Famous Adopted People

by Alice Stephens

  Annoyed with Ji Hoon and his ticktocking between snappish critic and obsequious tour guide, I said, “No, really…” But then it seemed like a cute idea. I’d send the photo to Kenji with a funny little note about me being his Orihime and he my Hikoboshi, along with a gentle reminder to mail my journals. “All right then.” I passed him the phone and crouched by the turtles with fingers in a V.

  He ducked and bobbed, turning my phone this way and that. “Crouch lower!”

  “I’m as low as I can go,” I groaned. “Just take the damn photo.”

  “OK, OK, let me just hop over here. It will give me a better angle.” He made a quick leap onto a boulder that poked from the algae-clotted surface of the lake. But his foot slipped, and for a second he was comically windmilling his arms in the air before he lost his balance and fell into the water with a theatrical splash. “Oh, no, oh no!” he howled, frantically dipping his hands into the green water, coming up with soggy plastic wrappers and squashed drink bottles.

  I laughed at him until I realized what he was looking for. “Fuck! My phone!”

  He brought up fistful after fistful of slime and glop and plastic. When he saw that I was rolling up my pants to join him, he cried, “It’s no use, Lisa. There is too much mud at the bottom.” He lifted up a foot to show me the muck that encased it. “I’ve lost my other shoe to it. It’s… I’m afraid it’s gone. Your phone is gone.”

  Even though the water came up only to his knees, he was completely soaked from all his frantic splashing. Distracted from the erotica, tour groups and young couples flocked about to gawk. Several started to applaud as he emerged from the pond. “I’m so sorry, Lisa.”

  “Let’s just go,” I snapped. “This place is really beginning to creep me out.”

  He waddled after me, trailing greasy splotches of mud, legs spread to mitigate the chafing of wet cloth on his tender parts.

  After settling me at a snack stand with a bottle of beer, Ji Hoon went to change his clothes, and by the time he returned, I was on my second bottle. The gentle alcoholic buzz, the drained aftermath of the surge of energy that had swept through me with the loss of my phone, and the rocking of the car as it snaked around the peak of Hallasan lulled me to sleep. Next thing I knew, he was gently stroking my shoulder. “We’re here, Lisa.”

  For the second time that day, I wiped drool from my wrinkled cheek. Squinting into an interstellar explosion of sunlight off metal and glass, I saw we were in a sea of cars, a huge parking lot that seemed to stretch for miles. “Where’s here?” I asked, my voice phlegmy from sleep.

  “At the resort,” he said. “I’ve already checked us in.” He stepped away to light a cigarette. “You can freshen up, and then we’ll go to the restaurant in time for sunset.”

  I ran my tongue over my fuzzy teeth. “Yeah, OK.”

  As we made the long trek across the parking lot, Ji Hoon confessed, “I probably should’ve told you this earlier. I haven’t been totally honest with you.”

  “Mmm?” I wiped a small nugget of crust from the corner of my eye.

  “Well, because this is a free trip… Well, I’m sorry to say… It’s just that…”

  “Oh my god, Ji Hoon, just spill it.” I sighed, exasperated. “They’ve put us in a linen closet? We have to wash dishes? What?”

  “No, it’s just…” With a nervous gesture, he brushed his hair forward with his fingers to hang in a veil over his eyes. “We are sharing a room.”

  About to say something lewd, I realized that he was intensely embarrassed and took pity on him. The hotel reared over us, a concrete monstrosity built to look like a cruise ship, with a jutting prow, circular porthole windows, and funnels poking up from the roof. “Wow! This place is hideous.”

  “No, no, inside you will see it is very nice, very luxurious,” Ji Hoon hastened to assure me. “And the view is spectacular. You will see. It looks different from the other side, the side that faces the ocean.”

  Emerging from a choking fog of exhaust spewing from the tailpipes of a long line of coach buses idling in the front driveway, we plodded through doors held open by men dressed like Edwardian fops in velvet suits with frilly shirtfronts. The lobby was a churning mass of holiday-making humanity: elderly women dressed in identical track suits and floppy hats; young couples with the strained look of people at a dinner party who were exhausted from being bright and bubbly and were ready to go home; haggard mothers chasing chubby children who were demanding more, more, more; meticulously groomed matrons in Chanel suits and Kate Spade kitten heels clutching the chains of their Dior handbags; stylish twentysomethings smoking cigarettes and flirting furiously. Ji Hoon ushered me into an elevator, which we shared with two doll-like women who turned to the mirrored walls to rearrange gingery locks of hair while surreptitiously checking out Ji Hoon, who also looked in the mirror, not to check out the girls, but to check himself out, running his fingers sideways through his floppy bangs as he looked with seductive earnestness at his own reflection. It wasn’t that he was vain; he was merely checking his equipment, like a soldier cleaning his rifle or a cook sharpening his knives, making sure everything was in good working order.

  Our room was all but filled by two queen-sized beds with ridiculously froufrou headboards of tufted satin framed by gilded cherubs. A picture window looked out on the parking lot. “Mountain view,” he said, and lamely waved his hand at the distant peak of Hallasan that hung over the carpet of cars.

  “I guess this is the suite for honeymooners who don’t get along,” I said, giggling and bouncing on one of the beds.

  “It is true, not all honeymooners get along,” he said, throwing his bag onto the other bed. “We still have arranged marriages here in Korea, through professional matchmakers.”

  Flopping back against the headboard, I asked, “What about you and your girlfriend?”

  “What about me and my girlfriend?” he echoed, his voice prickly and churlish.

  “Are you getting married?”

  He sat down on his bed with a heavy sigh. “Yes, we will get married.”

  “You don’t sound very happy about it!” I teased him.

  “Happy?” He groped the outline of his cigarette packet in his shirt pocket. “It is our duty. We have known each other since we were born. Our families are very close, and it has always been understood that she was for me and I was for her.”

  “Eww.” I grimaced, turning my bottom lip inside out. “It’s kind of like marrying your sister.”

  He stuck a cigarette wearily between his lips. “No, no, nothing like that. It’s more like… marrying the daughter of my father’s business partner.”

  “Hey,” I gasped, “are you a member of the same chaebol as Jonny?”

  A rough laugh that I had never heard before. “My family is very midlevel compared with Jonny’s.” He lit his cigarette, blew out a massive cloud of smoke that curled and writhed in the late-afternoon sunlight. “Better hurry up and get ready. It would be a great pity if we missed the sunset.”

  Driving to the restaurant along a curvy road that hugged the coast, Ji Hoon seemed agitated, going too fast at times, then at others, trailing slowly along, as if lost in thought. I imagined he was thinking about his girlfriend. “What’s her name?”

  He jumped slightly, the car swerving over the double line. “Who?”

  “Your girlfriend.”

  His jaw clenched, muscle rippling under flawless skin. “Never mind.”

  “I’m just trying to make conversation!” I laughed.

  “Never mind,” he repeated menacingly.

  I shrugged and turned up the radio, but that only made the static crackle more loudly over the faint undercurrent of pop music. He lurched a little too quickly around a curve, and I slammed into the hard molded plastic of the passenger door. “Ouch,” I murmured, rubbing my arm. “I miss the Audi.”

  Throwing his head back, he began to howl with laughter, banging the heels of his hands on the steering wheel.

  “Hey, watch it!” I ca
utioned, as he drove perilously close to the edge of the road, from where it was a sharp, jagged drop into the sea.

  Veering off the paved road onto a rough trail of two bald lines worn into a downward-sloping field of grass, he whooped, “An Audi is a good thing, isn’t it?”

  Stones spat up from the wheels as we descended, the car bouncing wildly.

  “You know what else is good?” His voice dipped low as the car heaved over a big hole. “A Rolex. A Rolex is mighty fine. As is a sushi banquet and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label.”

  We pulled up in front of a traditional wooden-framed house with mud-daubed walls, rice-paper windows, and a thatched roof. As he cut the engine, Ji Hoon reverted back to tour guide mode, explaining in a plangent croon, “This place is a hidden treasure that most tourists don’t know about. They only serve local specialties, like obunjagi ttukbaegi, which we will have tonight. The obunjagi is like a clam, found only in the waters of Jeju-do.”

  He directed me inside and we passed through what looked like someone’s living room, a short-legged table with cushions scattered around it squatting in the center, a glass-fronted cabinet crowded with porcelain figurines in the far corner, a gigantic flat-screen TV dominating one wall. A woman scurried across the dark shine of the wood floor, bent low in greeting, and led us through a large room, the smell of garlic and red chili paste mingling with the salt-rimed sea air, past a group noisily enjoying dinner, their table a mosaic of little dishes and large platters, and onto a porch that seemed to be suspended over the water, where ours was the only table.

  “You don’t mind sitting Korean style, do you?” Ji Hoon asked apologetically.

  “I think I’ll manage,” I grunted, collapsing on the floor, grateful that I had passed over a tight, short skirt for an ankle-length dress.

  Settling next to me, Ji Hoon flashed me a teasing smile. “You always think you can manage. But we’ll see how Korean you really are with this meal.” As the woman poured soju for us, he explained, “We don’t order from a menu. They just bring us whatever they have prepared today.”

  The fragile rims of our shallow cups kissed lightly before meeting with our pursed lips. The woman, moving silently and discreetly, started placing dishes on the table.

  “Bingtteok,” Ji Hoon explained, pointing to pillows of rolled-up white pancake, ends draping over the edge of the plate. “Like a daikon crepe. And this one is called hanchi mulhoe. It is”—he pulsated his hand in the air—“a sea creature. Like a squid.”

  “Jellyfish, perhaps?” I nibbled on it, red pepper sauce dripping from the sliver of milky, translucent flesh. “Mmm, not bad. Tender.”

  “It is also good for hangovers,” Ji Hoon mumbled as he stuffed bingtteok into his mouth.

  “Oh, well, we’ll have to come back in the morning.” I laughed, tipping another cup of soju empty. “What’s that, steak tartare? I love raw beef!”

  A wicked smile hovered on his face. “It’s raw, yeah. Try it!”

  Tweezing a slice of the marbled meat between my chopsticks, I brought it to my mouth. “It’s really gamey,” I said as I chewed. “Definitely not beef. Oh god, please don’t tell me it’s dog.”

  He snickered at my squeamishness. “It is horse.”

  “Oh, Flicka!” I gagged, taking a hasty swig of soju.

  The woman did not stop bringing food until the table was covered with plates, making it difficult to find a place to put our tiny cups of soju. Meanwhile, the sun sank to its knees right in front of us, as if humbly paying tribute, flaming the wispy clouds to a neon tangerine, which deepened into a golden bronze threaded with mauve and violet before bruising to an eggplant purple. The breeze turned cooler, bringing a hint of the darkness that was creeping across the sea. Ji Hoon was very attentive to my soju glass and ordered bottles of beer as well, and we inched closer and closer as we leaned across each other to reach the various dishes, until we were hip against hip, the soft swell of my upper arm nestled against the warm crook of his armpit. Leaning against him, I sighed. “It’s really beautiful here. I must say, I was a little skeptical about this trip; that travel agency was kinda weird and I half expected to wind up in a dingy dormitory with a bathroom down the hall. But so far, it’s just been great. Even losing my phone.” I began to giggle, butting him gently with my shoulder. “You looked so funny, splashing about in the water.”

  Plucking an obunjagi from its earthenware pot to scoop the flesh, which looked like curdled snot, from the shell with his bare fingers, he murmured, “I am so sorry about that. I mean, it’s your phone! All those numbers, lost.” He extended the jellied meat toward me, and I ate it from his fingers.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” I mumbled, mouth full of the surprisingly supple flesh, thinking more about his fingers, and how they’d feel stroking my belly and breasts, than my phone. “I know how to get in touch with all the people who really matter to me. Except for Kenji.”

  This time it was he who was nudging me with his shoulder. “Who’s Kennnjiiii?” He drew the name out with a schoolyard playfulness.

  “He’s a guy I know in Fukuoka.”

  “Boyfriend?” he teased with a sideways smile.

  “I wouldn’t call him that,” I hedged. What would I call him? What would he call me?

  “But you like him?”

  I took a swallow of soju and then washed it down with beer. “I like him well enough, but a relationship is out of the question. But I did say I’d call him, and now…” There was no way for me to get in touch with him. I didn’t know if he had an email address or a Facebook page or a Twitter account. I couldn’t even really remember his last name. Hasawa? Hasagawa? Higawa? “Shit,” I mumbled, and dipped a pheasant dumpling in vermilion chili sauce before sucking it into my mouth.

  “It’ll be OK, Lisa.” Ji Hoon patted my knee, then let his hand stay there, warm and moist through the thin fabric of my dress. “If it’s meant to be, you’ll find a way to get in touch with him again.”

  Kenji who? I could barely remember what he looked like as Ji Hoon’s face hovered so close to mine, his smile intimate and possessive. His face came closer and closer until his lips just brushed the tip of my nose, then he must have thought of his girlfriend because he quickly jerked his body back. He poured more soju, snipped up a morsel with his chopsticks, stared moodily out into the night. The last hint of color had been blotted from the heavens, and now the horizon between water and sky was almost indistinguishable.

  “It is supposed to be a moonless night, so we should get a good view of the stars,” he murmured. Then, to my surprise, he dropped his head forward onto his chest, and his shoulders began to heave.

  “Ji Hoon?” I uncrossed my legs and knelt beside him. “Are you OK?”

  He must have been more attached to his girlfriend than he let on. His back muscles tensed beneath my kneading fingers. His skin was soft, just a bit sticky.

  He stroked his face hard with his open palms, fuzzing his eyebrows into wild peaks. “I guess I just had too much to drink.” His voice was soft and dry, like an autumn wind whispering through desiccated cornstalks. “Why don’t you and I go for a walk? There is a pier that we can walk out on. You can see phosphorescent creatures swimming about, like stars trapped under the water.”

  “OK,” I murmured. “I just need to make a quick stop into the ladies’ room first.”

  I held on to his shoulder to balance myself as I wobbled onto my feet. Our server scurried over to personally escort me to the bathroom. The dining room was mostly empty now; there was only one other couple, who ate in stony silence in the dimly lit room. It surprised me that a place with such delicious food had so few customers, but the tourists probably ate at their gaudy, gargantuan resorts. The toilet was a squatter, so I carefully gathered up the hem of my dress, having learned the hard way how much spatter a really full bladder can make. My escort startled me when I exited, waiting to solemnly lead me back to our table.

  “Here.” Ji Hoon handed me a glass of soju. “One for
the road.”

  I lurched forward for the glass and polished it off without a second thought, wiping my arm across my mouth, the drink more bitter than I had remembered.

  “You better take your sweater, it will be cold on the pier,” he advised, holding it by the shoulders for me to slip into.

  The woman handed Ji Hoon a flashlight and we stepped out into the darkness. The flashlight beam carved a tunnel of light that ended with a splat on the path. “Hold on to me. It’s a bit rocky.”

  “And I’m drunk.” I giggled as I eagerly grabbed on to his arm.

  “Careful, careful,” he cautioned.

  A giant bullfrog hopped sluggishly across our path. The breeze slurred through the space between our bodies, wafting away some of the soju fumes. It was cold out in the full wind, and I shivered closer to him. My toes knocked against wood. “Step up,” he said, and we were on the pier. It went a long way out over the sea, our footsteps thudding with a hollow, forlorn cadence, the two of us hooding our shoulders forward against the onslaught of the wind. Ji Hoon shone the light on a decrepit motorboat tied to one of the posts of the pier. “The family catches much of the seafood for the restaurant themselves,” he noted in his formal tour-guide voice.

  When we reached the end, he waved the flashlight in sweeping arcs over the water, the beam probing a silvery finger into the night’s depthless void. “Water looks fairly calm despite the wind,” Ji Hoon observed, grazing the light over the tufted waves, back and forth, back and forth. “That’s good.”

  Then he shut off the flashlight and we stood in silence. At first it was like being blind, black on black, but then I caught the onyx gleam of restless water and the glinting coil of the Milky Way rolling like barbed wire over us. “It’s beautiful,” I whispered. My hand sought his, or his mine, and they fit together in a warm knot.

  “Lisa,” he whispered, his other hand cupping my neck and then sliding down my back, drawing me closer to him.

  “Yes, Ji Hoon,” I murmured, pushing my lips out.

  But not yet. He leaned away from me a little, let go of my hand. “Lisa…” A tremulous finger traced my hairline, then down my nose, brushing my lips and slowly stroking the shallow cleft of my chin. Was it his touch making my legs feel rubbery? All of a sudden, my whole body felt deboned. “I always knew I would find you, Lisa. I knew you were out there and would come to me. I just had to be patient.”