The day after she found out she was terminal, the day after she came home from the clinic, went straight to the backyard without even looking at us, and lay on her back on the lawn for the whole afternoon, Mom taught me to cook my own breakfast. In the nine years since, I’d repeated the recipe with such consistency that Jules dubbed it “Eggs Victor.” This morning—Saturday, Lafayette Game Day, eleven days after Dad was stabbed to death in the next room—I modify it to serve one-and-a-half Victors:
Start the toaster oven and put three eggs in a pot of water and cover it and set it on the stove. Set stove to medium.
Fill the electric kettle with water and slide three pieces of bread into the toaster oven.
Spoon coffee grounds into the wide glass beaker until the grounds are three fingers deep and then pour hot water from the electric kettle over the grounds (make sure none escape the deluge and float dry to the top).
Pour two short glasses of orange juice and sip from one. Thumb through the sports section.
Put your palms on the counter and clench your eyes shut for a minute as a tsunami of sadness washes over you. Picture the life gushing out of your father’s body. Did he think of you, did he say your name? If you were there, what would he have told you? Stir the coffee in the beaker.
Take the pot with the eggs off the stove. Set the table with two bowls, two forks, one knife, two mugs, the full glass of orange juice, one paper towel torn in half in the role of two napkins, and a jar of jam.
Use the lid to drain the water out of the pot of eggs and then refill it with cold water and put it on the woven trivet on the table. Press the coffee and put that on the table, too. Send a text message up the stairs: “Eggs Victor now.”
Tear one slice of toast into pieces in a bowl, peel two of the soft-boiled eggs, mash them into the toast with your fork.
Sprinkle salt and pepper. Hear footsteps on the stairs.
Jules pads in: sweats, slippers, and froofy hair. “Yay, Eggs Victor,” she says, tearing up her piece of toast. “And the worm for earliest bird goes to . . .”
I pour the coffee. “Are you going to wear that to the restaurant?”
“I’ll bring stuff and shower at your dorm before we go. Is that okay with you, Herr Victor?”
“Look, I just—I’m sorry.” Take a deep breath. Spread jam on the last piece of toast. “I don’t do this every day.”
“I know,” she says.
Since it’s game day I do a shootaround with Andre instead of my usual morning workout. We move methodically, serious, working our sweet spots and weak spots. At the end, by the time we’re winded but not beat, we take turns shooting foul shots and yelling at each other.
“A whole troupe of Vegas showgirls,” Andre waves his arms spastically. “Shagging on a spaceship!”
I swish the shot anyway. “Xiān bié qù xiǎng guòqù de nàxiē hé wèilái yào zuò de shì, bǎ zhùyìlì jízhōng zài dāngxià—Busy your mind not with what you have done or what you will do but with what you are doing right now,” Dad used to say.
“Final event,” says Andre, stepping behind the basket. He squints up at the rim, squeezes his eyes shut, and then lofts the ball neatly over the backboard. It falls through the net.
“Oh, booyah. What’s up now, huh?” Andre dances a few beats of the Ghostbusta.
I retrieve the ball, play along, make a bored face. As I’m lining up the shot, the far doors bang open and the sounds of Women’s Volleyball spill into the arena: fresh sneakers, nets and uprights on rolling carts, brassy chatter and laughter. I close my eyes and release; the ball takes two bounces around the rim and falls in.
“Ooooh, Victor Li! Are you showing off for us?”
Holly Michaels, All Cal-10 libero, sashays up to us with a thousand-watt smile on her face, tanly, symmetrically, gorgeously terrifying. I’m mumbling some explanation when she cuts me off, turning to Andre with her hands on her hips.
“Do you have any idea how much this guy is in here?”
Andre grins. “The hardest-working man on the team. You coming to the game tonight?”
“I shouldn’t, because none of y’all ever come to any of our games.”
“I’ll be at the next one,” Andre says.
“Uh-huh.” Holly drops her chin, looking ravishingly unconvinced.
“Hi, Andre!” A towering blonde waves her whole arm at us from across the court.
“Oh hey Jamie, what up girl!”
“That’s Jeanie,” hisses Holly.
“Oh.” Andre smacks himself in the forehead. “Look, Holly, why don’t you and Jeanie come to the game tonight and then come to our after-party at Irving? Four-oh-two.”
Blueberry eyes narrow. “I’ll consider it. Good luck tonight, Victor.” She chucks me on the shoulder and runs off to help her teammates set up the nets.
“She likes you,” Andre says.
“After what happened at that party? No way, man.”
“That was two years ago, bruh! When are you gonna let it go?”
Jules finishes tromping down the bleachers. “Who was that fresh little package?”
“Seems like we’re done here,” I say.
“The monk,” Jules says. Andre gives me a look, pulls off his sneakers, slips into his slides.
Back at the Quad, Andre sits on the counter and massages the arches of his feet with a lacrosse ball as I scoop supplements out of little plastic jars into a blender filled halfway with soy milk and bananas. Creatine, whey protein isolate, branched chain amino acids.
Just as Jules comes out of the shower wearing my towel, there’s a knock on the door, and she detours to open it.
“Hey, you must be Sun. I’m Juliana,” I hear her say, and then he’s following her into the room. It looks like he’s wearing the same clothes he arrived in last night.
“I am very sorry to meet you,” Sun says haltingly, looking embarrassed. “I am saying, in such a rotten time. Your father has tell me many nice things about you.”
“Thank you, Sun,” Jules says. “What a gent. Okay, boys, I’ll go put on some clothes so Andre can regain control of his eyeballs.”
“Ignoring a half-naked woman is impolite in some cultures,” Andre calls after her. “Hey, my man Sun. Where have you been all morning?”
“RoboTaco. I wake up three o’clock, big jetlag. I don’t sleep again. So I walk there, twenty-four-hour operating.”
Andre narrows his eyes. “You’ve been at RoboTaco since three in the morning?”
“I am walking around all San Dimas. So cool and quiet. So clean air. So much space, so much trees. Old Li have always say to me that America is the most beautiful place.” Sun sighs with admiration.
“So you’ve definitely never been to the States before?” Andre asks. “Because your English is pretty damn good.”
Sun combines a wry smile with a shrug. “Old Li always love to watch American films,” he says. “That how he teach me English. We watch everything in Happy Year office. I think his favorites are Robert Redford and Vin Diesel.”
Except when he says it, it sounds more like “Win Dieser.” Sun closes his eyes in concentration, then reopens them and deadpans with true Dom Toretto gravitas: “‘I live my life a quarter mile at a time.’”
Andre and I look at each other and share a surprised laugh.
“Dad did have a Vin Diesel thing,” I point out.
Jules emerges from my bedroom in black slacks, black tank top, and wet black ponytail. We leave Andre to his foot massage, gather around the table, and go over the plan in Mandarin. As he reiterates his instructions, Sun’s manner is grave and steady again. Jules and I will go to the original Happy Year restaurant for lunch and visit the main office at the back of the restaurant. We’ll keep an eye out for any conspicuous changes, and we’ll try to find out if the safe in Dad’s office has been tampered with or moved. And, of course, we won’t be saying anything about the gun, the passport, or the taco-loving man from Beijing camped out in my dorm room.
It’s in a grim mood that we head down the stairs and out to visitor parking, and for once Jules has nothing to say. The midday winter sun is warm and mild, and the noontime breeze seems to carry a hint of salt, even though we’re fifty miles from Santa Monica. I think back to the last time I saw the Pacific Ocean—it was about six months ago, in August, when Dad drove us out there to celebrate what would have been Mom’s fifty-fifth birthday. The ocean always mesmerized Dad, made him go all soft and sentimental. He could stare at it for hours on end without saying a word. That evening in August, we ordered omakase at a hole-in-the-wall Japanese place, toro sashimi and blue crab hand rolls. I remember walking along the beach afterward, Dad and I ambling along in quiet content, our faces bathed in the setting sun, as Jules pattered ahead to trace sine curves in the wet sand with her bare feet. It was a different ocean then, a different family who saw it.