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she's still wondered if she'd made the right decision. She spent a lot of time thinking about that in the two years that had passed since she had a choice. I've got some funds stashed, he'd said. I can set you up with enough to make a fresh start someplace. What do you want? She'd asked Silence for a long moment. I'm tired of doing it all on my own. The other choice she'd made back then. In retrospect, she'd clearly chosen wrong. At times, she could still feel the golf club in her hands. The weight of it, the slightly sticky grip until it became slippery with blood. She really should have killed him. The payroll was screwed up again. Really? What was the point of hiring a service if they couldn't get it right? Jesus stood there, still in his work T shirt and black pants, ball cap in hand, he seemed apologetic, like he was doing something wrong for asking a middle aged man short, wiry, with a shaved head and a fuzzy tattoo on his neck. One of her line cooks, he probably was here illegally, but she didn't really care. He had the right paperwork and he worked hard. She was covered. She signed the check and handed it to him. Thank you, Mrs Carmichael. Don't thank me. You worked for it. You should get paid. After he left, she finished entering expenses on her spreadsheet. It looked like it was going to be a decent month on track for 90,000 plus in gross receipts. She gotten some great deals on wine from Sonoma and Lake County. And she was more than happy with the prices and quality of produce and meat she was getting from the local farmers, Well, local and a few 100 miles away. You couldn't be a total purist about these things. She did. Some filing tidied up the tiny office. It didn't take much to clutter it up water to plants. The lavender wasn't doing well. Probably not enough, son. The office had a window that faced East, and Arcata was foggy much of the time. In any case, I could buy a sun lamp. She thought one of those therapy lamps for seasonal effective disorder. Maybe she could use it to My life's not bad, she told herself. It's not bad at all, and it's way better than it Waas walking into the seating area of the bistro. She reminded herself of that. She still felt a little thrill sometimes when she looked at it. The redwood burl tables, the dark walls, the photographs on them lit by accent lights, her work. It was all her work, really. She'd been very careful about everything. The place settings, the silverware, the glasses. She'd gone for a simple, elegant look with an unfinished edge. Japanese design. Wabi sabi. The deliberate imperfection, the acceptance that all things were transient and good food. Good wine, microbrews, single lot origin. Coffee, she kept. The price is reasonable, the value high. There's some money in this town, he'd said. College students, some of them still wanted a nice place to go. Not fussy, not pretentious, but something for a special occasion. A place to take a serious date or your parents. When they came to visit, the Cal State faculty made up a good chunk of her regulars, too. Them and the more professional cannabis entrepreneurs, whatever she thought, they had some things in common, really. The best growers were all about the quality. Perfectly trimmed buds, sticky and sparkling with crystals. No pesticides different strains for different highs and different medical applications. Indica for insomnia High CBD for Pain Management CITY, Va. For PTSD, you can cure cancer with cannabis oil. Some of them said she thought they tended to exaggerate. They liked her wine and cheese selection. Her organic grass fed beef, fresh seasonal vegetables and fruit. Artisanal baked breads, estate, olive oils. No G M O's. Of course. Arcata outlawed those one of her pot regulars, Bobby sat it a two top with his girlfriend, Gina, underneath her photo of redwoods and missed a cliche of sorts. She knew, but technically, a nice shot. She thought that Bobby was more of a broker than a grower, but she wasn't sure. And she didn't really want to know. Bobby kept his business quiet, especially compared to the medical growers where everything was regulated and registered. They were trying to prove a point. She knew the medical growers and dispensaries that marijuana could be a legitimate business, one that paid sales tax, joined the local chambers of commerce, served the community. The federal authorities busted them anyway, easy Pickens operating out in the Open like that, Bobby had once said with a shrug, No, thanks. I'm buying the bottle of vintage multi on the table. I'm wondering if it would be unforgivably rude of me to pour myself another shot. I don't even like multi, but Sydney Tsao singing feelings. I definitely need something. We've finished the Chateau Milton Rothschild genuine, one Sydney promised. And there's nothing else left on the table to drink except Pepsi feelings. Nothing more than feelings. I'm sitting in a private room, and what I'm told is one of the three most expensive karaoke bars in Shanghai. The weird thing is, it's not in a super upscale neighborhood like the Bund or Nanjing Road, the French concession or the riverfront in Pu Dong. Instead, it's this area west of the Shanghai train station that looks pretty typical. Gray high rises, broad streets choked with traffic and torn up by subway construction. Nothing green inside, except for the occasional strange paint Job Vendors selling socks and DVDs and steamed buns crowd the sidewalks along with bicycles and electric scooters. This place, though outside it's a facade pretending to be marble that slathered with neon fiberglass columns and turrets surrounding tall, fake bronze doors. The car is double parked in the street are Beemers, Mercedes, Ferraris, a rolls and a Bentley. On the inside, there's a huge lobby four stories high, that you have to go through a metal detector to enter. And when you do, you're surrounded by the fronts of fake buildings, like a movie set of a European village all painted white. And everywhere you look, there are gilded planters and gold chandeliers, plexi glass kiosks advertising luxury goods, giant ornate mirrors and the kind of fussy carved furniture that belongs in a Three Musketeers movie with dudes wearing long powdered wigs except instead of being white like it usually is the furniture's painted peacock blue and neon green. Also grand pianos. There are several in the cavernous lobby black Stein ways sitting beneath a painted sky, hanging four stories up that gradually changes from sunny blue with popcorn clouds to a garish red sunset. No pianists, though, maybe the piano's air just for decoration. Our private room is pretty cozy, with fake Renaissance paintings on the red flocked walls, which I have to say, do not go very well with the peacock blue and neon Green Musketeers furniture. But whatever. I'm sitting next to Lucy Woo on one of the couches. Lucy, my sometime partner in the art business, owns a Shanghai gallery, and she dresses the part. She wears crazy designer stuff a lot, but tonight she's out done herself outfit wise. It's this short, sleeveless white dress with daisy shaped cutouts and a halo of wispy white ostrich feathers paired with red leather boots. Her shiny black hair is cut in this blunt anim a style, and she's wearing bright scarlet lipstick, sick mascara and eyeliner like on a cartoon. Cleopatra feelings. Oh, feelings. One more chorus, she says to me, all the while keeping a big smile on her face. Sydney really can sing. I mean, I can't sing, either, but I'm not the one standing up there with the microphone. So far this evening, Sydney has regale us with you. Allow Dai Bao, while the sheen the moon represents my heart, home on the range and sailing. The seized depends on the helmsman Cultural Revolution favorite, he explains with a big laugh. I'm just about to reach for the multi. When the song ends, Lucy smiles, showing her perfect tiny teeth and collapse. I smile and Malad and clap Vicky Hong, the fourth member of our party, sits straight backed, not smiling, because this is serious stuff, apparently, and she's staring up. It's Sydney and applauding like she's witnessed the second coming Sydney beams and approaches our little group of couches, microphone in hand as he does. Our very own private waitress, dressed in a French maid's outfit, emerges from the shadows of the back wall where she'd blended in like one of the paintings, smiling without saying a word. She refills the tiny crystal flutes reserved for the multi gone bay, Sydney says, raising his glass. Oh, thank God, Lucy Woo murmurs in my ear. I lift my glass, we clink. And Lucy, who is about the size of an anorexic hobbit down, serves in a single gun bay. I don't do as well. I know this is expensive stuff and prized in China, but it's about 100 and 10 proof and tastes like sweetened sour paint thinner with maybe a dash of soy sauce. The multi catches in my throat and I cough now. Really, I think it is your turn