by Josh Emmons
“Why not?”
“Because what actually happened was, Leon disappeared.”
On December 7, CosmoCuisine Day was held at the Eureka Gazebo. Joon-sup Kim arrived at ten a.m. to set up the Joon-sup Experience, his Korean barbecue stall, in between a kebab stand and a bratwurst booth with weatherproof menus. He carried glass pans of marinating chicken and pork and beef, and although it was cold he’d begun sweating. He poured ice into a tub full of soft drinks and mineral waters. He said hi to the other food vendors and heard their speculations on the day’s turnout and was upset to learn that the kebab guy got grade B beef from Teddy’s Meats for twenty cents a pound less than he did—when Teddy had sworn in hushed tones that he was giving Joon-sup a deal!
Joon-sup had been operating this stall for eight years all over Humboldt County and believed he had built up enough name recognition to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant. The college kids from southern California told him they would flock to it. They were all recovering vegetarians and loved the unadulterated meatness of the Joon-sup Experience. They told him that they would be regulars, as would their friends and their friends’ friends.
Joon-sup was engaged to be married. His mother, who had been dying alone in Pusan for two years during which he visited her only once, had secured him a twenty-year-old bride late the previous autumn. The girl was homely and a poor student and difficult to raise for her parents, close acquaintances of his mother’s, but what else could Joon-sup expect given his age (thirty-three) and his financial prospects (nearly none)? His mother demanded an answer from him in a weakened, illness-worn voice. He was lucky to get an ugly, stupid, antisocial girl.
But now that his mother had died Joon-sup was in the process of breaking off this engagement—he’d agreed to it just to please her, though the girl was so unlikable that his mother had cried and admitted that the only thing worse than Joon-sup’s marrying her was his not marrying her—and had sent the girl a letter to that effect. He hadn’t written that his affection for her was a sham from the start, or that he’d been living with a woman named Justine for six years, or that any Korean girl who didn’t care what was happening to Seoul’s air quality was a flibbertigibbet. Instead he’d lied that his interest in Zen Buddhism, until recently of little importance, had developed to the point where he planned to enter Shasta Abbey, a monastery three hours east of Eureka, and become a monk. He knew that the girl’s feeling of rejection would be lessened by knowing that he’d renounced women as a whole rather than her specifically.
When Joon-sup’s crisis of ten years ago—during which he’d fantasized the strange and unnerving Leon Meed—abated and he got his bearings again through the help of thrice-weekly therapy, he stopped thinking about the unpublicized environmental disaster that had tweaked his mind. Leon Meed was packed up and placed in mental storage along with other memories from his NorCal hippie period: of mushroom collecting at the beach, of ornamenting walking staffs, of forty-minute bongo jams that bruised your palms and fingertips. All side effects of getting too American too deeply, too indiscriminately. The trick was to live in this country with its dangers and temptations without losing your head. To stay vigilant. That, despite Joon-sup’s efforts, Leon had recently appeared in the paper was almost too horrible to believe.
Keeping his legs straight, he bent and touched his hands to the ground, because he valued his flexibility, and when he stood up a few isolated needle pricks of rain struck his arms and he saw Eve approaching.
“This is the worst day for an outdoor food festival,” she said, tapping her short fingernails on the countertop of his Experience and glancing up at the sky.
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
“I called you back last night.”
“Did you leave a message?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe Justine erased it by mistake. I’ll ask her.”
“I don’t want to cause trouble between you two.”
“We’ve been going to relationship counseling for a year. We already have causes.”
Eve rolled up a paper menu and looked through it telescope-style at Joon-sup. Nothing was made larger or smaller. “If you don’t want to have kids, you should tell her.”
“I want kids.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“Justine’s forty-two. She can’t wait forever for you to make up your mind.”
Joon-sup looked away. A few more needles fell. The kebab guy was perched on a high bar stool, playing a handheld video game. The day was dark. “How’s your back doing?” he asked.
“Better, thanks,” she said, standing up straight as though to prove it. “But are you okay? You look pale.”
“I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“You look like you’ve lost weight.”
“I weigh the same as always. You know, lean but powerful.”
“Oh,” she said skeptically.
Joon-sup folded his arms and in a low, confidential voice said, “The reason I wanted to talk to you is because a reporter from the Times-Standard called me.”
“He called me, too.”
“He did?” This was his worst fear realized, though being a realist he had expected it. The prelude to everyone who saw Leon’s disappearances being rounded up by the government and themselves made to disappear. The fulfillment of an awful prophecy he’d never understood, only learned to ignore as a supposedly irrelevant past incident. Like the downwinders in Nevada who’d gotten cancer from nuclear testing, he and Eve couldn’t hope to win against forces too big to oppose. “I denied it,” he said, rotating strips of beef in a tray of marinade, “and so should you.”
“Deny what?”
“That you saw Leon disappear. I went online and searched for Martin Nemec’s name, and he’s only been writing for the Times-Standard a month.”
“So?”
“So he’s probably a spy and this article is a ruse to make us to admit we’re suffering from something we shouldn’t be, so they can debrief us—or worse.”
“Who would want to do that?”
“The government. Whoever was responsible for making us see Leon. You remember how I told you Soulbrother took his Geiger counter to the mouth of the Klamath River back then, and he found nine hundred picocuries of radioactive iodine per liter of water?”
“That’s ridiculous. This guy is just writing a story for the paper. It’s not a conspiracy. And anyway, my religious experience is private, so I told Martin I didn’t want to talk about Leon.”
“Good. You did the right thing.” He was sorry that Eve’s was such a major misinterpretation of Leon Meed, ignoring as it did the obvious geopolitical factors involved and instead dragging an irrelevant, nonexistent god into it, but he had been sorry about it from the beginning. Nothing new. For now he was glad she’d refused the newspaper imposter.
The needles of rain came down more steadily then, as though a giant sewing box were being slowly overturned in the sky, and Eve said, “Are you going to pack up if the rain gets worse?”
After a moment of contemplation, Joon-sup nodded and grabbed the rain slicker he’d stuffed under his booth. Eve, he noticed, was wearing a black cashmere sweater and had her hair down to her shoulders. It was a good look on her, brought out her blue eyes. He wasn’t surprised so many men asked her out, approached her even when she and Joon-sup were eating together and might reasonably be thought to be a couple. What surprised him was how she always, without explaining, told them no. In all the time he’d known her, she hadn’t dated anyone. He started to put away condiments and boxes of plastic utensils. “What happened with the banker who bought you a ticket to Hawaii?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“You said no?”
“Yeah.”
“You weren’t tempted? It was your chance to see Hawaii.”
“I’ve read about it so much at Going Places I don’t need to go.”
Joon-sup felt a small surge of relief and unplugged the barbec
ue warmers and folded up a tray stand. Just before he’d met her, Eve had had a boyfriend. That he’d died was terrible, but it didn’t justify her iron-clad solitude. Joon-sup stretched aluminum foil over the meat trays and Eve packed napkins and utensils in a big storage box. Fitted on lids, wiped off water beads. He looked at her and the expression for what he’d long felt but not formulated came to him: she lacked joy. Not that she had to float in a kind of spiritual exaltation, but for someone who’d made deep sacrifices for Christianity she seemed discontented, as though she’d once temporarily substituted endurance for happiness and then forgotten to switch back. This struck him as a great loss and he wanted to help her. Surely she could be doing better. Surely they all could.
He said, “How about we run the day after tomorrow at the river if it isn’t raining?”
Eve, bouncing up and down on her toes to stay warm, said, “We don’t have to if you’re not up for it.”
“I’m up for it.”
“You haven’t wanted to go the last few times.”
“Remember last week it was Soulbrother’s dance recital? And the week before I was doing something, I forget what.”
“If you’re sick you don’t want to push it.”
“I’m not sick.”
Eve started to back away down the street as the rain came down with building, piercing force. “Okay! The day after tomorrow!”
An hour later Elaine entered the Shanty in Old Town Eureka and became the only woman there. This didn’t excite much untoward behavior from the other patrons, two men with ecstatic white hair who were bent like wilted dandelions over their drinks at the bar, but still she couldn’t understand why Sadie had chosen this place to meet rather than a good coffee shop. Elaine sat at a table and waited for ten minutes and was about to leave when her friend came trudging in, wiping rainwater from her face with a knotted handkerchief.
“Two Bloody Marys!” Sadie said to the bartender before crossing to embrace Elaine in a light hug.
“I’ll have tea instead,” Elaine said.
“This place is known for its Bloody Marys,” Sadie said, catching her breath and peeling off her jacket. “You’ll be amazed.”
Elaine unbuttoned her purse and took out her phone. She called home and left a message for Steve and Trevor saying she’d be back in an hour or two.
“You didn’t mention how smashed you’re going to be by then,” Sadie observed.
“I’m only having one drink.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I can’t go home drunk. There are those problems I mentioned.”
“All the more reason to fortify yourself.”
“It’d be the wrong kind of fortification.”
Sadie turned her head when the bartender snapped his fingers to indicate that the drinks were ready. “Hold on.” She went to collect two large red glasses and then returned to the table.
Elaine said, “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”
“Of course. What’s happening?”
“It’s Steve. We had a bad dinner the other night. From the beginning of it he was sullen and cold, like he resented me for something, and when I tried to brighten the mood by telling him about a teacher award nomination I’d gotten, he got worse. Then out of the blue he told me he used to be a speed addict years ago, that before he and I got together he was doing crank all the time.”
“You didn’t know that?”
“Did you?”
“I must have told you about when I was set up on a blind date with that HSU professor Roger Nuñez, and my sister and Greg were there, and Steve showed up and got in a fight with Greg.”
“Was he on something that night?”
Sadie leaned back in her chair, considering. “I would say many things.”
“Okay, so that was a confession I could partly deal with. But then he said that a man named Leon Meed vanished in front of him once, as in actually disappeared. He swore it. And when I suggested that he’d had this—I don’t know, paranormal experience—because of the drugs he was on at the time, he stormed out of the restaurant.”
“Leon Meed?”
“Yes. But the story gets worse. Last night a reporter called from the Times-Standard and—”
“I know the rest.” Sadie took a finishing gulp of her Bloody Mary.
“You do?”
Holding up her middle and forefinger, Sadie signaled for two more Bloody Marys and the bartender silently acquiesced. She got up, went to the bar, and within a minute was back, placing another glass beside Elaine’s barely touched first one.
“Jesus,” said Elaine, blinking at the twin drinks, “I told you I can’t.”
“As a licensed therapist I insist you take this medicine, and as advisor to myself I must take it also. Now let me tell you something.” Sadie placed a plump, joint-wrinkled hand over the top of her drink as though to decline a refill. Her heavy-lidded eyes settled on Elaine and her frosted hair iced the outline of her face. She sat perfectly still and made no move to speak. Basketball scores blasted from the bar.
“What?” Elaine finally said.
“I had my own encounters with Leon back then, and he was an expert prankster and a magician. Not to be too respectful of him, because he was weird as anything, but he broke into my house a couple of times and then ‘disappeared’ with terrific skill. For a while I thought I myself was losing it until I learned that he was performing this trick all over the place for what reason God only knows. One time I caught him in my shower before he was able to escape and I beat on him—I mean I whacked him with a crowbar like he was a piñata—and then I called the police. And do you want to know something? I answered the door when they arrived, and by the time I got back to where I’d left him tied up, he’d escaped like some kind of greased pig.”
Elaine took a healthy swallow of her drink. “According to this reporter—”
“Ignore him. A patient came in to see me back then, a Korean fellow I now see for other reasons, who begged me to write mental-ward commitment papers for him. He described symptoms of schizophrenia that revolved around seeing Leon Meed appear and disappear.” She shook her head. “Leon caused major psychological damage in some people and then skipped town. It was a disgraceful episode. And now he’s died and left this hoax diary behind and there’s a sentimental reporter chasing a story. Don’t encourage it. Don’t tell him anything.”
“Okay, but my major concern is Steve. I want to ask if you could see us—me and Steve as a couple—and I’d pay and it would be strictly professional. After that dinner we’ve basically stopped talking. We’re at a standstill and I want it to end.”
Sadie sucked dry her second Bloody Mary. She held a big breath and then exhaled. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help, but I can’t.”
Elaine frowned. “Why not?”
“I don’t believe in couples therapy anymore.”
“How can you not believe in it?”
“Too many couples get nothing out of therapy except the realization that they’re not working out. I’m not saying this about you and Steve, but in my opinion couples that need therapy actually need to break up.”
“That’s the most cynical thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Not all therapists think this. It’s just my experience. I’d be happy to refer you to someone else.”
“You honestly think counseling doesn’t help?”
“I’ll get the next round,” Sadie said, pushing her chair out and standing unsteadily. Elaine didn’t try to stop her.
When the two women said good-bye, Sadie drove home through early evening traffic and took a long shower. A year ago she would gladly have counseled Elaine and Steve; she would have advocated a talking cure for their problems, based on concessions and mutual acknowledgment of each other’s feelings and beliefs. She would have said, “Wellness, in a body or relationship, takes time and commitment. There are no fast roads to recovery. There is no superhighway to health.” But not now. Now she knew that all roads ended in cul-desa
cs, and that the longer you traveled down them, the longer it took to get back.
That evening Prentiss sat at home drinking ice water and taking antacids to relieve his heartburn. They were taking their time. He wandered the carpeted rooms of his apartment hoping that movement would dislodge the pain. Ferdinand trotted after him and Prentiss gave him a treat and he darted into his small pighouse beside the refrigerator. Prentiss saw in the bathroom mirror a youthful forty-two-year-old man. Nobody had responded to his personals ad. The mildew on his shower-tile grout was becoming an irreversible problem. He could be witty and charming, and if he just met the right woman under the right circumstances, if luck would favor him—if only because luck was tired of favoring everyone else and thought Prentiss had novelty value—then what he wouldn’t do. What he wouldn’t give.
He picked up his phone and listened to the day’s messages. Prerecorded telemarketers, a wrong number. No one calling to ask him to dinner. No chance for romantic connection. There was always the supermarket, sure, where he could accidentally ram his shopping cart into some attractive woman’s, but that was so obvious he might as well sell tickets beforehand. Meeting people was supposedly easy and others did it all the time. He called Steve’s house.
There was no answer because Steve was on his first antidepression drive in ten years. It had taken less than a week for depression to erase the time between its appearances in his life, so that Steve now felt as if he’d always been depressed. A decade’s collapse and he returned to its most acute moment, when, sitting in his old living room ringing with Leon Meed, he’d been unopposed to suicide but too fixated on the messes of overdose, wrist slit, car crash, gunshot, and rope noose to act. An afternoon of thinking about Leon and obsessing about Anne until, almost more amazingly than the former’s disappearance earlier, the latter called to say she was in Eureka for a few days and wondered if his offer of dinner from Christmas Eve was still good. Her voice was warm and friendly, and he said no, rescinded his invitation not out of spite or retribution but because he didn’t want to see her again. As simple, as incomprehensibly complex as that. After months of wanting Anne back, the instant she expressed interest in seeing him he was freed from the torment of loving her. If only Leon could come again and make him see that he would live as easily without Elaine as he finally had without Anne.