A man just shy of 30 strolls into a cafe and is served by a 14-year-old apprentice waitress. She’s timid and sullen; in the place but not of it. He takes a fancy to her. Why? Hard to say. Maybe it’s her vaguely Western appearance. She looks like silent movie star Mary Pickford.
A plan forms in his mind. He will “take charge of the child and look after her.” He’s lonely and bored. “I longed for a little color and warmth in my life. Indeed, why not build a house, I thought ... I’d decorate the rooms, plant flowers, hang out a birdcage on the sunny veranda, and hire a maid to do the cooking and scrubbing. And if Naomi agreed to come, she’d take the place of both the maid and the bird.”