Then she said, “My dad’s never really had a friend before. As long as I’ve known him. I’m glad he has a friend now.” Sue kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks,” she added, before she went to bed.
Besides the business contacts I had made millions for, not too many people have said thank you to me and meant it. I knew Sue was special right then and there. I was damn lucky to have her in my life. And as I puffed on my cigarette under that Ocean City awning, I thought that sometimes just showing up consistently is enough to get the job done.
Unfortunately, Alan’s wife died not too long after that conversation. Was hit by a taxi when she was crossing Market Street in broad daylight at City Hall. Fucking tragedy. The taxi driver was a Muslim, by the way. But not an asshole jihadist, according to the papers, who painted him out to be a nice family man. The brakes had gone. Freak accident. Or maybe someone had tampered with them, I don’t know. But the police said it wasn’t the Muslim’s fault. He and his family came to the funeral, and he sobbed the whole time, which made me feel something for him even though he was a Muslim. Maybe it was because he was wearing a suit, like a proper American, instead of a bin Laden desert bathrobe. His family actually seemed nice too. The women covered their heads with colorful scarves, but they didn’t cover their faces with those black torture devices that only show the eyes, which was an improvement, at least.
None of that mattered much to Alan, of course.
Good or bad Muslim, accident or murder, his wife was dead.
Then my worst fear for Alan came true. He started spending entire days stumbling around his house half drunk, mumbling all sorts of depressing awful things about how he wanted to die. In spite of the fact that he had an amazing daughter to live for, Alan bought the bullet because his wife, Shelly, had been the great true love of his life. She was the one who had kept him level regarding all the Vietnam shit. Saved his life when he came back from the jungle and then gave him the civilian life he didn’t think was possible. She did all the legwork when they adopted Sue. And adopting Sue was smart. Gave Alan closure in a weird way. Allowed him to turn something bad into something positive. Intelligent woman. Shelly was a goddamn saint, just like my dead wife, Jessica.
Less than a year after I met him—and only a few weeks after we buried his wife—my Vietnam War buddy was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, which did not surprise me at all, because like I said before, he had bought the bullet. He got his wish and died shortly after getting that death sentence. The Grim Reaper is an efficient motherfucker. Give him an inch to work with, and it’s lights out.
When he was on his deathbed, Alan asked me to watch over his daughter, and I, of course, said it would be an honor. I’d do just about anything for a fellow Vietnam veteran. And I wasn’t about to buy the bullet anytime soon.
Sue got real lonely and depressed after her parents were gone. Took it hard because she didn’t have too much experience with death.
Alan died a few months before my son disowned me at the Phillies game. I’m still upset about wasting such good seats right behind home plate, not that my highbrow son would care about something as lowly and common as professional sports. The prime view would have been wasted on him even if we had actually stayed to watch the remaining innings. But anyway, after all that had happened, Sue and I were both in need of a family.
We started going to the Ritz Movie Theatres together a few times a week to watch cerebral art-house films, which we both enjoy. We’d always have dinner—never Vietnamese food, no fucking nasty nuoc mam—afterward and discuss the flick. Sue would say I reminded her of her father. Like how I was always accidentally falling asleep during the movie, and Sue would worry about whether she should wake me up or not. And how she sometimes had to remind me what certain dishes were, especially at Italian places, because of my fucked-up brain, only we didn’t know I had the tumor back then. And how I was always getting food on my shirt when I ate. She would say she used to call her dad Menu Man, because you could tell what was on the menu by reading the stains on his breast pockets. When she started calling me Menu Man, the significance was not lost on yours truly. And I’d tell Sue she was the absolute best Vietnamese person I had ever met, hands down, which made her smile sadly, because her genes would always make her a little sympathetic toward the little bastards in Vietnam, no matter how American she was at heart. I understood and accepted that fact. Let it slide, because Sue was value added.
Despite the other fact that she was always up my ass about my smoking, trying to get me to quit—she didn’t understand that the cigarettes hadn’t killed her father, his buying the bullet is what killed him—we became sort of close, and I consider Sue to be family now. She was there for me when my son wasn’t. She did a lot for me, like driving me to the hospital when I was too sick to get behind the wheel without killing anyone, back when my BMW was totaled anyway. Whenever I told her I felt bad wasting her time, she’d say she wished she could do all of this for her own parents, but she couldn’t because they were dead. I was all she had left, and she was all I had. So she helped me get my medication at the store and sort it into that Sunday-through-Saturday pillbox for idiots like me. She made sure there was food to eat in my refrigerator. She kept me company. And she was also the one who made me call Hank after the operation. She would have tried to get me to call him before I went under the knife, but I tricked her into thinking he was in Europe and couldn’t make it back in time, and that he knew already, which made Sue hate Hank until I told her the truth about my keeping the brain problems from my son because I was so fucking pissed at him.
The extra drugs they gave me at the hospital after they opened my skull made me softer than usual, and Sue used the sneaky part of her Asian heritage, took advantage of my incapacitated state, and cracked the case, which—I can see in retrospect—was what brought Hank and me back together in the end, so I guess I’m now grateful.
Hank doesn’t know it, but I’ve even written Sue into my will. Behind Ella, Sue might be my favorite woman alive. Jessica remains my favorite woman, living or dead. I still love my dead wife even more than I love Ella, although Ella is a close second. Before I took out that telephone pole with my BMW and my head got all fucked up, I was starting to love Sue more than I loved Hank, who had abandoned me in favor of a Dutch cunt. It gives me no joy admitting that now, but it’s true.
One of Sue’s best attributes is that she is kind. Despite all I confided in her about my dumb liberal son, that little yellow woman was always thinking of Hank, trying to get me to look at things from his point of view, moronic as it was. Even Sue agreed my son could be one hell of a stubborn idiot. But Sue has a big heart, which reminds me a lot of my Jessica.
8.