Dear Melissa,
Hello, my name is Hank Yang Jr. We have never met in the flesh, but perhaps you know a little about me from Joon. Or maybe not? Joon and I haven’t seen each other in the flesh in eight years. Joon was mad at me, and I moved to AZ. I bought a little condo. I bought succulents. I overwatered and drowned my succulents. I was sad, but I accepted that was that. He changed his phone number. I changed mine.
There is no easy way to build up to this. Joon and I will get back together. It’s going to happen soon, I think, and I hope you’ll prepare for it. I don’t want you to suffer. You’re almost definitely a nice person. Joon wouldn’t marry anybody mean or petty. He always wanted somebody to help him take care of his parents once they needed it. So you’re kind and patient and loyal, yes? I’m a nice person too, by the way. You might think o bullshit. He is trying to take my husband for himself. It’s pretty selfish. I’ll admit I want this to happen. I’ve always been selfish when it comes to Joon. But I hate the idea of hurting you, even though we don’t know each other. I’ve thought of this so much. I might have been you.
What I am going to say next will sound a bit holy moly. If you decide to stop reading that’s ok by me. What may happen may happen whether you finish these pages or burn them. I’m trying here, really trying to be as transparent as possible. I’ve discussed issues like these with my pastor, and her position is that transparency is kindness even when it’s embarrassing or painful. Or unusual. I’m a super spiritual guy. Friends, family, Joon, etc. have said I am too spiritual. I get that going to church isn’t hip, but it works for me. After a bad stumble, it offers me a feeling of forward-momentum. It makes me feel connected. I love church potlucks. Everything about them. Making noodle salad. Serving members who can’t stand in line themselves. Wiping down tables and putting away the folding chairs. I go to maybe six church potlucks a month at two different churches. One church is mega and serves lots of young families. One is small and is mostly for old Asian folks. Mostly Filipino. This is the best church in my opinion. The food at their potlucks is wow, it would make you a believer.
The thing I’m going to tell you about happened at the mega church. Our congregation was staying after bible study for a birthday celebration. The youth pastor, Kieu, was turning forty. Kieu is a striking, charismatic woman, and even though it was a chilly, dark January evening, a lot of members turned up with their signature plates. I helped set the dining hall. We put out two hundred chairs. Just as folks were filing in, we got some disappointing news. Kieu was down with the flu. That’s what the word was.
It felt somehow wrong to hold the celebration. So instead, we decided to assemble potluck to-gos that everybody could eat at home. They were great plates. People had gone all out. There was roast pork, shepherd’s pie, turkey legs, smashed and fried potatoes. Someone had topped the deviled eggs with flying fish roe. As it was a weeknight, and since so many members had young kids, folks grabbed everything, and the hall cleared in an instant. This was lucky. The weather outside was messing with our power. Some lights in the building went down. Soon it was just me and old Mrs. Hattori cleaning in half-darkness. Mrs. Hattori was washing platters in the kitchen. I was on chair duty.
There is a good flow I get stacking our chairs. My mind wanders in a pleasant way. That night, actually, I was thinking about Joon. Not in a sad way, not a covetous way. I was thinking back to this trip we took to the San Juan Islands in WA. One day a rainstorm soaked us on a hike, and later, we ended up in a gift shop bathroom, wringing our clothes into the sink and trying to get warm under a push-button air dryer. Seeing Joon, wet hair, half naked, valiantly drying my socks under the hot air, I remember thinking just wow, I loved him, and I would always be connected to him in a way that I wasn’t with others. I wondered, does Joon ever think of this day too? Folding and stacking two hundred chairs, pushing the dining tables against the walls, it probably took me forty-five minutes. By the time I was done, the kitchen was silent. Mrs. Hattori must’ve gone home without saying goodbye, I thought. What a Goddamn rude old lady, I thought. From a raised window, I could see my car was the only one left in the darkened parking lot.
I’d closed up the church after celebrations many times before, but it was usually a few members all leaving at the same time. That night, I had an unsettled feeling. Not scared exactly, but it felt strange to be in this huge building, all alone. My mind wandered to people in Scotland or England who lived in freezing castles all by themselves. If you lived in a castle, maybe you were rich, and you had servants. But what if you weren’t rich? What if you inherited a castle? And it just felt bigger and darker and moldier the longer you lived in there? If a person is alone, do they feel lonelier living in a castle or in a tiny apartment?
I didn’t feel lonely in the mega church though. I felt like there was another presence nearby, observing. I wondered if Mrs. Hattori had felt it too. Maybe this was why she’d gone in a hurry?
The mega church isn’t in a bad part of town, but it’s isolated. Industrial parks and storage facilities around. A transient person or teenagers could get into some shenanigans without interruption. There were four doors I had to make sure were locked and dead-bolted. There was a door to the kitchen, one to the pastor’s office, one in the children’s reading room, and the double doors in front. I had a personal key that would allow me to deadbolt the front doors. The order in which I locked the doors is something I’m a little murky on. Maybe, because of the restless feeling I had, I first locked and bolted the front doors so they would be secure while I locked up everywhere else? I could be misremembering.
I locked up the kitchen door and the pastor’s office. Then in the children’s reading room, my foot sloshed into something down in the carpet. It had a peculiar smell. It was a sticky spill, maybe fruit juice, but the smell was not a sweet one. I dropped napkins onto the floor, and they immediately darkened. I worried there might be an overflowing toilet nearby. Kids always cramming things where they aren’t supposed to go. I was dropping another round of paper towels on the floor when I heard a sound coming from the dining hall. The sound was out of place. It was like a child taunting a classmate. When I walked into the dining hall, it was pitch black. Had a cat or a bird gotten into the building somehow? I turned on the lights. And that’s when I saw a most bizarre scene.
It was a nun, a really, really tall nun, bent at the waist, observing something on the floor. She was super tall. I know I just said that, but if you’d seen her, you wouldn’t be able to get it out of your mind. Originally, because she was bent down, I underestimated her. When she straightened out, she towered over me. If I had to guess, I’d say she was more than seven feet. The first thing I thought was, I wonder if she had to have her robes custom-made. And if so, I wonder how many robes she was allotted by the higher-ups. It must’ve been a ton of fabric.
Nuns have always been kind of creepy to me. I’m not sure how that sounds coming from a dedicated church-goer, but I’ve always been a Methodist. I don’t spend any time around nuns. There’s something about them that reminds me of inmates at a maximum-security prison. Maybe it’s their uniforms or maybe their presumed celibacy. I just get this idea there’s something swelling and intensifying in there. Like a broth that keeps getting darker and saltier and thicker. Under those heavy robes. You just think, when is that going to leak out? The nun was also extremely attractive. I can’t be sure about her age or race. My best guess is she was in her mid-forties. And maybe Korean? Her nose was small and pointy. Her skin was milky white, almost like she was wearing a mask. I remember thinking she could’ve been an actress, but then, there’s probably not a lot of roles written for seven-foot Korean women. The other thought that occurred to me was she could be a stripper. But what was she doing in our church? Why had she been wandering around in the dark? And hadn’t she just been talking to somebody?
“Hello,” I said. “Are you looking for Pastor Nisha?”
My voice sounded off, slightly muffled in the large dining hall. The nun pointed down to the floor in front of her.
“He is missing a big one,” she said. Her voice sounded much younger than her appearance, almost like a child. “He can’t remember how to move.”
I looked to the floor in front of the nun’s finger, and I saw the largest spider I’d ever seen in my life. The spider’s body was the size of a prune. It would’ve fit in your hands, but its legs would’ve spilled over. The legs were long and bushy. The spider moved frantically, but couldn’t seem to get very far. It kept returning to the same spot as though tethered.
“Count the legs,” the nun said. I looked down and counted them. It was a seven-legged spider.
I’m not really scared of spiders, but I didn’t want to touch this one. Its size and frenzied movements were a little terrifying. A chilly feeling started to climb the nerve fibers in my legs. I didn’t want it going over to the children’s room. It could bite somebody.
“I’d better take care of it,” I said. “Children play nearby.”
“You mean you’re going to flatten it?” the nun asked. She sounded a little excited. “Its sides are going to split and its juices will stain the carpet.”
“I guess so,” I said.
“But you aren’t wearing any shoes!” she said.
I looked down. She was right. I must’ve removed my shoes while I was in the children’s reading room.
“Its blood is going to stain your socks,” she said. “And it has long fangs.” The nun crooked fingers on both hands and held them in front of her face, laughing a little.
“I’ll get a magazine,” I said.
“Go get a hymnal,” she said. “One of the fat red ones.”
The way the nun talked was a little strange. English was probably not her first language. There was a stack of hymnals in the pastor’s office, and I returned with one a moment later. The nun was circling the spider on the floor.
“You are really going to smash him with a hymnal?” she said. “You are serious about doing that?”
The nun laughed a little girl’s laugh. I looked down at the hymnal in my hands.
“Go and get a thermos from the kitchen,” she said. “Put cool water in it. He is just a little thirsty.”
I returned a moment later with a half-filled thermos. The nun took it from me. Her hands beside mine looked massive. Bending over again, she plucked the spider from a rear leg and held it over the thermos. The spider bucked like a clumsy animal, and the nun dropped it down into the water. Its legs thrashed over the sides a bit, and she had to poke the whole thing down using a tremendous middle finger.
“He is just a little thirsty,” she kept saying. “That should calm him down.”
“Well,” I said. “That was exciting.”
“Yes,” she said. “I saved the children. He would’ve bitten them for sure. Reclusive. You know the reclusive? His venom makes the skin melt off.”
The nun gave a few dry coughs. “Now,” she said, “take me to Kieu’s birthday party.”
“O,” I said. “I’m so sorry. Kieu has the flu. Everybody went home.”
The nun stared at me, but there was something distant about her eyes. It was the look of a person who was searching your face for recognition.
“No,” the nun said. “Not the bird flu. Kieu is in bed with the Lees.”
The nun gave another laugh.
“What?” I said. I thought I had misheard her.
“She likes doing her sex with a pair,” the nun said. “A pair of turtle doves. A pair of partridges. She has arrangements with many couples. The Lees. The McCockles. The Riptburgers. Three birds all in the same pie.”
The nun’s expression glazed over again, but she continued talking.
“She is getting fucked by Mr. Lee,” she said. “While Mrs. Lee sits on her face. It’s not Mrs. Lee’s thing, but it’s Kieu’s birthday, so she is the dictator.”
The nun scratched at her nose and hacked a few times. Her cough did not match her voice. Her nails must’ve been razor-sharp, because a thin scratch emerged upon the tip of her nose and wept blood. It stood out against a pristine face.
“Kieu promised me a birthday meal,” she said. “It’s nearly my birthday too. We share it.”
At this point, I thought I must be in the presence of a mentally-unwell person. Could she really be a nun? Where had she gotten those robes? A Halloween store?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We sent all the food home. Wait here a moment.”
I ran back to the kitchen. I’d just remembered Mrs. Hattori was going to leave me my platter in the refrigerator. I found it filled with a chilly selection of foods, secured with plastic wrap. I returned to the dining hall and handed it all to the nun.
“It’s cold,” I said. “But please take it home. I will tell Kieu you came to wish her a happy birthday.”
The nun held up the plate and sniffed at it, her nose bumping up against the plastic. A bead of blood smeared there.
“You will see her soon,” the nun said. “You’ll see her at WinCo on your drive home. She likes to buy mint chocolate ice cream after Mrs. Lee sits on her face. It’s one of her little rituals. Freshens the palette, she says to herself. Right?”
The nun tore away the plastic on the platter and snapped up a rusty-red flap of ham. I noticed her tongue looked dark.
“This is yours,” she said.
“That’s really ok,” I said. “You take it home. It’s your birthday too.”
“It was made with love,” she said, and chuckled. “The ingredient of secrets.”
“I go to a ton of potlucks,” I said.
“And you are sure you want me to eat it,” she said.
“It’ll taste even better if you warm it up at home,” I said. “That platter is even microwavable.”
“Set up a card table and chairs,” the nun said. “I don’t like to eat alone.”
Sitting at a single table in the middle of the church’s dining hall, I had that vision again about being alone, late at night, in a frozen castle in Scotland. But I wasn’t alone in the church. I was watching a nun eat voraciously with her fingers.
“I could get you a fork?” I said.
The nun licked her fingers.
“The old pastor kept a bottle of something for me,” she said. “It’s under the sink on the left. All the way to the back.”
“You mean Pastor Mark?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “The old-old pastor. The old-old head. He liked to drink this with me late at night.”
The half-filled bottle was there, under the sink, behind the cleaning supplies. It was a midnight green bottle. Someone had written over the original label the word “sink” with a black marker. The liquid sloshing around in it was dark and clotted. I thought it must be old wine. Were nuns allowed to drink wine? Maybe if it went bad and turned to vinegar? Maybe if they were in the presence of their friend, the old-old pastor? When the nun drank it, a swampy, sour smell infiltrated the room.
If you are still reading, you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with Joon. This must seem an unnecessary tangent. But I want to make it clear, this was not an ordinary person I was sitting with. Usually I would dismiss the whole encounter. But it was this nun or nun-impersonator that brought up you, Joon, me.
“It was good meat,” the nun said. “Your meat. And now I must give you something equal to its weight.”
“O no,” I said. “I was happy to share.”
“For the meat you fed to me,” she said. “A pound for a pound.”
“I’m good,” I said.
“Something equal, juicy,” she said. “It slithered down my throat. You’re sad. You’re disappointed. The way this life has turned out. Right?”
I shrugged. She wasn’t wrong.
“I’m going through a rough patch,” I said.
“At night, you make a deal with yourself. If tomorrow goes well, I’ll live another month. Like an eel in a tank at a restaurant. Maybe another month.”
“I’ve never seen eels,” I said. “You mean like a lobster at Red Lobster?”
“But if I have seven more bad days in a row, it’s a sign I should kill myself,” she said. “God is telling me. It’s ok if I kill myself. It’s his way of talking to me. It is mercy. You’ve been saying this to yourself, haven’t you?”
I felt like my jaw had unhinged and was dangling sideways off my face. I do not consider myself a suicidal person, but I had been saying, first jokingly, then later, a bit more seriously, exactly these words to myself, in the mirror, every morning for six or seven months.
“Something to give to you,” she said. She reclined back then, and her eyes assumed that faraway glazed quality. Her voiced altered, became distant.
“You and Joon will reunite,” she said. “It will happen in a year or less. A few things stand in the way.”
I didn’t say anything in response. Is that weird? In reflection, even I think that’s weird. I didn’t say, “How do you know Joon?” I didn’t say, “Who are you? What are you?” I just sat there, rooted, dazed.
“As this reconciliation gets closer, a few things will happen,” the nun said. “An article of clothing that was lost will reappear. Something murky. Gray. And a song you haven’t heard in years, it will play around you hundreds of times. Thousands? In advertisements, at a party, in a taxi. In Texas? No, in a taxi.”
The nun licked her lips.
“And then plants and animals around you will die suddenly,” she said. “This isn’t a bad thing. It is a sign you are untangling from this cycle of your life. These things will happen to both of you. Joon too. Horses. Rubber plants. Everything around Joon.”
The nun coughed and reached for something to drink. Perhaps it was her state, but she had set aside the old wine and was drinking from the thermos that held the spider. I thought about pointing this out, but she made some sounds like she was really enjoying the taste of it.
“You’ll meet in an airport station,” she said. “You need a station to invite the unplanned thing to happen. You coming from one direction. Him coming from the other. You will have layovers in a cold, dark airport. Ohio. Bad weather will come through. You’ll get stuck. Flights canceled. You will see each other, wandering aimlessly. You’ll have the hotel voucher. It’s your opportunity to reconcile. Do you want it? It will come with the station.”
The nun was smacking loudly and wetly. The sound of it made me uncomfortable.
“Between now and then, you are going to see bad days. All lined up in a line like wires. Like dead birds falling dead from an electrical wire. Six fucked days. Seventeen fucked days. Your soul will be poisoned. It will be shit. Maybe you will want to kill yourself. Maybe you should. But if you do, you won’t see Joon again, in the dark airport station.”
The nun laughed a little then.
“Would you like his phone number?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. Or maybe I just thought yes. It’s difficult to imagine that I had much of a voice. She told me the number.
“That’s not a phone number,” I said. “It’s only six, isn’t it?”
“You only need six right now,” she said. “You’ll find the rest later.”
She wiped those immense greasy fingers on her robe.
Even though I’m a devout person, I’m actually not superstitious in the slightest. Up to that point in my life, I’d never witnessed anything remotely magical or miraculous. Though the nun was very convincing, I still felt I would be crazy to believe in anything she had predicted.
Perhaps this nun had a vision, I thought. I accept that some extraordinary people have the power to receive them. But how accurate could they possibly be? Perhaps outside this brief encounter, the spell would be flimsy.
I was a little shaken on my drive home, my body went on autopilot. I pulled over for something to eat. I’d only had a green apple for lunch, and the nun had gotten my dinner. I didn’t have any groceries at home. Maybe I was lightheaded. I found myself in WinCo searching for sandwich stuff. Rolls. Mustard. I was also dying for fries. This was Joon’s favorite late-night snack too. I was pulling a sack of frozen steak fries from the freezer when I saw Kieu. She had on a tight silver dress. Her makeup was a bit smeared. I had the urge to avoid her, but our eyes met, our bodies froze.
We talked only for a moment. I said I hoped she was feeling better, and she said it must’ve been only a brief, violent bug. She said she had planned to stay in, but her godmother had convinced her to join for a late-night dinner. I told her she looked great. Other than the smeared makeup she really did have a glow. She was holding a pint of cherry-vanilla ice cream and posed in a way that made her look like she was in an advertisement.
Without thinking, I said, “O, I thought you liked mint chocolate ice cream best.”
Kieu’s face became disfigured in shock. I can still see it, if I close my eyes. She excused herself and made for the exit. She jogged. I watched her go. I thought, did she pay for that ice cream or did I just see her steal it? I replayed the incident in my head a hundred times. Had I actually said something rude? Something I couldn’t remember any longer?
Ok, again, it all sounds batty and coincidental, right? I thought writing this might convince me, but I myself struggle to understand. And until I see Joon at an airport in Ohio, I’m skeptical. There is also a faulty timeline to consider. The nun told me Joon and I would reconnect after about a year. But that night with the nun was six years ago. I hadn’t forgotten, the Kieu thing was too weird. But the year that came and went afterwards was unremarkable so I stopped holding my breath. I began to poke holes in my recollection. Every year that lay on top of it seemed to push the nun’s prediction further into a dream territory. Not wholly without power, but perhaps it was translated from a world one over from this one.
Something that did happen after this incident, my emotional wellness improved significantly. I joined a gym. I started sleeping soundly at night. I began to branch out from work and the church. I still encountered rough patches, some of them lengthy, but I was able to persist without much thought of suicide. I’m dating again. A year ago, I met Jesse, and although he’s nowhere close to Joon, we’ve started to build a quiet, satisfying life together. Maybe these improvements are the gifts the nun intended for me, and if that’s the case, I am really grateful.
Then about a month ago, a recurring dream inserted itself into my nights. In the dream, I’m in bed, naked, with Kieu. Except it’s a futuristic Kieu, very old and blind. She gropes for my penis and says she wants to give her electronic passwords to me, because she needs me to “deactivate her online identities.” She says she has secrets online that would destroy lives if they got out. I can’t really concentrate on the numbers she is whispering. Her hand grasps my penis so tightly I cry out in terror. When I awaken, the only number from her password I can summon is “seven.” The dream leaves me sweaty and alarmed. If Jesse is staying over, he reports that I repeatedly murmur “seven” in my sleep.
It’s a disturbing and embarrassing dream, and I was having it so frequently, I worried something was wrong with me. I discussed it with my therapist, and she asked what significance the number seven has for me. That’s when I remembered the last thing the nun had offered me. She said it was six of the seven digits for Joon’s phone number and that I would find the seventh on my own. I ran home and pulled out my diary from six years ago. I knew I would find the incident with the nun described there as well as the incomplete number. Assuming Joon’s area code hadn’t changed, I dialed the predicted six digits. I paused for a long time before dialing the “seven.” What was my intent here? Hadn’t I finally moved on? Jesse was researching long-term storage units for himself and was planning to move into my condo. He has a beautiful, pristine, white-chocolatey body, Jesse does. It’s an almost-teenage body, the shining hair silvery to invisible. He’s twenty-four; I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. It’s just, I’m with this man whose body looks and feels new to me almost every time I see it. It’s significant, what I’d be giving up.
And then an unfamiliar idea inserted itself into my mind. What if Joon wanted me to call? What if Joon needed me, in the way I’d needed him for so many years? What if he’d sparked something out of this need? Could Joon be responsible for the nun’s visitation? These ideas sound simple, but they were things I hadn’t imagined. I always conceived of myself as the pathetic half of our union. The one longing, forgotten. Never the target for desire and affection.
I hit “seven.” The phone rang a few times, and then it was picked up.
I didn’t say anything. On the other end, nothing was spoken. But I could hear breathing. Something in my bones told me I had reached Joon. I held the phone in silence for a long time, picturing him on the other end.
In my mind, I said, “I’m sorry.”
And something like a voice, in the liminal space between my mind and Joon’s mind, and in the electricity between our cell phones, responded, “It’s ok. I forgave you a long time ago.”
In my mind, I said, “So this is weird, huh?”
And the voice, which I knew was being transmitted by Joon, said, “Yeah, totally weird. But I wondered if something like this might happen. I always knew we weren’t done.”
And in my mind, I said, “You did? Why didn’t you try to find me?”
And the voice between us said, “I was too hurt.”
And in my mind, I said, “Will you go to a hotel with me?”
“What hotel?”
“I don’t know yet. A cheap one in Ohio, I think.”
“Will we have sex in Ohio?”
“If you want.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” my liminal voice admitted.
“That’s what I want too,” Joon’s liminal voice said.
“It is?”
“Yes, it’s something I’ve suspected for a long time. I don’t think I can be happy without going to bed with you.”
“But what about your wife?”
“I love her, but I can’t stop thinking about you. If I could, I would.”
“Won’t this hurt her?”
“Yes, of course. That’s why I’ve been resisting. Lying to myself. Hurting myself.”
“Please don’t hurt yourself, Joon.”
“I can’t help it. I miss you too much, babe.”
“O babe, my poor babe! I’ve missed you too.”
“I need to put my mouth all over you. I need your mouth all over me.”
“Your poor wife. How can we do this without hurting her?”
“We can’t. We can’t control who we hurt. That is the curse.”
“You feel cursed?”
“Yes, a little. But I will love you through the curse. I will love you through the pain.”
“Me too. Don’t hurt yourself my beautiful babe. Everything will be ok soon.”
“Don’t take too long. We waited too long.”
“It doesn’t matter. I still love you. I’ll tell you more when we’re in the hotel together.”
“Yes to everything. Ohio. Winter. I love you.”
There are some questions I think you should pose to yourself as you consider the veracity of this story. Has Joon recently found an old black and gray sweatshirt with the words “Red Rum Gasoline” on it? Years ago, on a road trip, we bought matching hoodies at a gasoline station in CA. I thought I had donated mine to Goodwill, but it recently turned up in my gym bag.
Recently, have you heard Joon humming the lyrics to the song “I’ll Recognize You Tomorrow” by the band Prinzzess? I have not been able to escape it. I’ve heard it in restaurants, cafes, in a Lyft, in drug commercials. My boss recently set the song as her ringtone.
Have your plants been dying? All of my plants died: my snake plant, my fiddle-leaf fig, my spider plant, all my rubber plants. And last month, both of my cats died. They were sort of old, but it was odd to see both of them go on the same evening. And usually this would’ve destroyed me, but I felt oddly at peace.
If none of these things are so, then in a way, I’m relieved. And I apologize for burdening you with this story. Throw out this letter, and forget it forever. But if these things are so, then I am glad I sent it to you. It gives you and Joon time to work out your entanglements. Could you forbid Joon to travel? You could, and he might accept that. If Joon accepts that, then I will accept that. Could you injure Joon, say, break his leg, say, push him down a tiny flight of stairs, so that he won’t be able to reach me? You could. Maybe you are supposed to do that. Maybe I am sending you this letter so that you can do that. I don’t know how fate is supposed to go. I only know that if Joon stays with you, I would accept that too. But I can’t help but feel that maybe you’ve made it to the end of this letter because you’ve sensed something serious, perhaps even final, is coming. And if you have been sensing it, maybe all you needed was for me to confirm. Now you can organize, set your affairs in order. Isn’t that what they say, affairs? I imagine you’re organized. I imagine you’re the logistician in the relationship. I was too.
With respect,
Hank Yang Jr.
