Memorial(30)

Shut up, he said. Didn’t you come here to relax? Stress’ll make you even fatter.

But later on, I’d find my father’s prescriptions in that jacket. I’d count them out on the bar top. He was always up-to-date.



* * *





One night, early on, we were cleaning the bar side by side. Mondays were pretty slow but that didn’t shift our routine. So we swept and we wiped and we dusted and we shined and Eiju whistled the whole time, or he’d play D’Angelo or Sade or Toni Braxton or the Isley Brothers or whatever the fuck else he’d been feeling for that day.

Eventually he asked if I’d prepped the sandwiches. I told him they were done.

And the limes? said Eiju. The potatoes? The batter?

Finished, I said. Oil’s out and everything.

Good. What about the cheese?

What cheese?

We’re frying cheese tonight.

You’re fucking with me, I said.

I am most certainly not fucking with you, said Eiju. It’ll be tonight’s American special. We’re celebrating our American guest.

Then he started laughing, a rolling thing that blanketed the bar.

The laugh morphed into a cough.

The cough sloped into a hack.

Eiju started choking.

I’ve never been the guy to hop a bar top but I did that anyway.

When he finally settled down, I sat by his side, rubbing at his back. Eiju winced, and I told him to breathe easy, to inhale.

But then, out of nowhere, the coughing stopped. And his grimace led to tears. And the tears slipped into a laugh.

Eiju started laughing again.

He pointed at my face.

You should’ve seen yourself, he said, still laughing. Holy shit!

So concerned! he said. Where the hell’s my actual son!



* * *





Eiju stood half a foot shorter than me. Already looking thinner than the day I’d flown in.

He treated everything like a joke but the punchline was that he’d reached stage four.

No surprise sat waiting in the wings.

I knew what to expect.

I knew how this would end.



* * *





My first morning in Japan, I asked Eiju if he knew he was dying. Did he truly, functionally, see that? Did he understand? Did he know the stakes?

He stood across from me in pajama pants, yawning, tugging at the drawstrings. His breath smelled like cigarettes.

Of course, he said.

But so are you, he said. So is everyone else.

Think of it as a race, he said. I’m winning by a mile.

That’s bullshit, I said. You’re bullshit.

Maybe, said Eiju.



* * *




? ? ?

I would’ve called Ben when I landed at Itami, but my phone died. And then I missed the first rail into the city so I had to grab another ticket. And I was so worried about blowing that train, too, that I didn’t touch my charger, didn’t look away from the clock, and I just plopped down by this German family standing on the platform, arguing between themselves, while a Korean couple stood beside them, and this white lady cried into her hands and out of nowhere a pretty Black woman zoomed by us with this rolling suitcase, like, she was walking sprint-fast, in heels and a blue dress, and I was still wondering how that was even possible when I barely caught the train and I made it to Shin-Osaka station, but then, like, two minutes later I missed the next line to Namba, and then I caught a line headed the exact opposite way, toward Kyoto, and then back down toward Tennoji, which is when rush hour hit, and about thirty minutes later I got off on the wrong stop, again, but I was less than a mile from Eiju’s apartment, the man I hadn’t seen in a decade, the dying one, and I’d been traveling for over twenty-four hours, so I was spent, out of my fucking mind, and I wasn’t thinking about much else by then, or anything at all, really—but that was a mistake, the whole fucking thing was a mistake, I’d left Ben with Ma, and I’d left Ma in the middle of nowhere, and I hadn’t called my boyfriend at home, and home was the only place I wanted to be, even if, technically, I was already there, I had already made it, I was finally back home.



* * *





We met at this party. I’d already seen him on an app. And I walked right up to him, squeezing his shoulder, because Ben had exactly nothing to drink and of course I’d had way too much.

He’d been laughing in his profile pic. It hadn’t look forced.

And now, here he was. IRL. In a flannel and khakis.

When I asked who he’d come to the party with, Ben nodded vaguely at the crowd.

The mob carried you over?

No, he said. Just one mobster.

Well, I said, are you fucking this particular punk?

And that’s when he finally looked at me.

Ben made a face, one I would learn the mechanics of in the future. I’d recognize what brought it on and how long it lasted. I’d figure out how to defuse it. Each of its nooks and crannies.

But at first, I didn’t know shit.

So I just tilted my beer, cheersing him.

I’m a little fucked up, I said.

Don’t worry about it, said Ben, raising his water.

My day off and all.

Ah. Go figure.

And our conversation should’ve ended there.