“Fair?”
“Because I lied to you too.”
The woman backed away from him. “About what?”
“Who I really am.”
Chapter Nine
Heads
One month ago
Summer was officially over, but no one had bothered to inform the sun. The city was an armpit and Keishin was wading through its sweat. If he had not committed to being a guest lecturer that afternoon, he would have happily spent the rest of the day sitting in front of his refrigerator. Keishin would have refused the invitation if it had come from any person other than Ramesh Kashyap.
The walk to lecture hall B was enough to soak Keishin’s collar in sweat. He might have been concerned if he had wanted to make a good impression, but the latest batch of freshmen were not high on his list of people who mattered. Half of them were going to be gone before the semester was over. The other half had yet to prove they were interesting enough for him to bother remembering their names.
Ramesh liked to torture him this way. Sitting back while Keishin welcomed the latest batch of physics majors with a lecture that obliterated any fantasy they might have had of breezing through college almost made Ramesh smile, and an Almost Smile from him was nearly as rare as finding a neutrino. Keishin let Ramesh have his little joys. And as the lecture hall’s central air-conditioning cooled him down to a more agreeable temperature, Keishin even admitted to himself that he was gratefulfor his mentor’s invitation, even if, technically, it was to the second law of thermodynamics that he owed his relief.
This was what Keishin appreciated the most about physics. It was predictable and reliable. Unlike the weather. For as long as he could remember, the latter had never been on his side.
Keishin watched the students file out of the auditorium at the end of the lecture, furrows of varying depths wedged between their brows. It was usually the ones with the deepest dents who fared the best. They had the most questions. Curiosity was fuel, and if you didn’t have enough, you would sputter, stall, and eventually decide that you were better off graduating with a degree in something practical like computer science.
“You looked exactly like them when you were a freshman, Kei.” Ramesh’s tone was flat as always, but those who knew him caught the little twitch just beneath his left eye that told you if he was serious, happy, annoyed, or sad. Catching when he was telling a joke was harder. Ramesh’s jokes were never funny no matter how much his eye twitched. “Just ten times more miserable.”
“Liar,” Keishin said. “You didn’t even know my name until I was a sophomore.”
Ramesh pushed his thick glasses up the slight bump on his beak-like nose. With his slicked-back silver hair and narrow-set eyes, he looked like an eagle about to swoop down on its prey. “I knew exactly who you were the minute you walked into my lecture hall. I just pretended I didn’t. I didn’t want you to get any cockier than you already were. You were the new wonder boy on campus. How could I not know your name?”
Keishin gathered his notes from the podium, trying to remember the exact point at which his relationship with Ramesh had shifted from mentor to friend. “You deserve an Oscar. Youhad me convinced that as far as you were concerned back then, I was invisible.”
“The most interesting things are invisible.” Ramesh shrugged. “Speaking of which, have you responded to Takahiro’s email yet about joining him in Japan?”
“Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for? Working at the Super-K detector is an amazing opportunity. You may just beat me to that Nobel Prize.”
“Then why aren’t you going? Takahiro invited you, not me. I’m his second choice.”
“I don’t like sushi.”
“Another lie,” Keishin said. “You should stop that, you know. You’re not very good at it.”
An Almost Smile.Ramesh leaned on his walking stick, taking his weight off his bad leg. “The truth is, if I had gotten this opportunity twenty years ago, I would have been on the first plane to Tokyo before you could say ‘neutrinos.’ But I’ve grown to like my old leather chair and my quiet walks around campus. I like that the little coffee shop at the corner knows exactly what I’m going to order as soon as I step through the door. I’ve finally earned the right to be old and boring. You haven’t. Besides, haven’t you been wanting to go back to where you were born?”
“I have, but—”
“But what?”
“I’ve carried around this idea of Japan in my head for so long, a place in my mind I could return to whenever I—” Keishin shook his head. “Forget it. I feel like I’m back in high school, stewing in my pubescent angst about not fitting in.”
“You’re afraid the real thing won’t match up to your memories of it,” Ramesh said. “And you’re absolutely right. Thatplace stopped existing the moment you left. Maybe it didn’t even exist at all. Memory has a way of smoothing and polishing edges. I’ve known you for a long time, Kei. I don’t think you’ve ever really fit in anywhere.”
“Wow. Thanks, Ramesh. Just what I needed to hear. All my ‘only-Asian-at-my-school’ and ‘mommy-abandonment’ childhood issues confirmed.”
“I didn’t mean that in a bad way. It was a compliment. Your drive, all your achievements—you wouldn’t have them if you ‘fit in.’ Unlike people who quickly find their place in their little corner of life’s puzzle, you need to see and understand the puzzle in its entirety.”
Keishin ran his hand through his hair, combing through a streak at his left temple that had prematurely turned silver. He let out a heavy sigh. “A puzzle that doesn’t even seem to have any borders.”
