Page 37 of Vicious

I laugh again. I think her sarcastic humor caught my attention even back then when I barely knew her. I admit, her looks are what drew me first, but as I learned more about her, my desire for her, my desire to keep her, only grew.

And now I have her permanently. I don’t need to play hard every single evening.

“I bought you the sewing machine! That was treating you like a human.” I glance at the door. “What’ll it be? Dinner and a movie, or a lonely night alone?”

“That’s redundant,” May points out snarkily. “A lonely night alone.” But she seems to be thinking about it, and after a moment, she nods. “I’ll take the dinner and a movie.”

“Wonderful.” I set the tray down on the bed so I can unlock her from the leash. As soon as she’s free, May jumps off the bed and takes several steps away from me.

“Ah-May, trust me, if I had any inclination of doing something sexual or painful with you tonight, I would have opened with that.” I pick up the tray again and head toward the open door.

May waits only a few seconds before following me out to the basement rec room.

It’s not particularly well decorated since I rarely use this space, but when I’d bought the house, I couldn’t think of what else to do with the basement. There’s a couch, a coffee table, and a big TV hanging above a console. I set the tray onto the coffee table and plop down onto the couch with a long sigh.

May looks a little disappointed when I settle onto the couch in the rec room, but she sits on the opposite end of the couch from me after grabbing her tray of food. “What are we watching?”

I pick up the remote and sigh. “I don’t know. Pick something. I don’t remember the last time I watched anything, even though I subscribe to essentially all the streaming services.”

“Do you have any of the anime ones?” she asks, perking up a little between bites of food. She’s eating like she’s starving, and she probably is after a full day of next to nothing.

I make a mental note to get and stock a mini fridge in her room.

“Uh… like that one with the robot cat and the bratty kid?” I ask, remembering the Japanese cartoon I’d watched as a kid in Beijing. “I don’t subscribe to an anime service, but I think some of the services carry a few. They show up in my recommendations because I’ve watched some C-Dramas.” I pick up my plate of food. “Because Chinese and Japanese are exactly the same, of course.”

“Not really the type I’m into, but sure. I prefer mahou shoujo, honestly,” she says, as though she expects me to know what mahou shoujo is.

“Pick whatever you want,” I say, passing the remote to her. “I honestly don’t care.”

May navigates to the biggest streaming service I use and starts flipping through it. She wrinkles her nose at my saved list and recommended shows. “Seriously? This is the shit you watch when you have time to watch TV?”

“Look, find me other shows in Chinese that are half as brainless as those so I don’t have to think while watching TV,” I answer. “And you want to watch some cartoons. How is that any better?”

“Cartoons?” May squawks, nearly dropping her fork. For a moment, she looks like she wants to stab me with it. “Are you freaking serious? You think anime is just…” She lets out a disgusted noise. “Yeah, you’re definitely irredeemable.”

“If I remember from my childhood, most of those cartoons are just long, drawn out fights that never go anywhere because the animation studio has to pad the length.” I set my plate back on the coffee table and extend my arm across the back of the couch.

She scoots farther away and presses against the edge of the couch, still glaring daggers at me. “Sure, some of them are like that. But not all of them are fighting and filler. There are different kinds of anime, just like there are different kinds of other shows and movies. Some of them are romance, some of them have action but plot, too. There are just all kinds.”

“I guess there’s the titty anime too,” I mention slyly. “Is that the kind you watch? The stuff that’s got tentacles and clothes getting ripped off and all the panty shots?”

May blushes bright red. “No!” she says, so quickly that I wonder if she has watched any. “Those are so demeaning to women.”

I laugh and scoot closer to her on the couch, putting my arm around her. “How would you know, if you haven’t watched any? Maybe I need to find a streaming service that carries them so we can see for ourselves.”

She squirms, stabbing at a piece of broccoli and shoving it into her mouth. She takes her time chewing, focusing on the food for a long moment. “Why?” she asks after she swallows. “Why would you bother, that is? It’s not like you’re interested in ‘cartoons.’”

I shrug. “What else am I going to do with all this money? If you like it, I might as well.”

May finds an anime on one of my streaming services and sets it to play from the first episode. Something about figure skaters and international competitions, I don’t know. It’s easy enough to digest.

“Did you ever think about learning Japanese?” I ask during a lull in the episode.

She pauses, and for a moment, I think she’s lost herself in the show—or maybe she’s just pretending to, so she doesn’t have to talk to me. “A few times,” she finally says. “But I never had the time. And even if I did have the time, well, I should focus on improving my Chinese.”

Right. She’d had three jobs to keep her and her useless father afloat.

I make a noncommittal sound. “Nothing says you have to speak Chinese just because your mom was Chinese. I know plenty of Chinese Americans who don’t speak a lick of Mandarin or Cantonese. If you want to learn Japanese or Spanish or whatever instead, who’s to stop you?”

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