The girl/woman confusion was irresolvable. She was petite and trim, traits hardly unusual among Chinese females. She had a pixie haircut, which was unusual. But this did not seem to be a fashion statement, given that she was wearing blue jeans and a pair of knee-high, bright blue pull-on boots—the kind of boots that working people used when scrubbing a boat deck or sloshing around in a rice paddy. A black T-shirt and a black vest completed the ensemble. No makeup. No jewelry except for a man’s watch, clunky on her wrist. She was rooted to the ground in a way that kept catching Zula’s eye: she planted those boots shoulder width apart on the pavement and stood square to whomever she was talking to, occasionally bounced a little on the balls of her feet when she was amused or excited by something. Her confidence made her seem forty but her skin was that of a twenty-year-old, so Zula concluded that she was young but odd in some way that would take Zula a little while to sort out.