In Real Life

by Lawrence Tabak

  One sign is blazing a Starfare logo and an ANC computer logo with a moving scene from a game. I turn to Kim and say, “Very cool,” but he is gesturing wildly, so I look again, just as the screen blinks.

  “Holy crap,” I say. Because there, on a hundred-foot sign, is a picture of me, with a backdrop from one of the Starfare maps. I’m looking towards the map, as if playing. Underneath is a streaming row of Korean characters.

  I turn toward Kim and stutter something.

  He jabbers something excitedly.

  “What the hell does it say?”

  The young Kim shakes his head and leans forward and says something to the older Kim, who has been riding quietly up front. They chat for a second.

  “Big star,” Kim says.

  “Me? How can I be a big anything? I haven’t done a thing.”

  Kim looks at me with a proud grin and says again, “Big star!”

  All I can think is that I better be getting into training. Immediately.

  The car drives another twenty minutes from downtown. When we get into my apartment the doorman sets down the luggage and bows to Kim before leaving. The door snaps shut. Kim reaches past me and flips a switch and I can see the rest of the place. It’s a narrow room, with a tiny kitchen to the right and an open floor with a big screen TV on the left. A curtained window at the end.

  I hear the door opening and look up and see Coach Yeong, marching straight towards me, his hand held out as stiffly as if he were pointing a gun at me.

  “Very nice, no?” Yeong says, grabbing my hand and shaking. “No need to share, like other players. Americans prefer single room, is this not correct?”

  He walks all around the little apartment opening cabinets and displaying features like he personally designed the place. Finally he pauses before a pair of narrow doors and, with a flourish, opens them up to two stacked white appliances.

  “Washer and dryer!” He says. “Very convenient for younger player!”

  I smile like I actually know what he’s talking about. Yeong hands me a key card, which is attached to a Starfare key ring.

  “I am in apartment 1321,” Yeong says. “Not a single.” Then he snickers. “I have wife and two children.”

  “You get rest. Team breakfast in Suite 1201, end of hall. 8 a.m. No worries,” he says, one hand on the door. “We take all your cares.”

  Just like that Yeong and Kim are gone. I flop down on the couch across from the black sheen of the TV screen. Exhausted and a little dizzy. My picture on the huge billboard etched into my mind like a burned LED screen. What was that all about? I knew I was just an experiment, a long shot. A long way, at least a year, maybe two, from playing with the top pros. If ever.

  I look at my cell phone. Before I left I checked online and the AT&T site said that the phone would work in Korea. But as far as I could figure it would cost a fortune for local calls, and worse for international. However, the time says 6:20 p.m., so I’m connected. I figure it’s 3:20 in the morning back home. The day before. Crap, it’s confusing.

  Realizing that if I fall asleep now I’ll be totally screwed up in local time, I find the remote on the table next to the couch. Whip through about twenty channels when I get to one that is a Starfare game, with a commentator prattling on in Korean. I watch for a bit and, during a commercial, find a second channel with two Korean guys playing WoW. I run through all the channels, and find two in English before I flip back to the Starfare game. I turn down the Korean commentary and watch the first game. I had heard about the gaming channels, but it’s still a bit of shock, actually watching one.

  When the first game winds down I check out the refrigerator. It’s stocked with what I think is bottled water and some cans that might be some sort of soda or sports drink. One cupboard has some food in it and I take out a couple rice cakes and grab bottle of water. The cakes don’t taste like anything and the water has something off about it, but I drink it anyway.

  Behind a little desk in the corner I find an Ethernet cable and so I unpack my laptop and plug in. I’m amazed I get online without a hitch. I open my email account and find a bunch of new mail, but nothing from Hannah. Garrett has a short note wishing me luck, Mom has a long one telling me all about a new yoga class she’s started. Even Dad has sent me a good luck note. I send out a reply to my family list, letting everyone know I got in safely. Then I decide to send an email to Hannah. I write about twenty different versions and finally send one with a subject line that says, “Hi from Korea” and a message that says, “Korea is amazing. Everyone is my height. Write me back if you want. Would be nice to Skype sometime.”

  Even though I have a piece of tape over my webcam. Through a webcam I look even dorkier than normal, my face blown up like it’s been inflated. I’m staring at my computer screen, thinking about Hannah when an IM pops up. I shake my head in disbelief.

  STOMPAZER: HEY PUTZ HEARD UR IN KOREA…GUESS WHO BEAT U HERE…TRYING NOT TO PUKE, SEEING UR POSTERS & ADS NEVER KNEW HOW MUCH U LOOKED LIKE A GRL…BUT THAT’S WHY THEY LOVE U ISNT IT…LET ME NO WHEN UR READY TO GET PWNED

  I shut down the IM application. Wondering if he’s kidding, about being here. But then, how would he know about the posters? I decide not to think about it and watch Starfare games until I can’t stay awake even though every game is just amazing. When I finally decide to crash I realize there’s no bed. I open up a small closet and see a row of about a dozen crinkly red team shirts, just like I wore when I did the photo shoot. Underneath are some rolled up pads, blankets and some pillows that look and feel like they could be used as airline seats. I spread the pads out on the floor and prop my head up on one of the pillows. My head is buzzing. Every time I’m about to fall asleep I think about meeting the rest of the team in the morning and get a rush of nervous, sinking feeling which jars me awake.

  And as I lie awake I can’t stop thinking about what it must be like back in Kansas. I could tell how many guys at North had become tuned into Hannah. Especially that one guy in the environmental club that I was particularly paranoid about. It would only be a matter of time before one of them clicked.

  I’m sure I had just fallen asleep when I hear a doorbell and then knocking on the door.

  3.

  I throw on a T-shirt and the jeans I wore on the plane. Open the door to a grinning Yeong.

  “You sleep good, yes?” And before I can answer he says, “Good, good.”

  He looks at my chest and frowns.

  “You not find team shirts?”

  I tell him I did indeed discover the shirts.

  “Must wear. Every day. Team Anaconda is very famous here in Korea. Photos all the time. Our great sponsor, ANC Computers, they be very sad if picture printed and no shirt and no ANC logo.”

  “Right,” I say. I wave Yeong into the apartment but he just stands in the doorway. So I rush back to the closet and slip on the first team shirt. It’s just as scratchy as I remember.

  “Come, come,” Yeong says as I follow him down the hall. He swipes a card across the double doors at the end and pushes one open, holding it for me to enter.

  Inside the entire Team Anaconda is sitting at a series of small, low tables, chopsticks in hand. They all turn, simultaneously, and just stare at me, chopsticks pointing at me like accusations. With their identical shirts and similar haircuts I feel like I’ve been dropped into some sort of clone experiment.

  Yeong steps past me and starts babbling in Korean. Then he grabs my arm and walks me around the room, spitting out what I assume is everyone’s name, but too fast and too thickly accented for me to follow. No one stands up. No one offers to shake hands.

  I recognize two of the players from the Chicago trip and expect them to be more friendly, but they’re not.

  I figure it must be the Korean way. After we’ve made the circuit he takes me into the suite’s little kitchen and give
s me a bowl and while I hold it, scoops a mound of white rice into it. He takes another, smaller bowl and dips a big ladle into a pot as large as a beer keg and as he brings the red stuff towards me my nose burns and my eyes actually start to water.

  “Kimchi,” he says. “Korean national dish. You try little at first.”

  I’m thinking my definition of little is none. He dribbles a bit more than a little onto my rice. Then he leads me past a bowl of what looks and smells like some sort of canned fish, which I politely decline. At the end of the counter is at last something that looks familiar, a loaf of odd looking bread. I take a couple slices and Yeong points me back towards the team.

  In the far corner there is a table with one player and two empty chairs. I sit down and nod at the player. I glance around the room and the rest of the team all seems to be staring at me. I stare into my rice, push it around with chopsticks. Trying to find some untouched by the pungent kimchi.

  I look up when I hear the player across from me say something in almost a whisper. Look at him and shake my head.

  “My name Sung Gi Park.”

  “Sung Gi?” I repeat, my heart lifting. “You speak English?”

  “English not very good,” he says, looking past me around the room. “But best on team. Maybe someday I go to America university. I try learn. You speak to me? I call you ActionSeth?”

  “Just Seth,” I say. “Of course I will talk to you.” Then I lower my voice. “Sung Gi. Did I say that right?”

  “Yes. Very good.”

  “The rest of these guys,” I whisper. “They don’t seem so friendly.”

  Sung Gi takes his time. Maybe because he has to translate what I’m saying. Or it’s a hard question.

  “They not know you, ActionSeth. But it is hard for new members on Team Anaconda. I am next newest. I sit alone.”

  “They don’t like you either?”

  “They like great Starfare champions. I not a great champion. They say you not great player.”

  “Not yet,” I admit.

  “You play hard, get good. They like you.”

  “OK, sounds like a plan.”

  When I glance around the room I see that the rest of the team has gone back to eating and chatting among themselves. When one of the players from Chicago, Tae-Uk, glances up and sees me looking his way he gives me an evil glare. I grin his way and wave. He shakes his head and mutters something to the guy next to him. I eat the first slice of bread. I can’t bring myself to try the reeking rice. So I sit and stir and stare into the pink bowl.

  I have about a hundred questions for Sung Gi. But I don’t want to annoy the only guy who doesn’t seem to already hate me. Plus I can tell it’s a stretch for him to communicate beyond the basics in English.

  After breakfast I follow the group into a room equipped with rows of back-to-back flat screen monitors and blue-glowing high-performance computers. Bed pads like mine are rolled up in the corners, and I realize that the rest of the team must sleep right here, in front of their monitors. The team lines up and down the center of the room and into the next room equipped the same way. I follow suit and stand at the end of the line. Yeong yells something and they start jumping up and down. After a minute he yells something else and they drop into a sort of push-up position, with their butts stuck up in the air and start pumping up and down. I do my best to follow along, but honestly, I’m not in the greatest shape and I just sort of dog it, doing one or two for every ten of theirs.

  After about fifteen minutes everyone breaks to a seat in front of a monitor and they fire up their computers. Just being in the same room with this much Starfare talent, and seeing the screens light up, I get a little dizzy. It’s a mixture of excitement and fear and disbelief. I shake my head to clear it. Then find an open spot, but before I can figure how to power up Yeong taps me on the shoulder and says, “Plenty of time to start training. Other things first.”

  The other things start with some sort of press event downtown. I get stuck in front of this room with about forty folding chairs and while I’m blinded by camera flashes as reporters yell questions in bad English.

  I don’t get all of them, but they want to know if I have an American girlfriend, what I think of Korean girls, how soon before I make it to a televised match, whether I like Korean food, and if I played Little League baseball. When I say I have—or had—a girlfriend they ask for name and photos. I just shake my head and say no over and over. I honestly have no idea how much I’m communicating, between the overlapping questions and the flash of cameras and the rolling chatter of Korean which sounds like I’m trapped in a flock of thousands of honking geese.

  Afterwards Yeong seems very pleased. “You already big star!” he gushes. As we walk out onto the busy sidewalk a dozen people freeze and stare at me. Others come rushing over, pointing. Finally three teenage girls step forward and say something to me.

  “They want to pose picture with you,” Yeong says. He seems to think this is a great idea and two at a time, they pose, standing on either side of me, grinning and bouncing with excitement, while the third snaps pics with her cell phone.

  After the press event Yeong ushers me back into the car and we drive about ten minutes and get dropped off in front of a large office building. A steady stream of dressed-up Koreans is flowing in and out of the glass doors at the front. As we weave through the crowd I wonder if any of these busy people speak English, and if they did, how I would ever know.

  We take an elevator to the fourteenth floor and get in line. Turns out it’s some government office and we have a bunch of paperwork to go through to get my Work Registration and Korean ID, which only involves standing in six different lines for three hours. Then we stop at a bank called Woori and I sit like an idiot while Yeong gets my account set up. I only figure this out when he hands me a credit card with a Visa logo and says, “Good in any ATM anywhere in world.” He also hands me a receipt with what I take to be my balance. It says 3,300,000 won, which is what they call the Korean dollar. I looked up the currency conversion before I left and impressive as the balance looks, it converts to only about $3,000.

  “We deposit three million won first of month,” Yeong explains, with a proud little grin. He hands me a stack of bills. “This is what I think you call bonus.” I thumb through them, and they are five and ten thousand won notes. I don’t want to be rude and count them in front of him, but something about those zeros is comforting. For the first time in the day I actually feel like grinning back.

  I do a quick calculation and figure that it’s about midnight back home. So no wonder I feel as if I’ve just pulled an all-night Starfare marathon. When we get back to my apartment I lie down on the couch. I take out a folder that I’ve carefully packed into the center panel of my suitcase. Inside are some photos from Hannah. The framed kissing photo, of course, but another of my favorites. Hannah had taken this self-portrait between two giant mirrors. So that she’s sitting in a chair, looking over her shoulder at the camera, and to either side of her are the reflected images, angled so they make a long, infinite hall of Hannah profiles. I prop it up against the back of the couch and I’m counting Hannahs when I pass out.

  4.

  So naturally, it’s still dark when I wake up, having slept about twelve straight hours. Hannah’s picture has flipped over during the night and I pack all the photos back into my bag and stash it in the closet. I draw the curtains and look out my window. In the gap between two high-rises the first fuzzy light of dawn.

  I tell myself it’s time to start honing my game so I fire up my computer. I’m not surprised to see plenty of action on the Korean server, even though it’s 5:30 a.m. local time. I get in the queue on the advanced level and within a few seconds my in-game IM screen is lighting up.

  At first I think there’s a software glitch. The messages are rolling in so fast I can’t read them all, like trying to read mov
ie credits on fast forward.

  I catch a few of them. “ActionSeth! Really you?” “Send picture please!” “Private chat, Mira1278 please please please.” “LOVE U KISS KISS KISS” “U make me a big happiness!”

  I flip off the IM screen and in a few minutes get in a game with someone named KKim1994. I reboot the IM screen and mute everyone but KKim. It feels great to be back into the game. We’re playing the Neverland map, which is not my favorite, but I’ve spent significant time on it and feel pretty confident.

  KimK and I both are going for early force development over infrastructure and I think we’re pretty even, going into the midgame. The action is heated, and we’re in one of those fierce battles that is so frantic you start sweating when I realize that I’m grinning. Because Starfare is such an awesome game and nothing is more fun than a close game like this. Then we get into a series of battles with three major fronts. I’m pumping on the mouse and keyboard so hard that I’m actually getting winded and when it’s over, it’s just barely over. In our final clash I’m left with just enough units to finish him off.

  “GG,” KimK writes. “You nice to take it easy on beginner.”

  “You’re no beginner,” I say.

  “I #5,” KimK writes.

  “#5?”

  “I playing team. School team.”

  “University?” I write.

  “No, no. High school team. Inha Academy in Inchon. We becoming good. Finish 2 in district. But I #1 girl on team.”

  As I sign off I’m trying not to panic, thinking that I just played a very good game, and it was barely enough to beat a girl from a high school team. Then my stomach growls and I look at the clock. It’s six-thirty and the sun is glowing through the haze on the horizon. I sign off and after pushing the rice cakes and unknowns around in my cupboard decide to head downstairs. I slip on a sweatshirt and scoot down the hall towards the elevators, looking back as if someone was about to jump out and catch me.