JD closed the game and sent Khoder’s contact information to Soo-hyun. He included a note:
>> My knee is killing me. You’re lucky we’re family.
The reply came back instantaneously:
>> Admit it, it’s the most excitement you’ve had in months.
JD sighed. Soo-hyun was mostly right.
He checked his phone’s map and the street signs hanging detached above the nearest corner, temporarily lost after the brisk death march to the restaurant and his rushed escape at a random trajectory.
When he finally recognized where he was, JD realized that maybe his trajectory hadn’t been random. Before the knee injury, the medical treatments, and all the rest, he’d lived three streets away, with Troy. He felt a uniquely modern disappointment in himself—knowing he should have been able to recognize the neighborhood without help. His internal maps and his sense of direction were two more sacrifices he’d made to the machines without a second thought, just like his ability to calculate basic math or remember friends’ birthdays.
JD stood, breathing quick against the pain in his leg. He tossed his rucksack over his shoulder, and limped toward his old apartment.
Troy opened the door to see JD, dripping water on his welcome mat. He frowned.
“Good to see you, too,” JD said.
“I have class in the morning, Jules; I was just about to go to bed.”
JD bit his tongue—they weren’t at a place where he could casually joke about them sleeping together.
“I was in the neighborhood—” JD stopped when he saw Troy’s frown deepen. “I really was.”
Troy wore a faded green cardigan, which he held tight around his throat with one hand, skin pink-white most of the way up his forearm before giving way to his natural dark pigment. The vitiligo spotted the sides of his head as well, so Troy wore his hair in a neatly cropped Mohawk, self-conscious about the locks of pure white that would grow there if he let them.
Troy stepped back from the doorway. “Come inside then,” he said with a sigh.
JD left his shoes on the landing and crossed the threshold into the apartment. Troy held an arm out grudgingly. They hugged, and JD rested his hands on Troy’s waist, but they felt orphaned there, so he let them fall to his side and pecked Troy on the cheek as he stepped past.
“What is that smell?” Troy asked with a crinkled nose.
“Smoke,” JD said. “I saw Soo-hyun, it’s a long story.”
Troy groaned. “I do not want to hear it.” He closed the door and locked it, then strolled down the short hallway that led to the bedroom, announcing over his shoulder: “I’ll get you something dry to wear.”
The apartment was small and neat, everything placed at right angles, as though Troy had decorated with a ruler and set square. The living room was floored in ugly, brownish, short-pile carpet that was mostly obscured beneath a large Oriental rug that Troy had inherited from his grandparents.
JD sat on one of the two light gray couches, their fabric shadowed with various stains and indented with the invisible weight of past bodies. There was no TV opposite, just a wall adorned with framed posters for sixties French cinema—Week-end, La Chinoise, Le Samouraï, and Le Feu Follet. All of them except Week-end had been gifts from JD, printed cheap on university printers and framed by an old Korean couple at a tiny shop in outer Seoul; they’d cost a full month’s rent. JD was glad they had survived the breakup.
“How have you been?” JD called out.
“Busy. They’ve got me tutoring classical literature, early Christian and Jewish studies, as well as my philosophy classes.”
Now that he was standing inside, JD’s phone connected with the apartment’s smart systems—the ambient temperature was displayed in large digits hanging in the center of the living room, and a list of controls for light switches, the oven, microwave, and kettle slid down the left side of his vision. He’d never relinquished his control keys after he left.
“What do you know about literature or religious studies?” JD said, dropping his voice when Troy returned with a threadbare bath towel and one of his many University of Cambridge sweatshirts.
“The administration doesn’t care. As far as they are concerned, it’s all just old people and old books. ‘Give it to Professor Morrison, he loves that stuff.’ ” Troy still spoke with the hint of an English accent, clinging to his tongue years after he’d left the Brisles—just before the old government collapsed in a domino effect from the crumbling American empire.
“At least it’s work,” JD said, scrubbing his head and face with the towel.
Troy sighed and sat on the couch. “You’re right; I should be happy.”
“I didn’t say that—you can feel however you want.”
JD folded the towel over the arm of the couch and turned away from Troy to strip out of his wet shirt, as though they hadn’t seen each other naked countless times before. He pulled the sweatshirt over his head slowly, breathing in deep to savor the smell of the fabric. JD would never spend the money for the brand of detergent that Troy used, no matter how much he liked the scent. Besides, it would only remind him of Troy. He hung his windbreaker and shirt on the hat rack by the door and sat back down.
“How’s your work?” Troy asked. “Still doing repo?”
The question hung heavy in the air between them, loaded like a cargo ship, like a gun.
“Yeah,” JD admitted, watching Troy’s face for a reaction, but seeing nothing telegraphed there. “Mostly I’m doing machine maintenance at a warehouse on the shorefront. The pay sucks, but at least the hours are long.” JD smirked.
“Living with your mom?”
“No, that was strictly short-term. Living in a dorm, but I still see her every week.”
“How is she?” Troy asked.
“I think she misses you—” JD said, stopping himself from saying the rest: as much as I do. After a silent beat, JD nodded toward the framed posters: “This place hasn’t changed.”
Troy carefully inspected the room, as though he didn’t see
