“It’s been such an honor to teach you,” he’d told the class. “It’s been so much fun.” The class replied with smiles—all except Jaidee.
Two days prior, Jaidee had gathered all his courage and once again lingered after class. He went to Victor’s desk, put his hand on the wood. Victor smiled up at him with brilliantly aligned teeth, and Jaidee thought that he’d never seen a man so happy.
“Jaidee,” Victor said. “How can I help you?”
Jaidee’s mouth filled with salty sand. He moved his lips and his tongue, but nothing came out.
“Thank you for speaking up today during the writing exercise,” Dunlap said. “You had some great things to say.”
The sand moistened, disappeared. Jaidee said, “I don’t want you to leave, Teacher.”
Dunlap smiled. “That’s kind of you,” he said.
“Please don’t.”
“Ah. You’ll be fine.”
Jaidee hesitated. “I found the hearts.”
“Excuse me?”
“I found . . . at the bottom of the assignments.”
“I’m not sure—”
“I know . . . secret, but you’re going away, so . . .”
Victor stood, gathered his file folders and textbooks. “Hey man, sorry. I have to get going. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Again, great contributions today. I appreciate it.”
“Mr. Dunlap—”
“Gotta run, Jaidee. Have a great afternoon.”
“But—” Jaidee said.
“Good job again,” Victor said. Then he left.
In the bathroom, crying that last day of class, Jaidee thought how hatefully unfair everything was—Victor embodied everything that was good and necessary, and it seemed that Jaidee’s time with him had been cut short. When he heard the door open, he wiped his nose, breathed deep, splashed cold water on his face.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Standing before him was, of all people, Aran, looking too tall, too self-possessed, too sure of himself. Jaidee looked in the mirror, breathed. Aran went to the toilet, unzipped, peed.
“Almost finished with school, huh,” Aran said. He zipped, turned around, and looked at Jaidee. “Hey, you look unwell.”
Jaidee shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“Look at us. Almost men.” Aran looked at his face in the mirror, moved a few strands of hair around. “Will you study at Chulalongkorn?”
“I will work with my father for a while,” Jaidee said. “I plan on studying in America.”
“I thought you might do that,” Aran said.
They fell silent. Jaidee wanted his old friend to leave, to let him be alone with his sorrow, but Aran lingered, studying his reflection in the mirror. He’s grown incredibly vain, Jaidee thought. Just because he’s so tall. Just because the girls giggle around him. Just because his skin is smooth and unblemished. But he’s only a boy, he thought. Probably still thinking about all that Belly-Kos nonsense.
“I wish you luck, my friend,” Aran said.
“Thank you,” Jaidee said. “You as well.”
Aran half smiled, waved limply. His eyes, Jaidee saw, implored more conversation: they shimmered around the edges, hesitant and sad.
“You should go to America too,” Jaidee said, knowing full well that Aran’s family couldn’t afford it even if he were admitted somewhere. “The land of promise.”
“I wish you good luck,” Aran repeated, turning around.
“The path to opportunity,” Jaidee said. Then, in English: “The land of the free, home of the brave.”
“Goodbye, nok,” Aran said, opening the door. “Nice to see you.”
“Goodbye, yai,” Jaidee said, but the door had already closed.
Jaidee splashed more water on his face, closed his eyes, and thought about what he’d said. America, he thought. Yes, that’s it. America. He hadn’t actually known he was going until he’d said it aloud, but once he had, once the word “America” had breezed past his lips, he knew, unequivocally, that the land of Hollywood and hamburgers and New York City was in his future. And why not? His family would approve. His uncle would bankroll. In fact, they’d all be thrilled: his father had studied there for two years, repeatedly recounting it as the most inspiring time of his life, and though he hadn’t pressured Jaidee to apply, he knew that he’d be happy to have a son with a college degree from abroad.
So Jaidee strode out of the bathroom with his head up, his face dry. In the classroom, Victor laughed with a group of students. Jaidee watched, smiling, remembering something Blademan had said during the second season. He’d just revealed who he was to Becky Thatcher; he’d come to her in his Blademan outfit but had taken it off, exposing himself as a very mortal man. She’d been shocked, horrified even, but had, in the end, fallen into his arms. After their kiss, Blademan had said, Love takes work, and any love that doesn’t isn’t worth a damn.
Jaidee thought, Of course. Love takes work.
So, he would find a way for this love to work. Because surely, undeniably, Victor Dunlap was worth a thousand damns.
Exhibit 3A: The Knife
Summary:
10" chef’s knife from Coralax, Inc.
Brown wooden handle, scratched
Jagged bloodstains crossing both handle and blade
Letters inscribed on the blade: TLB
Fingerprint ID: Leonard Grandton
Leonard
Leonard Grandton met Mary Kenilworth in the canned-foods aisle of the West Lincoln Hyvee: she was crouched down, inspecting a tin of peaches, when Leonard, contemplating the music above, pushed his cart directly into her. Mary yelped, fell onto her side, dropped the can of peaches. Leonard gasped, rushed to her, extended his hand. She didn’t take it; she shook her head, propped herself up, wiped her hands on her thighs, and said, “Don’t worry about it.” She grabbed her can of peaches and went to her cart.
“Are you okay?” Leonard said, rolling up next to her.
She didn’t look at him. “Yes, of course,” she said.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“No worries, really,” she said, and pushed off.
Neither Leonard nor Mary was a planner: their grocery-store visits relied on impulse and recall. Neither brought a list. They strolled down each aisle hoping the products themselves would trigger a memory. Because of this, they passed each other in the coffee and tea aisle, the cereal aisle, the snack-food aisle, the frozen-food aisle, the seasoning aisle, the beverage aisle. They avoided eye contact, looking quickly away when the other appeared, but their routes synced so completely, and the store was so feebly populated, that the other’s presence became enormous, and by the time they reached the perimeter—the deli, the dairy, the produce, the bakery—they stopped pretending and started playing. Mary, bagging broccoli, saw Leonard, bagging apples, and coolly walked by, nicking his foot with her grocery cart. She turned around, shrugged, mouthed I’m sorry!, giggled. And Leonard, checking eggs, saw Mary, examining yogurt, and with much dispassion, walked by and grazed her knee. I’m so sorry!, he mouthed. She laughed. Versions of this flirtation occurred in the bakery and the deli, and by the time they made it to the checkout, they were both thoroughly delighted.
“Those look like some great peaches,” Leonard said, tapping his cart against hers.
“How offensive,” she said.
“Sensitive, huh,” he said.
She turned away.
“Didn’t mean to offend.”
“Is this your process with women?” She still faced forward.
“Yes,” he said. “My process.”
“It’s a lame process.”
“Well, it’s mine, so.”
They paused. Ahead, the cashier said, “Hello, Mrs. Wilson.”
“Maybe tomorrow?” Leonard said, feeling a sudden wave of confidence. “We could talk about how lame it is? I could tell you otherwise?”
She smiled. “Tomorrow’s bad.”
“Next week, then?”
“Next week
next week next week.”
“That’s what I said.”
She shook her head, loaded her groceries onto the conveyor belt.
They met next week. Then they met the week after. Within two months they were cohabitating, and Leonard, a lifelong opponent of marital domesticity, thought, for the first time, that a life shared was a life expanded, that love was a worthy and admirable goal. He’d had girlfriends before—a straight line of divisive, prolonged entanglements—but had found their companionship utterly dispensable: he always faded, unwilling to even humor the idea of something perennial and warranting classification. He thought of these women as somewhat interchangeable: staid, middle-aged Midwestern women who understood their prime man-catching years to be historical. Sometimes they were divorced, sometimes single, but in all cases, they were willing to settle for someone like him: a balding, thirty-seven-year-old hotel manager with a soft belly and a lopsided smile. Mary Kenilworth, however, was different: she’d traveled, for one—Kenya, Morocco, Spain, Australia, Belgium, Belize, Japan, Vietnam, etc., etc.—and spoke in a way that emphasized these travels, not necessarily referring directly to these exotic lands but syntactically underscoring a sophistication that proclaimed worldly eminence. Instead of “really” or “so” or “very” she’d say “quite,” as in: It’s quite warm out today, isn’t it? She also used multisyllabic words like “palliative” and “ostentatious” and “incendiary,” and sometimes, after they talked, he looked up her vocabulary in the dictionary, partly to discover the exact meaning, and partly because he wanted to know if she’d used it correctly. In one hundred percent of the cases, she had.
They shopped together. Though Leonard had rudimentary bed-, bath-, and kitchenware, enough, he said, to get by just fine, Mary required a few more elevated items.
“Like a knife set,” she said. “How have you gone through your entire life without a knife set?”
He shrugged. “I have a knife,” he said.
“That rusty one in the silverware drawer?”
“I mean. It works.”
They bought a new knife set. It wasn’t until after they opened the box, removed the wood block, inspected each blade, threw away the cardboard, that they noticed, engraved shakily on the steel of the chef’s knife, the small letters TLB.
“That’s weird,” Mary said, tracing the letters. “None of the other knives have it.”
“These are Coralax knives,” Leonard said. “I wonder what TLB stands for.”
“The longest blade?” Mary said.
“The largest beauty?” Leonard said.
“The lengthiest breast,” Mary said.
“The littlest butt,” Leonard said.
For weeks afterward, this became a running joke. “Could you hand me the luckiest butthole?” Mary would say. “I’m gonna chop up this celery for the dip.”
“The last bitch still needs washing,” Leonard would reply. “It still has some cilantro on its blade from last night.”
They never discovered the meaning of TLB, but they concocted stories and told them to each other before bed.
“See, there’s this sweatshop,” Mary said one night. “And all they do is make knives, and one day, some guy, let’s call him Albert Lee, decides that he wants to add his own flair to one of the blades because he’s tired of so much monotony, so much boring steel, so one night he sneaks into the sweatshop and takes one and engraves the initials of his secret gay lover into the steel—Trenton Lyle Borschadt.”
“Trenton Lyle Borschadt?” Leonard said. “That doesn’t sound very Chinese.”
“I never said it was in China. Racist much?”
“Would sweatshops even have engraving equipment?”
“This one does.”
“I’m not buying it. I’ll tell you what actually happened,” Leonard said.
“Huh. Sure.”
“Well, this box of knives sat in one of Coralax’s warehouses forever and for some reason it would never get shipped off to Target or Walmart or wherever, and one of the warehouse employees noticed this, that this lonely box was just sitting there forever, so he stole it, brought it home, knowing nobody would ever really miss it. Well, he put this knife block on the counter, and his wife, who just used a perfectly good single knife for everything, one that she kept in the silverware drawer, she thought that this was a hint about her cooking, so she got pissed off and chased him around the house with the knife screaming, ‘I’ll skin you alive!’”
“This is a stupid story,” Mary said, grinning.
“Well, she finally calmed down and grew to love the assortment of knives, and this warehouse worker, partly out of love and partly out of fear of his wife, engraved her initials into the knife—Theresa Lynn Bootyman—so if they ever found his body hacked up, they’d know exactly who had done it. He told her, of course, that it was a dedication.”
“Bootyman? Really?”
“Better than Trenton Lyle Borschadt.”
“Hardly.”
He laughed, draped himself around her, peppered her neck with kisses. He felt, then, inordinately happy, inordinately lucky; he’d never met a woman who’d lifted his spirits so constantly, and he wondered how he’d gone through four decades of life without experiencing such bliss: it seemed that if everyone felt this way all the time, if everyone understood this sort of unbridled joy, that nobody would ever fight, and nobody would ever die.
Their sex, at first, was timid: he hadn’t witnessed many taut bodies unclothed except in magazines, and in her presence, he felt obscenely unworthy, refusing to take off his shirt during their first bout of frenzied lovemaking. As it happened, though, after a couple rounds, she confided that she preferred men like him, men who didn’t preen and sculpt and obsess about body-fat percentages and protein shakes. She said she liked to be the woman, meaning, in her words, that she was the pretty one and he was the man.
“Well, clearly you are the pretty one,” he said, rubbing his belly.
“I wouldn’t call myself traditional in any sense, Leonard. But in this sense, perhaps.”
Leonard’s confidence soared: he not only removed his shirt during sex but also allowed lights to be on, daylight to filter through. He found this newfound body-acceptance exposed an entirely new world, a world of sex wherever, and so, in a public place, overcome by this newly minted swagger, he’d take her to the nearest bathroom, shut the stall door, hold her against the wall, and examine her pores, her hairline, the small creases around her eyes all while thrusting, panting, fucking. He memorized her face—the Massachusetts-shaped sunspot on her left cheek, the small flecks of gold dotting her right iris, the slow, gentle curve of her lips when she pressed them together—and at work, he would sometimes draw her, stashing each coarse portrait into his desk drawer, starting over the next day.
He asked about her life. He wanted to know everything. She said:
“I’ve only lived in Lincoln for a little while. I moved to town to take care of my mother; she’s undergoing chemo and radiation for metastatic breast cancer. Before Lincoln, I was in Hartford, Connecticut. I was a travel writer. I worked for a magazine called Tarmac, the official magazine of Eastjet Airlines, and while they mostly had me write about the food, nightlife, and culture of various domestic cities, once in a while I’d be sent abroad, thus my impressive international résumé.”
Leonard found her previous life utterly unapproachable—he’d barely left his home state, had been born and raised in Omaha, and moved to Lincoln for two years of college before dropping out, had started working at the Claymont Hotel, had stayed—and one day early in their relationship, he asked her, earnestly and reticently, what someone like her was doing with someone like him.
They were sitting in his living room, both on the couch turned toward each other. She curled up her left leg so her foot sank behind her right knee. It was a Saturday afternoon. The sun peeked through the blinds, lighting one side of her face, the sun-spotted side.
“You’re beautiful and worldly and smart and
, really,” he said, “I’m telling you now, you can do a lot better. I mean, look at me.”
She sighed, smiled, brushed her hair off her shoulder. “Oh, Leonard,” she said. “Really, you’re a lot more than you think you are.”
“But I’m sure in all those places you’ve been you’ve met more interesting people, more accomplished, more handsome people, right?”
“Why would you compare yourself to projections?” she said. “These people you’re thinking about are not real and therefore irrelevant.”
“Meaning you haven’t met more interesting, accomplished, and handsome people?”
“Meaning if I have, they’re not sitting with me now.”
“I don’t want to be your charity case.”
She laughed, dimpling her forehead. “Is it terrible to say that I enjoy how much you like me?” she said.
“But do you like me?”
“I do,” she said. “I like you very much.”
“But why?”
“Well,” she said, “if you must know, you make me laugh, and laughter, really, is my primary aphrodisiac.” She moved her hand up his leg to his thigh, winked. “And you’re kind. And you’re thoughtful. And none of my past matters at all because this is the present and we’re together here now so let’s not talk about the why and just be, okay?”
But Leonard, as time went on, found that he couldn’t just be, that her reasons for liking him, while seemingly legitimate, would never stand the test of time, that eventually she would grow tired of his coarseness, his squishiness, his lack of ambition. Lincoln was no cosmopolis, he knew, but even in his town there were much more distinguished gentlemen, men who knew their way around books and films and plays, men discerning about scotch and wine, men whom Leonard assumed Mary would one day leave him for.
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