Free The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay Page B

help me find the temple. Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the problem you’re supposed to help me with. If you know this city so well, tell me, why has she refused to go with me?”
    Marc’s brow furrowed with concern. “Because her husband is the most dangerous man in the Orient.”

Chapter 5
Hope and Futility
    The following morning Irene waited for Simone in her office for nearly two hours, but the younger woman did not appear. Anne had told Irene that Simone often spent time out at the racecourse or in the layette section of the Sincere department store on Nanjing Road, but she was in neither of those places either. Irene even tried the Huxinting teahouse, a pagoda set on pilings in the center of a small man-made lake in Shanghai’s Chinese quarter. It was known for its gatherings of Kuomintang. Sitting at an upstairs table at one of the windows hoping that Simone might show up, she sipped her tea and tried to pass the time categorizing the peasants on the paths encircling the water—old matrons grilling flakes of silver fish over beds of coal, grandfathers writing their life stories on the pavementin chalk for money, and middle-aged women hobbling on their bound “lotus feet.” All around the lake, scraps of laundry hung limp from wooden poles that extended from the open windows of the tenement houses. Irene sorted through the faded shades of blue and brown fabric, but her heart wasn’t in it. There was no sign of Simone, and the day was drawing to a close.
    Finally, as the wet late afternoon heat wrung itself out of the soupy sky, and the chance of simply happening upon Simone dwindled, Irene admitted to herself why she was wasting such valuable time. She was afraid of Roger Merlin. After hearing the stories of his violent temper and Marc Rafferty’s warning, and having seen what Roger had done to Simone with a frying pan, Irene wanted to avoid him.
    If she’d had weeks at her disposal, she would have relished the challenge of maneuvering around him. As it was, there were only two days left until the
Lumière
sailed to Saigon. She’d already bought the tickets, the day after she arrived in Shanghai. She had to get Simone on that steamer, or else leave the city on her own and work out a new plan along the way.
    She took a taxicab to the Merlins’ apartment on the Quai de France, a narrow street that paralleled the Whangpoo River. Reaching the top landing, she checked once again for the bulk of her map case tucked inside her jacket. In a sconce on the wall, an oil lamp burned, and its light cast a distorted phantom of her silhouette down the stairs. She put her ear to the door and listened for voices but heard none. She knocked.
    Simone called out, “The door is open.”
    Irene stepped inside. The room stank. She recoiled and raised her sleeve to cover her mouth against the odors of food and closed heat that had fermented in layers so thick they seemed visible. The stench of decaying lilies overpowered all else, their stems decomposing in a large glass vase filled with slimy water.
    A circle of kerosene lamps hung from the center of the low ceiling, radiating ocher shafts onto four shuttered windows that spanned the length of the sitting room. Directly beneath them, on a teak chair, Simone sat in a blue kimono, draped open, its obi loose around her waist. She lifted her eyes and tilted her head sluggishly.
    Irene thought of Anne’s opium tea and the bottle of Luminal in the desk in Simone’s office. She looked around. “Is he here?”
    “No.”
    Released from the strain of bracing herself to face Roger, Irene stepped toward Simone. She reached inside her jacket for her map case, and as she did so, she felt the merging of hope and futility that comes with taking a last chance. Simone watched her unclasp the buckle. The calfskin cover of the diary was warm to Irene’s touch as she opened to the page she had marked with the ribbon. Without prelude she read, “ ‘I have spent the past twenty-seven days