“I was twenty-two when he died,” I said to Julian. Back then I had two jobs: weekdays I answered the phones at an eye doctor’s office, and weekends I worked as the hostess at a sushi bar on the west side that turned into a clubby lounge scene at night. I was supposed to be taking classes at Santa Monica College toward making a transfer to a four-year, but whatever cash I had left after paying the rent I spent on partying: dropping Ecstasy at warehouse raves in the Inland Empire, camping trips up the coast to shroom my brains out on the beach, endless shots of Crown Royal at the various Koreatown booking clubs staked along Wilshire Boulevard. Too many blackout nights, hangover days. Fiona was gone—New York, Jasper, her old law school ambitions—those were the years we’d lost touch.
I’d given up hope my father would ever return to LA, I said. Take up position as a regular part of my life again. I was angry with him, and whenever he called me up I’d send him straight to voicemail. It happened like this, every time: he’d call again a few minutes later, and again in an hour. Sometimes he left messages. Five, six, ten times he would call, always on Sundays. I never called him back.
Near the end his call volume dwindled to two or three times on a single day, then just one try, the last Sunday. I remembered declining that call, too. The next Sunday, when my phone didn’t light up with his number, I felt strange. I realized I’d drawn an uncanny comfort from the routine, rejecting his incoming attempts.
The next day, on a Monday, I got a call from an unknown international number. The person spoke Mandarin, but I had a hard time understanding his mainland accent—he was a cop, I finally gathered. The rest of the conversation was a blur, or maybe I’ve blocked it from memory after all these years.
“My father hanged himself,” I said, lying there in Julian’s bed. “From a ceiling fan.”
Julian was quiet for a moment. “A guy in boot camp did that,” he said finally. “It was the first body I ever saw.”
“He was in his forties,” I said. “Just a few years older than I am now.”
“The guy in boot camp left a note for his family. Did your dad . . . ?”
I shook my head.
“Wait, what’d you say?” Julian asked. “Forty—”
“Oh that,” I said. In my reverie, I’d slipped up. Then I told him my real age.
He asked me why I’d lied, and I said I didn’t know. I breathed, waited for him to say something else.
“Come here,” he said, and held an arm up for me to lean against his chest. He smelled like a new bar of soap. “Anything else you want to confess?”
I heard myself tell him about Naima, how I’d been getting close to her.
After I finished talking Julian cleared his throat. “I’m happy for you,” he said. “She sounds like a cool chick.”
Did he mean it? His voice betrayed no bitterness, no sliver of regret or jealousy. I wondered then if I’d wanted him to become upset, to act like the jilted lover. Maybe things would crystallize between us, force one or both of us to make a choice, say something we couldn’t come back from. Then I realized maybe I’d already said enough, telling him about my dad.
I hadn’t talked to Naima about any of that at all; when she asked about my family I’d said that my parents were divorced and left it at that. She didn’t pry. Her parents, too, were split up. Both had remarried, and Naima grew up with younger siblings from the new unions, the beloved big sister to them all. I couldn’t tell her Baba had been effectively ostracized from the family, that I’d been the one to out him to Mah. I’d turned my back on him when I was eighteen, after that trip to Taipei. For four years, he tried to reestablish contact. My father was a gay man, closeted and alone. I was stupid enough to think there’d always be more time with him—I should’ve known better.
Under the comforter Julian found my hand. “So what are you doing wasting your time with me?”
“Are you still lonely?” I asked.
“I just want you to be happy, Jane.”
“I want me to be happy, too.”
He laughed quietly. Then: “I’m not lonely, no. Not right now.” A short silence. “Maybe I’m happy, too? I don’t know,” he said. “But everything will just go back to normal after you’re gone.”
“After I leave New York, let’s never talk again,” I said suddenly. “Both of us happy, no one lonely. We’ll just promise to do our best to stay this way forever.”