Memorial(31)

I should’ve drifted back toward the kitchen, and we should’ve gone on with our lives, however the fuck they would’ve unspooled.

But then, Ben said, Does that mean you don’t get many?

Many what, I said.

Days off.

Let’s just say I make them count.

Ben considered me like he was solving some sort of equation.

My friend is the host’s cousin, he said. I wasn’t doing shit tonight, so she dragged me along.

Well, I said, as far as drags go, you look just fine.

You’d be surprised, said Ben.

Or maybe you wouldn’t, he said, more to himself than to me, and he looked back at the crowd, but before I could jump on that, Ximena waved from around the corner.

She winked at me, smiling. Glowing in a skirt and this letterman jacket.

Ben made another new face.

Looks like we’ve got mutuals, I said.

Just a friend of a friend, I said.

An ex, I added.

But you got Ximena in the divorce, said Ben.

I think she dabbles between the two of us.

Kanpai, said Ben, clinking my bottle with his cup, before he slipped around my shoulder, into the living room, and right the fuck out of my life.



* * *





That night I drove home with another guy. I don’t remember much about him, but he was definitely white. He told me I was his first, and I said, First what, and he said, You know, except I genuinely did not. Sometimes, you forget how people are. And then he reminded me. But before this whiteboy fucked up the rest of my evening, I put my mouth on his mouth, and my palms on his ass, and he jammed his knuckles in my khakis, and the two of us were off.

We fucked. It sucked. He came once, and then once again, and I jerked off on his stomach until I decided nothing was happening.



* * *





When I woke up the next morning, he was still knocked out on the mattress. I slipped into his kitchen thinking I’d fix us some omelettes. Scramble some eggs. Maybe he kept scallions. Peaches. Fuck. You never know, sometimes folks surprise you.

But this guy didn’t. He was predictable. All I found in his fridge was a tub of protein and half a Hershey’s bar stuck in the wrapper.



* * *





Back at my place, off West Alabama, the kids next door played tag on the driveway. They were chasing this cat and the cat was letting them. They’d named him Bruno, but also Gabriel, Victor Hugo, and Se?or Gato. When their father, a heavy dude, came outside for a smoke, he called the cat over. It sat on its ass while he rubbed its belly. Once the cat looked my way, so did everyone else.

I showered and got my shit ready for work: the apron and the T-shirt and the jeans. I held a part-time gig at one restaurant and a part-time gig at a coffee bar. On weekends, I played cashier at the grocery store. None of it was bearable. But the money wasn’t atrocious. That shit gave me something to do.

Afterward, still soaked, I sat my ass on the sofa. Checked my phone, opened the app. Scrolled to Ben’s profile.

But it was gone. I’d starred it and everything.

I closed the thing and opened it up again. The only thing left was a gap in its place. Not even a digital memory.



* * *




? ? ?

My first morning in Osaka, Eiju didn’t even speak to me. I spent one hundred and twenty-two minutes looking for his shitty little apartment by the train station. Once I’d passed the same fucking alley a fourth time, this lady smoking beside a FamilyMart waved me down from the corner, and later, I figured out that she owned a bookshop by the complex and she’d known Eiju for years. Sometimes, she brought him eggs from the market behind their building.

But that day, she was just some lady.

She wore this big-ass scowl.

You look lost, she said, in Japanese.

What? I said.

You look lost, she said, again, a little slower.

Oh, I said. I feel lost.

When I pulled out Eiju’s address, her features softened. She pointed above us.

You’re kidding, I said, and the lady laughed.

You’ve already made it, she said.

But you’re still lost, she said.



* * *





And then, like some Netflix Original shit, while I stood warming my hands by the steps, I watched Eiju lock his door through the railing, rooting around in a messenger bag, fiddling with his key chain, peering at the sky over my head.

For a long fucking time I had this dream where I’d spot the man and he wouldn’t recognize me but I never thought I wouldn’t recognize him. That’s just a thing that would not have happened.

It started once he split from our apartment in Bellaire.

I dreamt about my father back when I was a kid, snuggled beside Ma, when I couldn’t sleep by myself for the first year after he left.

I dreamt about my father while I slept beside who knows how many fuckers.

I dreamt about my father in my own bed, hanging off the mattress, snoring beside Ben.

I dreamt about him the night I left Houston.

I dreamt about him on the plane ride over.

And now, here he was.

Here.

Here here.

Here here here.

Right there. In front of my dumb fucking face.

Solid as the ground below me. And I recognized him.