inspected the work. The needlework was delicious, as if the white cloth were cream that had flowed together. The poor creature could certainly sew, even when she hated the dress.
'That will be fine,' said Mae, and made a move towards her purse.
'You are so kind!' murmured Miss Soo, bowing slightly.
Like Mae, Miss Soo was of Chinese extraction. That was meant to make no difference, but somehow it did. Mae and Miss Soo knew what to expect of each other.
The dress was packed in brown paper and carefully tied so it would not crease. There were farewells, and Mae scurried back to the hairdressers. Sunni was only just finished, hairspray and scent rising off her like steam.
'This is the dress,' said Mae and peeled back part of the paper, to give Halat and Sunni a glimpse of the tulle and styrofoam.
'Oh!' the women said, as if all that white were clouds, in dreams.
And Halat was paid. There were smiles and nods and compliments and then they left.
Outside the shop, Mae breathed out as though she could now finally speak her mind. 'Oh! She is good, that little viper, but you have to watch her, you have to make her work. Did she give you proper attention?'
'Oh, yes, very special attention. I am lucky to have you for a friend,' said Sunni. 'Let me pay you something for your trouble.'
Mae hissed through her teeth. 'No, no, I did nothing, I will not hear of it.' It was a kind of ritual.
There was no dream in finding Sunni's surly husband. Mr Haseem was red-faced, half drunk in a club with unvarnished walls and a television.
'You spend my money,' he declared. His eyes were on Mae.
'My friend Mae makes no charges,' snapped Sunni.
'She takes something from what they charge you.' Mr Haseem glowered like a thunderstorm.
'She makes them charge me less, not more,' replied Sunni, her face going like stone.
The two women exchanged glances. Mae's eyes could say: How can you bear it, a woman of culture like you?
It is my tragedy, came the reply, aching out of the ashamed eyes.
So they sat while the husband sobered up and watched television. Mae contemplated the husband's hostility to her, and what might lie behind it.
On the screen, the local female newsreader talked: Talents, such people were called. She wore a red dress with a large gold brooch. Something had been done to her hair to make it stand up in a sweep before falling away. She was groomed as smooth as ice. She chattered in a high voice, perky through a battery of tiger's teeth.
'She goes to Halat's as well,' Mae whispered to Sunni. Weather, maps, shots of the honoured President and the full cabinet one by one, making big decisions.
The men in the club chose what movie they wanted. Since the satellites, they could do that. Satellites had ruined visits to the town. Before, it used to be that the men were made to sit through something the children or families might also like to watch, so you got everyone together for the watching of the television. The clubs had to be more polite. Now, women hardly saw TV at all and the clubs were full of drinking. The men chose another kung fu movie. Mae and Sunni endured it, sipping Coca-Cola. It became apparent that Mr Haseem would not buy them dinner.
Finally, late in the evening, Mr Haseem loaded himself into the van. Enduring, unstoppable, and quite dangerous, he drove them back up into the mountains, weaving across the middle of the road.
'You make a lot of money out of all this,' Mr Haseem said to Mae.
'I… I make a little something. I try to maintain the standards of the village. I do not want people to see us as peasants. Just because we live on the high road.'
Sunni's husband barked out a laugh. 'We are peasants!' Then he added, 'You do it for the money.'
Sunni sighed in embarrassment. And Mae smiled a hard smile to herself in the darkness. You give yourself away, Sunni's-man. You want my husband's land. You want him to be your dependant. And you don't like your wife's money coming to me to prevent it. You want to make both me and my husband your slaves.
It is a strange thing to spend four hours in the dark listening to an engine roar with a man who seeks to destroy you.
In late May, school ended.
There were no fewer than six girls graduating and each one of them needed a new dress. Miss Soo was making two of them; Mae would have to do the others, but she needed to buy the cloth. She had a mobile phone, a potent fashion symbol. But she needed another trip to Yeshibozkent.
Mr Wing was going to town to collect a new television set for the village. It was going to be connected to the Net. Mr Wing was something of a politician in his way. He had applied for a national grant to set up a company to provide information services to the village. Swallow Communications, he called himself, and the villagers said it would make him rich.
Kwan, Mr Wing's wife, was one of Mae's favourite women: She was intelligent and sensible; there was less dissembling with her. Mae enjoyed the drive.
Mr Wing parked the van in the market square. As Mae reached into the back for her hat, she heard the public-address system. The voice of the Talent was squawking.
Mae sniffed, 'Hmm. Another choice on this fishing net of theirs.'
Wing stood outside the van, ramrod-straight in his brown-and-tan town shirt. 'I want to hear this,' he said, smiling slightly, taking nips of smoke from his cigarette.
Kwan fanned the air. 'Your modern wires say that smoking is dangerous. I wish you would follow all this news you hear.'
'Sssh!' he insisted.
The bright female voice still enthused:
Kwan gathered up her things. 'Some nonsense or another,' she murmured.
Mae listened then. There would certainly be a need for fear and panic if the address system said there was none.
'What test, what kind of test? What? What?' the women demanded of the husband.
Mr Wing played the relaxed, superior male. He chuckled. 'Ho-ho, now you are interested, yes?'
Another man looked up and grinned. 'You should watch more TV,' he called. He was selling radishes and shook them at the women.
Kwan demanded, 'What are they talking about?'
'They will be able to put TV in our heads,' said the husband, smiling. He looked down, thinking, perhaps wistfully, of his own new venture. 'There has been talk of nothing else on the TV for the last year. But I didn't think it would happen.'
All the old market was buzzing like flies on carrion, as if it were still news to them. Two youths in strange puffy clothes spun on their heels and slapped each other's palms, in a gesture that Mae had seen only once or twice before. An old granny waved it all away and kept on accusing a dealer of short measures.
Mae felt grave doubts. 'TV in our heads. I don't want TV in my head.' She thought of viper newsreaders and kung fu.
Wing said, 'It's not just TV. It is more than TV. It is the whole world.'
'What does that mean?'
'It will be the Net – only, in your head. The fools and drunks in these parts know nothing about it; it is a word they use to sound modern. But you go to the cafes, you see it. The Net is all things.' He began to falter.
'Explain! How can one thing be all things?'
