Without moving, she said, "Good morning, old father."

"Good morning, beautiful Li-Ahn. I thought you were never going to speak to me. Of course I was contented just have to you nearby. The presence of such hope-filled energy is like a steaming cup of freshly brewed green tea! Speaking of which…"

Li-Anh felt her concentration slipping. She closed her eyes and heard soft footsteps approaching, then the sound of someone sitting beside her under the plum tree.

"You can open your eyes. I won’t bite. Please, have some."

She opened her eyes, picked up the jade cup of steaming tea, and sipped.

"Thank you." She kept her focus straight ahead. At the edge of her field of vision, she saw him, but she could tell the rags were gone, replaced by a brown robe.

A long silence as she drank the tea. When the cup was empty, she said, "I want…"

"Shhh. Don’t you want to see how it comes out?"

"How what comes out?"

"The movie."

Li-Anh examined what she saw carefully. From her months of reading and meditation after long days working in a Shanghai McDonald’s, she thought she understood: Maya, illusion, all that. "I’m sorry, old father, but you are playing ancient men’s games. A movie that hurts this much is no movie. What can you know of the pain of my child who, now, will never be born?"

"A young woman comes to me, sorry, came to me once long ago. She was pregnant, full of new life. She sat on my porch, two waterfalls pouring from her eyes. ‘I’ve been fucked by a god,’ she said. ‘My husband has been away, in Beijing, for a year. I have been faithful to him, yet now I’m pregnant. I don’t know how it happened unless it was a god who visited me. Now what am I to do?’"

In spite of her long practice, Li-Anh suddenly lost patience. "Silly girl. She was denying to herself what had obviously happened." So upset was Li-Anh that without thinking she abruptly turned and looked at the old man. Looked and stared, because the old man was now a beautiful young man.

"Precisely. But there was no point in saying that to her, was there? It would only increase her pain. She had gotten what she had wanted for so long, not realizing that as long as one desire remains, there is no end to pain."

Li-Anh tried to order her thoughts. Not just a beautiful young man, but the most beautiful young man she had ever seen. She felt her nipples hardening, her vagina becoming moist. "M-more tea, please?"

From his left, the young man brought around a tea pot and filled her cup. He opened his robe, showing a fine organ, finely erect. "It’s for you."