As soon as I wake up, I remember the e-mail I got from Yuni yesterday: “Breakfast tomorrow. 9:30. Your treat.” It’s eight forty. I go online and check my e-mail to see if Yuni has changed her mind. Apparently she hasn’t. I jump in and out of the shower and then cook up some French toast. A quart of orange juice, two large plastic cups, forks, napkins, and a bottle of maple syrup, all go into a plastic bag, and a tall stack of French toast on top of three plates goes into another bag. I go out into my backyard and then into the alley with a bag in each hand. I don’t see anyone anywhere and I imagine what the world would be like if everyone suddenly disappeared. The only sign of humans is the constant humming of cars that comes from all directions.
I’m careful as I climb the rope ladder, simultaeneously gripping the ladder and holding the bags. It’s nine forty-three and Yuni isn’t here. Zan isn’t down below either. I sit in the rocking chair and leave the bags on the floor. It’s very peaceful here. I sit with my eyes closed and listen to the humming of the traffic. A few minutes later I hear a meow. It’s probably Alan Turing, and as usual, I can’t see him anywhere. Another meow. I give up looking and close my eyes again.
“Moonx!” I hear from down below. “You ready for breakfast? I’m hungry.”
“I hope you like French toast,” I say.
“Right now I think I could eat anything.”
The knots on the bags have tightened on the way here and I’m having a difficult time untying them. “Here, help me with this,” I tell Yuni handing her one of the bags. We get the bags opened, pour ourselves some orange juice, and start eating.
“Tell me about your wife,” Yuni says. “How’d you guys meet?”
“We met in college. She was a friend of my roommate’s.”
“Do you remember the first time you saw her?”
“I do. One day my roommate had some friends over for movies and she was there. I didn’t think much of her at first. I thought she was pretty, but for some reason I thought she was stuck-up. Turned out not to be the case at all. We didn’t talk at all during the first movie—I guess noone did. The second movie was terrible. It was an old Steve Martin film called The Little Shop of Horrors. I hated it and so did Nanda. So we started making fun of it and pretty soon we were talking about a million different things.”
“So you asked her out?”
“I didn’t ask her out that night. Before she left she gave me her phone number and I ended up calling her later in the week. We had lunch. We were into each other right away. I could never wait to see her again.”
“I wish I had a boyfriend,” she says. “I’ve never had one.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess I haven’t met the right guy. I have this idea of the perfect guy for me, and I guess perfect guys don’t exist.”
“Maybe you should lower your standards a little. And I don’t mean that you should settle for someone you don’t like. I think you should be open to the idea that none of us are perfect.”
Yuni reaches for another French toast and puts it on her plate. “How long have you been married?”
“Six years.”
“I bet it’s really cool. To have someone you can talk to at all times and someone to be happy or sad with and never have to be alone.”
When Yuni says this, I think about the way things used to be with Nanda. Things really used to be the way Yuni says, but they’re different now. Yuni can tell I’m thinking about something.
“What?” she says.
I decide there’s no harm in telling her about Nanda. “Marriage is great. You’re a team and you set out to conquer the world together. You’re always there for one another.”
“Why were you quiet right now? What were you thinking?”
“Things were like that before. But not anymore. Something happened and things just aren’t the same.”
“What happened?” Yuni says.
“It’s kind of hard to talk about it,” I say. Yuni looks up from her plate. She’s looking at me with a soft gaze. “A year and a half ago, Nanda cheated on me. She was away on a business trip and she slept with another guy.”
“Wow.” Her soft gaze is still on me.
“We’ve talked about it many times. I have no doubt she’s sorry for what she did and wishes she hadn’t done it. I’ve forgiven her. Well, I’ve tried, but it’s still so hard for me. I feel I can’t ever trust her the way I used to.”
“Have you thought about leaving her?”
“Of course it’s occurred to me. Sometimes, when I imagine her with another guy, I get angry and want to disappear and never see her again. But much of the time I’m not angry and I’d really miss her if I were to leave. To be honest, I’m not sure what to do. I wish I could just forget about it and have things return to how they used to be.”
Yuni is looking down at her plate now, cutting her French toast with her fork. “Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “You know, I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve never met anyone like you. I have a million questions.”
She laughs. “You can ask me anything as long as it’s not about my family.”
“You’re fifteen and you have a car and a laptop and you seem very independent. How can you afford that stuff?”
“Well, I told you I buy and sell stuff on ebay. I do. It’s true. And I do make quite a bit of money with it now. But you need money to be able to buy stuff on ebay right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure where to start,” she says.
“Anywhere’s good.”
She laughs and then thinks about where to begin. “There’s this secret society called The Performing Alcoholics. I think it’s nation-wide—I’m not sure. In any case, you have to be under eighteen to be in it and only boys are allowed. It’s expensive to be in the club, so it’s just rich kids. They do all sorts of crazy stuff. I’m not supposed to know about it, but some of the boys tell me stuff. Like, a group might get some money together and then pay someone to steal a Corvette for them and then they drive he hell out of it and drive into a lake when they’re done having fun. They buy all sorts of drugs, of course. Well, I’m not supposed to know any of that. The reason I know about them is that they have these auctions where they bid on girls. When one of the rich kid’s parents are out of town, instead of throwing a party there, they have the auction. Everyone shows up wearing a mask and everyone has a fake name. The girls fill out a form indicating what they are willing to do: like if they’d have sex, or just handjobs, or whatever. Then the guys look over the girls and start bidding.”
“And the girls are naked?”
“Except for the mask, some of the girls are fully naked. It depends on what they’re willing to do. Like a girl might be willing to masturbate a guy, but not take off her clothes. It all depends on what the girl wants. She can also have a minimum bid amount that she’s willing to accept.”
“And you do this?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You take off your clothes?”
“I do, but I never let the boys touch me. They can tell me what to do to myself and I’ll let them watch, but they can’t touch me.”
“How much do you make?”
“I always have a minimum bid of five hundred dollars, but the boys always pay more.”
“How much?”
“Well, before I would get as much as twelve hundred dollars. And that’s just for one session. I’m hardly ever with a guy for more than an hour. One day, one of the girls told me that guys pay a lot more when they can come on you. She said they still don’t have to touch you and you don’t have to have sex with them or anything, so I tried it, and it pays a lot more. I guess guys really get off on that stuff.”
If Yuni had been nineteen years old I would have felt more comfortable talking about all this, but she’s just fifteen, and although I feel a bit awkward, curiousity gets the best of me. “How much more do guys pay to be able to do that?”
“I’ve had guys pay as much as two thousand dollars for a session. They don’t care how much it costs. They take money from their parents or sell drugs to their friends. Money’s nothing to them. And for me it’s not a big deal. I just take a quick shower when it’s over and it’s worth it.”
“What’s it like at these auctions? Isn’t it weird?”
“It’s actually cool. At first it’s like a masquerade. Everyone walks around with their masks and talks and whatever. These guys are rich, so there’s always a lot of food and alcohol. After about an hour or two, after the guys and the girls have met, the auction begins. After the auction, the winners and the girls will have their sessions in the bedrooms. Some of these houses are mansions, so sometimes up to seven or eight rooms are being used at a time. Sometimes it’ll go on until four or five in the morning. Then everyone leaves and noone ever knew who you were.”
“So you could run into one of the guys at the mall and you’d never know.”
“Yeah.”
“You think you’ve ever run into one of the guys on the street?”
“Who knows,” she says.
“Have you gotten to know any of the guys?”
“There this guy who goes by the name Neo. I guess he likes me, so everytime he’s there, he makes sure to bid a lot for me. He’ll have me take off my clothes for him and he’ll have me play with myself and he’ll masturbate the whole while. Then he’ll come on me and sometimes after I shower, if noone needs the room, we’ll stay and talk for a while. He has a girlfriend. He tells me all about her and even about his family—never uses real names, of course.”
Two pieces of French toast are left and just as I take one of them and put it on my plate, my phone rings. It’s Nick.
“Broheim,” I say.
“What’s up, Brother Love. Let’s have lunch.”
“Awesome.”
“How does Beyond Bread sound?”
“Perfect.”
“What are you doing?” he says.
“I’m in a tree house.”
“You’re what?”
“I’ll tell you later. At what time do you want to meet?”
“I can meet you at one fifteen.”
“See you there.”
I hang up and Yuni is looking at me. “Broheim?” she says.
“That’s my best friend.”
“That’s his name?”
“No. His name is Nick.”
“What does he call you?”
“All sorts of things. We call each other different things. He calls me Broheim, Brohib, Brother Love, Brother Righteous, and other things I can’t think of now.”
“I think Moonx is better than all of those.”
I stop to think for a moment. “I think you’re right. Moonx is pretty cool.”
Yuni takes the last piece of French toast. “How long have you known Broheim?”
“See, you can’t call him that, because I don’t know if you’re talking about Nick or about me. Since Nick is the only person I call Broheim and I’m the only person he calls Broheim, we always know who Broheim is. But when someone else says Broheim, it leads to confusion.”
“Fine. How long have you known Nick?”
“We met in first grade.”
“And he’s been your best friend since then?”
“Just about.”
“I’ve never had a best friend,” Yuni says. “I bet it’s nice to have one.”
“Life would be very different without one,” I say. “But how can you have never had a best friend?”
“I’ve had friends, but I never get too close”
Yuni and I talk about friendships and marriage and love until one o’clock when I tell her it’s time to meet Nick for lunch.
“Have fun with your best friend,” she says.
I gather the plates and cups and everything else I brought into one of the bags and make my way down the rope latter. As I walk into the alley, I hear Yuni yell, “Good-bye Moonx!”
Chapter 6
