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phoned May Ling.
    “I’m ready.”
    “Good. I’m upstairs in the M Bar drinking a martini.”
    “A martini?”
    “I’ll explain.”
    Ava rode the elevator to the twenty-fifth floor. She had no idea the M Bar opened so early, but May Ling was sitting by herself at a table overlooking Victoria Harbour. She was wearing slim black jeans and a teal turtleneck sweater. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and as Ava approached her she saw small lines around the edges of her mouth and faint circles under her eyes. More surprising was that her eyes were full of worry. May Ling, in Ava’s experience, was a woman who took things in stride.
    “Sorry to have missed breakfast,” Ava said.
    May held out her arms and they hugged. Ava could feel the tension in her friend’s body.
    “May, what the heck is going on?”
    May shrugged. “Is it that obvious?”
    “You’re drinking a martini at noon.”
    “Well, we have a problem.”
    “A problem?”
    “A business problem.”
    Ava sat down at the table. When a server materialized almost instantly, she ordered a coffee.
    “I thought we’d talk first and then go to Man Wah for dim sum,” May said, motioning to the restaurant that made up the other half of the twenty-fifth floor.
    “Sure, that sounds fine. But May, you’re worrying me with all this talk about a business problem. Amanda mentioned something to me, but she thought it was a Wuhan issue.”
    May plucked a green olive from her drink. “It has nothing to do with Wuhan. It’s a problem with the new business — our business. I’ve been trying to sort it out by myself. I mean, Amanda had her wedding and you had Uncle, so I thought I would leave the two of you out of it.”
    May Ling’s eyes were like Uncle’s. They were such a deep brown that in many lights they looked black, and like Uncle’s, they spoke to you. Ava had seen them distressed only once before, that night in Wuhan when they had first met, when May Ling sat on Ava’s bed and begged her to take their case. “Tell me what’s going on.”
    “Ava, are you sure you’re up for this conversation? I know the last few days have been really trying for you,” May said.
    Ava shrugged. “I’ve spent the past four months worrying about Uncle and worrying with Amanda about the wedding. Yesterday, between him and her, could have been the worst day since I’ve been here, but we got through the wedding and Uncle got through another crisis. And none of it — the past four months, I mean — has been as soul-leeching as I thought it would be. I had to get the misery out of my system with Uncle and forget about how frivolous the wedding preparations were. And I did both well enough to get by. So tell me, what’s our problem?”
    “It isn’t officially ours yet,” May said, biting into the olive, her eyes on the harbour below. “You haven’t yet put your money into the business, and after hearing this you may not want to.”
    “Oh, don’t give me that,” Ava said. “Nothing can be that bad.”
    “I’m not so sure, and Changxing is most certainly sure it is.”
    “Why is he involved?”
    May looked back at Ava. “He isn’t, not directly anyway. But he does know about the problem. I couldn’t disguise my distress when I found out about it, and when he asked me what was going on, I told him. I think maybe he’s enjoying my discomfort. It just reinforces his idea that I can’t — or, more accurately, shouldn’t — do anything without him.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    May drained her martini. “All the money I had was tied up in businesses I shared with him. When I went to him with this idea for our thing, he was . . . Well, he was somewhat understanding and tolerant, but more confused than anything else. He couldn’t understand why I wanted to do something with just you and Amanda. Still, I must give him credit. He signed off on my pulling a hundred million dollars out of our joint ventures to bankroll the new company, and he didn’t charge me too