Gerry Schiller doesn’t regret his decision in the least, at least not yet.

He’s in the bathroom sitting on the toilet and facing the tank, one hand swiping his brown hair out of his eyes and the other hand groping around on the sink for the next test subject.

His hand knocks a small plum and it starts to roll towards the edge. He turns and just as it starts to fall he catches it. He needs the plum to be in one piece, not smushed, or it would invalidate his results.

He waits for the gentle hissing of the reservoir tank to finish, indicating that the toilet is fully reloaded. He tosses the plum into the water with a satisfying plop! He pulls the lever and watches. It swirls and swirls and swirls… and goes down!

He leans over to the top of the tank and makes a note on his pad: Plum flushes. He’s running an experiment to see which fruits would and would not flush down the toilet.

It’s 1962 and Gerry is four years old.

A short while later Jerome walks into the bathroom to discover his precocious son, seated as he is, with the toilet sloshing water onto the tiled floor. As the landlord and quasi-superintendent of their north Manhattan apartment building, Jerome takes pride in keeping his properties running smoothly. And now he comes home to discover this?!

He narrows his eyes, already feeling the familiar warmth that signals his face is turning red. Jerome clenches his teeth. He takes in a breath, but before he can begin shouting, Gerry notices him and turns around, unable to contain his excitement.

“A grapefruit almost fits down the toilet!”

* * *

Gerry smiles. He loves that story from when he was a kid. Time has polished the memory so he mostly just remembers the joy of running tests on his family’s fruit basket and not the swiftly administered reprimand afterward.

And for the record, an orange is the largest fruit that will flush completely.

Maybe one day when he has kids of his own he’ll tell them that story. Who’s he kidding? Of course he’ll tell them that story, it’s only a question of how many times.

At the moment, however, he has bigger concerns than the fluid dynamics of produce. He’s in his apartment poring over his most recent acquisition, an origami book entitled From Angelfish to Zen by Peter Engle. His second-most-recent acquisition, the Atari 2600, lies abandoned behind him.

Gerry’s been interested in the Far East since he was six and discovered bonsai in an encyclopedia one quiet afternoon. Soon he was rearranging his zen sand garden weekly, having stolen a pair of forks from his mom’s silverware drawer to fashion a rake (you just had to break off every other tine and tape the two of them together). That cardboard box filled with sand and small rocks had been his pride and joy. Back then, virtually nobody knew what bonsai or zen were. Hell, people thought he was making the words up!

Those bonsai and zen explorations in the library had led to reading up on origami. Procuring origami paper as a kid was perhaps the hardest of all. Regular typing paper was too thick to fold anything more complicated than a crane, and the translucent onion skin paper was much too thin and tore easily. Gift wrapping paper worked decently for a while until he got the idea to dampen typing paper and then press the sheets until they were thin enough to fold well. The best weight to use was that of two heavy encyclopedias.

Gerry had loved encyclopedias. He still does, though these days he prefers to pore over textbooks to pass his med school exams. Like most young men of twenty-seven, he also loves women, though in his case specifically one: Debbie, his fiancée.

They’d met in school and now he’s making her an origami heart with an arrow through it for Valentine’s Day. It’s why he’s sitting in his apartment folding this red and white square piece of paper instead of beating his high scores in Space Invaders. That Atari 2600, what an amazing piece of modern technology…

Gerry drifts back to the work at hand and continues to fold amid the neat stacks of books and papers on his desk.

* * *

Debbie walks into the bedroom she shares with her husband to find books and papers strewn about the floor. Of course her son– her eldest son (as of last year she has Josh as well) is sitting in the middle of it.

“Oy Matt, what am I going to do with you?” she asks of the ceiling and rushes over. The young mother stops short of scooping her boy up when she gets a better look at what he’s doing.

Oblivious to his mom, the four-year-old’s face is a mask of concentration. His tiny fingers pinch the paper in his hands and his eyes dart from his attempts at origami to the greyscale pictures in the book laying beside him. On each picture there are dotted and dashed lines indicating where the paper needs to be folded to get to the next picture and then the next picture, and so on. Matt won’t start reading for another year, so this picture-driven activity is right up his alley.

Or should be right up his alley. None of the corners are lining up how they’re supposed to and his paper doesn’t look anything like the diagrams anymore. He tosses the folded orange mess aside and gives up on trying to fold the kangaroo. Why can’t he get it right? It’s just paper after all. Maybe he’ll come back to it? He’d better, the animal looks really cool.

He flips ahead, past pages of diagrams for the would-be marsupial until he finds the first few diagrams for the next model in the book. He can’t read the word ‘Valentine’ above the picture, but he does think the cupid heart looks pretty neat. Girly, but neat.

He turns to pull a red sheet of paper from the package he found with the book and finally notices Debbie standing there. “Hi Mommy!”

She smiles and crouches down. “Hey mister. What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m folding paper! I’m making a sun, and a kangaroo, and a heart now!”

“I can see that. Having fun?”

Of course he’s having fun! Arts and crafts are cool.

* * *

Matt is still folding. He’s changed positions countless times already to stave off the pins and needles from sitting on the floor for so long. He looks up to stretch his neck, sore from leaning over his book of diagrams for hours.

It’s been almost six years since that day he found his dad’s origami books, and week after week he has made the hobby his own. Every birthday and Hanukkah since he made his interest known, he gets new books of more challenging diagrams. Not to mention stacks and stacks of the square paper needed for the craft.

He surveys his corner of the bedroom that he shares with his younger brother and sister in his family’s Bronx apartment. It’s obvious that this nook is his area. Nintendo Power magazines rise in stacks on the carpet and on top of one of such pile sits his Gameboy. The crimson game cartridge of Pokemon: Red peeks out from the back, though the system is powered off. At his feet lies a cardboard computer box he’d found, full of finished models. What is he supposed to do with the origami once it’s folded? Put them on shelves? There are dozens, hundreds of them, all in different colors and styles! So they stay in the box. It’s closed now, with the book and paper he’s working with resting on top.

Matt’s gaze continues on over to window where he sees the same dull grey skies he’s seen all day. The chilly drizzle means no walks to the park or any reason to go outside, which is fine by him. But it’s Saturday, which means no electricity per his family’s Jewish religion so he can’t play video games until sundown. Still, it’s not the end of the world. Saturdays are for origami.

He’s pretty good at it these days. Seldom does he find a set of instructions that stump him anymore. At the moment he’s working on his most ambitious project to date, a one-inch cube that unfolds into a savannah desert scene. He’d gone to a one-off class last week at the museum where the instructor had shown everyone how to make a cube that could come apart into six connected squares. Matt had the idea of gluing some tiny animals on the insides of the shape’s faces so they’d be revealed only when the cube was opened.

The pre-teen looks down at the small rhinoceros taking shape in his lap. “I wonder if girls will ever think origami is attractive?” he wonders aloud.

* * *

“Seriously, that’s beautiful!” Jac tells Matt for the fourth or fifth time since she saw the finished model. She’s referring to the origami koi and terrier he’d folded the night before that are resting on the half-table (they’re Matt’s favorite go-tos).

Jac’s gathering her things in their four-bed berth on the sleeper train from Hanoi south to Hue. Above them, Jac’s husband Shawn pulls his pack from the storage space above the door. A bump and a muffled curse let them know that the 6’4” sandy-blonde man is still having trouble with the sized-for-Vietnamese room. Almost ten years ago the couple had met in college (in actuality Jac had sauntered up to him and led the interaction, paving the tone of their relationship ever since) and are taking the long way home to Vancouver from Australia over the next seven weeks. Shawn needs to finish his PhD and as much as Jac enjoys cutting hair (Shawn had laughed nervously when he was asked if she did a good job of it), her journalism is what pays their bills.

Particularly interested in the couple’s Canadian origins is Yas, the last passenger of the four sharing the room’s beds last night. In his youth he’d spent many years teaching Japanese in Canada. And Germany. And Spain. And China for a time. An older Japanese man, Yas is well-traveled and the quietest of the berth by far. When he moves to adjust his seating, it’s with just the slightest whisper of creaking joints. But when you meet his eyes, they are sharp and clear under his short silver hair. Yas is traveling through Vietnam on a shorter trip, just ten days, to see some of the historic buildings and battle sites, Dien Bien Phu especially. After all, at eighty years of age, he’d been a soldier in the area when the decisive battle for Vietnamese independence from France had been fought.

None of the others pressed him after his short answers to their questions about it.

He did, however, like talking about how he had gotten travel diarrhea from drinking ice given to him by the locals. He told that story three times last night as the train chugged southward! He also liked talking about his daughter who’s raising a family of her own in Japan. He never once mentioned his wife, however. Again, none of the other three prodded for more answers. Instead, Jac and Shawn had broken out some wine and sake and Yas pulled out some calcium-fortified biscuits. Having nothing else to share, Matt had folded origami. The whole time he did so, he explained how first his dad and then he had gotten involved in the Japanese tradition. The dark-filled windows reflected the yellow cabin lights late into the night

But now it’s morning and the train is starting to slow down. Matt’s continuing on to Danang and then a bus to Hoi An, but for the others this is the end of the line. Yas sits next to the American on his bed, staring out the window. He’s all packed up and just waiting for his stop.

“So… how’re you going to carry the koi?” Matt asks him.

Yas looks surprised. “It’s for me?”

“What, you think I’m just folding this for the garbage? Rarely do I get a chance to fold for someone who’s actually Japanese. It’s totally for you. And Jac, Shawn, the terrier’s yours.”

“But it’s a dollar!” Jac protests.

“Trust me, I can spare a dollar. And besides, it’s just paper.”

Jac thanks him and flattens her terrier and stuffs it into her wallet, but Yas is still fishing in his knapsack for a better container. The train is shuddering to a stop as he pulls out a plastic bag. The guy wants to store the origami fish like that for a few days? For his flight home? Matt’s horrified. No way would that flimsy receptacle keep it from getting crushed and destroyed.

“Stop, stop,” the origamist† chides the grey-haired gentleman digging into his own pack. He pulls out a small tin of mints. In one motion he pops open the lid and empties its contents into one hand. A few of them tumble to the ground and clatter off under the beds. He sighs and then recoils a bit. The cloud of dust that hangs in the air, the dust of crushed and battered mints, stings his nostrils.

He’s got like thirty of the mini-mints in his hand, but their rigid container is part of why he’s been carrying the things around for so long. He hands the tin to Yas and after the man takes it and slips the koi neatly inside, Matt smiles. Then he dumps the candies into his mouth.

His mouth stuffed full of chalky candy, he looks up at Yas and then Shawn and Jac. Jac looks horrified while Shawn starts to grin. Matt begins to chew.

“Ahahaha!” Shawn bursts out laughing from behind his short blonde beard. “I bet you’re immediately regretting that decision!”

* * *

Matt’s starting to regret his decision to buy a high-caliber suit in Hoi An. “Come on, you think this looks good?” Matt asks his tailor. He’s standing in the second floor of Kimmy’s Tailors, one of the best reviewed of the several hundred such shops in the town (known for the craft). He’s frowning as he turns to check the fit of his custom-tailored suit in the full-length mirror.

He’s been in Hoi An four days already and this is his third fitting. At the initial sale and then the second fitting, Yum, his sales rep and tailor, had been agreeable. At Matt’s insistence that the suit actually fit (and not be incredibly tight around his bigger chest and butt), she had smiled less and less.

“This fits good!” Yum affirms and runs her hand down the lapel of her customer’s jacket.

But Matt’s feathers are too ruffled to be as easily smoothed as the navy-colored fabric. “No, the arm holes are too low; I look like an idiot when I lift my arms up!” He lifts his arms and the shoulders peek up over the top of his head. “And the butt is way too snug. Look, when I sit down I can’t even cross my legs.” He rushes over to the nearby chair and demonstrates how the pants wrack at the thighs.

“This is how it’s supposed to fit,” Yum insists.

Neither she nor Matt lets up, and after another minute of increasingly louder discussion, the head tailor comes over. Her name is No Le and she has the same black hair in a ponytail and slight frame as Yum (and the dozen women who are bent over the clothing in their laps, ignoring the argument). No Le’s face doesn’t share the same scrunched eyebrows and ferocity as her younger counterpart. She smiles and clicks her tongue at the rising shoulder pads and butt-crack-stuffingly tight seat of the pants.

She speaks English well and quickly has the pieces of the suit off and marked for re-stitching. The women share a brief, but firm exchange of Vietnamese which ends in Yum offering Matt some more free beer. The American is sweating from the balmy beach town weather and gladly accepts.

Just minutes later, when No Le is ready for another test of the jacket, she finds Matt standing stripped to his purple boxer-briefs between two wall fans he’s aimed directly at himself. The older woman playfully slaps him on the shoulder while he shrugs on the test-shirt. Matt winks back and shakes his rump at her. No Le tsk-tsks and the other women laugh. Yum leaves to go tend to other customers.

Several days and even more fittings later, Matt enters the shop with his deep sky blue shorts in hand. They’re his favorite pair and perhaps more importantly, fifty-percent of all the shorts he’s brought with him on his trip. He’s been backpacking for almost a month now and split the seam down in the crotch and frayed the entire bottom hem off. Backpacking too hard, obviously.

He walks through the bustling ground floor, full as it is with potential customers browsing magazines of different suit styles, and heads upstairs. He brings the shorts to Yum first, but she clicks her tongue at him and goes back to measuring the cloth at her table. No Le hears him out, asking for a repair. She’s all smiles and quickly accepts the task.

As is his custom, he strips down to his underwear, ignoring the curtained booths on the side, designed for this purpose. One of the women at the tables is enthralled with how hairy Matt is. His hair’s still mostly brown, but genetically speaking, he should start going grey everywhere any day now, like his dad did.  The woman makes monkey noises and starts hopping towards him. He responds by grunting and hooting back, pounding his chest like a silverback. The woman laughs and rushes back to her work.

Minutes later, Matt and the tailoring manager admire the work of the suits in the mirrors. The shoulderpads don’t rise like a clown’s nor do the pants bunch or stretch when he walks or sits down. They grin at each other. This is the last fitting.

“Here,” Matt says, pulling out a taped up cardboard tube. “I want you to have this.”

No Le opens the tube and pulls out an origami koi made from a one-thousand dong note (~$0.05). “Ooooh! Where you get this?”

“I made it!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

No Le looks into his eyes for signs of deceit, but finds none. She inspects the fish in her hand. “This is money!”

“Pffft, it’s just paper,” Matt smiles at his oft-used response to that objection. “I just wanted to thank you for putting in the effort with my suits.”

The middle-aged woman shoves playfully, she’s rather touchy-feely, and nods. She rushes over to show the other women at their stations.

“You make?!” one calls out.

“Make one for me, Monkey Man!” the hooting woman demands.

“Sorry ladies,” the sharply-dressed man bows, “just No Le.”

When No Le comes back to inspect the finer details of the suit (Matt had requested hidden loops and button holes to be put in for wiring LED strips in later), she has a bright blue bundle in her hands.

“The seam is all done up in the same color as the fabric!” Matt exclaims, “So you can hardly tell it’s there. And you fixed the hem too!” Matt forgets himself in the joy of being reunited with his now-whole shorts. Then the young man looming over her slips her a dollar terrier.

“I almost forgot. Give it to Yum. So she doesn’t get jealous.”

No Le looks down at the terrier and back up at Matt. He winks and she tugs on his beard before turning back to make chalk marks on the green lining for the minor additions.

In the mirror Matt watches her pocket the dollar dog. He smiles. He hasn’t needed a cardboard box for origami storage in years.

† Technically the term is ‘folder’, but let’s have some fun with English.

The origami valentine by Peter Engel. This one is folded by me out of a square piece of paper colored with maps on one side and parchment brown on the other. This paper was given to me by Chelsea before I left on my trip, so I found it only too fitting to fold the heart in the story from it.