Reprieve

by James Han Mattson

  “The same team,” Kendra says, her voice distant.

  “Because we weren’t white,” he says. “They called me a racist. They said I wasn’t white but wanted to be white. They said my desire to be white inflicted its own type of harm. They went on and on, and it was all really tough to hear, so I ignored it; I shrugged it off as nonsense. I mean, I was angry and stupid then. I didn’t understand what they were saying. But I get it now. I really do. And this meeting—our meeting, you and me—it was supposed to be about one thing, a different thing, but now, even as I’m talking, that thing is changing. As I’m gathering my thoughts, I’m realizing that the purpose of this, the purpose of me pestering you, of seeing you like this, the purpose of all of this is to apologize.”

  “Apologize?” she says, finally looking at him. Her eyes are dark and hard. Many people have apologized to her over the years. Jaidee knows this because many people have apologized to him over the years. But nothing has helped. Nothing has erased Bryan from his mind or his heart, so for her, he can only imagine.

  “I feel ashamed,” he says, bowing his head.

  “Ashamed,” she says, leaning forward, her hands fastened to the table.

  “Yes,” he says. “But more than that. I feel responsible.”

  “But you didn’t back then?” she says, her voice quavering. “You didn’t feel responsible then?”

  Jaidee shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

  She breaks off a piece of bread, dips it, eats. “Okay, fine,” she says. “Tell me why you feel responsible now.”

  Jaidee fumbles. Thoughts tear through him, new thoughts, thoughts that needed Kendra’s presence to crystallize. He thinks of Terrence digging his finger into his chest. What happens? he’d said. What happens when we splinter like this? He thinks of sitting in his dorm room, suggesting to Bryan that Black people weren’t studious. He thinks of Chris Driscoll, the blond douche who’d told Jaidee he wouldn’t even pity-fuck him. And he thinks of Cell Five. Of that moment: Victor shouts, Jaidee, RUN! Jaidee runs.

  At the table, Jaidee hitches. He’s going to cry. He can feel it in his nose. But he needs to say this. He needs a release. He looks away, says: “I thought I loved Victor. I thought we were going to be together. I’d come to Nebraska for him. I thought that if I just did this one last thing, this Quigley thing, that he’d see my devotion. He’d see me. But he didn’t. He’d never seen me. He didn’t even recognize me when I showed up on his doorstep. I was nothing to him.” Jaidee stops, calms his rapid breaths. “I have a partner now, Kendra. We’ve been together a long time. He’s Thai. It’s easy, you know? So much easier. With Victor, I’d sacrificed—and for what? I was invisible to him. I didn’t matter. But still, I continued because all I thought I ever wanted was an American boyfriend. A white American boyfriend. You see?” He chokes, bows his head even further. “And that’s how I made my choice to run at Leonard. That’s what informed it. It wasn’t adrenaline. It wasn’t confusion. It was a choice made under the assumption that Victor mattered and Bryan didn’t.” He let out a long, deflating breath. “There,” he said. “That’s it. That’s what I had to say.”

  He looks at Kendra. Her face is rigid, the lines beside her mouth deep and severe. She sits silently for a moment, looking at the couple next to them, then she draws in a long, wheezing breath, and says, blinking fast, “My god that hurt, Jaidee. My god.”

  “Kendra—”

  She gets up, leaves the table, heads for the bathroom, and Jaidee sits alone with a half-drunk bottle of wine and a basket of bread. When the entrees arrive, Kendra’s seat remains empty, and when the waiter asks if they’d like anything else, Jaidee shakes his head.

  She returns ten minutes later. She stands next to the table, hovering over the steaming plate of pasta. She looks down at Jaidee, her face drawn and cheerless. “I can’t do this,” she says, pulling two twenties from her purse, laying them on the table. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”

  “Okay,” Jaidee says, staring down at the money.

  “I can’t sit here and pretend,” she says. “I just can’t.”

  “I understand,” he says. The garlic from his dish pinches his nose.

  “What you said . . .” She wobbles back and forth. “What you said . . .”

  “I know.”

  She closes her eyes, clasps her hands in front of her. When she opens them, she looks resolute, determined. “Maybe someday we can finish this conversation,” she says, looking down at her plate. “Maybe someday. Who knows. But not today, okay? Not today.”

  She pulls her purse strap over her shoulder, throws him one last glance, then leaves Arpeggio. Jaidee watches her through the window. She hurries, pulling her bag close to her. A couple blocks down, she turns, and then she’s out of sight.

  At the table, alone, an immense sorrow rips through Jaidee’s chest. His heart beats double-time, and he thinks, for a moment, that he’s going to fall forward, that his neck and shoulders will simply give out and he’ll splat face-first into his plate of pasta, drowning in herbs and tomato and garlic. His hands shake; he puts them on the table. It takes him a few seconds to regain his breath.

  At his hotel, Jaidee considers video-chatting Kiet, but decides against it. Kiet will be starting his shift and won’t be able to talk. Feeling buzzed and crushingly sad, Jaidee pours himself another glass of wine from a bottle he bought earlier that day. He takes it to his bed, sips, allows himself to get drowsy. He thinks about Kendra, about that last meaningful glance, how her face had flamed with heartache, weariness. She’d said, Maybe someday we can finish this conversation. Maybe someday. He hadn’t paid much attention then; he’d been too distraught. But now, in bed, near sleep, he repeats her words aloud.

  “Maybe someday.”

  In his stomach, in his chest, a small but significant hope blooms: if she wants to speak to him, if she wants to continue, she might be able to forgive.

  He sits up, adjusts his pillow. When he gets home, he determines, he’ll email her. If she doesn’t answer right away, he’ll wait. Perhaps a month, perhaps a year. However long, it doesn’t matter—he’ll continue emailing. He won’t give up.

  His head nods. He puts the half-drunk glass on the nightstand, lies down, hugs his pillow, closes his eyes.

  In his dream, Cell One spreads out before him. Jaidee’s there with Bryan, Victor, and Jane, scrambling through the cages, digging through the confetti, searching for envelopes, fending off the actors with low-throated howls. Jaidee finds every red square, much to the consternation of his fellow contestants—Come on, J, Victor whines, we’re a team. Jaidee ignores him. He knows, in this world, that if he doesn’t find them all, if he lets any of them discover even one, Leonard will come, and Bryan will die, so even after he’s found the number the scoreboard says, he continues digging. At one point, looking outside the cage with the bleeding baby, he catches Bryan’s eye. There’s a knowing there, a deliberate glint that tells Jaidee that no matter what he does, no matter how many envelopes he finds, Leonard will come. Jaidee is no savior; Jaidee is no hero.

  Bryan! Jaidee screams through the bars.

  Bryan looks directly at him, and his face crumbles into years of blinding torment from which there’s been no reprieve, and from inside the cage, Jaidee grabs the bars, shakes them, and shouts, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!

  Acknowledgments

  I am indebted to my brilliant editor, Jessica Williams, whose tireless dedication to this book moved me in ways I’ll never forget. Also, Marya Spence, agent extraordinaire: Thank you for your passion, your heart, your devotion, and your friendship. I feel so lucky to know you.

  Thank you to Julia Elliott and the entire team at William Morrow, particularly Eliza Rosenberry, Angela Craft, and Ploy Siripant. Thanks also to Nat Edwards, Hellie Ogden, and the team at Janklow & Nesbit, and Alexis Kirschbaum and the team at Bloomsbury UK. I’m grateful for all the work you’ve done to usher this novel into public life.

  Thank you to Sarai Schulz, Katie Axt, Edwar
d Helfers, and Kevin Elliott for reading earlier versions of this book and offering such insightful feedback.

  For the many conversations about haunts and special effects, and for giving me a tour of your new spectacle, thank you to Billy Livingston and Mike Gemeny. Thanks also to Amanda Orr for introducing me to dorm life at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

  For friendship, support, and advice throughout the writing of this novel, thank you to Akemi Johnson, Rei Onishi, Jung Yun, Richard Cochnar, Christopher Allen Franklin, Bernard Welt, Samantha Chang, Andrew Malan Milward, Beth Randklev, Darrel Randklev, Kate Sachs, Jennifer duBois, T. Geronimo Johnson, Benjamin Hale, Angela Richerson, Kevin Richerson, Carol Downey, Jeff Downey, Mike Gray, Gerry Stover, Barry Nelson, John Mahon, Richard Golding, Dale Ray Phillips, Ann Neelon, Carrie Jerrell, Andy Black, Julie Cyzewski, Allen Wier, Erik Rodriquez, and Viet Le.

  Thank you to the creative writing program at Murray State University, the professional writing program at the University of Maryland, the creative writing program at the George Washington University, and Humanities North Dakota for financial and institutional support.

  Thank you to Chloe Salmon and everyone at The Moth for allowing me to tell a story onstage and giving me one of the best nights of my adult life.

  Finally, to my family, thank you for your faith, your guidance, and your steadfast encouragement. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done.

  About the Author

  JAMES HAN MATTSON is the acclaimed author of The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is the recipient of awards from the Michener-Copernicus Society of America and Humanities North Dakota. He was a featured storyteller on The Moth and has taught writing at the University of Iowa, the University of Cape Town, the George Washington University, the University of Maryland, Murray State University, and the University of California–Berkeley. He is currently the fiction editor of Hyphen magazine. He was born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in North Dakota.

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  Also by James Han Mattson

  The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  reprieve. Copyright © 2021 by James Han Mattson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  first edition

  Cover design by Ploy Siripant

  Cover illustration by Hokyoung Kim 2021

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Mattson, James Han, author.

  Title: Reprieve : a novel / James Han Mattson.

  Description: First edition. | New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2021]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021010494 (print) | LCCN 2021010495 (ebook) | ISBN 9780063079915 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780063079922 (paperback) | ISBN 9780063079939 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Psychological fiction. | GSAFD: Horror fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.A8647 R47 2021 (print) | LCC PS3613.A8647 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010494

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010495

  Digital Edition OCTOBER 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-307993-9

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-307991-5

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