Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

  “Sex has made you even prettier,” Casey remarked, noticing the sock’s thinning fabric on the balls of her sister’s feet.

  “Thank you.” Tina’s black hair swung in lovely chunks when she laughed. “I’m employed and engaged.”

  “What?” Casey shouted. “Are you serious?”

  “About which part?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. You’re twenty-two. Honestly, I won’t think poorly of you if you don’t marry him. What’s wrong with just living with him?” Ella had married her first. Chul probably wasn’t like Ted. Dear God, let that not be the case, prayed the agnostic in her mind. Casey wondered if she should talk about Ella now. “Have I failed you? Taught you nothing? The first man you had sex with!”

  “Correction. The first man who made love to me.”

  “I stand corrected. Excuse me.” Casey was clutching the handbag pattern in her hand. She was wrinkling the corners of the taped-up pattern paper, so she went to place it in her black portfolio leaning against the wall.

  “I thought you’d be happy,” Tina said, sounding dispirited. She’d been so relieved on the way over here with a summer fellowship in hand. She hugged her knees with her hands.

  “I am happy for you. Truly.” Casey had looked forward to Tina after such a bizarre day. But this was a shock, too.

  “Then you’ll come to the wedding.”

  “Yes. I will come to the wedding. Of course,” Casey said. Tina was still upset with her about the graduation. Casey hadn’t gone because she couldn’t deal with her parents and went to a Kearn Davis outing instead. It was work related, but truth be known, she could’ve gotten out of it.

  Tina didn’t want to talk about the wedding anymore.

  “Now, here’s the bad news.”

  “So that was the good news, then?” Casey laughed.

  “Ha, ha.. . . Dad’s building burned down last Sunday,” Tina said calmly. She lifted a cover off a lone hatbox within reach. Her eyebrows arched in wonder at the wide-rimmed straw encircled with pink fabric peonies. “Pretty.”

  The pizza arrived, but Casey couldn’t eat. She watched Tina devour her first slice while she discussed the fire and how the insurance would come through soon. Tina had dealt with all the paperwork that her parents couldn’t read. Faulty wiring had caused the total loss. Nobody was hurt because it had happened on a Sunday. No one had bothered to call Casey, making her realize that she must’ve missed many other things and would miss more as time went on. Casey was feeling left out, but Tina was excusing her parents, because they were hurt too by Casey’s withdrawal from their lives. “They didn’t want to bother you at the office,” Tina said. Their father wasn’t the same, she added.

  Three years ago, when Joseph bought the building in Edge-water, Casey had gone to the closing with him. Leah had called her at school. “Daddy is going to buy a building. Our retirement money will be the down pay. Elder Kong said it was a good investment.” Leah told Casey where the closing would take place. Tina could have gone—her father might have preferred that—but she was in Boston, and it was cheaper for Casey to show up. And Casey was older. So she skipped her microeconomics class, took a train to the city, and met her dad at the bank lawyers’ offices. Though her father understood almost everything, his lawyer talked mostly to Casey, and she translated whatever else was needed. After all the checks were passed out, Mr. Arauno, the seller’s lawyer, handed Joseph the keys. Mr. Arauno told Joseph that he had a nice daughter. After the closing, Joseph drove Casey to the building before taking her back to school.

  “I saw the building. After the closing,” Casey said.

  “Yeah?” Tina sprinkled garlic powder on her second slice.

  That afternoon in Edgewater, the sun had glowed fiercely on the modest storefronts of Hilliard Avenue. Her father’s building was a three-story brick with two shops on the ground floor—a pizzeria and a small electronics outlet. A side door opened onto a modest carpeted lobby with stairs that led to the professional offices on the second and third floors. Joseph didn’t say much as the two of them walked around the building. He walked into the electronics store, and the salesman asked him if he needed any help. Joseph shook his head no, picking up a Panasonic answering machine that was on special, then putting it down. He never told them that he was their new landlord. Casey followed him when he walked out. They peered into the pizza shop. It looked clean. After they toured the two ground-floor stores and checked out the dentist’s office and the accountant’s office upstairs, they left the building. Casey returned to her father’s blue Delta 88, which was parked not ten yards away. Not hearing his footsteps behind her, she turned and saw that he was standing beside the building; his right hand was pressed against the brick of the facade. Her father was smiling.

  “How is he doing?” Casey asked.

  “Lousy. What do you expect?”

  “Can’t he get a new one? With the insurance money?”

  “Mom said he doesn’t want to risk it. And you know her. She’s no gambler. They’ll probably put the money in a savings account.”

  What Casey had seen on her father’s face that day was pride. Some happiness.

  “He looks much older,” Tina said.

  “How old is he again?”

  “He turned sixty in June.”

  “I sent him a tie,” Casey mentioned. She’d bought an Hermès necktie that had cost over a hundred dollars and mailed it to him from the store, although it would’ve been far easier for her to just walk it over from Kearn Davis.

  “Mom told me.”

  Casey nodded. The last time she spoke to her mother was around Thanksgiving, when she’d told her that she was working through the holidays for overtime money. For turkey, she’d gone to the Gottesmans’, where Sabine was hosting a dinner for twenty of her favorite strays.

  “Sixtieth birthday. That’s—”

  “We didn’t do much for his hwegap,” Tina said.

  “Damn. That’s right.” Casey jerked back, sighing loudly. “Damn. Damn,” she muttered, disgusted with herself. Their parents were often invited to these fancy potlatches thrown by well-off adult children to celebrate their Korean parents’ sixtieth birthdays—the sum of five zodiac cycles. A person was supposed to have completed a full life cycle by living from zero to sixty.

  “That was near your graduation, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Tina said quietly.

  “So in the month of June, I managed to miss both your graduation and Dad’s big birthday. You can say that I have a genius for fucking up. They don’t get better than me.” Casey was afraid to ask what Tina had done for his birthday. No matter. She’d never had favored nation status.

  “There’s another big party at the seventieth, I think.” Tina tried to sound hopeful.

  “Yeah, I should’ve earned my first million by then. I’ll be thirty-four. Let’s just book the banquet rooms at the Plaza now.” Casey was sinking in an ocean of shame.

  “Shut up, Casey. It’s going to be okay. This isn’t a guilt session. I wanted to see you,” Tina said with a smile.

  She started to talk about Chul. He was likely to focus on cardiology, she said, beaming, at UCSF School of Medicine. His father was a professor and his mother a radiologist, and his three sisters were lawyers. Chul was the baby. Joseph and Leah had already met Chul’s parents in New York after Thanksgiving. Everything had gone fine, Tina said with a little shrug of doubt. Casey listened to her talk, trying not to interrupt—a bad habit of hers—and she observed how Tina’s face brightened when she spoke of him. Casey wanted to believe with all her heart and mind that true love could exist and that marrying young with the first man you made love to could yield a faithful bond. She wished that for her sister right then and there. She didn’t mention what was happening with Ella and Ted. What purpose would that serve?

  Tina had to leave at ten so she could take the subway home to Queens. They embraced before parting, and this time the gesture felt easier. Why hadn’t they done this sooner?
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  Casey shut the front door. The apartment wasn’t much, but it was tidy, and it was hers. She lived in Manhattan—it was called the city, though it was also a borough like Staten Island or the Bronx. Her first year at Princeton, a freshman from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, had asked her where she was from, and when she’d said New York, he’d said, Oh, where? When she’d answered Queens, he’d stared at her as though she’d been lying. Because only one borough counted as New York.

  The night from her window was blue and black with the skyline of Jersey City twinkling far off in broken bits and pieces. Next to the sewing machine, her contest hat rested misshapen on the head block, needing more steam to block it than what her teakettle could generate, and the handbag fabric lay uncut on the stool. It felt later than ten, and Casey went to brush her teeth to get ready for bed. Tired and spacey, she stubbed her foot on the open closet door. She bent over to take care of a broken toenail. Her nail clippers were in one of the Kearn Davis gym bags that she used for storage. The Redweld folders with photocopies of her B school applications were also stuck in there.

  Why hadn’t she told Tina about applying to business school? Ella, Ted, and Delia, Dad’s building, Tina’s internship and marriage. Life was either breaking down or fusing together. She was trying to start something new. It was hard to picture what her life would look like beyond this moment. Casey couldn’t tell her little sister about trying something new again. For surely it was possible to fail another time.

  5 VIEW

  YOU’RE WASTING YOUR LIFE,” Hugh Underhill said.

  “You’re such an ass,” Casey replied sweetly. She batted her short eyelashes for comic effect.

  Hugh smiled back charmingly. Cleaned four times a year by a hygienist he’d slept with years before, his teeth were bright and attractive. “Young lady, I’ve been called better things.”

  “And you’ve been called far worse things.”

  “Thanks, Casey Cat,” Hugh said. “You keep me honest.”

  “No problem, Hedge,” Casey answered. “Somebody has to try.” She continued thumbing through the rack of pastel-colored golf shirts embroidered with the logo of Bronan Resorts.

  Hugh was picking on her about her future. Knowing how broke she was, he had decided that the solution was for her to make more money. Pushing her to be a junior broker was his way of showing concern. Business school decisions would be mailed out this month, but with the exception of Kevin Jennings—whom she had no choice but to ask for a recommendation since he was her direct supervisor—no one else at the office knew she’d applied.

  The salesclerk who worked at the pro shop had gone downstairs to fetch Hugh a windbreaker vest, so they were alone. The cherry-wood paneling made the place look like a judge’s chambers. As usual, Casey and Hugh were fifteen minutes early—one of the annoying qualities they shared. It was their macabre joke that they’d beat their deaths by a quarter of an hour. Secretly, they respected each other for it. However, Seamus, one of their foursome for today, the client they both liked, was running very late. He had missed his flight entirely. Walter was scouting about for a replacement. Otherwise, Hugh, Casey, and Brett Martin, another client, would make up a threesome. Hugh was not fond of Brett, who jangled coins in his pockets and gave unsolicited advice on your swing. Brett Martin was a nice guy, but a duffer.

  Kearn Davis was hosting the Asian Technology Conference, which officially began tomorrow on Sunday after a sunrise breakfast. Yet the clients who wanted to play eighteen holes had come in that morning. Tee time was in thirty minutes.

  Casey had tagged along, taking off a weekend from Sabine’s since the latter two weeks of April were expected to be slow, with hardly any commissions worth sticking around for. The boys—as she called the men she assisted on the desk—hadn’t known that she golfed, but when she’d mentioned in passing that she did, they’d shouted, Why the hell didn’t you say so before? Frankly, it had never occurred to her in her nearly three years of working at the desk to go away on a golfing trip with them when she herself wasn’t a broker. She didn’t even know she was allowed, and certainly no one had ever asked. When she popped up at La Guardia with her sweet Ping clubs that Jay had bought her with his first paycheck at Kearn Davis, Hugh widened his dark brown eyes.

  “And I thought you were smoking us for a free vacation.”

  “Maybe I am,” Casey retorted.

  The panoramic view from the pro shop window was dazzling. The grounds below were carpeted with kelly green grass, and the sky above the horizon was half silver and lavender. From where she stood, she could see a couple of foursomes playing—spotless white carts lolling there waiting to ferry them to their next hole. Acres upon acres of nature manicured and coiffed like a rich second wife for the enjoyment of a few entitled individuals. She’d played at the great private clubs with Jay and his eating club friends whose fathers and mothers were members—Baltusrol, Winged Foot, Rockaway Hunt, Westchester. Virginia’s game was tennis, and Casey could keep up a modest rally, but without the precision and engagement she freakishly possessed in her golf game. Virginia said even her dull father thought golf was a snoozer. To the contrary, Casey wanted to say. There was a kind of geometry and physics in the game that she perceived visually yet could hardly articulate. She respected the game’s difficulty—its aesthetic design.

  She’d learned by playing mostly on New Jersey public courses with Jay. When they’d first started to date, they’d cut classes in the afternoons just to play. Golf and sex: That had been their thing. Sometimes before and after. When she asked herself why she never told the boys about golf, the answer hit her. She missed him still. Golf was something Jay had taught her from scratch. He was a very fine teacher. After they broke up, giving the clubs away had crossed her mind. But he’d been so proud to buy them for her with the money he’d made from his first Wall Street job, his face bright with the surprise. Right away she had kissed him, because the gift had moved her. And seeing his happiness, she’d kissed him two more times, and they had ended up in bed, being late for a dinner with friends. It was such a curious thing when you thought back to someone you loved: It was possible to remember the unspoiled things, and doing so lit up a bit of the sober darkness in your heart, and all the while the memory of the hurting cast its own shadow, dimming your head with the nagging questions of ifs and why-nots.

  The clerk returned and said they were out of the large-size vests. “Sorry.”

  “No problem,” Hugh replied. “You tried.”

  He made a face at the ladies’ racks of polo shirts and madras pants. Hugh disliked preppy clothing on women. It made them look like square, flat-chested little men. Women should be soft to touch, curvy in the waist and hips, and delicious smelling. Skinny, small-boned blondes who sailed and were sun-wizened in their twenties were not his cup of tea. He didn’t give two bits if that was old-fashioned. He liked a slim-waisted girl in a billowy dress, pearls on her throat; a little leg showing was fantastic. Matching bra and panties in a bad-girl color, even better. While her head was turned, Hugh checked Casey out. She was exceptionally feminine in her clothing. Her speech, however, was something else.

  “The worst thing about women playing golf is the clothing,” Hugh pronounced.

  “Does that mean you’re not getting me a shirt?”

  “What? You want one?” he asked, irritated that Casey could disagree.

  “You offering?” Casey raised an eyebrow.

  “It all depends.” He smiled suggestively. Hugh was an alchemist: He could transform any comment into sex.

  She never took his innuendos seriously, and it took about a hot second for her to come up with a sassy rebuttal.

  “I hope I price out better than”—Casey read the tag—“fifty-seven fifty.”

  Before he could reply, they heard Walter calling out.

  “Seamus caught the later flight.” Walter was panting. He repeated the message from his voice mail. “So, Hedge, you’re still short one. You can play as a threesome. But I just saw Unu Shi
m from Gingko Tree Asset Management in the lobby. Didn’t know he was here today. Want me to get him? Shim-kin’s a good guy. You’d be a few minutes late, though. He’s gotta get his gear.”

  “Isn’t anyone on time anymore?” Casey glanced at her watch. Even after four months, the Rolex still tended to startle her.

  Hugh nodded at Walter, trying to be agreeable. “Okay, man, you make it happen. I’ll be at the first tee with sweetie over here.”

  Casey smiled at Walter and elbowed Hugh.

  At the foot of the long patio where the carts were parked, Unu Shim turned up only a few minutes late. He was not quite six feet, slight build, almost skinny. His eyes had the double fold that Casey didn’t have. When he smiled, radial lines formed near his temples. He was thirty or so. Like all the others, he wore khakis. His red shirt had come from a pro shop in Maui with a slogan embroidered on the unbanded golf sleeve. Small, knotty muscles lined the length of his arms. For a thin guy, he had Popeye forearms. His golf shoes hadn’t been cleaned since the last time he’d worn them; mud streaked his laces.

  There were seven fully manned carts on the patio, and Casey, the only female, sat alone in one. She was in the driver’s seat, waiting to take the new guy. Seeing him approach the cart, she turned around to make room for his Callaway bag. Hugh had taken Brett and his noisy pockets in his cart. Unu ducked his head to get in.

  “Casey, right?” Unu said. He held out his hand.

  “Hey.” She shook his hand. Decent grip, palm damp. “You want to drive?” she asked him, smiling politely.

  “No thanks,” he answered, puzzled as to why she didn’t recognize him. She was Casey Han, Ella’s friend. They’d met twice, and both times she’d barely talked to him, but especially at the wedding, where she had skipped out before making a toast. Was that almost two years ago? he wondered. The dad had some tussle with her boyfriend. Something like that—Ella had said. The boyfriend was history, but apparently she had zero interest in blind dates, although Ella was forever singing her hymns: creative, attractive, smart as a whip. Unu had figured that she was one of those Korean girls who hated Korean men. But she didn’t seem like that right now.