“…Probably way less than when I was a teen,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you. You really can’t imagine what I was like.”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen photos, if that counts.”
“Pardon?”
“You know. The ones Jeffrey showed me.”
“When was this?”
“On the plane, the first time I went to your uncle’s house. Oh, and he sent me copies later. They’re still on my phone.”
“…Has that fool lost his mind?”
“Huh? Oh, I’m sorry! I never got your permission! I’m really sorry… I loved them all and never showed them to anyone else, but I’ll delete them if you want me to.”
“I won’t ask you to destroy your prized possessions. They are nothing but a few fleeting records of the past. I will, however, need to give a certain gentleman a piece of my mind.”
“Please don’t be too hard on him.”
“As you might imagine, I do not have particularly pleasant memories associated with having my photographs distributed behind my back.”
“Sorry! A thousand apologies!”
“One is plenty.” He turned to his phone. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to make a phone call.”
Richard pressed a couple of buttons. Jeffrey must not have been on his speed dial. He turned on speakerphone, set his phone to rest on a wooden stand, and sat down in a chair facing it with his arms and legs folded. He was trembling slightly, a fight-ready frown on his face. He was being his true, authentic Richard self, which excited me…even if Jeffrey was in for it now.
Jeffrey picked up on the fifth ring. “Hey there! It’s your older brother with the smile that goes a mile!”
“Kindly spare me the unsettling salutations.”
“Hi, Jeffrey,” I chimed in. If I hadn’t interrupted, Jeffrey might have thought it was just the two of them, which could have caused problems.
“Oh?” It sounded like he had just woken up “Hey, Seigi. Long time no talk. Sorry, I’m a bit tied up right now, so I’m going to hand the phone over to someone else. One sec.”
That was sudden, I thought. Behind me, Richard was fuming, flaring his nostrils like a bull. I could feel him ready to explode with sarcastic comebacks.
The next person to take over the phone had a low, gentle voice.
“Hell-oo? This is Joachim. Mr. Claremont is not avail—”
“Hi, Joachim. This is Seigi.”
“Oh? Well, if it isn’t le bébé from Japan. It’s lovely to hear your voice.”
“Where are you guys right now?”
“Tahiti. Lucky us, no?”
Le bébé. That was French for “the baby.” I didn’t know the full story, but apparently Joachim and Jeffrey were on vacation. After all the events in Sri Lanka, Jeffrey decided to take about half a year off as a “burnout recovery break” to jet around the world and stay at fancy resorts. Whether he was nose to the grindstone or in vacation mode, Jeffrey was a world traveler. In that sense, I felt like he had a lot in common with workaholic Richard. I just hoped he was getting some good rest.
After I inadvertently learned his secret in Sri Lanka, I met him in his hotel room and went down on my knees to apologize to him. He just laughed and waved it off, saying there was no need for all that. It wasn’t my fault, after all. That was true, but it was too true. Just like how Jeffrey was strong—too strong. I figured he’d had to become that way in order to survive. All the more reason, in my mind, for him to spend time with someone he could share his weaknesses with.
“Jeffy’s fighting the ketchup bottle right now. It doesn’t want to open.”
“Sorry, the what now?”
“So we’re having lunch, and Jeffy says he wants to order french fries through room service, right? Well, you can’t have french fries without ketchup. This hotel is fan-cy, so they don’t bring up a dispenser. They gave us a whole bottle, but it’s stuck fast! No one’s opened this thing since the Ice Ages.”
“Hey! I got it open! Look, Chim, I got it open! The conquering hero returns to the phone now.”
“Good for you, Jeffy. We’re all sooo proud.”
“Thanks for getting the phone. Here, I’ll take over. Go eat.”
We were evidently interrupting their lunch. I shot Richard a look—maybe we should call them back later—but he ignored it. His voice dropped so low he could have been crawling over the ground. “Good for you, Jeffy, indeed. We are all so very, very proud.”
“Uh-oh. I didn’t even know I was supposed to be walking on eggshells. What’s the matter?”
“I am told you gave Seigi a photo of me in childhood. Good for you in doing so. I am, of course, very, very proud.”
“And it only became an issue now? Please stop saying nice things in such a creepy voice. You’re sending such chills down my spine, I feel like I’m in the tundra!”
“You are no brother of mine, Jeffrey.”
Jeffy, called a singsong voice in the background, I’m taking the last french fry. I figured Joachim could hear the anger in Richard’s voice from where he sat. Fortunately, he didn’t sound concerned at all.
From there, Richard laid into Jeffrey so hard Joachim could have polished off all the french fries—heck, even the main course—in the time it took for him to finish. He was like a mafioso, snapping, “You get one last chance, wise guy. There ain’t gonna be a next time” before he hung up with a huff.
Richard took a deep breath, as if he were doing mental exercises to put himself back together, before muttering to himself, “Ridiculous. Him and his ketchup.”
“Hm? What’s the backstory here?”
“It…is a story I might have difficulty telling without resorting to sarcasm.”
“I don’t mind. Hit me.”
So he did. He told me the story of how ketchup was treated when he was growing up in the Claremont mansion. Apparently, ketchup wasn’t a common ingredient in British food. This made sense to me. I always thought of ketchup as more of an American thing. Besides, the British tended to say “tomato sauce” anyway.
As a result, ketchup did not appear on the Claremont family dining table. Again, that made sense. On the rare occasion that ketchup was served, it arrived out of the bottle in a small dish like the fancy little tureens of curry at Shiseido Parlor. Even after Jeffrey moved out of the Claremont estate, no part of the life he had been railroaded into took him near anything that would require opening a ketchup bottle. Richard had never seen Jeffrey open a ketchup bottle in his life.
Huh, I thought. I guess some people live like that.
“…Just to double-check, have you opened a ketchup bottle before?” I asked.
“Yes. Just the other day, I challenged myself to cook an omelet.”
“Ohhh. Right. That was a thing that happened.”
He sure did open it. Not correctly, maybe, but he opened it. The whole kitchen got covered in bright red goop. Sweet ketchup went everywhere, and the dogs were so happy they almost wagged their tails off. The experience was still fresh in my mind.
Even condiment lids could have personal histories for people.
“Your omelet turned out well,” I told Richard.
“…I hardly think it was classified as an omelet.”
“Your, uh, omelet-ish thing turned out well.”
“It was more like the carcass of scrambled eggs tossed into the watery abyss before washing ashore days later.”
“You don’t need to be that poetic about it… By the way, how does a late-night snack sound? We have sangria jelly.”
“I will respectfully decline. More pressingly…” Richard said, and he pointed to my laptop. The blog was still open in my browser, and I saw that there was a new post.
“Huh?” I said. “Isn’t it a little late for kids to be at school? That’s odd.”
“I would imagine they are scheduled posts. Evening posts tend to receive the most traffic.”
“Kids these days are something else.”
I bent over my laptop and scanned the latest update. It wasn’t written in the excited childish style I expected. The grammar was so good it made me sit up a little straighter, too.
The post announced the club had gained new members during a recent bismuth experiment. The same experiment had been run last spring, so the club performed it again this year in lieu of a welcome party for the newest members. Kind of a hardcore initiation process, I thought.
In this post, the three newest members introduced themselves. They didn’t use their real names since anyone could see their blog posts. All the kids had special nicknames—they called it their “science club name”—used just for the blog. These new members’ science club names, or online handles if you will, were…
Oh wow.
“…That’s surprising.”
“What is?”
“They wrote about me.”
“I beg your pardon?”
The newest members called themselves Ruri, Hari, and Shako—lapis lazuli, quartz, and seashell—three of the Buddhist seven treasures. Gold, silver, pearl, and coral made up the other four. Pretty cultured names for junior high schoolers. The blog post went on to say they matched a second-year club member’s name. The three new girls described her fondly. She was very helpful to them.
“Housekirei.” That’s what she called herself.
A bit of an odd name, I thought, but it sounded pretty. I assumed it was a portmanteau of houseki (jewel) and the kind of bird called a sekirei, but the blog post said it came from houseki and kirei (beautiful). Housekirei explained that she chose it because she thought being a jeweler sounded like a glamorous job. The blog didn’t disclose the personal information that their advisor, Ms. Tanimoto, had a friend in the jewelry business, but anyone within our circle of acquaintances would pick up on the implication.
Housekirei herself closed out the post by saying she hoped her three new clubmates were just as excited as she was a year ago when she first joined the club. She wanted them to discover lots of new worlds and share in the feeling of amazement with their classmates. The post ended with a sign off from the editor, Ms. Tanimoto. A perfect school story cliché—the teacher advisor looking over the work.
“…Huh. People outside the blog can’t react to it.”
“An appropriate safety measure for a blog run by minors, I should think.”
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t leave a comment, but there was a like button on each post and a likes counter. Each one felt like a whisper of “How beautiful,” like people might say when encountering a gemstone.
I clicked the like button, just as I always did, and sent a little wish along with it. It wasn’t much, but I wanted to give back. Whenever I read these blog posts, I always felt like I’d been given a little shard of a sparkle.