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I was fifteen, and fifteen-year-olds generally don’t want to stand up and take a bow on the first day of high school. Jack, however, was different. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him, and everyone liked him as a result. He’d somehow transcended the clique-iness of high school, and the jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, the AP kids, and the Introduction to Cosmetology students all gravitated to Jack, ultimately bestowing upon him the coveted award Best Car in the yearbook salutations. This for a 1977 two-toned brown Maverick, dubbed The Mav, because this was the eighties.

Like me, Jack was a political geek. Before we were old enough to drive, we’d ride the school bus and discuss House congressional races. When I hung out at his house, we watched The McLaughlin Report. On the day Republicans lost control of the Senate in 1986, Jack took a black-tipped felt pen to his chucks and covered his shoes with black ink.

“Because it’s a day of mourning,” he explained to our American history teacher.

In the years that followed, Jack became a political operative, managing campaigns around the country. We overlapped for a while in Sacramento, where he was able to procure for me an invitation to the inauguration of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of the state of California. If there is a finer moment in history to witness, I cannot imagine it. More recently, he moved on to Florida to manage a campaign and said he’d come to China if he lost. He lost. It had been a bad year for Republicans.

I took the train to meet him at the Hong Kong airport.

“That was a long flight,” Jack said, looking around and stepping into the arrivals hall. “And I need a cigarette.”

Political operative is one of the last professions in America where it is acceptable to smoke. Writing is possibly the other. Except in California. People there feel sorry for heroin addicts but save their loathing for smokers. With the kids I’d had to quit anyway, and once I’d convinced myself that it was okay to chew Nicorette for three years, quitting became easy.

“I’m still doped up from the vaccines,” Jack noted.

“I’ll bet. You made sure to get your shot for elephantitis, right?”

“Elephantitis? You didn’t say anything about elephantitis.”

“Did I forget that? Where we’re going, elephantitis is as prevalent as the common cold. Most men carry their balls in a wheelbarrow.”

“Shut up. You did not say anything about elephantitis.”

“I thought I did. But there’s nothing that can be done about it now. Just try not to…well, never mind.”

“What? Try not to what?”

“Breathe. It’s an airborne virus. Very contagious. But you know what? Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m starting to regret this trip already.”

After a week or so, I suddenly found myself eager to return to the mainland. While Hong Kong had been a welcome respite, it was but an interlude to my larger trip.

“This feels like Sydney or San Francisco,” Jack had noted earlier as we walked past the bars in Lan Kwaifung—the pub district—where Westerners in suits and rugby shirts downed their pints.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Isn’t it great?”

“I was hoping for something…different.”

“Different is over there,” I said, pointing to the north and the Chinese border. “Very different. But first I thought we’d have a look at Macau.”

“And what are we going to do in Macau?” Jack asked.

“We’re going to gamble.”

“Perfect. I’m unemployed. I’m in China. It only makes sense.”

A day trip from Hong Kong to Macau will cost you three pages on your passport, all without leaving the country. At the ferry terminal in Kowloon, it’s stamp stamp stamp as you go through Customs, Immigration, and Passport Control. They are one country, China, Hong Kong, and Macau, a renowned den of vice on the western side of the Pearl River delta. But they’re not really.

I had looked at my map, discovered that Macau lay sixty miles away, and yet my guidebook assured me that it was a mere hour away by boat. I wondered how, exactly, we were going to get there in