But…it’s a horrible story.”

“What is it? Tell me.”

“The dog was skinned alive and right afterwards, its skin was wrapped onto the newborn baby until the two grew together.”

“Yuck, that’s really sick…”

“I told you it was horrible.”

“These stories are true?”

“What do you think?” She winked.

A pause before we both burst out laughing.

A long silence fell between us, then Lisa took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, tapped it on the pack, and handed it to me.

“No, Lisa, I don’t smoke.”

“Have you ever?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t hurt to try.”

“No thanks.”

“All right then.” She lit the cigarette, slid it between her lips with a slick movement of her hand, then took a deep drag. She released a mouthful of smoke, her lips still in the shape of a perfect O-or a chicken’s ass, as my mother would say; or a Zen circle, as Yi Kong would.

My eyes were smarting from the smoke.

Lisa asked, “So Michael is your boyfriend?”

The question took me by surprise. I carefully sipped my rum-soaked Coke, lowered my voice, and changed to a whispery tone, as if I were about to reveal the deepest secret. “Fiancé.”

She didn’t say anything, but kept squinting at me and blowing more clouds of smoke. “How did you meet?”

I sipped more of my rum and Coke, and before I’d decided what to say, began blurting out everything: how Michael and I had met in the Fragrant Spirit Temple; how he’d saved my life in the fire; my fall into the well when I was thirteen; my earlier contempt for men as well as my aspiration to be a nun; my friendship with Yi Kong and Dai Nam.

After I’d told her about myself, it seemed a new intimacy of sorts existed between us.

Lisa listened with a fascinated expression. “Incredible,” she said at last, raising her eyes to the ceiling and releasing a long, slow stream of smoke, then dropping her head and looking me in the eyes. “You called men ‘stupid piece of meat,’ ‘monk head,’ ‘four-eyed monster,’ ‘stinking testosterone,’ ‘walking garbage’? I love that!”

As if pulled by some magnetic force, I found myself shifting closer to her. She asked our “waitress” for another round of drinks.

Delicately she sipped her fresh martini, leaving a ring of her silvery lipstick on the glass. “Michael must be very fond of you.”

I nodded.

“Wonderful,” Lisa said, then she took a deep gulp of her drink and soundlessly laid down her glass. Next she picked up a few nuts and popped them into her mouth, chewing noisily with lips closed.

Suddenly the warmth in her eyes was gone and her voice was cold. “So when are you getting married?”

“He wants to soon, but I’m not sure I want it so quickly.”

“So you’re still not sure whether you want to marry him?”

“Not that-I love Michael. But I’ve spent most of my life hanging around nuns, so theirs is the world I’m comfortable in. Also, when you’re told over and over for fifteen years how human passion is illusory and how men are untrustworthy, it’s confusing. And I’m even more confused since I don’t feel that way with Michael. He seems as centered as a rock, and never bothered-”

“Nobody is not bothered by anything, Meng Ning.”

She sipped more of her martini and inhaled deeply her cigarette. “Now let me tell you another story. It’s Japanese, about a lighthouse watchman living on an island. He fell in love with a beautiful pearl diver who lived on the island opposite his. Every evening he turned on the light so his lover could see the way when she swam across the sea to meet him. Then he fell in love with another girl. One stormy night, when the pearl diver was swimming toward his lighthouse, he put out the light-”

“So what happened?”

“She drowned. Of course.” Lisa squashed her cigarette in the ash tray.

“Why do you tell such a terrible story?”

“That man was my fiancé.”

“Oh…”

Lisa seemed to wrestle with her emotions. “I use the story as a metaphor.” She paused, then said, “He dumped me…for someone else.” She bit her lips, her eyes darting around. “But I’m still in love with him.” She paused to stare into her glass, now quite empty. “You can’t analyze love, can you?”

Yi Kong could. Love is illusory. It’s the cause of suffering.