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They let wen go on the first cold day of autumn, the day all of Harbin's furnaces came on, and a heavy smog began growing thick by early afternoon. Wen could see it from the fourteenth floor where Mr. Hong was saying it was the Americans' fault that profits were down and projects were stalled and everything was uncertain. It was the Americans' brinksmanship. It was nothing personal. Everyone was cutting back. Everyone was watching the Americans. Of course, Wen was not to take any files with him. No files and no supplies. His computer was being scrubbed as they spoke. But, Mr. Hong said, of course Wen knew all this. Wen was a professional and it gave Mr. Hong no pleasure to let him go.

Wen had put on his winter hat and his scarf for the first time that morning but he'd been unable to find his gloves. He was an organized man. Every year once spring set in, he put his hat and scarf and gloves in the same clear plastic box so he could easily find them again come autumn. But for some reason the gloves weren't there. This had bothered him immensely. He didn't like the thought of his gloves somewhere amiss in the apartment. It suggested other things could be amiss, too, and that thought was unacceptable.

Mr. Hong finished speaking. Wen had questions. He kept his voice even because he knew Mr. Hong was watching him carefully. They had all been watching him carefully now for three days, even though he had apologized many times to many people and was, as instructed, covering the contractor's medical bill. It was an absurdly high bill and it was still going and Wen was certain the contractor and the doctor were conspiring to take as much money from him as they could. Each day he imagined the two of them together in the doctor's office, an office Wen pictured as that of a lazy opportunist, with nothing on the walls and hardly anything in the desk save perhaps a brick of staples. The doctor would be sitting behind the desk and saying, The nose is broken, yes, but let's also focus on the neck and the back. The neck and the back are where the real money is.

And the round-shouldered contractor, sitting in one of the two chairs against the wall, would be nodding and saying, Yes, I'm positive there are many things now wrong with my neck. When I wake up in the morning it feels like there's a spike in it. And the doctor would say, No, don't say a spike, that's too dramatic, you want to keep it less specific. An ache or a twinge is good. Stay away from spikes. Right, the contractor would say. It's not so much a spike as an ache or a twinge that won't go away. My wife is very worried about me. Now you're talking, the doctor would say. That's the stuff. Bring the wife into it. No one likes a pain that won't go away. It drives people crazy. And the contractor would say, Exactly, it's just there all the time, this ache that won't go away and it's depressing and it's ruining my marriage. Good, the doctor would say—

And this is how it had gone in Wen's head since he'd struck the contractor fully in the face and the doctor's office had begun its steady barrage of calls. It had been a good punch; he had kept his wrist straight and tight and rotated it at the last moment so it was his first two knuckles that landed, and the man had fallen over in the great mud pit that was supposed to be the Huán Luxury Apartments. Wen knew he had broken the man's nose and he knew the man deserved to have his nose broken. But each day since that morning he'd learned it was not just a broken nose, it was also...