Tin Nee Beauty Salon was a beauty-and-fitness emporium on the second floor of the jade Building, in the middle of the noise roaring along Canal Street. Exercise machines, whirlpool. Manicure.
Mona maintained a regular appointment every other Sunday, but she was later than usual on this afternoon. Facial, sauna. A massage, the purity of innocent hands rubbing, squeezing away the poisonous touch of a piggish old man. Steam and heat purging the smell of Uncle Four from her pores.
She sank her body into the massage table, remembering Water Over Thunder, strengthen base of operations.
But how?
If she could find a woman, an accomplice, to help her secure a false passport or a new identity, she might be able to escape. But who? The secrecy of her relationship to Uncle Four forbade her any ordinary friends. And she didn't trust women anyway, especially the gossipers who cut her hair and polished her nails, always slipping in rude questions she had to evade. They never said what they knew, although she suspected they knew enough to gong sifay- spread gossip-behind her back as soon as she stepped out of the salon. So she went to several salons during the year, rotating them, thinking she could keep them off balance.
But who? Working-class women, factory women, would be suspicious of her, would misjudge her intentions. The sin lai lai, socialites, would recognize her for what she was, cheap see, mistress, and would disdain her, betray her.
The counterfeit identification business was underground traffic, and if she was betrayed, Uncle Four would surely punish her.
She pressed her fingers into the jade piece, her hand sweaty from the masseuse's artistry of pushing hands. Lake over water. Trapped. Abandoned, alone, nowhere to turn. Muscles loosening up. Sign of Sacrifice. Insight matures, resolves swells.
Help, she pleaded to herself.