My allowance, a rubber-banded wad of the weak, multicolored currency, a small fortune for the locals. How the servant Lin would silently appear in our vast, white-carpeted living room proffering a silver tray of gin and tonics for the adults, lemonades for the kids. Red jade sculptures of rearing horses flanked the fireplace; on the walls, a hanging scroll of a mountain scene, one of a bird on a branch, a red berry in its mouth, but also some incongruous Impressionist knockoffs we’d had shipped, and my mom’s Chagall print. We had a pool in the back; there’s Lin and his silver tray again,
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