A Loyal Character Dancer

made him oddly pleased. She started to browse just like other customers with an intensity he had not expected.
     
    Another store displayed traditional Chinese costumes. The street, frequented by foreign tourists equally interested in exotic Oriental products, was home to a couple of specialized boutiques. She lit upon a scarlet silk robe embroidered with a golden dragon. As she stroked the smooth material, the owner of the store, a gray-haired woman wearing a pair of gray-rimmed glasses, said affably, “You can try it on here, American lady.”
     
    “How?” Catherine looked around. There was no fitting room.
     
    “It’s easy,” the owner said, pointing at a piece of cloth folded back and hooked on the wall. “Pull it out, hook it onto the other wall, and it is a fitting room curtain. You can put on the robe behind it.”
     
    “Ingenious,” Chen said. What stretched out across the corner of the room was, however, not exactly a curtain. The material was too thin, too short. It was more like a fashionable apron.
     
    Beneath the curtain, he saw Catherine’s dress falling in a heap at her feet. Looking up, he caught a glimpse of her white shoulders before she wrapped herself in the scarlet robe.
     
    “Take your time, Catherine. I’ll smoke a cigarette outside.”
     
    As he lit a cigarette outside the store, he saw a young man in front of another store across the street dialing a cell phone and casting a long glance in their direction. A Chinese onlooker would be intrigued by the sight of an American woman changing her clothes behind the makeshift curtain. Chen did not feel comfortable in his temporary role, standing there like a bodyguard, a “flower protector” in classical Chinese literature.
     
    Something else was bothering him, too. He was not sure what. He dropped the cigarette before he finished, stamping it out under his heel, and went back into the store. She pulled aside the curtain and emerged holding the robe wrapped in a plastic bag.
     
    “I bought it.”
     
    “The American lady speaks Chinese so well,” the owner said with an obliging smile. “I’m giving her the price for a regular Chinese client.”
     
    They resumed their shopping, bargaining, comparing, making small purchases here and there. As they squeezed their way through the market, it started to rain. They hurried into a garagelike store, where a young salesgirl was perched on a high chair behind the counter. Probably in her early twenties, she was cute in a clean-cut way, and she wore a black DKNY top that showed her belly button, and a pair of shorts with a Tommy Hilfiger logo on the hip. She dangled her Prada slippers and smoked a brown More cigarette. She stood up to meet them, a collective image of contemporary fashion.
     
    “Welcome to our store, Big Brother.”
     
    It was a strange greeting, he thought. The young salesgirl appeared to focus her attention on him.
     
    “It’s raining,” he said. “So we’ll look around.”
     
    “Take your time, Big Brother. Your girlfriend deserves the best.”
     
    “Yes, she does,” he said.
     
    “Thank you,” Catherine said in Chinese.
     
    The salesgirl introduced herself. “My name is Huang Ying. It means Oriole in Chinese.”
     
    “What a lovely name!”
     
    “Our products are no low-quality fakes. The companies themselves sell to us through an unofficial channel.”
     
    “How?” Catherine asked, taking up a black handbag bearing the label of an exclusive Italian designer.
     
    “Well, most of them have joint ventures in Hong Kong or Taiwan. This handbag, for example. They ordered two thousand. The Taiwan factory produced three thousand. The same quality, needless to say. And we get one thousand directly from the factory. For less than twenty dollars.”
     
    “It’s genuine,” Catherine said, after taking a closer look.
     
    Chen could not see anything special about it—except for the price tag. It seemed enormously expensive to him. Handing the bag back to her, he noticed a row of colorful fashionable clothes hanging on a stainless-steel rack in a corner. The price tags seemed staggering.
     
    There was also a length of scarlet velvet—a fitting room curtain partially hiding a cushioned stool by the back door. This store was of better quality—at least in that respect. When people changed, they would feel more secure.                             
    “Take a look at this watch. Oriole took out a display case. “The