Page 92 of From Beijing, With Love

Their noodles were delivered in comically large bowls—curry udon with pork katsu for Daniel and kitsune udon for Poppy. “Yours looks better,” Poppy said as she snapped a photo of their food.

“I’ll trade you,” Daniel said. He had been terrible company over the past week, and he wanted to make it up to her.

“Swapsy halfway?”

“Whatever you want, Princess.”

“I’m a queen,” Poppy said, like he’d known she would. She gave his knee a squeeze. “Good to have you back.”

“I’ve been here the whole time,” Daniel said with a laugh, even though he knew what she meant. He felt as if he had just woken up from a fever dream, one about a beautiful Chinese boy in a white linen shirt with a lopsided smile.

His curry udon tasted of spices, but it wasn’t spicy. Rich, sweet, the sauce coated each strand of handmade noodle like a velvet glove. The panko-breaded pork katsu added crunch and decadence.

A man of his word, he swapped his bowl with Poppy halfway through. Her kitsune udon had a light broth that tasted of soy, sugar, and the sea. It was good in a whole other way.

“How does this stack up to the noodles of your people?” Poppy asked with a grin.

“Well, that zhajiangmian I had in Beijing will forever be the noodles of my dreams,” Daniel said, remembering the narrow street hidden in a maze of hutongs lined with jasmine blossoms.

Something warm expanded in his chest at Poppy’s words—your people. Maybe they were. Instead of being half of one thing and half of another, maybe he could be both. The math worked out a whole lot better that way.

“True, zhajiangmian slaps.”

“I’ll learn to make it for you if you move back to Amsterdam.” Daniel blushed at his inadequate proposal. Poppy was thriving in the city where zhajiangmian was from, so his offer of a homemade version was hardly an incentive to lure her back home. But this had been the basis of their friendship for a decade. He did the cooking, feeding, and worrying, and she was his warrior when those worries got to be too much.

“Deal,” Poppy said instead of making fun of him. Her cheeks were rosy from the cocktail, and her eyes shone. “But you better make it authentic.”

“You got it,” Daniel said with a smile, his eyes a touch glassy.

Standing under the scorching shower jet, Daniel scrubbed the day off his body. Afterward, he curled up in bed with the phone clutched in his hand. As much as he wished, the day wasn’t over yet. There was something he had to do.

A wave of queasiness washed over him as he held the metallic rectangle between his thumb and index finger. It was the new Japanese SIM card, meant to replace the Chinese one that had stopped working when he left China—the same one that had put him in a protective bubble. A bubble he couldn’t live in forever.

It was time to deal with the monsters of his old life.

Daniel switched the SIM cards and tossed the Chinese one in the trash. The notifications piled up as all the apps that had been blocked by the Great Firewall came screaming back. He skimmed the never-ending notifications, his heart drumming faster against his rib cage.

He swiped them away one by one, until two remained: a voice note from Taylor (the definite ex-boyfriend) and an email from Willem (the maybe ex-manager). Each one stood like an elephant, competing for his headspace while sucking the air out of the room.

Daniel didn’t know which elephant to confront first, but he believed in being prepared. His weapon of choice was a big-boy-sized glass of wine, courtesy of the minibar. He downed a generous sip (some might even call it a gulp), wincing at the tartness.

As his finger hovered over his manager’s email, his brain ever-so-helpfully cataloged all his faults. One, he had unleashed a command that deleted, well, almost everything. Two, he had interrupted his well-deserved dressing-down from his manager’s manager’s manager, Philip-never-Phil, with a little panic attack. Three, instead of sitting his ass at home during his mandatory sabbatical, he’d flown to another continent. Four, he’d gone dark in China and left his long-suffering manager on read.

Given all that, Daniel had an inkling of what Willem’s email might be about.

Here’s to funemployment. Daniel raised his glass to mark the moment before opening the email. The prospect of having to sell a kidney to afford his rent circled his mind once or twice.

Willem van der Berg:

Daniel, you probably didn’t see my last email. Don’t worry about it. The team filled me in on what actually happened. Let me start by saying that Philip’s behavior was unacceptable, even if a mistake was made. He had no right to yell at you, let alone threaten your job. I can’t say too much over email, just know that I got your back with HR.

Take the time you need to get your mental health in order. There’s no rush. Reach out when you are ready, and we’ll chat then.

Daniel reread the email once, twice, three times, feeling dizzy. It wasn’t funny, but he laughed. He had to.

His broken brain excelled at spinning up stories, each one more colorful than the last. Like warped glasses, they distorted the world and made it a shade darker. There were times that his head was right on the money, but there were also a whole lot of times that life proved him wrong.

Yes, he’d made a serious mistake at work, but there were recovery mechanisms in place. Because, well, as the cliché went, mistakes happened. No, it didn’t mean he deserved the screaming, the profanity, or the threat on his job. And no, even if he lost his job, he didn’t need to sell a kidney just to afford rent. The part of his brain that disagreed could fuck right off.