Memorial(52)

I don’t think so, I said. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on. Maybe everyone’s parents are like that.

Not everyone’s, said Benson. Just most of them. Many. And then they end up with us.

And we didn’t say much after that. We listened to the dogs barking next door, and the corridos humming from the next window over. And the neighbors outside chatting and smoking, and the white kids blaring trap music, and Harold stepping onto his porch, eventually, to tell them to shut the fuck up.



* * *





No matter how it felt at the time, we were just one part of the neighborhood. A cog inside the whole thing. But in sync, regardless.



* * *




? ? ?

One morning I woke up and Eiju was sitting beside me. Eyes closed, snoring, with his arms slack. Ass on the floor. I didn’t know how it happened, but I wasn’t about to shake him awake to ask.

I’d never really looked at his face before, and definitely not since I’d been in Osaka.

But now, here he was.

I saw the creases on his forehead. I saw the bend of his nose. His big-ass ears.

All of these were his gifts to me. The only ones he’d given me.

Delayed, sure. Present nonetheless.



* * *





A few hours later, he farted himself awake.

Fucking around on my phone, I watched the slow act of his unraveling into himself. The blinking. The gradual, slight tensing of the muscles. The shifting of his body as it registered him coming back to consciousness.

And then, breathing softly, Eiju stared into space.

When he realized I was beside him, he didn’t flinch or anything like that.

I thought you’d left, he said.

I didn’t leave, I said.

I thought you were gone, he said.

I’m right here, I said. I’m not gone.



* * *





And then, that evening, Eiju was himself again. He asked if he could pass through the bar.

It’s still your fucking place, I said.

So he walked with me through the neighborhood and up the stairs. Wiping at the stools. Groaning at customers. Mixing his drinks entirely too fast. Snapping his towel at Kunihiko, who’d burnt the rice, asking what in the hell was wrong with him, what on Earth did he think he was doing. And Kunihiko grimaced, but under that grimace there was a warmth, like he was grateful that Eiju was around that night and for the attention, and I honestly don’t know how he couldn’t be.

Hiro, Takeshi, and Sana sat across from us, clapping and whooping. They’d been buzzed for hours. They were are all on holiday. A thick drunkenness sat in the room, and I’d fucked with a little sake myself, and the night was warm the way it gets in Osaka sometimes.

You’re back! said Sana.

I’m visiting, said Eiju.

He’s back! said Takeshi, toasting the room.

Shut up. Stop that.

He’s back! He’s back! He’s back!



* * *





That night, I closed shop early. The crowd had thinned out. Eiju’d started his walk back to the apartment a few hours beforehand, and when I’d asked if he needed a cab, he asked who the fuck I thought he was.

I’d opened my mouth, and then I closed it. Told him to have it his way.

So Kunihiko started cleaning on one end of the bar. I started on the other. It was inevitable that we’d meet in the middle, eventually, but we always acted shocked when it actually happened.

When our fingers brushed, Kunihiko asked if I knew how lucky I was.

To have him, he said.

I frowned.

He’s yours, too, I said.

It’s not the same.

It isn’t. But you should be grateful. You’ve seen parts of him I never will.

And then Kunihiko looked at me. Every now and then, slivers of the guy he may’ve been slipped through his expressions.

But then, just as suddenly, they disappeared again.

I don’t know, he said. Eiju treats me like a son.

He does, I said.

And I don’t know how to repay that.

I don’t know if you can, I said.

It was Kunihiko’s turn to look a little bewildered at me.

You just have to stick around, I said. That’s enough. It has to be.

We just have to stick around, said Kunihiko, cheesing, and then he put his hand on my shoulder, knocking over a bottle of shoyu.



* * *




? ? ?

For the longest time, our family could barely afford two meals a day. And a little while later, eventually, we could. But only if my mother purchased it, which meant that all of a sudden Eiju wasn’t so hungry anymore. It was rare for him to eat something he hadn’t made himself.

But, when Eiju did cook, he made the dishes he’d learned at the Chinese restaurant, and the dishes he made at the Mexican restaurant, and the dishes he made at the Jamaican spot, curry chicken over rice and steamed eggs with okayu and caldo de bistec and fried plantains under fried dumplings, and even in the worst fucking times, when he drank away all the cash, he always found enough to sit us down for a decent dinner. A good one, even.

The three of us sat, picking away at this food. My folks wouldn’t talk, but they weren’t arguing either.