'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.