“Symptoms include high blood pressure, water retention, protein in the urine, can lead to fatal eclampsia…what about Vic for a boy?”
“What?” I turned, not sure I’d heard her correctly.
“What about Vic if it’s a boy?” Her blue eyes were wide, waiting for me to answer. I realized then she was talking about names, not complications. Fucking fantastic segue, Lenny.
“Why?” I asked, turning my head back to the road.
“What do you mean, ‘why?’ Because it’s your name.”
I shrugged at her reasoning. “Not really.”
“If you drop some goddamn news on me that your name isn’t Vic Wall and you’ve been undercover or some other goddamn spy shit I swear to god I will get a knife and cut you.” Lenny stared at me, eyes fixed. I laughed at her threat. I suppose I could attribute it to pregnancy hormones, but honestly, Lenny probably would have threatened me even if she weren’t pregnant.
“No.” I shook my head, turning back to the road. “Nothing like that.”
“Well.” She huffed. “You can’t blame a girl for thinking it.”
“I suppose I can’t.”
“Then why not?”
“I wasn’t born Vic Wall. I was born Ryuu Ono before being adopted by the Walls.”
“They changed your name? You were five, you already had a name. Is that even legal?”
I shrugged. “No use crying over spilled milk…or shitty parents. My birth mother wasn’t the greatest so I’m not about to erect a shrine to her or the name she gave me.”
It was one of the rare times we didn’t have music on in the car. Instead we listened to the low groan of the tires against the road and the spray of the ocean against the rocks. It made the silence louder, magnified our thoughts, but for the first time in years there wasn’t anything Lenny and I were hiding under screams.
“You don’t really talk about it,” Lenny said.
“What’s there to talk about?”
“I don’t know…” She tapped her fingers against the window, drawing my attention to them. “Everything?”
Shaking my head, I focused on the windy coastal road. “My birth mother was a meth addict. She died in a fire. I was adopted by the Walls.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Will you tell me the whole truth for once in your goddamn life?”
“When I was adopted by the Walls my new father said, ‘We might have to live with a goddamn chink because your cunt is broken, but don’t mean I have to call him that. He’s Vic. It’s a good, strong American name.’” I shrugged at the memory. Looking back, my dad was always kind of a dick. The drinking made him worse, though.
“What an ass,” she muttered.
“Yeah, so, now you know why I don’t have an attachment to the name Vic.”
Another few minutes passed before Lenny said quietly, “Well, I have an attachment to the name Vic.”
I reached across the car and hugged her hand.
Standing in the supermarket, looking for an obscure brand of chocolate that Lenny absolutely had to have that instant, I was transported back to the past. Lenny left me and I’d found her in a supermarket on Thanksgiving Day. I brought her home with me, but it had taken a colossal lie to get her back. I’d been so desperate not to lose her and back it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to tell the truth.
It was surreal to be here now, picking up chocolate and spicy sausage, because she was pregnant. With my child. Only months before she’d been threatening to get her tubes tied. As I pulled out the box of chocolate, I stared down at the cardboard, wondering if I actually had died.
But then I knew better.
Because no way would I have gone to heaven.
“Congrats on the pregnancy and upcoming nuptials, my friend.” I flinched when the hand fell on my back. I didn’t need to turn my head to know whom it belonged: Satan, or at least one of his disciples.