After dropping off Fiona at her place I drove slowly to my house. I knew that my mother was going to arrive the next day, and yet I dreaded arriving so much I pulled into the neighborhood park and sat on a bench for a good while. The silence allowed me to reflect on many things, including the one thing I really did not want to think about, which was that I would be leaving before the summer was over. But even that was not enough for me to prefer going back home. When I eventually mustered the courage to leave, the sun was already starting to set. I parked the car inside the garage and then ascended the steps to the door, unlocking it and pushing it open.

The inside of the house was dark and empty, something I rarely saw, due to my mother mostly being at home when I was. So I walked over to the couch in the living room and sat down, looking past the entry hallway to the stairs. A shudder instantly climbed down my spine as I remembered what happened at Uncle Chiu’s house. I found myself pulling out my revolver and cocking the hammer, aiming the barrel at the base of the steps. For a moment, I thought I could see a shadow descend from the second floor. I don’t know if it was a few seconds or a few minutes before I accepted the fact that I was alone in my home. But even if I knew that in my head, I could hardly get my arm to move; it felt like it had frozen in place. Something came over me and I realized that my finger had drifted from the trigger guard to the trigger. I snapped out of it and gently uncocked the weapon. I then stood up and holstered it before making my way to the light switches and flicking them on. I turned on the television to create some background noise, and then called Eddie and Jack, telling them to meet me at the diner. Everything was still on when I left the house.

I got to the diner way before their shifts ended, and so I ordered a plate of French fries and coffee so that they would let me sit there while I read the newspaper on the counter. There was nothing too interesting going on in the articles. I recall that now because I remember some of the shit that happened later that month, and I didn’t read any of it in the paper. I must have read some of the articles half a dozen times before I heard a familiar voice.

“Yo.” Jack took off his headphones and placed the Mover player on the table. “Check it out.”

“Wow,” I blurted out instinctively, picking it up. “How much overtime did you work to buy this?”

“Too much man, I got all this skin peeling off my damn fingers.” He held his hands up to show me.

“Looks pretty bad.”

“Give it a listen.”

I put the headphones on and pressed play. I recognized the voice of Fei Yu Ching, but hadn’t heard the song that was playing before. I glanced up at Jack, lifting the piece covering my right ear and pushing it behind. “Don’t you like Run DMC and that other New York shit?”

“Uncle Wang gave me this tape when I left and I wanted to save him some face by listening to it on my way out. Left my other tapes in the car. Want me to get one?”

I lifted my hand. “That’s fine, let’s just wait for Eddie. Fry?”

Jack grinned. “Sure.”

Jack sat down across from me and started digging into the fries. I finished reading my article before folding the paper and shoving it into the corner.

“Well? How was the trip?” Jack asked.

“Pretty good.”

“Score big?”

I chuckled in annoyance. “Something like that.”

I picked up the newspaper and started reading it again, with the sound of Jack’s munching as white noise in the background. This sort of thing was normal for us. We were secure enough around each other not to have to talk all the time. When Eddie arrived I put down the paper again and explained what was going on, because I knew he would remain silent until I got to the point. “I’m going back for military service.”

“What!” Jack exclaimed.

Eddie folded his arms.

Jack placed two fingers on the paper as if he was debating some article with me. “I was pretty sure you were going to send your mom back without you. Save a bit of money, get rid of her by buying her ticket or whatever. Fiona runs away from her shitty dad and moves in with you. She’s smart right? You’d make the mortgage somehow—”

“Fiona wouldn’t leave her home,” Eddie interrupted.

“I need to do it eventually,” I said. “And I wasn’t going to go to college here or out there. Better to go now.” I could see in Eddie’s eyes that he knew there was more to the story, but he also wasn’t going to press the issue.

“I don’t buy it,” said Jack.

I spread my arms across the table. “Don’t know what to tell you. That’s what’s going on.”

Jack shook his head. For several seconds afterward Eddie nodded idly while Jack made various flabbergasted noises.

“What do you want to do now?” asked Eddie, breaking the impasse.

“Karaoke.” I knew that was not what Eddie meant, but I really needed something loud to drown out my thoughts, and that was the first thing that came to mind. Jack’s frown turned back into a grin. Eddie looked pensive.

But the three of us finished the plate in short time, drove to the new Rockville Metro Station and went into the city. We found a karaoke bar in Chinatown and went in. So for a bit of background, the drinking age was brought up to twenty one in 1982, not that that really mattered. It’s hard to explain to somebody now how disconnected our community was from the general populace at the time, but I just want to say we didn’t get the memo on alcohol. In Chinese culture there was never really a drinking age, particularly when it involved family parties. As long as children had maybe half or at most one bottle a night no one would say anything. Beyond that, there was definitely a reluctance of enforcement during the crack epidemic, even more so the more Chinese an enclave was. If an officer decided to take a peek there were various ways to get them to look away, part of what the uncles did in their routine work.

The bar we arrived at was the type with girls in tight, shiny dresses and stockings walking around. People joked about women doing this and that to pay their college tuition, and I was sure there were a few Georgetown girls around the block. But even at that age I knew a lot of these women were there to fuel their substance habits. Those types of girls were easy to spot, and I didn’t like them. So I passed by a bunch of the patrons and hostesses without thinking much about them until we got to our room. We sat down in the booth and Jack began cycling through the machine to find some song by Leslie Cheung. I didn’t understand Cantonese, and so I sort’ve zoned out as he sang until the waitress came.

She was in a shiny golden dress but her hair was not permed in the popular style of the day. Instead, it was just naturally straight down. Her small studded earrings reflected the light emanating from the disco ball. I could instantly tell that she was not a crackhead, but she seemed a bit different from the sheltered, amateurish Georgetown girls I had seen in the bars before as well. She was not shy, and yet was perfectly distant from us. I looked from her heels up to her skirt, then up to her eyes, but she didn’t seem to notice. It was then that I thought she reminded me of some older version of Fiona.

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“Drink?” she asked.

I blinked.

“Drink?” she repeated in Chinese, in a way that made my heart pound a little harder.

“Taiwan Beer. For all of us,” I pointed around.

“Sure.”

She opened the door and left.

Though Eddie was concentrating on the lyrics on the screen, I could somehow feel his non existent gaze burning through me. I didn’t care, and after a few beers I was going to care even less. By the time we sang some songs and drank multiple rounds of beers, Eddie was passed out on the couch like he usually was. Jack already left to go to a private room with one of the girls he had passed in the hall on his way to the bathroom. And so I was left alone in a way, watching as the words scrolled by on the screen. The blue bars slowly filling in the empty characters were somehow comforting to me. I had already given up singing an hour ago. I heard a knock on the door.

“You done?” the waitress from earlier asked.

“Whenever my friend gets back yeah, we’ll call a cab.”

“I can call one for you.”

“That’s fine.”

The woman shrugged. “Have a good rest of your night then,” she said, and then turned around.

“I’m going back for military service,” I said before she could leave.

She stepped back into the room, glanced out into the hall, and then back into the room. “Are you coming back here before you go?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“I have some stuff for my brother. Could you give it to him?”

“No problem.” I didn’t care I was being used. I just liked her presence, particularly the sound of her voice. “I’m sure I can make room for it.”

She smiled for the first time that night, a smile I will never forget. “Thanks. See you again, then.”

I waved. “Bye”

Eventually Jack came back, we called a cab, and all made it home around sunrise. That was good because even in my state at the time I didn’t want to go into my house at night. Some morning news program was playing as I ascended the steps to my room. I barely got undressed before collapsing into my bed and falling asleep.

When I woke up I could smell my mother cooking something downstairs. So I put on my clothes and then descended the steps, making my way to the kitchen. I saw her standing there in her apron, moving the wok back and forth, the contents flipping casually through the air. It was hard to tell what sort of mood she was in. My guess is she enjoyed the cruise more than she thought she would. But I knew she knew what I had been doing the whole time. I took a seat further from the kitchen entrance and waited. A few minutes later, my mom placed a plate of fried pork noodles with cabbage on the table in front of me, then a cup of tea next to it. She then sat down across from where I was sitting.

“You’re not eating?” I asked.

“Already did, while you were sleeping,” she replied in Chinese. She then frowned. “Something wrong?”

“I’ve decided to to go back and fulfill my service,” I said.

There was a flash of a smile, but then my mother frowned. “Why?” she asked.

“You can go do that Tourism Department job,” I said.

“What about Miss Lee?”

“She always knew this would come at some point. I’ll write to her.”

I could tell my mother wasn’t pleased with that last bit, but I never found lying to her about this particular issue to do me any good. I suspected women always knew how men felt about other women.

My mother changed the subject. “We’ll stay in the guest house for a while, but I’m hoping to get a place of our own. Maybe near Dan Shui. The ocean would be nice, any ocean as long as it isn’t the Atlantic.”

“That sounds great,” I said absentmindedly.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” she suggested.

I picked up the pace on eating my noodles.

My mom smiled. “Eat slowly, we have time.”

I finished my food and washed my hands. While I was doing that my mom got her coat and waited for me at the front door. When we reached the sidewalk below she hooked her arm into mine, and we walked in silence until we reached the park.

“When I met your father he was still in the Marines. He was on leave from some sort of mission, and we met at a ball. I spent almost every moment I could with him until he left again. You were conceived during that time.”

I had heard this story in bits and pieces before, whether from my mom or from relatives, never from my dad. I only nodded and smiled. This first half of my father’s life was the one people liked to remember. For a soldier with few educational credentials the part I didn’t understand was why he separated himself so completely from the government after all those years of service. If he had stuck working in the army to one degree or another, my life would have looked completely different.

“He later helped our friends in South Vietnam. It’s a shame, all those people who had vilified President Johnson. We would have won.”

“Uh huh,” I managed.

“Serving your country is a beautiful thing. And women like a man in uniform, you know.”

I didn’t like how she usually ignored the fact that I was with Fiona, but it’s not like this was the first time she did it.

She continued. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions. There’s a lot about our family that I didn’t purposefully keep secret from you, I just never had the chance to talk about it. Life here in the States was a lot more hectic than we anticipated. We just didn’t have much time, you know.”

“I just want to meet some of my old friends before I enlist. See some mountains, go hiking or something. I don’t want to think too much about family stuff before then. Besides, we have time to talk about it, don’t we?”

My mom patted the back of my hand. “Of course, of course,” she reassured. “We can talk about it later.”

The fact that we were going home soon obviously put my mom in a good mood, and more than any time before then she avoided talking about anything that she knew would bring on an extended discussion. We chatted a bit about her cruise. She didn’t like swimming so she spent most of her free time reading and writing while she looked at the water. She met a group of Koreans and hit it off with them, though she made sure not to mention to them that she was ethnically Chinese. Our last time apparently was not that uncommon in Korea either. While she was relaying her experience I tried to come up with the words to talk about my upcoming trip to Montana with Fiona. If she noticed my diminishing attention, she didn’t mention it.

“One more circle and then go home?” she asked.

I feigned a smiled. “Okay, mom.”