There were no survivors.” The words had hit Neil in the gut, like a boxer’s best punch. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. His head spun. Sean Nakamura kept talking, but Neil couldn’t hear him anymore. He looked to Angel for some kind of assurance, some sign that this wasn’t happening, but Angel had taken Neil’s hand and was patting it gently.
At some point Neil must have gotten up and walked away. Hours later, it seemed, he noticed he was lying on the pull-out mattress he kept in his office. He had no idea how he’d gotten there. He was alone. The door was locked and there were no lights on in the kitchen beyond. It was dark outside.
Had he fallen asleep at all? Neil wasn’t sure. His head hurt. His stomach lurched. He brought his hand to his eyes. They were dry. He was surprised to find he was too numb to cry. He realized there was a sound in his ear. No, not in his ear, exactly, but in his head. It was Nakamura’s voice, coming back to him in snippets.
. . . they went on a boating trip . . .
. . . two days ago . . .
. . . Hiro and Larry . . .
. . . storm came up suddenly . . .
. . . huge waves . . .
. . . battered the boat into pieces . . .
. . . no bodies recovered . . .
. . . found a shirt with writing on the inside. It said “puts the man in manga” . . .
. . . Japanese police say there was no chance of survival . . .
. . . Larry’s parents have decided to have a memorial service right away. . . . They are coming back tomorrow night. . . . They asked me to tell you in person . . .
. . . a service for Hiro a few days from now in Japan . . .
. . . I’m really sorry. . . .
Neil now remembered. That’s when he’d gotten up, let Angel’s hand fall to his side, and had walked into his office, almost robotically grabbing his mattress from under his desk and lying down. He didn’t even know if the twins or Gary had served the last few customers, or cleaned up. He didn’t care.
Neil closed his eyes. He wanted to moan, but he felt completely drained. His hand flopped against something on the floor. There was a whirring noise and Neil could see a soft red glow inside his eyelids.
He opened his eyes and found himself staring at his open laptop. The screen shimmered with the last Web page he had been looking at: the latest—and now, last—installment of The Chef. There was Vegemight closing in on the Chef’s lair with his evil boat. The Chef was grabbing his atomic avocados in anticipation of the coming fight. A fight, Neil realized, that would never come. Larry would never finish the stupid manga. Neil reached over to close the laptop and found he couldn’t. Somehow, turning off the screen felt like closing off his last connection with his cousin.
Tears welled in his eyes. Every time the screen went dark he would reach over to wake it up. He felt like a little boy asking his big brother to read his favorite bedtime story over and over again. Neil had spent most of his life desperately trying to not be a little boy. Now that Larry was gone, he felt everything collapsing around him. He tried to call his parents but there was no answer. They must have boarded their flight home.
Finally, Neil curled up with his knees held tight against his chest and fell into a deep, and thankfully dreamless, sleep. The screen finally went dark and the laptop turned off.