Takeout (Salman Toor)

October 788 U.C., Heinessen

Yang woke up one Tuesday morning in October around noon, sleeping without his alarm because he had no pressing engagements or reason to get up, only to find that he had no fewer than six missed calls from his friend, Jean Robert Lapp.

His phone had tumbled off his bedside table at some point during the night, perhaps having vibrated off as it rung without any response, and it had nestled itself in with the dirty clothes that lined his floor, which stifled any buzzing of the ringtone completely. Yang looked at the list of missed calls dolefully as he rubbed his eyes against the noonday sun slipping in past his blinds. The last call had not been more than a half hour ago, so he called back.

Lapp picked up on the fourth ring.

“Yang!” he said, his usual exuberant voice piercing directly through the phone line and into Yang’s only half-awake brain. To save his eardrums, Yang switched to speakerphone.

“Morning, Lapp. Sorry I missed your calls before.”

“Ah— I made a bet with Attenborough if your phone was turned off to avoid reporters, or if you were asleep. I see that since it’s past noon and you’re telling me good morning, it’s the latter.”

“Guilty as charged,” Yang said. “It’s the joy of being on leave.” He came to his senses slightly. “The fact that you’re calling me—”

“Running errands for sixth fleet command as usual,” Lapp said. “They love to waste fuel on shipping someone down to the planet to attend a fifteen minute resource meeting.”

“Were you calling me because you wanted to get lunch? When are you leaving?”

“You, my friend, are the luckiest man in the world. And I’m the unluckiest.”

“Hunh?”

“I was calling to see if you wanted to get lunch before I shipped back out this evening, but you’ve slept through lunchtime. You’re very lucky that my flight out got canceled. I won’t be leaving until tomorrow.”

“They putting you in a hotel for the night?”

“That has yet to be figured out.”

“Stay with me,” Yang offered. “I’d love to have the company.”

“I was told you had no furniture in your fancy new house.”

“Who said that?”

“Attenborough, again.”

“He’s behind the times,” Yang said. “I have furniture.”

“A bed?”

“Yes.”

“A kitchen table?”

“Yes.”

“A couch?”

“Yes— are you going to name every piece of furniture that a person could have? I have furniture, Lapp.”

“Just making sure,” he said with a laugh.

“The future Mrs. Cazerne put together a list of things that I needed, and then I bought them. You can thank her for my new home decor.”’

“I certainly will, when I meet her.”

“You haven’t yet?”

“No, and I kinda doubt I’ll be back planetside for the wedding.”

“Pity,” Yang said. “She’s nice.”

“Anyway, if your house meets Cazerne’s exacting standards—”

“Meets? I don’t know. Gestures in the direction of.”

Lapp laughed again. “I’ll see you tonight then, Yang. Text me your address. I’ve gotta run and get back to this meeting.”

“Yeah, of course. See you later.”

Lapp hung up, and the happy energy at the prospect of seeing his friend suddenly fell away from Yang, and he flopped back onto his bed. He didn’t want to make any halfhearted attempts to clean his house, and the thought of seeing Lapp suddenly invoked more complicated feelings than he had expected it would. Maybe he should have said that they could meet elsewhere for dinner, but he couldn’t rescind the offer now. And, besides, Lapp was his friend. His best friend, even.

So, after he re-gathered his strength and will to get up and join the world of the living, he got out of bed and started sorting out his house, or at least made an attempt to do so. Lapp could have the couch for the night, so he’d need to get rid of the garbage that had begun to grow up around it.

---

Lapp arrived at around seven in the evening, having been delayed at his meetings and then caught in terrible traffic on his way out of the capital city proper. Yang ordered takeout, and it was steaming on the kitchen table (that he did indeed possess) when Lapp rang the doorbell. 

Yang let him in, and he looked around appreciatively before saying anything.

“I won’t say I’m jealous,” Lapp said. “But this is a nice place.”

“You’re not jealous?” Yang asked. “I figured you might be. Junior officer housing isn’t great— well, I mean, it has the advantage of coming furnished.”

Lapp laughed. “I don’t even have that.”

“Hunh? Isn’t an apartment standard if you’re deployed? I had one.”

“I took the pay package that doesn’t include it,” Lapp said. “Jessica told me that when I’m on leave, I’m more than welcome at her place. So, better to have the extra cash.”

“Ah,” Yang said. All of this said so frankly twisted his stomach, but Lapp didn’t seem to notice anything wrong in Yang’s voice or face, so he trotted through the living room and Yang pointed out the kitchen.

“Though, really, Yang, I feel like I should impose on you, rather than Jessica. This is a nice big place.” He was joking, of course.

In the kitchen, Lapp dropped his canvas day-bag on the table, next to the covered takeout dishes, and pulled something out of it. He tossed it at Yang before he could see what it was, and he didn’t catch it in time. The offending object sailed past his left ear and fluttered to the ground behind him.

“What are you throwing at me?” Yang asked.

“Jessica told me to pick that up for you. I assume you haven’t seen it.”

Yang turned around and retrieved the whatever-it-was from the floor. It was a magazine, the flashy white and pink cover loudly exclaiming exactly what publication it was.

“Jessica reads Pretty Woman ?” Yang asked.

“She’s gonna have to, now,” Lapp said. “Did you know you have a column in there?”

Yang’s stomach sank down to his feet, and he pinched the magazine in two fingers like it was dirty.

“Come on,” Lapp said. “Page 32. It’s not un flattering.”

Reluctantly, Yang flipped it open. Past the slick ads for perfume and fashion, past the recipes, past the advice columns, past the movie reviews, past the horoscopes. There.

“At least they didn’t title it ‘The Hottie of El Facil’ or something,” Yang muttered, which was the only positive thing he could think of to say. 

The page was mostly photographs of Yang. Half were images he had been aware existed— he had attended plenty of officially photographed parties recently, and so snapshots of him in his white dress uniform were not surprising. It was funny to look at them— the expression that he was wearing usually was a friendly smile. From the outside, they had chosen photos in which he appeared perfectly natural. None of the discomfort he remembered feeling in those moments was reflected in his face, which made for the odd sensation of looking at a stranger.

What was stranger still were the other half of the photographs. These were not taken at parties. They featured Yang simply living his life. All of these photographs had the familiar grainy distortion of images taken with a long zoom, or a tight crop. There he was: walking out of the military headquarters in his daily uniform; traipsing up the Heinessen Memorial Library steps (past the statues of Dante and Virgil guarding the doors) in civilian clothes; in the grocery store, comparing the prices on two brands of rice. 

He remembered that moment, actually. Not a minute later, a young woman had come up to him and asked for his autograph. Uncomfortably, he had signed a receipt that was in his pocket and passed it to her. She must have taken his photo before approaching him, and then sold it to the magazine.

Indeed, down in small font, beneath all the glossy little photos, was a notice that if anyone had pictures or stories about the elusive Yang Wenli, that they should send them in to Pretty Woman for a chance to be published and win a hundred dinar gift card to a retailer of their choice.

The rest of the text on the page was a list of places that Yang had been spotted, along with some completely irrelevant but true information— his birthday and starsign, a brief bio on where had grown up, his bloodtype (though he suspected that they had guessed, and managed to guess correctly)— and completely meaningless drivel that managed to be neither true nor false and simply filled up page space.

“Wow,” Yang said, after he had finished reading the whole thing. “I hate it.”

“Yeah,” Lapp said. He reached over and pulled the magazine out of Yang’s hands so that he didn’t keep staring down at his own stranger’s face in the photos. He tossed it into the overflowing recycle bin. “I assume you don’t want to keep it for your scrapbook.”

“No,” Yang said. “I really don’t.”

Lapp sat down at the table, and Yang got them both beers from the fridge. “On the plus side, they didn’t publish your address.”

“It’s only a matter of time until they do, I bet,” Yang said. “I met the woman whose idea all of that was—”

“Oh, so you did know?”

“Vaguely. I didn’t know if it would actually come into fruition. It was sorta pitched to me as a threat.” When Lapp looked confused, Yang continued. “If I don’t give an actual interview, that will force their hand into running whatever they feel like printing. I didn’t know they’d go through with it.”

“Heh, I think journalists are very good at following through on threats. I don’t think it’s an admirable quality of theirs.”

“Don’t let Attenborough hear you say that.”

“As if he hasn’t suffered the most from journalists keeping their promises,” Lapp said. 

“Oh, that story about his dad? I didn’t know you heard that one,” Yang said while doling out the fried chicken and potatoes that he had gotten for dinner.

“Cheers,” Lapp said, cracking open his beer as Yang finally sat down.

“Cheers,” Yang replied. He kept glancing behind himself at the magazine leering at him from the recycle bin. The magnified and shiny eyes of an actress followed him across the room.

“Why do you think it’s only a matter of time before they publish where you live?”

“It’s not like I go very many places,” Yang said. “They’re going to run out of ways to photograph me in public. I’m sure they’ll start peering in the windows and ambushing me when I step out the door if they get desperate enough.”

“You don’t think they have any personal integrity?”

Yang rolled his eyes and dug into his dinner. 

“Well,” Lapp said, gesturing with a chicken leg, “Jessica mentioned that she liked the photos, even if they were acquired a little less than ethically.”

Yang focused very hard on chewing his food so that he didn’t choke on it. “She’s joking, I’m sure.”

“You don’t clean up too bad in that dress uniform. If I was a reader of Pretty Woman , I’d clip out some of them and put them on my wall myself.”

That did make Yang laugh, and he choked on his mashed potatoes. “Sure.”

“Are you saying that if I had a column, you wouldn’t save all my clippings? I’m offended.”

“I’m more jealous of the fact that you don’t have a column,” Yang said. “I’m— I don’t like being famous. I hope everyone forgets about me quickly.”

Lapp was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke, it was with a more serious tone than he had been using. “Well, for your sake, I hope so. Are you holding up alright? Jokes aside, Wenli.”

“Hunh? Oh. Yeah. I—” Awkwardly, he rubbed the back of his head. “I’m fine, I guess. It’s not like— you know. It’s not going to kill me.”

“Not going to kill you is a particularly low bar.”

Yang tilted his can of beer around. “We are soldiers.”

Lapp let out a little huff of breath. “I suppose you’re lucky, then. The bigwigs can’t send you to the front right away— they’d have people storming their offices if you got killed. That’s— well, you’re safe, I guess.”

“I don’t think there’s any assurance of that.”

“You’re a pessimist.”

“I’m safe for a few months,” Yang said. “But someone’s going to get tired of having me hanging around soon enough— I don’t think I have the kind of fame that makes people want me to do desk jobs in the capital. I’m not— I’m a hero, but I’m a hero because my CO disliked me enough to leave me behind when he left the planet.”

“That’s not what—”

“It’s what it looks like. And it might as well have happened. I mean, I don’t think Rear Admiral Lynch was thinking about me at all, but—” Yang shrugged expressively. 

“If he had gotten to know you, he would have chosen to leave you behind on purpose?” Lapp asked with a sardonic twist in his voice.

“Maybe.”

“Well, if I was the rear admiral, I wouldn’t have left you behind.”

“Thanks,” Yang said dryly. “You wouldn’t have left the civilian population behind, either.”

Lapp laughed.

“Anyway, I’m the type of person it will look good to send to the front. Keep making me into a real action hero, no matter how ill-suited for it I am. And if I die out there, then that means I won’t ever become a political problem back here.”

“Are you thinking about running for office?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Yang said, in his usual deadpan way.

“Oh? Really?” Lapp was genuinely surprised, and he leaned forward, elbows on the table.

“I keep waking up in the middle of the night, soaked in sweat, imagining that someone has decided to run a write-in candidate campaign for me without me noticing, and I win. It’s the nightmare scenario.”

Lapp relaxed back into his seat. “Sounds relatively unlikely to happen.”

“What I need to do is arrange my life so that I’m as unelectable as possible.”

“You have to get involved in a scandal, and have the fine folks at Pretty Woman report on it, with all the journalistic integrity for which they’re known.”

Yang’s lips twitched in a wry smile. “The woman I spoke to— Patricia McCall— said they won’t print a scandal until the fleet asks them to ruin my reputation. They don’t like to print anything negative about the fleet, for funding reasons.”

Lapp put down his chicken piece. “You are in deeper than I thought.”’

“Now you’re seeing it.” His wry smile stayed. “You were a little jealous, weren’t you?”

Lapp suddenly looked very uncomfortable, and he looked away from Yang to take a long swig of his beer. “No,” Lapp said, but he was clearly lying.

“It’s alright,” Yang said. “I get it.”

“I said I’m not, Yang. I’m not a liar.”

“Sorry— I didn’t mean it.”

Lapp smiled at him. “Come on— don’t worry about it.”

Yang looked down at his plate. “How has everything been with you?” he asked, trying to get the conversation back on ground that felt less unstable.

“Fine,” Lapp said. “With me, it’s the same old, same old.”

“Nothing exciting in the sixth fleet?”

“Of course not. You’d have heard if there was.”

“And—” He found it strangely hard to get the words out. “How’s everything with Jessica?”

“Don’t you talk to her?”

“Sure, she calls me to talk every once in a while.”

“Then you know how it is.” Lapp kept smiling. 

Yang nodded and stuffed his mouth with potatoes. 

“Hey, I have leave in a little while, for real. If you’re still on Heinessen sitting around, I’ll have to invite you down to Thernussen.”

“I wasn’t aware that I needed a specific invitation,” Yang said.

Lapp suddenly seemed uncomfortable again, and Yang regretted the fact that he always seemed to have his foot in his mouth. “I meant that it would be nice for the three of us to hang out again. Like old times.”

“Yeah,” Yang said. He looked out the dark kitchen window.

“If you don’t want to come you don’t have to come,” Lapp said. “I just meant—”

“I know what you meant, Jean,” Yang said. “I appreciate it.”

Lapp took a moment, then said, “That’s why I said I’d invite you. It doesn’t seem like you’d want to come unless I asked you to.”

Lapp was right. Yang hadn’t gone down to Thernussen to see Jessica since he returned from El Facil. “It’s not much like the ‘old times’ anymore.”

“Because you’re famous now?” Lapp asked. There was mild derision in his tone. “You know that Jessica and I are the people who care least in the world.”

Yang gave him a sidelong look, and Lapp frowned. “It’s not that,” Yang said.

“Come on— it’s not like anything changed when Jessica and I—”

“I know,” Yang said, cutting him off. “Forget it, Lapp. Of course I’ll come see you. I’m being stupid.”

Lapp got up and put his dishes in the sink. “If I was you, I’d be lonely in this big house of yours.”

“I haven’t had a chance to feel anything,” Yang said, which was a lie. “I’ve only lived here for a month, and it’s been hectic.”

“Hah, true. I don’t mean to— you know.”

“You’re visiting. That’s one friend I have.”

Lapp smiled again, that gregarious expression that lit up his whole face, exuberant like only he could be. “True. Thanks for letting me crash here.”

“Any time.”

Lapp, who now was unable to stand still, paced around the kitchen, and his eyes settled on the bottles of liquor that Yang kept above the cabinets. He picked one at random and pulled it down, sloshing the half-full bottle around. “Mind if I…?”

“Be my guest,” Yang said. 

Lapp found glasses and poured them both drinks. “I suppose we could go out to a bar instead, but then you’d risk being photographed.”

“Hah, yeah, safer to do all my drinking at home.” Though the state of Yang’s drinks shelf spoke to a slightly more active type of consumption than avoiding going to bars. If Lapp noticed, he didn’t comment on it.

Yang finished clearing off the table and they naturally migrated to the living room. Yang had done a fairly admirable job of cleaning it up, or at least picking up the most obtrusive garbage, and so Lapp sat down on the couch without a word of complaint and stretched himself out with a yawn.

“Long day?” Yang asked.

“I landed at oh-four-hundred local time, so, yes.”

“Rough,” Yang said. 

Lapp gave a vague gesture to the TV on Yang’s wall, the one which Yang barely used. “Put on a movie, but I might fall asleep in the middle.”

“I don’t want to keep you up if you’re tired,” Yang said.

“I can’t bear to fall asleep at eight or whatever, come on. I’ll make an effort.”

“Alright, alright.”

Lapp had no input on what he wanted to watch, so Yang picked a historical drama about ancient Earth— some flick set in a pyramid-studded desert that bore only the most passing resemblance to actual events. Yang sat next to Lapp on the couch with his knees drawn up to his chest, and his glass of brandy dangling from his fingers. The bottle was on the floor between them, and Yang refilled his glass several times as the yellow-haze sunlight in the film flickered over him.

They didn’t talk. The suggestion of putting on a movie was one that relieved them of the burden of doing so, as was moving to harder drinks than beer. They had only graduated school a little while ago— and things had been so easy back then. It was different now. Without being in the same place all the time, there was less to talk about— or the things that there were to talk about suddenly took on a higher importance, and therefore were more difficult. Yang kept running their conversation over and over in his head as the movie played.

Lapp had nestled himself into the corner of the couch, which made him both take up more room than Yang, and made him look smaller than he actually was. But it was a position conducive for falling asleep, and with his head tilted on his shoulder to face the TV, Yang wasn’t sure he was awake, until he glanced over at him occasionally, and Lapp, seeing the movement out of the corner of his eye, rolled his head to face him. When their eyes met in the dimness, Yang looked away.