hand in the air. “Ah. Everything is hard. In its own way.”
Larissa thought about her day, of sushi lunches and painting theater sets and ice cream and homework, and shopping, and slowness. A little baking, a little shopping, a little housework. Was that hard, too? In its own way?
Chewing her lip, she said nothing, glancing at his cracked young hands holding the chopsticks, as she listened to Yes on the radio, on low, but unmistakably serenading her about perpetual change … the world in their hands, the moon, the stars; the impending disaster gazing down on them, thought forward to April, to summer. What to do? It’s just a boy I see, an illusion in front of me …
“So what happened to your dad?”
Kai stiffened slightly. With a thin smile he turned his head to her. “Nah, I don’t want to talk about my dad, you know? We weren’t close, he was … Papa was a rolling stone. Every day I worry someone is going to walk through the dealership door and say he’s my half-brother. My old man was into some bad shit, and my mom and grandma raised us on their own. He disappeared; then I heard he went to jail for possession. A little while ago he popped around again. I was his only son.”
Larissa said nothing.
“He disappeared again, like a magic act. We figured he probably went back to his two wives, his three mistresses; that’s what my mother said. But we heard he was sick and in the hospital. Then he died. Left me the bike. I do love my bike.”
“I’m sorry he got sick,” Larissa said.
“That’s okay. People get sick. We have bodies, and our bodies aren’t perfect. Nothing is perfect. Even our souls aren’t perfect.”
So true. But still. “Did you get to see him before he died?”
Kai emitted a short laugh, an exhale. “For someone who didn’t want to talk about it, I sure am talking a lot about it.” He took a sip of Coke. “Yeah. My sisters and I went to the hospital to see him. Even my mother went.” He stopped. “The Catholic nun who did rounds carried a guitar with her along with the Bible, and once she came into my dad’s room and sat with us and asked if he wanted to hear something. Well, he couldn’t talk anymore, he was slipping in and out of consciousness, but Melissa, my older sister, said his favorite song when she was growing up was ‘King of the Road’. Do you know it? Roger Miller?”
Larissa shook her head.
And Kai sang it to her. Just a little, his head bobbing from side to side; it was a lilting melody, he carried a cheerful tune … “Two hours of pushing broom buys an eight-by-twelve four-bit room …” and then broke off and said, “Well, this nun chick, I’ve never heard anyone sing and play the guitar like her, not even Roger Miller. It was unbelievable. And my dad, even though he couldn’t speak, and the doctors said he couldn’t hear or see or understand anything anymore, he lay there, and you could almost swear his misty eyes were twitching in rhythm to the tune. My sisters said I was crazy. But he heard every word. The nun told me privately that the last thing to go on a man is his hearing; the dying hear everything, and I knew she was right. I asked her if she knew where he was headed because he hadn’t been a very good man, certainly not a good father, which is the thing that most affected me when I was younger, not having a dad. And do you know what she told me?”
Larissa twitched, misty-eyed herself, to the rhythm of Kai’s words. “No, what did she say?”
“She said, well, you say he’s no good, but look, all his kids are sitting here with him, and his ex-wife, your mother, was here with him. You’re angry for the way he treated her, but you’re here, and she is here. There are some people who die completely alone, no kids, no friends, nobody at the end of their life. So you know, maybe your old man wasn’t all bad.”
A short pause followed before Larissa breathed in and said, “Look at the time.” It was after two. They’d been sitting for over an hour.
Next day. That’s how she moved now. Lunch hour, from one to two Monday to Friday. Housewives and bikers, women and men, mothers and sons, actors and singers, salesmen, stonemasons, shoppers and sinners, lunch hour from one to two, all welcome.
“So where’s your mom now, your sisters?”
“Still in Hawaii.”
“Oh.” Why did that make her happy? Him being here without his family. “What are you doing in Jersey? Seems a long way to go to work at a car dealership.”
“Yeah. But a friend of mine moved out here from Maui. So I followed him.”
“Is that your mall buddy, Gil?”
“Yeah. And his roomie. They go to Rutgers, live in Maplewood. Initially I came to bunk with them till I got a gig. But it just so happened that I got a gig right away, so I got my own crib.”
“Where?” She didn’t mean to sound so high-pitched. But she felt high-pitched.
“A few blocks away.” He was calm in response. He was always calm. “I can walk to work.”
“Maplewood’s a nice town,” Larissa said, in a more even tone. It didn’t seem quite right for college kids. It was more a family town. Like Summit. “Your friends like it?”
Kai cleared his throat. “Unfortunately my buddy Gil was arrested a while back dealing dope on campus. So he’s temporarily out of commission.”
“For how long?”
“Three to seven. Chance of parole in eighteen months.”
“Geez. Three to seven seems steep.”
“I think,” said Kai, “it might not have been his first offense.”
“Oh.”
“The guy had to pay his tuition somehow. Parents got divorced and there were no funds to be had, and yet—well, you know how it is.”
Just thinking about how it was got Larissa all flushed, because Kai said, “Is this making you uncomfortable? The drugs? That’s not my scene.”
“No, I was just … the food went down wrong.” His age was supposed to be the liberating thing! The thing that made everything else so easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. Almost like sitting with one of her drama students, having a chat in the breeze. Why did thinking of his friends, dealing drugs to pay for their tuition, make her feel so twisted up inside? Could it be because her own college experience of dope and crazy protesting friends was twenty years ago? His lifetime ago.
“Madison is a great small town,” Kai said. “Don’t you think?”
She wasn’t sure. “Like Hawaii?”
“Nah. Too many transients in Hawaii. Too many vacationers. Nothing is permanent there. This good stable life is so strange. So exotic.”
“This life is exotic?” Larissa repeated in a flat tone. What was he talking about!
“Honestly, you’d be hard-pressed to find a town as quaint and cute as Madison. I’m not saying I want to live here forever. I want to see the world. But to settle down? To raise a family? There is no better place. Really.”
“If you say so. But it’s not exotic, Kai. It’s just not. It’s too normal to be exotic.”
“See, to me, the normal is the exotic.”
“Do you know what’s exotic? The Philippines. My best friend lives near Manila; she’s always asking me to go visit her.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Well, I can’t just pick up and go.”
“Why not?”
“What’s my family going to do?”
“Oh, they’ll manage for a few weeks, won’t they?”
“I