This apartment is the apartment of a serious person. Disordered, but in a serious way-a large system on the wall, equipped for information and music, but no vid. There are flimsies in a stack on the floor, obviously down-loaded. The wall at the back has homemade bookshelves filled with books and stacks of flimsies in binders. The books look like non-fiction. I used to read a lot during my alienated adolescence. Fiction. There is a book lying on the floor near Gu's chair, The Social Matrix: Religious Communities in Capitalist America.

San-xiang talks. She is serious and involved. "A community doesn't have to be autonomous to be a community," she says. "People can work outside the community."

"Then what makes it a community?" Gu Zhongyan asks, sounding irritated.

"A community is a group of people united by shared interests," San-xiang says. "It can be work, or family or even something like a theater. That's why a community should do something, have a product that everybody works with, because the profit and loss unites people."

"But there you have competition," says the husband, "and whenever you have competition you're going to have inequality. Some members are going to be less able to contribute."

"So the community adapts," San-xiang says. "It adjusts. We're adults, we can recognize that someone taking care of a new baby has less time, or that someone else isn't going to be able to handle bookkeeping."

"But if you have competition," says the wife, "people's judgments become clouded. You get resentment. You can't expect people to recognize and adjust, somebody is going to feel put out." She sounds wistful, as if she speaks from experience.

"Sometimes a community doesn't adjust," San-xiang says, "and sometimes it doesn't work. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try."

After the discussion we have green tea and cookies and then San-xiang and I walk to the subway.

"What did you think?" San-xiang asks.

"I think you are very smart," I answer.

She frowns. "No, I mean are you interested?"

"In joining your commune? I don't know."

"We don't even have a commune yet," she says. "You didn't say very much, I guess it isn't as exciting as kite races."

"I'm not a very political person," I say by way of apology.

She looks at me sharply but doesn't say anything.

"It's true," I say, "I don't even like to watch the news. I'm not the kind of person who gets involved in political things."

"Everybody is involved in politics," she says.

"Not me," I say. "Not because I think they're bad, I think I should be involved, I'm just lazy."

"No, listen to me. Everyone is political. You can't help it. You make political decisions all the time, just as you make moral ones."

I shrug.

"Zhong Shan," she says gently, "get this through that handsome empty skull of yours, okay? No one can escape politics. You're ABC, are you a party member?"

"No," I say, expecting her to be disappointed. A lot of ABC are party members. "Like I told you, I'm not interested. I think the party is mostly a means of advancing one's career anyway."

"Exactly, and your decision not to join is a political decision."

"Well, then my political decision is to not be political."

"Exactly, that's a political statement. You are expressing your opinion about current politics. Except you are political, everything we do is political," she says, doggedly explaining to the unenlightened. "You do things. You rent a private apartment, right?"

"Because if I took housing I'd have to live in some complex in Virginia or northern Pennsylvania," I say irritated.

"But by doing so you condone landlords."

"I don't condone or not condone landlords," I say. "It's a practical decision, not a political one. The Great Cleansing Winds Campaign is over, San-xiang. We don't have to analyze everyone's lives for motives."

"I wasn't saying it's wrong," she says mildly, "I was just pointing out that your life says something about your politics whether you think about them or not. You can either just let that happen or you can think about the kind of choices you want to make."

"I'd like to continue to make my choices because they fit my life rather than out of some sense of ideology," I say. "In my experience ideology is a lot like religion; it's a belief system and most people cling to it long after it becomes clear that their ideology doesn't describe the real world."

She smiles up at me. "That's as pure a description of an applied political theory as any I've ever heard."

I look at that little monkey face and say coldly, "Pretty good for a dumb construction tech, right?"

"Bu cuo," she says airily. 'Not bad.'

Ugly girls have to have something, I think. Sports or ideas.

Lenin and Mao Zedong. I am sitting in front of the vid, leaned over unlacing my work boots, when I get a call. I assume that it's Peter and I think to myself, this time I won't let him talk me into going anywhere. It's Tuesday night, I'm tired. I pick up my beer and wander into the kitchen to take the call, trailing boot laces.

"Zhang here," I say, not bothering with the visual.

"Zhong Shan?" San-xiang says.

"Wei," I answer, surprised and a little disappointed.

"My parents threw me out," she says in her high, soft little-girl voice.

"What?" I say. "What for?"

"We had an argument."

"About what?" I say foolishly.

"Oh, everything. Can I come to your flat?"

"Oh, sure." I say. I give her directions and then lace my boots and run down to the little Thai place (The Ruby Kitchen) and get take out noodles and fried chicken. I stop and pick up more beer, too. Then back to my flat, where I take the shirts I brought back from the cleaners off the chair and throw them in my room. The place looks okay. It needs to be cleaned but I'm not going to worry about that right now.

And then I wait, sitting on the edge of the chair, watching the vid. If I sit back in the chair, I'll probably fall asleep. I fall asleep a lot of evenings in this chair, sitting in front of the vid.

The building system says someone's at the outside door, I check the console and there she stands with a slouch bag over her shoulder. Until I see the bag it doesn't occur to me that she might want to stay here the night. Hell, doesn't she have friends? I let her in, tell the building to recognize her and let her in whenever she comes, and leave the door off the latch.

San-xiang stops at the door. I am in the kitchen, but I hear her heels and then I imagine her stopping, her chinless little face upturned. "I'm in the kitchen," I call.

When she comes in the kitchen she doesn't have her bag.

" Yao pijiu ma?" I ask and hand her a beer without waiting for her to answer.

"Hi," she says, looking at the beer as if she doesn't know whether she wants it or not. She takes a sip. She stands, uncertain of her reception.

"This is my decadent flat," I say, gesturing. It is two real rooms and a kitchen and bathroom roughly the size of closets. Compared to her parents apartment it's little bigger than a drawer. And it's a rathole. The flooring is that synthetic stuff and doesn't go quite to the corners and the wall covering needs to be replaced. The apartment is brown except where the gray concrete shows in the corners. I could fix it up, I think about it once in awhile, but I never know how long I'm going to live here. And I'm rarely here except to eat and sleep.

She looks around, looks back at me. "I'm sorry to just show up this way."

"Sit down," I say, "have something to eat. Tell me what happened."

She sits down and I stick chopsticks in the noodles. I hand her a plate and a pair of chopsticks, sit down and pick up a piece of chicken.

She sits for a moment, looking at the noodles but clearly not seeing them. Her attitude reminds me of someone saying grace. I put a piece of chicken on her plate. "Thank you," she says.