ZGo and love - 14. Lazy bum

The following Saturday morning unfolded outside the Cheese and Mints Café with the lady with a straw hat of flowers sifting through the city trash can, Monica humming and strangely buzzing at the counter, the NA anonymous droning from the closed-off curtain, but no Hao grumpy and irritated. Luke rubbed his tired eyes, forgot to feel slighted by Hao’s tardiness, attempted to order extra sweet lemonade from Monica. She refused, citing Hao’s inviolable injunctions.

He called Hao.

“It’s 9:30. Was there a lesson for today?”

“9:30?” Hao’s voice sounded thick and groggy. “ Oh great 9:30—right 9:30… Where are my clothes? Can’t find my trousers—Ai-ya!”

“Are you all right, sir?”

“No—yes. Well enough …. Look, come over to my house. I’ll be there shortly.”

However, when Luke rang the doorbell by the grand iron-wrought gate, nobody answered. The neighborhood unwound a misanthropic black with its lack of sidewalks. He sat on the solid tar by the gate. Dogs in baby strollers passed him by, as well as the irate half-naked jogger in short shorts. The sun whipped its rays over the tall hedges, the black gates, and then stooped over him a lithe lady in a sleek velvet tracksuit.

“May I help you?” she said.

“Thank you, but I don’t believe you can, ma’am.”

Her eyes lined with blue swished left right. “You can’t sit there.”

“May I ask why, ma’am?”

“Because you can’t.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree, ma’am.”

She stood back, knitted her brows, looked around for someone to help her. One or two cars passed by; would-be helpers were safely imprisoned behind their grand gates.

“If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police,” she said, “you obviously don’t belong here.”

“I don’t believe that is a crime, ma’am.”

She shook her head. “It is something.”

‘Something’ breathed eerily the echoes of the knotty otherworldly things his parents would damn him to do, and distressingly now before the baleful scowl of the lady, these things tightened up a disorder within him. The twinkle of the front emblem of a German import car coasted to a halt behind her. Then Luke’s bum was vibrating with the rattling slide of the gate.

“Ma’am I think you need to move aside. Hao needs to get into his driveway.”

Lips crimped tightly, she waggled her sun-spotted arms at Hao’s car window, evidently gesticulating a lament. Hao rolled down the window, smiling, saying, “Mrs. Matheson, a good morning to you.”

“Are you—” Her cheeks were soiled a sickly purple.

“I was just at the beach for an early swim.” Hao soothed the rose patches scattered along his shoulder. “How’s your husband doing?”

“Good enough—The bum’s been sitting there for over an hour.”

“The bum’s sadly my student.”

She glanced at Luke staring at the windshield, then down the recesses of the driver’s seat. She tramped across the street, the wind raising a storm in her ash-blond curls.

Feeling dull over his lack of insight on this ‘something,’ Luke strolled along with Hao’s car guiding itself into the yawning garage. Unlike Luke’s cluttered garage, the Neat shelves ruled the front wall, and a muscular black convertible beamed. The gate shrugged to a close, unfurling uneasy shadows over the walls. Then barking came at the heels of Hao stepping out of the car, “How come you lost two games at the tournament?”

Luke blinked at the rusty discoloring of his eyes, the cellphone in one hand, the marked board of his bare chest, then at his tight briefs.

“I take it, sir, you were lying about a swim.”

Hao’s free hand curled indecisively between a fist or a wide palm. “No, I wasn’t—just get inside.” Hao’s long lean arms fought to open the door to the inside of his house, then he stopped, the difficulty seemed too great for his disintegrating mind. “She thought you were a no-good bum!”

Luke stared at the heavy crease on his briefs, the knobby knees, the curt toes. Hao sighed powerfully, and at last, gathered the sense to open the door. Luke, shoes removed, lumbered a step behind, a dull heaviness sighing in his senses over the glistening curve of Hao’s back. He had been thinking about Hao all week. They came to the rotunda of skylight, which radiated into a few choice directions. Perhaps up the open spaces speared with arty boards, or the steely shine of kitchen, or the glimmering blue panoptic beyond the pool doors.

Luke freed himself into the brisk light of the house, so cool, so lush, so quiet of ghosts. But his gaze raced up the stairs into the clipped shadows and grimy woody hues, and his mind turned darkly.

“Yuu’s around?” Luke asked.

“I believe he’s on spring break starting this weekend...” He checked his phone. His cheeks went pale and his eyes were hard and wide at some glimmering information on the phone.

“Sir, it seems this is a bad time for you.”

Hao regarded him with a cool disdain and pushed forward up the stairs. “Make yourself some breakfast. I’m going to take a shower.”

The kitchen blared now to Luke its industrial inutility and he cocked his head helpless towards Hao’s sodden face.

“No, you’re not welcome to join me.” Hao’s face was halfway between jest and undiluted horror.

Luke stared harder at the heavy eyes, but nothing was apparent. “You don’t seem well enough. Maybe we should postpone this.”

Hao’s laugh was needling. “Breakfast will make me feel better.”

“I could make you some eggs.”

“Oh good, the bum can cook. I’ll take eggs however way you take yours.”

Luke liked the request. He thought, finally a roadway towards something definite.

A smile was faint and ghostly on Hao’s lips, then he skated up the stairs and made the hard left into the master bedroom. The room emblazoned dreadfully the hard symmetry of a steel smooth bed, curtained windows, and on Ricardo’s bedside dresser, the dull shine of his ring, the sole light over the dark wood. The man was never coming back. Hao fell back against the door, twisted the lock on the door, guarded the rising beat in his heart.

The name ‘Micheal Johansson’ on the phone blared at him again. His spirits cramp, spluttered the vulgar laughter and the unappetizing arses of the damned sex party Ricardo had dragged him to a year and a half ago. Then he had stumbled into Micheal chaining smoking cigarettes under the gazebo, the solitary moral light in the wanton darkness. The damned party turned into the best party of his life.

Now supposedly he had spoken to him last night for a full forty minutes—Not good, not good in the slightest. But before he would tackle the black hole of his last night, he was going to have to punish Luke for his poor performance and his poor appearance.

***

“Sir, I refuse strenuously,” Luke said, stepping away from the shaving razor perilously close to his neck.

This was Hao’s punishment, a trip to a barbershop. Splashed on its walls were sepia portraits of eras Luke had no views whatsoever. Mirrors, bands of mirrors encircled the walls, reflecting the faces of chuckling customers. The ceiling fan whirred above the prattle of men. Luke glared wide at the barbers, Levite priests standing over the men who surrendered their heads in back in offering to the whisk and razor.

Hao took a calm seat at the chairs for waiting customers, and Luke watched as his impassive face was shut behind an edition of the Epoch Times.

A white-soiled razor in hand, Steve, the barber in tight jeans cut-off, swished his eyebrows at Luke.

“The go student is a handful,” Steve called out to Hao.

“Hold him down, tie up him, do what you need you to do. Just make him look important!” Hao’s face remained safe behind the defenses of the newspaper.

Cackles rumbled over the whine of the ceiling fans. Steve turned away momentarily to put down the razor onto the table to mate with other razors.

“Honey, don’t make me call my bear for backup,” Steve said to Luke.

This bear already stood at the doorway to the inner hallway, folded arms menacingly across his chest and eyes and nose black holes in the milky way of facial hair.

“Just as the bear, as you called him, has a right to his beard, I do too have a right to my beard,” Luke strained in a monotone voice.

“And I don’t have to sit through your games and look at it.” Hao folded the newspaper to a half and a quarter, eyes unwavering.

Luke glanced at the door swinging open to a customer, glanced at Steve stupidly smiling, and glanced at Hao pristine in his seat. He was aware that Hao had just threatened him, even madder at the fact of the threat bearing teeth. Now was the time to declare his obedience on go-related things only or walk away and forget the farce of lessons. But Hao turned a page, crossed his legs, and emanated an edifice of untouchability. And what footholds of that image on which he could hook his aim to conquer him or even to catch up to him were nonexistent.

The roomful chatter, of course, was blithe to Luke’s winds of obstinacy. The streets outside the shop window were sunny and joyous. Over the hands holding hands, the splashy strolls, the garish cars paralleling parking, a verdict trumpeted loud and clear to Luke: The sun had risen, and he must rise with it. But what would Lisa say?

Dead, mud, finito, mud. Luke shriveled, staring at the newpaper barrier, as blizzards of Trent’s voice beat upon him. It hurt, but the man spoke truth. Ashes neither felt nor thought. They certainly had no power to grant him absolution.

“Where do I sit?” Luke droned.

Hair fell off in scads and wads. Strands unfurled vanishingly light, but his heart was heavy on each pass. He looked numbly at his face emerging, the high forehead, the aquiline nose, the long cheeks, the thin lips, the honey eyes. The black hair was his father’s, its curls were his mother’s. But the face was entirely face of his father, or so Lisa had said, the face of a disloyal husband. The ceremony drew long and painful and Luke closed his eyes to his hurtful image. Lisa’s droopy moans simmered within. He opened his eyes and saw in the mirror Hao staring quizzically, his hands weakly tendering the papers to the side.

“Ricardo play this game too?” Steve asked.

“No, he’s like you. He can’t sit still for too long,” Hao said.

“But this kid sure can.” Steve slapped Luke’s back approvingly. “He can make me sit long enough for anything.”

“The game won’t suit your temperament either,” Hao said.

Steve stopped, turned towards Hao and wagged the electronic clipper. “Sweetie, you don’t know my temperament.”

“Do you play chess any?” Hao uncrossed his legs as if ready for a challenge.

“Puts my mind in bagful of hair.”

“Well …”

“What?” Steve asked.

“They’re both games of strategy.”

“Mmm hmm the strategies of sitting still in one place…”

“Yes, thinking would require you to sit still—”

“Never mind.” Steve took a pair of scissors to the back of Luke’s head.

Hao fell back in the chair, white faced. “Ricardo can’t stand the pinecone shedding hair all over the dining room. Demanded I do something about the dog.”

Luke reminded himself to tell Hao privately not to call him a dog.

“How’s Rico doing?” Steve asked. “I hope he’s enjoying the sexy haircut I gave him two weeks ago. You had better be enjoying it.”

“Thanks, he sang about your sexy haircut this morning,” Hao said in a dead monotone.

“I need more than thanks for all the men who leave me sexy and happy.”

“Maybe I’ll get you a chess board.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed and lips pouted at the mirror and Hao laughed in a sort of grateful way.

After the shave and haircut, Luke stood by the Hao’s car door and felt quite ill. His ears bit with cold, his nape was icy, his cheeks stung. He winced at his clean white reflection in the car window and felt transparent, naked to photons of the barbarous world. But Hao was beaming and still mysterious over punishments. He drove him to men’s clothing store on Melrose.

“This isn’t go-related,” said Luke to Hao pulling the parking brake.

“Be thankful, I’m spending my hard earned money on you.”

Luke reached for his chin for something to pluck on. Nothing, just stinging skin, bare skin, cold skin. He began to drag on his cheeks for something familiar.

“Mrs Matheson thought you were a criminal. Which puts me in the company of criminals,” Hao said, “I can’t allow false impressions.”

“Why are you afraid of what people think? I know what I am, and I know what you are. Everything else is irrelevant.”

“What nonsense way of thinking is that? Impressions are important.”

“I find them faulty and biased and useless to base good conclusions. At least for me, perhaps it’s because I don’t have the facility in social arcana… words and action provides me with better ideas about people.”

Hao slumped onto the steering wheel and banged his head limply. “You say these things because you care for nothing. ”

The words splattered vilely on Luke’s heart. He wanted to spin out in an invective about the futility of caring and never reaping the good fruit of your earnest desires. The sun beat down regally over the store façade, and he wanted to hurl it several light years away, just so people could know the fury jabbing its icepick at his skull. But indecorous explosions he recognized as meaningless, and he had sworn to himself after Carly’s death to never lose his temper. And so it was willingly he alighted from the car and twirled in the cool breeze of insouciance.

Hao’s running around with the sale clerk over the right pair of slacks reminded Luke of his high school friend Tony. The half-black, half jewish boy had forced him to trip the thrift school, and he would toss more and more shirts on him and say, “Ack, Nothing looks good. You’re a pole. You and me are going to work on your surfer arms” Hao seemed to concur, “You have cricket legs!”

After the indignity of silk shirts and fitting sleeks, Luke allowed himself the most expensive item for lunch— a forty-dollar creation of Wagyu beef, orange-oil scented salad, and emulsions of chervil and cilantro. Given the health philosophy of the restaurant, he could see himself ordering the next-to-most expensive dish on the menu.

They lunched amidst the tan and grey impressions of industrial décor of the restaurant. Air, tangy with lemon-scented disinfectant, blew coldly and eerily from the central heating panels above pictures of who’s who West Hollywood. The waiter, tall in black, glistening ringlets over the ears, kept winking at him whenever he came by. And that defied Luke’s understanding rather slid him into a mopey annoyance. But Hao was nowhere mindful of his bafflement, as he was dim and grim over a modest salad while checking over Luke’s go problems. Hao snatched off his reading glasses and splashed the stack of papers onto the table clothed in immaculate white.

“Most of these are wrong,” he said. “I’m inclined to make you pay for your very generous lunch.”

“I hadn’t planned on you paying for lunch,” Luke said.

Hao shifted back in his chair, leaned forward again, tried on various shapes of astonished poses for Luke’s puzzled gaze. “I don’t understand y—why would I let a lazy jobless bum pay for my lunch?”

Luke cut a section of his fish, lengthwise, breathwise, minced, wondering the philosophies nascent in Hao’s question. He lifted to Hao considering him with a look that could be anger or irritation, certainly not warmth or concern. Not that he would be able to tell precisely.

“And this is another case when I’d create a bad impression, sir?” Luke did not know what to make of Hao rolling his eyes, and so he went on, “Dad has told me more than a few times that I need to be open and generous in these sort of situations. So we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

“What sort of situations?”

“Vague exploratory social situations that might lead to amorous couplings… granted he had spoken apposite to dating women at the time. But I think this situation is well apt—My senses on these things are, as you can see, blunted, so perhaps I am not—”

“Just shut up and eat.”

Luke burped and took that as a sign to order the black pepper ice cream and chocolate thyme mousse. Feeling heat flush his ears, Luke looked round the primly dressed, fine-haired fellows congregating at the counter. Somewhere was the winking dreadlocks guy who tended their order.

The deserts orders arrived—a white big plate of three bird’s eggs of something black and a wobbly pyramid of something brown—Luke sat still and watched a teaspoon shovel into Hao’s mouth. He wished to the teaspoon be something of his choosing as he tried the cold glazed black egg. A hint of salt pricked him then the numbing swell of capsaicin and the energetic sweetness gliding over his tongue and darting to the roof of his head, fizzing up memories of his impolite night two weeks ago at Hao’s house. The sweet, the salty, the flaring dankness engulfed him in all its moist, heady anticipation. Those slick kisses were alive over his ears. However, he drew back to a pallid-faced Hao thumbing his cellphone and seized on the underbelly of discontent. He recalled the profane fact of Hao’s demanding his restraint until he became 6-dan. Now that was unacceptable. Luke nibbled and worried that what he desired might very well not happen if Hao insisted on being avuncular.

The absurdity of Hao having a son caused to Luke stop, flail the desert spoon in the air to regular puzzlement. “You must have had Yuu when you were eighteen?”

“Yes. And don’t you do what I did.” Hao put the phone aside unceremoniously. “It worked out well in the end. Yuu’s mom, her parents, we all stood together and made it happen …” Hao wanted to say family was the only thing you could count on, but however much Ricardo had hurt him, that was not true. Ricardo had been crucial in raising Yuu. Hao took another lazy spoonful of mousse. “The early days were rough … I was naïve and dishonest then.”

“And still dishonest now,” Luke said, prompting Hao to look at him sideways. Luke added, “You lied about going for a swim this morning.”

“Should I have told dear Mrs Matheson that I awoke this morning in a strange bed with three other naked men, one of whom I pretty sure was twice my age?”

“I see, another quest to keep a whole narrative of impressions … It could be the normal, the more accurate way to live, but I just don’t understand it.”

Hao tossed him a napkin in a wide frustrated manner. “Clean your mouth.” Then he snapped his fingers for the waiter to bring the check.

“I suppose it would create a bad impression if Yuu was aware that you and your partner have an open relationship.”

Hao held back a grunt. “It isn’t much of his business, is it?”

“Perhaps not, but you also lied about Ricardo—”

“And so what?”

The rise in Hao’s voice was unfortunate, even startled the waiter who was coming round with the check. Luke hardened on Hao stretching himself uncomfortably to reach for his wallet in his tight pocket. Luke felt acutely in the pale damp canvass of thin, lax lips and the eyes heavy and rust-rimmed, the tragedy of his own desuetude. He would never know, nor would he understand the wave functions that calculated the values and signs of emotion. A panic rumbled with the walls of his temples, and he had to take slow breaths, wade through slow spoonfuls of clotted thyme and chocolate, for that sweet bead of understanding. Then a credit card was flopped over the payment tray, and Hao patted his hand slack over the white table. The warmth felt alien.

“When you are six dan and have a job, then you can buy me a lunch.” His air was celebratory, and it frightened Luke. “Dear Luke, don’t stare at me so hard like that.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“And don’t apologize so easily.”

“It leaves a bad impression?”

Hao squeezed his hand, a surrender dimming his eyes. “We’re off to play go.”