Birthday

Birthday
by David Wong Louie

T here's a man outside the door. He pounds away at it with his fists, and that whole side of the room shakes. He can pound until the house falls. I don't care, it's his house; he can do with it what he pleases. He talks to me through the door. His talk is nothing like his knock. His voice is gentle, soothing, contrite. I might even be tempted to say it's sweet, only he's a man, and the man that he is.

I came to see the boy. It's true I have no rights except those that come with love. And if I paid any attention to what the court says, I wouldn't be here. The court says the boy belongs to the man, the boy's father. This has been hard to take. After all, the boy calls us both by our first names, and as far as I'm concerned that means we're equals.

It's the boy's birthday, and back in the days when the world was cold and rainy and sane, back in the days when we still lived together, I had promised we'd go for an afternoon of baseball -- sunshine, pop, hotdogs. I told the man I was coming. I kept calling his number, but no one answered. I left plenty of messages on his machine, detailing what I had planned for my date with the boy. No response. When the boy first moved into this house, I tried phoning him every couple of weeks. I just wanted to hear him say my name again, Wallace Wong -- the clearest three syllables in his vocabulary when his mother introduced us. But all I ever got for my troubles was the man's recorded voice -- until yesterday, that is, when he interrupted the message I was leaving to say, "Wong, why don't you leave us alone?"

I just hung up on him. I couldn't talk to someone who used that tone of voice.

The boy's mother is gone from the picture. She's in New York; I say New York because that's where she's from originally, but she might be in Topeka for a11 I know. Losing the boy almost killed her. All those days in court for nothing. What did that black robe know about the weave of our three hearts? The man won custOdy. Perhaps he bribed the judge; it's happened before. More likely it's because he's making money now writing movies, and in this town that's everything. He had written a script based on their marriage and breakup, which was made into a film and did well at the box oEice, so now he's in big demand.

One day I came home from the shop, and she was gone. No note then, and not a word from her since. Rut I'm confident she'll come home once her heart's on the mend. Her disappearance wasn't a complete surprise. She's a quirky one. I've learned to expect such behavior, When we first started going out, she wanted me to prove that I really loved her. She was still recovering frorn the marriage then and didn't trust what anyone said about anything, especially love. So she said she needed proof. I told her okay, but for weeks she couldn't decide what she wanted me to do. Then one day while we were having lunch at a restaurant, she said, "This is it."

"Steal his radio." She pointed across the street.

The radio went into a health club with a man built like a heavyweight boxer.

I crossed the street, and as I fallowed the radio into the building, I imagined the possible headline for tomorrow's paper: CHINESE ROMEO BITES GYM FLOOR. Having accepted the possibility of severe bodily injury, I found the actual theft of the radio surprisingly easy. I just hung around the locker room, watching him strip and 0ex, and when he got up to relieve himself, I snatched up the radio left sitting on the bench.

She met me on the street in front of the gym. "Keep it," she said. "A present from me to you," This I didn't appreciate. I reminded her the size of that man's fist was bigger than my entire head.

"Frank," she said, laughing in a mean sort of way, "wouldn't hurt anyone he wasn't married to."

That's Frank out there, punching the door.