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.”
“No luggage?”
“What is it with you guys and the luggage? Can’t someone just drop in for a visit?”
The clerk apprises me for a moment before returning to the paperwork in front of him. “It says your job is ‘international businessman.’ But you carry no briefcase?”
During happier times, maybe twenty hours ago, I’d written “international businessman” on my customs declaration card. A joke. “This was a social visit,” I say, glancing at the teenage soldier with a machine gun who stands nearby. He looks a lot less like a teddy bear than yesterday’s version. “I don’t mean to sound impatient, but my plane is leaving very soon.”
“Of course,” the clerk says. “I just make one phone call first. Make sure you’re not drug dealer.”
His smile doesn’t reassure me. Why did I have to be such a smart-ass with the “international businessman” thing? What if they found the dope I flushed on the way over? Visions of strip searches and various tortures pass before my eyes. What if they make me take a lie-detector test, and ask me if I’m a drug dealer?
The clerk finally hangs up the phone and, after a pregnant pause, stamps my papers.
“I hope you enjoyed Korea.”
DURING THE STEWARDESS’S MARCEL Marceau-like demonstration of the plane’s emergency procedures, I cling to my seat with a white-knuckled grip that leaves indentations in the armrest. I’m almost positive that any minute Korean teenagers with automatic weapons are going to storm the plane calling my name. But once we’re in the air, I relax enough to close my eyes.
I sleep for eight hours. I don’t feel refreshed, exactly, but I’ll settle for improved. I take stock of my situation. Broke. Brokenhearted. Mother sick and dying. I can almost hear the violins.
Let’s get real, I say to myself. Hadn’t I played a role in creating the unhappiness? Maybe Tana’s right about
