the high-octane zeal and innocence of those years.
“You got a girlfriend, Bobby?”
His face flushes. “A couple, why?”
I shake my head as if he’s a lost cause. “Because if you want to be fast, I mean really fast, you can’t hang around girls.”
“Oh,” he says, his face disappointed. He shakes his head. “Shoot.” He looks past me and out the window for a long, thoughtful moment. Then, with a sigh from having just made a profound decision, he says, “I guess I’m fast enough.”
I nod, chewing the inside of my cheek. “You are indeed fast, young grasshopper.”
“Thanks,” he says, studying my face for a couple of seconds before a flash of enlightenment crosses his. “Okay. Okay! You were bullshittin’ me, right?”
“Indeed, my son.” I punch his shoulder. “I certainly was.” He leans away and laughs.
Damn.
Jimmy!
Damn-it!
When he leaned away… he looked like… Jimmy… when he slumped over… on the bed.
Bobby snorts, oblivious to what’s going on in my head. Feels like I’ve got a two-by-four caught in my throat. I turn toward the window and take a slow, deep breath. That’s what Kari said to do whenever I have one of these… intrusive thoughts; I think that’s what she called them. Sometimes when I see someone make a gesture or say something, my mind sort of superimposes on the person an image from that terrible day. It startles the living hell out of me every time it happens.
I exhale a long breath to try to get all the crud out before I turn back to Bobby, who is too preoccupied with his tangled earplugs cord to have noticed my departure from reality. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to tease. You seem like a good kid.”
“And you seem like a good old man.”
“Touché. Your parents onboard?”
“No,” he says, too quickly considering the simple question. “They’re in Vietnam, in Saigon. I’m going to meet up with them. My grandfather is sick. My father says he is dying.”
Hmm, that sounded too smooth, too rehearsed. What’s going on? Could he be working with Lai Van Tan? No, no way. He’s a kid and he couldn’t be that good of an actor.
“Sorry,” I say, watching his eyes. “That’s rough. I lost mine a few years ago. You close to him?”
“Never met him. I’ve been to Saigon two other times but he was always away. He had a business; can’t remember what it was.”
That didn’t sound as practiced. Still, why wouldn’t the grandfather have made himself available those other times? That’s a spendy trip and a long ways for the family to have flown and… Maybe I’m making too much of it. I ask, “What do you think about going to see him?”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment as he fiddles with his cord. “My family is into ancestor worship,” he says, not answering my question.
“Really? I’d like to hear about that?”
He looks at me. “You think it’s crazy, right? Worshipping dead people?”
“Right now I don’t have any feeling one way or the other because I don’t know anything about it.”
“Lots of people think it’s crazy,” he says, still fiddling with the cord. “I’m not sure what I think. Maybe if I was born in Vietnam and grew up there I might be cool with it, but I’m a kid from Westminster, California. Ancestor worship seems pretty out there, know what I mean?”
“I do.”
“All my parents’ friends and my aunts and uncles are into it. They believe they must worship family members who have died, especially on the anniversary of their birthdays. They believe the spirit lives after they die, and stuff. They worship them and ask for help in their business, or help with a sick kid or something. So I respect that and go along with it.” Bobby is quiet for a moment, then shrugs. “I might get more into it when I’m older. I don’t know.”
“I think that’s a very mature and intelligent way to handle it.”
“Thank you. Where you going? You getting off in Seattle or Tokyo, or are you going all the way?”
“All the way to Vietnam.”
“Business, huh? What kind of business?”
“Not business. Personal.”
“Personal,” Bobby says, reading me for a second. “Okay, no prob.”
What sounds like the blond flight attendant’s voice on the PA announces that we have begun our descent into Seattle, and that we need to put our seat backs up and store our things. That was a fast forty-five minutes.
“Hey, I got row 12B in the new plane,” Bobby says, looking at his ticket. “What do you got?”
I retrieve mine from my pocket. “Let’s see… 12C.”
“Sweet. We could talk some more.”
What’s the chance of us sitting together twice? Could someone have arranged it that way?
“That okay?”
“What?”
“That we talk some more on the next flight.”
“Oh. Sure. But I’ll need to sleep. I’m really trashed. Been through some rough times recently.”
“Not a problem. You old people need your beauty rest.”
“On second thought, maybe it’s not too late to get a seat change.”
*
The plane change was non-eventful. We had enough time to grab a Whopper, walk off our meals, and buy some treats and magazines at a concession. We boarded the new plane, found our seats, and now we’re ascending to the heavens. Next stop: Tokyo in just over thirteen hours. Oh, my cramping back and knees.
We chat for a couple hours, mostly on ways he can build speed in his kicks and punches. He has a quick mind, quick wit, and asks questions that are ten years more mature than his age. A good listener too, a stark contrast from many young teens I’ve had in class over the years. If he keeps training, and I’m guessing he will, he’s going to be a fine martial artist and a good teacher. I do wonder about the weight he’s carrying on his shoulders.
We ride silently for a while, Bobby listening to his music, and me reading a Newsweek and doing the groggy head-nodding thing.
I touch his arm to get his attention. “I have got to get some sleep. I’m going to conk for a while.”
“I’m cool with that,” he says. “Got my cell. You can borrow it later if you’d like. Got like twelve hundred tunes on it.
