Frankly in Love

by David Yoon

  Hilarious!

  The string quartet changes tack—Wagner’s Bridal Chorus, no surprises here—and Kyung Hee appears. More invocations in Korean: “Marriage is work” and “Joining of the families” and blablabla according to Dad’s whispers. We sit. We stand. We sit. We stand.

  Kyung Hee and the groom kiss a single dry kiss, and then it’s ding-dong done: the quartet busts into an upbeat Mendelssohn march, and we all get up to herd ourselves into the cool indoor reception area of the ship.

  “What’d you think of the wedding?” I say to Mom-n-Dad.

  “They doing good,” says Mom.

  “It’s nice one,” says Dad.

  “Pretty soon you,” says Mom.

  “Mom,” I say.

  Mom tugs my jacket straight, then glances with astonishment past my shoulder. “Omona. So pretty.”

  Omona means Oh my god.

  And Mom’s right: there’s Joy, peering at me with plum lipstick and crushed onyx eyeliner, luxe goth. Just standing there in that dress.

  Not just standing. Joy is ___________.

  A) shimmering

  B) coruscating

  C) scintillating

  D) effervescing

  E) freaking gorgeous

  My IQ drops to ten. “What the fuck,” I whisper.

  Mom nudges me forward. “Go.”

  “Have a fun,” says Dad.

  Dad is smiling. Mom is smiling.

  I ignore them. The reception hall is a gallery of silhouettes surrounding a single shaft of violet luminescence, and in that light awaits the maiden of—

  “Frank,” says Joy.

  “Yo,” I say.

  Joy folds her arms and examines me, then admits, “All right, you look hot.”

  “You look”—I fish for the right word but come up short, so fuck it—“you look amazing.”

  “I don’t feel amazing,” says Joy, casting sidelong glances with her elaborate, glistening eyes. “I feel exposed. This dress is all like, boobs!”

  “Ha ha ha ha ha,” I say. “Hahaha ha ha haha ha.”

  The forest around us turns into a constellation of eyes, all watching. Cheshire-cat smiles flicker on and off. People are watching. I catch a glimpse of Joy’s parents. Their clothes look like they cost ten times as much as Mom-n-Dad’s.

  “This is a live-fire situation—we should get into character,” I say. For some reason I add, “Hold my hand.”

  “Copy that,” says Joy.

  We clasp hands. Hers is ice cold, like when it was on my cheek at the hospital. It would be ice cold running up my bare arm for sure.

  There’s a flowery table with a guest book. There’s a pyramid of champagne glasses. A futuristic DJ rig manned by a huge guy in a tracksuit. There’s a parade of sumptuous flower wreaths on tall stands, gifts from families and local businesses, all flanking a sliding pile of impeccable gift envelopes—probably tens of thousands in cash, just sitting there. There’s an eight-foot-tall ice sculpture of a—

  “Of a,” I say, squinting hard at it.

  “It’s a tiger,” says Joy.

  “Getting attacked by this eagle up here.”

  “So goddamn random,” says Joy.

  “I love it,” I say.

  “I hate it,” says Joy. “But so much that I love it?”

  “I feel you.”

  Her hand has gone hot and moist in mine, so I switch to warm up the other one.

  There’s another table I can’t quite understand, made of bare steel and full of gray pinwheels and tubes and what look like dead flowers. It stands in front of plain sealed blackout doors. Maybe it’s some weird Korean thing I don’t know about?

  “Torture table,” says Joy.

  “Blood carnival game,” I say.

  “Traditional Korean meat bingo,” says Joy.

  “Self-serve acupuncture,” I say.

  And so on. We do this until our faces hurt from giggling.

  Eventually we go sit at the kids’ table. Andrew Kim, John Lim, and Ella Chang are already there. Our table must be too big, because there’s a couple free chairs. We sprawl out and claim it in the name of the Limbos.

  “Dude, there are like no non-Koreans here,” says Andrew Kim. He’s wearing a maroon prom tux, because every wedding has that guy. He throws an arm over one of the empty chairs and scans the room. “She’s hot. She’s hot.”

  “Please explain this whole thing you’re doing,” says Joy.

  Andrew leans forward to explain. “Right now I’m inhabiting my character. I’m helping out with an indie thing up in LA. I play this super-shallow bro type, but who is secretly a kickass spy?”

  “But?” says Joy.

  “Yeah, how is that a but?” I say.

  Andrew just looks at us.

  Joy explains. “You’re implying that a bro is diametrically opposed to a kickass spy.”

  “What she said,” I say.

  Andrew thinks, then comes up with his checkmate move. “I got eight hundred on the Writing section.”

  It’s moronic banter, the kind Hanna would love, and suddenly I miss my big sister. I take a selfie in my suit and send it along with Miss you. Hanna of course probably won’t write back until tomorrow or next week or whenever.

  “You look like a princess,” blurts John Lim to Ella Chang.

  Ella Chang smiles, then sweetens it with a nose wrinkle. “You look like a magician.”

  “Wanna dance?”

  “There’s no music right now, John.”

  “When the music starts, that’s what I meant,” says John Lim.

  I can’t take any more, so I lean in to Joy. “Wanna ditch and pretend to smoke cigarettes?”

  “Heck yeah,” says Joy. “Just one rule: no talking about him.”

  She must mean Wu. “Oh no.”

  “Don’t make me cry. My makeup.” Joy dabs at her eyes with the tip of a napkin.

  I’m about to ask what happened when a booming voice destroys the air around us.

  “Okay, everyone, are you ready to shaking loose and party?” says the voice.

  It’s the DJ. He’s got an accent. If he has an accent, and everyone here is Korean, why not just speak Korean?

  My question is cut in half by a jet of white hissing from a hidden smoke machine. Beats rattle the century-old rivets in the ship’s hull. Beams of rainbow light slice across the tables.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of Kang-Chang wedding 2019, aboard such a beautiful Landworth classic steam cruise ship from days of yore, your new Mr. and Mrs. Kang!”

  The music dips, only to drop a ten-megaton four-beat onto the trembling chinaware. A spotlight burns away at a tall heart-shaped sheet of glitter that rips open to reveal Kyung Hee and her new husband bursting through. Comets of tinsel eject everywhere. She’s wearing a black flapper dress; he’s wearing a canary zoot suit.

  “Some kind of Gatsby thing?” I scream.

  “What?” screams Joy.

  “Everybody in the place / clap your hands and see

  “what a heart full of joy / make it easy to be

  “full of love and the things / that important to me

  “feel so good deep inside / perfect time wed-ding,” raps the DJ.

  With that, the music lowers to a merciful level to allow the newlyweds to be led by a squirrelly coordinator in a headset from table to table, where they bow and thank the guests. Meanwhile, rivers of stone-faced waitstaff bring out plates of food. Exactly fifteen minutes later, they take the empty plates away.

  The newlyweds arrive at our table.

  “Heyyyy,” say we Limbos.

  “It’s so cute seeing you guys all dressed up,” says Kyung Hee. “Look at my little sis!”

  Ella Chang wrinkles her nose—“Yay!”—then goes neutral again.

&n
bsp; The groom says a bunch of stuff in Korean.

  “Uh, we suck at Korean,” says Andrew.

  “I said there’s booze over there and no one’s carding,” says the groom. His jawline could sharpen swords. He points right at me and Joy like a machine inspector and says a bunch more stuff in Korean to Kyung Hee. She says a bunch of Korean stuff back to him, and together they giggle and give us love-eyes. I don’t need to ask what they said.

  The newlyweds move on to the next table: another kids’ table, with three boys and two girls sitting in mirror-image arrangement to ours like doppelgangers from an alternate dimension.

  The super-Koreans.

  They rise from their languor to greet the bride and groom. They bow in this hip, fluid manner that demonstrates how much they really own bowing. They toss perfect bangs and mumble in perfect Korean. And their perfectly disheveled clothes, I realize, are matching white outfits with matching black lapel carnations.

  They look so put-together. I could be put-together too if I had chosen the tribe, to quote Q. Suddenly I feel a little shabby. Far from put-together. More like left-apart.

  “Why are all the super-Koreans in Asian Death White?” I whisper to Joy.

  “Maybe they’re a K-pop group,” Joy whispers back.

  “Why not.”

  White is the color of oblivion in lots of Asia, not black like it is in America. Movies there fade to white. People think all-white cars look badass. I have a vintage Japan-only Asian Death White mini-disc player in my collection, and I think it looks badass.

  The newlyweds vanish. The robotic waitstaff bring in another course of food. A timpani drumroll rumbles forth out of nowhere.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s greetings from under the sea,” says the DJ.

  Kyung Hee appears in the spotlight in a tight green sequined dress and a wig of bright red hair. The groom looks like a pirate prince. The room applauds. I raise a hand and Joy claps it, like giving me a high five over and over again.

  “So it’s Mermaid Romance,” I say.

  “Why not,” says Joy.

  “And give a warm welcome to a very special presentation by friends of the groom,” says the DJ.

  The lights cut out. The super-Koreans spring to attention. I notice they’re wearing Asian Death White headset mics—when did they get those?—and one of the girls emotes an impassioned speech in a spotlight while a soulful electric piano plays.

  “What’s she saying?” says Joy.

  “Something about the sea being really deep—I can’t catch it all,” I say. My Korean is only barely better than hers, which isn’t saying much.

  A beat drops—this museum-quality late-nineties hip-hop jam—and the super-Koreans skip in time up to the dance floor, where they begin to perform a goddamn song.

  “I was fucking joking when I said K-pop group,” says Joy.

  The super-Koreans begin to clap, and now everyone’s clapping with them, and I start to get that classic Limbo feeling that I get whenever I’m surrounded by this much Korean-ness: that I am a failure at being Korean, and not doing so great at being American, so the only thing left to do is run away and hide in my own little private Planet Frank.

  The super-Koreans now clap at us: Come on, clap!

  “I did not sign up for this shit,” I say.

  “Fuck’s sake,” moans Joy. “For the sake of Saint Fuck.”

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  We sneak away in the dark and leave the Limbos, who now clap along in a daze, and escape into the dusky air where the only sound is the muffled music coming from behind the windows and the pink noise panorama of the ocean’s surround. The seagulls have gone quiet for the day. The sun hangs low and fat and orange.

  We find a spot where no one can see us, lean on the rail, and watch the sunset. I pass Joy an invisible cigarette. She inhales, exhales, and passes it back to me.

  “I needed this, I think,” says Joy. “I needed to get out of my own head.”

  “Everything okay?”

  Joy bumps my shoulder. “I’m chilly.”

  “It did get cold, didn’t it,” I say.

  “That means give me your jacket, stupid.”

  Right, duh. I drape it over her shiny shoulders. It’s a shame to cover up shoulders that shiny. She snuggles in, looks back at me with twin eyes ablaze, and says:

  “Thanks, yubs.”

  I can only gaze at her. Behind us, the music thuds on. A word pops into my head:

  if

  if if if if

  ifififififififififififififif, until the word ceases to be a word and becomes a nonsense sound you make while thinking hard.

  As in if there were no Brit.

  What am I saying? There is Brit. We are together. I say it slow: I. Love. Brit.

  But if there were no Brit, says a voice, I would probably go after Joy. It’s true. I would.

  This is news to me. I fold it up and put it away.

  “So,” says Joy, gearing up to tell me something. “About me and Wu.”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about Wu.”

  “We officially broke up.”

  Joy tilts her head back to catch tears in her eyes like raindrops. “Here come the tears for real,” she says. But there’s no stopping it. A gray streak leaks from her mascara and extends down her temple.

  “Listen. Wu? He’s sweet. He’s kind. But he never made me laugh. Not really. Not in that way where you’re laughing but you have no idea why. Or where you laugh for so long you have to take a break just to rest. You wouldn’t know because you’re so stupid. Who makes me laugh, Frank? Tell me.”

  I swallow. My feet are leaving the ground. “You’re gonna say me.”

  “Of course I’m gonna say you.”

  I look down and see her feet have left the ground, too.

  That’s never happened before.

  It’s always been my feet only, and no one else’s.

  “Well, I’m gonna say you, too,” I say.

  “Me too what?”

  “You make me laugh,” I say. “No one makes me laugh like you do.”

  “I know, Frank, that’s the thing.” Joy thumbs the corners of her eyes dry.

  “And you’re crazy,” I say. “It’s crazy how crazy you are.”

  “Because you make me crazy.”

  “I make you crazy?” I say.

  “You make me insane,” cries Joy. Then her voice shrinks. “Do I make you crazy?”

  She’s staring at me hard now, and I’m locked into her gaze. There are two tiny sunsets burning in those eyes of hers.

  “Do I make you crazy?” she says again.

  “Yes,” I say finally. “You do.”

  Joy cradles my pinky in her palm. “Oh, Frank. Just listen to me and don’t laugh. I got all dressed up today. I was so nervous. I was scared out of my mind. Because all I could think was, what if I got all dressed up, and what if it was all just for you, and it turned out you didn’t love me back?”

  The world zooms away to become a speck. We drift and drift until we find a lime-green nebula full of fragrant breathable air. The stars here are light as Christmas tree ornaments—the slightest touch and they sway slowly in this new atmosphere.

  I try out the words. They are easy to say.

  I love you, Joy.

  I don’t forget the I. I don’t have to practice. I don’t have to anything.

  The words are there right on the tip of my tongue. They were always there.

  I love you, Joy.

  Joy Song, seven letters long.

  “Don’t be scared,” I whisper. “Don’t cry.”

  I wipe a tear on her face very carefully. I follow the gray streak of mascara and blend it with my thumb. I have to get in close to do this. I’ve never been this close before.

 
Our kiss stretches the nebula into a thin green laserline that spans whole systems. I hold her tight against me so our bodies almost fuse, crushed so hard that I pause out of worry—she lifts her ovalette face and breathes at me, I’m fine, Frank, I am more than fine—before kissing her again. I inhale all the scents of her secret world: the soap of her shower, the vanillin of lotion, the burnt perfume of the hot iron that ran through her hair just before tonight. She tastes like wedding food and lipstick wax and salty tears.

  She tastes just like Joy.

  We don’t even notice that the wall we are standing behind is not a wall, but two plain blackout doors that have at some point opened to flood the air with pop music. We don’t notice the DJ, who now says, “Ladies and gentlemen, in honor of Kang-Chang wedding 2019, I am pleased to present sparkle lights!”

  We don’t see the table—the Korean meat bingo table—full of gray steel rods and other implements. They ignite and whirl. They’re fireworks, and they’re all going off at the same time in a blinding, buzzing fire hazard of a display.

  Only once we are engulfed in gunsmoke do we notice what’s just happened. The whole wedding party can see us in the brilliant shower of magnesium white. They were already clapping. Now they clap even harder. The super-Koreans see us, too. They’re panting from having just finished their routine. They clap in our direction with arms weirdly stretched sideways.

  They’ve willed the big moon of the spotlight to shine right on us, and now we stand in its crystalline light.

  chapter 22

  fire day

  Monday comes.

  Monday comes from the Old English monandæg and means moon day.

  By the end of this moon day, I will have a black eye.

  But let’s back up first.

  The wedding.

  Oh, the wedding.

  We danced. We sat at the table and ate. The bride and groom had two more costume changes: traditional Korean formal, then Celebrity Dance-Off.

  The Limbos all took turns punching us. You were faking that you were faking? said Ella Chang. You guys are so next-level, said Andrew Kim.

  I guess things change, said me and Joy.