ZGo and love - 10. Power games

Hao could see ahead in the foyer a glimpse of the ceiling arrayed with glass sand dollars translucent to the night sky. A bronze light fixture on the wall emanated rays that bathed the back of someone crouching to untie shoelaces. The face was to the shadows, and shoulder length hair glanced the cheeks. Pain contracted in Hao’s chest, joy and need warred for supremacy. Still, he lumbered towards the image, holding out for the Ricardo who might have grown out his buzz cut.

The face inched upwards, and black hair receded to shoulders. But it was Yuu, and frightfully unkempt.

“Your hair’s rather long.” A smile was forced through Hao’s lips.

“Too lazy to get a hair cut.”

“Make sure you do that tomorrow.”

“Right.” Yuu hugged him somewhat as his way of disregarding his father’s suggestions.

Yuu smelt of sweat and something sweetly herbal. Hao held him tighter, trying to place the scent. Incense, Hao thought, definitely incense. The littered house of a paramour in Echo Park skated through his mind, and the scent of cannabis filling out their heavy moments.

As they rolled away to the living room, Hao studied his son’s features for signs of breakdown. Maybe Yuu had lost an arm sometime between Thanksgiving and now. The linen shirt could be suave, the cargo pants unsightly. He could thank, not his genes, but America for Yuu’s height. But those genes got Yuu into Princeton, or at least his pushing.

Hao colored suspicious now. “Classes are still session?”

“Just home of the weekened. I came down here with a friend who’s attending a conference at USC.”

Hao swished around in his mind dark thoughts on this friend. Most likely a girlfriend ... Ricardo would be proud.

But before he could let go for the pain brewing in his belly, Yuu chattered about Nianxi, his mother. Mom and her complaints about him not spending enough time with her in Miami.

“Before you start the your summer internship, you should see her for a bit,” Hao said.

“Yeah…”

Hao felt in his son’s groan the decade of squabbles between him and Nianxi over Yuu’s upbringing.

“Where’s Tio?” Yuu asked.

The inevitable question for his Tio Rico, his colloquial uncle and adopted father, was asked, and Hao was no more prepared. A dark wave of nausea rose up his gullet as his mind nibbled through believable lies. He had hoped sometime in the last six months, Ricardo would have said something to Yuu.

“Ricardo went on a business trip.” Hao rushed to the white doorway of the kitchen, which widened into an oblong of harsh light.

“He never mentioned it when we talked two days ago,” Yuu said.

Hao wanted to mutter something profane about this irresponsible Tio who left him to do all the hard things when Yuu was concerned. Rather Hao opened the steel doors of the fridge and noted there was no milk, and Yuu liked milk.

“You came at a bad time. I’m leaving for Boston tomorrow. I and Ricardo won’t be around much this summer. How much free time do you have before the internship starts?”

“About the internship in New york…” Yuu hung back at the doorway, a pensive reluctance evident. “I met this girl, Amy, the friend who’s attending a conference at USC. She’s Chinese but born here. A Ph.d student in history—”

“A Ph.d student? How old is she?” Hao pulled out Styrofoam boxes unto the counter and prepared plates for microwaving.

“She’s thirty. She’s got hawwt legs.” Yuu held an imaginary vase to emphasis the point.

Hot versus hawwt was lost on Hao picturing a wizened crone necking his son, so he took solace in the coming feast. Sticky rice with pork sausages. Steamed pork buns, steamed dumplings, steamed rice cakes. Sesame seed buns, lotus seed buns. Glazed chicken feet.

“You were saying about New York?” Hao said

Yuu brushed back his hair, squared his shoulders, performed various mouth motions as if preparing a speech. “The world of finance is unsavory and immoral, so I’ve decided against the internship. Amy and I applied for to volunteer for an NGO in China. She’s never been to China—”

“You’re turning down a prestigious internship to follow a harridan across China?”

“If you’re going to be put it that way as usual … yes.”

Hao’s throat thickened, but he pecked his head about like a chicken, trying hard to ignore the implication of frigidity in the ‘as usual.’

Yuu had his hands in his pockets now, his head bowed low, and Hao could tell that his son wanted something.

“Dad?” Yuu voice’s dispersed too quickly to nothingness.

“Yes.” Hao said too loudly.

“But I’d have to pay for travel and living expenses. Funds are tight... ”

“Charity isn’t especially virtuous if you must do it on another’s dime. Earn the money you need to pursue your passions,” Hao said. “I suggest the internship.”

“You’re being anal.”

Ha, ‘anal’ that was the word Nianxi and Ricardo used to shut him up. Hao placed one large barbecue pork bun on Yuu’s plate, then another, and another, all to stop abruptly and stare at Yuu biting his thumbnail like it was a precious food commodity.

“Dad, the NGO is quite prestigious, and great for the resume too.”

“If thwarting the evil world of finance is that important, then you’ll work hard to make it happen.”

Yuu grounded him with a lupine look. Hao had never in his years seen such an arresting face, those hard lines of aggression. It was interesting; his lily-livered son was all grown-up.

“Amy’s right. You’re a willful slave, performing legal prestidigitation for the privileged white dons, who are guilty of economic crimes against humanity.”

Hao checked himself at the strange vapor of words. Rather embarrassing, but it was understandable: college, revolution, liberté, egalité, fraternité. How trite.

Yuu now was thumbing through his cellphone presumably to call his Tio Rico for backup. Hao thrust the plate into the microwave, dourly suspecting that Yuu had come to home because he could depend on Ricardo to acquiesce to his indulgent requests.

“You don’t mind some dim sum?” Hao said, hoping to stop Yuu from calling Ricardo in his presence.

“Awesome,” Yuu said, still perusing something on the phone.

Thankfully the microwaved beeped and the smell of savory meat ploughed the prickly nerves of the evening. Hao placed a plate for Yuu, who promptly put away his phone and took a hefty bite out of a bun.

Hao watched food disappear into the lean physique. It was a thing of magic, a wondrous machine of lusty youth. He could feed Yuu all day and just to watch his son eat with such gusto, so unlike the ratty Luke.

“I forgot. Luke’s waiting—I have a good go student in the dining room. Do you play any go?”

“Too hard.” Yuu said through a mouthful.

It was to Hao’s regret that Yuu never picked up go. He could remember Ricardo laughing uproariously after Yuu had pronounced go the diversions of old men with fu manchu beards. Hao stopped a moment to brush off the immersive, comforting echoes of Ricardo’s laughter and returned to unfocused thoughts on Yuu’s aborted future as he made his way to the dining room.

But no one was there. Not the laptop or the bag pack.

***

“Luke?” Hao was wandering towards the foyer when he noticed the front door was ajar. He hopped madly into shoes and scrambled outside.

The night was a parade of rustling shadows and cricket chirps. And Hao thought he saw a diffuse blob turn the corner at the driveway.

“Luke!”

More mystified than irritated, Hao sprinted after him. A feeling of playful delight tickled him, made him sprint faster, made him thankful that he had been running and weight training lately. The breeze, still cold for a March night, whipped against his clammy nose, and stung in his nostrils. Houses dissolved into the powdery black heights, and the street narrowed, heightening exhilaration pickling his nape.

It was ridiculous: an old man, no not old, a middle-aged man, chasing after a ragged young thing. But this was nature taking over, his pulpal nature metamorphosing. This was the view of the popcorn sky he had denied himself. This was the new self finally treating his designs like a go game, one of will and whim. He wanted to run after a hirsute pinecone, and so yes he would, because he could, because amongst the unlit ruminations on the lonely armchair, he liked playing go with Luke.

Hao followed him up the dirt road. Shrubbery lined one side of the road, high and black into the sky; on the other side yawned a drop into segments and sickles of rooftops and light. Someone, Hao spotted, bending over the driver’s side of a car.

“You owe me for your lesson.” Hao’s breaths raced up his chest and through his cramped throat.

Luke turned around hotly and began checking through his wallet in the abject dark.

“Pay me inside. I’m hungry.”

There was a slow deliberateness in the way Luke put away his wallet. He stepped back into the car and faced Hao with something heavy in mind. Behind Hao was the wall of black, and up the road curved into the dark, and Luke saw in all the night enclosing on him, defeat. Hearing Hao and Yuu jabber in the kitchen had marked on him the inefficient gripes against life. He should have died that day instead of Carly. He wished he could still spend all day in Trent’s garage, expounding his long versions to his patient ears. He was bound to ashes in an urn. And go was a distraction, drawing him to care about the world, which was only worth trashing and dumping into a wastebasket. And his chest was cold, and the spot where his heart should be beating was frozen in the tears he couldn’t shed.

Luke knew now what he wanted to say. “This will be the last of our meeting. You can tell everyone in the club, I won’t be coming anymore. I’m sorry for the grave inconvenience.” He faced the car again and began sifting through his keys, but the thought of Trent majestic at home halted him. No way he was going straight home. Perhaps Venice beach?

“You asked me for a game then you give me this bullshit,” Hao growled

Luke, his fingers rubbed over the grooved hardness of his car key, paused only to mark in the plosive anger in Hao’s words. He thought, yes, it was disappointing of himself, but it was the clear truth of himself. With that he opened the door, but something rammed at him from the behind, and suddenly Hao’s hand slapped the door shut. The door bang rang in his ears and an abhorrent idea juddered him into the possibility of having to defend himself. He dimmed, thinking his mom wouldn’t like that. Then again she hated him. No, no of course not, it was seventy percent love and thirty percent hate. She still wouldn’t like it if he raised his fists against Hao like he had done against Stanley or Carly—Carly, Carly, Carly, he should have died that day instead of her. Mom would have preferred it. The beach then? Scatter her ashes as she willed, and take one last surf?

Death was raging through Luke’s spirit, and so he did not feel it when Hao took a hold of his shoulders and bellowed just above his ear, “I won’t accept your decision!” The voice was life. His ear felt hot, his head was swallowed in the heat of death shattering, his neck, his arms, soul and bone were aflame. And next to his face was Hao’s face blind in the shadows; he felt his soul warm and aglow in the dark, and he gripped the taut nape and pulled the head towards himself, and they kissed in an apoplectic moment

Hao stuttered back and held off Luke’s face. “Hey, hey, and hey, I don’t think of you that way—”Luke had forced another kiss.

Hao painted over the rough feel of facial hair something of his desire and purpose. His hands quickened, pulled the face closer into his surrendering intake of a breath. The beard, the moustache, the cracked lips… He forced through the revulsion nipping at his strong ideas of attraction and admiration, before kissing with a renewed but obstinate zeal. The kiss could have been like other kisses, his date last weekend, the fuck three days, if not for Luke shuddering weakly in his arms. Luke’s body thudded back against the door, and he felt the warm ache of an erection angling against his groin. Leaves held still, waiting, then a rustle, an enabling breeze, and then an explosion of energies long smoldered away in Luke’s abstinent mourning.

Hao took a triumphal glee at Luke’s fingers hard and unyielding, digging into his pelvic bone. The monk was just another adolescent storm of hormones. The day was good. He was the mandarin asshole, commanding sexual attention, commanding the lightening moments of youth. Ricardo would be amazed finally. Hands soon fumbled against his fly, and he held a moment to worry about the open surroundings. Being hedged in between the high shrubbery and car offered no privacy. Still the wide openness of it was thrilling, the risk, the teenage audacity of it in an enclave of high-strung leftwing millionaires. None of those embalmed dowagers could imagine now what was happening a few doors from them. And Yuu was waiting for him to return…

Suddenly Luke was the frail-boned Yuu. Dear God! Could be Jae taunting him, insinuating that he had used go lessons to try to seduce him. Hao shrank away. Luke, though, grabbed him possessively to his warmth.

“What now?” Luke growled.

“You need to get a proper haircut and a shave. And you need to go on a proper date with a man your own age. I have no time for monkish virgins.”

“I’m not a virgin.”

“Oh good.” Hao felt genuinely relieved, but then a deathly shudder wracked him. “You’re twenty-one?”

“Nineteen. Young enough?”

“Ai-ya… you kiss me then you say some hurtful things.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

Hao wiped his mouth and declared to himself nonchalance. He was brimful with congratulations to his younger self that juggled college classes and a baby. And so he could damn well expect Luke to be responsible for his feelings. But Luke … his head pendent, his air despondent, still gripping his waist tightly. Hao, feeling the heady rush of a warm elation then a savage unease of its certain unfulfillment, moaned, “Luke, I don’t think of you in this way. Blame the hair, blame me being old and grouchy.” Hao gave an empty laugh, felt himself cold and bare now that mantle of the Mandarin Asshole was shrinking away. “I like playing go with you, so please don’t just take off. Come and have dinner.”

“Who’s leaving whom?” Luke slid down to his knees, chin bobbing against his hard crotch.

“You’re not yourself,” Hao said weakly to the silky mouth on him. “No, not here.…”

Conquered, he fell forward, propping his hands against the roof of the car. The sky was a smear of silver, the air pricked at his nape. This was triumph and conquest and a lovely energy wracking upwards his spine. He jerked and came and fell back against car.

No the kid was no virgin, Hao thought, which led to thoughts about other lies Luke may have led him to believe. Was Luke homeless? Did the kid live under a bridge somewhere? Did he live with his parents? Drugs?

Questions, questions were bubbling when a metallic jingle startled Hao to Luke, upright again, keying his car door. Hao considered the sight with undiluted alarm. He saw now how the world could not crush him and his insistent innocence about things. Underneath his polite, gentle way of speaking and rambling, Luke was a hard man. The tart would leave him unscathed with emotion, pristine arrogance and laziness intact. No, no, no!

“Give me your keys!” Hao barked. There was no waiting for Luke to obey, for he pounced over him and snatched the keys away. “I told you already, I’m not accepting you slacking off.”

Luke fixed him a stare from the dark. “Sir—”

“You just gave me blowjob, don’t you call me sir!”

“Well … OK, we’ll have to agree to disagree on my decision. Now may I have my keys?”

“No. You’re coming to dinner. You’ll say hello to my son. We’re going to talk strategy for the next week’s tournament, and you’re going to give me your absolute best.

Luke snorted in a playful ruse. “Or else?”

“I shall throw you keys down the ravine.”

“That would be unkind of you, sir.”

Hao was too tired, too hungry to as much as let loose a sigh. He slipped the keys into his pocket and made for his house, quite content if Luke decided to sleep on the street. But not one step was taken in the direction home when Luke yanked him by the arm and rolled him to himself. For a moment Ricardo restive and obtrusively needy flashed in his mind. A terrible sad feeling would cut him at the knees, but the feeling of fingers wiggling down into his key pocket, shook him back to Luke being sneaky. Hao managed to wrest control of the errant, but his actions degenerated into a tense struggle for control. Wrists fighting against wrists. Chin scraping against chin. In Luke’s face Hao felt the ghosts whispering, spectral shades swirling over where should be eyes, and on jutting up against his waist, the contours of a hard need. Luke’s breath was hot over his cheeks, harsh, forceful, and it thrilled him, maddened him. Suddenly Luke was not a fragile reed but a primal force he must conquer and possess deeply. What a ruinous thought, this he knew so intimately whenever Ricardo dominated him, the distressing throes of wanting and never achieving satiety, never finding peace, of being discomfited in the other’s soul and still knowing as deeply as your own breath that you own nothing, you possess nothing.

Hao had become blazingly furious, and with perhaps too much ferocity that was warranted for the calm dark night, was able to free the keys from his pockets and pumped them in the air, and he bellowed, “Shall I throw them down the ravine?”

He felt the arrows of Luke’s stare; it only swelled him. Luke surrendered his hands over Hao’s shoulders and sighed. “You can keep them for now.”

“That isn’t a yes.”

“Feel free to throw them. I don’t feel like sleeping in my house anyway.” Luke made an about turn down the steep dark road.

Hao grunted hard, and skipping down the street to join him, muttered irately about Luke being a bad stinky egg, a hard stupid egg. Luke hooked his arm around his and leaned on him as they strolled along darkest recesses of the sidewalk and shielded their faces away from the sweeping glare of passing cars. And as Hao felt the waist dissolve into his, he resolved to never let Luke claim any fraction of power over him.