That’s the thing, said Mike. Most ideas are good at the time.
We don’t find out that they’ve gone wrong until they actually do, said Mike.
* * *
• • •
The wedding reception is a wedding reception.
Ximena and Noah kiss.
Ximena and Noah smile.
Ximena and Noah take a fuck-ton of pictures for IG.
We’re on the taquería’s patio, a wooden deck laced in Christmas lights, and the staff stands around with their cell phones, recording the whole thing. Three old men and a kid strum a warbling “Amor Eterno.” You’d think the arrangement wouldn’t work, but it does. When the youngest one opens his mouth to sing, it’s almost shocking how beautiful it is. We all cry.
After the performance, and a couple of first dances, the reception devolves into people talking to the folks they already know.
I know Ximena and Noah, who are otherwise occupied.
And that’s how Omar and I end up beside each other.
I don’t think either one of us means to. His coat is frumpled. And also a half size too small. But it’s fitting, still, like I couldn’t have imagined him in anything else.
Why are you even here again, I ask.
Friend of a family friend, says Omar. Friend of a friend of the family. Steward of the bride.
Well, I say, at least no one died.
There’s still time, says Omar.
True. But they’d have to make it quick.
Maybe they could feel too much, says Omar.
A sweet death, I say.
Yeah. That might work.
Before we can veer the conversation anywhere more sensible, my phone starts buzzing.
I nod at Omar, touch him on the shoulder.
Hello, son, says my father.
Whoa, I say. What? What’s wrong?
It’s nothing, says my father. Or just one thing. A tiny thing. I’m having a little trouble breathing.
I ask where he is, what he’s doing. I’m already trashing my plate.
I’m at the house, he says. Sitting down. I read something about squeezing concrete things whenever this happens, so that’s what I’m doing.
You’re having a panic attack, I say.
If you say so.
I tell my father I’m on the way. He says that isn’t necessary. I give him twenty minutes, tops, and then I hang up.
That’s when I remember that I have no speed, no wheels.
Ximena’s sitting on Noah’s lap. They’re already drunk. Already smiling too wide. Ximena’s mother is holding the kid, sharing a drink with her ex-husband, and together they look like a family, or the closest thing to a family that any of us gets.
* * *
Out of nowhere, Omar asks if everything’s all right, and I give him a look. I tell him what’s happening. I tell him it’ll be fine, I’ll get an Uber. But then he’s already walking toward his table, grabbing his keys, telling me to follow him outside.
* * *
We glide across the freeway like bats. Traffic is light.
Omar doesn’t play any music while we drive, which I appreciate.
He doesn’t ask questions that aren’t navigational, which I also appreciate.
* * *
When we pull through my father’s neighborhood, to my old house, I tell him I’ll figure out a ride back to my place.
You’re sure? says Omar.
One hundred and ninety-nine percent, I say.
Eighty-five would be more believable, says Omar.
But he doesn’t argue with me. He rolls up the window and waves me away.
* * *
My father sits on the carpet. He’s choking down a bottle of water.
I told you not to come, he says.
When have your kids ever done as you’ve asked, I say.
Figures. And if I’d told you it was urgent, I’d still be here by myself.
Probably, I say. Can I have a sip?
My father says he doesn’t know where my mouth’s been, but he passes the bottle anyway.
The house looks dainty, and unperturbed, which is infinitely more terrifying than if it had been trashed.
I’m seeing a man about it, says my father. This whole thing.
You too?
You’ve always thought you were funny, says my father. I mean a shrink. He’s mostly good, I guess, and the insurance covers everything. He says to focus on solid objects. Things you can touch in the room.
That makes sense.
Of course it makes sense. I’m fucking paying for it.
But does it always work? I ask.
Ask me in an hour, says my father.
The two of us sit with our legs kicked out. We haven’t done anything like that since I was a child. Every few seconds, my father wiggles his toes, and they waggle in intervals, like a fountain.
* * *
After not very much time at all, there’s a knock on the door.
Shift’s over, says Lydia, to me, holding a greasy sack of food. You can go back to prom now.
Prom’s over, I say.
Then try the after-party, says Lydia. Unless you weren’t invited.
Our father lights up at the sight of her. My sister kneels across from him.
They unwrap their cheeseburgers on the coffee table, spilling all the fries.
* * *
I open the ride-share app once I’m out on the sidewalk. The block’s quiet in that way suburban neighborhoods get.
Then, I have a thought.
I make another call instead.
It isn’t five minutes later before Omar pulls around. A Whataburger sack sits on the passenger seat.
I got hungry, he says, through a mouthful of sandwich.
* * *
He takes the long way into the city. We never pull off Westheimer. Omar just cruises beside the highway, cutting through back alleys and suburbs. When we emerge from the other side, it’s already midnight, on a weekday, which means the streets are mostly empty, except for the people waiting for buses and all the folks with nowhere to go.
Omar’s a steady driver. There’s no jolt when we hit our stoplights. He just slides into them, until we ease our way out.
Eventually, finally, soon enough, I am home.
I owe you one, I say.
You really don’t, says Omar.
I ask about Ahmad, and Omar says he’s with their parents.
Just for the night, says Omar. He didn’t want to go. But I wasn’t bringing him to Ximena’s thing to act out.
You probably could’ve, I say.
Definitely not, says Omar.
Definitely not, I agree.
Omar’s car is tiny, but not in an obnoxious way. It fits the two of us snugly. The interior doesn’t smell like much of anything at all.
I’m not the most experienced man in the world, but a beat passes when I know that something should happen.
I also know that if I let it pass, then I can leave, and nothing will have happened.
And nothing will have gone wrong.
And we could both just move on.
So the moment passes.
We sit looking out the window.
A raccoon darts across the road.
Okay, I say, and then I set my hand on Omar’s thigh.
His leg stiffens, immediately, and it doesn’t relax. His pants won’t unzip, until he finally maneuvers the seat belt—and he’s hard when I grab his cock, jerking him off with one hand and squeezing his chest with the other, and then we are kissing, and then he comes. It happens in spurts, and he jolts, rocking the seat. Looking entirely bewildered.
And then he looks at me. Like something has opened that he hadn’t intended. I tell Omar it’s fine, that I really have
to leave, but he reaches for me, and of course I am hard.
Omar unbuckles my seat belt, collapsing a little onto my lap.
Wait, I say, we can’t do that.
What? says Omar.
I need a condom. We need condoms.
It’s fine.
No. I’m poz.
Omar looks me in the eyes.
That’s why, I say. So we can’t. I’m sorry. We just can’t.
Okay, says Omar.
Then he says, I get it.
I’m sorry.
Don’t be, says Omar. But you’re on medication?
Of course I’m on fucking medication.
Good. Then hold on a second.
He unbuttons my shirt, drops his slacks, and slips me between the crease of him. Just enough to create some friction. And then we’re rocking, at his pace, and it can’t be comfortable for Omar, and there’s hardly enough room for our rhythm. But I tell him I’m almost there, does he want to shift his weight so I don’t ruin his suit. And Omar declines, he says that it’s fine, he’ll survive, just keep going, so I do, until I don’t, and then we’re both moaning, and then we’re done.
* * *
Afterward we’re just two guys in a car, performing an impossible yoga.
Despite everything, I smile at Omar, because I can’t do anything else.
Omar smiles back.
We clean up with the wrappers from the food he’d been eating.
I tell him I’m leaving, right now, for real, and Omar says goodbye, good night, for real.
* * *
I watch him drive away.
And now I’m at my door.
And now I’m in my living room.
I don’t see Mitsuko, she isn’t in the kitchen, and I chalk that up to luck. But then, as if on cue, I hear wheezes coming from my bedroom.
Mitsuko’s on my mattress. Gasping. Wiping her face on the sheets.
Shit, I say, fuck. What is it?
Nothing, says Mitsuko.
What’s wrong?
Nothing.
Then she whispers something in Japanese, under her breath. And she’s crying again. Slapping at both of her cheeks.
I reach out to touch Mitsuko’s shoulder, and she immediately jerks away. But then she grabs my hand, squeezing it.
It’s fine, she says. It doesn’t matter.
We should both get some sleep, she says.
And since it isn’t a suggestion as much as a demand, I nod along. I tell her I’ll be around if she needs me.
Mitsuko purses her lips, standing up to lay on the sofa, but I’m not entirely sure that she hears me.
* * *
When I check my phone, there’s a text from Omar, some emojis.
There’s a text from Lydia just saying hi, everything’s okay.
And then there are texts from Mike.
But there’s also a voice mail, which is something Mike never leaves, and I’m sitting on the bed when I open it.
His voice is calm. I can actually picture him speaking.
He says, We’re cremating him tomorrow.
He says, My father, I mean. He’s dead.
And after that, says Mike, I’m headed back to Houston.
Mike says he’d appreciate it if I could pick him up from the airport. That would really mean a lot.
Mike
My fam’s last apartment was the largest. Once we’d made it to the States we bounced from Alief to the South Side to the West Loop, settling wherever Eiju could keep a job, and this new spot off Bellaire was way way way way way over budget. We weren’t skipping meals or anything but my folks were always strapped. Neither of their families in Japan were helping us. As far as they were concerned, we’d left. We had to figure shit out on our own.
* * *
The new complex had us parking under these busted-ass streetlights. You’d push a buzzer to open the gate but the gate just wouldn’t budge so the Filipinos smoking by the basketball court would drag it open for whatever quarters you kept in your car. Ma told Eiju that something had to change. Had to be him, or our surroundings. I’m realizing all of this later. You don’t see any of that shit when you’re a kid; you don’t have the context to flesh it all out.
* * *
I hadn’t started expanding yet, eating the entire world, but once my clothes stopped fitting Ma just stuffed me into Eiju’s. They were the fits he’d brought from Osaka. All baseball jerseys and tank tops and mesh shorts, and Eiju never thought he’d need them again but Ma wouldn’t let him trash anything and here they were, eleven years later, halfway across the world, and every now and then I’d catch a blip of myself in the mirror, thinking that this is what my father must’ve looked like as a kid.
* * *
That summer in Bellaire, Ma and I lazed around the new spot. Eiju didn’t want her out in the world. That shit had less to do with tradition than with his very particular vanity—but Ma entertained it anyway. At least at first. Less out of allegiance to her man, I think, than something else entirely.
The place was big but our pipes stank. Our carpet stank. The tap water stank. Eventually cash got even tighter than it already was. Eiju’s shouting turned physical, shoving and pushing and squeezing, and Ma started planning her escape, but we spent that season revolving around our living room.
I picked up cardboard boxes left over from the last move and set them back down. Ma watched soaps on the television—Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless; Ma swore that shit was bad for me but I’d still post up on the sofa beside her. She’d mouth phrases in Japanese—the Tokyo Japanese she’d grown up with—and ask me to spit them back at her. When Eiju overheard, he’d ask Ma, in Kansai dialect, why I wasn’t speaking fucking English.
* * *
Some days, Ma and I kicked our bare feet under the kitchen table. That was our thing. I was still twelve. I’d touch my heel with her heel and her toes with my toes. We’d keep them there until one of us pulled away but the one who gave up was always me. Ma could stay stone-faced through anything. Which was a sign, I think. Even then.
* * *
But again: hindsight, 20/20.
* * *
Eiju lost his gig that fall. He’d been prepping at this Chinese restaurant on Dashwood. Some strip mall enclave. He blamed his fate on the Mexicans, who cooked longer hours for less pay, and Eiju joined the tiny constellation Ma and I had constructed—but our orbit couldn’t support him. He threw everything off.
Whenever we sat at the table, he’d ask why we were wasting time.
Whenever we flipped on the television, he’d flip it right back off.
Then he’d drink up what little we saved. Had Ma counting coins at the end of the month. One night, I knelt beside her, sorting dimes into piles, sprawled on the carpet, and when I found a quarter lodged in the sofa, my mother actually collapsed in tears. She straight-up wouldn’t stop shaking. Eiju had no idea. He was still snoring from yesterday’s binge.
* * *
Eventually Ma finessed a situation selling discounted jewelry by the Galleria. You rarely found anyone speaking fluent Japanese in Houston. The manager was a Hawaiian transplant, an older Black dude, and he hired Ma on the spot, and eventually Eiju found another job bartending for white people around West U and their incomes were enough to keep us mostly afloat. But we didn’t know all that would happen.
* * *
So every glare and shove and yell between my parents felt irreparable. Intolerable. Like the craziest shit that’d ever occurred. And one night, after an argument that sent Eiju flying right out of the house, I asked Ma why we didn’t just move back to Setagaya, as if everything would’ve been better if we simply went back home.
She looked at me for a long time. Her makeup was smeared. Her cheeks were patchy.
Then she said, That isn’t your home.
Ma s
aid, We’re here now. This is your home.
She didn’t sound too sure about it, even then. Maybe she hadn’t quite convinced herself. And, of course, about a decade later, a while after Eiju split for good, she’d pack all her shit and fly to Tokyo and my mother would not come back.
* * *
But before that—our apartment with the gates.
Roaches on the carpet.
Our feet under the table, grazing in the heat.
Ma would set her lips on my earlobe, whispering all sorts of shit in Japanese, enunciating in the most ridiculous tones, until I fell out of the chair from laughter, only having picked up like half of it, and it was only later on that I’d think about what she was actually saying, that it was all just the same thing, frantic and unending: I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you!
* * *
• • •
After a week in Osaka, I came up with something like a routine: I’d make it out of the apartment around eight in the evening, to prep Eiju’s bar. It sat a few minutes from his busted walk-up in Tennoji, beside a bakery and a tattered bookstore and another walk-up and two parking lots and like sixteen love hotels. The streets were always quiet except for the other third-shift folks running last-minute errands before work. You didn’t have to walk too far from the nearest station to reach us, but it wasn’t like we ever actually opened before ten and most guests stayed well past midnight either way.
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