by Mark Sampson
“Fine. Three million won. Listen to me.” He leans in and speaks to us as if conveying a secret. “You three are my guys. Do you understand? I consider you, like, my brothers. When I get these ideas, I already have roles picked out for each of you. That’s how brilliant I think you all are. Michael, you’re gonna run editorial; Jon, you’re gonna sell ads and keep the books; Greg, you’re gonna run the technical end.”
“I don’t know anything about computers,” Greg says.
“I’m a disgraced journalist,” I add.
“I already have a good-paying job with the KOSPI.” Jon shrugs.
Rob looks at us, collapses against his chair, and takes on a rare posture: deflated. He seems desperate and on the cusp of a difficult realization. He presses his lips together and blows smoke out his nostrils.
“I’m also thinking of opening a Tim Hortons franchise in Seoul,” he says finally.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I reply.
“Look, I want to do something.” Then, a quick slip into honesty. “I haven’t made any real money in a while.”
A short, brutal silence hangs there for a bit.
“Maybe you could become a gigolo,” Jon jokes. “I’m sure there are lots of lonely Korean housewives who could use your … services.”
Rob looks at the ceiling.
“Rob, he’s kidding,” I say.
Rob’s eyebrows do a little two-step.
“I’m kidding,” Jon reiterates.
Rob just shakes his head and comes back to Earth. “I mean, am I wrong? There are tons of Canadians in Seoul, and they all love coffee. I think a Tim Hortons would really fly here. And expats need their own publication. They do. Am I right or am I wrong?”
“Rob, you need to find something that you can actually pull off,” I say. “Something you’re good at.”
“Besides shagging chicks of course,” Greg beams.
Rob straightens up in his chair, confident again. “Bah. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got tons of privates lined up. I’ll be fine for now. I’ll figure out something to do.”
He switches gears again and asks the boys about their plans for the evening. Greg Carey, with wormy exuberance, suggests a trip to Hooker Hill. Rob agrees, saying he doesn’t feel like “playing” the bars tonight. Jon acquiesces with his cold, corporate indifference. Naturally, they exclude me from these discussions.
The boys eventually leave, but Rob asks me to stay behind for a bit. He makes us coffee and then we head up into the hot August air of his rooftop patio. The city is glazed in a meringue of smog. Namsan Tower stands bland in the distance.
“So if I ask you something,” Rob says as we plunk down in his lawn chairs, “will you be honest with me?”
“Sure.”
“If I ask nicely, do you think Ms. Kim would hire me back — just for a few months until I get my shit together?”
“Oh my God, Rob,” I laugh, “are you kidding? She’d never welcome you back. There are still stories of your antics roaming the halls of that school.”
“ Fack,” he exclaims. “That twat — she always could hold a grudge. Shouldn’t have burned a bridge with her. Man. I’ll have to come up with something else.” He sips his coffee and then looks at me. “What are your long-term plans?”
“I’m thinking about going back to school next year,” I tell him. “Getting a teaching degree.”
“Fuck, man, good for you. You’re a great teacher.”
“Thanks. And I’m also thinking of …” And here I pause. I’ve not mentioned this other thing to a soul, but it feels strangely apt to reveal it to Rob, to make him the first person I expose to these ambitions. “I’m also thinking of writing something. A book, maybe. Partly about some of my experiences here but …” And I pause again. “But partly about some other stuff I’ve been learning … about Korea.”
He sniffs at the sky. “Fuck, I could write a book about this place. I mean, you don’t even know half the shit I’ve done. It would be bloody bestseller, let me tell you.”
“I don’t think you’re entirely literate, Rob.”
“Sorry?”
“Literary. I said you’re not exactly literary.”
“Oh yeah.” He crinkles his face. “I suppose you need to be, to write books.”
“I suppose.”
He looks at me. “And what about Jin? Will she follow you back to Canada?”
“That’s the plan, as far as I know.”
“She’s a good chick. Crazy as a bag of hammers. Lots of skeletons in that closet. But she’s — well, you know. I’m impressed you’ve been able to hold on to her this long.”
“Surprised, even?” I ask.
“Hey, you’re a very intense guy, Michael. Very focused. She’d dig shit like that. See, that’s my problem.” He sets his coffee mug down on the stone floor of the patio. “I got the same issues with women as I do with jobs. I get bored very easily. Especially with women.” He nods to himself, growing serious. “ Especially with women.”
“I’ll never understand your sexual addiction, Rob.”
“You can’t understand it,” he says to me. “I’m all about the next thing, you know. I get this crazy buzz whenever I’m with a new chick. It hits me in every molecule. I mean, I just can’t get enough. I come to every new sexual partner with a … what’s the word? Ferret?”
“ Feral. Jesus, Rob. It means wild, untamed.”
“Yeah, feral. A feral excitement. I keep thinking, Yeah this is it, this chick is exactly what I want. But every time I try to stick it out with someone for a while — meaning more than a couple of weekends — it fades away. I lose interest in a girl once the sex becomes as ordinary as going to the toilet.”
I must be making a face as images pass through my mind, of women lying down for men and being treated like latrines, because Rob says to me:
“I know, it’s appalling. I’m appalling. But this is what I feel. I’ll be in the middle of sex with someone I’ve been with for a couple of weeks, and I’ll think, this is no more interesting than takin’ a piss.”
“You’re right, Rob. I can’t understand it.” I rub the back of my neck. “Look man, you seem like you want some advice. So here it is. I think Korea is very bad for you. It brings out the worst in who you are; it smothers your better self, the little bit that does exist under all that shagging and self-deception. I think you should leave. You do have a teaching degree, right? You taught at a middle school in Ontario for a while, didn’t you? You should start thinking about moving home and doing something like that again.”
He hangs his chin over his shoulder, blows smoke. “I can’t ever teach in Canada again,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because … because I did something really stupid at the middle school where I taught.”
“Rob?”
“The kind of stupid thing where they don’t let you teach again. Ever.”
“Rob, what are you telling me?” I try to catch his eyes. “What, did you fucking …”
He looks at me hard. “What I’m telling you, Michael, is that you think you know what a ruined life is. Why? Because you fucking fabricated a bunch of stories in a newspaper? Well I say bullshit to that. Small potatoes, man. You have no clue.” He shrugs at me. “Why would I ever leave this place? A country where schools can’t be bothered to do background checks, and on weekends I get all the hot- and cold-running sex I want.”
He flings his cigarette butt over the rail. I can’t say anything to him. My tongue is dead at the bottom of my mouth.
He turns back to me. “But I’m happy for you, dude. It sounds like you got a plan. And if Jin follows you back to Canada next year, then all the better. And I’m happy for Justin, too. I genuinely am. I’m glad to hear he’s leaving. He deserves better than this place. But me? Fack. I’m not exactly oblivious to the oblivion that awaits me.”
He gets up and collects our empty coffee mugs.
“I’m gonna go,” I tell him.
“Yeah, I should get my day
started. I’m gonna go jerk off — whatshername left me in the lurch. And then —”he nods over the rail at that big, mad megalopolis “— find a way to make me some money today …”
I confront my future by marking milestones in the rice-paper calendar that hangs on my bedroom wall. You need to do this sort of thing when you’re planning to re-enter academia. By X date, I will need to have acquired my old transcripts; by Y date, have sent off my applications. And by Z date — sometime early next spring — I will know where I’ve been accepted, if anywhere. I mark the dates because if I don’t I might miss them, distracted as I am by all that Seoul has to offer. And if I miss them, I’ll lose another year of my life to this place.
And yet — there is more going on with me than these shallow plans to seize a new career. My research continues unabated. Jin’s great-aunt stands like a hunched, angry pillar in the middle of my mind. Eun-young’s story has seeped into my DNA. My research leaves me baffled and I long to question Jin about its accuracy. Thirty-five times a day? Really? Soldiers line up outside cubicles, erections already tenting their loincloths? Really? Did that happen? Could that really have happened?
This is not my story, but I’m going to tell it. I’m going to try.
The apartment won’t be the same after Justin leaves. The school will assign me another roommate in no time; probably a twenty-two-year-old naïf fresh out of a B.A. Justin and I joke about that as we sit in his bedroom among the boxed-up books and open suitcases of clothes. It’s strange to see his headboard wiped clean of the photos of Cody; it looks brand new. Justin’s just three days away from flying out to Halifax.
“Probably be a punk,” he says of this hypothetical new roommate.
“Ill-read,” I reply.
“He’ll probably go to Itaewon and get laid his first weekend here.”
“Another Rob Cruise in the making.”
We laugh.
“So how are you feeling about everything?”
He shrugs. “It is what it is. I am anxious to get back to a proper school. Back to where I belong.”
“You’re lucky to be escaping now,” I tell him. “Rob Cruise is on a bloody warpath.”
Justin just snorts. “A news site for waegookins? That guy has no clue.”
“You know, I once asked him if he knew why you had come to Korea, and he told me to fuck off. But I’ll ask you — do you know why he came to Korea?”
“Yeah. Because he was teaching at a school in Ontario and got fired.”
“But do you know why he got fired?”
“Rob was always vague on the details. What I know is that he followed some girl to Guelph after he got his teaching degree. I know — hard to imagine him ensconced in monogamy. He said he was there for a while, living with this girl, but then some shit went down. You know how he talks. He got fired from the school and, for whatever reason, had to get out of Dodge in a hurry. I assumed his story was similar to mine.” He pauses. “Why? What did he tell you?”
“Not much more than that. Except — I don’t think his story is anything like yours. Maybe I’m just projecting here, but —” I look at him. “Do you think he … you know.”
“I had my suspicions.”
“So then why were you friends with him?”
“Hey, what can I tell you? His generosity can be hypnotizing. When I arrived in Seoul I was flat broke, cleaned out by my divorce. And you know what the school’s like — it takes two months before you see a full paycheque. So Rob swooped in and lined me up with all these great privates right off the bat. And he took me out with him, showed me around Itaewon and Hongdae, introduced me to pretty girls. He taught me the Korean I needed to get around. You know what he’s like, Michael — you’ve felt this yourself. We’ve all gone through these phases with Rob. You, me, Jon …”
“Jin,” I frown.
“Yeah, Jin. But in the end, you have to stay clear of him. If you’re going to be here for another whole year, Michael, you need to know that.”
“Yeah, I do know that. But still. There’s a part of me that wants to help him. That feels like I should help him.”
“I don’t think he wants help,” Justin shrugs. “I mean, Rob just isn’t the type who would —”
The phone on the floor, our landline, rings.
“Hang on a sec.” Justin scoots off his bed and picks it up. “Hello? … No, this is Justin. Do you want to speak to him? … Hello? … Hello?” He hands me the phone. “It’s for you, I guess.”
I take it from him. “Hello?”
“Michael.”
“Jin? Hey, what’s going on?” There’s dead silence on the line. “Hello? Hello?” I roll my eyes at Justin. “Fucking cellphones,” I say.
“Michael. ”
“Jin, I’m here. What’s going on?”
She bumbles through some Korean, either to me or someone standing there in the background with her.
“You know, you may want to try speaking to me in English,” I laugh.
“ Mi’chael.” It’s only when she says my name like it’s two words that I realize she’s crying. “Michael, my umma died.”
“ What?” I’m sure I’ve misheard her, that she’s mangled her English. “Your great aunt? Eun-young? Your eemo halmoney?” All the hope plunges out of me.
“ No, Michael. My mother. Tae.” I hear her swallow a throatful of snot. “My mother died this morning.”
“Oh my God. Are you at home?”
A little sparrow’s chirp: “Yes.”
“I’m on my way.”
I cover the phone and speak to Justin. “When you go to work, tell Ms. Kim I won’t be in today. Jin’s had a death in the family.” Then back on the line: “Jin? Jin, I’m on my way.”
Barely audible: “Okay.”
I hang up, hurry out of Justin’s room. I strap on my sandals and grab my keys and wallet. “Shit,” I mutter. “Shit. Shit.”
“Who died?” he asks, leaning against his doorway.
“Her mom.”
“Shit.”
“Shit. Shit.” I open the apartment door and fly out onto the landing. Descend the stairs two at a time. Then outside to the street and off toward the subway.
Part 3
Exactly One Thousand Days
Chapter 18
Jin’s brother, Carl, is rushed home from Los Angeles for the funeral, which will occur over three days. As the eldest son, the only son, he is to act as the sangju, the master of ceremonies.
On the evening of the second day, I arrive at the funeral home encased in my only suit, appropriately dark. I’m awash in butterflies as I walk up the stone steps to the embossed double doors. I’ve been reading about Korean funeral rites on the Web and am worried about my etiquette. I called Jin earlier in the day: “Should I bring money? It says guests bring envelopes with cash in them.”
“No Michael,” she said. “As a friend of the daughter you don’t need to bring money.”
A friend of the daughter? I asked Jin, “How do I say ‘I’m a friend of the daughter’ in Korean?”
The funeral parlour is not much different than ones back home — sombre and austere, the floor thickly carpeted, pillars and arches everywhere, walls sporting anodyne landscape paintings. I wait in a short lineup that leads into the main chamber. Everyone here is in black — the men in dark suits, the women in either Western-style dresses or full hanbok. The air is brushstrokes of whispers and weeping as I move into the main room. Here, I see that the women stand together on the left side, the men on the right. I look over to the far side to see a dark curtain pulled across the front to hide the casket. A table is set up to the side of the partition and has a framed photo of Tae on it. Even from this distance I can see the severity of her features. Next to the table is a small wooden box where family members and close friends can discreetly drop their envelopes of cash. At the front of the room stands an exhausted but stoic-looking Carl. He would have come straight here after his flight landed from L.A. He is wearing the customary accoutrements of
a sangju: a tall hemp hat on his head and a hemp armband — thick and white with two dark stripes. Carl is three years younger than Jin and looks boyish. Yet I can sense the deep commitment he has made to suppressing his grief until he has completed this most traditional of tasks. I will have to wait until the end of tomorrow’s graveside service to be introduced to him: As the ceremony’s sangju, he is not to speak at this point in the proceedings.
I feel a hand touch mine.
“Hi.”
“Oh, hey.”
“Thanks for coming.”
“You kidding? I wouldn’t have missed it.” I jostle her grip. “How are you holding up?”
“’Mokay.” Jin’s eyes are all puffy, as if she’s been in a minor fight, but that’s not what I’m looking at. I find myself staring at her hair: she has tied dark, elaborate ribbons all through it. They look so alien there.
She leads me up to the front, where I catch the sharp, ancient odour of incense. As we approach the table, I see why: little sticks of it are burning on sandalwood trays all around the framed photo of Tae. Jin’s hand parts from mine and she passes me one of the sticks, then motions to a lit candle on the table. “Go ahead and light the incense,” she says. “It’s tradition.” I do what I’m told, hovering it over the candle’s flame. The tip glows orange and a silvery snake of smoke joins the others in the air.
“Now bow,” Jin says. “Bow to my mother’s photo.”
I look at her. Realize now why the ribbons seem so out of place in her hair. It’s not just because I’ve never seen Jin wear them, or anything distinctly Korean. It’s because they clash somewhat with the slinky black dress, Western-style, that she has also chosen to wear.
I turn to the photo, to Tae’s cold stare, and I bow. She just stares back. She just stares through me.
This is how it happened: It started with what she assumed was simply bad heartburn after dinner. It was severe enough to complain about it, severe enough for Minsu and Jin to offer to fetch her an anti-dyspeptic from the yakguk across the street. Tae said not to bother, that she would just go lie down. Minsu and Jin went about their business for the rest of the evening — he watching a Korean singing show on TV, she repairing to her room to read. Hours later, in the middle of the night, Tae shook Minsu awake. The heartburn had turned to a constricting force: She couldn’t catch her breath and her fingers had begun tingling in frightening ways. Minsu got up and helped her put on some clothes so he could load her into the car. He woke Jin and told her he was taking Tae to the emergency room. For what, indigestion? Jin first thought, but then got dressed to join them. Their wait in the ER lounge was over an hour. Tae sat hunched in her chair, clutching herself inwardly as if freezing to death. She eventually got in to see someone, and Minsu and Jin waited. An hour passed, then two, then three. The late August dawn began creeping up on the emergency room windows. And then the doctor came out, his face ashen. He took them aside, to a little room. They had lost her, he told them. She had passed away on the examination table.
