Free Leave It to Me by Bharati Mukherjee Page A

flick? Guilt closed in. I let myself down into a chair directly below that poster.
    “Weird,” I remarked. I meant the Flash connection between us.
    “He’s moved to the States, you know.” Ham put the phone down, and sighed. “It’s sad, really sad. He’s making videos for some exercise firm. The man was a genius.”
    Is, but I let the error pass.
    “His house burned down in New York. Someplace upstate. I heard he’s being investigated for murder and arson.”
    “Somebody died?”
    “Some squeeze. Smoke inhalation.”
    I didn’t have to believe the rumor about death from smoke inhalation. I didn’t have to believe there was any fatality. I didn’t have to believe there’d been a fire, except that I’d witnessed it.
    “It must have been an accident. They said it was an old firetrap, and he’d added all sorts of electrical shit. Someone must have fallen asleep smoking. The cops picked him up ’cos he was screaming and running down the street like a maniac. The Oswald syndrome. He doesn’t belong in a state pen! Jeez, the Flash was a genius.”
    I held my gaze on the Mandalay Monster. On the contrary, Flash was so vulnerable, a one-hundred-fourteen-pound woman destroyed him. We knew that all along, bud, didn’t we?
    Ham grinned, rolling his eyes up at the Mandalay Monster. “Acts like my ex-wife. Looks like all my ex-wives.” He beat his chest in mock horror. “You see where romantics end up?”
    “Where?”
    “Living alone on houseboats. On the lam from exes, lawyers, creditors.” He pointed to a Polaroid picture taped to the side of his computer. It was of an ordinary-looking houseboat, its name, Last Chance , painted in red across its prow. “It can be cozy.” He gave me an it’s-your-call kind of look. I must have scared him. “I’m starving, how about you? Wanna check out my favorite Chinese hole-in-the-wall?” He grabbed his jacket off a peg behind the door of his office and walked to the elevator while wriggling his arms into the sleeves. The jacket wasn’t cut like the blazers and sports jackets men wore in Schenectady. It was loosely fitted and collarless. You had to be confident to wear that. What’s next, sky-blue tuxedo with black piping?
    Over lunch at Tung and Phuk on Stockton near Columbus, Ham went through a Coming-to-a-Theater-Near-Youversion of his life epic. Suburban childhood. Parochial schools. Dad into Knights of Columbus and the Irish Rovers, Mum into Jack Daniel’s. Four surviving siblings, making adequate livings as photographer, graphics designer, prison warden and short-order cook. “I dropped out of Berkeley to look after Mum.” He sang a bar from “Beauty School Dropout.”
    “Don’t be so defensive,” I soothed. I made the necessary entry in my mental Rolodex: Catholic; four divorces; no kids; impulsive but avoids commitment.
    Ham turned his bad marriages into sitcoms, then prodded me. “Your turn, Day-Vee. I don’t know a thing about you.”
    I chopsticked a perfect crisp-fried squid from its bed of spinach to Ham’s lips. Take your time , I told myself, craft a bio to charm, don’t scare him with the little you know .
    “Give me your first impressions, Ham.”
    “Oh, streetwise in a way,” he teased. “Actually, I see two people.”
    “Only two?” I teased back.
    “I noticed the New York plates. You’re about as Haight as a Japanese tourist.” He squirted pepper sauce on his noodles. “You ever model, do a little acting? On the lam? Drugs, maybe?”
    “Okay, you’re good.”
    “New York’s cool,” he said. “New York’s sexy.”
    I played to Ham’s image of me. Mother was the innocent native-born Californian from one of those valley towns ending in o, a fun, normal late-sixties-early-seventies type who’d tried out all the good stuff like communes, bead curtains, Buddhism, drugs, headbands, drugs, lots of drugs,Jimi, Janis, Morrison, am I missing something from those times, Ham?
    Ham bought it, and played along. “Candlemakers on