door tug aside the curtain. The mama-san pulls back her arms and throws the earrings over the heads of the clump of girls and into the street. One of the door girls starts to go after them, turns to check the mama-san, and finds herself impaled on the sharp end of a glare. She resumes her place beside the door and lets the crowd of shoppers and barhoppers crush the earrings underfoot.
Kwan feels a sudden sting on the inside of her elbow. The mama-san has snapped the sensitive skin there with her index finger, and she's curled the finger beneath her thumb to do it again, but when Kwan turns, she lowers her hand and stares up into Kwan's eyes. As tiny as she is, her gaze has an almost physical weight to it. Without moving closer or raising her voice, she says, 'You.'
Kwan leans forward, trying to hear her over the noise of the club. The mama-san says, 'You will not embarrass me. Do you understand?' She lifts her chin in warning, and then she steps aside and looks back to where someone is standing at the edge of the group of dancers, a short, fat, pig-faced man in the brown uniform of a police captain. The uniform is wrinkled and dirt-mottled, the necktie pulled to one side, and the shirt patched with sweat. It balloons out over his pants, trapping rolls of fat. The mama-san raises her eyebrows inquiringly, and the captain studies Kwan's face, and then, slowly, he nods.
Fon says, very softly, 'I think you're in business.'
'But you will,' the mama-san says. They're alone in the room the girls use to change in, just a space behind the stage with little square lockers set into one wall. Kwan stands with her back to the lockers, which are to the right of the door. The bar's main speakers hang on the other side of the wall, and she can feel the bass thumping against her rump and shoulders. The mama-san sits upright, spine vertical, at the edge of a blue plastic chair. A doorway with no door in it leads to the men's room, which stinks of piss. Men come in at irregular intervals, some of them staggering, use the urinals, and leave. Most of them take long looks at Kwan on their way out.
'I won't,' Kwan says.
The mama-san doesn't acknowledge the remark. 'Nana told me you were a virgin. Did she lie?'
Kwan feels herself blush, but there's also a bright tingle of anger. 'No.'
'Did you lie to her?'
'Of course not.'
The mama-san hears Kwan's tone and lifts an eyebrow. 'Good. He's expecting a virgin. If he doesn't get one, he'll tell me.'
'Then find him one.'
'I have. You.'
Kwan feels the pounding of her heart above the bass line. 'I'm not even dancing yet.'
The mama-san nods as though she's finally gotten the argument she was expecting. 'You will be. Not until he's finished with you, because he won't want to share you with anyone until he's tired of you. That's if you take care of him right, of course.'
Kwan summons her one piece of ammunition. 'Nana said I didn't have to go with anyone unless I-'
The mama-san says, 'Ssssssssss,' and shakes her head sharply. 'Don't talk to me about Nana. Is Nana your boss? Is Nana in this room?'
'No,' Kwan says. She's searching for words, but they're jumbled and meaningless. They seem to flit past her eyes, disappearing before she can read them. She grabs onto four: 'But she promised me.' She breaks off as Oom comes in, damp with sweat, and looks at the two of them questioningly.
'Who promised who?' Oom says. 'And what was the promise?'
The mama-san flicks a hand toward the bar area and says to Oom, 'Sit out there. We're talking.'
Oom takes a plastic chair, puts it against the wall, and stands beside it, one hand on the back. 'I don't sit out there.'
The mama-san's head comes forward like a snake's. 'No, you don't, and don't think we haven't noticed. Nobody's buying you drinks, you're not getting taken out. No commissions, no bar fines. We're making no money off you. What good are you?'
Oom lifts her hair and fans the back of her neck. 'I bring men in.'
'So will she,' the mama-san says, tilting her face toward Kwan. 'And she won't be as picky as you are.'
'I'm not picky,' Oom says mildly. 'I'm in love. And you just hate that, don't you? You've never loved anybody in your life. You don't even have a cat.'
'Love,' the mama-san says. 'Love is a stocking full of drink receipts. Love is money in the bank. Love is having a nice place to live, one that's all yours, that nobody can take away.'
'Listen to this,' Oom says to Kwan. 'Wouldn't it be awful to end up like her?'
Kwan says, 'She wants me to go with that fat policeman.'
'This is not a three-way conversation,' the mama-san says.
To Kwan's surprise, Oom says, 'So? Do it. He's okay. Half the time he can't even manage it.'
'But-' Kwan says. 'I can't, I mean, I've never even… I've never been with a man.'
'Ahh,' Oom says. She picks up the chair and turns it around and straddles it, her arms folded over the back. 'I should have known you were a virgin,' she says. 'You give it off like perfume. So this is about your hymen, isn't it?'
Kwan says, 'I-'
'You get a lot of use out of your hymen?' Oom asks.
'What?'
'I mean, when was the last time you did anything with it? Do you take it for little walks? Talk with it at night? Buy it cute hats? Introduce it to your friends?'
The mama-san leans back in her chair for the first time. Kwan looks from her to Oom, and Oom returns the look with a faint smile.
Oom says, 'No? Then you're saving it? Is anyone paying you interest?'
Kwan has to say something, so she says, 'I don't think this is funny.'
Oom shrugs. 'It's not funny, and it's not not funny either. It's just how things are here, and here is where you've wound up. But your hymen. Let's face it. It's pretty much useless, isn't it? Like your appendix.' She twists a finger through her hair and pulls a long lock forward to check the ends, apparently giving it all her attention. 'But there's a big difference between your hymen and your appendix. Do you know what it is?'
The mama-san makes a chirping sound that might be a laugh.
Kwan says, 'No.'
'You have to pay someone to remove your appendix,' Oom says. 'But someone will pay you to remove your hymen.' She glances over at the mama-san. 'He is going to pay, isn't he?'
'You're joking,' the mama-san says. 'He's never paid for a girl in his life. We'll have to pay her.'
Oom fans the hair to check for split ends. 'How much?'
The mama-san says, 'Three-fifty.'
'Not enough,' Oom says. 'Should be five at least.'
'Five what?' Kwan says.
'Five hundred dollars,' Oom says. She lets the hair fall back into place.
'We're paying her,' the mama-san says. 'That means no commission to us. She'll wind up with the same amount of money. If he paid five, we'd take a hundred fifty.'
'I know,' Oom says. 'It's the principle of it.'
'I don't care how much it is,' Kwan says, but Oom raises a hand.
'Of course you care how much it is. What do you think this is about, if it's not money? You're only going to be able to sell this once, and then you won't have it anymore. Losing your virginity is not a career. It's a onetime sale, and you should get every penny you can.'
'I mean, I mean… I don't think I can-'
'Oh, grow up,' Oom says. 'You're here. You've left behind everything you know and everybody you know, just to come down here. As though this is the… the ocean, right? You've left your village and come to the ocean. And the only reason to go to the ocean, the only reason anyone goes to the ocean, is to get in the water, but you, you're afraid.' She wraps her arms around herself and does a mock shudder. 'It's too cold. It's too rough. You want to dip your toe in and give a little scream and pull it out again and have everyone tell you how brave you are, and then next time maybe you'll go in all the way up to your ankles and get splashed a little, and we'll all applaud and
