11. American Jingo Raspberries

It was Orion’s idea to talk about his second Reinstatement at the zoo. From a small distance away, June gazes softly at him, her hands folded, as he bends over a small blue information post-sign in the bird sanctuary, wearing a loud, beige, graphic T-Shirt with the print “California Raz ‘N’ Hell”, rocking back and forth on the vertices of his toes with his hands sunk deep into his pockets. He bites his upper lip before reading the sign. “Shrinking stomachs. Before migration, shorebirds shrink their digestive organs.” Raising his eyebrows, he continues. “They also like to balance themselves on one leg.”

Given that it is the middle of the workday on a Thursday afternoon, there is no one else in room four of the bird sanctuary at the Smithsonian zoo, except June, Orion and a crowd of shoreline birds. Before the birds, they had seen the red pandas, the elephants, and the only two remaining pandas in the world, all of which had been outdoor exhibitions, leaving June incessantly dabbing sweat from her forehead with her white napkin. She is glad that the bird sanctuary maintains a moderately cool temperature inside, a much-needed respite. “Why do they balance themselves on one leg?” June asks.

“To preserve heat.” Orion answers. “I think it’s fascinating how even with nature and human ignorance working against their survival, they continue to persevere.”

June is waiting for Orion to talk about his Second Reinstatement. He left the Archives much calmer this time. “All I want is to visit the zoo right now,” he had said somberly, and June had said yes. How could she not? She has been reading books outside the Department’s mandated reading list on how to help friends through a Reinstatement, and it has been hammered into her brain that the proper way to try helping Orion is to probably allow him the space to open up. June winces at how all her books always instruct her to give space without telling her how to do it. There are no limits on how much time or space the other person needs; without quantitative information, an overwhelming abundance of chaotic qualitative suggestions leaves her restless with her inability to help him. She doesn’t really understand her role in all of this. Is she his Eraser, therapist, or friend?

“I love the way water flows,” Orion says, pulling out his phone.

A stream of water curls through the entire habitat in a narrow channel. The indoor exhibit has tried its best to mimic a coastal habitat. Pale, soft white sand stretches over clusters of driftwood, sporadically interrupted by saltmarsh grasses that rise unevenly and sway gently against the brisk eddies of wind from carefully hidden fans. Sandpipers dart across the damp flat pitches; plovers pause and scurry; avocets turn their bills toward the ceiling painted like a pale, cloudless sky.

Questions, June remembers. It is always better to ask questions. “Why do you love the way water flows? It’s the third time you have said that today,” June says, before hurriedly filling in. “Not that it’s a problem!”

Orion looks at her, his phone still recording. “I like to talk about things I love. You need to keep talking about the things you love, so life keeps feeling like life,” Orion says, and June knows that if she thinks a bit harder about it, the sentence and its meaning will begin to fall apart. But something about the way Orion says things, or the way he smiles, makes her not want to think at all. “When May was happy,” Orion says, “I felt like I was a bird, or even poetry. She was a bard singing me to life.”

June clears her throat.

“Do you know that I’ve heard music both times when the Reinstatement ends? It was something by Birds and Daughters this time.”

“And do you remember the music from your last memory?”

“Oh, yeah. Nathan Khan.” Orion laughs. “In this Reinstatement, I was actually at a Nathan Khan concert. This was in college, before I started dating May. I know that to like someone is a series of events, but this concert is when I think I knew in my gut that I liked May in that kind of a way. Sometimes a song is all you get, you know?”

“Tell me more.”

“We were lying on our backs, on this blanket. We weren’t actually at the concert. There’s a barrier in front of us, and trees. People are…people were climbing trees. The stadium is huge, and we have hiked up the hills behind it. We can barely see him, but there are others here on the hill. It’s packed. Everybody’s listening and singing to his songs. Who cares if we can even see him at this point? Then, May offers me this cocktail she’s made in a jar. The jar is her grandmother’s. It’s the best cocktail I’ve had my entire life.”

“What kind of cocktail?”

“Whiskey, blueberry syrup. And something else. I’m not sure. When the drink hits, we stare at the sky and name constellations. That is when I knew,” Orion says, staring at the floor. “And before we went to the hills, I was waiting at the bookstore. We’d gone paddle boating in the afternoon. She drove me back, and I showered, then went over to the bookstore to wait for her. Ended up buying two books.” He adds, his jaw tense.  

“Which ones?”

“One was about mushrooms. And the other was about birds.”

“Cats eat birds,” June says, trying to joke.

“Remarkable.” Orion rolls his eyes.

“Sorry.” June scratches her head.

“It’s okay, June. You’re not a therapist.”

“Yeah, but I’m trying to be a better friend.”

Orion regards her for a moment. “When you speak, your voice drawls a

little. I find it comforting.”

She feels a strange, throbbing ache at being noticed for something she never thought she was hiding. She wonders if Orion has been hearing her the way she hears him, learning the shape of his voice, learning how conversations end. For one small, reckless sound, she wants to defy the surmounting suffocation in her gut and ask him what else he finds comforting about her.

Instead, when she looks back at him, she realizes it is time for things to stop being about her and start being about Orion. “I didn’t know I did that,” she says and hears her drawl immediately. “I know you keep telling me that it’s not my fault that your memories are gone, but it is. I am truly sorry. I am trying to make things better.” She grits her teeth, because is she really trying to make things better?

“Thank you, June.”

“I have another question.”

“Shoot.”

“What’s your favorite music?”

Orion flashes his teeth, grinning vividly. “You probably won’t like it.”

“You need to keep talking about the things you love so that your life keeps feeling like life. Isn’t that right?” She smiles.

“Cheeky.”

“So, what is it?”

“Anything by American Jingo Raspberries. They cover every possible theme: anxiety, grief, sexuality, insecurity, burnout. Did I say they cover anxiety?” He pitches his voice up, and as if he’s answered himself in his mind, he continues, “Anyways, their production is ridiculous in the good kind of way. Some people dislike them, but the point is that it’s just a bunch of noise put together in this earnest piece of music.”

“Wow. You really like them.”

“Like, who else do you know right now that’s treating noise and discord as a song?”

“Songs are all we get.” June wags her finger.

“That is right. Songs are all we get.”

“I also listen to them. Like a lot,” June says. She is lying, at least partially, because she did like and listen to them a long time ago in middle school with her best friend. She hasn’t listened to the American Jingo Raspberries since then. “I do agree with your description of their music. It feels like they first make a specific piece of pop music and then add twelve more things to it. Sometimes unnecessary, but I guess it does work.”

“Exactly.”

“I like my existential dread with a bunch of deafening bass,” June quips.

“I love that. I’m going to steal that quote,” Orion says, clapping his hands. “I have a crazy idea.”

June raises her eyebrows.

“They are performing on Sunday. Would you like to join my friends and me?”

Usually, on a Sunday, June prefers to drive to her favorite coffee shop, get their signature honey cinnamon latte, and then read a book at a Victorian-themed book shop next to it. Over the years, many people have tried to push her to do an activity outside her Sunday routine. To them, June has offered a gamut of excuses bordering along the peripheries of: “my cat is sick” (June does not have a cat) and “my dishwasher broke down” (June does not own a dishwasher). So, when on a Sunday, June is sitting across the table from two of Orion’s college friends, with Orion and his roommate on her left, at an Asian fusion restaurant in Baltimore, she is surprised to find herself laughing at their odd jokes and even more shocked to find herself enjoying the evening, awaiting the concert taking place at the Pre Pavilion Stadium five minutes away.

When the food shows up, she carefully takes only a piece of the pork dumplings because anything else might leave her feeling too bloated. She hates looking bloated in front of other people. Of course, she knows that her fears are irrational. Still, years of snide remarks over food portions, lingering glances at her stomach after meals, and jokes about letting herself go have left her with a persistent feeling that she is being judged for every bite she takes, so even after munching on a single piece out of six on the dumpling platter, she holds onto her stomach, trying to push it in. She does not want Orion to see her bloated, which is just an excuse because, in reality, she fears seeing herself bloated.

“So, where is your seat?” Tony, Orion’s roommate and business partner, asks.

“I got floor tickets. I know you guys planned everything far ahead, and I didn’t want to intrude.”

Tony only nods.

“We are at the back,” Orion says, filling in for Tony.

“Well, I’ll wave at you if I see you,” June says, and Orion’s two college friends in front of her – Jay and Brie – chuckle.

“You’ll love the show. The last time we went, they had this massive puppet show up. Orion should have a video,” Brie, one of the college friends, says.

“Let me find it,” Orion says, fetching his phone. He leans in and shows it to her, their shoulders almost touching. “It’s after their final song. They tear down the setup on the stage, and this is Jack’s giant head breaking through the screen at the back.” He laughs before she sees it. “And it throws confetti all over the crowd. Way back to where we stood.”

“That is absurd.” June laughs with him, relishing the way he explains things with his entire body, his eyebrows rising before he delivers the punchline, his hands sketching impossible diagrams in the air. The way he tells stories, weighing each detail, no matter how tiny or grand, equally, so that most of it sounds like a hopscotch of not one but many different stories – it is so wonderfully inefficient and charming.

“How many times have you seen them?”

Orion looks at Tony. “We’ve seen them three times now. Brie’s seen it once with us last year, and this is also Jay’s first time.”

“It’s amazing. Something you can’t erase,” Tony says, his voice monotonous.

“He’s only joking,” Orion says quickly, nudging Tony’s shoulders. “Tony hates the Department way more than I do.”

“Way more than any of us,” Jay adds.

“Didn’t you egg the Department?” Brie smirks.

Tony nods. “I wish I had more eggs.”

Tony remains hostile the rest of the night. In fact, June is certain that the only time she sees him happy is when she has to split away from the group. Had it not been for Tony, June is certain that she would have at least asked Orion about whether the back rows are any good, or whether he would be happier if she traded him her floor tickets.

Her floor tickets put her very close to the stage, and the arena feels impossibly large, yet every few minutes she catches herself glancing towards the upper bowl, searching for Orion in a crowd of six thousand people. When the lights dim and the first of four openers comes on, she gives in to her temptation and starts texting him, knowing full well that Tony is looming over Orion’s phone, scowling and shaking his head in disapproval. Stuck in a bowl full of people reverberating with music, she wants to sing everything about her life to Orion. She raves about the openers and how their lyrics remind her of driving home after work, or the Seattle airport, or about how frogs roll their eyeballs to the back of their headsbefore swallowing, or how painful her wisdom tooth extraction was.

They only stop texting when the American Jingo Raspberries come on, and for the next hour and thirty minutes, June remembers why she liked them so much in middle school, marveled by how great they sound live. Each song builds for several minutes, only for the lead singer, Jack, to have an earnest, painful conversation with every member of the audience through direct, blunt lyrics that hurt because they aren’t hidden behind seven hundred layers of metaphor. She forgets to worry about how loud she sounds, how red her face has become, and though there are no giant puppets when the concert ends this time, there is a local marching band invited on stage in a performance that does end with an explosion of confetti that drifts through the arena like fresh snow. June catches a piece and slips it into her pocket.  

“I have been to thirteen concerts, and that was the best of them all,” she says when she sees Orion after the concert.

“Right?” he says, his voice tinging with excitement, as he squats and holds his head animated. She realizes that she has missed this Orion, the one who squats when he finds things exciting and the one who claps his hands together when he wants to share something and the one who has been missing ever since his first Reinstatement. To see him again, so full of joy, reminds her of the color green.

“I forgot how good they could be,” she says.

“Music is a shared experience,” he says, his eyes following the endless line of people pouring out onto the sidewalks towards their cars and buses.

“How long have you been waiting to say that line?” she teases.

“Since Thursday.”

“Knew it.” She laughs. Jay, Brie, and Tony walk a bit ahead of them toward Tony’s car.

“Floor tickets? Worth it?”

“Worth it,” she says, reaching into her jacket pockets and pulling out the scrap of confetti. “I have evidence.”

His eyes brighten. “You kept one confetto!” He squats again and reaches out to hold it, their fingertips touching.

“Keep it,” she says. This is the strange new arithmetic of her world now, where confetti sometimes felt heavier than paper.

“I can?”

“It’s for you. Yes. That genuinely was my favorite concert, right ahead of the Peanut Gallery.”

“What was your favorite part of it?”

“Oh, when they read the sign by someone from the crowd and arm-wrestled for Jack’s hat.”

“They are very good at interacting with the crowd.” He nods. “They do it in every show.”

“Really? What did they do last time?”

“Rock, paper, scissors. I remember they did push-ups one other time. But you know, the crowd always wins. It’s part of the show, and I love it.”

“Well, now, I wish I was carrying around signs too,” she chuckles.

“Hey!” he raises his arms. “There’s always a next time. Actually, have I told you about my theory that their next album might be their last.”

She shakes her head.

“Okay, so, as you probably know, the band started with the three brothers – Jack, Ryan and Adam – performing out of their living room. Then, Adam left before this tour to do his thing at Columbia University-”

“-Oh really? What’s he doing now?” June interrupts.

“Something to do with climate advocacy. He’s an adjunct professor there on sustainability and climate advocacy.”

“Interesting.” June says. “Anyways, sorry, what were you saying about their next album?”

“Yes! So!” Orion says, so excited that he’s only speaking in interjections. “Adam’s left, and they brought on Arnetta as the bassist and sometimes on the trumpet. Their new album, coming out next month, is called ‘What No One’s Thinking About,’ and some people say it’s about them revisiting their old albums, but the final track is ‘The Big Goodbye.’ They also trace their growth through each album. In their first ones, they were just kids; now they’re grown up, and ‘The Big Goodbye’ is them retiring. At least, that’s what I think.” He beams, so proud of himself.

“Do you think just Jack and Ryan might still perform? Like they rebrand themselves.”

“Yeah, but the band as American Jingo Raspberries still ends, right?”

“It’s a good theory.”

“Thank you.”

“Makes me very sad.”

“No good music ever disappears,” Orion says.

“Okay, now, how long have you been waiting to say that line?” June laughs.

“Also, Thursday,” Orion laughs. “I am glad you came today.”

“So am I.”

When he smiles, it’s more uncertain. “Jay and Brie are staying with me, and it’s within walking distance for us from the parking lot here. Will you get home safe?”

Ahead of them, Tony jingles a set of keys and turns towards the parking garage. “I’m driving her home,” he says flatly. June sighs. She has no other ride.

The inside of Tony’s black sedan is unexpectedly warm after the cool September air outside. The rumbling engine and a pine-shaped air freshener swaying from the rearview mirror are the only things in the silence between them for a while. Sidewalks overflow with people in concert T-shirts, laughing too loudly, cars crawling through intersections. She watches buildings slide by through the window, each storefront briefly illuminating the inside of the car.

Only when they are finally halfway down the highway, close to June’s home, does Tony break the uncomfortable silence. “You know you’re making this harder for him.”

June turns towards him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do.”

She opens her mouth. Nothing comes out.

“You bought floor tickets after learning we were going. You texted him through all four opening sets.”

June pinches her nose. Please don’t say it, her mind screams.

“I have spent a long time seeing him rebuild.” His words are slow. “You don’t know what he was like after his Erasure, or his first Reinstatement. You have no idea at all.”

“I do have an idea.”

“No. You’ve just read reports.”

June muffles a cry. Tony pulls off the highway, and the road widens into a boulevard lined with maple trees that have just begun surrendering to Autumn. Headlights sweep over their trunks in rhythmic flashes, and the car gently pulls to a stop as the signal ahead flashes yellow.

“He calls her May, but her name is Gwen,” Tony says. “We were all good friends. You have no idea what it did to Orion, to us as a group. You didn’t just hurt him. You hurt all of us.”

“I am sorry.”

“I know. I don’t think that’s enough. Do you?” The roads thin into quieter residential streets, and porch lights glow softly against rows of trees. Tony speaks again, before June can gather a response. “I don’t think you are cruel or dishonest. You care about him. I can tell that much.”

“I really do.”

“It scares me.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t stop being the Department once you clock out. The Department is more than a building,” he scoffs. “You’ve seen what they did to him, and you still work there.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“No,” he says gently. “It really isn’t. If they Erased him again tomorrow, and you were the one they asked to be his Eraser, would you do it?”

“I…I don’t know,” June cries.

He pulls into her street. “If you do it, he’d probably apologize for making your day difficult.” The car stops outside her unit, but June just idly stares through the windshield at her own reflection glimmering faintly in the glass.

“I promise I won’t hurt him,” she says.

“I don’t need promises from you. I need you to understand that good intentions do not protect people.”

No longer trusting herself to speak, she opens the door and steps onto the sidewalk, watching Tony’s taillights disappear down the quiet street, leaving her alone with the sinking realization that, despite everything Tony said, the part that terrifies her is that he is probably right.