Ghost Month (23 page)

But things couldn’t be meant to be, could they?

Nancy began to murmur along to “Twenty Four Hours,” the hardest-driving song on the mid-tempo
Closer
. I thought about the lyrics, in which the speaker tries to make sense of an illusory world in the wake of a relationship that has come to a jarring end.

Too close to home.

I rested my head against the couch’s backboard and felt the furious drumming thunder through the house.

Could anybody else in the world really understand and love me except for Julia? After all our time apart, though, our relationship had become theoretical in nature. I could see that now as I sat here on the couch with this woman. I felt more alive than I had in years. I even seemed to be able to breathe more deeply.

All those wasted, loveless years of living in exile! I was the Chiang Kai-shek of love. But things were looking up for me now.

I moved my hand down to Nancy’s chin and she teasingly licked my index finger. I chuckled. She could do so many surprising things.

“Twenty Four Hours” ended, and now we were at the last two songs on
Closer
, mid-tempo curtain closers that pushed the boundary of what post-punk was at the time.

“What do you think of ‘The Eternal’ and ‘Decades,’ Jing-nan?” Nancy asked.

“I think they’re great,” I said. “I think Joy Division ended at their peak. Everything built up to this.”

“I have to confess something,” said Nancy. She sat up on the couch and held her hands. “I remember when you ripped on New Order on the PTT.”

I instantly thought of all the stupid talk online.

“Oh, that,” I said. “Ha!”

“You said the surviving members of Joy Division shouldn’t have gotten together again.”

“I was wrong to post that. I really like New Order now,” I said, putting my empty bottle down. “Well, it was all over, in a way, right? Why did they start up again?”

She crossed her arms. “They wanted to go on! That’s the only reason to do anything.”

“At the time I was mad that they didn’t stop.”

“Because you think they owed it to Ian Curtis to stop?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you think you can’t love someone else after Julia?”

I looked at the floor, although I didn’t see anything. “I don’t know,” I said. She touched my face and I looked into her eyes. They were lovely. “I didn’t think so.”

“Let’s just be happy,” she said. “I haven’t been in a long time, either.” I reached over and closed my hand over hers.

“Nancy, you must have guys all over you!”

“That’s not a good thing! It gets really annoying.”

I felt her little knuckles. “Let me know if I annoy you.”

“How could you?”

The album ended and I became aware of the time. It must be after three.

“What time do you have to be at Bauhaus?” I asked her.

“I never have to go back,” she said, shifting on the couch. “It was just a temp job while somebody was on vacation.”

“Damn. I was counting on you to get me a whole bunch of music!”

“You can download almost anything. I can buy you the rest.”

“I don’t need you to buy me stuff.”

“That’s true.” She pointed to my bookcase overflowing with CDs. “You probably have too many things already.”

“I have more CDs in the bedroom.”

She looked directly at me. “Ah, I’m not falling for that line.”

“I swear, it’s not a line!” I stood up and opened the fridge. “Do you want to cool off by splitting a can of Apple Sidra?” It’s a Taiwanese sparkling apple cider. I used to think it was misspelled, but it turns out that
sidra
is “cider” in Spanish. Why Spanish? Some things about Taiwan will always remain a mystery.

“It’s not that hot out here,” said Nancy, “but I’ll have a few sips.”

“We could move to the bedroom. There’s a fan there.”

She stood up and brushed her hair behind her ears. “Again with the bedroom, huh?”

“I don’t want to wear out the couch.”

I popped open the Apple Sidra and led the way.

After playing bumper cars for a while, we fell asleep.

I had a dream that Julia was trying to tell me something using only her right eyebrow. I wasn’t sad when I woke up. Just confused.

I didn’t tell Nancy about it. She left without showering because I didn’t have a shower and she didn’t want to wait for the hot water to boil for a bucket bath.

CHAPTER TEN

Ming-kuo had dressed in a shirt, tie and jacket. In the bright lights of the Korean restaurant, he looked like a chubby variety-show host minus the microphone and charm.

“This isn’t a job interview,” I told him.

“I wanted to look professional,” he said eagerly. “My mother always said that even though I wasn’t good-looking, I could at least dress well.” Man, was she right.

“Your mom was wrong,” I said.

“I don’t dress well?”

“You are good-looking,” I said as I wiped my mouth. I delved into the menu so I wouldn’t have to look at him.

“Thank you, Jing-nan! You’re a good-looking guy yourself!”

“Say, Ming-kuo. If I take you to Hsinchu City, do you think you could point out the stand Julia was working at?”

“I don’t know if I could. It’s been a few years and it was dark. No, I definitely couldn’t.”

“A few years? I thought you said it was a few months ago.”

He smiled and nodded. “Ah, you see how bad my memory is?”

“So which was it, a few months or a few years?”

He gave me an exasperated look. “Jeez, you’re making me feel like this
is
a job interview, putting all this pressure on me!”

I mashed my right foot into the ground. “Ming-kuo, could you
please get serious about this? I’d like to know any details you can remember.”

“Well, then I guess we can choose something in between. Let’s say it was a year ago.”

“Last Ghost Month?”

“Sure, let’s say that.”

Gan!
Could I believe anything this guy said? I sipped some water and swished it around my mouth. “Ming-kuo, I’m going to level with you. I’m actually asking for Julia’s parents. I’m seeing them after this and I’m going to have to tell them I couldn’t come up with anything useful.”

His eyes bugged out and he cracked his knuckles again. “You’re asking for her parents, Jing-nan? I thought you were trying to get to the bottom of things for yourself. I mean, you two were practically married.”

“Only in our minds.” I noticed that our silently furious waitress was standing at the ready. She took our orders for
zhajiangmian
, wheat noodles in bean sauce, without saying a word, and returned with several appetizers, ranging from salty to spicy, and steamed to chilled. There are a lot of different ways to make
zhajiangmian
, but for my money the best one is a dish that originated in the ethnic Chinese communities living in Korea. This variety includes a thick black paste made from roasted and fermented soybeans and tiny chunks of pork. The only place to find this type is in Korean restaurants that include Chinese items on their menu. Apart from that I didn’t know much about Korean food, and I knew even less about the little snacks. I didn’t want to ask our waitress about them because she was already mad enough that she had to serve us. It also didn’t help that Cookie Monster was looking at her like she was the daily special.

Classy as ever, Ming-kuo craned his neck and stared at her ass as she left.

“It’s not a crystal ball,” I said.

Ming-kuo sighed, shoved his elbows up on the table and cradled his head. “I’m not like you. Looking is all I get to do.”

“You haven’t been dating?” I asked, suppressing a laugh.

“Every few months I work up the courage to approach a girl, but I strike out every time.”

“I’m sorry, Ming-kuo.”

“I’m a virgin,” he said with exasperation.

Gan!
Or rather, non-
gan
!

“That’s an honorable thing, Ming-kuo. You’re saving yourself for marriage.”

“But how do I get to marriage if I can’t even get a date?”

“What a situation you’re in. You work at a love hotel and everyone else around you is getting laid.”

He dug his chopsticks into a cold dish of sprouted beans and threw them into his mouth. “You don’t have to rub it in,” he said with his mouth full.

I sampled some silvery fish that looked like crumpled foil candy wrappers with eyes. “I’m just making an observation. I’m not making fun of you.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

I bit into the inside of my left cheek. “I’m not laughing.”

“This is a fine way to treat your old classmate.”

A different waitress brought our
zhajiangmian
, snipped the noodles in our bowls with a pair of plastic scissors and left without saying a word. This would have been a huge breach of etiquette in a Chinese restaurant. Sure, shorter noodles would be easier to eat, but the noodle represents one’s existence. Breaking it means shortening your life. You’re supposed to have the entire noodle in your mouth before chewing it.

But it was just another stupid superstition. Why pay attention to it?

Ming-kuo’s face was ashen.

“She didn’t even ask if she could cut the noodles,” he said to the table.

I picked up my chopsticks and mixed the bowl. The bean sauce was impressively thick, like tar.

“Ming-kuo, you scared that first waitress away. This one probably has it in for you as well.”

The minor calamity wouldn’t stop Cookie Monster from eating. I’m not even sure a major one would. The dejected look on his face didn’t perk up, but he began to feed. At least he used a napkin. “You think she saw me look?” he asked.

“Of course she did! Women see everything.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have the experience that you do. Nobody was ever in love with me, all right?”

As I ate, I continued to stir up the noodles. You have to. The sauce is so thick, it can only penetrate the ball of noodles one layer at a time. The greasy black gravy made slopping sounds like someone chewing with his mouth open, as Ming-kuo was. The poor bastard.

“Look,” I said. “I’m going to help you, okay? I’m going to fix you up.”

“With whom?”

“A pretty girl.”

“She has to be smart.”

Don’t make it tougher for me, I thought.

T
HE
ZHAJIANGMIAN
WASN
’
T SITTING
right in my stomach, and the little bumps I hit on the way to the Huangs’ apartment sent strands of noodles whipping around inside.

It felt like a final act. This part of my life was over. This was the goodbye.

I wasn’t worried about the big Taiwanese-American. If I ran into him, I’d say I was here only to pay my respects to Julia’s parents one last time, and I was never going to see them again. Even an uncouth Taiwanese-American would understand that.

I pulled up to their building. I would give it to them plain and simple. I had tried asking Julia’s NYU classmates but neither of them had anything useful to offer. That would be enough for them.

But was it enough for me? Damn, Ming-kuo’s words were stuck in my head now: “You two were practically married.” Any husband whose wife had just been murdered would not rest until the killer was prosecuted—or he’d go out and kill the guy himself.

At least that’s how it is in the movies. I didn’t know if I could hold a gun in my hands, much less shoot someone.

I put my hands in my pockets and rode up the elevator. The doors made a hard scraping sound I could feel in my molars as they opened. Strange. The ride had been quiet last time. The place was falling apart.

I rang the doorbell and stood back. I saw something block the light of the peephole.

“Jing-nan!” Mrs. Huang shouted through the door. “What are you doing here?”

Odd. She sounded unusually surprised and maybe a little scared.

“Hello, Mrs. Huang, I just wanted to talk to you a little bit,” I said.

“It’s all right. Everything’s okay. Don’t need to come here anymore!”

“What?”

“Go home or go to work. Just go away.”

Just go away? Now that was just plain mean!

“Mrs. Huang, are you all right?”

“Get out of here now and stop bothering people!” I heard her stomp away from the door.

“You won’t even let him in?” I heard her husband say. “That’s rude!”

My thoughts exactly.

“Doesn’t matter!” she yelled at him, before apparently dragging him off to their bedroom so she could yell at him some more.

I was stunned. Out of all the phrases she could have used, she had to pick that one. It was the most hurtful thing anyone could say to me.

I crossed my arms and walked gingerly to the elevator. I felt the way I used to as a kid when my grandfather would reprimand me for transgressions I didn’t know I had committed.

Was I somehow at fault here?

Maybe they had been expecting me to call every day with updates? I hadn’t wanted to talk on the phone because it wasn’t respectful enough.

Maybe I should have come to Julia’s altar every night? No, they knew neither of us was into such a thing.

Then it hit me.

Someone had gotten to the Huangs. That Taiwanese-American and the goon who had confronted me at Taipei 101. I subconsciously covered my stomach with my hands.