
Double Storey
Leo unlatched the low metal gate and pushed it behind him with such force that the clang seemed to make the rhododendrons and hedges wince. A big, tawny Golden Shepherd came across the lawn toward him, panting with friendliness. When Leo did not stop, the dog sat down in his path on a cement square. A drum kit thrummed through the top floor windows, and beer cans glinted on the grass. The door slid open on the second floor balcony, where a girl emerged to light a cigarette and squint into the rare sun. It was unexpected t-shirt and BBQ weather in April, and the house pulsed with anticipation.
“Sorry, man,” someone called from above, Steve maybe, or Ryan. Leo had trouble telling them apart. Leo glanced up but said nothing. Not the “it’s all good” or “no worries” that would exonerate the butts in his aunt’s flowerbeds. He kept walking up the path, the waft of pot hitting him like an insult.
The phone was ringing as he walked down to his half of the house. It had big, beige buttons and a green light winked, indicating messages. Its ring reminded him of a crosswalk signal, two digital notes that fluttered in whole tones. But it’d stopped by the time he got inside. Leo found the idea of a landline useful, in theory. In reality, it often rang when he was in the shower or past midnight, and he’d stopped bolting to answer it or even checking messages. The callers rarely identified themselves, and even if they did, it was by relation only, Second Sister or Third Cousin. When his aunt had lived in the house, it had previously sat on the upstairs’ kitchen counter and she’d spent long evenings on that phone, dramatizing her domestic trials as if they were tangled soap opera plots.
Leo assumed that some of her more distant relatives still called the house because they hadn’t heard his aunt and uncle had moved last year to New Westminster to be closer to their eldest daughter and new grandson. When they’d vacated the house’s upper floor, the noise from upstairs had switched from his uncle’s HK news broadcasts to heavy footfalls and bassline thrums. Leo was supposed to find this youthful cacophony sexy, or at least entertaining. He was supposed to be a 23-year-old catching one of the female groupies on the rebound when they got sick of the laissez-faire treatment of a stubbled, monosyllabic guitarist. But he preferred girls who were quiet and organized, fierce in their reticence, with skin untainted by too many substances and late nights. His younger sister, Alexa, called him weird and unfit for social situations—“Like an armadillo,” she’d said.
Alexa was still out. Her breakfast dishes sat in the dish rack, her suitcase was stowed in the hall closet. She’d flown in that week from Ontario and was visiting for a few months, maybe the whole summer. Her electrical cords were snaking the floor, charging cameras and battery packs, but otherwise she was as clean and tidy as anyone raised by their dad. Leo emptied his knapsack of his binders and study notes, then lay down on his bed. From the ceiling drifted chords and footsteps, and he closed his eyes and imagined that instead, he was listening to the sounds of his aunt and uncle’s chairs scraping gently on the kitchen floor.
Leo had tried to keep an open mind when Raina and Steve had pulled up in a rusty striped Ford truck last August to view the house. Uncle Louis had led them up the back stairs to the sundeck, motioning to Leo to come outside. Raina wore her hair in braids and a gingham dress. Steve was tall with brown hair sticking out of a bandana printed with kanji and a red sun.
“Sweet view,” said Steve as Leo cautiously opened the door, as if he might catch whatever was wafting from the potential new tenants.
“And whoooo’s this?” Raina’s gaze climbed up Leo.
“This is my nephew, Leonard,” Uncle Louis paused for the others to introduce themselves.
“What’s shaking?” Raina said.
“Whoa, look at these counters,” Steve said, running his hands over the chrome edging. “So retro.”
“I liked the Indian couple more,” Leo said after they’d left, though Uncle Louis hadn’t asked.
“Good to have young people in the house,” his uncle said, putting their deposit cheque and documents in a battered plastic pouch.
“I’m a young person,” answered Leo, trying to mask his misery with irritation. He glared at boxes stacked around the house like an obstacle course. He’d hoped their cheque would bounce, that their references wouldn’t check out. But a few weeks later, Raina was at his door with a plate of too-soft oatmeal cookies. And soon after with an invite to their housewarming. And to let him know that the water had a funny taste, and that she and Steve wanted to replace the kitchen linoleum. Leo took evasive manoeuvres. He left the house hours before his first class, kept his kitchen blinds drawn, let her calls go to voice mail. Even alone in his bedroom, he couldn’t get over the feeling of being watched. As if the house itself had eyes.
Leo woke up to voices in the kitchen and sat up with a vague sense of horror. It was almost dark out. He came out to find Alexa leaning against the stove, pointing her camera at a girl he vaguely recognized, sitting at the table pouting her lips and looking over her shoulder.
Even alone in his bedroom, he couldn’t get over the feeling of being watched. As if the house itself had eyes.
“Hey! How’d the exam go?” Alexa lowered her camera and reached for a beer.
“Good. Last one,” he answered, stretching his arms above his head. He felt disoriented, like he was in two places at once, and defaulted into the warm-up stretch routine he’d done for years before track and field meets.
“The ghost appears,” said the girl at the table. She picked up her plastic tumbler with ice and crushed mint in the liquid. “It’s what they call you upstairs.”
“You don’t recognize her, do you?” said Alexa.
Leo looked at her, feeling vague at the sight of her round face and doll-like eyes with straight eyelashes. He had an image of her in different clothes, a white button-up with a scalloped collar, like a uniform. He remembered her with a violin case, pigtails.
“Livvy,” he said, the name coming from an unknown place. How many times had she and his sister rolled on the couch in laughter at the Nouveau Vague films they’d rented? “How do you know … ” Leo pointed upward.
“Steve and I are in a gamelan band on campus,” she said.
“What’s gamelan?”
“It’s Indonesian folk music,” she said. “We’ve got a concert next week.”
“What happened to the violin?”
“Yeah, I’m in orchestra and a quartet too,” Livvy tilted an ice cube into her mouth. A lime wedge hit her lip and she sucked it in as well.
“And you’re like—in first year?”
“No, I took a gap year. Starting here next fall.”
“Where are you living? You have roommates?”
“Whoa, I feel like I’m talking to my auntie or something,” she joked, leaning back in her chair.
“Leo, why are you so bad with people?” Alexa sighed. When he’d gone to meet his sister at the airport last week, he had trouble picking her out. In his mind, Alexa was still a teenager in oversized Roots hoodies with her hair in an everlasting ponytail. She still wore black, low-rise Converses, but everything else was different. Her cropped hair, her monochromatic film school uniform, her video camera bag at her side like a constant companion. Livvy was nearly unrecognizable, with pink hair and her tissue-thin Blondie t-shirt so long it looked like a dress.
“Come upstairs for a drink,” Livvy said, in a conciliatory way.
“I don’t drink,” Leo said. This wasn’t quite true, but it was a convenient excuse. There was the crash of footsteps above him, a dog’s nagging bark.
“Well, I need a refill,” said Livvy, both the girls politely reserving judgment. Alexa busied herself with attaching a fuzzy-tipped mike to her camera.
“Have fun,” he said as they hopped back upstairs. Headphones on, Alexa gave him a thumbs up, like she was about to embark on a secret mission.
Louis was his mom’s big brother and had bought the boxy Vancouver Special in the early '80s with his wife and two daughters. They were among the first wave of Hong Kong immigrants to the city trailing parents and aunties and cousins like patches of seaweed. His aunt and uncle had lived mostly in the upstairs half, and Leo had taken over one of his cousin’s empty bedrooms downstairs, where Fiona’s mother had also lived and sometimes used the downstairs kitchen, where the smell of medicinal broths still lingered. She’d passed away of a stroke one early morning while getting dressed. His aunt hadn’t yet packed up her bedroom with its frilly lampshades, family photos, and bed made up with puffy, satiny down blankets embroidered with hot pink peonies. The house was repeated with minor variations all over the south end of Vancouver. When he’d moved out west in with his relatives, Leo spent his first year consciously counting houses to make sure he didn’t walk right past it.
In the mornings, he’d wake to his aunt warming up congee and frying eggs, and his uncle leaving for the day to his job as a city building inspector. Living with his aunt and uncle was like being a passenger on a multi-decked ferry boat, moving through waters on a placid and predictable journey. It was totally unlike the zig-zag course of his father’s moods which made him and his sisters constantly queasy. His aunt and uncle approved of everything that he did, their kindness disorienting in its own way.
Aunt Fiona came by a few weeks later with two big T&T bags full of fruit, BBQ pork and coconut buns for her nephew and niece. She put mandarin oranges and a plate of glistening pork in front of the shrine in the downstairs living room. She inspected the contents of the fridge, scolding Leo for its paucity. Leo ate two helpings of Singaporean-style crunchy noodles with his aunt before she started emptying out the storage closet. Leo told her that Second Uncle had called. For once, he hadn’t let the call go to the answering machine. “Second Uncle died last month,” Aunt Fiona responded, shocked.
“Maybe it was Second Brother-in-Law?” Leo’s Cantonese wasn’t strong, and his aunt’s side of the family spoke it with a different accent. Aunt Fiona found an annex of photographs, mostly of distant relatives, which she spread out over a folding mahjong table. She waved him to sit down, determined to sort out her nephew’s misinformation like she might a drawer of jumbled Tupperware. She dealt out portraits and group photos into piles. Leo found family photos off-putting. Alexa was the one who would’ve loved the Polaroids and prints of wedding banquets. Fiona’s recently deceased uncle was the second in a family of three sons, and he’d married but had no surviving children. She found a photo of him as a young man, looking like a clerk of some kind in a pale, short-sleeved button-up shirt. Aunt Fiona put it on the mantelpiece on top of the fake fireplace and lit a stick of incense for him. Leo hoped he wouldn’t call again.
“Tai-ha, hai lei dai gah,” his aunt said, waving a photo at him. Look at this, it’s your family. Leo took it reluctantly, pointing his gaze toward it but not focusing. It was taken in front of the house, rhododendrons bursting from the yard next door. He was maybe seven or eight. Alexa was about five, in overalls, Mei still a passing thought in his parents’ minds. Aunt Fiona had fanned out more photos of their family trip on the table, a trip that had until then vanished from Leo’s memory. He wanted to ask his aunt about his parents but couldn’t find the right question. He glanced quickly at his father, who appeared so assured—when had he lost that? The kitchen felt full of spirits. He wanted to open a window. He smelled a faint trickle of sandalwood and camphor. The scent was suffocating as a carbon monoxide, seeking an escape—or an entrance.
The kitchen felt full of spirits. He wanted to open a window.
At dim sum on the weekend, Leo counted himself, Alexa, his uncle Louis and aunt Fiona, his cousins Teresa and Joanna, Teresa’s husband Raymond and their daughter and Joanna’s fiancé, Caleb. When the carts came by, his aunt ordered bamboo baskets of steamed chicken buns, shu mai, har gow, rice rolls stuffed with spinach and sticky rice in twos and threes. Leo and Joanna poured tea until the pots were emptied and they tilted the lids to let the waiters know to refill them. The background noise of rattling carts and busy tables like their own always lulled Leo and made him anxious at the same time. He still wasn’t used to big family gatherings. Teresa’s daughter was passed from lap to lap, his uncles had minor disagreements about the housing market, Caleb showed pictures of a recent vacation to Peru on his phone.
“What about you, Leo?” asked his aunt in Cantonese. “Is there a prospective wife yet?”
His cousins laughed, mouths full. This question had been asked of him since he was a child.
“No, do you have anyone in mind?” he said, to more laughter at the table. His relatives began chiming in with their opinions, in a mixture of English and Cantonese.
“Just stay away from those Hong Kong girls! Very high maintenance!”
“What’s wrong with being high maintenance, Dad? A woman should have standards! Aiiiyaa!”
His uncle looked at his nephew with interest.
“Is Sonny’s daughter living at the house now?”
“Who?”
His aunt nodded. “Hai-ah, hai-ah, ngo doh yau geen heu!” Yes, yes, I saw her at the house too!
His cousins lost interest in the topic but his uncle and aunt puzzled over Sonny and Sonny’s daughter.
“I forget her English name … ”
“She plays violin and piano too ... ”
“Sonny has a son, too! Wonder what he’s up to?”
“You mean Olivia?” Alexa offered, with a confused look at her brother.
“Yes, yes, Olivia. Her dad and I worked together back in Kelowna. She has talent.” Leo had forgotten, if he’d known at all, that Livvy had grown up here.
“Dad you should’ve given us violin and piano lessons too, why didn’t you?”
“Not everyone who gets music lessons turns out to have talent, ok?”
“You know Olivia’s dad?” Leo asked.
“Sure! I remember when she was born. She and her parents moved a lot and I lost track of her dad. I heard he left his family,”
That was not something his sister had mentioned the last time they’d talked. He hadn’t seen Livvy since she’d left the house the morning after the party, giving Steve a lingering hug. His uncle Louis drove him back to this house, but before Leo got out the car, his uncle had more news.
“I sell the house this summer,” his uncle said. “Now you are graduating, it is the right time.”
At this news, Leo’s thoughts veered from whatever was going on between Livvy and Steve and at a sudden sense of homesickness. He stared at his uncle, protests clogging his throat like ball of pillowy dough. If he’d allowed himself to think through his uncle’s options, he might’ve anticipated that this was the most logical course of action. Something had distracted him, kept him from seeing what was coming. What else had he missed? It was true, he wasn’t planning to stay in Vancouver anyway—he’d had two offers from graduate programs in California and Washington State, waiting for his signature. He looked up at the house, already feeling like he would never see it again. Uncle Louis and Leo watched Steve open the blinds.
“You can tell them,” Uncle Louis said, making it sound like a treat.
“I don’t want … ”
“You can’t expect … ”
“ … I’m not … ”
The voices floated down through the back deck like burnt paper toward Leo, where he brushed them from his mind. He lifted the top of the garbage bin and dropped the black bag inside, then wheeled to the alleyway. Through the streetlights Olivia’s black hair swung as she came down the stairs. Leo could tell she was pissed off by the way she made a hard turn, her shoulder bag swinging around to the front of her body.
“Hey,” he said. She looked into the dark, breathing hard. “Need a ride home?”
“Thanks, but no.”
“C’mon. It’s late.” He reached inside the door for his car keys on the kitchen counter, slapping the light switch.
“It’s not that late,” she said, but she followed Leo to the second-hand silver-grey Audi. It wasn’t the first time he’d driven her back to the house she shared with four roommates off Commercial. Once when she’d been drunk but hiding it very well. Another time when she’d been a little stoned and giggly, teasing him about who had had crushes on him in high school. She appeared to be neither tonight.
“Any buyers yet?” asked Olivia as she closed the door on her fringed skirt.
“I hope so,” he answered. A realtor’s sign was planted in front of the house. He’d managed to avoid having to tell Steve and Raina, but not being waylaid by their dismayed questions whenever he left the house.
“Aren’t you sad?” she asked, walking out the gate.
“It was going to happen eventually.” Leo unlocked the doors.
“Steve and Raina are pretty worked up about it,” she disclosed, sliding into the passenger seat and massaging her temple. “It’s the end of an era, they keep saying.”
“How dramatic.”
The streets looked wet, and Leo waited for an old lady wearing rubber gloves to push her cart of empties down the sidewalk before he turned onto the street. He went up Victoria and the car aimed toward the Grouse Mountain lights.
“Yeah, they might not survive this crisis,” Olivia said.
“What about you?”
“I’ve survived worse,” she said.
“Like what?” he asked. Leo so rarely spoke to someone from home that the questions couldn’t stop themselves.
“Like my dad having an affair with a 27-year-old in Taiwan,” she said.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, we finally figured out what all those business trips were for,” Olivia began rummaging in her a bookbag screen-printed with the words I’ll SHUI YR MAI. She pulled out a prescription pill bottle, and began fiddling with its child-proof cap.
“Sorry,” she coughed. “I got no filter.”
“I’m sorry. I thought my dad was bad,” Leo found it a relief that like him, Olivia didn’t make much eye contact when speaking. Her skin looked greyish, her large mouth tense with fury. He watched her swallow two of the pills with a gulp of water, the motion of her hand to her mouth suddenly reminding him of his father. He felt as if he could see her standing at the edge of precipice. Leo wanted to yank her away from danger but was too far to reach her.
“At least your dad gives a shit about all of you,” she said.
Leo thought about this. There were many ways that self-destructive tendencies could be manifested. Living with his father, Leo was sure he had developed the ability to detect all of them. It was like knowing beforehand when someone was going to call.
He felt as if he could see her standing at the edge of precipice. Leo wanted to yank her away from danger but was too far to reach her.
The atrium of the Vancouver airport, with its azure carpets and intense sculptures, made Leo think of a natural history exhibit. Applying to school out west had been the answer to a question, one he’d gotten into a habit of asking without knowing why. It was a question of distance, of how to have a different kind of life than the one his father proposed. Grad school offered a continuing trajectory, the next hurdle. Yet leaving again felt like a conversation he didn’t really want to have.
He scanned the crowd for his parents. Leo had been uneasy about their visit, but in the evening light streaming through the windows he felt mellow and resigned. His mom came down the escalator, and at first he saw only her clunky black shoes and soft, blue pants before the rest of her lowered into his range of vision. Her creamy skin, the small lines around her mouth, her faint eyebrows which gave her a constantly startled expression. She was alone, pulling a small blue carry-on.
“Here, let me take that,” Leo said, after they’d embraced. She kept looking up at him, away, and back again, like a curious bird. She’d been fixed on the idea of their family gathering together for his graduation. But Mei was spending the summer in a dance program, and his Dad hadn’t accompanied his mom on the flight.
“How long to your Uncle’s?” asked his mom, as they went over the bridge and turned west on Marine Drive. The Fraser glinted to their left.
“About half an hour,” he answered. “I don’t know why you don’t stay at the house.” Leo watched her lips move, but she said nothing. He suspected she had a fear of death, of places where people had died. She always refused to attend funerals, claiming they’d frightened her terribly as a child. The way she described it did sound terrifying—a parade of mourners wrapped in white, wailing in the streets.
Before dropping her off at Louis and Fiona’s apartment, they walked a little while by the water, where they were building a new boardwalk and park. The view was carved up with bridge spans, His mom asked about his work, his summer plans and grad school, then ran out of questions. They listened for awhile to the seagulls and the faint shake of the Skytrain underground. Leo wanted to ask about his dad, but didn’t want to ask at the same time.
“I left the plane ticket for your dad on the counter,” his mom said in Chinese, as if reading his thoughts. “He has work today so will fly on Friday.”
Leo made a noise of assent, not wanting to let himself feel hopeful or to express his skepticism. They dropped back into silence, watching the seagulls snatch what they could. Their familiar roles were returning slowly to him like a landscape he once knew intimately, but now felt cloister-like. In a few days, they’d be in different time zones. Loving his family was more possible this way.
The day of graduation Leo got up like it was any other day, but had a feeling like there was something in his blindspot. He pictured his father, boarding the flight, signalling with a scoop of his hand to the flight attendants as if they were waiters. He hated staying in other people’s houses, preferring the non-judgment of hotels and Leo wondered how his mom had persuaded him.
There was time for a run before heading to campus for the ceremony. Sometimes he ran up Victoria to Trout Lake, sometimes west to the cemetery on 41st. He liked how the city was gradated, like bands on a spectrum. It became tidier, more prosperous the further he headed toward Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale, and more modest, less picturesque the further east he went. Leo hadn’t actively trained for a meet in a few years, but he would’ve felt ashamed at giving up running completely. His favourite event had been the steeplechase, because flat running felt monotonous without something to keep him startled and off-balance. Running the streets of Vancouver was a little like the obstacle-strewn steeplechase, with shining puddles, boggy lawns, concrete barriers around construction sites.
“Someone was calling for you,” Alexa said when he got home. She looked rumpled, like she’d just woken up.
“Who was it?”
“She didn’t say. She sounded like one of our aunties, but I didn’t completely understand her. And she used your Chinese name.”
Leo shuddered. “There’s something weird about that phone,” he said. “Don’t answer it.” He moved around the boxes toward his room to get changed.
“Wonder why Auntie Fiona hasn’t packed up this room yet,” Alexa said, peeking into the bedroom across from his, where his cousins’ Poh Poh had slept. Leo turned to look but didn’t go inside. “Maybe she still misses her,” Alexa mused, turning on her camera.
All that remained in it was a chest of drawers, a bed stripped of its sheets and the photograph above the headboard.
“Strange that we don’t even know her name,” Alexa said, looking at the portrait.
“You can ask Auntie,” Leo said. “She used to sleepwalk down here.”
“Whoa,” Alexa said. “Did you see her?”
“No,” Leo said. “She passed away before I moved in.” His uncle had told him stories of her wandering into her grandkids’ bedrooms, convinced they were ill or in danger.
“Do you think her ghost is still here?”
“It could be. It’s too bad her ghost can’t get rid of the bozos upstairs.”
Alexa laughed. She turned on her camera and was panning it around the room, resting its wide, deliberate eye on her brother.
“What’s this for?” Leo gestured to the lens that replaced his sister’s face.
“I don’t know yet,” Alexa replied, sleepily. “In case I missed something the first time round.”
hey you home?
I’d get back here if I were you
Leo put down his knife and fork and read Livvy’s texts, annoyed that she didn’t just tell him what was going on.
Family dinner, he typed back. House burn down?
It might
Leo put his phone in the pocket of his navy suit jacket and resumed cutting into his steak, medium rare and well-peppered. Across from him, his Mom and Alexa were quietly chewing. Aunt Fiona waved away the waiter, refilling their wine glasses with Bordeaux, and Uncle Louis wiped his mouth with a starchy napkin. After the ceremony, they’d driven up to Cordova to have a celebratory dinner at a glassy restaurant overlooking English Bay. Leo had looked for his dad before, during and after convocation. Sometimes he thought he glimpsed his dad’s thinning hair and sharp shoulders, but it was always someone else’s father. He could see the empty seat next to his mom as he crossed the stage, and could imagine his dad having overslept, or simply refusing to leave the house. Leo felt a mix of relief and frustration.
“Thank you for all that you have done for Leo,” said his mom in Cantonese. Her voice was apologetic and humble. Uncle Louis waved his hand, still holding his knife. It was the kind of magnanimous gesture that Leo might’ve expected from his own father. He wondered if there were some kind of code that his grandfather, father and uncles had learned, a way of sitting in silent judgment, expressionless as Buddha. But it was thanks to his Uncle that Leo had been taken care of, in more than one way.
“Mmm goi, kau fu,” said Leo, the thank-you phrase feeling formal and childish, but the right thing to say.
“Leo works hard,” his Uncle responded. “Too hard.”
Expecting the worst, Leo was surprised to find the house almost quiet, a faint murmur of song drifting down from the open windows upstairs. He wondered if Livvy were playing a joke. Bikes leaned against the cinderblock. Leo would’ve preferred to avoid whatever was going on, but with a martyred sense of responsibility he knocked loudly at the door, Alexa following curiously behind him. When there was no answer, he plunged in.
Leo and Alexa walked through the kitchen, the counters scattered with wine bottles and beer cans, bags of pretzels and little flat sheaves of rolling papers. Its chaos looked arranged, like the set to a movie that Leo didn’t belong on.
At the end of the hallway, there were so many people on the floor and against the walls that the three had to climb over crossed legs and slide between damp, hot skin. Leo had never seen so many people in the living room before. They lined the walls, squished on the couch, quiet in front of a young woman singing and accompanying herself on the guitar. The dog that Leo had seen before was seated by the singer. The dog stirred, rattling its tags, the girl who was singing paused to click her tongue and the animal sank its head down again, sending laughter through the crowd. Candles were placed around the room, and there was the obligatory vapour of weed. The song ended and everyone clapped and whistled.
At the sight of him, Raina leapt up and hopped over several cross-legged guests toward him. Her triumphant expression and the way she clutched his upper arm, like he was her property, made Leo want to shake her off. Steve followed, leaving an empty space on the couch next to Livvy, who, Leo noticed, appeared to be falling asleep.
“Everyone has to leave,” Leo said, before Raina could open her mouth. Steve came toward him, his eyes hazy.
“Ah, don’t be like that, it’s no big deal. Come on, have a drink, enjoy the show.”
“Those candles are a fire hazard.”
“We’ll blow them out. And we’ve got fire extinguishers right here.”
“Do you have a permit for this?”
“Don’t worry about it, man, it’s a chill crowd.”
“Everyone’s being so respectful,” Raina said, coming up behind Leo. “It’s a special night—can’t you feel it?”
Leo could see that the more objections he brought up, the greater they relished the challenge of winning him over. Saying no was the fastest way to make them want to do exactly what they weren’t permitted to do. The rules did not apply to them.
“If the neighbours call me everyone has to leave,” he said, hating the words even as they left him. “This can’t go on all night. And no more people in here.”
“No problem, no problem at all,” Steve said.
Leo turned to leave, trying to eject his rage out of his body. He saw Alexa leaning over Livvy, Steve touching her face. Everything felt too late.
“Don’t go,” Raina moved woozily into his path. “Can’t you get your uncle to change his mind?”
“Sorry,” Leo said, avoiding her gaze. He heard the phone ringing downstairs.
It was still ringing when Leo picked it up, standing in the dark.
“Lai Wah,” said an alert, elderly voice. Few people, even his dad, used his Chinese name.
“Yuu goh hai been goh?” Who is this?
Leo heard breathing on the other end, and his fingers began to feel cold.
“Lei goh peng yau beng zuo,” said the woman, slowly. Your friend is sick.
“Peng yau?” he said.
“Hai-la, lei goh sai mui goh peng yau,” Yes, your sister’s friend. The voice was speaking more rapidly now. “Fai dee-lah!” Quickly.
There was the click of the receiver before he could ask anything else. Taking the steps two at a time, he found Alexa where he’d left her.
“How much has she had to drink?” he asked. Alexa shook her head. The music had started again, and Livvy was lying on the couch. He tried to shake her awake.
“Maybe she’s just passed out,” Alexa whispered.
“I don’t think so,” Leo said, disregarding the hush in the room. He shook her again. She opened her eyes briefly, then closed then. The cold feeling had steeped to his feet.
“Livvy!” He shouted. The music stopped. Some people started gathering their things, putting on their shoes. “We need to get her to the emergency room.” He heard the phone ringing again.
“Keep trying,” he said, running back downstairs again, barely registering Raina’s startled face, the other guests watching him.
There was a different kind of breathing on the line this time. Leo waited in dread.
“Where I am?” the voice was faint, confused. It was Livvy’s voice.
“You had too much to drink,” Leo said. “Livvy, don’t go. Stay with us.”
There was a long pause, in which Leo could hardly breathe or move.
“Why should I? I’m so sad.”
Because you’re someone’s daughter. Because you’re someone’s granddaughter. Because you’re loved. He had to say it. He had to remind her, remind himself, of everything that would be left behind.