Khanh Ho is writing the first Vietnamese American Detective Fiction ever. Why? Because being the first is a power trip. In this installment, he discusses how a college friend–long thought dead–reemerges. Like what you read? Share, comment, subscribe.
Sometimes life gives you stuff to write about. Crazy stuff. Urgent. Wacky. When that happens, you should write about it. And ask questions later. Here is something that happened to me that was so crazy that I want to put it in my detective story.
I was at a poetry reading. The poet, Bao Phi, was pretty well known—a slam poet who won prizes and had been on TV—so he had a following: young people who live by their smart phone facebook updates. The place was pretty packed but I knew the organizer, so I was gabbing with him up front before the main event. And this made me visible. When I disappeared to the back of the room, I heard a voice: “I remember you.”
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I turned around but couldn’t place the face. “It’s Craig, from undergrad.” Craig had been my college sweetheart’s roommate. I saw this guy regularly—he was a fixture in my life—but I never thought much of it, because he was not the reason I was coming around to that apartment. He was just a part of the scenery. Craig was getting a master’s degree. He was a mild-mannered Asian guy. Buttoned down shirt. Steel-rimmed glasses. He was un-flashy in every way, except for one thing: he was one of those Asian guys with a motorcycle. He kept that thing garage parked with a cover and it was spotless. One look at it and you knew he drove it at night and drove it fast. It was a bike that made you think of this word: ninja.
Ninja Motorcycle
That was his undoing. The last time I saw Craig was in the hospital. He was in a coma. His father was at his bedside. And a little machine was going bleep-bleep-bleep just like in the movies. He was in traction. And me and my girlfriend came to see him. It was a powerful experience. The room was dark and solemn and funereal. We couldn’t really talk to him. We just came to look, as if his body already were in state. There was no color in that room. I remember it all as a wash of black and white.
Craig is better now. He’s still in therapy and trying to finish up that master’s program he started twenty years ago. I’m glad that I saw him. I immediately went home and facebook-friended him. Wouldn’t this make a great twist in my story: friend, ex-partner comes out of a coma after many years, gets back on his ninja motorcycle and secures the crucial bit of evidence that solves the crime. What do you think? Yea or nay?
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Oh, most definitely Yea. I’m glad for you that you re-connected with Craig and even more glad that he’s made progress. and is doing so much better. Characters like that – who come back from one’s distant past – can give such interesting backstory on a protagonist and can add a layer of interest in and of themselves.
I never thought about that but you’re absolutely correct: just like our skin regenerates every seven years, so do we too become new people, over time…with new lives, new furniture, new cities. I guess that is the premise of Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge and, also, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill…now, I wonder if this friend on a motorcycle has an ax to grind…or a secret that needs spilling…
Thanks Margot for pointing this out–the mind reels…
I’m all for characters who have had their lives ripped in half. They always come back from the edge with some kind of special perspective that lets them do things the other characters are too afraid to do.
Well, for a writer whose bailiwick is the undead–vampires and all–I figured you would be into the characters back from the dead, Thomas! Dead folks can really change the world…
Your description of the beeps coming from the life support machine reminds me of when my brother was in an induced coma, suffering from double pneumonia and the swine flu. Along with all the alarms coming from his IV (6 of them) central hookup. I’m glad your friend recovered…
Wow. So you know the experience…and I’m glad that my description was faithful enough to the experience that it struck a chord of veracity. This is a high compliment, Joel. I too am glad that my friend, Craig, survived. As it turned out, he was in an induced coma, too. I didn’t know that at the time. He told me when I saw him again. I went home and looked it up on wikipedia. I did not know what it meant.