Page 29 of Make The Cut

“She’s on the couch right now, wondering who I’m talking to,” I deadpan. “I even pausedBraveheartfor this.”

“I’m flattered.” Her chuckle gives way to something like weariness as she sighs. “Do you mind if I tell you about my date?”

“Go ahead.” I lie on my back, staring at the ceiling, still clutching the ball. From her tone, she’s not in love with him.

“He showed up on time, at least. But…”

“But?” I prompt, wanting to hear what fatal flaw this date had so I can never repeat it—I mean, so I can hunt him down and set his life on fire. You know, out of friendly protectiveness.

“He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” My eyebrows rise.

“Not when there was a spider on his chair! He jumped onto the table and asked me to kill it for him,” she says with a laugh. “I smashed it with a napkin and left before my drink got to the table.”

I don’t know how every cell of my body breathes a collective sigh of relief, melting into a puddle of relaxed goo, but it does. “I’m sorry to hear you were so gravely disappointed.”

“Where’s thebut?”

“But, I’m glad that my favourite stylist won’t have her time commandeered by a wimp who can’t kill his own spiders. Otherwise, I would have nothing to wear.”

“What are you wearing right now?”

“Are you flirting with me, Red?”

“Not in a million years, Naoya. I value my dignity too much for that.”

“Funny, I thought you swept your dignity under the rug when you started writingMuse Unmasked.” As the words leave my lips, I realize how they must sound. How they must hurt her. Sometimes, my lighthearted teasing can go far. “Poppy, I—“

“It’s fine.” Her tone is curt. “I think I’ll go to bed. It’s late and I need to sleep. You know, so I can find you something to wear tomorrow.”

“Poppy,” I say again, but I’m greeted only by the dial tone.

I throw my phone against the wall. A crack splinters the screen.

* * *

Murmurs in Cantonese and the sound of clacking tiles greet me as I walk into my mom’s apartment. Though small, it’s cozily furnished and right now, filled with four women playing mahjong. When my mom spots me, she flips her tiles face down and gets up to greet me with a kiss. “How have you been?”

“Good.” I kiss her back on the cheek just as the other women seated around the square table get antsy.

“It’s your turn, Rhoda!” one of them says.

My mom has never been one to give in so easily to anyone’s demands, so she just responds in Cantonese, saying, “I’ll play once I’m done talking to my son. Can’t you see his life is clearly a mess?”

I chuckle, trying to hide how true that statement feels.

Turning to me, shetsksand continues in the Chinese dialect. “You must have lost ten pounds. You’re too skinny. Have you been eating? I told you to let me come over and cook for you. Or at least you could hire someone who knows how to make good Chinese herbal soup. I can’t even pinch your cheeks, there’s no meat on your bones.”

A laugh bursts forth at her concern. “Mom, I’m fine. I assure you, I haven’t lost any weight.”

“Are you still avoiding your father? You know, you can’t dodge his calls forever,” she mutters in English, accented with a crisp British affectation from her education in Hong Kong. “He’s going to have to tell you his news eventually.”

“I know, I just… I don’t want to hear it yet. I thought you were still scolding me about not eating well.”

That launches her into another tirade about my health. As she regains her seat at the mahjong table, she scoffs, muttering something about how all the pop stars are too skinny these days and that it must be the fault of K-Pop groups like BTS.

I go into the kitchen and start brewing a pot ofpu’ertea, my mom’s favourite. Growing up, I always felt torn between two worlds: my father’s glamorous life in Japan, and me and my mom’s more humble upbringing in California, where she worked two jobs to make ends meet and refused to take a dime from my father. Now that I’m older, I think they’ve somewhat reconciled, enough that she sometimes nags me to call him. My mother is from Hong Kong, having met my father when she went on vacation with some of her girlfriends to Japan. Back then he was a struggling restaurateur.

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