"Choose me! I will let you feel my love button!"

"No! Pick me! I will be so carried away I will forget to count the thrusts!"

"Forget your dreams, sister. He has found his new conquest. Where is that new girl? Who is she anyway?"

Hulan peered sideways and saw Siang in much the same condition as Aaron. Her eyes were cast down and she was blushing from embarrassment, but the smile on her face showed her pleasure.

Peanut, keeping her voice low, said, "Don't listen to them, Siang. They're just having fun."

"Do you think so?" Siang asked.

Peanut grinned conspiratorially. "Tell us. What did the manager say to you?"

"That I was doing good work. He said I was learning faster than anyone he had ever seen."

They entered the cafeteria building, picked up trays, and joined the line to receive a bowl of rice with some stewed meat on top. Peanut and Siang went to find a table, while Hulan got herself a mug of weak tea. By the time she reached her co-workers, they were deep in conversation, their heads together.

"Are you going to meet him?" Peanut asked Siang as Hulan sat down.

"Do you think I should?"

"Of course. I would if he asked me," Peanut answered.

Obviously a lot had happened in the few minutes Hulan had gotten her tea.

"But where?" Hulan asked. "I thought there were no places to be alone."

Peanut and Siang exchanged glances.

"The people who run this place think we have no needs, but we do," Peanut said delicately. "So we have found places to meet here inside the compound and ways to get out when we can."

"How?" Hulan asked. She picked up a piece of the meat, noticed that the hair was still attached to the skin, set it against the side of her bowl, and looked for another, more appetizing morsel.

"When you're here longer, you'll find out," Peanut answered.

"But Siang already knows, and we've been here the same amount of time."

"But she's different. The manager told her himself."

Hulan put down her chopsticks. "I don't think this is fair." The words seemed tame enough, but in China they were the first step toward public criticism.

Peanut sighed. "Okay, but if you get caught, don't tell them I told you. There are actually several ways to meet," she went on, trying to sound more worldly than her fourteen years. "Staying in the compound is the least dangerous, but it's hard to avoid their eyes."

"Last night Madame Leung caught me when I went outside," Hulan said.

"That's because you left after lights out," Peanut explained. "You have to be gone much earlier than that." Peanut looked around to make sure that none of the officials were nearby, then leaned forward and continued in a low voice, "Did you notice that when we came in here that we didn't have to check in? Well, the same goes for breakfast and dinner." "So?"

"So they only check us when we go in and out of the factory. Otherwise they don't pay much attention."

"People sneak out during lunch?" Hulan asked dubiously. "Lunch. Dinner." Peanut's eyes scanned the room. "I can tell you not everyone is having lunch right now." "But where do they go?" "Oh, the warehouse, the shipping area, the Administration Building, even here." Seeing Hulan's shocked look, Peanut laughed. "They aren't doing it in here right now! That's only at night after lights out and the men have supposedly gone home. Outside, you put a man and a woman together, how long does it take? Not so long and then the man goes to sleep. But"-Peanut's eyes gleamed-"if you stay in the compound-if you're in here perhaps-you do your thing and then you have all night to talk, because these floors are too hard for much sleeping. Believe me, I know!"

"Still, won't you get caught?"

"Depends where you go," Peanut said, "depends who with."

"What if I wanted to leave the compound?" Hulan asked.

"Do you have a special man too?" Peanut wanted to know.

"Maybe," Hulan said. "Maybe I just don't believe you. What about the gate? What about the guard?"

"Oh, leaving is easy!" Peanut bragged. "We're dismissed at seven and so are the men. You take off your smock, give it to a friend, join the men-walking in the middle of the group-and go right out through the gate. In the morning, you just reverse the process. And if you really want out, you can always pay the guard. He's very greedy."

Hulan remembered back to the first time she entered the compound and how the guard had paled when he'd seen her identification. He must have thought he was on his way to a labor camp.

"You've done this yourself?" Hulan asked. "Paid the guard?"

"Me? No. I'm here to make money, not spend it." Peanut turned her attention back to Siang. "So, where did the manager want to meet you?"

Siang studied her empty bowl. "He said to come to his office. He said we would have dinner there and we could talk about my promotion."

"Um." Peanut nodded sagely. "He wants to talk." Then she burst out in raucous laughter, stood, and called out across the room in a shrill voice, "Manager Red Face wants to talk!" The laughter that followed was accompanied by a few more comments on Aaron Rodgers's prowess.

Feeling sorry for Siang, Hulan reached across the table and patted her hand. "You don't have to do what he says."

Siang looked up not in embarrassment but in defiance. "Why wouldn't I go?" f "Isn't it obvious that he does this with other girls?"

"So what?"

"So you could get hurt. You could get a disease. You could-"

"You only say those things because you're old." Siang filled the last word with as much contempt as she could marshal. As Hulan recoiled at the insult, Siang went on. "Don't look so surprised. It's true you look young, almost like one of us. But you are a friend of Ling Suchee. Tsai Bing's mother says you are girlhood friends. Well, if you are friends for that many years, then you are as old as that old woman."

Peanut consumed all this with considerable interest, and Hulan had no doubts that their conversation would be common knowledge by lights out tonight.

"And what about Tsai Bing?" Hulan asked.

"He's the reason I'll do it." Siang pushed her tray away and stood. "We want to be together, but how can we without money?"

Hulan and Peanut watched Siang wend her way through the tables. "True-heart love, eh?" Peanut asked. Hulan nodded. "Parental objection too?" When Hulan nodded again, Peanut sighed at the hopelessness of it all.