by YZ Chin
By the way, did you see the headlines? “ICE Using Psychiatry Records to Deport Young Immigrant.” It made me want to tell Katie and Bradley I told you so. I said I couldn’t see a professional therapist because it’d be on my record, and I was right. Of course I’m a privileged, documented (for now) immigrant, but the point is, there is no sanctity of privacy when it comes to the authorities. I feel for the immigrant in the news article. How betrayed he must be feeling. How unfair it all is, his cries for help used against him.
Again, I’m so thankful we found each other. I trust you.
After
Day Nine (Thursday)
By 6:00 p.m. I still hadn’t heard from Eamon. I messaged him again. “Stuck at work,” he replied. I paced the apartment, feeling antsy. There had to be something else I could do. I sifted through the accumulating pile of unopened mail until I found it, the list I’d made right after Marlin first left.
Home with Mummy (unlikely, based on phone call)
His office (possible, though need an in to get past building security)
Crashing with someone? Best friend Eamon (possible, all the way out in College Point)
Friends from work (possible, could verify by visiting office—see above)
Climbing gym partners? (can’t remember names other than Eamon)
Climbing gym (possible, given three-times-a-week routine)
Favorite restaurant (too close to apartment? worth a try anyway)
I still didn’t have a way into his office, especially now that Meg was on vacation. But I could go to the climbing gym. From the one time I’d been, I knew it was a place of artificial nature, the outdoors brought inside and given garish pops of color that shouted TOY! Marlin went there three times a week, or used to. He’d been so serious about this sport. It might have survived his transformation. Maybe what had shifted was simply software, while his hardware stayed the same: fingers that loved locking onto brightly colored replicated rock holds, feet that scrabbled and soared off plastic nubs.
I felt uneasy the moment I stepped into the gym. A strong stench of feet permeated the space, even though it was cavernous, warehouse-high. Bulbous rock walls bulged forth at odd angles. It was dizzying. The climbers, too, looked off to me, in a way I couldn’t pinpoint.
Maybe I would stand in the shadows as he ascended, grunting, up the highest rock wall in the gym. As he reached the top, I would rush forward and stand right underneath him. I’d shout out some pithy message of love at the exact moment he let go of the wall to come back down. He’d crash into me, and I’d fold into the mat. “I’m here for you,” I’d tell him, as the pain from broken bones and crushed body parts kicked in.
These were scenes inspired by East Asian dramas our mothers used to watch, long-running series from Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Korea. Marlin and I both scoffed at the dramas’ predictable, sentimental plots (many, many convenient cancer diagnoses when lovers needed to be star-crossed), though we also slyly followed along from the corners of our scornful eyes. Some primal human in us responded. We laughed when our moms wiped away tears and clucked their tongues, but really, there was a swelling in our chests too.
Heightened stakes and emotions—maybe that’s what Marlin wanted. In the 1990s Asian dramas we didn’t watch, the most expedient way to win back an angry lover was to stand in pouring rain outside their window until they felt you had suffered enough. Sometimes it took catching a bad cold to reach that threshold, sometimes physical collapse. I stood in the climbing gym and craned my neck, taking in the fifteen-foot bouldering walls. I imagined myself doing and saying the cheesy, cringe-inducing things from the dramas. I replayed my fantasy’s ending scene over and over: Marlin’s weight and my injuries combining to make my breath shallow, the unnatural angle of my leg or wrist making it clear that I had successfully crossed us over into a world in which things were different.
What I wanted was physical manifestation of my suffering. Bodily pangs that would legitimize this psychic hurt, make it quantifiable from smiley face to frowny face: How bad is the pain?
A roar echoed around the bouldering gym. Obediently, my attention snapped after the sound. In one corner of the gym half a dozen men were celebrating, clapping their hands, their faces angled adoringly up. The object of their cheer was a man holding on to a rock near the ceiling, his feet dangling. His body swayed rapidly, like a punching bag punched. Then he let go with a whoop and dropped all the way onto the mat beneath, his arms crossed at his chest. He was swarmed as soon as he got up, the cheering men extending fists for bumping. As if in response to their adoration, the man who’d dangled from the top of the wall pulled off his shirt. I saw, with a jolt, a logo featuring a Bender-like robot wearing a wig with flyaway white hair. The man, it was Josh.
I gasped and ducked my head, then felt foolish—there was nothing to hide behind. I looked around at the large, undivided space, so reminiscent of the open floor plans of tech companies. Then it clicked. All around me were men who looked nerdy from the neck up, but athletic and toned everywhere else. I had never before seen so many framed glasses paired with defined biceps in one place. Slouchy postures and impressive abs. Bad haircuts and thick forearms.
And their T-shirts, the dead giveaways, advertising things like annual summer retreats and hackathons, bearing the logos of tech companies, yes, but also those of law schools, dental schools, banks, and accounting firms. I remembered what Marlin had said when I asked him why he liked rock climbing so much. He said it was mentally challenging in addition to being physically demanding, and in this it was unlike most other sports. A bouldering route was like a problem-solving exercise, involving much more strategy than running or weight lifting.
Problem-solving exercises? Like in a job interview? I was puzzled. Why would you do those in your free time, when you’re supposed to relax?
Gotta stay sharp. He grinned.
There were many women in the climbing gym too. I noticed them now that I wasn’t solely focused on finding Marlin. Almost all of them were slender, with long limbs, their ponytails dancing as they soared up the walls. How light their bones must be, I thought. Their eyes, too, glazed over with the intensity of tackling problems that existed for no reason other than to be conquered.
I did an almost full sweep of the gym, careful to avoid the area Josh was in. The rental climbing shoes cramped my feet, bunching up my toes. Marlin wasn’t here, among all these smart people with brain cells to spare. As the tension of hope held tight dwindled away, I became light-headed, on the verge of tears again. “Weak,” I muttered. Then an impetuous energy sparked as if rising against this self-disgust. I eyed the rock walls and their preschool colors in contempt. What was so hard about clinging on?
The thick mat bounced under my feet as I walked toward a pink problem. That was what they were really called, these climbing routes—problems. I barely glanced at the difficulty rating attached to one of the rocks. Like software engineers, rock climbers started counting from zero instead of one, meaning a problem could be rated from zero (easiest) to something in the midteens (world-class hard). I craned my neck as far back as it would go, my hands resting on the labeled pink rock. I lived in a city of skyscrapers, I told myself. The top of the wall was not very far at all.
I swung my legs up. The momentum surprised me, making me kick my toes too hard into the wall. They already hurt in a dull way from the shoes’ crimp, so the additional pain was easy to ignore. I reached for the next pink hold just above my head, stretching out my arm. Each time I ascended up one rock, my body swayed away from the wall, flapping in air. It was as unsteady a feeling as I’d ever had, more precarious even than being on a roller coaster. I had to either reach the top or descend safely back to the mat; this in-between position was untenable—
My left foot slipped. I shrieked involuntarily as I felt the hard tug of gravity against my hands and right foot, now the only points of support attaching me to the wall. I flailed to get my left foot back in contact with a rock, but the haphazard movement swu
ng my right foot off too. I hung with my arms rigid, too stunned to kick my legs. Already I could feel the burn spreading through my fingers, as if the rocks they grasped were eating them away.
“Just let go!” someone shouted at me from the mat, a world away.
I looked up. The very last hold, perched near the top of the wall, was only a foot above. I thought of Marlin sitting on Eamon’s guest bed, so close but unreachable. With a loud exhalation I lifted one knee and planted it on a tolerably flat rock. The position hurt my kneecap, but I thought I could finish the problem that way, my arms pulling me up to the last rock, my weight supported by a half kneel. I strained skyward, trembling. My fingers brushed the edge of the final hold, and then I plummeted.
For a while there was no pain, only a dazed breathlessness.
“Are you okay?” A woman leaned over me.
I was about to nod and wave her off when an excruciating pain radiated through my left shoulder. Even my armpit seemed to pulse with hurt.
“No,” I gasped.
“Let me see,” she said, helping me up into a sitting position. I put all my upper-body weight on my right arm, braced against the dirty mat. I wanted the left side of my torso to cease existing.
“It’s dislocated,” the woman said. “May I?”
And before I could even process the question, my limp arm was pulled into place with a click. I looked down to see her chalk-smeared shoe curved against my thigh, bracing. Tears streaked my face. I had not been touched by a stranger for a very long time. When I opened my mouth, I found I didn’t know what to say in the face of such violent kindness. By then a small crowd had gathered around me, silently gawking. I felt debased even as I also felt saved.
After
Day Nine (Thursday)
Back home I stripped to my waist and gingerly tried out my recently dislocated shoulder. The internet said that to treat a dislocation is to “reduce” the affected area. I windmilled my reduced shoulder slowly, first forward, then backward. Had its range of motion been affected? I didn’t know, because I’d never really paid my shoulders any attention. They were not problem areas like my stomach or my butt. I imagined encircling my arms around Marlin’s back. Was this how I’d done it?
Afterward I lay on the couch, thinking about how I had no idea which continent I’d be on six months later, everything hinging upon a government form. In a few weeks it would be September, and our landlord would ask whether we wanted to renew our apartment lease. If I couldn’t even answer that, how could I possibly claim to be in control of my circumstances?
Eamon finally called.
“Sorry, there was an outage at work. It was all hands on deck.”
“Everything all right now?”
“Ehhhh . . .” He drew the sound out. “Anyway, what’s up?”
I told him about the job posting at Cachi I/O, for a senior software engineer. “You could apply,” I said.
“I’m confused. What’s the plan?”
“I would apply myself, but I’m not qualified. You are, though. You could apply, and then when you go on-site for an interview, you could check and see whether Marlin’s there.”
“I don’t know, that seems like a lot, just to see if he’s there.”
“A lot? You wanted to call the police. How is this ‘a lot’ compared to the cops?”
“Okay, but what do we do once we know he’s there? Am I supposed to quit my job and join Cachi?”
“No, no, of course not. I just want to know he’s still going to work. Hanging on to at least one part of his regular life. That’s a bit reassuring, right?”
Eamon didn’t say anything immediately.
“Please, Eamon. I’m asking you to help.”
“Fine. Okay. I’ll try. It’s not guaranteed they’ll want to interview me, though.”
“Oh! Thank you!” I was grateful, gushing. “It’s worth a try.”
“Any other ideas?”
“No, but—” I weighed my words, wondering whether I should say them out loud.
“What?”
“I’ve been wondering—when Marlin predicted you’d find a new girlfriend soon, why did you want him to stop? You said you suggested that I write a letter because you thought it would help me ‘move on.’ Doesn’t that imply you’ve ‘moved on’ from Emily?”
There was a long silence, which I didn’t dare interrupt, for fear that I’d offended Eamon and he’d change his mind about the Cachi I/O interview.
“It’s hard to explain,” he eventually said.
“I know,” I said uncertainly.
“It’s like, this is an area of my life I care so much about. It’s a touchy subject. When someone claims they know exactly what’s going to happen, when to me it’s something . . . mysterious and powerful, I just feel like they’re trivializing it. Does that make any sense?”
“I think so. Do you think he was trying to help?”
“Maybe, but it’s not actually helpful. Not for me, anyway. It reminds me of when my cousin was in a bad accident, and doctors said he might lose his leg. My aunt kept repeating to him, ‘You’re gonna be fine, your leg will be saved, don’t worry,’ and I could see my cousin getting more and more agitated and upset. It’s like, how could she know? She might be doing more harm giving him false hope, when he should be mentally preparing for any outcome.”
“You’re saying you didn’t believe Marlin about your love life.”
“I guess so.” Eamon sounded tired.
“Do you want to believe him?”
“No. Well, maybe. I’m not sure. I want what he says to come true, but I don’t want it to be because of him, or anyone else. Does that make sense?”
“Maybe,” I said. I paused, weighing my words. “Do you dream about his predictions? Or imagine them?”
“What? No. That’s weird. I don’t let them get to me that way.”
I thought a lot about our conversation after we hung up. Eamon had told Marlin to stop predicting the future. Eamon never let himself dwell on stories other people told about him. Why couldn’t I be the same way? I’d never thought to tell my mother I didn’t want to hear any more of her past life stories. Instead I fleshed in their contours, both with my waking imagination and in my dreams.
Could it be that I’d developed this tendency in my free-market, postcolonial childhood? Growing up in a former British colony meant that the first books I read were the most English stories possible, by the likes of Enid Blyton. The radio would be going while I read in the kitchen, broadcasting songs in different dialects from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Meanwhile I’d also catch sounds from the TV drifting in from the living room, carrying snippets of news reported in Malay. And on school holidays we’d go to cinemas and sit under long-stemmed ceiling fans to watch censored Hollywood movies. I drank it all in without question. No one taught me that these various media had their individual cultural contexts that informed their content. I’d been dipped indiscriminately into the great vat dyes of so many different cultures that were not strictly “mine,” never examining the biases of their origins until I was already a horrid patchwork quilt of clashing colors. (You see? “Vat dye” is a metaphor from Chinese. “Patchwork quilt”? From English.)
Marlin, too, had been raised in a similar environment, with the additional angle of being mixed-race. Growing up, he’d fed on even more diverse sources of narratives. Had he been smarter, more discerning, than I was? Or had he similarly swallowed them all without question?
Maybe he’d succumbed to the allure of dowsing because, like me, he had dived uncritically into the amalgamation of global influences around us. Maybe we’d both become lost, shuffling around puzzle pieces from unrelated jigsaw sets, aimlessly trying to form a coherent picture, deluding ourselves into believing that if we could make the elements come together in harmony, we would have produced some insight or breakthrough. Something like a revelation.
After
Day Ten (Friday)
Lucas was late for our one-on-one meeting, which he st
ylized as “1:1” on our calendar invites—1:1, as if we were equals. As if our values, our worth, were interchangeable. I fidgeted with my phone while I waited, refreshing news pages, sitting with a vague dread that something unknown but bad was about to be announced.
“So what happened in there? With the beta test?” he said as soon as he walked in, closing the door behind him. His boyish face was flushed.
“AInstein failed the test,” I said. I’d rehearsed this. With engineers, you always started with bite-size facts. Get them to agree with you on the basics.
Except of course, I realized with a sinking feeling, there had been a whole bikeshedding meeting about whether the statement “AInstein failed the test” was accurate. Lucas frowned.
“AInstein couldn’t make you laugh,” he rephrased.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“You didn’t find it funny at all?”
I hesitated. It had to be said.
“It was actually worse than that. It was offensive. Insulting.”
“I appreciate that some of the jokes are, well, edgy. Some people like them because of the surprise factor,” he said in his managerial tone of infinite patience.
“These were really bad, though.”
“You can’t have a product that pleases everyone. You have to find your core audience. That’s something you’ll learn as you grow in your career.” He leaned back, surveying me. “How can we convince clients to buy an AI that tells jokes, if our product can’t even make our own employees laugh?”
“I looked into it this morning—”
“Do you know what I’ve been telling our sales team? I told them, just look at our Glassdoor ratings. They’re so high because we eat our own dog food; we let our people interact with AInstein whenever they need a laugh, and it works, the employee satisfaction ratings are proof. But now this. What went wrong?”