New Waves

by Kevin Nguyen

  Charlotte placed a bottle in front of me.

  “Japanese whiskey,” she said. “It’s all the rage.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Charlotte groaned, and reluctantly opened the bottle’s seal. She poured a small taste for each of us. We clinked glasses. I gulped mine down.

  “Jesus, Margo, you’re supposed to sip it.” As if to illustrate, Charlotte took a delicate sip from her glass. “Like an adult.”

  “Whatever, I can’t tell the difference.”

  “Good booze is wasted on the likes of you.”

  “Booze is wasted on everyone.”

  Charlotte also downed her fancy Japanese whiskey. Then went back to boxing bottles of liquor, while I watched. I told her about Michael.

  “I get my shift covered for one day, and of course, that’s the one time anything interesting happens at this bar.”

  She was most amused by the fact that, after our long argument, Michael still wanted to sleep with me. Charlotte assured me that this is “some straight-people shit.”

  She also asked me how my book was going, making her the first person to ask me since my agent. There was something pure about Charlotte’s curiosity, like she actually cared. It made me feel good in a way I hadn’t felt good in a long time.

  “I actually started a new book,” I said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  This was true. Just a few days ago, in a rare moment of clarity, I realized that I would never get Mining Colony into workable shape. The only time I made real progress on it was with Margo giving me constant feedback. And now that Margo was gone, it wasn’t right attempting it without her.

  “What’s the new one about? Also sci-fi?”

  “It’s so early that I barely even know. It hardly matters. The point is that I’ve moved on.”

  I hopped off my stool and began helping Charlotte with the bottles. I got another box from the back room and just started loading it up. I asked Charlotte if there was any order or reason to how the alcohol got sorted, and she said there wasn’t. And I realized then that a bar isn’t a place; it isn’t the people; it’s not the mood or the feeling evoked. Really, a bar is just a large, haphazard collection of bottles.

  AFRONAUT3000: Have you thought more about Japan?

  MINING_COLONY: I want to go so badly, but I just don’t think it’s in the cards for me this year. And by “in the cards,” I mean I am so broke.

  AFRONAUT3000: What if money wasn’t a problem? Would you go?

  MINING_COLONY: I mean, of course.

  AFRONAUT3000: So let’s say money isn’t a problem then!

  MINING_COLONY: What do you mean?

  AFRONAUT3000: I’ll front your plane ticket.

  MINING_COLONY: No! You can’t do that.

  AFRONAUT3000: Really, it’s no big deal.

  MINING_COLONY: As much as I’d like to go to Japan with you, I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting you pay for me. It’s a very generous offer, but it could never sit right with me.

  MINING_COLONY: You understand, right? How weird that would be?

  MINING_COLONY: Hey, are you still there?

  VIII

  Tokyo 2011

  MOM’S FAVORITE SHOW WAS still a suburban drama set in the ’70s about a curly-haired young white boy in a white town and his pursuit of a white girlfriend. Unlike my father and his Paris by Night collection, she didn’t have tapes but she watched reruns in the early evening, just before the local news.

  I didn’t like the show at all, but I was back at home in Oregon, back to watching weird TV with my mom, feeling like the loser I was. This show’s main character was Kevin, who I was almost named after, my mom informed me. She would have gone through with it if I didn’t already have a cousin named Kevin. I’d never met a cousin Kevin, I told her, and she said he was the son of an estranged sister, whom I’d also never met.

  The white girl that Kevin spent the show attempting to woo was named Winnie.

  “What kind of name is Winnie?” my mom would say at least once per episode.

  On this particular evening, from the other room, Dad had an unhelpful response. “There were some guys who used to call me Winnie.”

  I’d never heard this before. “Why did they call you Winnie?”

  “It was a nickname,” he said, noting that our Vietnamese last name was sometimes pronounced “win” after it was bastardized into English.

  “I don’t think this white girl is named Nguyen.”

  “I liked the nickname Winnie, actually,” Dad said.

  “That’s not what Mom was asking.”

  “Winnie Nguyen, they’d call me.”

  “They were making fun of you.”

  “Both of you be quiet. I am trying to watch the white people.”

  The show was about nothing—a family and a romance—but it was set during the Vietnam War. I didn’t know much about the war, which felt like a distant atrocity that didn’t have much to do with our family. My father didn’t want to talk about it, despite having lived through most of it as a child in Saigon. In the show, though, Winnie’s older brother Brian had gone off to fight in the war. You knew what happened when a TV character shipped off to Vietnam. You know, Chekhov’s Indochina conflict.

  In the episode we were watching, Kevin runs off to the woods to find Winnie after she receives the news of her brother’s death, hoping to comfort her. Conveniently, he discovers her by the town’s famous climbing tree. She’s in shock, grieving. This is the perfect moment for Kevin to make a juvenile advance on her, to show her just how much he cares. This seems to be the plotting of every American show: someone named Kevin trying to win the heart of a girl by being the nicest guy possible, pursuing her with unrelenting kindness and incessant affection. Exert yourself enough and you can have everything you’ve ever wanted. Perhaps that was the greatest fiction of TV, that hearts could be won over with enough hard work, that romance followed the same ideals as capitalism.

  I am not sure why we are supposed to think Kevin is doing the right thing by discovering her there. A girl who wants to be left alone gets followed into the forest by a guy who wants something from her, and we are rooting for that? But it gets worse. Kevin finds her, sitting by herself, staring off into the middle distance, so overwhelmed by her sadness that it has possessed her entire being. And what does he do? He tells her it’s going to be okay, and sticks his tongue in her mouth, Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” plays. The camera pans out.

  “What the hell?”

  “What is wrong?”

  “Kevin kissed Winnie while she’s mourning her dead brother.”

  “Yes, she is very sad because of the brother.”

  “No, I understand the plot. It’s just messed up.”

  “Why is it messed up? She is sad because the brother is dead.”

  “He’s taking advantage of her.”

  “You are too critical. It is just a TV show.”

  “A TV show with a fucked-up message.”

  Mom let out a huff, disappointed that I had cursed in front of her. But she let it go.

  “It is just a TV show. You watch it. You don’t have to think about it. Just let it go, Lucas.”

  But I knew I couldn’t let it go. Which was worse: The Vietnam War, an atrocity that killed three million people, boiled down to a stupid plot device on a mediocre TV show? Or that we were watching a mediocre TV show that encouraged boys to take advantage of vulnerable girls? I got up from the couch and exited the room, fully aware that I was no longer the sort of person capable of letting anything go.

  I went to my room and sat on my bed. I thought about how I’d spent most of my life sleeping on it, and maybe I would for the rest of my days. I’d tried to move out and I’d failed. I was frustrated with myself because it’s not like I’d gone across the country with big aspirations. I had no dreams other than to
just live somewhere else for a while, and looking around my room was a reminder that I couldn’t even do that right.

  It had been a month since I’d moved back. I hadn’t bothered with my stuff. I abandoned everything in my shit room in Queens: my clothes, my computer, everything else I’d accumulated throughout my two years in New York, which was mostly junk. I’d even given up Ozymandias, the last reminder of my PORK days. I’d hoped leaving behind all my material possessions would mean leaving behind all the things I’d become: a cruel friend, a workplace creep, an alcoholic. Or maybe I was all those things to begin with.

  My roommate had received a note that simply said I’m leaving and a check for last month’s rent. I headed to the airport and got a one-way ticket home. The only thing I took with me was the iPod. I guess I still had one more reminder.

  * * *

  —

  THE PHONE RANG, MY parents’ landline. I could hear my dad answer it from downstairs. It was for me.

  “Who is it?”

  “He says he is your boss.”

  I had no interest in talking to Brandon, and even less interest in hearing what he had to say. We hadn’t spoken since I had been fired, though he’d called me a handful of times and I just let it ring out. Brandon had sent a half dozen emails that just said “call me,” the demanding tenor of which made me want to talk to him even less. I’m not sure how he figured out where I was.

  Reluctantly, I took the receiver and waited for my dad to exit the room.

  “What do you want?”

  “Most people say ‘hello’ or ‘how are you,’ ” Brandon said.

  “I worked for you long enough to know that you only call when you want something.”

  He got straight to it: “We sold the company. We’re being acquired.”

  At first I thought he’d called to gloat, which seemed needlessly petty. “Congratulations, Brandon. That’s really good news for you.”

  “Listen, you may not work here anymore, but you do still have your shares. Which means you get a cut of the sale.”

  I asked him how much the acquisition was for. Brandon told me. It was an impressive number.

  He didn’t sound proud or excited or even happy.

  “You know, most people would celebrate becoming a millionaire,” I said.

  “No, it’s good news. It’s as good of an outcome as possible, considering our situation. Things were getting bleak around the time you’d left. They only got bleaker.”

  “I didn’t leave.”

  “You know what I mean,” Brandon said. “And you know that my plan for Phantom was never to sell it…”

  “And now all you have is money.”

  It was an unfair jab but I didn’t have patience for Brandon’s shit anymore. He cleared his throat, shifted his tone.

  “From the acquisition, you’ll receive”—I could hear him rustling some papers—“one hundred and thirty-four thousand, seven hundred and eighty-eight dollars.”

  “Say that again?”

  “One hundred and thirty-four thousand, seven hundred and eighty-eight dollars. I know it’s not a lot, but only a fraction of your shares had vested by the time you exited the company.”

  “No, that’s a lot of money. I’ve never had that much money.”

  I was aware that everyone else at Phantom had probably made much, much more than that. But it didn’t matter to me what they had. This was three years of salary for me. An incredible sum.

  “I thought you would be disappointed but I’m glad you’re happy with it,” Brandon said. “I know you’re just learning about it now, but do you know what you’ll do with it? That right there is enough for a down payment on a condo.”

  “A condo?”

  “Yeah. You might as well reinvest it in property. The market is great right now. Everything is dirt cheap.”

  “Isn’t the housing market the reason the country’s in a downturn?”

  “By the time the economy recovers, housing will be back in fine form and you’ll have made a killing.”

  “Hmm.”

  Brandon sighed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you how to spend your money. I am thrilled you’re happy with it.”

  “I can leave.” It just came out. “I’m leaving.”

  “For where?”

  “I’ll figure it out.” But the reality was that I already knew.

  That felt like the natural end of the conversation. But before we hung up, Brandon wanted to say one more thing.

  “This is probably inappropriate for me to say, especially since the two of you were much closer. But I think if Margo was still here, we would’ve made it. I capitulated to investor pressure. I made a bunch of bad calls. Margo would never have stood for my bullshit.”

  “There’s no way to know.”

  A pause.

  “You know how I tell that story about the origins of Phantom? About how I was inspired by a breakup and the texts that remained? I remember telling that spiel to Margo, and she told me, ‘That story is bullshit.’ Even before we started seeing each other, she was calling me out. But you know what? She was right. I made that story up. The whole damn thing. And she could tell.”

  “That sounds like Margo.”

  “But that story worked in all the pitch meetings I had. It’s what made the product relatable to investors,” he said. “I thought I was building something meaningful, but I’d sold out my ideals from the beginning.”

  I laughed. “Margo always said that technology was made for sad white boys.”

  I wasn’t angry at Brandon anymore. I was over his relationship with Margo—it no longer bothered me. I wasn’t the only person allowed access to Margo’s life, I’d come to realize. And to be honest, while I cared little for the lamenting of a twenty-five-year-old millionaire, it was nice to talk about Margo again. It’d been a while since I had someone to do that with.

  Brandon couldn’t tell me who had acquired Phantom, not quite yet. Later, I’d learn that it was one of the major technology companies from California. They were the internet’s largest search engine, and had the lofty goal of cataloging all the world’s information, though for what purpose it was unclear. They digitized books and built maps of the Earth. In many ways, Phantom was a good fit for their portfolio: imagine if you could know what everyone was saying to each other. The company could use that information for any purpose—nefarious or not. But mostly it seemed like it would be used for targeted advertising. A company with incredible ambitions to catalog the world’s information in all its forms—hiring and exploiting some of the world’s greatest minds with innovative ways to do so—couldn’t come up with a more creative way to use that information than sell ads. In the end, it was the system that Emil had built that became the most attractive part of Phantom. Everything about Brandon’s political and humanistic aspirations for Phantom was forgotten.

  Another reason Brandon had called me, instead of simply having the company lawyer inform me of my earnings, was so I could help him settle Margo’s affairs. She also had equity in Phantom, and when he told me just how much she took home, it confirmed my suspicion that this money I was so thrilled to have, that felt like a life-changing amount, was just chump change to everyone else.

  I promised to forward on the contact information for Margo’s mother, Louise. I’d let someone else deal with it.

  * * *

  —

  THE MONEY ARRIVED MORE quickly than I’d expected, just a day after the acquisition was announced.

  My first purchase: a smartphone. I drove to the nearest electronics store, which in eastern Oregon was an hour drive away. But I was finally able to afford a modern phone and a data plan. The device felt nice in my hand, the glass front, the smooth, cool aluminum back. Holding it outside the store, I marveled at the device in a way that should have embarrassed me. Such a symbol of o
pulence, and yet I was drawn to it. I knew my old flip phone had no value left to me. I tossed it at the nearest garbage can. I miscalculated my throw and watched it bounce off the lip of the trash receptacle and land on the ground nearby. I didn’t bother to pick it up.

  The first thing I downloaded was Phantom. When I opened it, I got hit with a pop-up that explained that the service had been acquired. There was cheery language about the company’s “incredible journey” and excitement about “the next adventure”—a string of startup clichés—as if the lifespan of Phantom had just been a series of quests in a video game. For the first time, I recognized that I was genuinely glad to be out.

  Buried in the copy for Phantom’s acquisition message was the acknowledgment that the service would be gradually sunsetted over the course of three months. I always found that image funny, that a piece of software could be given some kind of sailor’s funeral, its remains placed in a boat, pushed into the sea to drift toward a setting sun.

  My next purchase: a plane ticket, the second one I’d bought in a month and, again, headed one way.

  * * *

  —

  I’D EXPECTED TOKYO TO be something out of the future. Instead, I discovered the city was quiet and subdued. It had the scale of New York. There were towering buildings and people everywhere. And yet, somehow, Tokyo was nearly silent. People seemed to move through the city with ease. The subway arrived on time every time. The streets were immaculately kept, cleaned by a sanitation crew that swept through and restored Tokyo to its pristine state each morning.

  My imagination of Tokyo had involved more noise, more lights. The one neighborhood that lived up to this expectation was Akihabara, full of large electronics stores signaled by the blare of arcades and blinking neon. The retail of Akihabara resembled something of a technological junkyard. One store was famous for accumulating old devices and selling them at steep discounts. It had bins of loose cords, mysterious peripherals, and obsolete devices sealed in plastic. Digging through those containers of old gadgets felt like excavating years of consumer technology, each layer of goods representing an era of human progress in the way sedimentary rock formations show their age by strata.