Free Ghost Month by Ed Lin Page A

all, I already own everything in your house.”
    Still, German’s father had a heart. He recognized that my grandfather was an honest guy who had gotten in over his head. At this point most men fled or killed themselves, but this country bumpkin from rural central Taiwan didn’t even know enough to do that.
    The
jiaotou
handed back my grandfather’s belongings and toldhim to go back to work and never gamble again. German’s dad brought the signed deed to a local bank and had papers drawn up to reflect a sale-leaseback deal on the house and a promissory note.
    I wasn’t familiar with the term “continuous compounding,” and neither was my grandfather, because he signed the papers, which allowed his expanding family to stay in their home. He had no choice, really. That was why we owed German a total amount that was probably four times what our house was worth.
    My grandfather’s big mistake was not going to a loan shark who would have bailed him out on more generous terms. It was a matter of preserving some pride. He wanted as few people as possible to hear about his situation.
    “Don’t ever let pride get in the way,” was how my father summed it all up. I nodded, though I didn’t understand. To the end of his days, my grandfather would fly into a rage if The Debt—or any debt—was mentioned. My father didn’t even have the balls to tell me how bad our situation truly was until after my mother was dead.
    I FLOSSED AND BRUSHED my teeth until my gums bled. In the heat and humidity of the night, my skin never dried off completely, and I was covered in a glistening sweat by the time I rinsed my mouth out. I finished with a cheek full of stinging mouthwash.
    In my bedroom, I replaced my speaker and clicked on
Unknown Pleasures
.
    When I was a kid I used to think it was so ghoulishly cool that Ian killed himself. I could read into his tortured lyrics and see that he had shamanistic insight into life and beyond. After I read some English-language books about Ian, the image faded. His wife’s account was particularly damning. They had married young—in their teens—and in only a few years he felt he was outgrowing her artistically and intellectually. When he noticed his wife, Ian treated her with contempt.
    Maybe Julia and I would have suffered a similar fate should we have married. I had no illusions whatsoever that I was as smart as she was.
    It was time for a reality check before bed. There weren’t anymore updates on my phone, but maybe there was something on one of the twenty-four-hour news stations.
    I turned on my little Sanyo television, hoping they would have realized there’d been a misidentification. There wasn’t any more about Julia. The news cycle had moved on to celebrities leaving their spouses and animated reenactments of an armed standoff in the American Pacific Northwest that ended with five dead. One station used special effects to turn a television presenter into a transparent ghost as he hungrily ate up a bowl of steamed fish and rice in a segment that went on way too long.
    I shut off the TV and stereo, zapped the lights and slid across the mattress. A hot breeze from the street felt good across my slick, naked body.
    A light orange glow from the street prevented my bedroom from ever really being dark, even with the shades down. I looked over the contours of my useless hands and sighed.
    In my heart I knew the dead betel-nut girl was Julia. In the morning I should go to see her parents at their apartment. The trip would give me final confirmation. Maybe then I could cry.

CHAPTER FIVE
    I was still asleep when someone grabbed my left shoulder and tried to drag me out of bed.
    I woke up in a fright, but then I realized that it was my own right hand doing the pulling.
    It was about nine in the morning and the sun was fully up, but it was still an hour earlier than my alarm was set to go off. So annoying.
    I stretched out, experiencing a feeling I hadn’t expected.
    Relief.
    I didn’t have to