Frankly in Love

by David Yoon

  “It’s nothing, I’ll tell you later.”

  “Big eyes, though,” mumbles Joy, and again winces at herself.

  “Huh?” says Brit.

  “Oh my god, shut up,” I tell Joy. I say it in my five-, six-, seven-year-old voice.

  “I’ll shut up,” says Joy.

  The air has changed. No doubt about it. It no longer feels quite like I’m here with Brit and Joy’s here with Wu. Right now it’s feeling strangely like I’m here with Joy, and we’ve each brought our respective problems along.

  Right now it feels like planes of reality crashing together. I have my reality, which Joy has never been a part of. Joy has hers, and I’ve never seen it either, aside from little glimpses of her closed room when it’s the Songs’ turn to host a Gathering. And there is the entirely separate reality of the Gatherings themselves, plowing right through the middle of everything like an armada of icebreaker ships.

  Joy gives me a sad look: You know I’m right, Frank.

  My eyes drop to her shoes: You are, Joy.

  A buzzer bell razzes the silence. It’s like a signal for all of us to stop holding hands. So we do, and the two couples now become four people standing apart.

  chapter 6

  dying

  It’s Friday. Brit’s absent today to go on a trip with her parents. They’re designing some kickass private residence in wine country, so they’re making a little family vacation out of it. They’ll even let Brit taste a fine wine or two, like a 1984 Cabernet Merlot Pinot Somethingsomething.

  When I try to picture sipping fine wine with Mom-n-Dad, I snort so hard that Q looks up from his game thing.

  “What?” says Q.

  “Nothing.”

  “Is Brit Means a funny girl?”

  “Huh? No. I mean yes.”

  We’re sitting in front of the school, waiting for Q’s mom to pick us up. Q is tapping away, building some kind of sprawling miniature factory full of conveyor belts and automatons on an alien planet.

  “Mom says Italian for dinner, by the way,” says Q.

  “I love Italian.”

  “Then why don’t you marry Italian?” says Q.

  My phone buzzes. I always keep it on vibrate—Q and I find ringtones depressing and believe they are forlorn cries for validation in a noisy, jaded world. “I’ll laugh in a sec,” I say, and look at the screen.

  At a rest stop now, says Brit. Already missing you super bad

  Me too, I say. The missing you part, not the rest stop part

  lol my funny boy

  Please say that one more time

  My funny boy

  I miss you too, I say.

  I miss you more

  No I miss you more

  No I miss you more

  Ha we stoopid

  “So this is how it ends,” says Q.

  I look up from my fartphone. “What?”

  Q gestures sadly at the screen. “Our friendship.”

  “Shut up,” I say, and laugh, and Q laughs too.

  But just to make doubly sure, I turn the phone off and make an unmistakable show of stuffing it deep into my backpack.

  * * *

  • • •

  “To the left,” says Q. He passes a dish of olive oil.

  “To the right,” I say, and pass the basket of bread.

  “Now dip, baby, dip,” we say.

  Q’s mom snaps her fingers in time to the music: a clean KidzRock! version of a racy booty-house classic that legend says was once banned from the radio. Q’s mom looks forever pleasantly surprised, even when her face is at rest. Q’s dad gets up to bring waters, and performs the most perfect dad-dance along the way. Q’s house is always filled with music and dad-dances. Q’s mom-n-dad even kiss sometimes.

  Dinner at my house is a goddamn wake by comparison.

  Q’s sister, Evon, wanders in like a doe appearing in a wood, rose-gold headphones and all. She glances down with mild astonishment: Dinner is happening? Oh my.

  The Lees pray before dinner. But they do it quickly, with eyes open. They don’t even bother to turn the music down. They go to church on Sunday, but not if there’s a big game on. They’re postseason Christ fans, Q likes to say.

  “Good Lord in heaven bless this food and bless this family and bless Frank for blessing this table and our house with his blessed presence,” says Q’s dad so quickly it sounds like he’s muttering to a sink yet again full of dirty dishes.

  “Amen,” says Q.

  “Amen,” say Q’s parents.

  Evon is too hot for amens, and says nothing.

  “Amen,” I say. Being Korean-American, I’m technically Presbyterian by default. But I couldn’t even tell you what a Presbyt is or what it tastes like, to be honest.

  Another KidzRock! song comes on, scrubbed of any bad words. It’s cute how Q’s parents still play this music for us even though we’re technically adults at this point.

  “Q says you have a girlfriend now,” says Q’s mom.

  “Jesus christ almighty hang gliding up in heaven,” I say to Q.

  “Do you deny it?” says Q.

  “No, I supply it,” I sigh.

  “Then what’s there to hide?”

  “I’m happy for you,” says Q’s dad, chewing with alarming speed. His glasses slip, and he pushes them up, and chews and chews, making his glasses slip again. “Is she very dope?”

  Q and I laugh so hard that a noodle comes poking out of one of Q’s nostrils.

  “You’re so funny, Mr. Lee,” I say.

  “Frank, come on,” he says. “Call me David.”

  “Okay, Mr. David.”

  “Oh, so, Dad,” says Q, “I need you to write to the teachers about next week.”

  Next week is this geek trip Q is taking up north to Stanford—also known as The Harvard of the West—where his geek uncle is doing a PhD. Q’s plan is to get into Stanford and shoot lasers into live monkey brains to see how they react. This is called optogenetics.

  “I bet you’re crunk for the trip,” says Q’s dad.

  “Yes, Dad, I am extremely crunk,” says Q.

  “Should be tight,” says Q’s dad.

  “So tight,” says Q.

  I cough into my noodles.

  “Okay,” says Q’s mom. “Now you’ve got me laughing.”

  Q’s dad simply sits and chews and feigns obliviousness. He excels at being king of the dorks; he is proudly aware of this particular genius of his.

  “So do your parents like this Brit girl?” he says.

  “Honey,” says Q’s mom.

  “We haven’t set a date for the wedding yet,” I say.

  That gets a nice laugh. Except for Evon, who’s still lost in her own private musical world. Q’s mom waves a hand in front of her face.

  Evon takes off the headphones and takes a small bite. Meanwhile, Q scrambles to finish his food.

  “Yesssss,” he says. “I win.”

  “Win what?” says Evon.

  “Yeah, I didn’t know this was a race,” I say. I share a quick look with Evon.

  “Q is a baby,” she says.

  “We’re literally the same age,” says Q.

  “Body of a teen, mind of a baby,” says Evon.

  “Although technically,” says Q, “I’m older since I emerged from the vagina three seconds before you did.”

  “Lord, I beg you have mercy on me,” says Q’s mom.

  “Come on,” says Q. “Let me show you my game.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  We bolt up from our seats and dash off, but a mighty ahem stops us.

  It’s Q’s dad, eyeing our dirty plates. “Ten years and I still have to remind you, Frank?”

  “Holy cow, is it really ten?” I say.

  “It is really ten,” sa
ys Q’s dad. He’s looking at us with gooey eyes, and I know he still sees us as little kids flinging our bikes down onto the front lawn.

  Q and I look at each other and say, “Huh!” at the same time.

  On the way into the kitchen I spot a photo of me and Q and my parents from three years ago, at our junior high school graduation.

  I point at the photo with my chin. “You still have that thing?”

  “Yep,” says Q, putting our plates into the sink. “Do you?”

  “Yep,” I say. But that’s not true. I have no idea where our copy of the photo is. There are no matching photos of Q in my house. The last time Q was at my house was months ago, when he came to drop off something I’d left at his house. I can’t actually remember the last time he stepped foot past the foyer.

  “Game on,” says Q.

  * * *

  • • •

  I’m watching a little homunculus run around a 2D landscape from a God-view perspective. Q clicks and pans with the speed of a card magician. It’s fast, but not incomprehensible. He’s mining resources and building an elaborate system of factories to bring his homunculus hero through the Stone Age, Iron Age, and beyond.

  We’re in Q’s room. Q’s room is pretty small, with just a small desk, two narrow bookshelves, and a sofa (Q prefers sleeping on sofas, because they are dual-use). What Q’s room is is mostly screen. A tiny projector sits on a faux-marble cornice and throws the giant view of the game onto a blank wall that Q has painted with some kind of special projector screen paint for maximum image quality.

  “The story is,” says Q, “you’ve crash-landed on this alien planet, and you have to build up an escape rocket from scratch using whatever’s on hand.”

  “Cool.”

  My pocket buzzes, and I sneak a peek. There’s a picture of Brit looking with one big eye through a wine goblet like it’s a magnifying glass.

  I single-thumb three hearts back and put it away.

  “But the aliens don’t like me,” says Q. “Because I’m cutting down their forests and polluting their environment. So you also have to build weapons to kill them off.”

  “Wow, that’s super amoral.”

  “I know, it’s a bummer aspect of the game’s design. It’s called Craft Exploit.”

  “Also, since you’re the interloper here, shouldn’t you be considered the alien, not them?”

  “It’s conflicting, right? Definitely a dude made this game.”

  Q spots six warships approaching, and decimates them with a flurry of tiny missiles.

  “Probably a white dude,” I say.

  “Would explain the colonialist impulse,” says Q.

  Another buzz, another photo from Brit, this time of a package of paper napkins named Napkins à la Maison de Beaujolais. Brit’s added her comment beneath: J’adore French-for-no-reason branding.

  I stifle a chuckle and stash the fartphone before Q can notice.

  “Still, the game looks fun,” I say.

  “It is,” says Q. “Open source, too. I coded these lift-sorters, right here.”

  “Badass,” I say.

  Yet another buzz. I want another peek. I want another hit of Brit.

  But Q pauses the game. “Your phone’s really blowing up, huh.”

  Q stares at me.

  “Fine,” he says finally with an eyeroll. “Answer it.”

  “Just one last one, I promise,” I say.

  “The last one? Or the last-last one?”

  We’re coming back Sunday night! says Brit. Frank Li, I frankly need to see you.

  I feel my stomach wave hello. My ears grow warm. Gravity eases enough to loosen all the joints and nails and screws holding the world together until all its pieces are slowly tumbling free in a soft huge space lit only by the white rectangle beneath my thumbs. My girlfriend is texting me.

  I Frank Li need to see you too.

  Can I come to your house?

  Impossible, I think. Just forming the words would be impossible: Mom-n-Dad, this is Brit, and we’re going to lock ourselves in my room for hours like they do in teen movies.

  I’m racking my brain for alternate venues optimized for romance, but then I do a mental facepalm. I’m not free Sunday night.

  I type carefully. Shit, Sunday night I gotta help Dad out at work, I say, and add a sad face for extra sincerity. She must not think for a second that I’m blowing her off.

  Q has paused the game. He’s making eyebrows: at me, at my fartphone, at me again.

  “Almost done,” I say.

  “Sure.”

  “Really, almost done.”

  “Like our friendship.”

  Q turns back to his game. He’s up against a huge sudden wave of attacking aliens (I mean indigenous peoples) and frantically clicks to defend himself (I mean commit genocide).

  I’ll see you Monday, I say finally.

  I don’t know if I can wait that long, says Brit.

  “I’m dying,” says Q.

  I stash my phone. I could text all night, but: enough.

  “I’m dead,” says Q.

  “Let me try.”

  “That’s the guilt talking, right there.”

  “If I exterminate the aboriginals, will you be a happy exploiting camper again?”

  “It’s a game. I don’t make the rules.”

  “I know,” I say. “I know.”

  chapter 7

  planet frank

  I’m back at The Store. The three flies buzz above me. It’s not as hot today, so the chocolate can sit outside the walk-in cooler.

  It’s quiet. I look around, examining things. There’s a security camera system, aimed right at the counter and cash register. Beneath the counter is a little white button—press it, and the cops show up in minutes, at least in theory. Beneath that is a drawer, and within that is a loaded .38 Special revolver Dad has fired only twice: once at the firing range, and once into the sky during New Year’s Eve.

  I snap a pic of scrolls of lottery scratchers encased in Plexiglas and post it with the caption Stupid tax?

  My dad is mopping the floor when I see him stop, thump his aching arched back with a fist three times, and then resume.

  “Dad,” I say. “Let me do that.”

  “You know how to doing?”

  “It’s mopping.”

  He makes a point of showing me anyway. He holds the mop handle lightly, with just his fingers, and works it to one side like a gondolier would. He rinses the mop in a wheeled bucket, squeezes it in the vise, and continues on with an almost-easy stroll. It’s a weird way of mopping, to be sure, and when he finally lets me do it I can feel the strain in my back after just a few long sweeps.

  Dad works the cash register from his tall stool. An antique alarm clock radio from 1982 plays Korean AM church music and preaching. I understand none of it.

  It’s relaxing, this mopping.

  Bing-bong. A crazy-haired white man enters, dressed all in black, with plastic bags attached to his every limb. Mom-n-Dad have mentioned him before: The Store’s one and only white customer. Without a single word Dad grabs two six-packs of beer—Porky, the cheapest brand—and bags them: plastic, then paper, then plastic again. He’s got everything ready by the time the man even reaches the counter.

  “Hey, Frankie,” says the man. I’ve always wondered if he’s homeless. He looks—and smells—homeless.

  My dad’s English name is Frank, too. Frank Sr.

  “Charles,” says Dad.

  Charles casts a wild eye at me and holds it.

  “My son,” says Dad.

  “I’ve seen you,” says this crazy Charles dude. “You going to college?”

  “Gonna try,” I say as normally as I can, to offset the crazy.

  “They teach you how to mop in college?”

  “Uh,�
�� I say.

  Charles turns to Dad. “Only got a hundred, sorry.”

  “No problem,” says Dad, and makes change.

  Charles aims his blue-white eyes at me again. “I bet your folks keep you real clean,” he says, and makes to leave. But before he does, he gives me a tiny scroll of paper with icy hands.

  “That’s for you, if you’re so smart,” says the man, and leaves, bing-bong.

  Dad scoots me back behind the cash register. It’s like he’s worried I’ll fall prey to more Charleses if I’m exposed out among the aisles.

  “He very unique person,” says Dad. “Million dollar, he having. He own house, too.”

  “Wait, really?” I say. I want to examine the scroll, I want to hear more from Dad, but bing-bong, now here comes a young man with his wife, holding a small baby.

  “Paco,” hollers the young man, and salutes Dad.

  Paco is short for Francisco, which is Spanish for Frank.

  “Luis,” says Dad. “You out today? When you afuera?”

  “Yesterday, patron. I’m officially on probation.”

  “Congratulation,” says Dad. “Beautiful baby, eh? Hey, consentida. ¿Qué es nombre?”

  “Veronica,” says the wife.

  “Anyway felicitaciones,” says Dad. He tickles the little baby, and the wife holds her higher for him.

  The young man, Luis, slides beer and diapers across the counter. “Gimme a loosy too, holmes.”

  “You got it,” I say. I tap a cigarette from an open box under the counter and slide it over all sneaky-style. Luis feigns an itch and discreetly tucks it behind his ear. On his shoulder is a homemade tattoo: F People, the local gang.

  “This your son?” says Luis.

  “Frank, you saying hi,” says Dad.

  “Hey,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”