“I thought you were stupid for doing ithere,” he says.“Right now. I didn’t want you to do something you would regret. That you’d both regret.”
“Why would I regret proposing right now? This seems as good a time as any.”
Kenji laughs, but somehow manages to keep his mouth closed. He swallows another bite of food and says, “Don’t you want, to, like, I don’t know—buy her some roses? Light a candle? Maybe hand her a box of chocolates or someshit? Or, hell, uh, I don’t know—maybe you’d want to get her aringfirst?”
“I don’t understand.”
“C’mon, bro— Have you never seen, like, a movie?”
“No.”
Kenji stares at me, dumbfounded. “You’re shitting me,” he says. “Please tell me you’re shitting me.”
I bristle. “I was never allowed to watch movies growing up, so I never picked up the habit, and after The Reestablishment took over, that sort of thing was outlawed anyway. Besides, I don’t enjoy sitting still in the dark for that long. And I don’t enjoy the emotional manipulations of cinema.”
Kenji brings his hands to his face, his eyes wide with something like horror. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Why would— I don’t understand why that’s strange. Iwas homeschooled. My father was very—”
“There are so many things about you that never made sense to me,” Kenji says, staring, flabbergasted, at the wall behind me. “Like, everything about you is weird, you know?”
“No,” I say sharply. “I don’t think I’m weird.”
“But now it all makes sense.” He shakes his head. “It all makes so much sense. Wow. Who knew.”
“Whatmakes sense?”
Kenji doesn’t seem to hear me. Instead, he says, “Hey, is there anything else you’ve never done? Like—I don’t know, have you ever gone swimming? Or, like, blown out candles on a birthday cake?”
“Of course I’ve been swimming,” I say, irritated. “Swimming was an important part of my tactical training. But I’ve never—” I clear my throat. “No, I never had my own birthday cake.”
“Jesus.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Hey,” Kenji says suddenly. “Do you even know who Bruce Lee is?”
I hesitate.
There’s a challenge in his voice, but Kenji isn’t generating much more in the way of emotional cues, so I don’t understand the importance of the question. Finally, I say, “Bruce Lee was an actor. Though he’s also considered to be one of the greatest martial artists of our time. He founded a system of martial arts called jeet kune do, a type of Chinese kung fu that eschews patterns and form.His Chinese name is Lee Jun-fan.”
“Well shit,” Kenji says. He sits back in his chair, staring at me like I might be an alien. “Okay. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“What does Bruce Lee have to do with anything?”
“First of all,” he says, holding up a finger, “Bruce Lee has everything to do with everything. And second of all, can you just, like, do that?” He snaps his fingers in the direction of my head. “Can you just, like, remember shit like that? Random facts?”
“They’re not random facts. It’s information. Information about our world, its fears, histories, fascinations, and pleasures. It’s my job to know this sort of thing.”
“But you’ve never seen a single movie?”
“I didn’t have to. I know enough about pop culture to know which films mattered or made a difference.”
Kenji shakes his head, looks at me with something like awe. “But you don’t know anything about thebestfilms. You never saw the really good stuff. Hell, you’ve probably never even heard of the good stuff.”
“Try me.”
“Have you ever heard ofBlue Streak?”
