The Refugees(11)

“What does candid mean?”

“Candid?” Marcus said. “Yeah, right. Candid. It means being caught by surprise, like in a photograph or a film, when someone takes your picture and you’re not looking. Or it means someone who’s frank. Who’s honest and direct.”

Liem took a deep breath. “I want to be candid.”

“I’d like to be candid.”

“Shut up,” Liem said, putting his hand on Marcus’s knee.

Afterward, he sensed things might not have gone well. First, none of their clothes came off as smoothly as he expected, because all of a sudden the buttons and zippers were smaller than he knew them to be, and his fingers larger and clumsier. His rhythm seemed to be off, too. Sometimes in his eagerness he moved too fast, and to make up for it, or because he was embarrassed, he then went too slowly, throwing them out of sync and causing him to apologize repeatedly for an elbow here, or a knee there, until Marcus said, “Stop saying you’re sorry and just enjoy yourself, for heaven’s sake.” So he did his best to relax and give himself up to the experience. Later, his arm thrown over Marcus’s body, facing his back, Liem wasn’t surprised to discover how little he remembered. His habit of forgetting was too deeply ingrained, as if he passed his life perpetually walking backward through a desert, sweeping away his footprints, leaving him with only scattered recollections of rough lips pressed against his, and the comfort of a man’s muscular weight.

“I love you,” he said.

Marcus did not roll over or look behind him, did not say “I love you” in return, and indeed, said nothing at all. The ticking of Parrish’s antique grandfather clock grew louder and louder with each second, and by the time the patter of rain on the roof was distinct, Liem was fumbling awkwardly with his underwear.

“Can you just wait a minute?” Marcus said, turning around and hooking one leg over Liem’s body. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

“No,” Liem said, trying to unpry, without success, Marcus’s leg, honed by countless hours on the treadmill and the squat machine. “I need to go to the bathroom, please.”

“You just got caught by surprise. Sooner or later you’ll figure out love’s just a reflex action some of us have.” Marcus stroked Liem’s hand. “A week from now you’re not even going to know why you told me that.”

“Okay,” he said, not sure whether he wanted to believe Marcus or not. “Sure.”

“You know what else is in your future?”

“Do not—don’t tell me.”

“A year from now you’ll be the one hearing other men say they love you,” Marcus said. “They’ll say you’re too pretty to be alone.”

Marcus pulled him closer, and, as the rain continued to fall, they held each other. Outside a car began honking repeatedly, a sound Liem knew by now to mean that someone, double-parked, was blocking the narrow street in front of the house. Then all was quiet but for the clock, and he thought Marcus might have dozed off until he stirred and said, “Aren’t you going to read the letter?”

He’d forgotten about the airmail, but now that Marcus had mentioned it, he felt it glowing in the darkened living room, bearing on its blue face the oil of his father’s touch, and perhaps his mother’s too, the airmail the only thing he owned that truly mattered.

“I never read it to you.”

“I will never read it to you. That’s the future tense.”

“I’ll never read you the letter.”

“Now you’re being petty. Don’t read it to me, then.”

“But I will tell you what I’ll write.”

“Only if you want to,” Marcus said, yawning.

Until this moment, Liem hadn’t thought about what he would write to his father and mother once their letter had arrived. So he improvised, beginning with how the tone would be as important as the content. His letter, he said, would be a report from an exotic city, one with a Spanish name, famous for cable cars, Alcatraz Island, and the Golden Gate Bridge. He would include postcards of the tourist sights, and he’d mention how funny it was to live in a city where people who weren’t even Asian knew about the autumn festival. When enormous crowds in Chinatown celebrated the lunar new year, he’d be there, throwing down firecrackers at the feet of a dancing lion, hoping his family was doing the same. The crunch of burned firecrackers under his feet would remind him of his boyhood at home, and the letter he’d write would remind him of times when the family gathered around his father as he read, aloud, the occasional note from a distant relative. At the end, Liem would tell them not to worry about him, because, he’d write, I’m working hard to save money, I’m even making friends. And we live in a mauve house.

He heard the steady rise and fall of Marcus’s breathing, and, afraid Marcus was fading into sleep, he couldn’t stop himself from asking the other question he’d wanted to ask since the previous day. “Tell me something,” he said. Marcus’s eyes fluttered and opened. “Am I good?”

A light drizzle tapped against the windows, the sound of Friday night on a rainy day. “Yes,” Marcus said, closing his eyes once more. “You were very good.”

This much, at least, he could write home about.


After Marcus fell asleep, Liem slid out of bed and went to the bathroom, where he stood under a spray of hot water for so long he nearly fainted from the heat and steam. He had his pants on and was combing his hair when the phone rang in the living room.