“You really think that?”
“What else is there to think?”
Luke hesitates. Peels part of the chicken skin off with oily fingers. “There was a video I found of him with your mom.”
Ares’s throat tightens painfully. His mom. Someone too abstract and unknowable for him to really think about for long, like trying to imagine what exists beyond the universe—your brain hits a dead end. And yet he thinks about her all the time still, on some subconscious level, every time he sees a mother and son strolling in a park or grabbing dinner or heading home from school together. “What video?”
“From before you were born. They looked very happy together, and she was saying—I think he was meant to show it to you. Or that was the plan, before she...” Silently, lightly, he sidesteps the fact of her death like a ditch in the road. “She was talking about the life you would have together. The three of you. She wanted to move to Beijing and spend the first year at home, cooking for you, and he was pretending to be jealous, saying she only cooked for him like, twice a year or something, and she was laughing.... Like I said, they were happy. He really loved her, you could tell. And I think—not to find excuses for him, or anything like that—maybe it felt...” His forehead scrunches as he reaches for the right word. “It made him too sad, to try and have that life in Beijing without her, but he still wanted to look after you, or have you close. I’m not sure. That’s just what I think.”
The donations.Significant donations, Mr. Murphy had said, from his mother. He had been deeply skeptical at the time, thought it was a mistake, but—maybe. Maybe his father hadintended it. Let his mother be seen as a good mother, generous, supportive, even when she wasn’t around. Or maybe that was the only language he knew: money.I can’t speak to my own son, but here’s a couple million, make sure he’s doing okay at school, won’t you?
Sitting there in the corner, amid the chatter of arcade games, a happy robotic voice urging people to play again, Ares feels a deep wrenching in him, an emotion so intense he wishes to weep. But it isn’t awful, this feeling. A catharsis. Resolution, or redemption, even. For his old self, for his father.
He breathes out. “Right. I see,” he says.
They both eat in silence, until there is a pile of small bones stacked up on the napkins. “These aren’t as good as the chicken wings you make,” Luke says, licking the cheese powder off his fingers.
“Yeah?”
“I missed your cooking,” Luke admits. “Long Ge fed us, but... just enough so we didn’t starve. Sometimes I’d literally lie awake at night with my stomach rumbling and try to remember how the food tasted at home.”
“Tell me what you’re craving,” Ares says. “I’ll make it for you.”
This earns him a tentative smile. “I will.” Luke pauses, seems to think of something, his face turning serious again. “By the way, is that girl okay? I’ve been meaning to ask.”
Ares knows instantly who he means. “Yes. Yeah, she’s okay. She’s out of the hospital now. Just has a couple more checkup appointments, but the doctors say she’s healing fine.”
“Who is she, anyway?” Luke asks.
“Chanel Cao,” he says, with a stirring of pride. How many people have said her name today alone, but how many can claim to know her the way he does?
Maybe his thoughts are more transparent than he realizes, because Luke regards him in a new way. “And are you two... together?”
“Not yet,” he says. “Not officially. I’m planning on asking at a better time. I want to do it right.” He’s never discussed girls with Luke before, he realizes. Not that there was ever much to discuss. Only fleeting moments of fondness, shallow desire, mutual flattery, strangers who more or less remained as much. None of them really count, not anymore.
“How did you meet?”
Ares feels himself smiling. Can’t seem to help it. “You want to hear the full story?”
Luke nods, eager.
“Okay, well, I guess it began with the moon....”
35
Chanel
The moon hangs high tonight, a perfect silver pendant in the sky.
I find Ares standing underneath it, waiting by the lake banks where I’d first followed him. I stay still, allowing myself the luxury of simply admiring him from a distance. He’s always looked so beautiful in the moonlight. Almost surreal, like something out of a dream.
Then I step forward—silently, or so I think, hoping to catch him by surprise, but he turns around at once, his dark eyes finding mine.
“Have you been waiting long?” I ask.
“No, not at all,” he says, his lips sliding into a smile. “I know you usually need two hours to get ready.”
“Well, being hot takes time,” I say. I shrug off my fur jacket as I cross the grass toward him, revealing the tight crimson dress I’d picked out just for him, the one that’s softer than silk and fits like a second skin around my body. A warm, pleasantbreeze fans my hair back from my bare shoulders. It’s finally starting to feel like summer, and even the air is sweeter, balmy with the fragrance of begonias and yesterday’s rain. Children are staying out later, chasing each other around the park, licking hawthorn ice pops and scooping traditional Beijing yogurt out of little glass jars. The yeyes and nainais are back to playing their chess matches and dancing in the courtyards, swaying together to ballads from the nineties, slightly off-rhythm but laughing.
