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  Fiction The Particles of Order By  August 25, 2024 Illustration by Manshen Lo The guest from America was to arrive in the late afternoon. Ursula, having arranged the welcome platter, waited until she heard a car slowing down in the driveway, its gravel rinsed all day by the rain, before drizzling some honey in broad strokes on the cheese and the nuts. From the kitchen window, she could see the cabdriver—Timothy today—place a suitcase next to the door, heavy, as demonstrated by his eloquent grimace. Likely he had entertained his fare with one of his two America-related stories: the cousin who’d done life in Sing Sing or the great-granduncle escaping Alcatraz on a stormy night. Visitors from America were rare, or else Timothy would have invented more credible family legends. The woman, Lilian Pang, smiled tiredly as she got out of the car and thanked Timothy. She was between forty-five and fifty-five, Ursula estimated, a time when some people’s lives come into order while others’ fall