“Like I said.” Sam poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table. “You’re not your father.”
My shift ended at dawn. It was a forty-minute drive from the Westside to my Eastside apartment, on a side street off the up-and-coming stretch of Sunset, not far from where the boulevard became César Chávez. Stolen cars and hovering -police helicopters were commonplace here in Echo Park, where I’d moved after the divorce. By the time my mother passed away during the summer, I knew what loneliness was like, and on the day after the funeral, suspecting my father might be lonely too, I invited him to come live with me. I hadn’t expected him to say yes.
Today was my day off from both jobs, but after sleeping for only two hours, I got up, showered, shaved, and dressed in fifteen minutes. Half an hour later, I had crossed from Echo Park to Mimi’s neighborhood, the Chinese mecca on Atlantic and Valley boulevards. She opened the door wearing a pink velour tracksuit. My father was showering after his morning run, and she insisted on preparing me a cup of coffee. I heard him singing in the bathroom as Mimi returned with a glass of ice in one hand and, in the other, a second glass with the condensed milk, a stainless steel filter perched on top. While we waited for the black coffee to drip, she smiled and said, “Your father speaks highly of you.”
“Not as highly as he speaks of you.”
“He says you work in the medical industry.”
“I sell hearing aids. In the evenings I’m a night watchman at a high-rise.”
“I see.” We heard the running water stop.
“It’s an expensive apartment building,” I offered. “The women wear fur coats just because they can afford to.”
When Mimi smiled at me again, a gold tooth glinted in the far reaches of her mouth. “It’s not good for a boy your age to be without a woman,” she said. “Your father tells me you’re not even dating.”
“I’m recovering.”
Mimi ignored my comment and began describing the young women she knew at her temple, as well as the ones from her old neighborhood in Can Tho, everyone searching for husbands with American passports. Vietnamese women, she informed me, leaning close and putting her hand on my knee, were much better mates for men than American women, who were fickle and demanding. Vietnamese women took care of their men, doted on them, and these same women wanted men like me, neither too American nor too Vietnamese. She nodded at my father, who had appeared in the doorway, already dressed in a button-down shirt and wrinkle-free slacks. Ignoring her, he looked at me and said, “Today we’re going to rent a car.”
“Are you coming back tonight?” Mimi asked.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Now hurry up and drink your coffee before the ice melts.”
As soon as I’d finished, he ushered me out. He said nothing to me in the car, jingling the keys in his pocket until we came to a complete stop where the Harbor and Hollywood freeways crossed. A squadron of news helicopters circled lazily over the freeway some distance toward downtown, its towers only ghostly silhouettes hidden by a curtain of smog. I lit a cigarette, and my father rolled down his window. After my mother died, he quit his pack-a-day habit, even though she’d never objected to his secondhand smoke; she just complained about the migraines that forced her to turn off the lights in her bedroom and lie down. “It’s my head,” she would moan. “It’s my head.”
“When was the last time you talked to her?” he asked.
“Who?” I thought he meant my mother.
“Sam.”
“Months ago.” I blew smoke out the window. “She called to say she was sorry about Ma.”
“How will you get her back if you don’t talk to her?”
“None of your business.”
“You give up too easy.” Sam told me the same thing soon after we first met, our senior year in college. “Look at you,” he said.
I checked myself. “What about me?”
“You’ve gained weight. You haven’t combed your hair.” He plucked at my pants. “And you haven’t ironed your clothing. A man must always iron his clothing.”
“I thought Ma pressed your clothes.”
“The point is that you look terrible.” He slapped his hand against the dashboard for emphasis. “How many of those cigarettes are you smoking every day?”
“Six or seven.”
“Put it out.” When I did nothing, he snatched the cigarette out of my mouth and tossed it out the window, then grabbed a handful of the fat around my waist, squeezing it hard. “You even feel like a woman.”
“Jesus Christ!” I pushed his hand away. “Don’t do that!”
“You’re never getting Sam back looking that way.”
“Who says I want her back?”
“Don’t be an idiot. You were only half a man before you met her, and you’re back to being half a man now.”