“But I am enjoying my quality of life.” Louis stretched out on the couch, from whose depths would later emerge a double-size bed for Arthur. “I’m thinking about how my renters pay my mortgage and how I’ll profit from those houses in a few years. I’m thinking about how I’m going to corner the market in better than genuine goods, which is a bigger market than the one for things most people can’t afford to buy.”
This, Arthur realized, was the difference between them. Arthur thought of what he had done, what he was doing, or what he should have done, but Louis thought only of what he would do. For example, rather than resigning himself to saying “fake” or “knockoff,” Louis preferred to say “better than genuine.” But, he always emphasized, his wares actually were better, in the sense of being much, much cheaper. Why own one of the originals, he liked to say, when for the same price you could own a dozen, two dozen, even several dozen, of the better than genuine version?
“It’s not all about money, Louis,” Arthur said. “What about a wife? A family?”
“You mean love?” Louis pointed to the gold ring on -Arthur’s finger. “Can you say that’s made you happy, Arthur?”
“It’s not love’s fault if things haven’t worked out between me and Norma.”
“I’ve tried love,” Louis said, as if it were a kind of soft, malodorous French cheese. “It’s okay, but the problem with it is the other person involved. She has a mind of her own. You can’t say the same thing about things.”
Arthur watched Louis for any sign of irony, but the small frown on Louis’s face indicated he was serious. “Tell me about her,” Arthur said. “Or was there more than one?”
“It’s all in the past, Arthur.” Louis gestured over his shoulder dismissively. “And I never think about the past. Every morning that I wake up I’m a new man.”
Arthur had tried to get Louis to talk about himself before, never with any success, and so he changed the subject. “Thanks for letting me sleep over,” Arthur said. “I appreciate it.”
“You’re my friend,” Louis replied.
Arthur interpreted the statement to mean that he was Louis’s only friend, for Louis never mentioned anyone else. “You’re my friend, too,” Arthur said, putting as much feeling as he could into his words. For a moment, the two of them maintained eye contact and smiled at each other. Then, before the situation became more emotionally complicated, Arthur excused himself to go take a shower.
The first inkling Arthur had the next morning of a less than auspicious day was the office computer crashing, taking with it into oblivion the last week’s worth of record keeping. Despite Arthur’s tinkering, the computer was still frozen at the end of the day, and it was a frustrated Arthur who climbed into his Chevy Nova, turned the ignition, and heard nothing but a mechanical screech, leaving him to ask for a jump start from Rubén, the Arellano & Sons landscaper who worked on Martín’s house and who had once confessed to Arthur that he was indocumentado, which Arthur knew was true for more than one of Martín’s gardeners. By the time Arthur stopped off at home to pick up fresh underwear and his razor before he went to Louis’s, he was wondering what more could happen. Norma was in the kitchen, microwaving a TV dinner, and when she saw him, she gestured at the notepad by the phone, saying, “Someone called for you.”
Arthur was relieved at having something to do besides scurrying furtively around his own home. The caller’s name was Minh Vu, and as Arthur dialed the number, he wondered if this person was one of the many he had called months ago. While Arthur had not recognized the accents he had heard then as being of Vietnamese origin, he could now hear that accent quite clearly when Minh Vu answered the phone, even if his English was perfectly understandable as he said, “I think you know my father.”
“I do?”
“His name is Men Vu.”
“Oh, so you must be Louis’s brother!” Arthur said. “He didn’t tell me he had a brother named Minh.”