Page 20

EIGHTEEN

OLIVER

It has only been a couple of weeks since Oliver received word that Marshall died, but it feels like an entire lifetime has passed. It also, strangely, feels like not much has changed, which is ridiculous. But then again, he’d never been close to Marshall, not since their mother died. He and Marshall would meet up once or twice a year, tops. The last time they’d met up, well, that was the day before Marshall died, and that hadn’t gone well at all.

You’ve always been jealous of me. The knockoff twin. That’s what they all called you.

“Eh, what are you doing? Don’t daydream when you are on the ladder,” Vera calls up to him.

“I’m not daydreaming.” He was most definitely daydreaming. He clears his throat and screws a new lightbulb into the light fixture before climbing back down the ladder. “I’ve changed the bulb for you, but I think your electrics need rewiring. I don’t think the power is running as efficiently as it should.”

“Oh, I can’t afford new electrics,” Vera says. She picks up a tray from the counter and gestures at Oliver to join her at the table.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll do it for you one of these weekends.” Oliver can’t quite explain it, but when Vera called him this morning, asking if he could help her change a couple of lightbulbs, he hadn’t minded at all. In fact, he found himself looking forward to coming back to Vera’s little shop and spending time there. Especially now that it’s clear that Marshall’s death was an accident.

“I make tang yuan.” Vera pushes a bowl filled with five large glutinous rice balls swimming in lightly sweetened broth toward him.

“Gosh, I can’t remember the last time I had this.” He sips at the broth, which is steaming hot and spicy-sweet with a strong kick of ginger. The warmth slides straight down his throat and into his belly like a comforting flame. He bites into one of the tang yuan and finds it chewy and soft in the best possible way and filled with a sandy-sweet black sesame paste. His mother used to make tang yuan, and he remembers it being just as comforting as it is now. Maybe it’s not so strange to like Vera’s company; something about her soothes his soul.

“Is it good?” Vera is watching him like a hawk, practically unblinking.

“Yes.” Oliver bites into another tang yuan and finds this one filled with sweet peanut paste. “It’s so good. I love tang yuan.”

Vera nods, satisfied. “So I am thinking maybe one of these nights you all come for dinner here—”

The ringing of Oliver’s phone interrupts her, and with a quick apology, Oliver answers. It’s the tenant from 3B, telling him that they can’t get any hot water. Oliver promises to look into it and hangs up. “I can’t stay long. I’m supposed to be on the job.”

“Speaking of job,” Vera says, “I have start reading your manuscript...”

“My manuscript?” It takes a beat for him to recall Vera finding it in his car. He narrows his eyes at her. “Vera, I thought I told you to put it back where you found it.”

Vera looks entirely unapologetic. “Why? So you can forget it exist for another ten years? No, I take it home and I have been reading it. It’s not so bad. Maybe a bit slow to begin with; I keep falling asleep when I read it.”

“Thanks a lot, Vera.” Actually, Oliver can barely remember what he wrote in that manuscript. He vaguely remembers that, like the stereotypical amateur writer, he’d based it loosely on his own life story. He really should tell Vera to give it back to him, but he doesn’t have the time right now. Finishing up his tang yuan, Oliver takes his leave and drives back to his place.

His steps are leaden as he makes his way to the basement to check on the water heater. Working as a building manager had seemed like the perfect job all those years ago. Quiet, low-key, with plenty of downtime to work on his writing. And Oliver has been working all this time on his writing, he hasn’t just been sitting on his ass, waiting for various things in the building to break so he can be useful. It’s just that this job was meant to be a temporary one, one that he would quit once his writing took off, and now it’s been more than ten years and Oliver is still in the same place, literally, same chair, same little apartment, same everything. And nothing but rejections on his writing.

As Oliver works on the water heater, his phone rings again. He sighs, putting his tool in his pocket and retrieving the phone; 3B has always been impatient. He taps on the green phone icon and turns his attention back to the water heater.

“I’m working on it,” he says by way of greeting.

“Oliver?” The voice stops him in mid-crank. That’s not 3B. It’s the voice he’s dreamt about ever since high school.

“Julia?” Oliver straightens up, wiping off his sweat with his forearm, as though she could see him. “Hey, what’s up?”

A shaky sigh. “Sorry to bother you, is this a bad time?” She sounds so apologetic that his chest tightens.

“No,” Oliver says quickly. Never a bad time for you , he wants to say, but that would be very inappropriate, so he leaves it at no.

“Okay, um, this is going to sound weird, but...” She sighs again, and this time he catches the tone of frustration and pain behind the sigh. “I just got a call from some guy who says that Marshall was renting an apartment downtown. Marshall had mentioned it before he left, but I guess I must have forgotten about it after he died. I thought he’d just gotten it, but it turns out I was wrong. I can’t even—he had a secret apartment, Ollie!” Her voice shakes then, almost breaking, and Oliver is filled with the familiar sense of anger toward Marshall. God, why did Marshall have to be such a raging dick? “God knows what he was doing in it for how long, I mean... gah!” She takes a deep breath. “Anyway, the landlord said he’s going to empty out the apartment tomorrow, but he asked if we wanted to go over to retrieve Marshall’s stuff. I can’t go because of Emma. Do you have time to go? I’m sorry, I know it’s such an imposition, but I just don’t—”

“I’ll go,” Oliver says simply. He’ll go, because it’s Julia asking, and he’ll do anything for her. Always did everything for her, back in school, when she let him. And seeing her again last week after so many years had been one of the most incredible moments. He desperately wishes they could go back to how they were before. “I’ll grab everything that looks useful.”

Julia snorts bitterly. “I don’t know if I want to know what’s even in that apartment.” She pauses, and Oliver finds himself holding his breath. When she does speak again, her voice is tight with pain. “Um, if you do find... you know, something, uh, you know—if he was, uh, betraying our marriage vows—I’d rather not know.”

“Of course.” He’s about to add that Marshall was loyal to her and he’s sure he won’t find anything that would say otherwise, but then he stops himself. Because why bother lying? The only person Marshall was ever loyal to was himself. But still, Oliver hates that Julia now knows this about Marshall. Despite everything, despite his own feelings for her, he’d always hoped that Marshall would prove him wrong, that Marshall would treat her right.

“Thanks, Ollie.” There’s another pause, so long this time that Oliver half wonders if she’s hung up. But as he lowers the phone to check that the call is still ongoing, she says, “It was really nice seeing you the other day. After all this time.”

His heart swells and he finds it hard to draw breath. “It really was,” he replies with so much unspoken emotion. “And so good to see little Emma too. I hope—uh—I hope we see more of each other now.”

Oh god, that came out all wrong. That was so fucking creepy, oh my goddd.

Like he’s hitting on her now that her husband has passed. Argh! That was not at all his intention. He scrambles to save it. “I just meant—uh, I hope we don’t lose touch again?”

A small laugh, more sad than happy. “Yeah. D’you know, I never quite figured out why we stopped hanging out.”

The thought of Julia wondering why they stopped being friends is so acutely excruciating that Oliver can’t quite find the words to reply to her.

“See you around, Ollie,” she says, and hangs up before he can say anything.

Oliver stares at the phone for a long time, his thoughts and emotions warring in the cool darkness of the basement. When the phone rings again, it is apartment 3B, asking why they still don’t have any hot water.

···

The next morning, Oliver finds himself standing in front of Marshall’s secret apartment, key in his hand, licking his dry lips with increasing nervousness. He has no clue whatsoever what he might find inside. Hard-core porn? Illegal firearms? Who the hell knows what Marshall wanted to hide from Julia? But certainly it would be something shady, because otherwise Marshall wouldn’t have had to hide it.

Well, whatever. It’s not Oliver’s job to keep Marshall out of trouble anymore. He stabs the key into the keyhole and turns it. The lock clicks open and Oliver turns the handle.

The stale smell of old cigarette smoke hits him full in the face. That’s right, Marshall was a smoker. Had been ever since he was a sophomore in high school. One time, Baba discovered Marshall’s pack of cigarettes and without missing a beat, Marshall blamed it on Oliver. The few startled, silent seconds that Oliver took to respond were all that was required for Baba to believe Marshall. He’d been so disgusted, his upper lip curling into a sneer as he looked at Oliver.

The apartment is your typical overpriced San Franciscan fare. Oliver looked it up last night and saw that the rent starts at twenty-five hundred for a studio, which this one is. That’s a lot of money to spend on a secret apartment that looks like it was primarily used as... storage? There’s a floor mattress, the sight of which triggers a whole-body shudder running through Oliver, because he can just about imagine what Marshall was using it for, but aside from that there are no other pieces of furniture, merely boxes stacked on top of one another. It doesn’t look at all like a place that anyone lived in.

Oliver goes to the far end of the studio and opens a window to let some of the stink of stale smoke out. He looks at the boxes, dreading to find out what’s inside them. Taking a deep breath, he reaches out for the nearest cardboard box and opens the top.

Huh.

O-kaaay.

Inside is not a stash of wrapped bricks of cocaine or stacks of counterfeit money or anything that he’d expected but a sculpture about four feet tall. It’s a model of a U-shaped spaceship, its surface carved with extremely elaborate minute detail. Oliver lifts it very, very carefully, because it’s obvious even to him, someone who knows nothing about sculptures, that this is a true work of art. The amount of detail that has gone into this spaceship is staggering; you can even see people inside the tiny carved windows. He places it on the floor before stepping back and staring at it, dumbfounded.

A piece of art, a beautiful one at that. Why does Marshall have it? Oliver feels like he shouldn’t be handling this delicate piece of art with bare hands, but he hadn’t thought of bringing gloves here, and he needs answers, so he lifts the piece gingerly and peers at the bottom of its base.

Sure enough, there are words carved into it.

F. Martinez. Failure to Launch.

Oliver sets the piece back down, his mind racing. Failure to Launch is obviously the title of the piece, and F. Martinez presumably the sculptor. Fleetingly, he wonders about the possibility of it being filled with drugs—maybe Marshall was smuggling drugs? But no, he dismisses the thought as soon as it surfaces. This is true artwork, not a front for some drug-running business.

He opens the next box. This one is filled with prints of beautiful photographs of waterfalls and forests, each one so vivid that Oliver can practically hear the rush of the rivers in the pictures. In the lower left-hand corner is a signature he can’t make out. By now, Oliver has no freaking clue what is happening, so he opens more boxes, and the more he finds, the less he understands.

Before long, the studio looks like a tiny art gallery, albeit one owned by the most eclectic collector. There are oil paintings, and jumbled yarn pieces strung together with bits of broken glass and feathers, and cartoon drawings, and more sculptures. Some of the pieces are lone ones; others come in a set. They’ve all been made by different artists.

Oliver is absorbed by the bizarre discovery, his mind racing ahead—or rather, backward, into the past, digging frantically to figure out just what the hell Marshall was up to, but still he can’t make any sense out of it.

“Oh, Marshall,” he says, his voice heavy with sorrow and regret. “What have you done?”