The Sense of Wonder by Matthew Salesses

Author:Matthew Salesses
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2023-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

5. The Dunk Contest

Carrie was supposed to arrive with plenty of time before the dunk contest, which had been my favorite part of All-Star Weekend as a kid. But when I woke, I had two texts from her: the first said her plane needed maintenance and the second said she had been delayed and wouldn’t get in until after the dunk contest started.

It was maybe three in the afternoon. I had time to get lunch and then head over to the Staples Center alone. It just didn’t seem worth it. Each year, the dunk contest got more and more repetitive, the contestants risked less and less, and I grew further and further from my childhood. Seeing it by myself already sounded pathetic. I wondered whether I should visit my dad and sisters instead, who all lived south of LA now in Fullerton, with other Koreans who had made enough to get out. In K-town, my dad had run a law firm serving Korean businesses, mostly defending them against the city or big corporations. He had lost a lot but won enough. It was something to be embarrassed by as a teenager and proud of as an adult. I almost texted him before I realized that I should text one of my sisters instead. I texted my biggest noona, but she said Dad wasn’t home and wouldn’t be back until late. He’s hiking with some other old people, she wrote. You know how they are. He’s 100% ahjusshi now.

Should I visit you then? I texted.

We’re all busy, she wrote back. She meant all the sisters—they often spoke like that, like they were a unit and I was the odd one out.

Do you, she texted.

Don’t you have to do stuff before the game? she texted.

I was just trying to avoid Powerball! and whatever happened the night before. I still didn’t know what that was. In the end, he had taken a woman back to the hotel and I hadn’t. All night, I had dreamt that Carrie was in the noraebang, that she was the one getting me off. When I woke, alone, it was with a fist in my chest, pounding, like I was grieving. What was it that I had lost in that moment, other than my erection? Why did Powerball! get so pissed at me? It was a mystery I really did not want to solve. I wanted it to go away.

Carrie got to the hotel in time for a late dinner. Over dessert, she asked after Sung and Ducky—Ducky had argued her way onto the trip, though they hadn’t planned for her to go. I hadn’t seen either of them. Carrie said she had heard from Ducky that Ducky was monitoring her husband’s phone for notifications, even holding off her bathroom trips as long as she could so as not to miss anything. “She’s holding her pee in! That seems bad.”

I thought cruelly that Ducky and Sung’s main problem was that they hadn’t broken up a long time ago.

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