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all he’d want to share it with.
    He stood in the middle of the Asian foods aisle pondering this, and received a new shock. Standing farther down the aisle, frantically comparing the contents of her cart to a crinkled paper in her hands, was a gorgeous young Southeast Asian woman. Everything about her was jarring, and slightly off: She was awkwardly dressed in a yellow sweater, the color of which clashed with the warmer luster of her own skin and which was at least a few sizes too big for her, the sleeves rolled up. Her black sweatpants also were too large, and she seemed to be wearing men’s bedroom slippers. She would have looked like a homeless person if not for her perfect face and the fact that she was in the most expensive grocery store in D.C.
    But no, not perfect. An indigo crescent moon curved beneath her left eye. He thought it might be a birthmark, because the only alternative was too unfortunate to consider: that it was the fading trace of a shiner. They made eye contact and he looked away, caught leering—was she as beautiful as he thought, or was he just thrown by all the conflicting signals? Her near-black hair was pulled in a loose ponytail, the strands seeming to sigh as they drooped around the elastic. There was a wide space between her eyebrows, a place he imagined a lover kissing.
    Her fingers accidentally knocked a can off the shelf. She reached down and picked it up hurriedly. He saw red marks on the side of her neck as she did so. She placed the can back on the shelf and chose a replacement.
    She furtively glanced at him, as if expecting to be scolded.
    “Don’t worry,” he said, “I won’t tell anyone.”
    She looked down again and attempted a three-point turn with her heavily laden cart. He saw that her small cloth purse had a patch of brown Javanese batik on it.
    “Are you from Indonesia?” he asked her in Bahasa. He hadn’t spoken the language in weeks and it felt clunky yet comfortable on his tongue, like putting on clothes that were three fashion cycles too baggy but favorites all the same.
    She looked up at him in shock.
    “Yes,” she said, amazed. She stared at him for a moment before asking, “You speak Bahasa?”
    “A little. I lived there for a few years.” He was not accustomed to divulging much of himself to strangers, but it spilled out. “Do you speak English?”
    “No.”
    He could tell now that it wasn’t a birthmark. The skin below the eyebrow was still the tiniest bit puffy. He ran the possibilities: A young immigrant with an abusive husband and very particular grocery needs? A badly dressed graduate student who’d been in a car accident? Her sleeves were too long for him to see any defensive wounds.
    “I haven’t heard anyone speak my language in weeks.”
    “There aren’t many Indonesians in D.C.”
    “You speak very well,” she said, and seemed to laugh without smiling.
    “Thank you. I haven’t spoken it in a while myself. I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
    She looked down quickly, not to check the contents of her cart but again as if she’d been scolded. He wondered if he’d gotten his words wrong.
    He felt a charge coursing through him. The memories streaming back, the collision of worlds to be speaking Bahasa in D.C. And her odd appearance and demeanor, as if life were trying its damnedest to stamp out her beauty, but failing.
    “Actually,” he said, “could I ask you a cooking question? I didn’t bring any recipes with me, and I was trying to remember, do I need Kaffir lime leaves to make dendeng ragi? ”
    Both of her hands were gripping the cart tightly, her knuckles white, the crinkled grocery list gasping out of her left palm as if attempting an escape. He wondered if he had made himself look like a fool in her eyes, a man doing woman’s work.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Do you know where to buy them around here? The only Asian grocery I know is out in Arlington.”
    “There’s a store around the corner, on 14th Street,” she