“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, grinning, and gesture to the two full closets behind us. “I’m just worried there aren’t enough towels.”
He laughs, and there are noalmosts. Everything is entirely, wonderfully perfect.
Before, there was little Julius hated more than being caught making an effort.
The mortification oftrying. Of struggling to achieve something before he had truly achieved it. Not that there was anything wrong with the act of trying, but he just didn’t want anyone to know about it. It felt too vulnerable and exposing and awkward, like having people gather around to watch you while you’re putting your socks on in the morning. He much preferred working in private, when nobody was watching, and then, only once he had the concrete results to show for it, acting as though that success had simply fallen into his lap. As though he was good by nature. By design.
During one of those boring speeches at the start of the year, the principal had created a slideshow with a clichéd diagram of an iceberg, only the peak visible, the rest submerged underwater.Success is only what people see, the principal had said.What they don’t see is all the sacrifice and the hard work and the long hours that go into it.Which was, Julius had thought snidely, the whole point. Why would anyone want to gawk at the full iceberg?
No, effort had always felt like compensation, which implied that there was something to compensate for—a lack of talent, maybe, a limit to his potential.
He hated it all the more because his brother has never really tried at anything in his life.
James Gong has never needed to. Because thingsactuallyjust fall into his lap. Invitations, awards, book deals, acceptance letters, money. Once, James came first place in an international essay competition, much to his own bewilderment. James swore, even as he walked off the stage with his gold trophy and twenty-thousand-dollar cash prize, that he hadn’t entered the competition at all. Only later did they discover that one of James’s professors had been so moved by an essay he’d written—last-minute, in under an hour, for an ungraded assignment—that she had secretly gone ahead and submitted the essay for him. Things like that were always happening to James.
And as if the universe needed to provide yet another example, his brother’s abstract paintings are now being sold at a fancy art auction.
“Yourwhatare being—what?” was his first reaction when his brother casually dropped this news at the dining table last week, right after asking their dad to pass him the papaya salad, like these matters were of equal importance.
“My abstract paintings,” James repeated very clearly while he heaped most of the salad onto his own plate. On either side of him, their parents just smiled, so proud, so happy their oldest son was their son, and let him keep talking. “They’re being—”
“No, stop right there. Since when did you have paintings? Since when were you even remotely interested in art?” Julius demanded.
“So, funny story,” James said, even though his funny stories were never funny, unless he meantfunnyas inextremely weird that this is something that can happen to a human being. “I was busy working on the follow-up to my critically acclaimed, award-winning, internationally bestselling novel the other day—”
“You understand you don’t have to add that description every single time you bring up your novel, right?”
James chuckled. “I can’t help it, Ju-zi. My publicist keeps reminding me to mention it in TV interviews and such, and I’ve doneso manyinterviews it’s just muscle memory at this point.”
Disgusted into silence, Julius bit his tongue and stabbed his chopsticks through the braised chicken wing on his plate.
“But where was I? Oh, so I get this call from my old classmate at Harvard Law, and he tells me he’s visiting Australia and wants to catch up, and so, you know, despite howincrediblypacked my schedule is, I make the time to go meet him. And he’s booked this interactive restaurant that lets you paint while you drink tea—”
“Now why,” Julius couldn’t help interjecting, “would anyone want to do that.”
“It cleanses the spirit,” James said knowingly.
Julius wanted to cleanse his spirit of this conversation.
“So we’re painting, and of course, as you know, I’ve never painted anything before. The last time I held a paintbrush was most likely in primary school. But there was something about the atmosphere, or the tea, and I just felt—it was like when the initial idea for my critically acclaimed, award-winning, internationally bestselling novel first came to me. It was almost as if I had been possessed by an otherworldly force. Before I knew it, I had this completed painting, and the waiter sees it andgasps, and he gasps so loudly that other customers at the restaurant run over to look too.” James paused for dramatic effect. “And you’ll never believe what happens next.”
“I already cannot believe any of this,” Julius muttered under his breath.
“One of the other customers turns out to be a famous collector who’s holding the biggest art auction in San Francisco next week, and he’s standing there, in awe, and then he grabs my hand with tears in his eyes and tells me Imustallow him the honor of including my art at his auction.”
Julius had been right. This story was not funny at all.
But his parents were practically clapping their hands. “That’s perfect, baobei!” his mother gushed. “We always knew you had artistic talent—it makes so much sense that you wouldn’t just be a genius at writing, butpaintingtoo. Oh, and you’ll be in San Francisco the same time as your little brother! He can come to your auction!”
The horrifying thought had occurred to Julius at the exact same moment. Slowly, he set his chopsticks down and did his best to suppress a grimace. “Right …”
“You must come,” James told him with an air of great benevolence. “And bring that little girlfriend of yours too.”
“I really don’t think—”
“Don’t worry about the tickets,” James cut in. “They might be pricey and extremely exclusive, but I’msurethey’ll let my own brother in.”
“That’s not—”
