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“’Us’,” I said. “’We’. As in you and I?”

“Yeah, sure. You and me.”

I nodded at Brian, who lay nearby, deep asleep and snoring. “And what about him?”

Ellis shrugged.

“I don’t know, Tim,” she said. “What about him?”

I looked back down at Brian, who hadn’t shifted position, not even when my shadow fell over his face. Idly, I inquired:

“You’ll still be there when I get back, won’t you, Ellis?”

Outside, through the porthole, I could see that the rising sun had just cracked the horizon; she turned, haloed against it. Blew some more smoke. Asking:

“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. But you wouldn’t use my being away on this job as a good excuse to leave me behind, though—would you?”

She looked at me. Exhaled again. And said, evenly:

“You know, Tim, I’m gettin’ pretty goddamn sick of you asking me that question. So gimme one good reason not to, or let it lie.”

Lightly, quickly—too quickly even for my own well-honed sense of self-preservation to prevent me—I laid my hands on either side of her face and pulled her to me, hard. Our breath met, mingled, in sudden intimacy; hers tasted of equal parts tobacco and surprise. My daring had brought me just close enough to smell her own personal scent, under the shell of everyday decay we all stank of: A cool, intoxicating rush of non-fragrance, firm and acrid as an unearthed tuber. It burned my nose.

“We should always stay

together,” I said, “because I love you, Ellis.”

I crushed my mouth down on hers, forcing it open. I stuck my tongue inside her mouth as far as it would go and ran it around, just like the mayor of that first tiny port village had once done with me. I fastened my teeth deep into the inner flesh of her lower lip, and bit down until I felt her knees give way with the shock of it. Felt myself rear up, hard and jerking, against her soft underbelly. Felt her feel it.

It was the first and only time I ever saw her eyes widen in anything but anger.

With barely a moment’s pause, she punched me right in the face, so hard I felt my jaw crack. I fell at her feet, coughing blood.

“Eh—!” I began, amazed. But her eyes froze me in mid-syllable—so grey, so cold.

“Get it straight, tai pan,” she said, “’cause I’m only gonna say it once. I don’t buy. I sell.”

Then she kicked me in the stomach with one steel-toed army boot, and leant over me as I lay there, gasping and hugging myself tight—my chest contracting, eyes dimming. Her eyes pouring over me like liquid ice. Like sleet. Swelling her voice like some great Arctic river, as she spoke the last words I ever heard her say:

“So don’t you even try to play me like a trick, and think I’ll let you get away with it.”

* * *

Was Ellis evil? Am I? I’ve never thought so, though earlier this week I did give one of those legendary American Welfare mothers $25,000 in cash to sell me her least-loved child. He’s in the next room right now, playing Nintendo. Huang is watching him. I think he likes Huang. He probably likes me, for that matter. We are the first English people he has ever met, and our accents fascinate him. Last night, we ordered in pizza; he ate until he was sick, then ate more, and fell asleep in front of an HBO basketball game. If I let him stay with me another week, he might become sated enough to convince himself he loves me.

The master chef at the Precious Dragon Shrine tells me that the Emperor’s Old Bones bestows upon its consumer as much life-force as the consumed would have eventually gone through, had he or she been permitted to live out the rest of their days unchecked—and since the child I bought claims to be roughly ten years old (a highly significant age, in retrospect), this translates to perhaps an additional sixty years of life for every person who participates, whether the dish is eaten alone or shared. Which only makes sense, really: It’s an act of magic, after all.

And this is good news for me, since the relative experiential gap between a man in his upper twenties and a woman in her upper thirties—especially compared to that between a boy of fourteen and a woman of twenty-eight—is almost insignificant.

Looking back, I don’t know if I’ve ever loved anyone but Ellis—if I’m even capable of loving anyone else. But finally, after all these wasted years, I do know what I want. And who.

And how to get them both.

It’s a terrible thing I’m doing, and an even worse thing I’m going to do. But when it’s done, I’ll have what I want, and everything else—all doubts, all fears, all piddling, queasy little notions of goodness, and decency, and basic human kinship—all that useless lot can just go hang, and twist and rot in the wind while they’re at it. I’ve lived much too long with my own unsatisfied desire to simply hold my aching parts—whatever best applies, be it stomach or otherwise—and congratulate myself on my forbearance anymore. I’m not mad, or sick, or even yearning after a long-lost love that I can never regain, and never really had in the first place. I’m just hungry, and I want to eat.

And morality . . . has nothing to do with it.