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in a couple hours.”
    “I’m sorry, I have to work too.”
    “Damn her! She does nothing but sleep at the day care, Mrs. Espada told me. She’s like a model baby there.”
    “She has just reversed her sense of day and night.”
    “Put her down! Let her cry as much as she wants.”
    “Honey, don’t be so nasty. She’ll quiet down soon.”
    Her gentle voice checked his temper. He closed the door and returned to his room. He used to dream of having an angelic child whose beauty would spread over everything in their home. It wouldn’t matter whether the baby was a boy or girl as long as it took after Gina or himself. Now slitty-eyed Jasmine had marred his picture of the ideal family.
    He kept yawning at the meeting the next morning. One of his colleagues teased him, “You must’ve exerted yourself too hard last night.”
    “Be careful, Dan,” another chimed in. “You shouldn’t act like a newlywed.”
    People at the conference table cracked up while Dan shook his head. “My daughter’s ill and cried most of the night,” he muttered.
    Everybody turned silent at the mention of the baby. They had all seen Jasmine and some had raised the question of whom she looked like. Their silence sent a wave of resentment over Dan, but he restrained himself because they were discussing how to acquire an old warehouse in Forest Hills and convert it into condominiums. He was eager to move out of Flushing. It’s public school system wasn’t too bad, but the whole area was isolated culturally—it didn’t even have an English bookstore. Galleries appeared and then disappeared, and there was only one small theater, managed by his friend Elbert Chang. Most immigrants here didn’t bother to use English in everyday life. Anywhere you turned, you saw restaurants, beauty parlors, retail stores, travel agencies, law offices—nothing but businesses. New arrivals had made little effort to protect the environment, or perhaps they were too desperate for survival to worry about that. Dan feared that his neighborhood would deteriorate into a slum, so he was determined to see the plan for converting the warehouse succeed. He was sure that some of his colleagues also hoped to buy the condos the company wanted to build in Forest Hills.
    •    •    •
    Jasmine got well within a week, but Gina was still unhappy about Dan’s suspicion. She wouldn’t reproach him but avoided speaking to him. Her reticence angered him more. He thought to himself, You think you’re a good woman? I know what you’ve been doing on the sly. Wait and see—I’m going to find out about you.
    One evening Gina came home with a flushed face. At the sight of Dan with their daughter sitting on his lap, she stopped at the door for a moment, then stepped in. She hung up her navy blue coat in the closet and sat down on the sofa opposite him. “You’re ridiculous,” she said.
    “What’s that about?” he asked.
    “You hired a midget to follow Fooming and me.”
    Abashed, Dan didn’t know how to respond, but instantly he recovered his presence of mind. “If there’s no monkey business between you two, why should you mind?”
    “Let me tell you, your detective botched his mission. Fooming roughed him up and gave him a bloody nose.”
    “Damn it, it’s against the law to beat a professional agent!”
    “Give me a break. The man was eavesdropping on us. He violated our privacy first.”
    “Your privacy? What is it that’s so private between Fooming Yu and you?”
    “You’re insane. You hired that man to make a scene in public.”
    “You just said it was Fooming Yu who made a display of himself. Where did this happen?”
    “In Red Chopstick.”
    “You’re a married woman, but you dined with a bachelor in a restaurant on a busy street. Who’s insane?”
    “How many times have I told you he and I are just friends?”
    “Then neither of you should’ve been upset by Mr. Kwan’s inquiry.”
    “It was foolish of you to use that man. He’s too