Seoul Survivors

by Naomi Foyle

  It was his cock. Again. A sideways view this time, spurting cum all over a picture in a magazine. She peered closer. It was one of the lipstick ads: her small, glossy face half-covered with a big white blob of Johnny juice.

  Sydney recoiled. What the hell was he playing at? Was this his way of saying sorry for last night? Or . . . was it some kind of threat? The last thing she needed was for a money shot featuring her face to get onto the wrong MoPho. And what if she’d opened it when Jin Sok was around? No, no, no! Her stomach flip-flopping, she deleted the photo and stuffed the MoPho back into her bag. She unclasped the EarRinger too, and jammed it in the pocket with the Gotcha Watch she’d taken off earlier, when Jin Sok was deciding which of her own jewelry she could wear. He’d been impressed that she owned such high price-tag bling, but right now she never wanted to wear the devices again. She was going to have to seriously set some boundaries with Johnny tonight.

  First, unfortunately, she had to take all these gorgeous clothes off. She unhooked the bra and carefully put it back in its box with the foam pump equipment. Unscaffolded, her breasts deflated at least three cup sizes, and the bruises near her armpits Johnny had made last night were exposed. Well, he wasn’t going to do that again, either. She slipped out of the OhmEgo shorts and draped them over the back of a chair, then examined herself in the full-length mirror by the door.

  A gold-plated punk goddess snarled back, clad in thigh-high boots and metallic panties, a hundred spiky braids blazing from her head. Okay, so she could still pinch at least an inch around her waist, and she’d never done a catwalk show. But beside her was a rail of thousand-dollar clothing and a table cluttered with hundred-dollar lotions. Things had changed since she’d got off that plane from Vancouver. She sat down at the make-up table and pulled a bottle of cleanser and a jar of cotton wool balls toward her. As she wiped her forehead a faint frown-line emerged from beneath the layers of gold paint. Jeez. Was that a wrinkle? Just as she was starting to get somewhere in life, some dork was ruining her looks. She scrubbed at her nose and narrowed her eyes. It was definitely time to review the Johnny Sandman situation.

  It was hard to believe now, but Johnny had been totally sweet to her once—when they’d met in Vancouver he’d been funny and caring and generous, a snappy dresser from LA who’d taken her to fancy restaurants. And unlike the other agency clients, he’d really made her laugh. Offering GFE, she had to giggle at every client’s jokes, and ooze sympathy and compliments all night, but Johnny had seen through that shtick right away: he knew he looked great, he’d said, so why didn’t they talk about something else—how about her favorite stuff to do on her days off? She’d told him the usual, really: she ate out a lot for work, so she liked to eat Pot Noodles at home and watch DVDs. Or go out shopping and dancing with the girls. He’d started talking about Korea then: the nightlife was insane, he said, and the department stores were twenty stories high—serious shoppers took nap-breaks in capsule hotels on the tenth floor. That had got her giggling. She’d asked him all about Korea then, and the dinner flew by. It was almost like she really was having a Girlfriend Experience.

  Later, at the hotel, Johnny had even tried to make the money part seem romantic. He’d laid the envelope on the dresser, and while she checked the bills, said gruffly, “Do me a favor, babe? Think of this as a present. Buy yourself something nice with it—even if it’s just groceries, promise me you’ll get them from the best deli in town?” She needed the money for a massive overdue gas bill, but the word “present” was way better than the usual “donation,” which often led straight to stupid jokes about sperm. And the sex had been surprisingly okay. She’d provided her usual package: French Kissing, Hugging, Bare Back Blow Job, Cunnilingus, and Full Service, of course; but rather than lunge at her, slobbering and grabbing, he’d taken his time—and he’d proved to be pretty good at muff-diving. He hadn’t even whined about the condom. Like her laughter at the meal, her orgasms weren’t fake. And he’d cuddled her afterward, too.

  In the morning he’d told her he was in town for a month, on a training course, and he’d asked if he could monopolize her attentions for a month? She’d thought yeah, why not? The agency had urged her to agree, and when she’d added up the figures, it was the best offer she’d had in a long time. The extra money meant she could take that modeling course sooner than she’d planned.

  It had been a great month, too. Johnny had taken her to the mountains in his rented sports car; he’d bought her lingerie, jewelry, and one day a stupid teddy bear she hadn’t wanted to admit how much she liked. The best thing was that she didn’t ever have to pretend she was in a good mood. She could bitch about stuff—her boss, the weather, other clients—and he’d just laugh. She’d told him stuff about her family—not everything, of course—and one night she’d even confessed that escort work wasn’t really her thing: she was saving for the modeling course and once she started getting fashion jobs she’d quit the agency.

  He said she was definitely too cute and smart to be working as an escort—and he’d asked her to come back to Korea with him. He’d said that Seoul was dying for blonde models, she wouldn’t need a course; he could use his contacts to get her an employment visa, and some starter jobs, no problem. He’d even shown her an email from a friend of his saying sure, bring her into the studio, they could use a blonde in their lipstick campaign. But hey, he’d said when she frowned and passed his MoPho back to him, don’t worry. He wasn’t one of those clients who thought the escort was falling in love with him. He just liked her style; that was all. They could have fun, nothing serious, just see what happened. If the worst came to the worst, she’d have some international fashion shoots under her belt. Just think about it, babe? Promise me that?

  Korea was too far away, and her girlfriends had told her not to trust him. She’d said she couldn’t leave Canada, but the next night he’d sung that old song, “My Way,” to her. It was his philosophy of life, he’d said. A naked man using a pink dildo as a mic would have made anyone laugh, but as the song went on and he closed his eyes and really got into it, she realized Johnny could actually sing. His deep crooning had reverberated throughout her body as she lay twisted in the Egyptian cotton sheets, the words almost thrumming up her spine.

  “Wow. That was amazing,” she’d said sleepily when he’d done. “Sort of like a massage.”

  “Excuse me?” He’d pounced on the bed and started to tickle her. “Was that a compliment from Little Miss Sour-Puss?” She’d squealed and denied it, wriggled in his arms as he enveloped her in a massive bear hug. She’d thought he’d want sex again, but instead he’d murmured, “Aww, baby’s tired,” as she drifted off to sleep. “Big bad Johnny’s all worn her out.”

  The next day over breakfast she’d told Johnny he could pay for her passport and an open return ticket to Seoul, but there were two conditions. First, he would have to pay for her rent and bills until she got enough work to support herself. And second, she wasn’t going out with him as an escort. Instead, it would be a real girlfriend experience. Like he’d said: just to see what happened. Absolutely, babe. he’d agreed, holding her close, That’s exactly what I want too.

  Sydney removed the last of the make-up. Her exposed face looked pale and gaunt in the mirror. She’d been right to trust her gut instincts; she was modeling now, wasn’t she? But living with Johnny was starting to exhaust her. Though he’d promised to help her get her own career off the ground, she was spending most of her evenings buttering up his dumb clients when she could be out dancing or shopping or meeting people she actually liked. At home, he was a neat-freak: he was all about his spick-and-span kitchen, toxic household air fresheners, precious hardwood floors, while his obsession with Frank Sinatra was like some kind of aural prison. And then there was the porn.

  All guys watched porn, of course. Most of the agency clients had wanted her to do stuff just like the girls in the films on the hotel pay-per-view channel. The channel was softcore—one reason the agency recommended that hotel—so the re
quests were just goofy stuff really: sticking her tits out in a certain way, or putting her hair up in bunches. If they got weirder than that, she’d remind the client she only offered GFE, minus anal; other agency girls did PornStar. But Johnny hadn’t turned on the TV in Vancouver. He’d turned her on instead.

  Once they’d settled in to Seoul though, he’d started wanting to watch the satellite TV on the ceiling screen over the bed. The stuff he chose was pretty ordinary to begin with: women with big hair and drag queen nails, or Korean girls playing with each other. She could take it or leave it, really, but he always asked her what she liked, so she said the girls together were pretty, and she didn’t mind big hair if the cocks were big too.

  Then last week he’d taken a couple of DVDs out of a drawer. He’d said he used to watch them on his own all the time, wishing there was a girl he could share them with, so they’d put one on. It was different than the others. The light was grainy, the sex rough, right from the start, and quickly moved from hair-yanking and fake rape into dungeon-style bondage. When Sydney had said the film wasn’t working for her, they’d tried the next one. It was worse: garishly lit to highlight every pimple, and there was a gun in the first scene. She’d made him stop it too.

  “The girls look frightened, Johnny,” she’d said.

  “Ah c’mon.” He’d sounded annoyed. “They’re acting, babe.”

  “Well, doh. But I don’t like it. And the men are butt-ugly.”

  Then he’d got all patronizing about it. “That’s the whole point,” he’d lectured. “This kind of film’s about flirting with danger, breaking taboos. I thought you were a risk-taker, Sydney.”

  He was being such a dickhead. She hadn’t felt like explaining why she didn’t like violent porn. “The girls aren’t ugly!” she’d retorted. And they weren’t. Their bums had a few spots, and they weren’t wearing a ton of make-up, but their faces and bodies were standard fare. The men, though, were barrel-bellied and ham-fisted, with squashed-up, greedy faces—probably just like the losers who bought deviant porn. You were supposed to feel sorry for them, but if they stopped watching that shit and learned how to hold a conversation they’d get a girlfriend, for sure. Women married ugly guys all the time.

  Johnny was pissed off, she could tell, but he had put the films back in the drawer, so she’d tried to make it up to him with an extra deep-throat BJ. That had done the “trick,” LOL.

  The next night she was in a playful mood so she’d told him that since she had tried to watch the DVDs, he had to try watching the fashion channel with her. Johnny thought that was insane, of course, but the ramp shows all had good soundtracks—techno-trance, Bolly-bhang, power ballads—and he could look at her if he wanted to see a naked girl, couldn’t he? He’d done it, though eventually he’d fucked her so hard she had to stop watching. It had been a battle, and even though she’d sort of won, she’d known the war wasn’t over.

  That had been proven yesterday. She’d been so excited about the OhmEgo shoot, babbling away about it on the street, until out of nowhere he’d shouted at her to just shut up about the fucking job, will you? He’d totally exploded. It had been almost frightening, seeing his face get all red like that, but she’d stared him down until he’d stomped off to the Caddy instead of shopping with her like he’d promised. When she’d got home, he was drinking whiskey. And when they got into bed, for the first time since they met, he couldn’t get it up.

  She’d asked if he wanted to watch the porn channel, but he’d growled “You don’t like porn.” Then he’d punished her breasts, grabbing and squeezing them hard with one hand, with the other trying to force his flaccid cock inside her. Why did guys do that? She’d told him to stop and pulled away and curled up on the other side of the bed, swallowing back the tears. After a few minutes he’d started to snore.

  In the morning he’d hugged her and touched the bruises gently and said, “Did I do that, baby? Oh, Johnny’s sorry.” He sounded like he meant it—but sorry didn’t matter, did it? These tits were her job. They couldn’t ever be black and blue.

  Sydney screwed the lid back on the cleanser. Beside the bottle, Jin Sok’s pink hanky lay crumpled on the counter like a used party napkin. Like her whole fucking life. Tears welling in her eyes, she opened the Oxytoner and dampened another cotton ball. Why had she been dumb enough to think Johnny might really be into her? He had turned out like all the rest: a selfish, controlling jerk with a jealous streak as cold and deep as the Atlantic. So much for the Boyfriend Experience.

  But as she dragged the wet cotton ball over her cheek, the clean seaside scent of the toner fought with her misery. No. She hadn’t crossed an ocean to be forced to do anything she didn’t want to anymore. She wasn’t going to let Johnny scare her, not his control freakery or his porno MoPhotos: he was just another no-neck Yank with a borderline personality disorder, and one day she was going to tell him so. Savagely, she threw the wodge of dirty cotton balls into the bin, where they hit the plastic liner with a thump. Her chin throbbed with a buried zit she longed to squeeze—but she wouldn’t, no; she’d moisturize properly and tomorrow she’d have a facial, the full works: clay mask, steam and extractions. She had to look after herself now she was a model—the top new Canada model in Seoul.

  “You ready go, Sy-duh-nee?” Jin Sok yelled from the studio.

  “Two minutes!” Furiously, she dotted concealer over the bags beneath her eyes and applied a quick brush of color to her cheeks.

  “I want lock up! Palli palli, plea-suh. Leave clothes on rail.”

  “Coming!” Sydney tugged off the boots and wriggled into her mini-skirt and strappy top. She’d have to do her make-up in the taxi. Johnny would freak about her hair. So let him, she thought as she pushed her feet into her shoes. Shit: the OhmEgo shorts. She slipped them onto a hanger and slung them back on the rail; then she stuck her tongue out at her reflection, grabbed the pink hanky from the make-up counter and turned on her kitten heels to go.

  3 / Seeing Double

  “Lee Mee Hee—are you awake? Lee Mee Hee?” Soft and clear as a mountain stream, a familiar voice was murmuring her name.

  Slowly, Mee Hee opened her eyes. Dr. Tae Sun was sitting by her bed. And Dr. Tae Sun was standing at the foot of her bed as well.

  She must be dreaming, not yet awake. She blinked in the gauzy light and the cracks and stains in the ceiling swam into focus. So she was no longer in the box—she could stretch, sit upright. With an effort that reminded her body how much it hurt, she pulled herself up against her pillow.

  She was in a bed high off the floor, and a blue nightdress was gently brushing against her bruised skin. There was a tender spot on her forearm where a tube was taped against her skin. She followed it with her gaze: it was attached to a plastic bag hanging on a frame as tall as a person beside her. Was she in a hospital? The room was small, with faded yellow walls. There was a chest of drawers beside her and next to that an empty bed with a green blanket, just like hers, standing neatly made beneath a single window hung with thin white curtains. From outside she could hear beeping, roaring and tinkling: the noises of vehicles of all sorts, cars and buses and bicycle bells. And there were indeed two doctors here, mirror images of each other, except looking more closely now she could see one was slightly stockier, a little fuller in the face. That one, the stranger, was resting a clipboard against the iron bedstead, observing her with concern.

  “Don’t be afraid,” said Dr. Che, her Dr. Che, grinning broadly as he smoothed the corner of her sheet. “This is my brother, Doctor Che Dong Sun—my twin. He’s thirty-three years old, like me, and a graduate of Yonsei University, the top medical school in Seoul. But he wants you to feel at home with him. Please, you may call him Dr. Dong Sun.”

  Dr. Dong Sun tried to look humble, but he seemed to grow half an inch as his brother spoke and his chest swelled slightly beneath his white coat. Mee Hee shrank back on her pillow. Was she supposed to introduce herself now? She opened her mouth, but nothing came out except a dry squeak.
r />   “Shhh,” Dr. Tae Sun said quickly, “don’t try to speak yet.”

  “We were worried about you,” Dr. Dong Sun said, kindly. He ticked something on his chart and slipped his pen back into his breast pocket. “You were delirious when you arrived, so Dr. Tae Sun prescribed this IV drip to replenish your fluids and electrolytes. The nurses washed you and made you comfortable, and you’ve been sleeping peacefully all afternoon.”

  “Now it’s time for you to eat.” Dr. Tae Sun nodded at his twin, a barely repressed note of joy in his voice. Oh, he must love his brother very much—and all the good family feeling was contagious. The last time she had smiled so widely was when her baby was born.

  The thought brought a lump of coal to her throat. Her smile wilted and she dropped her gaze to her hands. They were rough and scratched: a peasant woman’s hands. What was she doing here in this iron bed, attached to a plastic tube, surrounded by the complicated music of a Chinese city?

  There was a rap on the door and a woman in a blue uniform—a nurse? a guard?—entered the room, carrying a tray with four short legs. The doctors parted to make room and she carefully placed the tray over Mee Hee’s lap, not spilling a drop of the soup in the bowl balanced at its center.

  Small chunks of tubu and slippery green pieces of miyeok were floating in the soup. A delicate scent like the sea on a warm summer breeze wafted up with the steam from the bowl. Tears flooded Mee Hee’s eyes: the room, the food, the doctors and the plump nurse all swam together in a blur before her. “Eat, please, you must eat, Lee Mee Hee,” Dr. Dong Sun gently urged. “The miyeok is full of minerals, and the tubu will give you protein. It’s very good for you.”

  She couldn’t—she mustn’t eat it. Anything but miyeok soup—

  “Lee Mee Hee, you need to eat. This is good food, simple for your stomach to digest. Please try it.” Softly echoing his brother, Dr. Tae Sun handed her the spoon.