It was too late to start working my way through the jewelry shops of Canal Street; by the time I got downtown they’d all be closed. I was tempted to go home to bed. If I did, though, I’d spring wide awake in a few hours and spend the rest of the night staring at the ceiling.

I headed for the dojo. I’d worked out in California, but that wouldn’t cut much ice with Sensei Chung. All he knew was I hadn’t been around for a month. I suited up, stretched, and offered to take a class of younger students through their forms. Sensei bowed, accepting the offer. I worked with the kids for forty minutes, until they, and I, were sweaty and panting. Then Sensei dismissed them and smiled, ready to show me why it wasn’t a good idea to disappear.

I got home exhausted enough that I had hopes of falling asleep and getting back on New York time. I found my mother watching a soap opera on the Cantonese cable channel.

“Oh, will you be home for dinner?” she asked innocently. “I think there are vegetables.” I peeked into the kitchen and saw mountains of chicken, broccoli, peppers, and ginger chopped and ready to stir-fry.

Sometimes this transparent kind of thing flips my switch. Our deal is, I’ll live here as long as she lives here, so she won’t be alone; but she doesn’t get to give me a hard time about where or when I come and go. Or whether I’m home for dinner.

But I had been away a month. Besides, I was starving.

“Ma, it looks great. Let me change, and I’ll cook.”

“You make the chicken dry. Go shower. Dinner will be ready when you come out.”

Which meant she’d already made two people’s worth of rice.

Clean, dry, and full-truth be told, my mother’s a great cook-I headed for bed at a ridiculously early hour. Which turned out to be a mistake. Sensei Chung’s private lesson and my mother’s stir-fry were no match for jet lag, and though I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow, by midnight I was, in fact, staring at the ceiling.