Kept: A Comedy of Sex and Manners

by Y. Euny Hong

  IN THE FIRST WEEK of October Jung rang me up.

  “Did Yevgeny give you any credit cards?” Jung asked.

  “Yeah, how did you know?”

  “That’s how it works. Courtesans get limited cash but unlimited credit. It’s to prevent your becoming independent. If you disappear or displease them, they cancel the cards. But you only have store cards, right? No Visa, Amex, or MasterCard, right?”

  “Indeed. Bergdorf, Henri Bendel, Barneys, that sort of thing. All boutique stores.”

  “See? That’s because they don’t want you running off to buy a car, or whatever. They only want you to buy things that make you pretty. Wanna take me shopping? Don’t worry, I won’t go overboard. Just some shoes.”

  I agreed.

  We met up at the beauty salon at Bergdorf’s for a hydrodermic facial. We didn’t have an appointment, but Jung knew someone there, as usual, and got us adjacent slabs. We lay there like corpses in a morgue, being prodded by a woman in a lab coat. This was our masseuse, who insisted on being called a skin analyst.

  Hydrodermics are offered only in a few places outside of Paris; Jung has been getting them every six weeks since she was thirteen. The masseuse runs electricity through the skin, or something, and the currents force dirt out of the pores the way a storm makes earthworms leave the ground. It leaves a strange tin-foil taste in your mouth.

  Lying on the slab, I said, “Hey, Jung, why do you need me to take you shopping? Doesn’t your new boyfriend, John Locke, or whatever, give you credit cards? How do you know him again?”

  “Emerson,” she mumbled, trying to keep her face motionless for the masseuse. “His name is Emerson, and he’s my upstairs neighbor. He doesn’t give me credit cards because it’s not like that with us.”

  “Indeed? Must be serious,” I said.

  “Don’t mention Emerson to anyone,” she said menacingly. “Especially not to my brother. If this gets out, I’ll know you were the leak.”

  “What’s to mention? You always tell me that if I don’t keep this or that to myself, you’ll cut my head off, and then you never actually tell me anything.”

  “I’ll tell you later,” said Jung sternly.

  “Let’s talk about me, then,” I said. “Joshua hasn’t called since I saw him at the Met. I think it’s because I got into one of my bad-temper scrapes.”

  “Who’s Joshua?” said Jung. “Oh, the one-act wonder? Who cares.”

  “Or maybe it’s something else that turned him off. I’m really worried. Do you happen to remember whether I was unusually bloated or something that second week in September?”

  The masseuse interrupted, “Both of you, stop talking or you’ll jiggle your pores.” She added in my direction, “Yours are cavernous, especially.”

  As we lay quietly, my thoughts wandered to another piece of dermatological advice I once received twelve years ago, in Seoul, Korea.

  I am fourteen: three years have elapsed since we moved here from the States. I bite into a peach. The piece in my mouth appears still to be attached to the peach, by some sort of umbilical cord, stretched taut. It is a worm. Still very much alive, it chooses to align its fortunes with the larger of the two pieces of peach. It extracts its tail from the piece in my mouth and retreats into the nearly whole peach in my hand. I drop the fruit and run around the room spitting and shrieking in disgust.

  “Stop screaming and stop spitting on my carpet,” my mother commands. “It’s just a peach worm. In the old days they used to say that eating peach worms were good for your complexion. It would be unwise to pass on any such opportunity.”

  Appearance was paramount to my mother, which is not remarkable except that it was a strange lesson for her to come away with after a lifetime of suffering.

  AFTER THE FACIAL, Jung and I went, scrubbed and ruddy-faced, to the shoe department. Jung felt instantly at home, but I have never liked shopping at Bergdorf’s, and I find the shoe department particularly nauseating. It’s full of uppity monied types who spend all their time at the gym, but, ha-ha, no amount of exercise can hide their ankles, wide as all outdoors, which these ladies try unsuccessfully to stuff into strappy shoes. The balls of their feet balance precariously on pin-thin stiletto heels, resembling a tennis ball on a golf tee.

  “Do you have to look so damn hostile?” Jung said, picking out a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps for herself. “You having one of those imaginary altercations in your head again? Make yourself useful; try on some shoes.”

  I shook my head, whining, “I don’t want more shoes. I just went shopping last week.”

  Jung sighed. “You amateur. You have to keep using the cards as much as possible, keep the balances high, so his records show a history of large purchases. That way, the store doesn’t call Yevgeny to get his consent when you splurge. Plus, if you keep spending a lot and he keeps paying off the balances, they’ll keep raising the credit limit on the card.”

  “You amaze me,” I said. “This system has too many loopholes, though. What’s to prevent me from using the cards to steal money from Yevgeny? I could buy a bunch of gift certificates and then redeem them for cash.”

  Jung shook her head. “They won’t let you do that without calling Yevgeny first.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “A kept woman knows these things,” she said.

  “Why don’t you just stop working?” I asked. “Haven’t you saved any of the money all those men gave you? Or the allowance from your family, at least?”

  “Kept women don’t save money. It’s not our way.”

  Jung taught me long ago that in order to attract wealth, you have to project an image of wealth. You have to join clubs, attend balls, wear nice clothes, and, most important, upgrade continually. Jung says it is like the property ladder: you start off with the best you can get at the time. Then you use that boyfriend’s money to pretty yourself, and use his connections to meet someone better. Jung got on the ladder at age sixteen; while at boarding school in New Hampshire, she was tooling around with a Boston banker in his thirties who made only a hundred thousand a year. He outfitted her so nicely that she was able to run off with his boss a mere four months later. And so on and so on, ever upward, for more than a decade. Her last boyfriend, the one prior to the upstairs neighbor, was of the Cisneros clan, one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Venezuela.

  After I paid for our shoes, Jung and I went to Bemelmans Bar in the Carlyle. We ordered glasses of Veuve. Hers was free; I had to pay for mine.

  “I always get my drinks free,” she said in a singsong voice.

  “I know,” I said, seething at the injustice of it.

  “You know what it is? It’s my boobs. Having a pretty face will get you a good table, but you can’t get free stuff unless you’ve got the chest.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said.

  “Don’t you just hate it when guys stare at your rack while they’re talking to you? I’m like, ‘Hey, my face is up here.’ I guess you don’t know what I’m talking about, though.”

  “It must really be a nuisance,” I said.

  “Oh, it is,” she said without a hint of irony. “My body is a size four, but I have to buy a size six dress just to accommodate my bust.”

  Losing patience, I said, “Size four, my ass.”

  She choked on her cigarette smoke as she laughed. “Hey, no need for that. You’re probably not doing so badly yourself in the free stuff department. Any jewelry from Yevgeny yet?”

  “No,” I said. “Just dresses, and, oh, this Burberry coat.” I put my thumbs under the lapels and posed jauntily.

  She scrunched up her face in an expression of incredulity. “A bloody raincoat?”

  “It’s a Burberry.”

  “It’s a raincoat.” It did sound pretty foolish when she put it like that, but I wasn’t about to admit that.

  I said, “There’s time for jewelry later on; maybe he’s building up to it.”

  “No, no, no,” Jung sai
d. “Being a courtesan is like being a professional athlete. Your payoff has to be all at the front end, because you have to retire before age thirty-five.”

  “Jung, maybe I don’t care about jewelry.”

  She said, “You may not care, but Yevgeny should. What is this, amateur hour? He has clearly never kept a woman before, otherwise he would understand that he has to buy you jewelry in order to signal to other men that you are kept. It is a parade of vanities, a Vanity Fair.” As she spoke, she fingered her own Cartier choker. “And now I’ll tell you a secret. You must swear never to tell anyone, okay?”

  “Not this again, Jung? Either tell me or don’t tell me, and then let it go.”

  Jung nodded and leaned across the table, whispering, “Emerson is Korean.”

  I screamed, “What?” I was met with the scornful glances of our fellow patrons.

  “Not just Korean, but the son of a friend of our family, absolutely the right sort. A member of the Vanderbilt four hundred, or whatever the Korean equivalent would be.”

  “What kind of Korean is named Emerson?” I asked. “And which part of it is meant to be a secret? Wouldn’t your family be over the moon?”

  “All will reveal itself in time.”

  10

  Krauts and Doubts

  MY FRETTING about not being in communication with Joshua came to an embarrassing halt after less than a fortnight.

  Apparently, someone came by the house last week and hand-delivered a large envelope. Giovanna had signed for it and forgot to mention it to anyone. Some four days later, one of the other girls noticed it lying around the foyer, opened it, and informed Madame Tartakov, who was out of town at a dance competition. Madame called the house phone and asked to speak to me. She shat bricks as she explained that the contents of the envelope had to be translated from German to English. A legitimate job for Tartakov Translation Services.

  “What has this to do with me?” I asked. “Go tell Heike.”

  “Heike is with her client. You are only one speaking German besides her.”

  I froze. “What’s the job?”

  “How would I know? You stupid girls don’t show me my own mail. It is from old associate of mine. Is needed by six A.M. tomorrow.”

  “I never said I could translate from German,” I said.

  After some exchanges of the “YES, YOU DID,” “No, I didn’t” variety, I begged her to get me an extension on the translation job.

  “Simply tell the truth,” I said, “and explain that Giovanna forgot to deliver the document and that we need more time for Heike to become available.”

  “The IRS thinks this is translation service I am running,” she said. “If I refuse or delay jobs we will all go to jail for sure.” After demurring a bit, she very reluctantly offered to shave two hundred dollars off my debt if I would do this for her. I had twelve hours.

  I agreed. But I knew I couldn’t do it alone. The document was in some kind of dense financial language, and I could never get through it by the following morning, flipping through the dictionary all night long.

  I needed help. But within my limited social circle, there were only a few people I could burden with an imposition of this magnitude. And only one of those people had an entire bookcase full of books in German.

  I picked up the phone and dialed the number that I had so presumptuously committed to memory.

  “I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND,” Joshua said. “Madame Tartakov is your landlady, or your boss, or what?”

  “Both,” I said.

  We were seated in Madame Tartakov’s basement kitchen, where I was heating up some boeuf en daube that I had made for dinner the night before. It hadn’t been that difficult to convince him to come, which was surprising in light of our turbulent first date. Even the most unassuming of men will succumb to the slightest appeal to their intellect. So much so that Joshua was willing to spend his Saturday pulling an all-nighter to translate this document for me, for the small price of my keeping him fed and caffeinated.

  I was taking a great risk in bringing Joshua to the house, but given the time constraints, I had little choice. At the slightest whiff of a male presence, six of the girls found a reason to happen into the kitchen within a twenty-minute period. They winked and smiled at me; I rolled my eyes to give them the impression that I did not care.

  Joshua missed these gesticulations, as he was wrapped up in his own discomfort at being a toothpaste-stained nebbish among potpourri and silk and smooth elbows. He was clearly overwhelmed by the girls’ brand of aggressively floral femininity.

  When the last of the girls had left the kitchen, Joshua asked, “How did your landlady happen to find this whole b-b-bevy of very fragrant girls from different countries?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I imagine she’s well connected through her late husband. Or from her days in the ballet.”

  “Aren’t there other places people can go for that kind of service? I mean, places that are more…professional?”

  My heart pounded. What did he mean, “that kind of service”?

  “I mean, they’re just fancy girls. They’re not really trained as translators.”

  The muse for liars, strengthened by my success heretofore, was singing louder to me now. I said, “Tartakov Translation Services helps people with things that no one else can do. The wife of a Saudi oil baron might just be lonely and want a dame de compagnie who speaks her language. Or some dignitary’s wife wants to plan a big dinner party, and needs someone to communicate with the caterer and musicians. These are high-end, personal services that require very refined girls, not just linguists. A normal translator doesn’t have the vocab to translate, you know, the names of different kinds of antique chairs.”

  Joshua fingered the rim of his water glass. He said, “I still don’t understand why you all live together. In the same house.”

  “Rich people want things when they want them, Joshua. Day or night.” I had said the right thing, as it tapped into his resentment of the privileged classes.

  “Of course,” he said, nodding vigorously. And I was out of danger, for the most part.

  He took a bite of the food I had put before him. “This is really good stew,” he said.

  “It’s not stew,” I nearly shrieked. “It’s boeuf en daube.”

  After Joshua finished eating three platefuls of my food, which greatly pleased me, we went upstairs to the parlor to begin work. I tried to work alongside him for the first half hour, but he said he’d be better off going it alone. So he sat on the sofa with his laptop, and I took out my sewing basket and sat in the armchair mending some of my clothes, which fascinated him nearly to distraction.

  We exchanged smiling glances as we undertook our respective tasks. It was like being an old-fashioned husband and wife, and the harmony of it was very agreeable.

  Joshua was working swiftly, though he made frequent use of the German-English dictionary. He nodded to himself now and then, satisfied with his work. Then, sometime into the third hour, Joshua said, “This can’t be right. Judith, did you look carefully at this document?”

  “No. What’s wrong?” I said, pricking my finger with the sewing needle out of nervousness. Had I actually been stupid enough to ask him to translate something that made it obvious what sort of work we did here?

  “If I’m not mistaken, and I’m pretty sure I’m not, this document is an illegal offer of shares for an IPO of a German company called Struwwelpeter Industries GmbH. You know, an initial public offering.”

  “I worked at a bank; I know what a fucking IPO is,” I said.

  “The author of this paper is trying to sell shares of Struwwelpeter to American investors, without registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I said, much relieved.

  “ ‘Is that all?’” mocked Joshua. “Judith, this is highly fraudulent. Is that what Tartakov Translation Services is all about? For dubious documents that people don’t want a legitimate translation service t
o see?”

  I wanted to take issue with his claim, but I was silent, deciding it was better that he bark up this tree than that he pursue another one.

  “Please, Joshua, I’ll get into so much trouble if you don’t do this for me.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to do it. Who knows, maybe there’s more to this than is apparent here. I’m no finance expert. I could be wrong. It happens.”

  While he plodded on, I kept his teacup full and even rubbed his neck a bit as I mused at how extraordinary it was that he was doing this favor for me.

  Joshua finished translating the job at half past four in the morning; he handed me a disk and packed his bag. I was sorry to see him go, though I could think of no excuse to force him to stay, besides which I would likely get in trouble if he stayed till morning.

  We stood facing each other in the parlor. The lateness of the hour made everything seem sultry. I had become attuned to tiny sounds, like the whirring of his computer as it shut itself down, and my heart-beat, accelerated by coffee. I opened the door; we stood in the doorway a minute, sharing silent complicity in the dubious task just performed.

  “What are you two doing?” came a female voice from a silhouette approaching the house. I froze, thinking Madame Tartakov had returned early, but in fact it was Heike, come home at last.

  “We’re doing your job,” I said with false irritation.

  Heike clomped up the stairs to her room waving tiredly and said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to remember any of this.”

  Joshua and I were once more alone at the doorstep.

  “Have I seen that girl somewhere before? Her face and voice are really familiar.”

  “Heike? I doubt it.” He had probably seen her at Columbia, but it seemed best not to draw attention to any connection he might have to any of Tartakov’s girls.

  Joshua said, “You’re probably wondering why I’m being so nice to you when you’ve been so unpleasant to me.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that at all,” I lied.

  “I’ve been giving this a good deal of thought. When I first met you, I thought that your obsession with correct form was a bit odious. But I decided that this trait was an indication that you were the sort of person who tried to be careful about things. Most people aren’t careful.”