Peter Liu - Watering Heaven

Growing up, I heard this story about a million times and I never could get the thought, What the hell was he thinking? out of my head. I mean, I get symbolism in one’s actions, but wasn’t there a smarter way of going about it? And I thought the Chinese invented gunpowder. Why didn’t Zhou Liao combust the powder to take a few Brits with him?

Maybe because my mom was in love with illusions or the people who chased after them, she married my father. My father failed at every job he tried and the worse part was, he could never admit it. Disappointment sapped his vigor and his heart ended up giving out like a worn-out sieve. He died in the middle of the day working in a clerk’s office surrounded by kids a third his age.

I wish it didn’t make me so depressed thinking about him typing away on an old Commodore computer, the way the corporation engaged in the emblematic crushing of the soul. I worked for a large IT corporation called SolTech. But unlike my father, oblivious to everything around him, I was hyper-sensitive. I spent nights worrying about my position and gathered with co-workers to bitch about our jobs. Aggravated by wives who wanted E! — televised homes, we hid our apprehensions, worshipped table etiquette, and masqueraded as Michelin food snobs, the big annual salary with a bonus keeping us more effectively leashed than the chained mace of an Inquisitor’s religious wrath.

It was in my ninth year at SolTech when I got an email from an old friend who found me through Facebook: June Guan, love of how many lives, a moth ablaze in the congealing flames of a frozen fire, my unforgiven sin, my brittle, broken soul. I was in love with her in high school. Did she have a precursor? She did, but… what the hell am I talking about? I barely spoke to her. I was just your typical high school nerd lusting after girls and wanting sex without knowing what it really was. She didn’t even realize I existed. In the four years I was in high school, she only said my name, Byron Zhou, once, because she was asking for help with her homework. We chatted a few times about the future during AP Lit, but that was it. I’d spoken more with our production assistant at work than I had the love of my youth. And yet, I knew everything about her: who she dated, how many members were in her family. Funny how stalkerish high school attraction could be.

So I was surprised when she suggested we meet up. I agreed heartily, scouring her profile to see if she was still single.

I met June at a fusion café, a trendy place with its combination of Asians and neon. She was comely rather than striking, serene rather than dynamic, a mix of Chinese and Dutch ancestors. She was nowhere near as pretty as I’d remembered her, with a plump attractiveness and a gaudy flowery dress that made me embarrassed about my childhood infatuation.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi!” she said, waving her hand enthusiastically. “How are you?”

“I’m great. You?”

“I’m great too. I love this restaurant. I absolutely recommend their spaghetti sushi broccoli hamburger.”

“I was actually eyeing the pesto chow mein sashimi.”

“Ehhh,” she said, shaking her hand. “It’s all right.”

I ordered it nevertheless. She picked a sake martini.

“Do you remember in high school you read books all the time?” she asked. “You talked about aliens and black holes and the Loch Ness?”

“Vaguely.”

“Do you believe in UFOs?”

“You mean like unidentified flying objects?” I asked. She nodded. “I hadn’t really thought about it. Why?”

“I was recently abducted by one.”

I burst into laughter, especially since she had such a somber look on her face.

“You don’t believe me?” she asked.

“Are you being serious?”

She lifted the side of her neck to reveal a nasty scar.

“The aliens did this to me,” she answered.

“The aliens?”

“I woke up one night and I felt this really bright orange light. It was creepy how orange it was because it wasn’t orange like an orange, but this eerie radioactive orange that seemed like it was from a different world.”

“Okay.”

“It was actually healing me. I just found out I had cervical cancer, but after the light, it was completely healed,” she said. “The doctors couldn’t believe it.”

“Your cancer was gone?”

“Yep. When the aliens returned a couple months later, I wanted to thank them. But it got really weird.”

“What do you mean?”

“There were shadows in the windows and I couldn’t see any of them but they seemed huge and they were shining their lights everywhere. And then I was in their craft or something, because I couldn’t control where I went, but I was moving. My mind went blank and when I woke up, I was in an Alaskan forest.” She took out a used airplane ticket stub. “See, it says Alaska. That’s proof that it happened.” I checked and the ticket did read Alaska to LAX.

“Do you remember what happened when you were abducted?” I asked.

“No, but I had scars all along my stomach. I’ve been doing research and I read how they like to grow fetuses inside a womb and cut it out. I was gone five days and I don’t remember a thing. I know it’s crazy. No one believes me, but it really happened…”

When the food arrived, she picked the spaghetti up with her bare hands, dropped it because it was hot, swirled it into her mouth straight off the table.

“It’s okay to use your fork,” I said.

“I know, I know, but I had a friend from Mongolia who told me you lose your connection with food that way.” She picked up her broccoli, swallowed the whole piece, and chewed loudly. Her mouth was covered in sauce as she asked, “How come you’re not eating?”

“I had a late lunch,” I said, having lost my appetite.

“Do you mind if I have some of yours?”

She grabbed a huge chunk off my plate before I could respond and wolfed it down.

“I told you the chow mein isn’t that good,” she said, wagging her finger at me.

Underneath the table, I texted everyone I knew, Call me back ASAP .

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look a little nervous.”

“I’m fine,” I replied. “I just ate too much.”

“You have room for dessert though, right?”

“I’m not really a dessert person.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like sweets that much.”

“Dessert is essential to any meal. They have the best zucchini chocolate soufflé here. It only takes one hour to make and they put this garlic salt all over it. It makes your breath stink for like five hours, but it’s soooo worth it.”

“I…”

“Excuse me,” she said calling the waiter. “Can we get the zucchini chocolate soufflé?”

We spent the next half-hour chatting about trivia: What is the soundtrack of your life? If the world ran out of water, what would be your drink of choice? What’s the weirdest word you’ve ever heard? And my favorite, if you were reincarnated as a plant, which would it be?

“Cactus,” she said, “because they can live in super heat, have spikes all over to protect themselves, and store water inside them.”

“What’s so good about that?” I asked.

“They’re self-sufficient. What plant would you be?”

“I think I’d be a dandelion.”

“Why?”

“So I could be free.”

“You don’t feel free?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’d be nice to float on wind, flutter all over the place. But it’s a stupid dream. None of us can really be free.”

“Also, if there’s no wind, dandelions can’t fly,” she said.

“What?”

“They depend on wind currents and if it takes them someplace they don’t want to go, they still gotta go.”