Chapter 5
FIVE
Nico
“Just don’t, Annie.” I scrub my face.
She just stares, an inscrutable look on her face.
“Just hold it in,” I tell her. Minute one of this road trip and I’m already descending straight into the first circle of hell. “Don’t—”
“Really?!” she bursts out.
I sigh.
“You know, most times it really isn’t my intention to ridicule you, but…” she gestures at the car. “You just make it so easy.”
“I didn’t—”
“—you’re truly just a walking stereotype—”
“—choose this car—”
“Like, really?”
“—only car left—”
“Not only is it a Mustang, but it’s yellow?!”
“—didn’t have a choice—”
“—and a convertible?!”
I sigh again. “Get in the fuckin’ car, Annie.” I really didn’t have a choice. It’s not like I asked the car rental place to give me the tackiest car they had. Maybe I should’ve kept the top up, though, but it’s a nice day out and I may as well embrace it all.
Annie doesn’t get in the car. “The gas mileage is probably terrible on these things,” she says instead.
“You don’t have to pay for gas,” I offer, because I’m sick and tired of talking about it. “Just get in the car.”
“And really? An American car for a two thousand mile road trip? You couldn’t go Japanese?”
“I told you I didn’t have a fuckin’ choice, Annie—this is all they had at the rental place.” Maybe this is all some sort of cruel, sick joke from the universe for saying fake grace and cheering on a god I only nominally believe in.
“We’re totally going to break down before we even get to D.C. in this American piece of shit. Always go Asian,” she says with a saucy wink.
I spent my entire freshman year at Duke wrangling the Bensonhurst out of my voice and learning how to speak in a neutral accent that isn’t aggressively loud or full of swear words.
I’d say it’s mostly gone, except for when I’m drunk or angry.
I showed up at her parents’ house intending to fully tamp down the accent for this trip so Annie would have less fodder for ridicule.
However, here I am, supremely pissed after thirty seconds with Annie Li, and the Bensonhurst smashes back into my voice like the Kool-Aid Man.
This becomes evident with my next statement.
“Get in the goddamn fuckin’ car, Annie Li,” I bellow.
“Jeez,” she answers, completely unbothered, walking around and popping the trunk and throwing various pieces of luggage in. “Someone overdid it on the steroids this morning.”
I grip the steering wheel. It seems like a safe place for my hands.
They wouldn’t be able to wring her pretty little neck there.
We haven’t even made it a centimeter out of Bensonhurst, and I already want a cigarette despite having quit a year ago.
And no, I did not quit the second after Annie Li told me it was gross. Most certainly not because of that.
“What’s all this camera equipment?” she asks, slamming the trunk shut. The buzzing starts in my ears. I feel the flush climbing up my neck. “Filming an episode of Jackass? Holding your dick above a Bunsen burner or whatever they have you do in your lab?”
I wince, because she’s not too far off.
I must have pissed the universe off real good, by the way, for this.
I need to record at least one video for NakedReactions on this trip.
My subscribers pay for it, and they missed out last week because of my infected dick.
I think I can time it so that I film at one of the properties with the separate pool house, send Annie to stay there while I record, but fuck.
The risk? Total Annihilation by Annie Li?
Total Annie-hilation? If she finds out I post videos of my dick for money?
It’s a huge fuckin’ risk. I’d rather throw myself out of a moving car.
Which I guess will be easy to do, if Annie Li does find out. I clear my throat.
“I told them I’d make them a wedding video,” I answer, praying she doesn’t push it, but I forget about it as soon as she opens the door of the passenger seat because I am suddenly inundated with two things: books and skin.
Annie dumps what seems like twenty books onto the floor of the passenger seat before her long legs climb in.
She’s wearing what’s gotta be the shortest shorts known to mankind.
And a crop top. Skin on her legs, skin on her arms, skin on her stomach.
Tattoos on all the skin. Despite them being prison tattoos or whatever Tom said, they’re really well done.
And hot as sin. And even if it’s less skin than she showed on the beach, the fact that it’s a foot away from me, in the confines of this car? I wrench my eyes ahead.
“Which parts do you want to film?” she asks.
I almost answer, For our sex tape? Well, all of it, when I realize she’s talking about the wedding.
I clear my throat again.
“Are you sick?”
“Sick and tired of your shit, maybe,” I tell her.
“Clever boy.”
I look out the window and see her parents standing at the top of their driveway, waving. Annie returns one half-heartedly.
“Don’t worry,” I yell towards them, “I’ll keep her safe and get her down there in one piece.”
They smile and wave even harder.
“See you two in a week!” I say. “Travel safely! Congratulations!”
Annie yells something in Cantonese, and I pull away from the curb.
“At least your parents like me. They think I’m charming as fuck,” I tell her.
“That’s because they neither speak nor understand English.”
Huh. “Well, maybe I give off charming vibes. They can just feel it.”
“Your vibes feel like a hernia,” she says seriously.
“Have you had a hernia? Do you know what it feels like?”
She thinks. “Well, at first it’s a mild irritation, like… a nagging pressure that you try to brush off,” she starts.
I heave out a breath.
“But then, out of nowhere, he shoves his way in—”
“Oh, it’s a ‘he’ now?”
“—sharp, insistent, and completely unwilling to be ignored. Every movement reminds you of his existence. A stabbing, pulling sensation that flares up when you least expect it—”
“May I remind you that you forced me into this—”
“If you try shifting or adjusting or bargaining with the pain,” she continues, “it doesn’t matter.
He’s there. A relentless, throbbing, burning discomfort that makes even the simplest tasks unbearable.
And just when you think he might ease up, he digs in deeper, a cruel reminder that he’s here to stay—”
“Again, this is on you—”
“—and you’ll probably need professional help to get rid of him.”
I mull that over. “Is there an assassination implication there?”
She shrugs. “Surgical removal.”
I sigh. Four sighs in five minutes can’t be good for my lungs.
“So what are you filming?”
I have a mild panic attack before remembering the wedding. “I guess I’ll film the… ceremony and vows and like, the first dance or whatever.” I have no intention of doing so, but those are the film-able parts of a wedding, right?
She scoffs. “You really wanna get Tom on camera thanking May for funding his chino and boat shoes collection?”
I glance over. “You’re real mean, you know that?”
Her long hair starts flying all over the place once we really get moving, and she ties it back. More skin. Skin on the elegant line of her neck. I’m gonna need some of those blinders they put on horses, or else we’re going to get into an accident before we even get on the highway.
Annie rolls her eyes. Or at least it feels like she does. I’m not looking because I have pretend horse blinders on. “Only to dicks.”
“Like me and Tom?”
“You said it, not me.”
“Whatever. I can admit he’s kind of a douche. But he’s harmless. We’ve been friends since we were all kids.”
She shrugs. “Birds of a feather.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Cut from the same cloth?”
“Huh?”
“Like calls to like,” she tries.
“That makes even less sense.”
“Take it up with the romantasy girlies.”
I give up.
“Are you sure you can read?” She doesn’t drop it.
“I can write, too.”
“Your name? Impressive.”
“A one hundred and seventy-eight page dissertation on the science of umami.”
A subtle wince. “A dissertation?”
“Yeah, Annie Li. It’s Dr. Nico to you. And I’m doing my postdoc now,” I say with not a small amount of pride.
Annie takes a while to digest this, and I can almost hear the neurons firing and her jaw cracking under the effort. Finally she asks, “Umami? Like MSG?”
I’m not surprised this is what she brought up, but this is what most people associate with umami, the fifth basic taste after sweet and sour and salty and spicy.
“That’s an example of umami, yeah. Other popular ones are parmesan, anchovies, and some dried mushrooms.” My interest in all this started when I was shaving parm in Ma’s kitchen, when I realized I couldn’t identify what parm actually tasted like.
It was a little salty, yeah, but something more, something funkier than that.
“What’s the science of umami entail?” she demands to know, because she demands everything. Time, attention, answers. The last thread of my sanity.
“Investigating chemical interactions between…” I put myself in NakedReactions mode, thinking of how to explain complex chemical concepts to lay people.
“Between umami flavor compounds. Glutamates being one of them. MSG stands for monosodium glutamate. Also investigating things like fermentation, aging, and slow-cooking to naturally intensify flavor.”
“Like kimchi?”
I nod. “Exactly. Kimchi. Soy sauce. Miso. Fish sauce. They’re all loaded with umami.”
She pauses, chewing on that—mentally, not literally. Then, “You know, it’s wild how white people demonized MSG for decades while shoving parmesan into their mouths like it was nothing.”
I glance at her, and there’s something sharp in her gaze. Almost like a dare.
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “Whole campaigns built on junk science and yellow peril, racist, xenophobic bullshit. Made 'Chinese Restaurant Syndrome' a punchline while Western chefs were bathing in glutamates from truffle paste and dry-aged steaks.”
“Right,” she says. “And now it’s in every bougie Bon Appétit video.”
“Every fancy New American tasting menu.”
“Every white dude who thinks fish sauce is edgy.”
We look at each other.
She hums, and I feel like I’ve passed some sort of test. “So you do food science stuff.”
“Yep.” In more ways than one.
She hums again.
“Have I done the impossible?” I ask her. “Impressed the permanently unimpressed Annie Li?”
“With five minutes of Googling? Nah.”
“Six or seven years of research and experiments, but sure.” And one very successful adult content page.
“So can you explain the flavor ‘blue’?”
I got real obsessed with figuring out the answer to this after the beach this past weekend.
I try to keep myself in NakedReactions mode.
“It’s blue because of the artificial food dye.
It’s called Blue Number One. That’s the stuff that stays on your tongue,” I tell her, trying to keep the eagerness out of my voice, lest Annie massacre me about being a nerd.
“The flavor is created through a combination of artificial flavoring chemicals that contribute to a fruity profile. Pineapple, banana, and cherry are in there,” I tell her.
“Along with childhood nostalgia,” I add.
“Among other things,” she murmurs.
We’re silent for a few beats.
“Lightning trapped in a summer night,” she says after a while.
I smile, because this is the part of Annie Li I didn’t actively dislike in high school. “Pretty.”
She grunts. It’s almost comical.
Pretty soon I see the city getting smaller and smaller in my rearview, and thus begins the desolate wasteland of I-95.
“So what’s the great Annie Li up to now? Pulitzer Prize winner? University professor? Both?”
She cuts her eyes to me. Her shoulders tighten. Her chin goes up in something that looks like defiance. “I’m a writer.”
“That’s what you wanted to do in high school, right?”
Annie shrugs.
“Explains the books, too,” I say, nodding towards the small hill of them over her feet.
She relaxes, but only by a hair. “Yep.”
“You were always walking around with a library’s worth of books.” I chuckle thinking of little Annie and the giant backpack she toted around. “In your arms or your backpack. You definitely threw some at my head a few times.”
Annie sniffs. “I would never desecrate a book in such a manner.” Her shoulders move away from her ears a little more.
“You’re also bossy as hell, so Annie Li making people read her writing makes sense.
Forcing it into their hands, daring them to feel something.
Probably yelling about metaphors until they cry.
” I pause. “I don’t know what kind of stuff you write, but you definitely give off chaotic free verse energy. ”
I think I get a small smile from this one. For some reason, like it did on the beach, it makes me feel like I climbed to the top of Mount Olympus and met Zeus, who handed me a leather-bound book whose table of contents listed I. The Cure for Cancer and II. World Peace Action Items.
“What are you writing right now?” I ask.
However, with this question, Annie closes up again, like steel reinforcements slamming down on her windows like in the movies. She picks up one of the books at her feet.
“Do you have a book?” she asks, and with that, she decides my question is irrelevant and that train of our conversation is finished, and I can’t decide if all this whiplash is making me irritated or hard. Or both. Both, probably.
“What do you mean?”
“You could probably write a cool book about your research.”
I glance over at her, the back of my neck prickling. “Not… Well, my dissertation was technically bound into a hardcover book.”
She shakes her head. “No one wants to read that. Maybe something non-chemists could digest. Like, a cookbook would be cool.”
“A cookbook… would be cool,” I repeat lamely.
“Okay,” she says with finality, out of freakin’ nowhere. “I’m going to read now. Focus on driving, please. Eyes on the road.”
I don’t even bother responding, the whiplash feeling intensifying, now feeling like I’ve been punted off Mount Olympus but still pretty impressed we managed to share space without resorting to violence. But I guess quiet is better than arguing.