Hello Kitty Must Die (10 page)

Hai.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
at Berkeley. UC Berkeley. CAL.

For Chinese-Americans living in Northern California, UC Berkeley is Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, Cambridge, Oxford all rolled into one. High school kids have killed themselves upon getting rejected by UC Berkeley. Your life is worthless if UC Berkeley does not deem you worthy of acceptance.

Getting in and graduating from UC Berkeley means that you can walk down the street sideways. You will be hailed as a genius. You will be successful. You will be an engineer, a doctor, a millionaire. You will marry the right person and live in the perfect house in the Sunset District and have two boys. You will be set for life.

For life.

That is the UC Berkeley promise.

Never mind that I had gone to Yale. The fact that Thomas had gone to UC Berkeley impressed my father. He and my mother were probably making my wedding plans for me right now.

Too bad I didn’t have a date with Thomas. I had no intention of setting one up with him. It was just easier to lie than to argue with my father during the onset of a major migraine. After I got off the phone, I checked my voicemail, Blackberry, email again.

Two new messages were highlighted in bold in my Gmail inbox.

One was an offer to sell me Viagra at a discount.

The other was a call to join a campaign to save the wolves. Apparently, the wolves needed saving.

And a Gmail ad alerted me that Hello Kitty underwear was forty to sixty percent off at
Overstock.com
.

No Sean.

Idleness and lack of Sean.

Idleness and Thomas.

I picked up the pink index card with Thomas’ number. I propped it up next to my phone to remind me to call him tomorrow. What the hell. I could always bring my pepper spray and butterfly knife along. Good date companions.

Raymond Merrill should have brought his.

F
LUNITRAZEPAM, OR WHAT
a news anchor calls Rohypnol, or what your average date rapist calls a roofie, makes a great date companion.

Sean tossed a couple of tablets in a little plastic bag at me.

“Take these with you. In case you need to knock him out.”

“Sean, I’m not planning to rape or rob him.”

“No, but in case you need to make an emergency getaway. Induces anterograde amnesia. Residual amounts in the body almost impossible to detect. Perfect drug.”

“Anterograde amnesia?”

“Means he won’t remember anything after you knock him out. He’ll remember everything before.”

“Ah. Cool. But I already have pepper spray and a knife. I think I’m good to go, Sean.”

“Pepper spray is dangerous. You gotta pay attention to what direction the wind is blowing or you end up with it in your own face. Stupid. Who pays attention to that when you’re being attacked?”

Sean had a good point.

“And leave the knife at home, Fi. Makes you look guilty. Carrying a concealed weapon. Assault with a deadly weapon. You’ll just get yourself in trouble. Geez, you’re the lawyer. Don’t you know that stuff?”

Sean was right.

“Besides, if you need to use a weapon, always use something that belongs to him. Wipe off your prints. So it doesn’t get traced back to you, Fi.”

Always thinking of me, Sean was.

SEAN CALLED ME
the evening after I had made a date with Thomas. He invited me over to his apartment for drinks on Friday night. This time, he answered the door wearing clothes. Normal clothes. I wondered if Betty was disappointed.

“Where the hell have you been the last few days, Sean?”

“I needed to take care of something.”

Sean looked at me and smiled. Smiled like he did the day they took him away, after he set Stephanie on fire. He paused, daring me to ask him what anyone else would have asked him. “What? What did you have to take care of?” But I wasn’t anyone else.

So I didn’t.

Like I didn’t ask him why he had roofies in his possession.

That was one of the first lessons I had learned in evidence class at law school. Never ask one question too many.

The most famous example given by Professor Fossett involved the cross-examination of an eyewitness to an assault and battery by an unfortunate defense attorney.

“Sir, did you actually see the defendant bite off Mr. Smith’s ear?”

“No, sir.”

“Then how do you know that he was the one who bit off Mr. Smith’s ear?”

“Because when I turned around, I saw him spit it out.”

One question too many could cost you your case. Or your life.

So I changed the topic of conversation.

“Well, you missed a whole lot of excitement. Laurie dragged me off to an Asian speed-dating event. I have a date tomorrow with a nice Chinese boy. Thomas. Went to UC Berkeley.”

“Your Dad must be thrilled.”

“He is. I wasn’t planning to actually go out with the guy, but then my father called and told me he had another date set up for me. I figured Thomas would be better than whatever he had in store.”

That was when Sean tossed the packet of roofies at me. After we chatted about the benefits of roofies and the liabilities of my knife, Sean said, “Fi, I got you something. Thought you would like it.”

Sean walked to his dining table, picked up something, and gave it to me.

“Here, wear this behind your ear. It’s all the rage now.”

It was a small gardenia. Miss Cosmo’s.

I didn’t ask him why. I just thought about the lawyer who lost his case by asking one too many questions.

The next day, I found myself waiting for Thomas at the Sony Metreon, San Francisco’s modern-day watering hole, entertainment arena, and shopping mall. My pepper spray and Sean’s roofies were safely tucked in my purse. Thomas and I had planned to see the two o’clock movie. My watch read a quarter to three.

“I’m still trying to find street parking,” said Thomas, fading in and out on my cell phone. His English carried a heavy Cantonese accent. Damn silent speed-dating.

“Thomas, it’s Saturday afternoon in downtown San Francisco. You are not going to find street parking. Park at the Yerba Buena Parking Garage. It’s right across the street from the Metreon.”

“Oh, I know. But that’s expensive.”

I should have left the theater at that point. What a cheapskate. What a loser. Any man who would make his date wait forty-five minutes while he tried to find street parking deserved to be kicked in the groin. Or worse.

I called Thomas back.

“Look, I don’t have time for this bullshit. I’m leaving.”

“No, I’m so sorry. I just found parking. I’m walking into the theater now.”

And he was.

Thomas. Five foot nine inches. Collared shirt. Leather bomber jacket. GAP khaki pants. Black leather shoes.

“I’m so sorry, Fiona.” He gave me a huge bear hug, smelling like CK One.

“Well, the movie’s half over. And I’m hungry. I want to eat.”

“Uh, I already ate. I’m not that hungry.”

Yeah, right. The cheap bastard probably just didn’t want to pay for a meal.

“Well, I want to eat.”

“Oh okay. What do you want?”

“I want Japanese. Let’s go to Sanraku.”

“You like Japanese? Why don’t we go to Japantown? Actually, you wanna go karaoke?”

Karaoke.

Which literally means “tone deaf.” Invented by Daisuke Inoue to provide “an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.” Because you have to be tone deaf, drunk, or dead, to stand it. And not kill your friends for partaking in it. Modern technique for teaching toleration.

But it’s the drug of choice for young Asians everywhere. It’s the mahjong for the forty and under. Belting out songs off-key at the top of your lungs in a cramped, windowless booth in front of a glaring television screen with nothing but booze to keep you going. Asians call it entertainment.

I call it late twentieth century’s answer to the rack. A hi-tech version of fingernails down a chalkboard.

And it made me think about Thomas in an “entirely new way” as he bellowed ABBA songs into the microphone, right next to my ear.

“See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen...”

Thomas put his arm around my shoulder and took another swig of beer.

“Come on, Fiona. Sing with me,” he said, thrusting the microphone in front of my face.

My stomach growled. We never went to get food. I am hypoglycemic. So I always carry a couple of Nature Valley granola bars in my purse. Apple and cinnamon crisp. Raisin and almond.

Thank God for granola bars.

“You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen...”

On dates, most people wonder what the other person looks like naked. What her boobs look like. How big his penis is. If he’s good in bed. If she’s into anal. If he snores. And how many dates it would take to get her into the sack.

I found myself wondering how Thomas was going to die. And what he would look like as a corpse. People always look different when they’re dead. They don’t look the same as when they’re screeching out the lyrics of “Eternal Flame.”

I wished Sean was there.

And then I realized he was. In two white tablets.

Thomas took a break while he waited for the next song on the queue to load. He guzzled more Sing Tao beer.

“This dating thing is sorta new to me, Fiona. I haven’t really dated before.”

“Really? You’re joking. How old are you?”

“I’m thirty-five.”

“What the fuck?”

“Sorry, is that weird?”

“No, man, that is scary. Creepy. What’s wrong with you?”

“Oh, well, I just focused on my career a lot. I went to UC Bookaley.” UC Berkeley. Pronounced UC Bookaley by little old Chinese ladies who only spoke a few words of English. Not a UC Berkeley grad.

“Thomas, were you born here?”

“Oh yes, I was born in San Jose actually.”

Asian Grand Central. No wonder. An American-born Chinese with a Cantonese accent.

“You’re an engineer, right?”

“Well, I got my degree in engineering, but I’m a project manager for a hi-tech company in Menlo Park.”

“So you’ve never had a girlfriend?”

“No, I dated someone in high school once. But that was for senior prom.”

Holy crap.

I felt less absurd, thinking of Mr. Happy and my bottle of Lidocaine. Here was someone who had been living in a cave, a Silicon Valley cave.

“Why haven’t you dated, Thomas?”

“Like I said, I just focused on my career. You went to Yale, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. That’s so cool.”

“Thanks. So why are you dating now?”

“Oh, my father said that it was time for me to find someone and get married. Oh, here comes the next song. It’s one of my favorites. I love this one.”

“Love Shack,” by the B-52’s.

“Cool, Thomas. Here, let me get you another beer.”

And I did.

I’m headin’ down the Atlanta highway,

lookin’ for the love getaway

Heading for the love getaway

Thomas never got to scream out the best part of the song. The part that went
“Love Shack, baby Love Shack! Love Shack, baby Love Shack!”

So I did it for him.

Too bad he didn’t hear me. At least I was on key.

Poor Thomas.

“I’m stepping out for some air. My boyfriend is still in there. He’ll take care of the tab,” I said to the attendant outside.

An emergency getaway. A love getaway.

Sean was right.

My father accosted me at the door when I got home.

“Well, how did your date with Thomas go?”

“Forget it, Dad. He was a loser.”

“So picky, Fiona. Did he really go to UC Berkeley?”

“Yeah, got his engineering degree. But he’s not an engineer. Project manager for some hi-tech company.”

“He’s in computers then.”

“I don’t know, Dad. Total loser.”

“Why?”

“Big cheapskate.”

“You spend too much money.”

“Dad, he was forty-five minutes late because he was looking for street parking.”

“Oh, how practical. So he’s a frugal boy.”

“Dad, he didn’t want to buy me lunch. He said he had already eaten.”