* * *
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Helen Park. He’d been resentful that their classmates assumed the two struck up an alliance because they were the only two Asian American fiction writers in their year. In fact, Jasper had intentionally ignored Helen’s friendly glances during the orientation events. He’d also made a point to steer clear of Phuong Ly, a poet in the year above, to combat the stereotype that all Asians stuck together. Jasper wasn’t going to be pigeonholed.
He thought Helen was a lesbian at first. She wore her short black hair gelled into spikes, a rotating uniform of loose chambray shirts topped by colorful fringed scarves, and always, some clown lipstick was painted on her mouth, bright tangerine, sparkly purple, and, occasionally, goth-metal black. He made it through the fall without engaging her much, but a month into the spring semester, she’d plopped down next to him at the bar where everyone congregated after workshop and called him out: “You’re avoiding me, right?” Though her lips were parted in a smile, she delivered the line as if lobbing an insult, her eyes glittering. He’d noticed then that Helen had a tooth on the side of her grin shaped like a fang.
“I have a girlfriend,” he blurted out.
Helen snorted. “Relax,” she said. “Girlfriend. Cool. Well, what is she?”
“What do you mean, what is she?” he said. “She’s a law student.”
Helen shook her head. Her hair didn’t move. “No, I mean, like—is she Asian?”
“She’s Taiwanese,” Jasper said. Helen raised an eyebrow. “So what?”
“Why don’t you ever invite her out with us? Everyone else brings their boos and randos.”
“I don’t know, she’s busy.” He didn’t want to tell her that Fiona would find their conversations—about books, writing, their professors—insufferable.
Jasper had long suspected that Fiona wasn’t totally on board with his writing ambitions. The program was designed to accommodate working professionals, but Jasper had insisted on quitting his day job to fully immerse himself in the MFA. He had some savings and took out a student loan. He’d wanted to chance a higher amount, max out both the subsidized and unsubsidized federal limits, but Fiona had advised against it. What about all your law school debt? he’d said. That’s different, she replied. After I finish I’ll actually— She didn’t finish the sentence, just let the words hang there. He’d been stung by her frankness, though he knew she was only being pragmatic.
“Why’d you ask if she’s Asian?” Jasper said.
“You seem like—I don’t know.” Helen shrugged. “Your stories in workshop—”
“What?”
She shrugged again.
Helen was only a year out of college, the same age Jasper was when he moved to New York with Fiona. That night at the bar, she told him to stop writing stories about white people. He’d scoffed and then they’d argued—“Just because I don’t indicate what race the characters are doesn’t automatically mean they’re white!” “Um, yeah, dude, it reads like that, sorry to break it to you.” “Not true. That’s your own racist reading bias. Not my problem!”—until Jasper realized their raised voices had attracted everyone else’s attention. The others from their workshop stood around the bar clutching PBR cans, staring at them.
Jasper stood suddenly, knocking over his barstool. He tossed down a few bills and stormed out. Helen followed him. They shouted at each other out on the sidewalk. Frustrated, he grabbed her hard by both arms—he thought maybe he would shake her. An alarmed expression crossed Helen’s widened dark eyes. Jasper remembered himself. Then, she was leading him to another bar, where they took shots and kept arguing, but there was laughter in it now, and something else; something more dangerous, Jasper recalled. Later still, when he followed her up the stairs to her apartment on Delancey—Helen was going to lend him her copy of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee—Jasper thought: Nothing’s happened yet, and nothing might happen, anyway. Pull yourself together, Chang.
When he got home that night, Jasper took a scalding shower before falling into bed with Fiona. Six years together: Fiona wasn’t the first girl he’d slept with, but she was pretty close to it. Jasper promised himself it was only going to be that one time, with Helen. The sex wasn’t anything spectacular, and her room smelled vaguely like cat piss. The next Monday after workshop, however, they fucked again; then another time, another day of the week, until Jasper couldn’t remember why it mattered, as though he’d somehow believed that cheating on Fiona, if done on a Monday, gave him moral immunity.