Memorial(36)

I said it was spacious for the price.

No kidding, said the Realtor.

She asked if I had a wife or kids, and I shook my head at all of it.

Then you can build the nest, she said.

This is a hell of a tree, I said.

It’ll grow on you, said the Realtor. If I had this space to myself, I don’t know what I’d do.

There’s still time for you to grab it.

That’d be nice, said the Realtor, grinning.

But look, she said, trust me. Honestly. It’s a deal. Might not look like one now, but this area’s the next big thing.

Next big thing or not, I needed a place. I’d just finished a long, messy thing with another guy. It’d take too long to explain. But he’d become something like a roommate with benefits, and he’d actually gotten a new live-in boyfriend, this motherfucker who was always side-eyeing me, and I needed a new situation, so I signed a lease that afternoon and it turned out the newbie Realtor was right: that apartment really was the last deal the neighborhood gave.

Afterward, every spot on the block went to frat kids and professors. The neighborhood’s palette changed overnight. The Third Ward was rewired.



* * *





My phone pinged just past midnight.

It was Ben. He was online.

don’t worry about it, he wrote. i don’t drink often

GOOD FOR YOU, I wrote. YOU’LL PROBABLY LIVE LONGER

if you say so

LET’S HOPE SO

i’ll do that

And then we hit radio silence. We’d reached the stage where one of us needed to give the conversation a boost.

I’M MIKE, I wrote.

i know, wrote Benson.

?

you know Ximena?

I DO

she told me. we talked about that SORRY, GO FIGURE

And then, more silence.

And then, on a whim, I wrote: YOU WANNA GRAB A BEER SOMETIME?



* * *





Another few minutes passed.

I counted the cracks on the ceiling.

Ten minutes later, Ben wrote:

ur very forward

IT’S WHERE I WAS HEADED ANYWAYS, I wrote. WHY WASTE TIME

To which Ben replied, immediately, i’m not really into hookups anymore

I wrote, THIS IS JUST BEER WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

And then, as if those were the magic words, Benson blipped offline.



* * *





The next morning, I had a message:

sounds good, he wrote. u know a place?



* * *




? ? ?

All of Eiju’s patrons had a story. There was always some convoluted mishmash for how they ended up in the bar.



* * *





One night, Hana stumbled in after a breakup. She’d been distraught. On her way out, she ran into a stool, fucked up beyond reproach. And that’s how she met Mieko, who was also drinking away the end of a relationship—but the difference was that she was celebrating. They came back into the bar and toasted each other. Afterward, the two were fucking inseparable.



* * *





One night, in the middle of June, Sana met Takeshi at the bar. And then Takeshi met Hiro. And then Hiro met Sana. A few weeks later, they figured out that they all worked in the same building.



* * *





Natsue was a childhood friend of Eiju’s—she’d known him since grade school. Knew him before he married my mother, before he’d even heard of Ma. After he’d told her they were getting hitched, Natsue told Eiju she was happy for his happiness but warned him that living in Tokyo wasn’t for him, and neither was marriage. Not that he was hearing it. Eiju called Natsue jealous. He told her to fuck off, and it was the last conversation they’d have before Eiju came back to Japan thirteen years later—but Natsue was the first person he’d looked up when he landed; he spent that first night in Kansai on the sofa in her older brother’s living room.



* * *





One night, I was shelving beer behind the register when Natsue asked what I had going on in my life.

Hayato sat next to her, sipping from his wife’s glass. Eiju’d stepped out to the convenience store. Kunihiko and I held down the fort. Takeshi and Hiro laughed at some too-quiet joke, trying to rope Kunihiko into their conversation—and I realized that, for them, this scene was something like normal. For them, it must’ve felt like home.

I’m just passing through, I said.

We’re all just passing through, said Hiro.

That’s the gaaaaaaaame of liiiiiiiiiiiife, said Takeshi.

Stop that, said Natsue.

And then to me, she said, You’re here for Eiju-kun, aren’t you?

I blinked at her.

I mean for support, said Natsue.

You could say that, I said. He’s getting older.

He’s not too old, said Natsue, but it’s nice to see that he’s got someone.

That’s when a look passed between us. I wasn’t entirely sure what’d been exchanged.

Hey, said Hayato, you’ve got someone.

And I’ve got someone, said Takeshi, grabbing at Kunihiko, who flinched.

Sure, I said, and I went right back to shelving.