LITMIR.BIZ

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were somewhat easier for me than for people who aren’t so blessed.”

      “Never thought of it that way,” Bobby says thoughtfully. “I guess I was a fast learner too. I went through the belts quicker than everyone I started taekwondo with.”

      “Let me ask you, how did you get to your classes and who paid for them?”

      “My parents,” he says, then ponders that for a moment. “Okay, I hear what you’re saying.”

      “That’s the second half. First, your parents gave you their genes and then they gave you their time and their support. My mother and grandfather drove me three and four times a week to my classes. I couldn’t have achieved any of my belt ranks and early competition wins without their help, their time, and without the support they gave to me.”

      “I get it,” Bobby says softly, looking at the seat back in front of him. I must have hit a nerve because his face sucked into that solemn look again.

      “In my mind,” I continue, “it’s hard to think that I’m all that when I’m responsible for only part of what I’ve achieved. Maybe the smallest part.” When he doesn’t comment, I continue. “Think about this. In Tibet when someone thinks he’s better than other people, it’s said that he’s like someone sitting on a mountaintop: it’s cold, it’s hard, and nothing will grow. But if a person is humble and puts himself in a lower place, then he is like a fertile field at the base of the mountain.”

      “Where things grow,” Bobby says. “Where he learns, right?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Cool.”

      We sit in silence. I don’t know what Bobby is thinking, but I try to think about nothing and thumb through a flight magazine. I reach the last page without a clue of its contents, replace it into the chair-back pocket, and press my forehead against the cool Plexiglas. Nice view. It’s as if I’m floating among the clouds in the lower stratosphere.

      Two months ago, Vietnam was a war movie: Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. A place where my father died. I never thought of it as someplace I would want to visit. Then I meet my “dead” father and his stepdaughter Mai and, well, here I am, on a plane.

      According to Google, Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon, as many people still call it, is a growing economy in which the United States has an ever-increasing number of business interests. People vacation there and hike around the country. Who knew? I wonder how many non-Vietnamese people like me go there to visit their supposedly dead father and to spend time with his gorgeous stepdaughter, who, thankfully, isn’t related to them?

      “I read more about you online,” Bobby says, cutting into my thoughts. “In a blog or something. Said you’re really fast.”

      “Speed is relative,” I say, thinking of Samuel and what he calls his teacup trick, how his hands were virtually invisible when he switched our cups. Just when I thought that that was the fastest thing I’d ever seen, a few days later he showed me what he called The Third Level. He was so fast that it was frightening. It was as if I had witnessed something paranormal. Mai said there was a Fourth Level, one so extraordinary that it was beyond comprehension, even for Samuel. He said that he had achieved it only a few times, but because he was afraid he couldn’t control it, he wouldn’t do it again without more guidance from his teacher.

      That was the day he reduced me to a beginner, one who knew so little that I didn’t know what questions to ask.

      “How did you get so fast?” Bobby asks, pulling me back. I’m guessing that he doesn’t know what ‘speed is relative’ means. “I’m pretty quick,” he says, snapping out a backfist that looks good and makes the elderly woman across the aisle look over at us. She frowns at me and looks away. Probably thinks I’m a bad influence on teenagers. “But I want to be faster.”

      His dark cloud has left and the sun is out again. Reminds me of me at that age. I could train every day, twice a day sometimes, sleep like a log at night, and then do it all over again when I woke up. I really miss the high-octane zeal and innocence of those years.

      “You got a girlfriend, Bobby?”

      His face flushes. “A couple, why?”

      I shake my head as if he’s a lost cause. “Because if you want to be fast, I mean really fast, you can’t hang around girls.”

      “Oh,” he says, his face disappointed. He shakes his head. “Shoot.” He looks past me and out the window for a long, thoughtful moment. Then, with a sigh from having just made a profound decision, he says, “I guess I’m fast enough.”

      I nod, chewing the inside of my cheek. “You are indeed fast, young grasshopper.”

      “Thanks,” he says, studying my face for a couple of seconds before a flash of enlightenment crosses his. “Okay. Okay! You were bullshittin’ me, right?”

      “Indeed, my son.” I punch his shoulder. “I certainly was.” He leans away and laughs.

      Damn.

      Jimmy!

      Damn-it!

      When he leaned away… he looked like… Jimmy… when he slumped over… on the bed.

      Bobby snorts, oblivious to what’s going on in my head. Feels like I’ve got a two-by-four caught in my throat. I turn toward the window and take a slow, deep breath. That’s what Kari said to do whenever I have one of these… intrusive thoughts; I think that’s what she called them. Sometimes when I see someone make a gesture or say something, my mind sort of superimposes on the person an image from that terrible day. It startles the living hell out of me every time it happens.

      I exhale a long breath to try to get all the crud out before I turn back to Bobby, who is too preoccupied with his tangled earplugs cord to have noticed my departure from reality. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to tease. You seem like a good kid.”

      “And you seem like a good old man.”

      “Touché. Your parents onboard?”

      “No,” he says, too quickly considering the simple question. “They’re in Vietnam, in Saigon. I’m going to meet up with them. My grandfather is sick. My father says he is dying.”

      Hmm, that sounded too smooth, too rehearsed. What’s going on? Could he be working with Lai Van Tan? No, no way. He’s a kid and he couldn’t be that good of an actor.

      “Sorry,” I say, watching his eyes. “That’s rough. I lost mine a few years ago. You close to him?”

      “Never met him. I’ve been to Saigon two other times but he was always away. He had a business; can’t remember what it was.”

      That didn’t sound as practiced. Still, why wouldn’t the grandfather have made himself available those other times? That’s a spendy trip and a long ways for the family to have flown and… Maybe I’m making too much of it. I ask, “What do you think about going to see him?”

      He doesn’t say anything for a moment as he fiddles with his cord. “My family is into ancestor worship,” he says, not answering my question.

      “Really? I’d like to hear about that?”

      He looks at me. “You think it’s crazy, right? Worshipping dead people?”

      “Right now I don’t have any feeling one way or the other because I don’t know anything about it.”

      “Lots of people think it’s crazy,” he says, still fiddling with the cord. “I’m not sure what I think. Maybe if I was born in Vietnam and grew up there I might be cool with it, but I’m a kid from Westminster, California. Ancestor worship seems pretty out there, know what I mean?”

      “I do.”

      “All my parents’ friends and my aunts and uncles are into it. They believe they must worship family members who have died, especially on the anniversary of their birthdays. They

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