“Joseph Keats Jones sat on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He routinely rested here after visiting parts of the collection, which he was doing a lot during the summer after he graduated from high school. A gaggle of teenage Japanese girls sporting a cacophony of fashion accessories approached him. Though they were speaking Japanese, one of the girls turned and spoke to him in English, without any accent. “Yo, Dude. What’s your name?”
“Joe K. Jones, yo,” he answered, using a version of his name he was trying on as a nom de plume for his imagined future as a writer.
One of the other girls said something in Japanese including the name Yoko Ono, and the whole group giggled. The first girl replied in Japanese to her friends, laughing, then turned back to Joseph and said, “My friend from Tokyo says you’re the TV star Joe Ko Jono. We’d know that smile anywhere!”
Joseph blushed. “I wish, but I’m not.”
“Dude, you look just like him, though!” The other girls were all rattling on in Japanese. “I’m Ryoko. I’m a TV special reporter. Too bad you’re not Joe Ko; we could go out and get chased by paparazzi.”
Joseph felt like a dream was taking place. One minute, he’s a bored high school graduate; the next, he’s considering playing make-believe with attractive playmates. He stared at the ground and looked for something to say in the flecked stone steps. There wasn’t anything there. It left an uncomfortable pause.
“Well, at least let us take our picture with you!” Ryoko said, and waved at her girlfriends to come and sit around him. She stepped over to the handrail and snapped a photo, the plastic Polaroid spitting out a white image-to-be. Then she handed the camera to her friend and gave her instructions in Japanese. Ryoko sat next to Joseph and turned as if kissing him on the cheek. Her lips brushed him and he felt a vibration run from his cheek to his pelvis. The whirring camera motor pushed out the next picture, and Ryoko fished a pen out of her vinyl knapsack. She handed Joseph the ghost portrait and said, “Here, autograph please: To Ryoko, Love Joe Ko.”
Joseph took a deep breath that seemed to hold itself. When it finally released, he grinned, chuckled, then signed the square print and handed it to her. She read it aloud and laughed at the poetic symmetry, “To Ryo-ko, Love Joey Coe!” He gazed at her as she watched the emerging picture. Ryoko was the most beautiful girl he had seen in his teen life. His cheek was still humming from her kiss. He sat up tall, heaved a nervous sigh, then whispered to her, “I think we can escape the paparazzi in my penthouse.”
After dozens of city blocks of laughter, mock fights, pizza, dessert, and cups of tea, they dropped the Japanese entourage at a movie theater near his apartment on East 80th Street, where they watched a blockbuster about a rabbit. Joey and Ryoko used the time to make out in his bedroom, while, in the next room, his parents complained about the show on TV.” — from Incarnation

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Incarnation

by Peter Ferko