The Love You Want

2.

Later that morning, my boss called to ask when I was thinking of coming back to work. I regretted answering the phone the second I did, realizing too late that over the phone there would be no way out of talking like there was when I was talking to him over email or text message.

I knew I should take the hint and do a bit of work. After all, I needed the job and it's not like I was doing anything important. But the thought of sitting down at my desk and working on reports, staring at the screen like it was the one thing in the world that could provide me with any answers, sickened me to my core. I didn't care about those reports, or what they said, or about the people who would read them. I had always hated the corporate lifestyle, hated that I was supposed to go to college to read books and to learn, but really to go and graduate before dressing in clothes that I didn't like to go and talk to people that I didn't want to speak to about subjects that I didn't care about. Hanuel had always laughed at my groaning about work. I had never wanted to work a corporate job, but I wasn't an artist, and I hated the instability of freelancing, which all led to me being generally unhappy. Every Sunday night, we'd eat homemade popcorn and cookies in a "Sunday Blues" celebration. Suddenly, standing there on the phone, I had a craving for popcorn. I mumbled some sort of explanation to my boss, half-heartedly saying that I would be getting some work done soon, then finally hung up the phone.

I stood there in the kitchen for a long minute, wondering what the hell to do with myself, when Doyun brushed past me. He'd done his best to look presentable, combing his hair nicely before he rushed to his house to get ready for work, but the dark circles under his eyes were painfully apparent, along with the sickly paleness of his skin.

"Hey," he said, and I tried to smile. "Are you okay?"

I was confused, and must have looked it.

"You look pretty beat-up," he said, quietly. Because of course, I looked like I'd been hit by a train. I had been hit by a train, sort of. Just not physically. The physical problem came after the train hit.

If you were somehow immortal and couldn't die, and got hit by a train, would you materialize into some sort of liquid, or would you bounce off? That was the sort of question I'd ask Hanuel, randomly, when we were doing absolutely nothing. He would stare at me for a second, then he would laugh, and he'd probably say that you'd bounce, because Hanuel would hope that you would bounce, because that sounds like fun. I've always been more prone to violent imagery, and although I thought you would probably bounce, you would probably hit and bounce back with equal force, probably knocking into a few innocent, non-immortal bystanders, killing them piece by piece.

It would be like when a bomb went off, and people would get their limbs blown off, and it takes a few more seconds until the pain kicks in, and they take a second just to stare at their limb, now no longer part of them. Something that had been so useful and so vital, now just dead flesh.

"You're really starting to freak me out," Doyun said.

I realized I'd been gazing off into the distance, and I winced at the concerned look on my friend's face. "I'm okay," I said. "I'm just really tired."

We hadn't spoken about what Doyun had said last night. And I sure as hell hadn't talked about the fact that I felt my dead best friend next to me in bed. Doyun said Hanuel had been hugging him. Had he been hugging me, too?

"Do you want me to come back during lunch? I could pick up some food."

I shook my head. I was lacking in many things, but food wasn't one of them. I wasn't Korean, but I was apparently close enough to be considered part of Hanuel's family, and that meant many, many, many plates, bowls, and plastic containers of food were brought to the apartment every day by well-wishers. I thanked them, but I never let them in. I didn't want them inside. I also didn't want them to see that I kept pictures with Hanuel up in the apartment. Korean funeral etiquette said that all pictures were put away three days after the funeral. Putting them away would involve looking at them. Just because I was the pragmatic one didn't mean I had to be pragmatic always. Even Joan Didion didn't get rid of her husband's shoes for a year, and she was a grown woman with an adult kid and a solid sense of reality. I recalled what she had been referred to in her book about her "year of magical thinking." The doctor had called her a "cool customer." I was far, far, far from behind a "cool customer." I was a blue-hot prisoner. But no one needed to know that, except for the people who could and would force their way inside the apartment. Hanuel's relatives were not included on that list.