Memorial

by Bryan Washington

  Both women ducked their heads for a moment, reminiscing.

  I glanced at Eiju, who’d crossed his arms.

  So why’d you stay, he said. If this man was so terrible?

  Hana made a face. Mieko jabbed her with an elbow. Eiju poured them both another glass, nodding at me to replace the bottle.

  After a while Mieko said, I know why.

  He was good at that, she said.

  What, said Eiju.

  You know, said Mieko, raising her palms a respectable distance.

  Anyways, said Hana, in the end it couldn’t work. He had to go.

  All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t break your back over it, said Hana, looking at me. Don’t stress out. Your uncle’s friends don’t bite.

  You’re not my friends, said Eiju.

  Bullshit, said Mieko. I don’t know what you’d do without us.

  He’d just sit in here by himself, said Hana. Wiping those glasses like a turtle.

  He wouldn’t survive, said Mieko. He’d just fall over and die.

  They both pantomimed the action, the collapsing, and the thud, and Eiju just laughed and laughed.

  * * *

  • • •

  This was the same man who, a decade ago, threw our apartment’s landline against the wall when Ma got a call from another man.

  The man was her boss. He was calling about her schedule at the jeweler’s.

  Eiju asked why he had our apartment number, why my mother was fucking around.

  And Ma said that if only he could see himself, then he wouldn’t have to ask.

  * * *

  • • •

  Hana and Mieko were usually followed by a trio of salarymen: Takeshi, Hiro, and Sana. Three blind fucking mice. We were all around the same age. They’d stumble into the bar, already wasted, though sometimes it was just Hiro who was fucked up, and other nights it was one of the others. They kept some sort of running system about who got the drunkest each night, I could never figure it out, and they were jovial, always asking if I could fix one of them a sandwich. When I told them bread wasn’t on the menu, they told me 7-Eleven was right up the road. When I told them that I didn’t fucking do that, that I wasn’t their fucking maid, Hiro or Takeshi or Sana called bullshit, clapping, and then they’d pivot their tone, saying, Sorry, and Please, pursing their lips and fluttering their eyes and pawing my elbow, creating a big fucking production.

  I’d glance at Eiju and he’d just shrug, like, You asked to be here.

  * * *

  Eventually Hiro told Eiju, You should’ve hired this fucker earlier.

  He’s just moonlighting, said Eiju. Apprenticing.

  Like a child, said Takeshi.

  A child star, said Hiro.

  Children mean work, said Eiju. Sana would know.

  Sana groaned behind his bottle. His two friends slapped his back.

  Twins, said Takeshi, when he saw my face.

  Finally decides he’s gonna leave his girl and then she pops out two sons, said Hiro.

  We decided together, said Sana. Nobody popped out anything.

  You’re drunk, said Eiju.

  Two boys, said Sana. When they grow up they’ll be just like Mike.

  They’ll make sandwiches, said Sana, from Texas.

  No shit, said Hiro. Must be nice for Mike’s girl to have a cook around.

  The three guys looked my way, fingers laced across the banister. They’d been drinking, but they weren’t drunk enough to miss a response.

  When I finally opened my mouth, Eiju started coughing.

  He leaned over the banister. Grabbed at the counter.

  The four of us watched him. The guys at the bar looked my way, concerned.

  When Eiju recovered, wheezing, wiping at his mouth, I handed him a napkin, and he waved it away.

  Hiro and Sana played with their thumbs.

  Then Takeshi let out a laugh.

  Shit! he said.

  We thought you were done for! yelled Sana.

  I felt a chill. But all Eiju did was grin.

  Nope, he said.

  If that happened, said Eiju, who else in this stupid city would babysit you?

  * * *

  After the guys took off, Eiju started closing up shop. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. For once, he looked like the old man that he was.

  It isn’t like Takeshi was lying, I said.

  About what, said Eiju.

  I don’t have a girlfriend. Won’t ever have one.

  I am gay, I said.

  Eiju kept scrubbing the counter. Threw his whole back into it. Looked like he’d all but toss his fucking shoulders out, but then he finally sat down, feeling around under his apron.

  He pulled out a box of cigarettes.

  You are fucking kidding me, I said.

  Shut up, said Eiju. So you’re a fag.

  That’s fine, he said. Whatever.

  And you’re just gonna kill yourself faster, I said. I guess that’s your response?

  It’s nothing you haven’t already done to me, said Eiju. My own son.

  Didn’t you call yourself childless? Isn’t that what you just told your fucking customers?

  And, at that, Eiju slammed his fist on the counter.

  You little fuck, said Eiju, in English.

  There it is, I said, in English. There’s the man I remember.

  You don’t get to parachute over here and do this, he said. Not now. Not in this life. You don’t get to do that.

  But even just saying that took his breath away. Eiju started to sit, nearly missing the chair. When I jumped up to help him, he waved me away.

  Fuck off, he said.

  But I guided him toward a stool.

  * * *

  • • •

  After a few days, I found a busted notebook by the apartment’s toilet. Threads fell from the seams. Everything in it was written in English. My father had scribbled a bunch of lists, all of them in the tiniest handwriting. Grocery lists. Train routes. Practical shit. But then there were other things.

  Like, a brief list of things Eiju didn’t believe in: socks, fate, predetermination, promises. Chili oil. Locked doors. Christmas cards. Christmas. Savings accounts. Birthday parties, gifts. Ultimatums. Last strikes. Luck.

  * * *

  • • •

  Most days, Kunihiko passed through the bar to help Eiju.

  He was a little younger than me. Thick but not as thick. And his clothes were always two sizes too big, but all he did was smile. When we met, I was chopping vegetables in the nook behind the bar, skinning sweet potatoes and straining dashi, and Kunihiko wandered in the back, looking lost as shit. But it would be a while before I realized that’s just how he was.

  The first thing he said was that I looked just like my father.

  If you say so, I said.

  Really, said Kunihiko. It’s the eyes!

  He’d started working for Eiju after wandering into the bar one night. His job at some local bank had dumped him. Apparently he’d made an astronomical fuck-up with the wrong person’s account. Something big enough that he didn’t want to share it, big enough that his boss dropped him super quick, big enough to lead Kunihiko on a three-day bender. Eiju’s bar was the only spot he actually remembered drifting into—he woke up drooling on the counter, with Eiju slapping him awake.

  I was lucky, said Kunihiko. If Eiju hadn’t hired me, who knows what the hell I’d be doing.

  You’d be doing the same shit everyone does, I said. Something else.

  Something else, said Kunihiko, laughing with his chest.

  He was goofy. Always rocking his shoulders. Kunihiko showed up late every evening, forever fucking up everyone’s orders, but our patrons treated the kid like a mascot, even when Eiju wasn’t having it.

&nb
sp; He barked at Kunihiko for juggling utensils.

  He barked at Kunihiko for abandoning just-emptied beer mugs.

  One time, Kunihiko’s elbow brushed the edge of the bar, catapulting a stack of plates, scattering them across the wood, and Mieko clapped at the show from her corner by the door, and Hiro, that evening’s drunk, let out a whoop, and Eiju grabbed the towel he kept wrapped around his waist, slapping it hard against the barstool, sending Kunihiko leaping into place. He told the kid those plates were coming out of his check.

  I really don’t think I can cover that, said Kunihiko.

  Of course you can’t fucking cover it, said Eiju. So we’ll work through your tips, too.

  Kunihiko bit his lip. He quivered, just a little bit. But at the sound of that, Hana slapped a five-hundred-yen coin on the counter, while Takeshi and Hiro reached in their pockets, extracting some grubby bills.

  Give the kid a fucking break, said Hana.

  Tough love breeds competence, said Eiju.

  Bullshit, said Hiro.

  A full gut of it, said Takeshi.

  Fuck outta here with that, said Mieko.

  But Kunihiko raised his hand, smiling.

  It’s really all right, he said, reaching through his own pockets.

  He pulled out some hundred-yen coins of his own, adding them to the pile.

  I totally understand, said Kunihiko, smiling, shrugging, emptying his pockets, and we all sort of pitied him. But we envied his devotion, too.

  * * *

  The thing is, if you knew my father, you’d know he wasn’t really upset.

  None of this was true anger.

  These weren’t the shouts that I’d heard in our apartment with Ma.

  They weren’t the hands he threw at me, asking why I was so soft.

  They weren’t the yells he’d given my mother once she’d started making more bank than him, once she began climbing the rungs leading out of his life.

  What Eiju showed Kunihiko was endearment.

  It looked a lot like love.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ben popped up on the app again a few weeks after the party.

  He wasn’t there, and then he was. I hadn’t exactly been searching.

  When his face blipped on the grid, I was shelving hot sauce at the grocery store. The gig was easy money. Mostly, I unpacked crates of tomatoes, shepherding white folks through aisles of artisanal bread. No one could ever pronounce what they were looking for, and I’d guide them through the syllables—garam masala, coriander—but that day, some whitelady scanning the shelves took a peek at my phone.

  He’s cute, she said.

  Excuse me?

  Your boyfriend. In the picture?

  I must’ve made a face, because the whitelady smiled a little too enthusiastically. She started stepping away, already pushing her shopping cart down the aisle. A little girl sat in the basket, juggling zucchini and kicking her legs. The kid made a face at me, scrunching her nose and biting her lip.

  Not a boyfriend, I said. Just a boy.

  Well, said this lady.

  If it helps, she said, that’s how they all start out.

  And then, Boom, said the lady, opening a palm toward her daughter, flinging her fingers, which the little girl caught with glee.

  * * *

  Eventually, I messaged him.

  Just couldn’t help it.

  I wrote: STILL SOBER?

  Then I jammed my phone in my pocket.

  After a minute or two, he didn’t respond.

  Fifteen minutes later, my inbox was still empty.

  A few hours later, I told myself it didn’t matter. If this guy reached back then he reached back. If he didn’t then he didn’t. So I chalked it up to fate, messaging five other guys across the grid.

  Two of them hit me back immediately. One of them asked how big my dick was.

  Immediately, unthinkingly, I typed, BIGGER THAN YOURS, and then I blocked him.

  * * *

  I kept yet another job at a deli by the railstop on Pease. Right on the edge of midtown. A twenty-minute drive from the Third Ward. This was months before the pop-up was even half of a thought, and Tony was still chopping veggies at this overpriced taquería on Shepherd. He was always bitching that he could make better food for a fraction of the cost, and one day I told him, on a whim, that we should go ahead and do that, and at first he’d waved me off, swearing we’d both found ourselves good situations, but eventually Tony changed his mind.

  In the meantime, at the deli I was frying avocado spreads on flatbread, with olives and Gruyère and basil. And on that afternoon, I’d just taken this whiteboy’s order when he slapped his sandwich back on the register.

  It’s the tomatoes, he said. They aren’t quartered. That’s how they should be.

  You serious?

  I’m serious enough to ask your boss about it, he said.

  I was, incidentally, the manager on duty. More or less. The motherfucker who supervised me hardly ever came in. So I started to bring that up, but I felt a buzz in my pocket.

  Let me go see if he’s back there, I said, cheesing, dipping right the fuck out of there.

  * * *

  The buzz came from Ben.

  He’d written: still sober

  And that was it.

  It wasn’t much. Or even anything.

  But he’d responded.

  When the whiteguy out front called, clearing his throat, I let him simmer a bit before I came back. Once I passed him the sandwich again, he asked what someone had to do for decent service in Houston.

  Move to Austin, I said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Another of Eiju’s regulars was this couple: Hayato and Natsue.

  They’d roll up to the bar on bikes, leaning them against the staircase. Hayato was basketball-player tall—a weird fucking sight for a Japanese guy. Natsue kept her hair in this tiny bun. She’d slip just under the arch of his elbow whenever he held the door. They’d order a beer apiece, with a bowl of rice on the side, while Natsue tugged on Eiju’s ear from over the bar.

  We’ve been coming around since the old man opened this hole, said Natsue.

  We watched him take his first steps, said Hayato.

  He’s like our baby.

  Our big fucking baby.

  Everyone likes to think they discovered something, said Eiju.

  We didn’t find you, Eiju-kun, said Hayato. We only shepherded you along.

  All you needed was some direction, said Natsue.

  I wouldn’t know shit about that, said Eiju.

  And all three of them laughed.

  * * *

  One morning a few weeks after I’d landed, Kunihiko was washing glasses and I was drying them off. Once he’d finished, Eiju set a hand on his shoulder. He told the kid to try showing up on time for once, and Kunihiko grinned, bowing a little, slamming a shoulder into the doorframe on his way out.

  After he’d left, Eiju and I locked up. The walk back to his apartment was short. It was just before five in the morning, and some stray lights flickered around us, but mostly nothing moved except for the cabs idling by. The sun hadn’t risen yet. All we had was this dark sheen above us.

  I asked Eiju if Kunihiko knew about the cancer.

  Does he actually know you’re dying, I said.

  Have you fucking told any of these people, I said.

  Eiju kept walking. Didn’t even look my way.

  After a while, he said, You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.

  That’s not an answer, I said.

  Eiju didn’t say anything to that. He just kept walking.

  Once we’d made it to his place, he left me on a futon in the living room. There was a light on in his bedroom. I waited for it to d
im—but I couldn’t. I was asleep before he even started snoring.

  * * *

  • • •

  A day after Ben reached out, I messaged him back on the app.

  What I sent was: SORRY TO HEAR THAT.

  It felt like an eye for eye.

  * * *

  Later that night, I’d just made it back to my place from the grocery store, halfway up the steps, when the old Black lady next door called my name. She pointed at my cigarette, waving a hand across her nose.

  Her name was Mary. She’d lived in the Third Ward her whole life. From the tail end of its best years, through the bulk of its decline. Her husband went to high school in the district a few blocks away, and she’d been a cheerleader, and he’d been a football player. They met at a school dance. Went to prom. Got hitched a year later like out of some fucking old-timey movie.

  A few weeks after I’d leased the apartment, Mary told me her story over dinner. She’d invited me over. Cooked macaroni and yams. She and her guy sat across from me, watching me scarf that shit down, and I know everyone’s got their problems but sitting next to each other they looked like they fit. Mary and Harold. Just snug. Like in this way that I hadn’t ever fucking seen before.

  When I told them it felt strange to eat while they didn’t, Mary waved me off.

  All that cheese is too much for our pressure, she said. When you get this old, all you can do is watch.

  That’s what my ma says, I said.

  Smart woman, said Mary. Do your people live nearby?

  Nah. She’s back in Japan.

  That’s a long way from Houston.

  Not too long.

  And your father?

  Fuck knows.

  Mary’s eyes flickered. Her husband yawned.

  It’s hard work to keep a man in one place, he said.