My aunt owned a karaoke bar off the food court at Grand Century, the kind with sticky menus and a machine that hadn't been updated since 2009. I ran the sound board on weekends. That's how I met Kevin, who came in every Friday with his lo-fi band's demos and none of his own confidence.
He couldn't sing. I want to be honest about this. He had the range of a car alarm. But he closed his eyes when he reached for the high notes, and something in me leaned toward that closed-eyed reaching the way plants lean at a window.
He always chose the old songs, the ones my parents played on Sundays — the pre-war ballads about waiting at harbors. He didn't understand the Vietnamese. He'd asked me once to write out what the words meant, and I gave him a translation that was mostly true and a little bit about him.
For months we hid inside the machine. I'd cue his songs and lower the crowd mic and raise his, just a little, so the room was kinder to him than it should have been. He never knew I was tilting the whole night in his favor. Love, I think, is mostly adjustments nobody hears.
The Friday before finals he sang the harbor song again, but at the last chorus he opened his eyes and looked straight at the booth, at me, and sang the line I'd mistranslated on purpose — I'll wait however long the water asks — in careful, terrible Vietnamese.
I killed the crowd mic entirely. For eleven seconds the food court held only his voice and my held breath. Then I pressed the button that throws the words up on the screen, so everyone could read what he was trying, badly, beautifully, to say.