LITMIR.BIZ

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since he was taller and skinnier than his father had been; or accessories, such as cufflinks and tiepins, that could only be worn ironically. He recognized a navy-blue suit jacket that was the only one he remembered his father ever wearing, the collar stiff with hair oil, and the lining in the armpits discolored from perspiration. The jacket was so narrow that Michael imagined anyone who wore it must have perpetually hunched shoulders, constricted by fabric as well as other things.

      Finally, he asked to go through his father’s papers and chanced upon the one item that didn’t look like it was some kind of financial document (these he’d leave to Emily to sort out): an envelope that was addressed to his father. The postmark indicated it had been sent about a month before his father’s death, from someplace in China that he had never heard of and didn’t think he knew how to pronounce. Then his mother had come into the room, and he had put the letter in his pants pocket, where it stayed unopened for another nine months. Sometimes he would think about it, and be satisfied enough to simply know it was there, and then he forgot about it altogether. The only reason he’d rediscovered the letter that following June was because David had wanted Michael to go with him to the wedding of one of his closest female friends. Michael had taken out his sole good pair of pants and had come across the letter again.

      Unfortunately, it was written in Chinese, except for one sentence toward the end of the letter—Everything has been forgiven—in neat but spiky handwriting, as if a crab had crawled over the page. Michael wondered if his father had racked up some kind of debt. He could ask his mother to translate, but that would bring up questions and uncomfortable memories. So instead he put an ad online for a translator, and it was answered by someone named Edison Ng, whom he arranged to meet at a coffee shop downtown. At first, he was skeptical of this skinny college kid wearing a backward baseball cap, but Edison assured him that he was fluent in both languages and could translate the letter for fifty dollars by the end of the week.

      “Heavy stuff, right?” Edison commented after he’d delivered the translation. “Who do you think this Liao Weishu guy is?”

      Michael was still trying to digest its contents. “Other than a friend of my father’s, I don’t know.”

      “For another fifty bucks I can track him down for you online. . . .”

      Michael had to admire the kid’s entrepreneurial drive. “Thanks, but I think this requires more than an Internet search. I’m going to have to go to China to find him.”

      As soon as Michael spoke those words, it seemed like the most logical solution in the world. Of course he had to go to China and meet this Liao Weishu. Liao did not know that his father had passed away, and it was up to Michael to break the news to him. You didn’t write someone after forty years and just receive a letter in return. No, a personal visit was in order. Without telling anyone, he applied for a visa.

      He wasn’t running away, Michael assured himself. Although there were other, very good reasons for him to get out of the city. The heat, which made his apartment feel crappier than usual. The fact that the lease on his apartment would soon be up, and he might not be able to afford to renew it. His inability to find a new job—no one wanted a graphic designer who had once accidentally turned in a report with rude drawings doodled in the corners. That it would soon be a year since his father died, and his mother would probably want him to come home and commemorate it somehow. He imagined what it would be like—an uncomfortable dinner at home with Emily, who would be preoccupied with her latest case; and Julian, who would hover awkwardly on the periphery; and his mother, who would try to fill the silence with chatter, answering questions no one asked. Also, there was David. By that time, he and Michael would have known each other for around ten months, on and off, but if you counted the times they were on, it would only be around seven months. Not that anyone was counting.

      After Michael found out what the letter had said, he told David that he had changed his mind about accompanying him to the wedding of his friend, Laurel.

      “I don’t understand,” David said. “You have female friends too. Like that girl who lived next door, Annie.”

      “Amy. And we never dated.”

      Michael found it amusing that in high school, David had played straight, captaining a couple of sports teams and dating the daughter of one of the oldest families in town. Laurel’s wedding was on the grounds of an organic farm, and Michael was sure he would be the only Asian person in attendance, aside from a couple of trophy girlfriends. Or maybe he would be the trophy boyfriend.

      “This isn’t what I signed up for,” he told David. “Being your plus one.”

      “Fine,” David said. “But you’ll be missing out on some amazing grass-fed beef. Or is it free-range beef? Anyway, you know, beef that’s so fresh it talks back to you.” His tone was playful, but clearly he was troubled by Michael’s reluctance to be considered a couple.

      Therefore, David went alone to the wedding, which took place on a beautifully sunny day in late June, a day on which Michael stayed inside his crappy apartment and only ventured outside in the evening to get something to eat. When he came back, David was waiting for him, sitting on the top step underneath the skylight that was plastered darkly with pigeon droppings.

      “How was it?” Michael asked.

      “Wholesome and bourgeois,” David said. Then, after a pause, “If you were there, we could have made fun of the flower arrangements. Fucking modernist sculptures, they were.”

      “I missed you, too,” Michael admitted, before realizing a moment later that David had not actually said that he’d missed him.

      But it didn’t matter, because then they were kissing, and somehow Michael managed to unlock his door, and they moved as if in a choreographed dance the few feet across the room from the door to the futon that David always swore he would catch something from, and things were all right again.

      That is, until a few weeks later, when David suggested Michael move in with him. By that time Michael had received his visa and was close to maxing out his credit card after purchasing a plane ticket, among other travel preparations. It was almost too easy to become upset at David and accuse him of things that were only partially true, before storming out of David’s apartment and ignoring his calls. This way he didn’t have to tell David anything about what he was intending to do, to explain himself when he didn’t even know why he was taking this trip.

      Michael realizes, though, as the train winds its way through the plateaus of northwestern China, this trip has everything to do with David Wheeler, and it was set in motion over a year before.

      That summer morning, Michael had made plans to meet a friend at a restaurant in Chelsea, a place that guaranteed a wait of about an hour, followed by awful service. Thus, he was already not in a very good mood when he came to Fifth Avenue and found his way blocked by hordes of shirtless young men, cheering on a street full of more shirtless young men elevated in gaudily decorated floats. He had forgotten about the Gay Pride Parade.

      Normally, Michael scorned this kind of event. Was there really a need to emphasize your otherness, to flaunt it in other people’s faces? He had spent so much of his life hiding—hiding where his parents had come from in high school, hiding his boring suburban upbringing in college, hiding his lack of corporate ambition at work—that it was second nature to hide a less visible aspect of himself as well.

      After struggling through the crowd for several minutes, he couldn’t find a way to cross the street. He gave up and was about to call his friend to cancel when he heard a voice behind him say, “This sucks, doesn’t it?”

      Michael turned to see a young man, somewhat preppy-looking in a polo shirt and khaki pants, blond hair gleaming in the sun. “It does,” he replied. “I’m supposed to meet someone on Seventh Avenue, but I guess I won’t make it.”

      “Me too,” the man said. “But I’m getting hungry. You want to grab a bite on this side of the street?”

      Michael only looked at him for a few more seconds before agreeing. He wondered how long this man had been following him before picking him out among so many fine, shirtless

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