She sat back down on the futon, next to him. They were silent for a while. She curled her legs up and hugged her shins. “Can you do me a favor?” She paused. “Can you help me shave my head?”
“What?”
“Kenji’s been so down lately, I think it’ll cheer him up.” She paused. “Help him get through the rest of chemo.”
Jasper didn’t reply. He sat leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees.
Fiona glanced over at him. The way Jasper looked at her then, like she was a wonder, something magic, Fiona knew that she would always love him. She’d forgotten that feeling, the pleasure of being seen by someone you loved and who loved you back. For a moment, before she stepped into the future on her own, and the past—their past—closed for good, she reached for him as if through a door, and she held on to his hand. How soft the skin of his palm against hers, how warm and familiar his fingers. How dear he was to her, after all. Jasper had been her first love. He would always be that.
* * *
? ? ?
The next morning, Fiona headed uptown to check on Kenji. When she got above ground at 125th, she reached for her cigarettes. Her knuckles brushed against a crumpled ball of paper and it fell out of her purse, landing on the sidewalk at her feet. The save-the-date for Amir and Khadijah’s wedding—she didn’t know why she’d been carrying it around. Fiona bent down to pick it up. She unfolded the postcard, smoothing her thumbs over the wrinkles creased in the paper. When Amir had announced his engagement in an email to their clinic last quarter, she’d replied with her congratulations, and he’d sent back: “You’re next!”
In the last six years, she and Jasper had talked about marriage, and kids, in a vague way. Last year, they’d agreed to wait until after they both finished their degrees before getting engaged. Fiona had once been able to imagine the wedding with confidence. Jane, her best friend, standing up there by her side. Kenji next to Jasper, of course. Now she wasn’t sure about anything anymore. A long time ago, she’d pressed Jane for her honest opinion after she’d met him at Fiona’s graduation at Berkeley. “Honestly? You won’t get mad?” Fiona braced herself. “Just kidding—he seems great, Fi. Is he really writing a novel? What does that even mean?” Fiona’s friendship with Jane in the last four years had lapsed into something dormant—last they talked, months ago now, Jane had been dating a woman named Carly, though Fiona couldn’t get a read on how serious things were between them.
She strolled in the direction of Kenji’s building, the sun on the back of her neck, her newly shorn crown. She felt self-conscious and kept touching her head. Were people staring at her? Did they think she was some kind of escaped Buddhist nun? When she passed Kenji’s brownstone, her feet kept moving. She was still smoking the cigarette.
Fiona thought about the notebook. When she’d leafed through the pages that night while he slept, Fiona knew it was a violation of Kenji’s privacy. Still, she felt it was her duty as a friend to monitor his state of mind from week to week. The notebook was part communication tool, and part journal. Kenji had lines copied from Neruda love poems, quotes from Kant and Hume on existential meaning, a series of zen koans and his earnest attempts at answering them. A few entries of recorded dreams. A list of medications. Then she’d come upon a page, just a few lines: Enough about me, what’s up with you? Did you stop seeing that girl? How’d she take it? You okay?
She’d touched Kenji’s shoulder to wake him. Showed him the page. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—but what is this? Is it Jasper?” Kenji had brought his hands up to his face. He’d taken the notebook from her and then he’d thrown it across the room. It had hit the wall with a dull thud.
The Movers
The buzzer squawked twice, and Fiona pressed the button on the intercom box to unlock the gate downstairs.
“You sure this is legit?” I’d told her about the Chinese moving company I used—uncles who chain-smoked Marlboros and looked like they couldn’t lift boxes for shit—but you’d be surprised, I said. Still, she insisted on hiring this charity outfit, a job-training and reentry program for former felons. Fiona had heard about it through a pro bono case at her law firm.
A soft knock on the door. Fiona opened it, and two men stood waiting. They wore matching green baseball caps embroidered with the company logo.
“Ms. Lin?” The one in charge—he carried a clipboard and an air of confidence—pumped Fiona’s hand a couple times. “Sam Jones.” He was somewhere in his thirties, I’d guess, lean and clean-shaven. His eyes surveyed the room, and I sensed Fiona relaxing, the way she held her smile, her shoulders going slack. Something about his gaze made me think he might be older, though his face was unlined. Age was hard to tell with Black folks, same as with Asians. Take me: I turned thirty-two this year but they still wanted ID at the liquor store, every single time.