'Oh, nonsense,' she said, when Mae went into her usual performance. 'Is this for a wedding? For a feast?'
'No,' said Mae. 'It is for my special friend.'
The little hussy put both hands either side of her mouth as if in awe. 'Oh! Uh!'
'Are you going to do a special job for her or not?' Mae demanded. Her eyes were able to say: I see no one else in your shop.
Oh, how the girl would have loved to say, I am very busy – if you need something special, come back tomorrow. But money spoke. Halat slightly amended her tone. 'Of course. For you.'
'I bring my friends to you regularly because you do such good work for them.'
'Of course,' the child said. 'It is all this news; it makes me forget myself.'
Mae drew herself up, and looked fierce, forbidding – in a word, older. Her entire body said: Do not forget yourself again. The way the child dug away at Kwan's hair with the long comb-handle said back: Peasants.
The rest of the day did not go well. Mae felt tired, distracted. She made a terrible mistake and, with nothing else to do, accidentally took Kwan to the place where she bought her lipsticks.
'Oh! It is a treasure trove!' exclaimed Kwan.
Idiot, thought Mae to herself. Kwan was good-natured and would not take advantage. But, if she talked…! There would be clients who would not take such a good-natured attitude, not to have been shown this themselves.
'I do not take everyone here,' whispered Mae, 'hmm? This is for special friends only.'
Kwan was good-natured, but very far from stupid. Mae remembered, in school Kwan had always been best at letters, best at maths. Kwan was pasting on false eyelashes in a mirror and said, very simply and quickly, 'Don't worry, I won't tell anyone.'
And that was far too simple and direct. As if Kwan were saying: fashion expert, we all know you. She even looked around and smiled at Mae, and batted her now-huge eyes, as if mocking fashion itself.
'Not for you,' said Mae. 'The false eyelashes. You don't need them.'
The dealer wanted a sale. 'Why listen to her?' she asked Kwan.
Because, thought Mae, I buy fifty riels' worth of cosmetics from you a year.
'My friend is right,' said Kwan, to the dealer. The sad fact was that Kwan was almost magazine-beautiful anyway, except for her teeth and gums. 'Thank you for showing me this,' said Kwan, and touched Mae's arm. 'Thank you,' she said to the dealer, having bought one lowly lipstick.
Mae and the dealer glared at each other, briefly. I'll go somewhere else next time, Mae promised herself.
The worst came last. Kwan's ramrod husband was not a man for drinking. He was in the promised cafe at the promised time, sipping tea, having had a haircut and a professional shave.
A young man called Sloop, a tribesman, was with him. Sloop was a telephone engineer and thus a member of the aristocracy as far as Mae was concerned. He was going to wire up their new TV. Sloop said, with a woman's voice, 'It will work like your mobile phone, no cable. We can't lay cable in our mountains. But before MMN, there was not enough space on the line for the TV.' He might as well have been talking English, for all Mae understood him.
Mr Wing maintained his cheerfulness. 'Come,' he said to the ladies, 'I will show you what this is all about.'
He went up to the communal TV and turned it on with an expert's flourish. Up came not a movie or the local news, but a screenful of other buttons.
'You see? You can choose what you want. You can choose anything.' And he touched the screen.
Up came the local Talent, still baring her perfect teeth. She piped in a high, enthusiastic voice that was meant to appeal to men and Bright Young Things:
'Hello. Welcome to the Airnet Information Service. For too long the world has been divided into information haves and have-nots.' She held up one hand towards the heavens of information and the other out towards the citizens of the Green Valley, inviting them to consider themselves as have-nots.
'Those in the developed world can use their TVs to find any information they need at any time. They do this through the Net.'
Incomprehension followed. There were circles and squares linked by wires in diagrams. Then they jumped up into the sky, into the air – only the air was full of arcing lines. 'The field,' they called it, but it was nothing like a field. In Karzistani, it was called the Lightning-Flow, Compass-Point Yearning Field. 'Everywhere in the world.' Then the lightning flow was shown striking people's heads. 'There have been many medical tests to show this is safe.'
'Hitting people with lightning?' Kwan asked in crooked amusement. 'That does sound so safe, doesn't it?'
'It's only the Formatting that uses the Yearning Field,' said Sloop. 'That happens only once. It makes a complete map of minds, and that's what exists in Air, and Air happens in other dimensions.'
'What?'
'There are eleven dimensions,' he began, and began to see the hopelessness of it. 'They were left over after the Big Bang.'
'I know what will interest you ladies,' said her husband. And with another flourish, he touched the screen. 'You'll be able to have this in your heads, whenever you want.'
Suddenly the screen was full of cream colour.
One of the capital's ladies spun on her high heel. She was wearing the best of the nation's fashion design. She was one of the ladies in Mae's secret treasure book.
'Oh!' Kwan breathed out. 'Oh, Mae, look, isn't she lovely!'
'This channel shows nothing but fashion,' said her husband.
'All the time?' Kwan exclaimed, and looked back at Mae in wonder. For a moment, she stared up at the screen, her own face reflected over those of the models. Then, thankfully, she became Kwan again. 'Doesn't that get boring?'
Her husband chuckled. 'You can choose something else. Anything else.'
It was happening very quickly and Mae's guts churned faster than her brain to certain knowledge: Kwan and her husband would be fine with all this.
'Look,' he said, 'This is what two-ways does. You can buy the dress.'
Kwan shook her head in amazement. Then a voice said the price and Kwan gasped again. 'Oh, yes, all I have to do is sell one of our four farms, and I can have a dress like that.'
'I saw all that two years ago,' said Mae. 'It is too plain for the likes of us. We want people to see everything.'
Kwan's face went sad. 'That is because we are poor, back in the hills.' It was the common yearning, the common forlorn knowledge.
Sometimes it had to cease, all the business-making, you had to draw a breath, because after all, you had known your people for as long as you had lived.
Mae said, 'None of them are as beautiful as you are, Kwan.' It was true, except for her teeth.
'Flattery-talk from a fashion expert,' Kwan said lightly. But she took Mae's hand. Her eyes yearned up at the screen, as secret after secret was spilled like blood.
'With all this in our heads,' Kwan said to her husband, 'we won't need your TV.'
It was a busy week.
It was not only the six dresses. For some reason, there was much extra business.
On Wednesday, Mae had a discreet morning call to make on Tsang Muhammed. Mae liked Tsang. She looked like a peach that was overripe, round and soft to the touch and very slightly wrinkled. Everything about her was off-kilter. She was Chinese with a religious Karz husband, who was ten years her senior. He was a Muslim who allowed – or perhaps could not prevent – his Chinese wife keeping a Pig.
The family pig was in the front room being fattened: half the room was full of old shucks. The beast looked lordly and pleased with itself. Tsang's four-year-old son sat tamely beside it, feeding it the greener leaves, as if the animal could not find them for itself.
'Is it all right to talk?' Mae whispered, her eyes going sideways towards the boy.
'Who is it?' Mae mouthed.