God Hates Us All

“Am I going to see you two do some fuck-ing?”

“No you will fucking not, you goddamn fairy,” replies Ray.

Gene giggles. “Maybe I’ll trade beds with Chris. That way I’ll be riiight beneath you.”

I sense a shift in Ray’s mood. “Back off, Gene,” I say. “Mr. Moneybags doesn’t have to rub elbows or any other parts of his body with our sorry asses. He’s staying at the Four Seasons.”

Ray stops as quickly as if he’d been punched in the gut. “Fuck.”

“You’re not staying at the Four Seasons?”

“Devi told me to cancel my room. ’Cause I’d be staying with her, right? Why waste all that money when I could be supporting some family of six in Nepal? Enough cow dung to last two winters… That fucking bitch!”

We idle for a while until the news settles in. The English-man finally breaks the silence. “Bollocks,” he says solemnly to Ray. “I guess Gene’s going to get to see you fuck after all.”

Sunny’s face clouds with confusion, her disposition, for the first time tonight, at odds with her name. “How much farther is this place, anyway?” Ray barks at no one. “I’m getting a fucking cab.” He drags Sunny toward an intersection with a higher concentration of motor traffic.

The Englishman catches up to them. “In all seriousness, mate, you’re not going to bring her back to the hostel.”

“Why not?” demands Ray.

“It’s against the rules.”

Ray reaches the intersection and flags a passing cab. “Fuck the rules.” He guides Sunny into the car and looks at me. “Hurry up.”

My arm is still intertwined with Janie’s. I could let go and sprint toward the cab, were I that kind of asshole. Instead, I split the difference, half-jogging as fast as her little legs will allow. Gene and the Englishman interpret my drunken chivalry as an open invitation. They race toward the cab, piling in before we can.

The cabdriver glares skeptically at the six figures crammed in his backseat. He’s even more concerned when we tell him we’re going to the Superior Guesthouse. “You ditch fare,” the driver says, his voice clearly singed by experience.

Ray searches for his wallet—no easy task, given the increasingly confused Korean hooker on his lap. “Seriously,” the Englishman says. “Let Sunny out of the cab.”

Gene, who’d beaten the Englishman into the car and earned the right to sit nearly on top of Ray, sounds his agreement. “He’s right. It’s against the rules. You should let her go.” Gene grabs Sunny’s chin between his fingers and speaks into her face. “You should go.”

“Get your fucking hands off of her,” says Ray, who has finally pried the wallet from his pocket. “I will break your god-damn fingers.”

“You should let her go,” says Gene.

Now Ray is screaming. “Where’s my money?” He looks at me. I look at Janie. “Why are you looking at her?”

“I’m not.”

Janie just stares out the window. “Mr. Moneybags spent it all at Suzie’s,” she says.

“She might be right,” I say. “I saw you drop a lot of money back there.”

“You should let her go,” says Gene.

“You should shut the fuck up!” says Ray. I catch the driver’s reflection in the rearview. He’s obviously regretting his decision to pick us up.

“You don’t even have any money,” says Gene. “You should let her go.”

Now the brakes are squealing. We’re thrown forward by the momentum. The driver is yelling at us. “No money?!”

All eyes turn toward Ray. He opens his door and scoots out from underneath Sunny, dragging her behind him. The rest of us quickly join the exodus.

“I call police!” screams the driver, speeding away.

We’re on a street that even in my short time in Seoul feels vaguely familiar—the major thoroughfare with the wide side-walks. Janie renews her grip on my arm. “It’s this way,” she says, dragging me along.

I look over my shoulder at Ray, who has Sunny’s hand in a vise-grip. His bleary eyes bulge white with cartoonish panic. “What do you say, Ray?” I hear myself using a delicate voice, like a negotiator talking a jumper off a ledge.

“You should let her go,” repeats Gene, and it’s one time too many. Ray is spinning on one leg, dragging the other like a tetherball around a pole. There’s a sickening crunch as his flying foot connects with the bridge of Gene’s nose. Gene crumples to the ground, holding his face. Blood spurts out through his fingers.

Ray isn’t finished yet. “I told you to shut the fuck up!” he yells. “But you couldn’t shut up!” Ray kicks him again, this time in the ribs. The blow lifts Gene off the ground, several feet into a curb. Ray closes the distance.

I unspool from Janie and dive toward Ray, wrapping my arms around his waist and knocking him to the ground. I hold him there as he swings wildly, eager to continue the fight. We struggle for I don’t know how long before I feel his body go limp, the anger fleeing like a vanquished spirit.

Gene sits on the edge of the sidewalk holding his ruined nose. The front of his shirt is stained red. Men in business suits, Monday morning commuters, emerge from a nearby subway terminal, surrounding Gene like water passing a pebble. Despite his condition only one man stops—across the street, to talk to a policeman. Both look back in our direction.

“Are you cool?” I ask Ray. “Because we really need to get out of here.”

He nods weakly. I lift him to his feet and lead him toward the entrance to the subway, the most obvious route of escape. We sprint down the steps into the terminal until turnstiles block our path. We pause to catch our breath. Sunny has for some mysterious reason chosen to follow us. She gestures at the turnstiles and says something in Korean, pointing toward a row of electronic vending machines built into the wall.

I snap at her like a condescending parent to a toddler in a tantrum. “No money. I know. You don’t understand a word we’re saying. No. Money.”

Sunny turns and walks away. Or so I think, until she accosts a man in a business suit. He brushes her away and she moves to another. I don’t understand the words being exchanged, but begging looks the same everywhere. The men who don’t ignore her offer an equally translatable expression—shame, a Korean girl so scandalously involved with two broke and broken white men. Until a stern-faced man with neatly combed white hair and wire-rimmed glasses hands her a few coins. Sunny clings to his sleeve, effusing until he pulls away in embarrassment.

Sunny returns from the vending machine with three tickets, handing one to me and pressing another into Ray’s palm, which is as limp as the rest of him. She leads him by the arm toward the turnstile, guiding his ticket into the machine. She watches to make sure I do the same, then follows us onto the train. Luck is on our side: Ray has committed his almost certainly felonious assault above a subway line that happens to terminate at the airport. Sunny sits next to him, providing a shoulder for his slumping head.

We arrive at the airport three hours before my scheduled departure. “Breakfast,” says Ray, the first words he’s uttered since the fight.

“I thought you didn’t have any money.”

He pulls a green credit card out of his wallet. “American Express.” He smiles weakly. “Don’t leave home without it.” The airport diner takes plastic. We drink a pot of coffee and sit in silence. Sunny, wearing sunglasses appropriated from Ray on the train, greedily devours a huge stack of pancakes.

At the entrance to customs, both Ray and Sunny hug me good-bye. I look back at them several times— despite the party clothes and the sunglasses, they remind me of that painting, the one with the farmer and his wife.

“Did you enjoy your trip?” asks the customs clerk.

“‘Enjoy’ isn’t the first word that comes to mind. But it sure was interesting.”

“How nice. Your luggage?”

“No luggage.”