Frank could trace each winding step from Heller past his house and to downtown through pure instinct; if he looked hard enough, he could swear he saw the imprints of his shoes in the concrete. Even the rhythms of traffic were instinct by now: the same minivan laden with children in soccer cleats always passed by the street corner with the fire hydrant at 3:25; Tom's Langley-mobile consistently a minute later, on every day but Friday—when he was in a good mood, he would honk loudly and roll down his window, asking Frank if he needed a ride, an offer which he always declined; all the quiet energy boiled down, really, to a certain stillness in time that Frank knew for certain was there. Branches of flowers that hung down from overhead appeared solid, so much so that they could have been wireframes, until Frank looked closely at the almost-imperceptible undulations in the petals as they swayed.

Details like these carried Frank, as if he were walking on air, through the muggy heat to the train station; Frank swept his wallet with a deft flick of the wrist on the machine and let himself into the thankfully air-conditioned train car, where sleepy men in suits listlessly scrolled through their phones or drowned their faces in their newspapers. They paid him no heed, and shortly after Frank had a chance to stretch his legs and yawn, they moved at an accelerating pace, cutting through bright skies and heading north. The train slowed as they swept past the airport and through a long tunnel, where Frank counted the intervals between the fluorescent orange lights—five seconds, then a bright flash, five seconds, a bright flash, and just when Frank thought that a nap wouldn't be such a bad idea after all, the train emerged into a new, overcast world. Concrete titans loomed on both sides of the train tracks, and the train moved slowly enough now that Frank could see clotheslines and white plastic lawn furniture arrayed on balconies; potted plants with darkened leaves; and a few mourners who after making the pilgrimage up the hill, had come back to the city below to drink bubble tea if young and vodka if old.

He had not brought flowers at home because he knew that the florist still set up shop directly across the train station; as usual, she was pleased with Frank's respectful Cantonese and handed him a dewy bouquet of roses with her sincere condolences. The fog was a welcome respite from the heat at home, and Frank did his best to avoid the cars that appeared in a blink and just as quickly disappeared behind him. The route to the cemetery was familiar to Frank by then, and he knew where Ernest's plot was by instinct; last time, he had spent so long circling through tombstones that all appeared identical, some even carrying Ernest's admittedly common surname—the character 周 engraved on all of them, even if the English text sometimes read Zhou like Ernest and sometimes Chow—that a kindly caretaker mistook him at a distance for an elderly person with dementia.

Frank brushed off the desiccated rose petals that rested on his grave and blended in with the soil before placing his own, fresh bouquet on top. He stood in silence, head hung low, for a few minutes until the moment seemed right, and began:

"It's been a while, hasn't it? Long time no see. I'm sure you've heard already, but we're graduating tomorrow. I know I said 'we' there—spiritually speaking, we thought it was wrong to deny you release, and you were such an accomplished student that we thought you'd earned it. I have a really nice speech prepared and everything. Bittersweet, you know. I would read it to you, but I don't want to spoil the surprise; I think you would like it. It's an interesting thought, right? There's one more day of school tomorrow, but I don't have any final exams, so I get to spend the day preparing for graduation. You'd think that would be the parents' responsibility or something, but it seems like in all my zeal to make everything else just the way I imagined it, I volunteered to spend a few hours laying out chairs and doing that sort of tedium. Silly me."

"Anyway," Frank continued after another long moment of silence, "memory is such an interesting thing, isn't it? I've always believed the past to be something unassailable, even when we're dealing with something as fragile as memory: one individual may not remember everything just how it happened, but put enough people together and the truth is bound to come out. When I was at prom, a few weeks ago, Mr. T had largely forgotten who you were—I don't think he had you as a student, but when the day you died, everyone was talking about good old Ernest and how much we missed Ernest, don't you think that would have stuck with people a little more? Maybe I'm the crazy one. It's fortunate that there's a little picture here of you, a mnemonic aid, or else maybe I'd forget exactly what you looked like too. I guess that doesn't really matter. Ideas are what really matter, and the intent behind them—those are what define our character and our measure as people. I should know better than anyone how those little insidious parasites can grow and grow and take over all else. So I think that's what I remember more, the idea of you, that nagging little devil on my shoulder. Maybe if you asked someone else, they would give another perspective on the truth; anyway, if I thought mine unimportant, I wouldn't be here today."

Frank had expected to see more people at the cemetery—it was a Thursday afternoon, certainly, but since when did mourning have to follow the five-day work week? All the better, he supposed, for composing his thoughts.

"Of course you know the proverb 三人成虎, three men make a tiger and all that? I think an idea, repeated enough, becomes part of the natural laws of the universe; anything like 'murder is wrong' and 'give to the poor' aren't physical axioms, sure, but at some point society has rightfully come to the point where if we reject those, we may as well say that two plus two equals five. That might be a bad example, actually, given all my activities at Heller, but I would like to think there's something to them. In front of me I see my legacy sprawled out: it's why I'm here, and why I come with guilt and not happy memories. It's my present too—this is my Thursday suit, and tell me: how many kids do you know with a suit for each day of the week? It's the present that weighs down on every facet of my being, the moments where I think I've done wrong when all around me, I see the celestial spheres of the universe reverberating in harmony like church bells, telling me that I was right! And really, it's the future I see in front of me tomorrow when the credits begin to roll, and I walk sculpted like a statue into a cruel world that only reflects on a grander scale what I've enabled at Heller, those cynical human instincts I once thought I could overcome by pretending to be 'good'. This is exactly that 'orgastic future,' as Fitzgerald put it, that I might run faster and faster toward, even as simultaneously the timeline flashes back to the conservative drudgery which spawned this entire mess. It's hauntingly beautiful, I admit. There's a certain vigor I find myself approaching the world with in my hardened temperament, knowing that it operates under the same laws I have abused for so long that they have become etched in my very fiber. I don't think you possessed that same zeitgeist of an era; I have only been cursed with my knowledge of the future that awaits me because I dared to open Pandora's box and learn what awaits me too soon. High school was meant to protect us from this! Someone should have known better, enough to stop me, but now I stand here on that sad height and survey the universe before me, as it spins, as it unravels. I came, I saw, I conquered. What a nice phrase. I guess whatever comes next will be no challenge for Frank the Ineffable. Everything comes in threes these days, doesn't it? There's that rhythm to it, like a waltz, but that might be a story for another time. I've probably bored you to death, haven't I?"

Frank let out a rare chuckle, realizing that he had spent the last fifteen minutes talking to a rock. That was what Ernest's grave seemed like in the moment: it was that rock which once had fallen off the fairy's wing and stumbled down into the moral realm, what had bound Frank to reality before he had let himself be swept away by delusions of grandeur. "Until next time, Ernest," Frank promised, and Frank hurried off before he could think of anything else to say. The train was there, as usual, and it accepted its fresh load of desultory passengers in one big gulp before it began its meandering crawl toward the land of sunshine. Juliet waited outside the train platform not knowing why it was that Frank appeared so sullen but only that Frank had promised her, a few hours earlier, that he could use a bit of cheering up that evening. He returned her hug with rare pleasure, and together they walked through the starry streetlamps once more into the cooling twilight.

Discussion Questions:

Why is the writing style of this chapter so different from the previous ones? What makes it different?

Do you think between this chapter and the last, Frank feels blame for Ernest's death? Should he feel guilt over it?

What happens in the ending paragraph, and what point was there to this story beyond Frank talking to Ernest? Particularly eager eyes may notice there are a few quotes from The Great Gatsby in here.