branch. They were higher than the top of the adjacent building, and Mattie saw that an immense puddle had formed in the center of the flat roof.
Using her right hand, Mattie unslung her backpack, opened it, and removed her sketch pad. She leafed through the pad until locating her drawing of the Taj Mahal. She studied the drawing, showed it to Rupee, and then carefully folded it and stuck it into a crevice formed within a split branch. She looked up, trying to somehow glimpse her mother’s spirit. She spoke silently to her mother, asking her to watch over Rupee, to make sure that he was safe and happy.
“Why you leave picture in tree?” Rupee asked, Prem held tight in his hand.
Mattie put on her backpack, glancing below at her father, who stood near the base of the tree. “My mother . . . she’s dead, like I told you. But she loves to see my drawings, and to read my words. So I put them in wishing trees.”
“Wishing trees?”
“Places where I feel closer to her, where I know she’s looking.”
Rupee nodded. “Tomorrow, when you at airport, when you go to new country, I come outside and look for your drawing. If it fall to ground, I carry it back up, put it at top of tree again. Then your mother see it for many days.”
Mattie moved her loose tooth with her tongue, not wanting to think of being separated from Rupee. “Do . . . do you miss your mother, Rupee?”
“Me no remember her, so me no miss her. But sometime . . . me see mother with boy, and this make me sad.”
“I know. Me too.”
“But you take me here, so now I so happy. Maybe someday I have mother.”
“We’re going to find you a family. My daddy’s really great at that stuff.”
Rupee exhaled deeply, as if he’d just arisen from the river’s murky waters. “Me think me already reborn. When you say hello, when you take me to eat food, that day I born again. Me lucky. No have to get body burned, pushed into water to get reborn. I already reborn. You are like my Ganga River.”
“Really?”
“You . . . you do so much for me. Next time I see you, I do so much for you. And Mr. Ian. I make you feel reborn too.”
Mattie studied his smile. She was so happy to see it. But her smile was only half as wide. She wasn’t ready to say good-bye to the boy who made her laugh, who gave her his hand and helped her climb a tree.
Mattie wanted to be reborn. She understood what he was talking about. She longed to wake up and have everything different, everything the way it had been.
“I’ll miss you, Rupee,” she said, biting her lower lip so that she wouldn’t cry.
Rupee’s smile wavered, and he reached out to her, their fingers meeting and clasping, neither of them quite ready to climb down from the wishing tree, from a place where rebirth seemed so near and yet so far.
HONG KONG
Pain and Pleasure
“IT IS ONLY WHEN THE COLD SEASON COMES THAT WE KNOW THE PINE AND CYPRESS TO BE EVERGREENS.”
—CHINESE SAYING
The hotel rose like a sword into the night sky. The ultramodern building was sleek and soaring, thrusting higher than the half dozen skyscrapers crowding around it. Forty rows of oversized windows provided guests with spectacular views of downtown Hong Kong, which at night resembled its own solar system, replete with brilliant constellations, glowing planets, and setting suns. The city seemed afire with color and radiance. The skyscrapers weren’t simply tall rectangles of steel and glass, but sculpted and flowing structures illuminated by millions of green, purple, blue, and red lights that reflected off the clouds, the nearby sea, and the mountains, giving rise to a futuristic landscape that might have been conjured within the pages of a science fiction novel.
Ian stood near the window of their hotel room, peering through a telescope at the world below. Four high-rises fell within his immediate field of view, and all appeared to be apartment buildings. Many featured large windows, and he saw families eating dinner, watching television, gathered around flat-screen computer monitors. Children ran from room to room while mothers washed dishes. Fathers spoke on cell phones, pacing like caged lions. Other telescopes twisted and turned as people studied the scenes around them.
Not sure what to think of such voyeurism, Ian continued to look into the night. The nearby buildings must have housed