Free A Good Fall by Ha Jin

she could talk it out. In fact, the girl wasn’t that fragile, though she seemed to lack willpower. I believed the service would toughen her up a little, and also she could ask the nursing home’s manager for a letter of recommendation, which might help distinguish her college applications. Eileen agreed.
    When one of Eileen’s employees took a week off to attend his son’s wedding in Minneapolis, I offered to help in the afternoons. I didn’t know how to operate the printing machine or the computer programs, so I mainly did photocopying and other clerical jobs. One afternoon Mr. Feng dropped in and began to bicker with Eileen about his novel. I was collating a handout in the inner room, where the company’s motto was inscribed on two scrolls hung vertically on the wall: “To Publish Books by Anyone / To Disseminate Stories of Everyman.”
    “No, no, the first printing should be at least one thousand copies,” I heard Mr. Feng say in a raspy voice. I looked over at him and Eileen, both seated at the long table with teacups in front of them. The old man held his chin in his knotted hand, his elbow on the tabletop.
    “Please be reasonable,” Eileen said. “We can’t possibly sell that many copies, and neither do we have the storage space for them.”
    “How many copies do you plan to bring out, then?”
    “Two hundred at most.”
    “That’s ridiculous.”
    “We’ve never done more than two hundred for a novel. If you want us to print more, you should deposit a sum for the production cost.”
    “What are you driving at?” The old man sat back as if in horror.
    “You should buy the extra copies you’ve ordered.”
    “I’ve no cash on hand at the moment.”
    “Truth be told, we cannot lose too much money on this book.”
    Mr. Feng coughed into his fist. He sighed. “Well, I guess I must bow to reality here. I used to have eighty thousand copies for a first run.”
    “That was back in China. Don’t be angry with me, Old Feng. If there’s the need, we can always rush to print extra copies.”
    “All right. I’ll hold you to that.”
    “You have my word.”
    With puffy cheeks, the old man slouched out the door. Eileen heaved a long sigh and massaged her temples with her thumb and forefinger. Outside, a truck was unloading steaming-hot asphalt on the street, flashing its lights and sounding warning beeps, while a worker in a hard hat directed the traffic with an orange flag.
    I wondered how long Eileen could hold on to a publishing business that was unprofitable and too much for her to manage alone.
    One afternoon in late September I sprained my ankle while playing tennis with Avtar. For several days I couldn’t go to the Mins’, so Sami came over to take her lessons. She was excited to be in my studio apartment, which in spite of its shabbiness provided an intimate setting for the two of us. Her brown eyes were often fixed on me when I spoke to her. She laughed freely and loudly. As if we had known each other for years, she would pat my arm, and once she even pinched my cheek when I called her “kiddo.” She worked less than before and talked more, though time and again I managed to bring her back to her textbooks. She sniffed the air, her pinkish nostrils twitching a little, and said, “Hm. I like the smell of your room.”
    One night I couldn’t find my black undershirt. I’d worn it three days before and had dropped it beside my laundry basket, which was overfull. Nobody but Sami had been to my apartment that week. The thought that she had taken it alarmed me, because she was just a kid, and because I’d never known any woman to be fond of my smell. My first girlfriend said I stank to high heaven and always made me shower before bed. She wouldn’t even mix her laundry with mine. My second girlfriend never complained, so I seldom used deodorant.
    Then Eileen phoned and said she didn’t feel comfortable with her daughter away from home in the evenings. My ankle was improving, so I agreed to