I call again a minute later and I say, The doctors don’t think I’ll be able to walk again. I say, It’s cool, I can be like Stephen Hawking.
A minute later I call and I say, Oh, while they were checking me out, they found a tumour. On my right arse cheek. They think it might be cancer. I say, No playing, just like my dad.
A minute after that, just as I’m about to hit call again, I get a text.
You’re a prick when you’re drunk.
I chuck my phone at the wall of whirring machines in front of me, where it smacks and clatters to the floor.
I immediately regret it and run to pick it up, checking I haven’t broken it.
This is me, back in between the old aunties, swearing at my cracked phone screen.
Booze. Need more booze.
Hey, I say to the auntie on my right, got any booze?
The wizened old girl clicks her tongue and the look on her face reminds me of my mother when I drink in front of her.
You look ugly when you drink, my mum always says. She says, Your eyes go watery and your whole face is red. Then: Thank goodness you haven’t got monolid eyes, a rounded head or a flat nose.
She’s not wrong, I do look ugly when I drink. Which is why I don’t drink all that much back home. But here, everyone looks ugly when they drink, so in that sense at least, I fit right in.
I pick up the empty bottle of Kaoliang on the floor and wave it in front of the auntie’s face.
You know, booze. Alcohol. Speak English?
She shakes her head and buries her face back into the flimsy thin pages of her celebrity magazine.
I try the auntie on my left. No dice: this one is a champion ignorer, just like me.
I would run out and buy another bottle somewhere, but my clothes are still tumbling around inside that washer, getting nice and frothy, and I don’t want anyone to steal them.
For real, leave any of your things unattended and they will get removed from your possession. Trust no one, Mr Mulder.
Not even old aunties who smell like the sausage your ama used to make.
Can’t drink, can’t sleep.
Can’t get Mia out of my head.
Just then, I see a picture of a familiar-looking guy in the auntie’s magazine.
No playing, it’s the dude whose picture I caught Charles scowling at the other night in that apartment.
I tap the magazine a couple times and I say, Who is that?
Movie star, says the auntie, yanking her magazine away from my reach, giving me the side eye.
So you do speak English, you sly old bird.
T
WELVE
Because of the effort, Charles takes off his jacket, then his tie.
He unbuttons his shirtsleeves and rolls them up. His forearms look lean and sinewy.
He rolls up the tie, and places it in his jacket pocket.
Spare, he says, carefully draping his jacket over the back of one of the plastic chairs like if he just tossed it, he’d launch a nuclear missile and blow up the world. Gentle gentle.
No jacket, no tie, still sharp. Especially with that bright white hair slicked back.
But then look at his feet, and you have instant clown. For real, not even Charles Hu can make those multicoloured shoes look good.
A boom, a rumble, a crash. A whoop whoop whoop. High fives all round for the strike on the lane to our left.
The girl that just bowled pumps her fist, she’s got on a red and yellow bowling shirt and one of those lame wrist supports.
Say cheese, I say, lifting my camera and taking a picture. She gives me a filthy look. Her identically dressed bowling sisters watch me for a second, deadpan.
Charles sits down and he says, I know what you’re thinking.
A boom boom boom, a rumble rumble rumble, a crash crash crash. A round of bowling alley sounds on loop, mingled with ecstatic yelps and electronic music high on speed.
Let me hear it, then.
