Nothing But Blackened Teeth(8)

“Lin.”

“Cat!”

But he was still my Lin, and when he crushed me to his sternum, I realized, without surprise, that I was still his Cat as well. I pressed our old name for him into his shoulder, hugging him back, breathing him in. Lin smelled of intercontinental travel: sourness under a caking of deodorant, a splash of cologne.

He pulled away, reaching an arm over my shoulder. Shadows deepened the hollows of his eyes with plum, the only outward sign of exhaustion.

“Is Faiz still in the other room?” said Talia.

We turned, six years of complicated history rolled back up and re-holstered, all for the sake of the blushing bride. Talia stood taller than all of us, mouth pinned in a line like police tape, lipstick moody against brown skin. She’d changed out of her travelling clothes into a yukata, painstakingly tailored for her frame, white moths burning to cinders on a sprawl of navy cloth. Her expression fell as they crossed my face, collapsed entirely at the sight of Lin.

“Who?” said Lin.

“He was one of your groomsmen.”

“I had like sixteen groomsmen. You can’t expect me to remember them all. It was an event, after all.”

“You made him fly to Iceland.” Talia thinned her mouth.

Lin draped an arm around me. “I made everyone fly to Iceland.”

“He’s the reason you’re here. We’re getting married! That’s the whole point you came here!”

“Oh. That.” Lin glanced at me, smirking. “I thought I was just here to see Cat.”

I froze. Long enough for Talia to see and for her mouth to weigh with condolence. Lin, though, with his thoroughbred wife and his immaculate life, still blind from those late-night Manhattan lights, took no notice at all.

“He was supposed to get our surprise from the car.” Talia flicked her attention to Phillip, hopeful. “We wanted to do something for you guys. Like, it’s crazy that you got us a full holiday to Japan. First class too?”

I interrupted. “Technically, it was Phillip—”

“Yes, yes. Trust-fund baby paid for the bulk of it. But you all helped, you all did the very best you could. And it matters to me. To us. You have no idea.” Her expression went soft, a perfect act. She flattened a palm over her heart. “So, we wanted to do something for you guys. Except that Faiz is missing his cue.”

Enclosed in Talia’s ribs was an entire vocabulary of sighs, each one layered with delicate subtleties, every laboured exhalation unique in its etymology. She raked a hand through her hair, sighed for the third, fourth time. I’d lost track at this point. Her gaze skated to mine, chagrin expressed with an arching of penciled brows. Your fault, declared that grim expression, no reprieve in stock.

“I’m here! Sorry!” Faiz’s voice came from behind a shoji screen, quickly overshadowed by a shrill of splintering timber, worm-wounded fibres coming apart. The panel to our right shuddered before it fell over. No fanfare. No collateral damage to the adjunct architecture. Not even a pluming of grey dust. Only an audible smack as it hit the floor, a sound like a palm colliding with a cheek.

We froze like hares.

“Shit,” said Faiz.

Lin was the one to break the spell. He laughed, jackal-throated and giddy. It was somehow enough. We sagged into ourselves, small talk dispensed like so much recreational Valium. Faiz stood smiling at us from behind the devastation, six-feet-but-not-quite of shame and self-loathing. He cradled a stack of slim rectangular boxes, each package wrapped in gilt, bows on every one. “Sorry.”

We laughed as a group this time, and we all sounded drunk on being alive. Phillip got up and walked over to Faiz, punched the other man square in the shoulder, hard enough to dislodge his cargo. The gifts tumbled free, gloss and gold-trimmed ribbons. Phillip caught them all, naturally—one-armed and effortless—golden boy to Faiz’s dross.

“This,” Lin muttered with too much glee, “is how supervillains are born.”





3



The food was everything its aroma had vowed: decadently complex, delicious to the last sip of broth, the savoury decoction of marrow, meat, and greens almost too umami to finish. But we did. We ate until our stomachs bulged and the alcohol lost some of its effect. In between, Lin convinced us to sample his cheese, carving slivers of Danablu and jalape?o-infused Camembert for anyone who’d look at him twice. The leftovers he used to make a Hong Kong–style baked rice, melting mascarpone over pork and sweet-salty shiitake.

We devoured that too. The room laid strewn with wrapping paper. Faiz and Talia had bought us gifts: statuettes of deepest jade, the green of an ancient lake. They were each of them shaped like a woman, her head bowed as though sacralized by grief. Her legs faded into a half-finished column: she is being buried alive, buried by a lord’s hope, buried to hold steady the weight of her master’s manor.

Hitobashira.

I stroked a restless thumb over my effigy’s cheek. There were neither eyes nor mouth on her, no way for her to scream or see. How’d they known to gather these? I wondered. The trip was billed as a surprise. Had Talia known? Had Phillip, our golden boy, god-king of small towns, perfect Phillip who no woman would reject, coyly spoken to Talia beforehand?

“We should play a game,” Talia purred, eyes lidded and drowsy with mischief, crooking her fingers at Faiz. He stood up and went from lantern to lantern, extinguishing their flames. Our shadows arched to the ceiling. “It’s called Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai.”