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~ Darren ~
Past
Part of me wants to demand she give me my fucking sportscoat back. The other part of me wants to pin her against the gazebo and…
I shake off the thought and decide to be nice about it. “That supposed to be a compliment?”
“I’m sorry. That came out all wrong. I mean, I did think you were rude when we first met—”
“I thought we were even once you threw your drink all over me.”
“Yeah.” She gives me a smile. “We’re even.”
Turning back to the view, she seems to soak it in as if savoring every drop of a fine wine. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen this view many times before, but I don’t remember it being this spectacular.
“Can you imagine waking up to this every day?” she asks, leaning against the guardrail. “I grew up in the flats of Oakland, and there aren’t views like this.”
At present, I’m more intrigued with her reaction than the view.
“You live in Oakland all your life?” I ask.
“Yep. Went to a preschool in Chinatown and graduated from Oakland Tech.”
“And you said your grandmother raised you?”
“With a lot of help from Aunt Coretta, who’s like a second mom to me. Aunt Coretta worked part time and took care of me after school.”
“What did your grandmother do?”
“Worked for the US post office. Worked up until she had to get treatment for breast cancer, got chemo, then went back to work as soon as she could.”
“Did the chemo work?”
“No. The cancer came back, and she wasn’t up for going through it a second time.”
My conversations with women rarely end up in territory like this, especially when I barely know them. But it almost feels natural talking to Bridget about anything.
“I had an uncle who died of lung cancer,” I share. “We knew it was coming because he smoked twenty-four seven. He would eat and drink with a cigarette in his mouth. But it’s tough to watch a loved one die a slow death.”
I also think of Henry Fong, a fellow triad member who had to watch his father bleed to death from a single gunshot wound. The father had tried to embezzle funds, a little here, a little there, thinking he could escape detection. My mother played mahjong with Henry’s mother, and she started pushing me in a different direction after what happened to Mr. Fong.
“My grandmother got really sick when I was five years old,” Bridget says while shifting her gaze up to the sky. “She thought she might die and told me that if she passed, she would be watching me from that star there.”
I follow her gaze. “That specific star?” I ask.
“The brightest one. Maybe that’s the one your dad’s on, too.”
I’m not five years old. I feel myself resisting her comforting attempt. It’s corny. I don’t need it. Gangsters don’t get to hang out in the heavens on stars.
But it would be cool if he were.
“What was your dad like?” she asks.
Why does she want to know that? It’s an innocent enough question, I guess, but kind of intimate for two people who are hanging out together only because we got ditched by JD and Amy. Although…I’m not in a hurry for my cousin to come back.
“A quiet man. Worked a lot.”
“What did he do?”
