Merlot never understood why his mother flinched at being called "American." It wasn't meant as an insult—he wasn't accusing her of war crimes or implying she drove a cyber truck. You'd think she'd have started acting like part of the family, even if it was the kind that drank too much, fought at holidays, and left its veterans to rot.
Freshly discharged from the hospital, she needed a cane to walk. Merlot thought she needed another week of care; her insurance thought she needed to get lost. Now she was limping around her third-floor walk-up with a cane and a grudge, in a building that treated elevators like luxury yachts. He'd brought dinner from the Chinese restaurant down the block—a small comfort in a city stingy with kindness.
Afterwards, he headed home. Finding a parking spot for his e-bike had felt like hitting the lottery—if the lottery prize was "not getting towed."
Back at his apartment, he glanced out the grimy window. Traffic snarled endlessly through the streets of New York.
On the table sat his manuscript—The Sangria War. Felix, his protagonist, was desperate to escape conscription. Merlot understood that desperation intimately. But unlike Felix, Merlot had already bled through the jungles of Saigon, watched friends vanish into the green silence, and returned to a country that welcomed him with bureaucracy and indifference.
He sank into the sagging couch, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a fortune cookie—cold, cracked, and vaguely greasy from the lo mein. Work hard. Make dreams come true. He snorted. "Sure," he muttered. "Tell that to Felix." Still, he slipped the fortune into the corner of his notebook on his desk.