Five Spice Street

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When it comes to Madam X’s age, opinions differ here on Five Spice Street. One person’s guess is as good as another’s. There are at least twenty-eight points of view. At one extreme, she’s about fifty (for now, let’s fix it at fifty); at the other, she’s twenty-two.

The one who says she’s about fifty is a much-admired forty-five- year-old widow, plump and pretty. Her husband died years ago. It’s said that she often sees Madam X making herself up in her room, applying ‘‘powder an inch thick’’ that ‘‘completely masks the wrinkles in her neck’’-a neck ‘‘almost without flesh.’’ What is the widow’s vantage point for spying? She indignantly ‘‘refuses to divulge it.’’ The writer would like to interject something about this lovely widow. She’s classy, a cut above others, and plays a pivotal role in this story. She’s influenced the writer his whole life, and he, in turn, has always paid her special respect.

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