by Naomi Foyle
Jin Sok unpacked his camera from his bag and hovered above his subject. The pig’s head was a pallid rose color and rubbery-looking, like a faded, plastic flower, but it was glistening as if it had just broken out in a light sweat. The eyeballs had been removed, leaving two tight slits.
On a whim, Sydney took a half-burned cigarette from the overflowing ashtray, reached over to the pig, pried open an eyelid and stuck it in. The red tip glowed bitterly at the end of its white dagger. Hae Lim screamed with laughter and when Jin Sok cried, “Another, another!” she donated her own cigarette.
The company fell silent as Sydney poked it into the other slit. Ashes from the first fell softly onto the pig’s cheek, a small slagheap of regret. With both eyes now lit up, the pig was no longer victim or trophy, but an edgy, cruel-looking monster, staring its persecutors into a state of guilty unease.
“Sydney is artist,” Jae Ho said, softly. Everyone applauded. The pig’s moment of glory was over.
“Is portrait of my last boyfriend,” Sydney said, to another hysterical outburst of laughter. She meant Johnny. Or did she? Right now Jae Ho was stroking Hae Lim’s thigh.
The party left Moon Sun to close up and moved on to Gongjang, the women tripping on ahead, arm in arm, the two men hanging back to talk and smoke underneath a streetlight. As usual on a weeknight, the atmosphere in the club was low-key. Song P’il was piling TVs on top of each other in the corner. Hae Lim wobbled over to him, leaving Sydney sitting on a sofa with Eun Hee. Finally Jin Sok and Jae Ho joined them, and she chatted with Jin Sok, trying not to watch Jae Ho lighting Eun Hee’s cigarette with a flourish, tickling her shoulder, nibbling her earlobe. Finally they made their excuses and left, and Sydney waved goodbye, a grin plastered on her face.
“He very lucky man,” Jin Sok slurred. “She very beautiful, warm heart woman.”
“Yeah.”
Sydney got up to go to the bar, but Jin Sok pulled her down again beside him. “Sy-duh-nee, I know he go to your apartment,” he sorrowfully announced. “Is not for married man to do. He not treat you right; he not respect wife. He my little brother, she my little sister, you my friend. I don’t want you food for playboy. I must tell him stop. Is my duty.”
Her face was on fire. She couldn’t look at him. “Jin Sok—please don’t say anything to him,” she begged. “He’ll be very angry if he thinks I told you.”
“No, no; I tell him now. On way to Gongjang. I tell him, is not right what he does. He very ashamed. Don’t worry, he not angry with you.”
Jin Sok’s lack of interest in English tenses had often led to confusion and frustration, but never more so than now. Sydney slowly absorbed the enormity of what he had just told her. “He’s not angry with me?” Her fingers drilled into the sofa; her jaw was a solid mass of bone. “What about me being angry with you? Why did you do that, Jin Sok?”
“I sorry Sy-duh-nee, but she hurting. I know. He has child. He must stop now. I tell him.”
He had a child.
Sydney swallowed hard, then grabbed Jin Sok’s arm. “But he was hurting too,” she hissed, “and me—I was so lonely, but he was close to me, so kind. It was private. No one knew! I didn’t want to tell his wife.” She was close to tears, talking in the past tense already, her mind reeling. “How could you interfere, Jin Sok? How could you know what’s best?”
“You don’t have lonely be. Many friends for you in Seoul,” he said kindly. “Your Miss Kim, Da Mi, she call me, she very worried for you. She not want you fall in love with Korean Casanova. She want only best things for you.”
A croaking white noise filled Sydney’s head. What? What had he just said? “Da Mi told you about me and Jae Ho?” The words disintegrated the second they passed her lips. She could see Jin Sok’s mouth move, but she couldn’t hear his reply. She backed away from him on the sofa and fumbled between the cushions for her purse.
“I sorry, Sy-duh-ney—you want me take you home?”
She shook her head, dumbly lurching to her feet.
He reached for her hand. “I call you tomorrow. You be okay. Everything better be.”
Turning her back on his sympathetic face, she stumbled out of the club, up the stairs and back out onto the street.
A bloated moon hung over the city. The sidewalk was greasy with the exhaust fumes that had built up during the day. Her vision blurring, her legs shaking, Sydney ducked into an alley and leaned against a wall. The alley stank of splitting garbage bags and images from the murder in Vancouver flashed into her mind. Jeez, she had to get a grip.
Behind her something scuttled in the dark. Afraid of rats, afraid of Jin Sok coming after her, afraid of—she didn’t know what—she peered out into the street, then, wiping her face with her hand and trying not to blubber, she trailed home through the nearly empty streets, crossing over when she saw a cluster of Hongdae regulars, English teachers and their Korean girlfriends. At last she was back inside her apartment, lying on her bed, her face a mask of tears and snot, stuffing her sheet into her mouth to stifle her cries.
When she woke up, the sky was dark with heavy clouds. She lay in bed listening to the storm break. Thunder and lightning crashed and cracked above her, the rain beat against the building and rushed down the drains, and the windowpanes thudded in their frames. When the fury had finally subsided, she got up, made a pot of coffee and went back to bed with it. The taxi for the Chair session arrived, but she didn’t answer the bell. Da Mi rang on the Gotcha and she didn’t answer that either. Instead, she stuffed the Gotcha behind the sofa cushions and watched romcoms on her flat screen all day. It didn’t stop raining, but she was snuggled in bed, sniffling her way through hours of misunderstandings magically transformed into perfect, happy endings.
On Saturday she woke up late again. It was still raining. Fuck, when is this monsoon season going to end? she thought, though the darkness of the room was comforting. She spent the day in her cave, reading magazines, watching TV, doing her nails. Jin Sok called, but she ignored him. At five, she went to the mog yuk tan on the corner—it was just a neighborhood one, nothing fancy, but the shower and hot pool helped her feel better. Back home she cooked herself a stir-fry, then, as the rain finally began to let up and the clock moved closer to midnight, she rummaged through her wardrobe and got dressed to kill.
She dropped into Pig Bar just as it closed and asked Moon Sun if she wanted to go to Gongjang. Fifteen minutes later they were walking hand-in-hand down the alley to the club.
The place was heaving, and Jae Ho was propping up the bar. Sydney’s heart rapped loudly in her chest.
“Asshole.” Moon Sun scowled. “He has beautiful wife and he just chase foreign skirt!”
Sydney flinched. “Why? The painter?”
“See my friend here, black girl?” Moon Sun gestured toward a girl dancing a few feet away. Her orange sleeveless dress clung to her full figure. “Jae Ho, he phone her every day. He tell her every day he love her, she beautiful, everything. She hate him. She never encourage him. He thinks he has right to hassle her like that. He is Confucian pig.”
Setting her face in an expression of blank indifference, Sydney reassessed the girl: short, busty, with a bright Modette style. Obviously no one had told her that look didn’t suit fat chicks. Casually, she scanned the room until she was looking back in Jae Ho’s direction. Caught staring at the black girl, he shrugged and turned away.
Her blood racing cold in her veins, Sydney tore through all the possible options in her mind. Clearly, Jae Ho had only said he loved this girl because she’d refused to fuck him. There’d been nothing to gain by telling her, Sydney, the same thing. Okay, so maybe he was playboy. But he had felt for her, he had—until Da Mi and Jin Sok fucked everything up. A hot pulse of anger flared in her chest.
But then the girl in the orange dress laughed and waved at Moon Sun, and something inside her went limp. Maybe Jae Ho had been getting bored with her? Maybe this squashy girl with her big tits was really his type—men always wanted shorter women. It was pathe
tic, but true.
“What a jerk,” she said, viciously. “He tried with me too. I told him I don’t date Korean guys. Too bossy. Western women, we don’t like to be pushed around.”
“George Clooney is my style,” Moon Sun announced. “Some crazy hero! He make his own way, I make mine. We meet only in foreign country. George Clooney respect woman, he is like a stimulus to growth.”
It wasn’t how Sydney would have described George Clooney, but she approved of the general outline of the fantasy.
“Yeah, that’s the best,” she agreed. “Independence.” Her stomach in tatters, her jaw set, Sydney grabbed Moon Sun and started dancing hip-to-hip with her, grinding each other into fake delirium, always aware of Jae Ho, who was prowling through the room, like her, only half-submerged in the spaced-out music of not-home, airports, limbo, voyage.
At three a.m. he winked at her, tilted his head at the door. Hating herself for her weakness, she waited five minutes, then, leaving Moon Sun on the sofa, holding hands with her friend in the orange dress, she followed him outside.
Water from the gutters was sloshing down the street. In the yellow glow of the street lamps the rain was like needles, slicing shining bullet paths through the air, nearly blinding her. She stepped into the road, and her dress was instantly plastered to her body. Her stomach felt taut and hollow. Where the fuck was Jae Ho? She pushed wet ropes of hair off her face. She couldn’t go back in the club like this. She’d have to give up, go home.
“Sy-duh-ney.” The sound of her name came faintly through the cascading rain, an echo through a waterfall. He was standing on the steps where they’d first kissed.
“Jae Ho.” With a surge of exhilaration, she ran to him. “I’m soaking!”
He was clutching a black folding umbrella in his hand like a policeman’s truncheon. “Sy-duh-ney,” he said loudly, over the rain. “I wait last time. I tell you, I must go home. I have family I want see.”
Her nipples were hard, her dress was sticking in silky ripples to her skin. “That’s okay,” she wheedled, leaning close, stroking his arm. “You come to my house next week. I be very good, very quiet. Like second wife.”
“No, Sy-duh-nee, second wife old Korean way. Not today. I not see you anymore. I sorry. I cannot.”
Sydney took a step back. “Fuck off then!” The words spewed out of her mouth, harsh and thin, driven into the street by the wind and rain.
He gave her a silent look, part pity, part disapproval, then shrugged and opened his umbrella.
Tears boiling up in her eyes, she watched him disappear, a stocky black figure tramping through the storm.
Shivering, she turned to start the walk home.
“Sydney! Sydney!” There was that echo again, higher and more insistent this time. A woman in a billowing black hooded cape was hurrying toward her, calling out her name.
“I’m so glad I’ve found you!” Da Mi rushed up to Sydney and clasped her wrist. “I’ve been calling and calling your Gotcha—did you lose it? Jin Sok said you were upset with him. Oh, Sydney, you’re drenched. Is everything okay?”
Sydney wrenched her arm free. “No, Da Mi, it’s not okay. You told all that stuff to Jin Sok—I couldn’t believe it. I thought you were my friend!”
She walked on, but Da Mi followed, tugging at her elbow, shouting over the wind and the rain, “I am your friend—and so is Jin Sok. Look, I’m so sorry if what I said caused any difficulties between you. Let’s talk it through, okay?”
Sydney spun on her heel. “There’s nothing to talk about, Da Mi,” she spat. “I’m wet, just let me get home.”
Beneath her hood, Da Mi’s face was streaked with shadows from the street lamp and twisted in distress. “Oh darling, I know you’re angry with me—but I’m sure we can work it all out. I’ve got a taxi waiting. Can I at least give you a lift?”
In the yellow light, Da Mi looked washed out, almost old. A lump rose in Sydney’s throat.
Da Mi opened her cloak. “Come, we could sit in there for a minute and talk.”
Sydney hesitated. Why was everything going haywire with all of her friends? Hunching into the black wing, she let Da Mi steer her to the taxi waiting on the corner.
“Now, let’s dry you off.” Da Mi took off the cloak and handed it to Sydney. The outer shell was waterproof GrilleTexTM, but the lining was pearly-pink satin.
She just held it for a minute, then at Da Mi’s insistence, she rubbed her face and hair, blotting up the worst of the rain. “Thanks,” she muttered.
“I’ve got a Thermos with me. Would you like a honey water?”
“No.”
“Oh, sweetheart—are you sure? It would calm your nerves.” Da Mi opened the Thermos and held it out.
At the smell of the drink, Sydney’s mouth began to water. “All right,” she said sulkily.
Da Mi waited as she took a warming sip. “Oh, dear, you really are upset with me, aren’t you?”
Sydney balanced the cup on her knees. She tried to speak, but nothing came out except a strange tsking sound.
Da Mi sighed. “It must have been a shock when Jin Sok told you we had spoken—maybe I shouldn’t have called him, but I was so worried about you. Sometimes just a couple of healing sessions in the Chair can make you feel more confident, but it’s not enough to give you the detachment you need to make a clean break with the past. Or it can stir up all the emotions, and if a trigger situation arises, you don’t have a clue how to react.”
Begrudgingly, Sydney shot her a quick look. “It felt a bit like that, yeah.”
“I thought it might.” Da Mi said consolingly. She moved a fraction of an inch closer to her, but then, as if she knew Sydney was still bristling inside, withdrew. “Please, darling. Let me explain. I just wanted Jin Sok to look out for you. I honestly didn’t mean to mention Jae Ho, it just slipped out—but frankly, Jin Sok had noticed your attraction too. I know it’s all been very messy for you, but can you accept it was for the best? The sooner you can put him behind you, Sydney, the faster the Chair will work for you. Think about the future that’s just around the corner. Don’t you think that’s worth giving up a fruitless love affair?”
Sydney leaned her head against the window. Outside in the pelting rain, a few drunken clubbers were weaving up the street underneath a pop-up umbrella: Moon Sun, her arm around the waist of the black girl, who was clinging to a tall blond surf-dude. The umbrella so small it made no difference at all.
The little group disappeared around a corner. The girl was pretty, really, Sydney thought dully. And it was hardly like she was trying to steal Jae Ho away. It wasn’t fair to hate her. Maybe she’d even done Sydney a favor by showing up what Jae Ho was really like. Just another married man, fantasizing about foreign girls. It was the same every night here, and it would be the same ten years from now, twenty even, maybe: people dancing to forget themselves, to get soaked in the magic of a few sweaty hours. She’d thought she’d found something special in the mix; but it was all just a fleeting illusion.
She took another sip of the honey drink. It was sweet liquid comfort. Da Mi, though—Da Mi had only ever offered her nice things—more than nice, amazing: the chance to step above the crowd, to feel secure in the world, be someone everyone would remember.
“I’m such an idiot sometimes,” she said. “You were only looking out for me. He’s history; I know he is. I’m sorry that I let you down.”
“You’ve never let me down, Sydney. It’s very hard to break a love-sick spell. Look, why don’t you come back home with me now? You can have a hot bath and a good sleep—I’ve got new silk pajamas in the guest room. And tomorrow we can get you back into the Chair.”
Sydney felt so tired. But one thing was clear as soju: she had to move on from Jae Ho. He was an asshole, and he had just walked out of her life. But Da Mi hadn’t; Da Mi was right beside her, smelling of lilies and jasmine, inviting her home to rest.
She thought about her own apartment, strewn with clothes, empty wine bottles and mascara-stained
sheets. It would be so good to have a long hot soak in that gleaming tub in Da Mi’s bathroom, sleep on freshly washed sheets, wake up and walk around that gorgeous garden, breathing the fresh mountain air of Pyongchangdong.
“Okay,” she whispered, and Da Mi signaled to the driver and the black taxi steered out into the raging torrent of the street.
Part Five
MISCONCEPTIONS
31 / Chusok
Chusok fell at the end of September this year. The Korean Harvest Moon Festival was a time for stressed-out city slickers to head back to their home villages to eat, drink and “honor the ancestors.” Damien’s privates had canceled their lessons and the hagwons were all closed. Jake had invited him to a party in the mountains, but the thought of sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for six hours to get there was unappealing; instead he’d decided to stay home, sleep and drink beer. After three months’ hard labor he could do with some time to slob out.
Saturday afternoon he lay on the sofa with a Grolsch and his laptop. As predicted by the pundits, NATO had stepped up its campaign in Pakistan, but had so far shown remarkable restraint on the nuclear front. The hawks, playing the noble victims, were courting favorable world opinion in a build-up to taking on Russia. Considering that the snuke fallout had turned out to be far less potent than originally feared, you had to wonder if M15 hadn’t decided to save English footballing pride, destroy Yankee enthusiasm for soccer and give themselves an excuse to oust not only the Taliban but Putin all in one fell swoop. What was the cost of rebuilding Wembley compared to all that?
In other news, the NHS was on rolling strike action, autumn rains had already caused the Thames to flood twice, and according to several prominent psychics, Lucifer’s Hammer was right on target. Everything was getting worse and worse, and still people weren’t thinking further ahead than next week. Well, at least they wouldn’t all be stampeding to Winnipeg. He opened another beer and put on Damon Albarn’s new opera. The Tuvan throat-singing heroine was yodeling her way to the top of an aria, when his MoPho rang.
