Memorial(34)

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.