Lisa Ko - The Leavers

On the morning of May 13, two days before the big show, Roland couldn’t stop talking about who had RSVP’d and who hadn’t, changing the set list for the twentieth time. Later tonight, they would run through the songs again.

As Adrian entered minute fifteen of a marathon shower, Daniel brushed his teeth in the kitchen sink. “Thirty percent chance of rain today,” Roland said, pacing the living room. “Think it’ll make a difference in the turnout? People don’t want to go out in the rain, though what’s wrong with them, are they allergic to life? But there’s also the humidity factor, since it’s a new space to us, and that could affect the sound.”

Daniel rinsed his mouth and spat. If he didn’t leave the apartment in the next five minutes, he was going to be very late for work. He heard his phone ringing and dashed across the room to find it, knowing it wouldn’t be his mother, yet hoping it would be. A week had passed since they had last spoken, and yesterday, tired of waiting for her to get in touch with him, he had called and left a message telling her to not bother calling him again. And she hadn’t. He’d beat her to it.

It was Kay. He let it go to voice mail, and as he searched for a matching pair of socks he listened to her message, reminding him about the meeting with the Carlough dean, the day after tomorrow.

“Bad news?” Roland said.

Daniel found the missing sock. “I might have to go upstate the day after tomorrow. For a meeting.”

“You’re fucking with me, right? We have a show on Friday.”

Daniel poked through a lump of T-shirts and towels and found his right shoe, but not his left. “A meeting with the dean of Carlough College.”

“You don’t want to go to Carlough College.”

He pulled on the right shoe and laced it, hobbled around with his left foot in a sock. “Maybe I do.”

“Who’s going to play the show with me, then?”

“Get Javi to do it. I don’t know. The guitar parts are easy.”

“Easy?” Roland mimed tearing his hair out. “Make up your mind for once! You’ve been here for what, five months, and you haven’t gotten a better job so you still can’t afford to rent your own room.”

“I thought Adrian was moving out. I was going to take his room.” Daniel turned to face Roland. “Do you want me to leave?”

“That’s not the point. The point is that you’re never going to get anywhere if you keep on doing what your parents want. You don’t even know what you want. You don’t think you deserve better.”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me and don’t tell me what to do.” Daniel found his left shoe under the couch. In the bathroom, the shower shut off, Adrian crooning Christmas carols.

Roland looked disgusted. “You know what? Don’t bother coming to rehearsal tonight.”

“Come on. I’ve got to go to work.” Daniel opened the door, still holding the shoe. He’d put it on in the hallway. Right now, he needed to get out of the apartment.

EIGHT HOURS OF BURRITO-MAKING produced little relief. “I’m going to your show Friday,” Evan said, as they sliced bell peppers. “We used to have raves in Gowanus back in the day, these warehouse ragers. Now it’s all gentrified and ruined.” His co-workers Purvi and Kevin were going, too. All afternoon, Daniel’s phone buzzed with messages. Of course he’d play the show. Of course he wasn’t going to Carlough.

When he left Tres Locos, it was after seven. He went back to the apartment to get his Strat, rode the train out to Bushwick, ran up the block to the building and took the rickety service elevator to the seventh floor. Outside the metal door, he heard a Psychic Hearts song playing, thought Javi might be at the rehearsal, too, but when he pushed the door open he saw Nate, strumming a guitar as Roland sang and pressed buttons on a sequencer. Nate’s floppy hair bounced as he bobbed to the beat. He was hitting the right chords, but the song sounded even flatter than it already was.

Nate and Roland saw Daniel and exchanged a look. The song stopped.

“What’s going on?” Daniel said. “We’re getting a second guitarist?”

“You’re out and I’m in,” Nate said. “That’s what’s going on.”

Roland walked over and said, his voice lowered, “I can’t have a band with someone who isn’t reliable.”

“I’m going to play the show tomorrow.”

Roland shook his head. “You’ll change your mind again.”

“I won’t, I swear. I’m not going to Carlough.”

“Too late,” Nate sang in a falsetto.

Roland glared at Nate, then walked Daniel out the door and started to close it. “Sorry.”

IT TOOK LESS THAN ten minutes to scoop up his things from Roland’s living room and shove them into his backpack. He left the Strat behind and grabbed his acoustic, walked up Lafayette, past the poker club, and turned onto Broadway. He put on his headphones and inched the volume up, let the music make the world louder, a glorious reverb of lights popping on like candy-coated solar flares as he listened to Bowie and Freddie Mercury’s voices bursting out in “Under Pressure”:

Without music, the world was flattened, washed out, too obvious. Daniel cranked the volume up even more, until he was awash in colors and sound and there were only lights and possibility and flying, the way it was when the guitar was translating his brain. He walked through Union Square, through the Flatiron, past people eating outside restaurants, a group of skateboarding teenagers, tourists clutching subway maps, laughing couples. Herald Square, chain stores; Times Square, more tourists. At Columbus Circle he sank onto a bench and put his guitar case down. He’d blown it.

He spent the night sipping watery coffee in a diner booth, typing angry texts to Roland and deleting them before sending. He sent a text to Angel, saying hi, hope you’re well — he texted her every few days, but she never wrote back. Port Authority wasn’t far away; he could buy a bus ticket and be in Ridgeborough in a couple hours. But Roland’s accusations had stuck with him. He didn’t know what he wanted, and he didn’t know how to figure it out.

In the morning, he took the N train out to Sunset Park, had a bowl of pho at a Vietnamese spot, killed a few more hours in a café, then headed to the only people he knew in the city who might let him stay with them.

Vivian was on her porch, watering a planter of yellow and red flowers. “Deming?” She eyed his bag and guitar case.

“Hi, Vivian.” Her eyes were shadowed by a lime green visor with VIRGINIA BEACH printed across the top, and Daniel couldn’t read her expression. “Is Michael here?”

“He’s at school right now,” Vivian said in Fuzhounese. “He’ll be back later. You want to come in?”

“I need somewhere to stay. For today, tonight.”

“Okay. Put your bag in the living room.”

This was how he ended up cooking with Vivian. Timothy and Michael would both be home by dinner, she said. Daniel looked at the clock on the wall. It was just past two. Dinner was a long time away.

He chopped garlic and ginger on a cutting board, seated at a wooden table, as Vivian browned chunks of beef. On the table was a stack of mail, fliers for local businesses, printed in English and Chinese, the one on top advertising an immigration lawyer with an office on Eighth Avenue, the accompanying photo of a woman with aggressively airbrushed teeth. This was what his life would’ve been if he had remained Deming Guo, if his mother and Leon had stayed together. They would all be having regular family dinners with Vivian and Timothy.

“Leon said he spoke to you,” Vivian said, as the meat sizzled. “He said he was happy to hear from you.”