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He walked over to my bookshelf and scanned the titles.
“This one, isn’t it?” He held aloft Murray Sperber’sBeer and Circuslike a trophy. Sperber, he knew, was one of my heroes at the moment, and if I were inclined toward the traditional academic career full of books and scholarly articles, I might have followed the course he charted, with so many works peppered with the ways big time college athletics was undermining the core functions of the university. This was one topic among many of which I never grew tired, as Nao Kao knew better than anyone.
“If I read it, and tell you all of the ways that you and he are correct, then will you come to a football game?”
I laughed.
“Deal.”
“As I said, there is only one way to win an argument with you. To read a book. Then you are satisfied!” Nao Kao said. He wasn’t wrong.
Nao Kao made quick work of Sperber, was sufficiently outraged by the harm athletics wrought, and brandished a pair of tickets to a non-conference game on September 15. On that day, though, the stadiums across America would be silent, their emptiness an homage to the terror of the preceding week.
So it was that on Friday, Nao Kao popped over late in the day to brainstorm backup plans.
“One thing I know, canoeing is out.”
“And no more pictures. I’m not in the mood.” I paused.
“Greenfield Village?” I suggested, half-heartedly.
“Remind me again what this is.”
“Kind of an outdoor museum,” I started. “You know – Thomas Edison’s workshop, the Wright Brothers’ home, that kind of thing. It’s in Dearborn.”
Normally Nao Kao loved history, but today he wrinkled his nose.
“Not in the mood?”
“Too much history right now,” he said, and I remembered the way he had once described history in Laos as being very close. September 11 wasn’t just close. It was still enveloping us.
“Well, there’s always Stucchi’s.”
“Liss, really. I am being serious, la.”
“Me too. You don’t have any ideas and you didn’t like mine. And ice cream is always good. At least when the weather is warm, which it won’t be for long. This isn’t Laos.”
He rolled his eyes, but could not suppress a slight smile.
“Besides, what haven’t you done yet on campus? The natural history museum?”
He took off his glasses to rub his eyes, the back of his knuckles massaging the sockets, first left, then right.
“Ahh, the famous dinosaur bones.”
I moved to the kitchen and began pulling down plates.
He shrugged.
“No matter, we can decide later. Or I can just start working on a paper. I have one due next week already.”
This elicited a bit of side eye from my usually unrufflable friend.
“It’s your last semester and you’re going to spend it all in the library?”
I ignored him. We both knew the answer to that question.
“Well, do you want to watchAu Revoir les Enfantswith me?” I asked as I portioned out the cartons of orange chicken and lo mein. Nao Kao still preferred the foods that bore some mark of familiarity, even if I was certain the sauce on the orange chicken existed nowhere outside of North America, but I was not going to complain. I preferred Chinese food, even mediocre, imitation “Chinese” food to that other ubiquitous college town fare, pizza.
