by Rhys Ford
Scarlet.
I’d met Scarlet years ago while working a vice sting at Dorthi Ki Seu, an elegant gentlemen’s club that catered to gay Asians, mostly Korean. She performed a torch song act there, slinking across the stage while singing smoky classics. Tall for a Filipino, her slender body seemed made for little blood-red dresses and sips of whiskey. Her beauty was timeless, with gorgeous features, a lush mouth, and skin the color of fresh milk with a dash of Kahlua to make things interesting. Without a doubt, Scarlet was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
And she was also a man.
I’d probably met one, or maybe even both of the Korean men hovering near my house. Sadly, they all seemed to be hired not only for their deadly aim and hard fists, but also for their stony faces. I couldn’t tell any of them apart. It was even worse in the daytime when they wore sunglasses. I’d been worried about it until Mike told me he couldn’t tell them apart either, and he dealt with them a lot more than I did.
“Hey.” Mike paused before he got out of the Rover. “You going to bring Jae to the dinner with Mom and Dad?”
“I haven’t asked him yet.” I was tired, and there was a burning hole in my stomach from all of the bad coffee I’d inhaled over the past few hours. “It’s not like Dad wants me there, Mike. We haven’t talked in years.”
My father and Barbara, the woman he’d married after my mother died, put off their initial visit after I’d been shot by Jae’s crazy cousin, Grace. It wasn’t so I’d have time to heal before they visited me. It was because Barbara tore the ligaments in her ankle and needed a month before she could travel. I’d called Barbara “Mom” once. That was before she stood silent while my father railed on about me being a faggot and then did nothing when he tossed me out of the family.
“Cole.” Mike would be a good father one day. Not only had he mastered cop, but he also mastered dad taken to the line voice. “Tasha wants you there. Maddy wants you there.”
One thing about my brother, he never failed to pull out the big guns: the half sister I knew and his wife, two women I didn’t want to disappoint. I’d never met my other two sisters. This was the first time I’d been invited to see them.
Sighing, I rested my head against the steering wheel. “Fine, I’ll be there. I’ll ask Jae if he wants to come with me. Just tell Mad Dog not to count on him being there. He’s got his own family shit to deal with. He might not want to deal with mine too.”
“It’s in a couple of days, so don’t forget.” Mike got out and slammed the car door behind him. I got out and nodded to the Korean guys. Not surprisingly, they didn’t wave or smile back. “I’ll call you.”
I stood there in the rising sun as my brother got into his little sports car and headed back to his corner of suburbia. My neighborhood was just beginning to wake up. The coffee shop across the street already had its lights on, and someone was moving around behind the counter, filling up the pastry display cases for the morning rush. There were other old buildings near mine, many of them turned into boutiques or their insides chopped up into tiny apartments. A bottle-blonde woman jogged past, her breasts bouncing with every stride, but the Koreans didn’t so much as glance her way, their attention fully pinned to my building.
“Well, good night, guys.” They said nothing, watching me head to my front door. “Try not to burst into flames when the sun comes up.”
My front door was locked. It was a habit Jae had, locking the world out. Fitting my key into the knob, I opened the door to my home, and stepped in to be greeted by a tiny black demon screaming at me from the top of the stairs. She was a small cat, barely five pounds of black chinchilla fur and fangs, but Pearl Harbor envied her air-raid vocalizations. Jae didn’t need to lock the door to keep intruders out. The cat’s banshee screams did the job just fine.
“Morning, oh evil one.” Neko ignored my greeting and dashed off, a furious ebony streak bent on hell and the destruction of the upstairs bedrooms.
Most of the downstairs was wainscoted, with cherrywood paneling and cream plastered walls. I’d stripped the wood, sanded it smooth, and restained it. She couldn’t do much damage there, other than the occasional eyeing of the massive comfortable couches spread about the living room that took up much of the first floor.
Upstairs was a different matter.
I’d papered the smaller bedroom with a silk damask print the cat loved to strip off the walls. I’d bought her a gigantic scratching post with enough holes and levels to house most of the city’s homeless. The wallpaper continued to suffer until Jae fitted her claws with something he called nail caps. They worked, so she couldn’t claw out anything, and looked pretty against her thick black fur. They also pissed her off something fierce.
Now I had a small black furry pissed off cat with glittering gold claws staying with me four days out of the week when Jae slept over. I feared she’d move on from clawing up my wallpaper to chewing off my testicles as I slept.
“Hello, hyung.” The locker of doors and owner of demonic black cats padded into the foyer from the living room, and my heart skipped. I didn’t blame it. My brain seemed to have taken its own vacation, because words failed me.
My dick, however, knew exactly what it wanted to say, and was as pissed off as Jae’s cat that we had company.
Kim Jae-Min was nothing I ever wanted in my life, nothing I ever expected. He was beautiful and enigmatic, a gorgeous Korean man trapped between his sexuality and his family’s traditional expectations. He shouldn’t have caught my attention. I’d never looked at an Asian man. Never imagined sharing a bed with one, much less having another man after Rick died. Once I’d found him, I didn’t want anything… anyone else.
Jae was a loose-hipped, sensual creature, a little shorter than me, but with long, lean legs I couldn’t get enough of. His mouth was kissably full, and his dark-brown eyes were hard to see through the fall of black hair framing his face, but I knew there were light honey specks in them that caught gold when he was out in the sun. He dressed with little care to how he looked, preferring low-slung threadbare jeans or drawstring cotton pants that hung low on his narrow hips. His feet were always bare when he was home, long toes that bore more than a few scratches from his cat’s vicious playing. He preferred T-shirts, usually mine when he slept over, and tank tops that left his muscular arms free. They were nice arms. They went with his broad shoulders, built up from lugging photography equipment around.
It was a shame we had issues. I was having a hard time getting over my dead lover, and he wrestled with being gay and coming from a culture where being homosexual would get a man excised from his family. I was never certain if he understood his beauty, or even was aware of the attention he attracted when he came into a room. It was a pity he couldn’t stay mine.
I was working on that.
“Nuna is here.” The kiss he gave me was light, a brushing of our mouths, but it was enough to short circuit my brain the rest of the way.
I wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying. Not when his arms slid around my waist and his body fit up into mine. I slid my hands down, cupped his ass, and ran my fingers along the rise of his rear, filling my palms with the feel of him. Since there was company in the living room, the couches were off-limits. Heading upstairs was also out. She’d hear our feet on the steps and would wonder why we’d left her alone downstairs. The laundry room was looking good. I could see Jae balanced on the washer, his pants pulled down just enough for me to spread him apart and work myself into his warmth.
“Cole-ah, listen,” Jae said, flicking me on the end of my nose with his fingers. The -ah at the end of my name was a term of affection, but the flick stung. He’d let go of my waist, and pushed me away gently. I reluctantly let go, telling myself I was too tired for a romp on the washing machine anyway. “I said, nuna is here.”
“I know. I saw the kim chee mafia outside,” I replied, leaning over to bite his neck gently before he could pull away further. He let me, and I briefly worried at the skin before letting him
go. “Is she okay?”
“She wants to talk to you. She brought someone for you to meet. They want to hire you for something,” Jae murmured. His high cheekbones went pink, a blush over his skin, and he rubbed at the spot where I could still see the dimples left by my teeth. “What took you so long to get home?”
“I had to go watch a doctor pick glass out of some guy’s dick.” I shrugged. “Is there coffee I can warm up in the microwave? I’ll need something to keep me awake for a little bit.”
“I’m not enough?” His smile was brief, a flirtatious smirk that left me no doubt I could have dragged him away to the laundry room if I’d tried hard enough.
“Jae, you aren’t something to get me into the living room to talk,” I murmured, hooking my hand behind his neck and pulling him into another kiss. “You’re inspiration for me to head upstairs and see if we can make enough noise to get the cops called on us.”
“Aish.” It was a guttural sound, a rasp of a rattle in his throat. “There’s coffee. I’ll get you a cup. And something to eat. Go talk to nuna so she can go home and we can get some… sleep.”
OTHER than the office space in the front of the building, I’d spent the most time renovating the living room. The enormous fireplace fought me every step of the way, and it’d taken me the better part of two weeks to get rid of decades of paint and smoke. What I got out of it was an elegantly carved mantelpiece and a place I could hang my flat-screen television. Most of the long wall and bookcases were set around and below the windows. I’d tried to find furniture to match the clean lined fireplace, but I’d missed the gay designing gene, and finally settled on buying long, wide overstuffed sofas and a low, squat apothecary chest I used as a coffee table. It was big enough to host a small family if they didn’t mind kneeling.
Jae’d declared the chest was off limits for sex. We ate off it all the time. I had to give him that.
I didn’t like it, but sometimes, common sense did win out.
“Hello, baby,” Scarlet purred, standing to give me a kiss on the cheek.
Despite the late night waiting up for me to come home, she looked incredible, her skin luminous against an untucked white men’s shirt. Her trim legs were showcased in black skin-tight leggings, and she’d taken off her flats at the door, leaving her tiny feet bare. Her fingers were naked except for a plain gold band on her left hand, and the jade and gold ring on her right index finger. The band was from her lover. The jade was a gift from me. She’d been there for Jae during the hardest times of his life. I’d have bought her the moon for that if I could.
“Hello, nuna.” I used the Korean honorific Jae used for her, an intimate word from a young man to an older woman he was close to. It meant the world to Scarlet that he called her that. The first time I did, her tears threatened her makeup, and I’d earned a slap on the arm for teasing her about it. “You should have called me. I’d have come home sooner.”
There was a young Korean man about the same age as Jae-Min sitting next to her. He stood as I came in, giving me a slight bow. His black hair was cut tight to the sides of his head and only a little bit longer on top. He was shorter than I was by about a head, but his arms bulged with muscles when he extended his hand for me to shake. A slight tan darkened his skin, and his palm was dry and rough from physical labor. We shook hands briefly as Scarlet introduced him.
“Cole, this is Park Shin-Cho. He is my friend’s son and hyung’s nephew. Shin-Cho-ah, this is Cole McGinnis, the man I was telling you could help you.” She let us shake hands once more, then slid back onto the larger couch, tucking her legs under her. Reaching forward, she retrieved a cup of tea from the table and cradled it, taking a sip. “Unless you want to use your American name?”
“Jason?” Shin-Cho sounded a little bit like Jae when he was tired, his English rounded at the edges and softened with a blurred accent. “I haven’t used it in a long time, not like Shin-Ji… David. I don’t know if I’d answer.”
“Shin-Cho is fine unless you like Jason.” The smell of something delicious came out of the kitchen, and my Twinkie-stuffed stomach grumbled in protest. Remembering my manners, I asked, “Did you guys eat?”
“Musang fed us earlier.” Leaning forward, she patted the couch, urging me to sit. “You eat. He’ll take care of you too.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s sick of taking care of me,” I joked, but I’d wondered when Jae would finally say he’d had enough—but then, I put up with his cat, so it was an even trade.
“You’re not that hard to take care of,” Jae scolded me, his voice husky from lack of sleep. Carrying a tray with dishes and a teapot, he deftly avoided my efforts to take it from him, putting it down out of my reach. “All you want to do is get into trouble, eat, and sleep.”
“That’s not all I want to do,” I said, thinking about the washing machine. My wink was enough to make Jae scoff, and Scarlet laughed. I’d forgotten about Shin-Cho, and his face flushed bright pink from embarrassment. I mumbled an apology, but he waved it off with a shy, crooked smile.
“I believe, Cole-ah, that falls under the get into trouble.” Scarlet murmured a thank you as Jae refilled their cups with tea.
Jae sat down near me, settling on the other end of the long couch with Scarlet. His knees brushed mine, and we shared a smile. Reaching over, he spread out a small array of panchan dishes in front of me. The little white squares held different pickles and salads, including one of my favorites: thinly sliced daikon, and carrots in seasoned rice vinegar. There was also a deadly looking red-peppered kim chee. It made my eyes water just looking at it.
I’d eat it, because Jae put it in front of me. I’d regret it in a couple of hours, but I’d eat it.
A tall glass of iced coffee and a palm-sized metal bowl of purple and white rice joined the panchan, and then Jae carefully placed a covered ceramic soup bowl in front of me.
“What is it? It smells good.” It did smell good, spicy and meaty, with a hint of smoothness I’d come to associate with dubu, a silky Korean tofu.
“Sundubu chigae.” Jae pinched a bit of the kim chee with the back end of a pair of chopsticks and ate it before handing the utensils to me.
“I’ve had this,” I murmured, trying to translate the Korean. I was about to lift the domed cover when I stopped and asked, “Wait, does it have eyeballs?”
There were a lot of changes in my life since I’d hooked up with Jae. One of them was the occasional appearance of eyes in my food, usually from fish heads, and unpeeled whole shrimp. I could handle a lot of things, including tentacles, but having a prawn stare back up at me from my soup wasn’t one of them.
“No eyeballs,” Jae promised with a small smile. “No legs either.”
“Thanks.” I kissed his cheek and lifted the cover, inhaling the soup’s rich aroma.
I felt weird eating in front of the others, but they reassured me it was fine. Spooning some of the rice into the soup, I cut through the yolk of the egg Jae broke into the hot chigae before bringing it out, spreading the thickening threads through the liquid. A big shrimp bobbed up to the surface, its pink body devoid of shell, eyes, and legs. They let me eat, making small talk I now knew was necessary for them to have before they could get to talking about why Scarlet was there. The panchan disappeared steadily with Jae’s help, and I reached for the last piece of the cabbage kim chee with my chopsticks, holding it out for him to take.
He tilted his head to bite it free from the chopsticks, his eyes hot with something I couldn’t identify. It burned there whenever I fed him, a tingling awareness we never spoke of.
I made a mental note to feed him more often.
The chigae was gone before Scarlet turned the conversation to what she’d come over for. Jae brewed us both a strong Vietnamese coffee and condensed milk drip, and moved from filching my panchan to chewing a checkerboard cookie.
“We, Shin-Cho and I, want to hire you, Cole-ah.” Scarlet dipped a cookie into her tea, and nibbled on its moistened corner. “It’s about his father. He
disappeared when Shin-Cho was young… in 1994. We want you to find him.”
“Or find out what happened to him,” Shin-Cho added. “I need to find out what happened, especially now.”
“It’s been a long time. Why now?” I mentally guessed Shin-Cho’s age, and added a couple of years on for good measure. “You were what? Eight? Nine?”
“Ten,” he corrected. Shin-Cho glanced questioningly at Scarlet, and had a silent conversation with her with his eyes.
She nodded once, urging him on. “You can talk to him, Shin-ah. You can be open with Cole.”
“My brother, David, is getting married.” He bit his lip, obviously fighting with himself over something. “These past few weeks have been hard. I was happy for him. We’ve known her family for years… she’s very sweet. Very nice.”
I sipped at my cup. “What does she have to do with your father?”
“It’s not her,” Shin-Cho said, waving his hand in the air. “Helena is fine. It’s her father. I found out he used to be my father’s lover… about the time he disappeared.”
I set my cup down on the table. “Okay, let’s back this up. Your brother’s marrying your dad’s lover’s daughter?” Shin-Cho and Scarlet nodded as one. “And you guys don’t think that maybe you need a bigger gene pool to swim in?”
“They didn’t know. Dae-Hoon’s sons didn’t know about their father,” Scarlet said in a soft voice. “Hyung, Shin-Cho’s uncle, never told them anything. It’s not something that we speak about.”
“So why now?” It was an easy question to answer, but from the fidgeting Shin-Cho did all over my couch, I was guessing it was harder than it looked.
“I don’t know how much you know about being Korean.” Shin-Cho glanced at Jae, who gave him a small shrug. The shrug could have meant anything from I still have to remind him to take his shoes off when he comes in to He’s useless, so use small words. “South Korean men have to serve in the military before they are thirty. I’ve… I was discharged… for….”
