The Year of the Crocodile

by Courtney Milan

  You would like Hong Mei.

  Not that.

  You would get a fucking kick out of this cake.

  Not that either. I’m doing my best to not be a complete basket case. I’ve managed to succeed with semi-reasonable regularity, at least since I got out of rehab. It’s one thing to send emails into the fucking ether to wither and die unread. It’s another to hold complete, imaginary conversations about day-to-day events with that same fucking ether. I’ve given myself far too much latitude with regard to my stupid self-indulgent shit. Pretending that things are like they once were, like I can just have a conversation as if everything is still hunky-fucking-dory? There’s a superlatively self-indulgent fucking falsehood.

  Instead, I send a variant of the same email I’ve sent every day since last July.

  Hey, asshole.

  In case you were wondering, and you weren’t, you’re still completely fucking wrong. Fuck off with your stupid bullshit. I’m not over you. I still love you. I will always love you.

  TINA

  Things are going well. My sister Mabel suggested we play Pictionary, probably because Blake has an app that generates Pictionary prompts from the web, and she and Blake have teamed up against me and my mother.

  Mabel and Blake get along like gangbusters. They met almost a year ago; she came up and spent a week with us in May when I started my internship at bioLogica. While I was working, Blake showed her the entire Bay Area. He let her get her nose pierced, which he managed without parental permission by falsifying an adult ID for her on Cyclone machines. She’s worshipped him ever since. They couldn’t be more different—Mabel is Chinese, poor, and plays the saxophone, while Blake is a billionaire—but they have a weird connection where somehow three squiggles on a page turns into—

  “Moose,” Mabel is saying. “Antlers. Uh, Rocky and Bullwinkle.”

  Blake points at her. “Bam! You got it.”

  Mabel raises her arms in victory.

  “How do you even know who Rocky and Bullwinkle are?” I ask. “You’re fourteen.”

  “YouTube.” She shrugs.

  Blake shakes his phone, frowns, and shows the prompt to my mother.

  She peers at the screen and tilts her head in confusion. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “Antenna,” Mabel is saying. “Radio. Satellite dish… Uh, lots of them… SETI at home? No. I have it. Distributed computing.”

  “How?” My mother is shaking her head. “How? How do you get distributed computing from…” She holds up the paper. It’s a series of… Bows and arrows? With boxes?

  I have no idea.

  There’s a knock at the door.

  “Ah,” my mother says. “Tina, get the door.”

  “You’re just trying to distract us.” Mabel frowns in our direction. “Ignore them. Time is still running. Draw, Blake! Draw like a motherfucker!”

  Blake has had an interesting influence on my little sister’s vocabulary.

  I get the door. I’m paying more attention to the conversation behind me.

  “Toilet. Flushing. Whirlpool!”

  “We’re on fire!” Blake says.

  “No, we’re on water!”

  I open the door. I’m staring straight ahead at a white T-shirt. Plain. No logo. I look up, and I swallow. Adam Reynolds is standing in front of me. He’s holding a large, white box in one hand. A padded laptop case is slung over his opposite shoulder, and he’s looped a grocery bag over his free wrist. His hair, a mix of gray and white and dark, is a mess.

  He needs to shave.

  He needs to explain why he’s here.

  “Hey, Tina,” he says, like nothing is weird about his presence. “Nice to see you again.”

  “You see?” my mother says behind me. “Fireworks are traditional for the new year.”

  Shit.

  “Adam.” I swallow. “I didn’t know you were…” Son of a bitch. I glance behind me at Blake. He still hasn’t noticed his dad is here, but he must have known. He must have known. Right?

  Fuck. I’m not sure how to introduce Adam to my parents. I’ve fielded snide comments from my mom for almost a year. My dad has given me as many pointedly neutral remarks.

  Adam Reynolds? He’s not exactly the kind of man who backs down from snide comments.

  There will be mushroom clouds.

  Mine first. I’m going to kill Blake.

  But my mother stands up from her seat on the sofa. “Adam.” She walks toward him like she knows him. “So glad you could make it.”

  “Hey, Hong Mei. Thanks for inviting me.”

  They stop in front of each other, looking each other up and down like stiff-legged suspicious cats. My mom is a full foot shorter than Adam, but there’s a bristle to her that more than makes up the height difference. I have been dropped into bizarro world. How… What…

  He hands her the box. “I brought cake.”

  She frowns. “Cake? You call this cake? What did you do with my cake?”

  Her cake? What cake?

  “Had it couriered up to Cyclone,” Adam says with a shrug. “I figured that since I have to actually eat whatever shit I brought, I’d get something a little…” He pauses.

  “Think carefully,” my mother says, holding up a finger in warning. “Do not say that you obtained a better cake than the one I made for you with my own two hands.”

  Adam snaps his fingers. “Thanks. That’s precisely the fucking word I was looking for. Better. Yes, I’ll fucking call it better. What the fuck is But-R-Crème anyway? That shit sounds fake as fuck.”

  “Of course it’s fake,” my mother snaps. “But if you think fucking is fake, I feel very, very sorry for you.”

  The mushroom cloud is happening in front of my eyes.

  Instead of getting upset, Adam shrugs. “Point to you,” he says. “And yes, the cake I brought is a fucking salted caramel chocolate. It’s better. Ten out of ten people with fucking tastebuds prefer caramel to trans-fat emulsified fucking corn syrup, or whatever the fuck that shit was.” He wanders over to the table, laden with food. He sets down his cake box and takes some bottles out of the bag.

  “Soju,” he says.

  Goddammit. I was wondering why my mom didn’t get any soju this time around. I knew something was weird.

  “Adam,” my mother is saying, “let me introduce my husband. Jian, this is Adam Reynolds. Adam loves China.”

  “How exciting,” my father says. He stands up and holds a hand out to Adam. “So do I. We have that in common.”

  If I’d had time to prepare them, I’d have told them that he hates handshakes. It probably wouldn’t have changed anything.

  Adam looks at my father’s outstretched hand. Very slowly, he takes it.

  My mother and Adam have obviously met, or at least talked—how, and to what purpose, I have no idea. They’ve met and the world didn’t end.

  Surely the apocalypse is coming soon.

  “Espresso!” Mabel is saying. “Five seconds left. Blake, do another one, do—”

  She stops mid-sentence. Blake is frowning at us. “Dad?”

  “Hey.” Adam holds up his hand in a perfunctory wave. “Good to see you, asshole.”

  “Dad, what the fuck are you doing here?”

  Adam Reynolds ignores this. Instead, he uncaps the soju and accepts a plastic cup from my mom. “So how does one drink this shit?”

  “It tastes like crap,” my mom says. “Chug it all at once.”

  I shake my head behind him.

  “You sure you’re not an alcoholic?” my mother asks. “Tina never gave me a list of all the ways that you’re fucked up.”

  There is nowhere to hide. I look over at Blake. Help me, I mouth.

  “Workaholic,” Adam says. “Everything else stems from that.” He tilts the cup up, and thankfully, does not take my mother’s advice. He takes a sip and frowns pensively.

  My mother persists. “You know what you need to get everyone’s mind off your big drug scandal?”

  Shit
. This is not happening. I almost whimper. The only thing worse than my mom yelling at Adam Reynolds about human rights abuses is my mom offering him helpful advice. This will not go well. This…

  “What do I need?” He gives her a curious smile. “I’m gonna bet Martin in PR will fucking love your advice.”

  “A sex scandal,” my mom says.

  “I was right.” Adam looks up. “Martin’s gonna love it.”

  “Sex is much more interesting than drugs. These days, so few things qualify as a true scandal, though. And you’re not married, so cheating is not a possibility.” She frowns. “Probably you’d need an orgy to really get attention. And pictures. Pictures are more likely to go viral than text. I read that. You should tell Martin.”

  Adam Reynolds chokes on his soju at the word orgy. “Interesting idea. No fucking thank you.”

  My father looks at him. “I never would have expected Adam Reynolds to be a prude. This is interesting information.”

  Oh, shit. They’re double teaming him now.

  Adam sets down his soju. His eyes narrow. “I’m not a fucking prude.”

  “Yes, you are!” Blake calls from across the room. “Don’t believe him!”

  “No, I’m not. Just because I believe in personal privacy and—”

  “Personal privacy?” My mom shakes her head. “You believe in personal privacy? Forgive me if I am misremembering events. You announced to the entire world that you were a two-bit crack whore, and—”

  Adam is staring at her in disbelief. This whole thing is going wrong. Terribly wrong. Exactly as I knew it would.

  My mom snaps her fingers. “Ah. I’m so sorry. English is not my first language. Sometimes I make mistakes. Did I say two-bit crack whore? I meant recovering crack whore.” She leans over and pats his hand. “I know the difference must be very important to you, even if nobody else will see it.”

  I’m not even sure what to say. How to make this better.

  Adam Reynolds practically explodes in laughter, shaking his head. “You’re not bad,” he says, “for a commie cult member.”

  He may be laughing, but I have gone to DEFCON 5. My parents practice Falun Gong, which is illegal in China. It’s the reason they were granted asylum in the United States when we moved here years ago.

  China’s official stance is that Falun Gong is an extremely complicated cult. His statement is the offhand equivalent of tossing a grenade.

  But my mother simply shakes her head. “You’re just saying that because you can’t do it.”

  “What can’t I do?”

  “Falun Gong,” my father puts in. “A simple series of exercises. Requires a clear mind and flexible thinking. You can’t do it.”

  Adam Reynolds sets down his soju. “The fuck I can’t.”

  “Also, you will get yourself banned from China,” my father says.

  “I’d like to fucking see them try.”

  And that is how our parents first meet. Adam Reynolds takes off his shoes in my parents’ living room and ends up practicing “Buddha Stretching a Thousand Arms” while my mother watches, eating cake and offering pointers like, “If you do everything this fast, no wonder you don’t want to have an orgy on film. It would be embarrassing for you.”

  Adam Reynolds looks over at her. “Shut the fuck up and admit you like my cake.”

  She frowns at it. “Edible, I suppose.”

  My father shakes his head. “Never get involved in a land war with Hong Mei,” he says, “when cake is on the line.”

  Adam gives him a flat stare. “So it comes to this. I will eat the piece in front of me. You will eat the piece in front of you.”

  Funny. I knew when they met there would be a nuclear explosion. I just didn’t realize that they would end up laughing and mangling Princess Bride after the radiation had dissipated.

  By the end of the night, my dad is doing shots with Adam Reynolds. Adam is deemed not quite sober enough to drive, and when he talks about getting a car, my mother makes shocked noises.

  “A total waste of money,” she says in disbelief. “We have a perfectly good couch. Stay here.”

  No fucking way will he accept, I’m thinking.

  He accepts.

  Adam Reynolds. Multibillionaire. Sleeping on my parents’ couch. My mom gets him blankets; my dad finds him an extra toothbrush and a pair of sweats that will undoubtedly be too loose at the waist and too short in the leg.

  We are all about to head off to bed.

  “Hey,” Adam says. “Tina. Blake. Mabel.”

  Blake and I stop, hand in hand.

  Adam is still in jeans and a T-Shirt. He gives me a goofy smile. I would never have guessed that Adam Reynolds would be silly when he’s drunk.

  But he stands up and rummages in the computer bag that he brought with him. “I have these.”

  He pulls out a handful of red envelopes.

  My breath sucks in. One of the things about being young and Chinese—particularly if, like me, you grew up with very little money—is that you learn to be mercenary at the lunar new year. It’s traditional for adults to give red envelopes to children. The theory is that what they give away will come back to them over the course of the year.

  Everyone we know is like us: varying degrees of struggling. That means that the red envelopes I once collected usually had a dollar in them, maybe ten if it was a close family friend.

  But Adam Reynolds? I have no idea what Adam Reynolds will give. Blake explained to me once that anything under a hundred grand didn’t even seem like real money to him.

  Mabel approaches first.

  “Gong xi fa cai,” Adam says in semi-passable Chinese, handing her an envelope. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he had been practicing the phrase.

  “Gong xi fa cai,” she replies.

  Blake is next. “Gong xi fa cai, asshole,” Adam says to his son. He passes over the envelope with one hand, as is traditional, and Blake takes it. The fistbump that follows is not traditional.

  Then it’s my turn. “Gong xi fa cai,” he says to me.

  I almost say it back. They’re just words, ones I say without thinking about their meaning. Happy New Year, essentially. Except that’s not what these particular words actually mean.

  Wishing Adam wealth and prosperity for the new year is like wishing a shark more ocean. He can’t swim through the tiniest fraction of what he already has.

  I’m supposed to do something risky this month. I’m not sure if there’s anything riskier than asking Adam Reynolds a personal question.

  “What would you want?” I ask him. “If I could wish any one thing for you, would you really pick wealth and prosperity? Or would you ask for something else?”

  He looks at me. His pupils are dilated. I can smell soju on his breath. For a second, he looks old—older than his fifty years, older even than he looked sitting in the hospital after his heart attack.

  He rubs one hand through his graying hair, sending it up into little spikes. Then he looks away.

  “One more email,” he says. “I want one more email.”

  I don’t know what he means. I tilt my head toward Blake, a questioning look in my eyes. Blake shakes his head in confusion.

  “Then I hope you get a hundred emails,” I tell him.

  He smiles. There’s no mirth in the expression. Instead, there’s something almost haunting about his face.

  “Nah,” he says. “I’m not drunk enough to hope for that.”

  3

  ADAM

  The apartment is dark. The couch is surprisingly comfortable. It’s the fucking alcohol that won’t let me sleep. That, and Tina’s question.

  What do I want?

  A million things I’m never going to have. But this one? The one I asked for?

  That, I can imagine. I can make a case for one more email. I can imagine that one exists, stuck in the Cyclone mail servers. Maybe he left one last message hedged by a delivery date. Maybe it’s still coming.

  I want to believe it could exist.
I want to think that it’s not completely, utterly, finally over.

  It’s over. It’s so fucking over that I watched it turn to fucking ash.

  My stupid wish is just the alcohol fucking with my mind. Maybe. Maybe there’s more.

  I pull my phone off the floor where it’s charging and open my mail.

  I’m trying not to imagine the way he would have laughed at me throughout the evening. He’d have handled this entire situation with nuance and grace. My dispute resolution tactic has always been to barge in, guns blazing, f-bombs away. I wish he were here, but I’m not him. I can’t ever be him.

  I miss his fucking nuance.

  I don’t look for a response to my last message. I’m fucked enough to send messages to his abandoned email box. I’m not so fucked that I believe he’ll actually respond.

  Once, I told someone that the five stages of grief were inefficient—that anyone with a fucking clue could navigate the waters of bullshit with just two. Turns out denial is not as unfamiliar to me as I had claimed.

  My typical denial usually runs to extraneous bullshit posturing, but I’m drunk and stripped of my defenses. Tonight, I can’t manage the crap.

  I stare at the empty message field for a minute before typing.

  Hey, gorgeous.

  I’m finally beginning to understand what you told me. I thought that without you to soften me up, I’d eventually ossify and break into fucking pieces. Turns out I’m not that fucked. As much as it pains me to admit it, you were fucking right about one thing. I’m going to be okay.

  Don’t fucking think it changes anything else. You were still wrong. I love you. I will always love you.

  BLAKE

  “I think,” Tina whispers to me, “this is what getting along looks like. For our parents, at least.”

  We are lying in her bed after midnight, listening to the sounds of her household winding down. Her sister has been banished to the TV room, giving us a small semblance of privacy. It’s a twin bed, which means the only way to sleep is tangled up in each other. Her head rests against my shoulder; her hands are against my chest.