Love Love

by Sung J. Woo

  “I’m not a fan of raw fish,” he’d said.

  “What don’t you like about it?” she asked. When she saw his hesitation, she quickly assessed, “You’ve never had it.”

  She had a keen, almost eerie ability to see the truth in him: It was as if she took the shortcut while everybody else drove on the main roads.

  “If you have a piece of my sushi, just one,” she told him, “I’ll let you sleep with me tonight.”

  “What if I eat thirty pieces?” he asked.

  “Then we’ll do it thirty times.”

  “That’s a lot of sex in one night.”

  Her smile turned sly, fox-like. “That’s a lot of sushi.”

  That was the most surprising thing about sushi, that even though they looked bite-size, he was full after one hand roll and twelve smaller pieces. He had tuna, spicy tuna, and eel. He liked tuna the best, because it tasted like nothing at all. It was more about the texture, the soft heft of the fish as it melded with the sticky rice and seaweed.

  “You like it?” she asked.

  “What’s your guess?”

  “I think you sort of love it.”

  He dunked the final wheel of sushi in the murky puddle of soy sauce and wasabi, let the liquid soak into the rice.

  “Hey, that’s . . . a little goes a long way, you know?” Alice said.

  Kevin picked up the drippy sushi and popped it into his mouth before he could change his mind. It was like the most intense ice cream headache he’d ever had, except the burning/clearing sensation was in his upper sinuses. Tears welled up; he thought his nose was going to fall off.

  “I have to admit,” she said with a straight face, “nothing turns me on more than a man who can handle his wasabi.”

  That night they made love, and they didn’t do it thirty times, just once, but it was more than enough. She smelled like baby powder. Her hair gleamed gold in the waning moonlight. When she breathed out, her face glowing with the sweat of her effort, her lips pursed out to form a perfect O.

  His first memory of sushi, and now this, the sad supermarket version in front of him, black trays with clear plastic tops that displayed the upturned faces of the rolls. Kevin pried one tuna roll out of the tray and showed it to Snaps.

  “Got your favorite,” he said to her, and he tossed it into her dish.

  On the kitchen island was the envelope Soo had given him last evening, and next to it, a business card, which had fallen out when he took a second look at the photograph. Kevin picked it up and ran a finger around its edges.

  PICTURE THIS

  Photos by Vincent DeGuardi

  2318 Mission Street

  San Francisco

  • Specializing in weddings, bar mitzvahs, and family portraits •

  The phone number on the front had been blacked out with a pen, but another one was written on the back. Kevin had dialed it last night, and he got the response he’d expected: Sorry buddy, wrong number.

  Snaps, having devoured her treat, was at his feet and looked up with hopeful eyes as Kevin ate one sushi roll after another. When she tired of waiting, she scratched her side with her hind leg, thumping the floor as if it were a drum. With the final beat, Kevin heard a crack, and Snaps jumped away.

  He checked the bottom of her paw and saw no damage, but the floor hadn’t gotten off so lucky. One of the pumpkin pine boards was cracked and dented in, yet another part of this ancient house that was falling apart. Snaps tentatively approached the spot and sniffed it.

  Kevin glanced at the clock above the sink. He had an hour before he had to be back at the tennis club, and this was a problem that couldn’t be ignored, so he opened up the trap door and climbed down the stairs to the basement to get the spare board, the jig saw, a drill, and a couple of nails. Before coming back up, he checked on the two snapping mousetraps in the corner, which were thankfully still armed, but then he remembered the groundhog was back under the porch and he’d have to take care of that, too. Squirrels, snakes, bats, turkey vultures—sometimes he felt as if he were living in a zoo. Last week he heard a bear warning on the radio.

  When Kevin and Alice had bought this aging colonial in rural Warren County ten years ago, it had seemed like a reasonable purchase. They were in love, and what better way to harness the strength of their spirit but to transform this house into their own? They would remodel the first-floor half bath, lift off the peeling linoleum, and lay down ceramic tiles. After that, the three bedrooms upstairs would get fresh coats of paint, and then they’d tackle the kitchen, replace the mismatching appliances with stainless steel, build a little pantry off to the side.

  Unfortunately, they found out they didn’t work well together. Alice started quickly and made adjustments as she went along, while Kevin believed in devising charts and sketches before he lifted a single tool. It was no different than how he’d approached his challenger circuit tennis matches, writing out a plan of attack the night before and sticking with it. Whether it was the location of a nail or the placement of a first serve, it helped to be prepared, because things always went wrong. But his wife disagreed, and when they butted heads, neither of them had anticipated each other’s stubbornness, and it didn’t take long for them to find excuses to delay the remodeling.

  He should’ve sold the house after the divorce was finalized, but he didn’t. He wondered why he didn’t tire of being reminded of his marital failure, but the surprising fact was, he’d gotten used to this house. And with Alice gone, he was actually able to complete the tile job in the bathroom in a little more than a month. When he’d finished his grouting and admired the clean geometry of the straight white lines that patterned the floor, he picked up the phone but stopped himself from dialing her when he realized the stupidity of his notion.

  As Kevin slid a large bit into the drill, Snaps watched him, sitting tall with her front paws together, the most regal pose of hers. He and Alice had gotten her as a puppy eleven years ago. The average lifespan of a shepherd was somewhere between ten and twelve. Did Snaps know that she was nearing the end of her life? If so, she never let on. Looking at her, he could almost pretend that she would be by his side for the rest of his days.

  He held up the drill and triggered a burst of spin, like a doctor pushing out bubbles from a syringe. Kevin had done this repair job many times before, so it was routine. He drilled a half-inch hole at the broken edge for the jig saw blade to fit, then cut away the broken wood. He measured the length of the hole twice and cut off the necessary piece to snap into the void, and two nails later, he was almost done. He ducked under the trap door again and found two blocks of two-by-fours to support the new wood from the bottom.

  The whole process took less than half an hour, and when he resurfaced in the kitchen, Snaps sniffed the new board. He’d have to poly it, but that could wait.

  “Good as new, right?” Kevin asked her, and she plopped on top of it with approval.

  There was a certain satisfaction to fixing up this house. He could point out all the other boards he’d replaced in the years he’d lived here. Not only did it give him a sense of pride, but it also made him consider the house as a living being that needed his healing hands to keep going. Kevin wondered if the houses of strangers would offer him similar satisfaction, if carpentry was a viable career choice for him. He’d always been good with his hands, but would the deft drop shot he employed with his tennis racquet translate so readily to a lathe or a chisel? He was forty years old, another thirty to go at least before retirement. Reaching that midlife milestone birthday had made him consider his future with more urgency, and the thought of teaching tennis for the rest of his working life filled him with dread. He was fooling himself, anyway—nobody wanted to be taught how to play a young man’s game by a sixty-year-old geezer. Sooner than later he’d have to move into management, learn to keep his workers happy, do up the budget the way his boss Ernie did it at the club with his giant receipt-printing calculator and ledger software.

  This Sunday afternoon, his first le
sson was with Alexa. Usually he looked forward to working with her, but with what happened last time, he wanted to call in sick. The best part of his job, now ruined. And it all happened in a blink. It’s okay, she’d told him after the kiss. It’s not the end of the world. Maybe not for her, but for him, it was close enough.

  Somewhere in this house, his cell phone rang. It was a muffled sound, meaning it was either under something or inside a pocket, and on the fifth ring, he found it, of all places, in the refrigerator. This was sad. This was the sort of thing that senile people did, leaving their keys in the freezer. The phone felt pleasantly cool on his ear.

  “Kevin? Hey, it’s me, Chuck. You called me last night about Vincent DeGuardi, the photographer? So I talked to my mom this morning, and you’re not going to believe this. This number used to be Vincent’s, many years ago. Because my mom got so many calls after he moved his business, she tracked down Vincent herself and they became friends. Maybe more than friends from what it sounds like, but anyway, not to bore you with the details, my mom still keeps in touch with the guy, is what I’m saying. You want his number?”

  •••

  “So,” Alexa said, “are you still all freaked out?”

  She’d been waiting for Kevin because he was late. He picked up the metal ball hopper by the opening of the canvas curtains on the court and saw her on the other end practicing her serves. He was relieved she looked as she always did, in a no-nonsense gray T-shirt and blue cotton shorts. She tossed the ball, and he yelled, “T!” And sure enough, she served it down the middle. It was a drill he’d repeated in college, where his coach called out the location of the serve as the ball was being tossed. The point was to keep your opponent from reading your serve, which made it that much tougher to return the ball.

  Alexa, her ponytail pulled through the back of her cap, tossed another ball.

  “Wide!” Kevin yelled, and the serve missed the corner by a foot.

  “Shit,” she muttered, and she tossed and swung and clipped the line on her second try.

  Kevin picked up the stray balls in his path, each sphere offering a satisfying resistance as he pushed down on them through the rungs of the hopper; it was the tennis equivalent of popping bubble wrap. Alexa tossed another ball, this time her second serve, slower but with a kick to the right.

  He dropped the hopper by her feet. She twirled her racquet.

  “Yes,” Kevin said. “I am still all freaked out.”

  “Good. Me too.”

  They didn’t speak. Kevin stood a few feet behind the net and fed her balls from the rolling cart, the mechanical Zen of the swing, the strike, the bounce emptying his mind. Never underestimate the simple power of repetition.

  When the balls were gone, they both walked around the court to pick them up. They had started on opposite sides of the court with their respective hoppers, but now they were converging, meeting at the middle of the court, the white band of the net cord stretched tight between them. She took off her cap and dabbed the moisture off her forehead with her pink sweatband. She looked up at him with a face he didn’t recognize, a face she must’ve reserved for discussing the unpleasant portions of her life. He wished he’d never seen it, but it was a fitting punishment.

  “I’m sorry I kissed you,” she said.

  “It’s my fault,” Kevin said. “As the adult, I’m supposed to know better.”

  “I’m not usually impetuous.”

  “I know.”

  “You do know me, don’t you? And I know you, too.”

  Kevin dumped the balls in his hopper into the cart, a makeshift mountain of neon green. “But you don’t know me,” he said. “All you know is the guy on the court. And all I know is the girl on the court.”

  Alexa handed her hopper to him over the net. “But we do talk. Like about your father; that’s not something you tell just anyone.”

  “Yeah. I shouldn’t have done that, either.”

  She picked up a ball lodged underneath the fold of the net. “But you did.” She held it up as if it were some sort of evidence for him to see. “Now what does that mean?”

  He snatched the ball out of her hand. “I don’t know.”

  “Me neither,” she said. “Nate, the guy I’m dating right now, he told me I’m frigid. Like an icebox, his words. Why do you think he’d say something like that? Because I’m totally not, as you now know.”

  Kevin cleared his throat. “Okay, drop shots. It’s the least used shot in the game today. Let’s work on yours.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Alexa, if I may be frank with you.”

  “Please.”

  “I don’t want to talk about your love life.”

  “Love life?”

  “See, this is really messed up now. I’m saying stuff that doesn’t sound very good. You and I are a team, you know? You’re my star student, and I’m your faithful teacher.”

  “What if my ‘love life’ is affecting my game? Isn’t it your job, then, to coach me in that as well?”

  His cell phone chirped, and Kevin couldn’t remember hearing a sweeter sound.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to get that,” he said, and he ran over to the bench to pick it up.

  “Mr. Lee?”

  An old man’s voice, it had to be him, the man who’d taken that photograph of his mother.

  “Yes. And you are Mr. DeGuardi?”

  “Correct. I can’t talk for very long because of my arthritis, can’t hold up the phone so long, you see. Karen, that’s Chuck’s mother, she told me that you were trying to track me down.”

  “You took a photo of my mother, many years ago,” Kevin said. Alexa, who’d been pretending not to eavesdrop on the conversation, hurried over.

  DeGuardi cleared his throat. “I haven’t taken photographs in twenty years. And if God continues to hate me, I’ll be turning ninety-three this year. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t remember her.”

  “I think you might, unless you took a lot of nude centerfold pictures.”

  Alexa stared at him with slack-jawed surprise.

  “That takes me back,” DeGuardi said, “I mean really, really takes me back. Those beautiful girls. No, I didn’t take too many. You’re Chinese, right? That’s what Karen said.”

  “Korean, but close enough.”

  “Jade Asia.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That was her name. I did a few negroes, a couple of genuine Swedish blondes, but only one oriental.”

  “Jade Asia? That’s what she called herself?” Kevin said.

  “Probably not her real name,” DeGuardi said.

  In the distance, Kevin heard a bell. DeGuardi explained it was lunchtime in his nursing home. “I still have my files in storage. You’re free to look through them, if you wish.”

  The second he got off the phone, Alexa was all over him. “Are you telling me your mother is also not your mother, and that she was a Playboy model? Or something? Oh my God, that’s just like totally insane, wow, I mean wow.”

  Here he was again, revealing his personal life to her. “We still have another hour of practice.” He walked back on the court and picked up his racquet, but Alexa remained standing by the bench, her arms crossed.

  “You’re shutting me out?” she said. “Why? Because I’m a kid? Because I’m your student? Because I’m stupid? Because I’m frigid?”

  “Yes, yes, no, no. And your boyfriend, Nate—”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “He’s probably just saying that so you will, you know, do things with him.”

  “Sleep with him.”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  He watched her walk over to him, her racquet dangling, scuffling against the blue concrete. She looked older, a woman dealing with men problems.

  She sat on the court, drew her legs into herself, and sighed. “I know all this, of course, but when he says it to me, it feels real. Knowing it doesn’t stop the pain.”

  Kevin squatted next to her. “I could tell yo
u that it gets better as you get older, but I’d be lying.”

  “What happened between you and your wife? You were married for a long time, right?”

  “How did you know about my divorce?”

  “I don’t know,” Alexa said, waving him off. “You might have told me at some point. You’re old, remember? You forget stuff.”

  “I did leave my cell phone in the fridge this afternoon.”

  “See? You’re just one step away from getting your own motorized scooter. Besides, it’s not like I don’t know anything about divorce. My parents are both residents of Splitsville. I live with my dad. My mom’s out in San Francisco.”

  “That’s where this guy is.”

  Even though he promised himself he wouldn’t, he ended up recounting his whole sordid story to Alexa while they volleyed lightly at the net. Each bounce of the ball freed him a little more, tennis doing the work of therapy.

  “Hey, you can totally stay with my mom,” Alexa said, slicing his errant volley to keep the exchange going.

  “Huh?”

  “When you go out there. You will, right? You should, because this DeGuardi guy sounds like he might keel over tomorrow, and there might be more pictures of her there and other stuff. I mean it’s possible that she’s still there, don’t you think? In San Francisco? She probably knows who your father is, too. Maybe they’re together and they’ve been waiting to see you all this time so you can be a family again.”

  “I better get there before the carriage turns back into a pumpkin,” Kevin said, though since he saw the photo of her, his mother did seem more real to him. To meet with a second family—what would that be like?

  Kevin poked back a wide backhand from Alexa, but it floated over her head and their volleying came to an end. They must’ve kept it in play for at least a hundred strokes.

  “And I can stay with your mother.”

  Alexa reached over for her water bottle.

  “Absolutely.”

  “The parent you’re not living with.”