Lin Page 6 fugal force pinning her body and face to the win-dow, the summer wind scalding her. She looked upon the dozens of faces in the street looking back at her incuriously, and she knew: no place like this. She had come to make a living, perhaps make it big, in what she had no idea, but in a place with millions of people, millions of ideas, surely there would be a few which she could synchronize with, like the hundred-strong crowds that march in lockstep across intersec-tions. That was two years ago. Habits: Gun Duk is addicted to Coca-Cola. Empty cans pile up in artless clumps in his apart-ment, even as Cheng constantly badgers him: All that sugar and caffeine can't be good for you! She is right, he knows it; he also knows that this is her function as his girlfriend, to point out these things. But Miho is different. She is old enough to know that vice is what it is, and should be accepted with a shrug. So they spend a long evening sitting atop the railings over-looking Hong Kong Harbor, and the cans pile up at their feet, she in her short white dress and perfectly cut jacket, he in his crushed velvet shirt and Diesel jeans, the older woman and the younger man, neither of them demanding more than company. Miho: Hard to believe that a girl from a modest snowbound village in Hokkaido could become a jetsetter. But here she is, an elegant woman who flits between Hong Kong and San Francisco: a new cosmetic line here, a fashion expo there. Flash bulbs pinpoint her in the crowd, young women take note of the purse she uses. She is in high demand: the middle-aged Hong Kong men with hair perfectly sprayed and parted on the side are always there. They are probably gang-sters, with their mirrored sunglasses and their