the most passionate love scene she had ever performed, to marry him.
She had slept with so many two-bit producers, directors, and casting agents on her way up the ladder that she couldn’t recall all of them. She could, though, remember the after-hours trips to the doctors. The ones with the cold, nondescript offices who would scrape the consequences of her thirst for fame from her womb. She remembered them all, especially the last one, the one who had arrived smelling of gin and who had rendered her barren. She would never forget him, ever.
She came to see it as a blessing. Cheng didn’t want to have children and in a sad way, she saw it as a sign that they were meant to be together. Perhaps they were meant to start anew, to slingshot each other forward.
Cheng’s home was in Beijing. He lived in the Chaoyang district near the St. Regis Hotel. He liked to be close to the action, he said, so he could entertain his clients when they came to the city.
On weekends when he was in town, he would take her sightseeing to the Temple of Heaven and the pearl market, or Hou Hai Lake and the Summer Palace. When he traveled, he encouraged her to go back home and be with her family, or to invite them to come to Beijing. He was incredibly generous, and she sometimes lamented not being able to love him. Her mother, so dependent upon his generosity, railed against Mi if she so much as gained an ounce between visits. They all expected her to stay as attractive as possible for her husband. There was no doubt the role she filled for her family. Her husband was the meal and she was the ticket.
She settled into an uneasy but somewhat predictable rhythm with him. When he was home, they never stayed there longer than was necessary to make love, grab some sleep, change clothes, and go back out. Cheng was a physical fitness fanatic. He involved her in none of his businesses, but he expected her to run and lift weights with him when he was in town, and to continue the practice without him when he was gone.
With or without clients, they ate at the best restaurants and danced at the best nightclubs. This was her favorite part. People recognized her, and Cheng proudly showed her off. She was glad to see what he was getting out of the relationship. She wasn’t just a sex object—he could have slept with her without marrying her—she was a status symbol to him. In fashionable, fast-moving Beijing, she was an extension of him, a reflection of his worth. Only an important, successful man could land a woman like her.
Suddenly, her past no longer mattered. She began, slowly, to think about the future. Cheng had begun talking about buying a house on a lake outside Nanjing—one that they could spend summers in. He talked about her father working too hard, that he should hand more of the business off to her brother so he and her mother could enjoy the warmer months along with them. It was like a fairy tale, and in that fairy tale the black ice that surrounded her heart was beginning to melt.
Of course she was a fool not to see what was happening. Cheng knew her better than she knew herself. He knew she didn’t love him, not truly, and he had been looking for every single thing he could do to make her fall for him. He had quietly interrogated her parents, her siblings, and anyone who had known her as Mi the person, not Mi the actress. He spoke with two aunts and even an old schoolteacher. What made Mi tick? What were her fears and what did she dream about? He had tried to ask her, but she always told him she was happy, and that she had everything she could ever want.
The summer home near Nanjing had been a stroke of genius on Cheng’s part. Even just talking about it produced a noticeable change in his wife, but he was convinced that there had to be more, something else he could do that would melt the rest of the ice and win her heart once and for all.
Amazingly enough, the best suggestion had come from someone at the Second Department—another intelligence agent. Cheng had overheard him talking about how his relationship with his wife had been faltering. He had tried, as best he believed any