“Oh, me? I’m eighty-four.”

She thinks this is wildly funny. I’m becoming legendary throughout the Middle Kingdom for my rarefied sense of humor. “If you could be any age, what would it be?” she asks conversationally.

“I like being eighty-four! It’s a great age. What about you?”

“For me, I like you be twenty-five, so be my big brother.”

I meant how old would she be, but that’s okay. I’m pleased with her answer.

“But since you so old, we must content to be father-daughter.”

Works for me. She can be the daughter I never had, poised and pretty. It’s been twenty-five years since I was last in Beijing, as a foot-loose young man between wives. And how old is Jade? Twenty-four. If any of the women I’d hooked up with last time I was here had gotten pregnant, the child would be Jade’s age now. She’s a grad student of foreign relations, she tells me, only a part-time waitress, and I immediately feel more at ease with her than I ever did with Yuh-vonne-her frank, guileless face, her teeth that are as white in back as in front. But how can she, like Yuh-vonne, be so free and easy about her American name? Jenny or Jade-how can she allow her identity to be so malleable? A Chinese mystery, one of those enigmas that long ago earned the natives that awful adjective “inscrutable.”

But she’s giggling at me again, producing cute bubbles in her teeth. “You are much ability to make me laugh,” she says.

“What’d I say now?”

“Not say-do. You stir coffee with arm of sunglass.”

“That’s an American thing. All the very important people, the presidents and such, we stir our coffee with our sunglasses. It’s like a code, how we recognize each other abroad.”

“You are pulling it again, my legs!”

So I am. But in a chaste, fatherly fashion. She’s so trusting I wouldn’t have it any other way. Her dark eyes are candidly veiled, like seal eyes, peering at me with more openness than I’m used to. Maybe that’s what gives her such an air of vulnerability. For me, after being with Yuh-vonne, it’s like going from a hot dog to a cream puff, except that Jade is strong as well. She knows who she is. I reach for the clod of preternaturally bright scrambled egg, with a cowlick of parsley on top. And continue making conversation, since she shows no signs of leaving. Her supervisor sees her idling with me but backs away, bowing.

“So, Twenty-four, do you have a big brother or sister in real life?”

“No, Eighty-four. I am only one child.”

“Is it lonely for you, to be an only child?”

“Oh, no, I am glad of this. I am number one! I tell my mather, if you have another baby, I will kill it.”

“You were joking, surely?”

“No-serious!” She giggles, pleased with herself: “He he he he.” I never heard a giggle so literal before, but it works. I would say it sounds scripted, except it’s so charming.

“So you are their treasure.”

“Treasure, yes. My mather tease me, say she like her dog better than me, but I know is not true. In true, I am responsibility to be best daughter I can, safe and good. If there is tragedy and I am killed, like in earthquick, then they have no one, is torrible!” Her eyes fill with tears. “Such a thing take place sometime and is very torment.”

Every now and then, you meet someone like this-someone you feel should never have to die. How could such adorableness ever die? How could such sparkling innocence be snuffed? I want to protect her from death. I want to take her under my wing and make sure no harm comes to her-no earthquick, no depressionism, none of the things that hurt our children. Of course I can’t say any of these things, so I content myself with saying, “Your parents must love you very much.”

“I hope that,” she says ardently. “So what is your plan in this day?” she asks.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“This day is my lucky day, I think,” she offers. “Because this day I show you my country to repair my English.”

This isn’t delivered flirtatiously-just earnestly. Situation splendid.

“You want to show me around? What’ll it cost me?”

She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t want to think ill of me…

“How much to be my guide for a few hours?” I say, tapping my watch and wallet, but this puts a shadow of shock on her face.

“Nothing!” she says. “I want repair my English-”

“Okay, yes, sorry, I’d like that. Maybe tomorrow morning?”

“We take tour. I show you fuck market?”

“Pardon…?”

“Antique and such, also modern product for deep discount?”

“Oh, sure. Folk market sounds good.”

“Where we have supper?”

“Supper? I can’t take so much of your time.”

“I am nothing to do tomorrow except working, sleeping, shopping.”

She looks so dejected that I feel like the Spanish father in the elevator, handling his baby with kid gloves.

“We’ll play supper by ear,” I say. “Where’s good to meet tomorrow morning?”

“Outside hotel. Not in lobby. I not tell hotel I doing this.”

“Undercover, eh?”

“Double-oh-seven, bang bang!” she snickers, blowing smoke off her fingertips.

“Gotcha, outside the hotel.”

I will not-I will not!-pass out flyers in Tiananmen. To distract myself I return to my luxury suite, settle myself among my 100-percent Egyptian cotton linens, and knuckle down to cast my shaggy net wider still. I wish I could use the distinguished mahogany fountain pen provided by the hotel to write letters in longhand to everyone I ever knew in the hemisphere, but I settle for e-mail. Some remedial apologies are top of the list.

Dear Safrina, First of all I want to apologize for the way I left you waiting at the Singapore airport last time. I know it’s nine teen years ago, but I’m trying to make amends for my youth. What can I say? I loved you, but you had too many boyfriends for me to handle. I had to break your heart before you broke mine. Anyway, I find myself in your neck of the woods again and wonder if you might have access to any working kidneys on any of the islands…

Dear Achara, I’m sure it comes as something of a shock to hear from me again, two decades after our painful falling-out, but I’m writing to ask an unlikely favor. I remember you telling me that your aunt was the queen of Thailand. With the vast con nections that must be available to your family, do you know anywhere in Bangkok I could possibly get my hands on…

Corazón! It’s way past time that we bury the hatchet. Why point fingers? There was enough blame to go around. I’m not mad anymore and hope you’re not either, because I have a dire favor to ask. Manila has become quite the sophisticated medical center this last decade and…

Then, speaking of the devil, just after I’ve pinged this off, Manila pings me back. Not Corazón or any of my other old Asian flames, but a beachside motel where I earlier made tentative arrangements if our week in Beijing didn’t pan out.

To whom Sir and Madam

We look forward where you stay. At your request we have book two ooms. However we are in perplex about you request for rooms on separate floors for ‘breathing room’ purpose. Is pity Sir you request or two floors can not be honored because we are single floor operation. However we can place each room far from the brother room, if suitable, on other side of Relaxation Yard which is covered by green plants to make guests feel cleansing and comfortable…

Score! I snag this despite its vaguely prisonlike sound. It’s only a contingency anyway. Hopefully, we won’t need Manila if China somehow comes through.

One more outgoing e-mail before I get to my in-box: A warm thank-you to Happy-Go-Luck Travel, telling them I won’t be needing Yuh-vonne’s services any longer and directing them to give her a large tip in farewell. It’s in honor of the little teeth prints on her lips, may she be happy every day. But, oh dear: Is Larry’s generosity rubbing off on me?

No, it’s his pragmatism. I’m purchasing Yuh-vonne’s continued silence. The last thing we need is for her to blow the whistle on us.