The Bengali girl has boots today. Not fashionable ones—I know what the fashion is from Serena, my 'keeper'. If there's anyone who doesn't deserve the beautiful name Serena—derived, of course, from the Latin, meaning calm—it's this woman. Serena's boots are pale-blue suede, with a yellow fur lining. I've seen them on the girls when we go to the beauty salon for my hair. A ninety-four-year-old woman at the beauty salon is obscene, as I've told Serena, who says it keeps my spirits up.

Not if you tell me that's the point of it.

Then she laughs: that mindless, placeholding laugh. She must weigh nearly two hundred pounds. If there's anything more foolish than an old woman at the beauty salon, it's a fat girl in blue suede boots.

The Bengali girl makes a detour on the way to the mailbox, meandering across the lawn. George must've taken her out when it first started falling, but this is the first time she's walked in it on her own. She walks gingerly, as if it's ice instead of soft powder, and looks behind her to see the tracks she's made. Doesn't she know that people are watching? I've known George. I knew his parents, and I knew his first wife, April, and their children, Russell and Jessica. Now April lives in Florida with the children, one of whom is a drug addict. I don't know whether it's the boy or the girl. That's not because I've forgotten, but because it was Edith Overton who told me, and she sometimes has trouble with her memory.

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'Where East Meets West' will be printed in full in Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2. To subscribe to Granta and receive the entire issue free, or to buy a copy of Granta 97, click here.