In Real Life

by Lawrence Tabak

  “Me too,” I say. “I sometimes wonder if I’m going to forget how to speak. That I’ll get home and sound just like Coach Yeong.”

  Kim laughs. “Not much of a chance of that.”

  As we head down the road Kim says that his family is really looking forward to meeting me.

  “My wife’s name is Annie,” he says. “And we have one son. Alexander. Alex, for short. He can’t be believe his old man not only knows the great Starfare warrior Seth Gordon, but is bringing him home.”

  I wish he had told me. I’d have brought something for him. A Team Anaconda T-shirt, or something.

  For some reason I pictured Kim living in a suburban neighborhood like Overland Park, but we stay right in the city. Take so many turns that I’m completely lost. Drive down another canyon of buildings not unlike the one I live in and turn into an underground garage.

  “Home sweet home,” Kim says as he pulls into a narrow parking spot next to a pole. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get out the door. But there’s just enough room. I’m thinking, no wonder everyone drives tiny cars.

  Elevator up to the sixth floor and down the hall. Kim swipes a key and we step into a brightly lit apartment. It smells wonderful, a bit like the restaurant in Westport.

  I blink twice when Kim’s wife comes around the corner, wiping her hands on an apron. She’s tall and blond.

  She marches right up to me and offers me her hand.

  “I’m Annie,” she says. She frowns at Kim. “I suppose he didn’t mention that his wife is half Swedish, half Dutch and grew up in Providence?”

  I shake my head. I’m thinking Providence is somewhere out East but I can’t quite remember where.

  “That’s so like him. The absent-minded professor. Come on into the playroom. Alex is a little shy.”

  I follow her and Kim through a small living room and around the corner into an even smaller room. The room has one wall of shelves crammed with toys and there are Legos all over the floor. Alex is sitting among them, a controller in his hand, but he’s staring at the door and us. The screen is frozen on the beginning of a Mario Kart race.

  “Alex,” Kim says, “Where are your manners?”

  He stands up, but doesn’t move.

  “Alex, this is Seth.”

  “I know,” Alex says, almost in a whisper. “I know who it is.”

  Alex is looking at the ground, shuffling. He’s got straight, light brown hair. At first I don’t see the Korean side of him, but when he looks up, it’s there, in his dark eyes.

  “Hope you like lasagna,” Annie is saying. “I have to have half the ingredients shipped, so it’s a special meal for us too.”

  I nod, and say I used to work in an Italian restaurant, back in Kansas.

  “Alex is a little shy,” Annie continues. “We speak English at home, but he goes to a Korean school. So he doesn’t get to meet a lot of other native English speakers.”

  Alex continues to fidget.

  “I know he’d like to play a game or two with you,” she says. “Would you be willing?”

  I look at Annie and then Kim. “Mario Kart? I used to kick…butt on that game.”

  They smile at each other while Alex scrambles to find the second controller. He holds it out to me.

  “We’ll be ready to eat in about fifteen minutes. Alex?”

  He’s jumping up and down like he has to go the bathroom.

  “Alex?”

  “Fifteen! I heard you!”

  I sit on the floor next to him and try to get accustomed to the controller and the unfamiliar course. We do a couple of practice rounds. Alex giving me commentary and tips. He beats me the first two games but then I get back in the groove and whip around the course without an error.

  “Wow,” Alex says, staring at the screen. “1:24.25? That is so fast.” He looks at me with abject worship in his eyes. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing it that fast.”

  “Well,” I say. “I used to practice a lot.”

  “I saw you win that tournament,” Alex says. “On TV.”

  “Well, yeah. That was something.” Beating up on high school kids.

  “Duk-Ho doesn’t believe I’m meeting you.”

  “Duk-Ho?”

  “Yeah. My friend at school.”

  “What will you tell him?”

  “I’ll tell him 1:24.25.”

  Then Annie is in the doorway, saying that dinner is ready.

  Which is delicious. The only thing keeping me from making a pig of myself is all of Annie’s questions. Answer one between each bite. She can’t believe that I came all this way, at my age, all alone.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’d probably be going away to college pretty soon anyway.”

  “Yes,” Annie concedes. “But you’re so young. And college. You’re with all those kids in the same situation. I hear you don’t even have anyone to speak with.”

  Mouthful, I nod.

  “That’s just awful,” she says.

  Swallow and say, “But I Skype my mom once a week and get lots of email and text messages from my friends.”

  “Your mom,” Annie says. “She must be worried sick. I want you to give me her email before you go. I’ll tell her that we’re going to make sure you get a decent American meal at least once a week.”

  I look over at Kim who is nodding and see that Alex is grinning.

  “Can I bring Duk-Ho?” Alex says.

  “We’ll see,” his mom says. “If you eat your salad.”

  Alex winkles up his nose, but doesn’t say anything.

  After dinner Alex wants to play some more but his parents shush him away. Kim and I sit in the living room and I ask him a few questions about the book he gave me.

  “You read the whole thing?” he says. “I didn’t think they gave you ten minutes a day to yourself.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I say. Then I remember the notes that I stuffed into my pocket. I pull them out and hand them over to Kim. Who looks at them with a serious expression.

  “I’ve been working on a bunch of these,” I say. “It’s just that I can’t keep up with these Korean players. They work so well together and so fast and I’m just left behind.”

  Kim is clearly interested. So I continue.

  “So after your lecture. And reading that book. I start thinking that so many aspects of Starfare are mathematical, when you think about it. But as far as I know, no one has tried to figure it out. So maybe that’s the way I get an edge. I do the math.”

  Kim looks again at the page of equations.

  “Look,” he says. “I’m an economist. Who studied a lot of math, true. But this stuff…how much more of this do you have?”

  “I don’t know. About five pages of decent stuff. I’ve only been working on it for a week or so.”

  Kim looks up at me and I think maybe he’s impressed.

  “Can I borrow this?” he says. I say of course.

  “I’ve got a young colleague at the University. He just finished his doctorate in applied math from Brown and this is right up his alley. Let me share this with him. I’m betting he’ll be interested in getting together.”

  Annie comes in and the three of us sit around and talk about all kinds of stuff. Mostly things we miss. Our old favorite TV shows and fast food places and movies.

  When Alex comes in wearing his pajamas to say goodnight I suggest it’s time to go.

  Kim and I head back to the car. On the way home he says he’s really happy that I’m interested in the books he sent over. Asks me to tell him when I get through the second one. Drops me off at the door and says, “Same time, next week?”

  And I’m happy to say that’ll be great.

  When I get back to the apartment I check for messages from Hannah
but there’s nothing. So I leave her a text, telling her about my new friends.

  I don’t hear back from her that night but when I get up on Monday I find a short text.

  “New friends?” she writes. Then she has a link. When I pop it open it leads to a picture from the tabloid of me and Sumi draped over my shoulders. I swear and then write her a long note about how it was just another crazy fan and that there was nothing to it. Because I don’t want her thinking I’ve got anything in common with that creep she used to go out with in New Jersey.

  23.

  Coach Yeong has a team meeting on Monday. I sneak in a minute late and sit in the back and imagine what he’s talking about. What I know is what you know about every coach of every pro team when the season is about to start. He’s worried about his job.

  The pro season starts with a series of dual matches—team against team. The top seven players are randomly paired against each other. What has me most interested is our first pairing—against one of the two new teams. Stomp’s Xerus International.

  I can feel the intensity at practices increasing day by day. But I’m not even close to being in the top seven, so I don’t get too worked up.

  On Wednesday I get an email from Professor Kim. He’s invited his math prof friend Song to join us for dinner on Sunday. So that gets me motivated and I work up a couple more problems that I think could be attacked mathematically. Although I have some ideas and make some progress, I’m finding it harder than I thought.

  So on Sunday evening I have a little bag with my math notebook and other stuff and I’m standing outside. There’s a strip outside my building where the sun is finding its way to the pavement. I stand in the sunbeam. Wearing just a hoodie, but not cold at all. Watching the cars zip by, seeing if I’ve gotten any better at telling a Daewoo from a Hyundai.

  When Professor Kim pulls up I hop right in.

  “Hey, Tiger,” he says. “How’s your game?”

  “Pretty good.” But I’m really wondering about this math professor and what he’ll think of my project. Probably laugh.

  Alex is at the front door when we arrive, standing with a shorter Korean boy.

  I say hello to Alex, who gives his friend an “I told you so” look. Inside, the smell of cooking. Something different. Baking, I think.

  “You must be Duk-Ho,” I say.

  The boy nods.

  “You two ready for a quick game of Mario Kart?”

  I don’t have to ask them twice. Before we start Annie comes into the playroom and I thank her for having me over.

  “It’s our pleasure. Right Alex?”

  Alex is trying to unscramble the cords for a third controller.

  Annie shakes her head.

  “That’s all he could talk about all week. Seth coming over for dinner again.”

  I almost say I was the same way, but I’m too embarrassed.

  “And I exchanged a couple of emails with your mother. She sounds wonderful.”

  “She’s great,” I say. “And really flexible.”

  Annie looks at me oddly.

  “From all that yoga. She can bend like a pretzel.”

  “Well,” Annie says. “We didn’t discuss that. We talked about you. She didn’t seem to understand that you’re something of a celebrity over here.”

  “No? I mean, I’m not really. Except maybe for that orange soda. ActionOrange. Sounds like a stain remover.”

  Alex, Duk-Ho and I get in a couple of rounds before the doorbell rings. Before I go to meet Professor Song I give Alex and Duk-Ho two black Team Anaconda T-shirts. As I hand them over, the two of them are besides themselves, grinning back and forth while holding the too-large shirts against their chests.

  In the living room I step over to Professor Song and start to bow, but he offers me a hand instead.

  “Just call me Song,” he says. “That’s what they called me back at Brown.” I’m relieved because I’d probably mangle his full Korean name, Kyung Chan.

  He has a bit of an accent, but not heavy.

  “You know, I think of the Kims like an unofficial American Embassy. A little island of the States in the middle of Seoul. So we do with handshakes rather than bows.” Song is young, maybe late twenties.

  Kim comes back and the three of us sit down and chat for a while. Kim takes his time, but eventually gets around to my mathematical work on Starfare.

  Song asks to see it, and when I ask him if he’s played Starfare he says yes.

  “When I was younger. A bit. Not seriously.”

  So I explain the first problem. About trying to quantify the best yield between mineral harvesting and spybot production. As I do, Kim gets up, excuses himself to help with dinner.

  Song looks at my notes. Makes a face. I’m actually flushing, thinking I’ve just made a fool of myself.

  He thumbs to the next page and I try to explain what I was doing there, but he raises his hand.

  After another few minutes he looks up at me and says, “Interesting. Very interesting. You know, in applied mathematics, we’re always looking for real-life examples. What makes this especially intriguing is that it all a construct. It all starts off with someone sitting down and typing binary code. So that it might be revealed in mathematical terms is initially surprising, but on second thought, quite predictable.”

  I nod.

  “So tell me about your background in mathematics.”

  I give him the quick summary.

  “What I see here—and keep in mind that this is just a quick glance—what I see is an impressive integration of some very fundamental principles. It shows a very deep understanding of the basics. I can also see where you’re running into some walls. But on first glance I imagine they are not insurmountable. Maybe some more advanced techniques.”

  I’m just so relieved he wasn’t dismissing it as trash that I’m only catching parts of what he’s saying. Then Annie and Kim come in, call out to the boys that dinner is ready.

  Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and what Annie calls Rhode Island cinnamon rolls. I stuff myself.

  After dinner Song and I sit in the living room. He points at my math notebook on the table in front of us. “Would you be interested in working on this together?” he says. “I can’t promise anything, but it could lead to something interesting.”

  Of course I’m all over it.

  “The only problem,” I say, “is time. We don’t get a lot of free time.”

  We talk some more about some of the individual problems I’ve identified and Song mentions a couple more. I’m thinking maybe he played more Starfare than he let on.

  When Kim and Annie join us, Song explains my concerns about time. Kim is nodding. “I think Yeong might make an exception for this. If I convince him it could help the team.”

  So we leave it at that.

  24.

  Yeong has this thing about lineups. He wants everyone on the team working as hard as possible, so he doesn’t announce the lineup until an hour before our first dual.

  The venue is this big auditorium downtown. We have a team meeting back stage and Yeong pulls a slip of paper out of his pocket. Gathers us all around. I sort of hang in the back, half paying attention as he reads the names.

  At first I think I’m imagining it, when he says something that sounds distinctly like “ActionSeth.” But then I see the entire team has turned and is staring at me. Not nice looks.

  My first instinct is to protest, but if I’ve learned one thing since I got on the team, it’s to keep my mouth shut in situations like this.

  The team breaks up into small groups. Lots of buzzing discussions. All about my being named to the lineup, I would bet.

  I find a folding chair off to the side and sit down. Try to get my head in the right place to play. I don’t even notice Yeong co
ming up, carrying a chair. He sits down, puts his head right next to mine.

  “You wonder, Mr. Seth Gordon?”

  I just look at him, blank.

  “I know you like to question Coach Yeong. So I tell you. You not top seven.”

  I raise my eyebrows, about to say, then why am I playing, but Yeong cuts me off.

  “It is for team, ActionSeth. It is always for team. This is business. Sponsors. They want you on TV. So we play this new team with Americans, Xerus International. Not so good. We win all seven. So instead we win, maybe six? Maybe seven. You play American, you can win, no?”

  I shrug. Maybe. I’m certainly playing tons better than when I got to the final eight at Nationals. If Stomp is in the top seven, I’d be more confident.

  “OK, OK,” Yeong says. “We have understanding?”

  I nod.

  “You play hard, and when you are done, win, lose, you smile at camera. You think about all your fans. They love ActionSeth. They love drink ActionOrange!”

  So I’m a nervous wreck even before we step onto the stage for the introductions. The crowd is a howl in the background, behind the blinding lights. I see Stomp on the other side of the stage, in the middle of his team. I have to admit their team shirts are pretty cool. Some sort of electronic graphic on a blue background. Blue metallic accents that glow in the spotlights.

  Unbelievable as it seems, it looks like Stomp has gained weight. He must love Korean food. His shirt looks more like a cape. I recognize some of the other guys from the U.S. tournaments. Including the older guy who I split with, MilesBlue. The Swedish champ, TheBorg, I recognize from pictures.

  Then one-by-one, the pairings are announced. I’m in a daze as the first six are announced, not keeping track. But I’m staring across the stage and Stomp is grinning like a fool before the last pairing is announced. I should have guessed.

  We take our places behind each of the pairs of keyboards. Stand and then, along with my teammates, we bow in unison. I notice that the guys on Xerus International don’t bow. The crowd starts booing at this and yelling stuff.

  As I sit down, I shake my head. Look over the top of my monitor to Stomp who is still standing. Maybe that’s their strategy. Piss the Koreans off. Be like one of those professional wrestlers who makes his living dressing up as a devil, or mullah or whatever rednecks are into hating this year.