He leans forward, presses his forehead into the steering wheel.
“Last night with a credit card because I want to see the world.”
“You have a credit card?”
“I got my own a few weeks ago. There are perks to hanging out with an older woman.”
He pulls his forehead off the wheel, but still stares straight ahead not meeting my eyes. “What if something happens to you?”
“Nothing will.”
“But what if it does?”
“I have the pills, Olly. They’re going to work.”
He squeezes his eyes shut and puts his hand on the key. “You know we have plenty of world right here in Southern California.”
“But no humuhumunukunukuapua’a.”
A small half smile forms at the corner of his lips. I need to make it spread across his entire face.
He turns to face me. “What are you talking about?”
“The humuhumunukunukuapua’a.”
“What is a humu-whatever?”
“The state fish of Hawaii.”
His smile broadens. “Of course it is.” He turns the key in the ignition. His eyes linger on his house and his smile fades, just slightly. “How long?”
“Two nights.”
“OK.” He grabs my hand and gives it a quick kiss. “Let’s go see this fish.”
Olly’s mood gets better, lighter somehow the farther away from his house that we get. This trip gives him the perfect excuse to let go of the burden of his family for a little while, at least. Also, an old friend of his from New York, Zach, lives in Maui.
“You’ll love him,” he tells me.
“I’ll love everything,” I respond.
Our flight’s not until 7 a.m. and I have a detour I want to make.
Being in his car is like being in a very loud, very fast moving bubble. He refuses to open the windows. Instead, he presses a button on the dashboard that prevents air circulation. The sound of the tires on asphalt is like someone hissing low and constant into my ears. I fight the urge to cover them.
Olly says we’re not going very fast, but to me we’re hurtling through space. I’ve read that passengers on high-speed trains say that the world outside the train blurs from the speed. I know we’re not going anywhere near that fast. But still, the landscape moves too quickly for my slow eyes to hold on to. I barely catch glimpses of houses in the brown hills in the distance. Overhead signs with cryptic symbols and writing come and go before I can decipher them. Bumper stickers and license plates appear and disappear in a blink.
Even though I understand the physics of it, I find it strange that my body could be moving though I am sitting still. Well, not exactly still. I’m pushed backward into my seat whenever Olly accelerates and I lurch forward whenever he brakes.
Every so often we slow down enough and I can see other people in their cars.
We pass a woman shaking her head and slapping at the steering wheel with her hands. Only after we’ve passed her do I figure out that she was probably dancing to music. Two kids in the back of another car stick their tongues out at me and laugh. I don’t do anything because I’m not sure what the etiquette is for that.
Gradually we slow down to a more human speed and leave the highway.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“She lives in Koreatown.”
My head buzzes from trying to look everywhere at once. There are brightly lit signs and billboards written only in Korean. Since I can’t read the language, the signs seem like art pieces with beautiful, mysterious forms. Of course, they probably just say things as mundane as Restaurant or Pharmacy or Open 24 Hours.
It’s early, but still there are so many people doing so many things—walking or talking or sitting or standing or running or riding bicycles. I don’t quite believe they’re really real. They’re just like the mini figures I pose in my architecture models, here to give Koreatown the vigor of life.
Or maybe it’s me that’s not really real, not really here at all.
We drive along for a few minutes more. Eventually we pull up to a two-story apartment complex with a fountain in the courtyard.
He undoes his seat belt but makes no move to leave the car. “Nothing can happen to you,” he says.
I reach over and take his hand. “Thank you,” is all I can think to say. I want to tell him that it’s his fault that I’m out here. That love opens you up the world.
I was happy before I met him. But I’m alive now, and those are not the same thing.
Infected
Carla screams and covers her face when she first sees me.
“Are you a ghost?” She grabs my shoulders, squeezes me against her bosom, rocks me side to side, and then squeezes me again. I don’t have any air left in my lungs when she’s finished.
“What are you doing here? You can’t be here,” she says, still squeezing me.
“I’m happy to see you, too,” I squeak.
She pulls away, shakes her head as if I were some kind of a miracle and pulls me back in for more.
“Oh, my girl,” she says. “Oh, how I missed you.” She holds my face in her hands.
“I missed you, too. I’m so sorry about—”
“Stop. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“You lost your job because of me.”
She shrugs. “I got another one. Besides, it’s you that I miss.”
“I miss you, too.”
“Your mama did what she had to do.”
I don’t want to think about my mom. So I look around for Olly, who’s standing off in the distance.