A woman begins to fall. With her long dark hair in a ponytail and her black-and-red scarf loose around her neck, she is plummeting from a fourth-floor balcony, through the neon-charged November night. Below awaits 40th Road, a gritty street of commerce in the Flushing section of Queens. Chinese restaurants and narrow storefronts, and dim stairwells leading to private transactions.
Strivers and dawdlers and passers-by, all oblivious to what is transpiring above. If only for a moment. She toils in the netherworld of Flushing massage parlors, where she goes by the street name of SiSi. A youthful 38, she is in a platonic marriage to a man more than twice her age; harbors fading hopes of American citizenship; and is fond of Heineken, Red Bull and the rotisserie chicken at a Colombian place on Kissena Boulevard. Among her competitors, she is considered territorial and tireless.
She has returned from a market with provisions. She has tried calling her younger brother in China, but he is asleep. She has been on the phone with friends and clients, unaware that she is in the sights of a member police team working vice.
Soon she is leading a man back upstairs β an officer working undercover β as her closely held cellphone casts a glow about her face. Their awkward conversation in her apartment convinces him that SiSi has broken the law, just as it convinces SiSi that he is a cop.
She pushes him out and closes the door, though not to the inevitable. She knows from experience what comes next:. More police. Tromping through the dusky vestibule of her building, across the worn scarlet rug and up the 50 tiled steps. Then right to her door. SiSi watches the officers ascend on the video monitor she keeps near the door.
