She surprises herself by taking a new lover. He is younger than her Portuguese lover, and choosing between them is as simple as putting their names into a paper bag and releasing one, folding it in half, and tucking it into her apron pocket for an afternoon. This morning she lies awake in bed, waiting for him to stir. The rising sun through the trellis beyond her bedroom window forms a lattice shadow on her torso. She raises her hand into the light, watches the pattern of the lines moving over her skin, and the motion of her wrist is reminiscent of Catherine the Great’s upon receiving Marie Antoinette’s court painter, Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who later wrote, The sight of this famous woman so impressed me that I found it impossible to think of anything: I could only stare at her. The tea house woman slides down along the body of her lover, takes his cock into her mouth and sucks, lightly, lips soft as a bee landing on a plum blossom. Years later, she will swear that she loved him. Loved him as dearly as she loves trees that have survived for centuries, trees that will continue to live long after she is gone, without ever having had a plan or a destination.