Lin Page 5 ebb, but that is when she is calm enough to form-ulate questions. She only sleeps three hours a night anyway, like Thomas Edison, her hero. She calls him, he makes a show of grumbling, but he never hangs up. Mostly he just listens. A good listener is harder to find than good sex. Further on cars: Paul has fantasies. A car will nearly run him down, the driver will drop his window for a crude remark in the midst of a one-handed cell phone conversation, and he will reach out, grab the man by the lapels, and bodily haul him from the vehicle. The car will continue puttering down the street, rudderless, and finally come to a crunching stop against a wall, or a dumpster. In the meantime, he will have beaten the man's face to a satisfying pulp, after which he will find the car keys, drop them through the nearest sewer grating, and disappear like the breeze. All he wants is egalitarianism: Everyone should be treated decently, all the time. Or may-be he is simply an egalitarian snob: You just want yourself to be treated well, is all. Halley, too, is fascinated with the lawlessness of red-light running, and she spends her days filming such incidents. All makes, models, neighborhoods, social classes, ethnicities. Some run the lights with impunity, others get an aggrieved yell or the honk of an opposing horn. She has no idea what she will do with this footage, but she suspects it will have anthropological value someday. For now, she enjoys showing Paul these rough scenes and watching his face burn crimson. Cheng: She heard all the stories about Hong Kong when she was a child growing up in China. She couldn't quite believe them until she was fresh off the train to Kowloon, riding a bus as it clung to the corners like a race car, sheer centri-