Eighteen months.

The coffee had been cold long enough to leave a faint brown skin around the inside of the mug, but Matt kept lifting it anyway. He would get it halfway to his mouth before remembering, then lower it beside the mouse, where the air-conditioning pushed across his desk in a steady current and the condensation from an earlier glass of water had dried into a pale ring he kept meaning to wipe away.

Outside, Houston had settled into one of those evenings when darkness did nothing useful to the heat. The windows reflected more of the apartment than they revealed of the city beyond them: the standing lamp beside the sofa, the corner of the dining table, the blue-white wash of his computer screen. Somewhere below, tires whispered over damp pavement. Humidity pressed against the glass while the apartment stayed aggressively cool.

Matt had laundry going.

That was why he was on Facebook.

At least, that was the explanation he would have given if anybody had asked why a forty-year-old man with three clean shirts still waiting to be folded had spent nearly twenty minutes scrolling through people he barely remembered from jobs he no longer worked and schools he had no desire to revisit.

Nobody asked. That was one of the advantages of living alone.

A former coworker had posted photographs of a grandson Matt hadn’t known existed. Someone from the Air Force had shared an article about retirement benefits. A cousin he had not spoken to in years had changed her profile picture and received eighty-three variations of beautiful beneath it. Matt scrolled past all of them.

Then he stopped.

The post belonged to someone he didn’t know. One of his friends had shared it. There was a faded school photograph attached, the colors bleached toward yellow and the clothes aggressively late eighties. A woman was trying to find a girl she had been friends with before her family moved away. She gave a first name, a maiden name she wasn’t certain was spelled correctly, a high school and the year they had last spoken.

Twenty-five years earlier.

The comments were doing what Facebook comments did. Half the people had tagged women with vaguely similar names. Several were offering advice the original poster had plainly already tried. One man claimed to have found the correct person, then returned three comments later to admit he had not.

Matt read longer than the post deserved.

At the bottom, the woman had written, I don’t need anything from her. I just woke up wondering how she was doing.

He moved his hand to the mouse wheel.

Kainoa.

The name arrived so cleanly that Matt stopped with one finger resting against the plastic.

For a few seconds, nothing else followed it. No swelling music. No mystical sense of a door opening somewhere in the universe. Just a name he had not spoken aloud in years sitting inside his head with the irritating completeness of something that had never actually left.

Kainoa Wong.

Matt scrolled down. A video started automatically. Somebody’s dog was frightened of a vacuum cleaner.

He watched eight seconds of it without seeing the dog at all.

Then he stood, because the washing machine had probably finished and because standing gave him an excuse not to do anything stupid.

The laundry room off the kitchen was barely wide enough for the machines and Matt’s shoulders at the same time. He transferred the clothes to the dryer, shook out two shirts before putting them in, cleaned the lint filter although it did not need cleaning, and spent another minute matching three socks that had no possibility of being difficult to match.

Twenty years.

Longer than that, depending on how a person counted.

Matt closed the dryer and pressed the button. The machine began its low revolving thump.

He went to the kitchen, rinsed out the coffee mug, refilled it from the pot, took one sip, decided the coffee had been sitting too long, poured it out and made tea instead. None of these activities required him to think about Kainoa Wong.

So naturally he thought about Kainoa Wong through all of them.

He wondered, first, if Wong was still his last name.

That irritated him immediately. Of course Wong was still his last name. Men generally did not lose surnames through marriage, and Matt had no reason to imagine Kainoa had changed his for any other purpose. It was the kind of unnecessary speculation the mind produced after being given a subject it had not been allowed to touch in a long time.

By the time Matt sat down again, he had decided not to search.

He opened Facebook.

He searched.

Typing the name felt stranger than thinking it.

Kainoa Wong.

The letters sat inside the search field. Matt looked at them before pressing Enter, absurdly aware that this was the first physical thing he had done with Kainoa’s name in years. Thought disappeared if you left it alone long enough. Typed words remained until somebody deleted them.

He pressed Enter.

Facebook produced people.

None of them were Kainoa.

Matt clicked one because the profile photograph was too small to make out. The man was twenty-six and lived in Las Vegas. Another appeared to be a teenager. One was old enough but had been born in Oregon. Another profile had no photograph at all and enough privacy settings around it that Matt could learn nothing beyond the name.

He changed the search.

Kainoa Wong Hawaii.

Then:

Kainoa Wong Hilo.

Then:

Kainoa Wong Air Force.

There were traces of other people, mentions in race results and school programs, tagged photographs belonging to strangers, surnames repeated in family trees Matt did not understand. Nothing settled into the shape he knew.

That should have been the end of it.

Matt leaned back and rubbed the heel of his palm against one eye. He had not expected Kainoa to be waiting there. That would have been ridiculous. Search the name, click the correct face, discover twenty years conveniently arranged into albums: Christmas 2003, summer vacation 2007, someone’s graduation, somebody’s wedding, a dog, a house, a haircut Matt would privately judge.

Still, the absence bothered him in a way the presence might not have.

Kainoa had always been extraordinarily easy to find.

That had once been part of the problem.

⸻

“You always sit by yourself?”

Matt looked up.

The airman standing on the other side of the table had a paper cup in one hand and the expression of somebody who had already decided the answer didn’t matter.

“What?”

“I asked if you always sit by yourself.”

“I heard you.”

“Okay.” The airman waited. “So?”

Matt looked deliberately at the other empty tables in the dormitory dayroom.

It was early enough in the evening that most of the room had not yet filled. A television mounted near the ceiling was playing a basketball game with the volume too low to hear over the vending-machine compressor. Two men Matt recognized but did not know well were arguing over cards at another table. Somebody had abandoned a newspaper on the sofa. Through the open door at the end of the hall came the dull metallic bang of a washing machine being closed too hard.

There were, by Matt’s count, at least twelve other chairs available.

“Apparently.”

The man smiled. Not because Matt had been funny. That would have been tolerable. He smiled as if Matt had confirmed something he’d already suspected.

Then he sat down.

Matt stared at him.

The man set his cup on the table. “Kainoa.”

Matt waited.

“Kainoa Wong.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“You were going to.”

“No.”

“You should’ve. Now you look rude.”

Matt glanced toward the card game to see whether one of those men had sent him over as a joke. Neither appeared interested.

Kainoa leaned his forearms on the table. His T-shirt was slightly damp around the collar, as though he’d showered recently and put it on before drying properly. There was also too much cologne involved in whatever he’d done afterward. Not expensive cologne, either. Matt could smell it from across the table.

“Lee, right?”

Matt looked down at himself, then back at Kainoa. He was out of uniform.

Kainoa laughed. “I know your name isn’t written on you right now.”

“Good. I was concerned.”

“I seen you around.”

“Saw.”

“What?”

“You saw me around.”

For the first time, Kainoa looked offended. Then he pointed across the table at Matt as if something important had just been established between them.

“See, that’s why.”

“That’s why what?”

“Why I came over here.”

“To get corrected?”

“To find out if you’re always like this.”

Matt picked up the paperback he’d been reading before the interruption. “Now you know.”

Kainoa remained seated.

Matt opened the book. Kainoa took a drink. Matt read half a paragraph before realizing he had retained none of it.

He lowered the book just enough. “Was there something you needed?”

“Company.”

“There’s two guys playing cards right there.”

“They cheat.”

One of the men called from across the room without looking up, “Fuck you, Wong.”

Kainoa raised his voice. “Exactly.”

The other man laughed.

Matt lowered the book an inch. “So they know you.”

“Everybody knows me.”

“I can see why.”

Kainoa’s grin widened. “You say that like it’s bad.”

Matt went back to his book.

For perhaps thirty seconds, Kainoa said nothing.

It was almost worse.

Matt became aware of him in pieces: the scrape of his thumb against the paper cup, the tap of one shoe against a chair leg, the way he shifted when the television crowd erupted soundlessly above them. He had the restless physical energy of somebody accustomed to occupying whatever space he was given and then testing the borders to see whether more was available.

Finally Kainoa said, “South Carolina.”

Matt’s eyes stopped on the same sentence for the third time. He did not look up.

“What about it?”

“You’re from there.”

“How do you know that?”

“I asked.”

That made Matt lower the book. “Who?”

“I don’t know. Somebody.”

“You went around asking where I’m from?”

“No. You came up.”

“I came up.”

“Yeah.”

“In conversation.”

“You know what conversation is, right? This thing where one person says something and then the other person says something back?”

“I was doing fine without the demonstration.”

Kainoa laughed again, louder this time.

It changed his face more than Matt expected. There was nothing careful about it. Matt had spent enough of his life around people who laughed politely, laughed because a room expected them to, laughed while watching to see whether everybody else had approved the joke. Kainoa threw his head back slightly and let the sound go wherever it wanted.

Matt found that irritating, too.

Mostly.

“Where in South Carolina?” Kainoa asked.

Matt turned a page he had not finished. “It matters?”

“Probably not.”

“Then why ask?”

Kainoa shrugged. “I want to know.”

There it was.

Not I need to know. Not somebody told me. Not a reason dressed up to make the question legitimate.

I want to know.

Matt had never trusted people who wanted things from him without explaining the terms.

He closed the book around one finger. “Near Columbia.”

“You like it?”

“No.”

Kainoa blinked, apparently surprised by how quickly the answer came. “All right.”

“You?”

“Hilo.”

Matt waited.

“Hawaiʻi,” Kainoa added.

“I know where Hilo is.”

That pleased him. “You been?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know where Hilo is.”

“I know geographically.”

“That’s not knowing.”

Matt stared at him.

Kainoa took another drink as though he had said nothing provocative at all.

“You do this to everybody?” Matt asked.

“What?”

“Sit down uninvited and start conducting interviews?”

“No.”

The answer came too quickly.

Matt narrowed his eyes.

Kainoa tried to hold the expression for another second, failed, and smiled into the rim of his cup.

“Yes.”

“There it is.”

“You looked lonely.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You looked lonely.”

“You’ve known me for four minutes.”

“Long four minutes.”

Matt opened the book again.

From the card table somebody shouted, “Wong, we need one.”

Kainoa twisted around. “You got two!”

“We need somebody who can count.”

“You’re asking the wrong guy,” Matt said.

Kainoa turned back slowly. The smile arrived before the laugh this time.

“All right, South Carolina.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Lee?”

“No.”

“Matt?”

Matt hesitated, which was enough.

Kainoa pointed again. “Matt.”

“You’re very pleased with yourself.”

“I got your name.”

“You already knew my name.”

“Now I know the one I’m supposed to use.”

Matt shook his head and returned to the book.

Kainoa stood, the chair legs dragging against the tile. For a moment Matt thought the ordeal might actually be over.

Then Kainoa picked up the empty chair from the other side of the table.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking this.”

“Why?”

“For cards.”

“There are chairs over there.”

“Yeah, but this one’s lucky.”

“You weren’t sitting in it five minutes ago.”

“That’s how lucky it is. Brand new luck.”

Matt watched him carry the chair toward the other table.

Halfway there, Kainoa turned and walked backward.

“See you tomorrow, Matt.”

Matt frowned. “Why tomorrow?”

Kainoa only grinned, turned around again and joined the card game.

Matt reopened his book and spent the next ten minutes discovering that he could not remember a single thing he’d just read.

The following evening, Matt came back from work tired, hungry and in no mood for anybody.

Kainoa was sitting on the floor outside his dorm room.

Matt stopped several feet away. Kainoa looked up.

“Hey.”

Matt looked at his door, then at Kainoa. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting.”

“For who?”

Kainoa’s expression said the answer should have been obvious.

Matt actually glanced down the hall.

Kainoa began laughing before Matt could say anything. “Oh, you really don’t like people, huh?”

“I like several.”

“Name two.”

“No.”

Kainoa got to his feet. “You eat yet?”

Matt unlocked his door. “Yes.”

A lie.

His stomach chose that moment to make a noise loud enough for both of them to hear.

Kainoa looked down at it, then up at Matt.

Matt closed his eyes.

“You were saying?”

“I hate you already.”

“Nah.” Kainoa stepped away from the wall and patted Matt once on the shoulder as he passed. “You don’t know me good enough yet.”

The touch lasted less than a second.

Kainoa started down the hall.

“Where are you going?”

Kainoa turned.

Matt regretted the question immediately. The grin confirmed he had been right to regret it.

“To eat,” Kainoa said. “Thought you already did.”

Matt stood with his key still in the lock.

Kainoa waited.

He did not ask again.

That, more than anything, was probably why Matt followed him.

⸻

The dryer had stopped by the time Matt came back to himself.

He sat at the desk without moving, the Facebook search results still open in front of him. The apartment seemed too quiet after the dayroom in his memory, though twenty-one years separated the two rooms and one of them no longer existed anywhere except in his head.

He closed the search window.

Then he opened the hall closet.

The box was behind a stack of towels he rarely used, a shallow cardboard file box with one corner softened from too many moves. Matt had not labeled it. He knew what was inside anyway: old orders, discharge paperwork, photographs, letters he had never found a reason to throw away and had also never arranged into anything sentimental enough to deserve the word keepsake.

He carried it to the dining table.

The photograph was not difficult to find.

That annoyed him almost as much as the search had.

It was tucked inside a paper envelope with a handful of prints from California. The surface had gone faintly soft with age. One corner bent upward no matter how many years it had spent pressed flat between other photographs.

Kainoa stood beside him in the picture with one arm slung over Matt’s shoulders, close enough to be ordinary for two young airmen and not close enough to prove anything else. California sunlight had washed the background pale. Kainoa was laughing at something beyond the frame. Matt was laughing too, which was more embarrassing.

Nothing about the photograph explained them.

That was probably why Matt had kept it.

He sat with the picture between his fingers and looked at the face the internet had failed to give back to him.

Young. Loud. Alive in the careless way youth looked alive only after enough time had passed.

Matt turned the photograph over.

Nothing written on the back.

Of course not.

He set it faceup on the table and returned to the computer.

Searching Kainoa’s name had been private. Nobody knew he had done it. He could close the browser and let the impulse die there without having to explain himself to anyone, including Kainoa, wherever Kainoa was.

Posting a photograph was different.

Matt found a Hilo community group after several minutes of looking. The page was mostly old school photographs, lost-and-found pets, local events, people asking who remembered businesses that had closed years ago. He scrolled long enough to convince himself he was only evaluating whether the group was useful.

Then he clicked the box to create a post.

He attached the photograph.

The cursor blinked beneath it.

Matt typed:

Trying to find an old Air Force friend. His name is Kainoa Wong, from Hilo. We were stationed together at Travis AFB in California in the nineties. I haven’t been in touch with him in a long time. Does anyone recognize him or know how he’s doing?

He read it.

Deleted old before Air Force friend.

Put it back.

Removed in California because anybody who knew Travis would know where it was.

Put it back because most people did not.

He almost added that Kainoa would have graduated around 1995, then decided he was not certain enough about the school to make the post look more authoritative than it was.

Most of all, he did not write what Kainoa had been to him.

That information belonged to a locked room in California, not to strangers on Facebook.

Matt looked at the photograph one more time.

Then he clicked Post.

Nothing happened.

The page refreshed. His words appeared beneath the photograph with his name above them, ordinary as every other post in the group.

Matt sat back.

The dryer remained silent down the hall.

His tea had gone cold.

Again.

For the first time that evening, there was nothing left to pretend he had not done.

He had looked for Kainoa Wong.

Now other people could look too.

Matt stood and went to get the laundry.

Behind him, the computer made the small bright sound of a Facebook notification.