The book of love, p.34
The Book of Love, page 34
“I was going to get you a fuzzy hat for Christmas,” Mo said. Actually he hadn’t been thinking about Christmas presents at all, but he thought Jenny would be cute in a fuzzy hat. “And something practical. Like a phone charger.”
Jenny patted his shoulder. “Those are good, too. Let me get my coat and I’ll drive you into town.”
* * *
—
Thai Super Delight wasn’t busy, it never was in the winter, so the Thangleks were okay with Natalie and Theo and Mo and Rosamel staking out a booth in the back for as long as they wanted. When was the last time Mo had been here? With his grandmother, of course. Before he’d died. Before she’d died. She would have ordered pad kee mao because that’s what she always got. But then given all the broccoli to Mo. She didn’t like broccoli, but she was too shy to ask if it could be left out.
There was a lump in his throat. His eyes burned. But also, he was angry. He hadn’t just died. Someone had done this to him, and that was one thing he was angry about. And he was angry, too, because he’d come back and it had seemed as if she were still there, somehow, trying to get back to him, but it hadn’t been her at all. Mo’s grandmother was just gone. How was that even possible? Why couldn’t she have waited just a little longer?
He held on to his anger. Clung to it. Otherwise what would he have? Only sadness and fear, and what were their gifts? Bad skin and a feral stink.
Natalie and Theo said all the stuff your friends should say when your only living relative has died. They embraced Mo carefully, tenderly, and he wondered if this was because his body felt different to them, not because he had been dead and was now remade, but because they could somehow tell how small he felt himself to be inside it again.
Once they’d said hello to Genevieve from band, who was working part-time at Super Delight over the holidays, and ordered food, Rosamel pulled out the old, worn deck of cards with the picture of Leonardo DiCaprio on the back that she’d stolen years ago from Mrs. Paulsen’s desk in homeroom, and they played Hearts and ate lettuce wraps and dumplings. Natalie shot the moon twice and only cried once. The day before she’d been looking at Instagram and seen someone who looked like the guy she’d been dating at college. He was in the background of another friend’s picture, and he was not only dancing with someone who wasn’t Natalie, he was full on touching a boob. And not in a tentative way, either. It looked like he was planning on taking it home with him when the party was over.
“It’s kind of blurry, though,” she said. “Like, maybe it isn’t actually him? I can’t believe he would actually do this. Last week he drove out with me to Wat Nawamintararachutis. We were going to take a Li-khe class together.”
Theo sighed heavily. Her look at Rosamel and Mo said, quite plainly, You see what I have to deal with?
Finally Theo said, “Doesn’t he have a tattoo? Look, you can see the tattoo right here. It’s him.” She blew up the picture on Natalie’s phone.
“It might not be a tattoo,” Natalie said. “It could just be a smudge on the lens.”
“You could text him the photo,” Rosamel said. “Just send it with no comment. See what he texts back.”
“But then it doesn’t matter if it’s him or not,” Natalie said. “Because if I send it to him, he’ll think I’m jealous. I think I should go back to the dorms early. Just show up at his door like a surprise present. He’s studying too much. He said he couldn’t go back home for Christmas because he had so much work to do.”
Natalie was at Tufts, and Theo was at Boston College, both on full scholarships. They hadn’t wanted to go to the same school, but they hadn’t wanted to be too far apart, either. They’d had a meltdown during college applications, Mo knew, because they couldn’t figure out what they’d do if they both got into Harvard. They couldn’t figure out how to decide who would get to go. But neither had gotten in, so they’d had literal twin meltdowns about that, then happily sent in their acceptance letters to their top backup schools.
Theo said, “Great idea! You catch him in the act, we won’t have to talk about whether or not he’s cheating on you. Bless. Anyway, it’s not like men are ever short on the ground for you. Men love a sad girl. They think if they just try hard enough, they’ll be the one who finally makes her happy.”
“I can’t help how my face looks! I look sad even when I’m perfectly fine!” Natalie said. “And that’s not why men love sad girls. Men love sad girls because it works out in their favor when they screw up. They think, Well, she was already a mess. How can anyone accuse me of making things worse?”
It was a mystery, truly, how Natalie and Theo could have the same face and yet Natalie was the picture of woe, while Theo always looked ready to party. Mo thought in this case they both had made good points. This was usually the case.
“Anyway, how about you?” Natalie said, poking Mo in the side with her elbow.
Rosamel said, “Yeah, so I was poking around on Facebook late last night and saw Vincent, remember from band? He wrote this long poetic thing about the human heart and how he ran into an old friend the other day and it brought back a lot of very pent-up feelings. And then he said that this was his official coming out. And then he said maybe love would return to him again one day because he thought he would be ready for it this time.”
Mo ducked his head down. Fucking Vincent. For about five minutes, once, he’d thought maybe he and Vincent might be something that actually meant something. That was the time Vincent had taken Mo’s hand out of his pants and said, “Maybe we could talk for a little while first?” And so Mo had said he’d like that. And then Vincent had started talking about this bicycle pump he’d read about online, and after four minutes of that, in desperation, Mo had gone down on him just to shut him up.
“Vincent?” Natalie said. “That guy? Wait, Mo, did you and he ever—”
Mo had no intention of speaking about Vincent, not ever again. So he sidestepped, said, “As it so happens, there is a guy. Kind of.”
Rosamel said, “Come on, man. You and Vincent? For serious? I was pulling your leg.”
“Nah,” Mo said. “Not him. Just, somebody. A guy.”
Theo said, “Is he nice? Did you meet him in Ireland?”
“What’s he like?” Natalie said. “Let me be very shallow for a minute. No, wait. Let me be shallow my whole life. Being deep sucks. Is he hot?”
“Actually, yes,” Mo said. “Actually he looks kind of like that guy.”
On the street outside, Thomas was standing in front of Thai Super Delight. He was with a woman in a voluminous turquoise fur coat. She wore cat-eye sunglasses, and her cartoon-red hair was piled up in a beehive. She came inside the restaurant and Thomas trailed sullenly after her.
“Seriously,” Natalie said. “You’re seeing someone who looks like that?”
Rosamel said, “Who hangs out with people who look like that?”
“More or less,” Mo said. He couldn’t help but feel a little smug. Mainly he felt a dim foreboding, but the human animal is a complex organism. There was space for smugness and some foreboding, too. Even some annoyance. Whatever Thomas was up to, Mo would have preferred it if he was up to it somewhere Mo wasn’t. He would also have preferred it if his own body wasn’t so aware of Thomas, of its proximity to Thomas’s body. Little hairs were standing up all over. His pulse was up and his mouth was dry. He reached for his water glass and almost knocked it over.
Genevieve showed Thomas and the lady to a window table. Thomas didn’t even look over at the booth where Mo was sitting, but the woman turned and smiled as if she’d heard Mo and the others talking. As if she could hear Mo’s heart beating too quickly. She still had her sunglasses on.
“I’ve seen that guy around some,” Theo said. “But she is something else. I can smell her perfume from here. Bet you she’s from L.A.”
“Girl,” Rosamel said. “No. Definitely San Francisco.”
“Yeah,” Natalie said. “And she’s an actress. A TV actress. No, wait, a porn star. My mom is going to flip if she sees her. She’ll be like, That porn star better appreciate my food.”
She and Theo both cracked up. At least Natalie was out of crisis mode. Rosamel would be pleased about that. She hated when her friends were sad. Rosamel was the best person Mo knew. He hoped the whole state of Ohio got it together and realized it’d won the best-person lottery when she decided to go to school there.
The woman with Thomas let her fur coat slip off her shoulders, Thomas catching it and draping it across the back of one chair, then pulling another out for his companion to sit. Like the coat, the dress was outrageous in a way you usually didn’t get in Lovesend in the afternoon: a bosomy sheath resembling a tall glass of Pepto Bismol someone had set down accidentally on top of a small upside-down flamingo. Some people just didn’t seem to feel cold. Or shame. You could see why Natalie had thought of porn stars.
When the woman sat down, her bare, dirty feet were visible under the slush-crusted feathers of the hem.
“Oh wow,” Rosamel said. “The hell is she doing, going around in the snow with no shoes on?”
And here came Natalie and Theo’s mom, because clearly Genevieve wasn’t going to be able to handle this. She began to say something. The woman said something back, and Mrs. Thanglek shook her head. Then nodded. Thomas stood up and took off his black boots. The woman slipped her feet into them and then smiled back up at Mrs. Thanglek.
“But now he doesn’t have any shoes on,” Natalie said.
Indeed, Thomas had only a pair of socks on. There was a sizeable hole in one heel.
When Mrs. Thanglek passed by their table, Natalie said, “Ma?”
A short conversation in Thai followed, and then Mrs. Thanglek vanished into the kitchen.
“My mom says she’d like to draw her,” Theo translated. “Also that she’s trouble. But even trouble gets hungry. Even if trouble doesn’t feel cold.” Natalie and Theo’s parents spoke English perfectly well, but as Natalie and Theo liked to point out, it was useful to have a separate language to be judgmental in.
“Tell me about it,” Rosamel said. “You should see Ohio. Blond beardy boys in board shorts smoking bongs on their porches in the middle of snowstorms. Little pipestem legs going blue.”
“You guys know Mom has been taking life drawing, right?” Theo said.
Mo had not known this. Previously Theo and Natalie’s mom had been into pottery and before that into macrame. But Rosamel nodded.
Theo said, “So Dad’s taking her to Paris in January. Planned this whole big surprise romance vacation. Taking her to the Louvre and stuff. She thinks he’s getting her a new bike. Meanwhile, she got him some socks and stuff like that.”
“Nothing wrong with socks,” Mo said.
Natalie said, “They’re pretty nice, actually. Little white elephants. He’s worried ’cause she keeps coming home with these drawings of a hot naked guy from the life drawing class. She’s even getting one framed. Anyway, there goes our inheritance. Thanks, hot naked guy.”
Rosamel shuffled the Leonardo deck and they went on playing Hearts, while Mo, keeping an eye on his supernatural hookup and his hookup’s boss lady, made up things to tell them about the cute boy he had met in Ireland. His name was Thomas. Yes, he was white, and yes, there were queer Black guys in Ireland, but not, like, throngs. No, Mo didn’t have any pics. They weren’t officially dating or anything like that. No, Mo didn’t think Thomas was on Instagram. (Instagram? Had that even been a thing before he died?) Thomas wasn’t really on social media. Mo didn’t think it was anything serious. But, you know, not everything had to be life or death or even good for you. Sometimes a thing could just be fun.
While Mo went on inventing a relationship as tidy and short as a pop song, Mrs. Thanglek brought out dish after dish from the kitchen, and the woman in the pink dress ate helping after helping of papaya salad, beef salad, pad Thai, sticky rice, duck lollipops, and the house specialty, a whole salmon wrapped in spinach and steamed with basil and mango. Mo couldn’t help noticing Thomas didn’t eat at all. He drank hot tea and sat there, not looking at the table where Mo and the others sat. There was still a hole in his sock. Mo wanted so badly to hold Thomas’s heel in his hand. To see if his foot was cold. To warm it with his breath.
“Hey, hey,” Theo said. “Look over there. Does he know them?”
Mo saw that Mr. Anabin had come in, was sitting down across from Thomas.
“Maybe before he came here to teach he lived out in L.A.,” Natalie said.
“San Francisco,” Rosamel said.
“Maybe he had a porn career, too,” Theo said. “No, wait, he composed the score for her porn movies.”
“Always knew there was something off about him,” Rosamel said.
“You did?” Mo said. “Mr. Anabin?”
“No,” Rosamel said scornfully. “That was a joke. He wasn’t any weirder than any other teacher we had. Look, here comes Lady Gatorade.”
The pink dress was headed in their direction, all those dirty feathers vibrating around Thomas’s untied boots like flagella. Their booth was on the way to the bathroom, but Mo’s phone buzzed and when he looked, there was a text. BE CAREFUL
Mo shoved his phone back into his pocket just as Natalie or Theo kicked him under the table. He straightened up.
The woman stood just at his shoulder.
She said, “You like games.”
“We do!” Rosamel said with straight-faced enthusiasm. Theo began to crack up. She covered her mouth with her hands and kicked Mo again under the table.
Natalie said, “You know how it is, when you get to hang out with old friends after a long time. It’s just sooooo nice to have everybody together again. Is Mr. Anabin a friend of yours or something? We were in his class last year.”
“Oh, I agree!” the woman said. “It’s been longer than I care to mention since Anabin and I broke bread in one another’s company. Do you know, it just happens to be his birthday. Today! We’d completely fallen out of touch. But a little while ago I found myself wondering what exactly it was about your town that drew him here so far from my orbit, and so I decided I would come find out for myself.”
“Sweet,” Rosamel said. “I hope I’m not being rude, but would you settle a bet for us? We were wondering if you were from L.A.? Or San Francisco?”
“Dear heart,” the woman said, “I’m from a place much farther away than that. How about you, Mo? Are you looking forward to going back to Ireland?”
All of his friends looked at him. “Sorry?” Mo said. “Do we know each other?”
The woman patted him on the shoulder, left her hand there. The weight of her hand was cold and heavy, and he could feel her gaze on him like two blobs of mercury. Her nails dug into the meat of his arm. He reached out, found Rosamel’s hand, and gripped it. Didn’t look at her.
“My old friend Anabin was telling me about you,” the woman said. “He says you’re quite bright. Thomas, on the other hand, is not in a confiding mood. Or perhaps he doesn’t agree with Anabin that there’s anything interesting about you and is too polite to say so.”
“Him?” Rosamel asked Mo. Under the table she squeezed his hand quite hard. “That’s him? The one sitting over there, the guy you said looked like the guy you’re dating? You’re seeing that guy?”
“They were fucking like bunnies this morning,” the woman said. “But I suspect my Thomas is out of Mo’s league. What do you think, Mo?”
“I think you’re an actual monster,” Mo said. Because this was Malo Mogge. Who else could it be? “And I think maybe Thomas is a monster, too, but he’s a sad monster and you wouldn’t recognize a human emotion if it brought you breakfast in bed after it had pissed in your orange juice. But mostly I’ve been thinking about what sort of birthday present to get for Mr. Anabin. I’ve been thinking about that, really, and not thinking about you or Thomas at all.”
This was bullshit and bravado, and Mo knew it and he knew Malo Mogge knew it, too, but it wasn’t like he had anything else on tap at this particular moment. And what was Malo Mogge going to do, anyway? Dip him in sauce and eat him like a fresh roll? He clung tightly to Rosamel’s hand beneath the table.
“Little dead boy,” Malo Mogge said. “You know who I am and still you speak to me this way? Anabin and Bogomil have been poor friends to have not schooled you better. Was it your eyes or your tongue or your cock that Thomas found so charming? Tell me and I could offer it to him as a souvenir to remember you when I leave this place and he goes with me.”
Mo heard Theo gasp. He said, “It would be easier to get a puppy, wouldn’t it? You can’t make a puppy give you its shoes, but it’s easier to house-train, surely. And a puppy will love you even if you’re an awful person.”
Malo Mogge said, “I don’t give up the things that belong to me. Thomas can cause a great deal of trouble, yes. But Thomas is mine.”
“Maybe you should leave then,” Mo said. “And take your puppy with you.”
“In my own good time,” Malo Mogge said. “And once I have retrieved another thing that belongs to me. Do you think I have any desire to be here? In this small place? Though perhaps improvements can be made, now that I come to think of it, and coming here has given me the opportunity to meet you, Mohammed Gorch. Your grandmother was very proud of you, I’m sure. It’s a shame she never found out what happened to you. How she must have grieved. Though perhaps it’s a mercy she won’t see what becomes of you. Your mother is dead, too, isn’t she? What extraordinary bad luck, that the people who care about you, Mo, die so easily.”
He couldn’t speak.
She patted his shoulder, then removed her hand. “Anabin is fond of confectionary,” she said. “He has a sweet tooth. Are you going to the Cliff Hangar tonight? I understand there’s going to be karaoke.”
