by Хэнк Муди
Ray shrugs. “I’ve been trying to tell you since you walked in.”
“Nate is here. In fucking Korea? Lining the hallway with rose petals?”
“He was outside her room when she arrived,” Devi continues, either divinely indifferent or just oblivious to my mortal suffering. “With his guitar. He has the voice of an angel. And the necklace …”
“There was a necklace?” I turn again to Ray. He looks back at me with a sympathetic cringe, as if he’d just seen me get kicked in the nuts.
“Diamonds,” says Devi.
“Diamonds? As in plural?” My head is starting to spin. I feel like I might vomit.
“From Tiffany’s,” she chirps. “With the blue bag and everything!”
“Where are they now?” One look at Devi, and I can tell I sound as angry as I feel.
“In our suite,” she replies, uncertainty creeping into her voice for the first time.
“The room number?” I ask, sounding even angrier. Devi’s eyes flit nervously toward Ray.
Threat assessment.
“You don’t want to do that,” Ray says, presenting a reassuring hand to my shoulder. I slap it away.
“What. Fucking. Room.”
“I’m afraid I’ve said too much already,” says Devi, clearly frightened by the look in my eyes. I focus on the small handbag she’s now clutching to her chest. Pissed off enough to take on a goddess, I grab the purse out of her hands.
Devi shrieks. Ray looks caught between hugging me and socking me in the jaw. I root quickly through the bag, my hand emerging with her room key.
“Room 24021,” I read aloud off the plastic tag.
Replacing the key, I hand the bag back to her and storm toward the elevator. Or as close to it as I can, before a sumo wrestler stuffed into a security guard’s uniform holds out an arm to block my way and asks to see my room key.
I pat my jacket as if looking for the key. The sumo has clearly seen this one before. “Guests only,” he says.
“Have it your way.” I walk back to the front desk.
“I would like a room,” I tell the clerk.
“So sorry,” she says kindly. “All booked up.”
“Any room.”
“I’m so sorry. Perhaps I can recommend another hotel?”
“Listen,” I say. “I have traveled almost seven thousand miles to see one of your guests.”
“You’re welcome to use the house phone,” she says, her eyes flickering nervously toward the sumo. He begins walking over. I decide to accept the clerk’s invitation to use the house phone.
I dial K.’s room. K’s suite. After seven rings, someone picks up the receiver and — before either of us can say a word — hangs up.
I redial. This time it rings four times before I hear Nate’s voice on the line.
“Whoever this is, fuck off!” he yells. Click.
I dial again. This time nobody picks up. I imagine Nate delighting K. as he rips the cord out of the wall, then jumps into bed to delight her some more.
My head feels like it might explode.
“You okay, buddy?” asks Ray.
“What do you think?”
“Yeah, it’s fucked up, I know. But I tried to warn you that night at the Western. Rock stars are like voodoo masters. I mean, look at Billy Joel. He’s married to Christie Brinkley. Christie Brinkley? Are you shitting me?”
“Thanks, Ray. I feel so much better now.”
“You need a drink.”
“Your invitation still good?”
“I would, but Devi … I don’t know if you made such a good impression.” I spy the exgoddess across the room. She stares back at me with dark fury. I quickly turn away. “Besides,” Ray continues.
“We were just about to get all funky and shit.”
“Lucky you,” I say, meaning it. I look at the clock on my pager. “I guess I can go feel sorry for myself for another seventeen hours.”
“Dr. Ray has another idea. There’s a place down the street. A youth hostel.”
“A youth hostel?”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, man. Youth hostels — this is an established fact — are full of horny sluts. Horny sluts on vacation from their better judgment. A good-looking guy like you gets laid with minimal effort, I mean zero rap, as long as you’re cool with unshaved armpits and a lack of privacy.”
My anger is slipping away, making room for sleep deprivation. “I don’t know about the horny sluts, but I’m definitely pro-nap.”
“There he is,” Ray says, sounding relieved. “A little shuteye, then you’ll bang a slut. I recommend Australians. Find one with a friend and bang them both. Go root a couple of sheilas.”
I pat Ray on the shoulder and exit the hotel. The valet appears immediately. “May I call you a taxi?”
I look up at the sky and see threatening clouds and approaching darkness. A perfect match to my mood.
“Thanks, but I’ll walk.”
I set out down a major thoroughfare that feels like New York, only with enviably wider sidewalks. Per Ray’s directions to the youth hostel, I make a right turn at the first light and wind up, a block later, in a neighborhood with a much more suburban feel. A brightly illuminated 7-Eleven-type store anchors a stone-tiled public square surrounded by tenementstyle buildings. The square itself is occupied by a few dozen Korean men, many in business suits, who gather in three distinct circles.
Each circle has its own bottle of the local hooch, passed with cheery camaraderie from one smiling man to the next.
Not a female in sight, I notice. That explains the smiles.
16
“MY WIFE IS IN MANCHESTER, MY MIStress in Hong Kong, and my lover in Jakarta,” says the Englishman.
“You don’t have a license to kill, do you?” I ask with sarcasm that goes unregistered.
The Englishman grins, his head snaking toward me. “No, but I once saw a man die in my arms.
What do you say to that?”
“I think you’re either totally full of shit or the most interesting man I’ve ever met,” I reply. “But either way, I think you’ve had a little too much of the yellow.”
“Impossible!” he growls, rising to his feet. “I’ve been drinking nothing but orange all night. Now let’s go pull your friend off that dancer before we’re all led off in wristcuffs.”
I’d met the Englishman, along with the Mormon and an American woman who called herself Janie, at the Superior Guesthouse, the hostel Ray recommended — a two-story wooden structure with a front door lit like a Christmas tree, hidden in a back alley between the ass-ends of a restaurant and a flower shop. The kind of place you can imagine the guidebook calling “an undiscovered gem.”
I don’t have a guidebook, and my discovery of the Superior is severely impeded by a blistering rain that begins right after I’ve passed the drinking circles. Coupled with darkness, visibility is a serious issue. I miss the entrance to the alleyway three times before stumbling inside, soaked and miserable.
The room can hardly be called a lobby after the Four Seasons — the small, wood-paneled cubicle has a lot more in common with a sweat lodge. I point toward the cheapest rate and am directed to a room with two bunk beds. Well-traveled backpacks claim dibs on the bottom bunks, so I climb onto the bed farthest from the door.
Sleep comes quickly, but it doesn’t last long: Two hours later, I wake up shaking. Or rather the shaking wakes me up. I open my eyes to see Ray.
He reeks of alcohol.
“You asleep, man?” he asks.
“I was. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be having sex with a goddess right now? Getting all funky and shit?”
“Yeah, that one got kind of messed up.”
“What happened to taking advantage of her low self-esteem?”
“Hah! Turns out part of the test for becoming a goddess was spending a night alone with a bunch of severed animal heads. Without crying. She was fucking three years old. Bitch is a natural-born icicle.” Ray shivers for
effect. “That, plus your going psycho didn’t do me any favors.”
“Sorry about that. I guess that makes us even for the whole international date line fuckup.”
“You should be thanking me. Imagine if you had to spend the whole weekend here. Let’s go get drunk. It’s on me, motherfucker.”
“What about us?” asks a British voice. We look over to see the Englishman, seated Indian style on the lower bunk across the room.
“I’d like to get drunk,” chimes in a voice from the bunk below me. Ray jumps back from the bed, discovering the Mormon’s head just inches from his crotch.
“Jesus Christ,” says Ray. “Where the fuck did you come from?”
“Utah,” replies the Mormon. “But that was a long time ago. Let’s go get drunk.”
Both men are clearly accustomed to being on the road. Each looks to be about thirty, with scruffy facial hair and billowy hippie clothes of indeterminate nationality. Neither has showered for several days.
“Where are we getting drunk?” says Janie, a bigboned but tragically low-waisted American girl with fashionable glasses. She’s holding a manila envelope.
“Is that what I think it is?” says the Englishman, referring to the envelope. “Has our shipment from San Francisco arrived?”
“My shipment,” Janie corrects him. “I know you’re going to try and treat this like your personal stash, but this is mine.”
“What are you going to do with a whole sheet of acid?” asks the Mormon.
“Whatever I want,” says Janie.
“Give us a taste, you sick tease,” says the Englishman, springing to his feet.
Janie relents. “You can each have one tab.”
From the envelope she pulls out a letter-sized page scored into tiny boxes, each inked with a blue star.
And, I gather, an ample serving of LSD. The Englishman and the Mormon hungrily accept their tiny tabs, placing them on their tongues. Janie turns to Ray and smiles. “Care to join us?”
“Me? No,” says Ray. “I don’t want to be seeing trails and shit when I’m forty.”
“That’s such an urban myth,” she says, then turns to me. “What about you? You look like you could use a pick-me-up.”
“Much appreciated,” I say. “But I’d prefer to keep my feet on the ground just now. I believe there was some talk of getting drunk?”
“We could take them to Suzie’s,” suggests the Englishman. “How about it, mates? Shall we storm Hooker Hill?”
The word “hooker” seems to demolish any objection Ray might tender. A few minutes later, the five of us are packed into a taxi headed to Itaewon, Seoul’s version of a red-light district. The Mormon — whose real name is Gene — uses the trip to explain how he’s arrived at his current station in life.
He’d been on a religious mission to Indonesia, with his wife and newborn daughter, when he experienced an “awakening.”
The Englishman coughs theatrically. “More like a descent into moral disrepair.”
“I just realized that I wasn’t living the life I was supposed to be living,” replies Gene.
“Because you’re a queer,” says the Englishman.
“I am not a queer,” Gene says, looking directly at Ray. “Although this one’s got this whole butch thing that’s really turning me on.”
“Because you’re a goddamn poofter,” the Englishman says, as if stating the obvious.
The Mormon smiles with practiced tolerance.
“I’m really not gay. Anyway, I’ve been traveling for two years ever since. I’ve seen so much of the world.”
“What about your family?” I ask.
“I tried to stay in touch with them at first. But after a while they didn’t seem so interested in hearing from me. I think we’re all just moving on.”
When the taxi arrives at Suzie’s, no one but Ray can find a wallet. Mine appears to have been stolen while I slept at the hostel. I take some consolation in the fact that the thief or thieves ignored my passport and plane ticket.
“The front desk should have warned you,” Janie says. “That’s the fifth or sixth robbery this week.”
Ray grudgingly pays the cab fare. “He’s got an excuse,” he says, pointing to me. “What about the rest of you?”
The Englishman raises his hands in surrender.
“What can we say? We are but poor travelers. But if you’re intent on recompense,” he says, pointing to the Mormon, “I’m certain he’ll bless your knob with a thorough spit-and-shine.”
“Ha!” says the Mormon with a laugh. “He’s kidding. I’m really not going to, you know, do what he said I’d do. That would be a sin.” The Mormon’s leg vibrates nervously: The acid is kicking in.
“Just pay the fare,” Janie says. “And stop pretending that you don’t like being the moneybags.” Something tells me that Ray and Janie are not destined to be boon companions.
Inside, Suzie’s looks like it might once have been a car dealership. Large plate-glass windows provide natural advertising to the foot traffic outside and a colorful view of the gaudily lit neighborhood for the customers within. Most of the interior space is devoted to a dance floor, where a dozen or so Korean beauties in slinky dresses and their male p a rtne rs — the clientele, I assume — twirl incongruously to the sounds of New Kids on the Block. The scene looks more like a USO dance than a bordello: A large percentage of the men wear American military uniforms. “Yongsan Garrison’s just west of here,” Janie explains. “Thirty thousand red-blooded, shit-kicking United States Army men.”
“How do the Koreans feel about that?” I ask.
Janie shrugs. “I guess they probably hate it. But not Suzie. Without them, she’d be out of business.
Korean men are like totally straitlaced. They expect their women to be good little hausfraüs, dressed all conservative and staying home in the kitchen. If they saw Korean women acting this way, they’d go apeshit.”
I look again at the dancers in search of behavior that might drive the locals crazy — public nudity, pussy-powered Ping-Pong balls, etc. — but I don’t see much more than the occasional suggestive smile. As for the foreigners — Ray, in particular — the relatively demure dancing works like catnip. If the mention of hookers piqued Ray’s interest, the sight of this many potential sexual partners of Asian descent has him bug-eyed. “How does this work?”
he asks, bouncing from heel to heel.
“Miss Suzie will take care of us,” says the Englishman. Miss Suzie looks like an older version of one of her employees, although with Asian women I never can tell — my best guess at her age is somewhere between thirty and seventy. She addresses the Englishman with comfortable familiarity. “Welcome back, Mister Christopher. You bring friends tonight.”
Miss Suzie leads us to a booth in the back. “I’ll send someone over with your drinks.” She pauses for a moment, carefully studying each of our faces.
She bows gracefully and shifts her attention to another group, American soldiers who seem to be edging from boisterous toward rowdy.
“Shouldn’t she have asked us what we wanted first?” I wonder aloud.
“There are only two drinks on the menu,” says Mormon Gene. “Yellow and orange.”
Gene is clearly tripping — the pupils of his eyes, as is the case with Janie and the Englishman, are as wide as saucers — but a couple of minutes later, one of the Korean beauties presents a tray bearing two plastic soda bottles, recycled and filled with what looks like radioactive Kool-Aid. Yellow and orange. “Grain alcohol,” says Janie. “Be careful.
This stuff will hit you like a brick wall.”
Ray sneers at her. He grabs one of the disposable picnic cups that accompany the bottles, fills it with yellow, and chugs it down. Then he pours himself another.
Janie sneers back. “Oooh!”
Ray ignores her. “So what now?” he asks.
“That’s up to Miss Suzie,” replies the Englishman. “But don’t worry, you’re in good hands.”
When Miss
Suzie reappears, she’s holding hands with a dancer she’s chosen, it seems, specifically for Ray. “This is Sunny,” she says to him. “You look like a good dancer. She is very good dancer too.”
Sunny, covered in a light layer of sweat from the dancing, smiles at Ray, not lewdly but like an innocent child being introduced to an adult. The effect on Ray is immediate. He throws back his second cup and in the same motion leaps to his feet and grabs Sunny’s hand.
“You like Sunny?” asks Miss Suzie.
“I like Sunny,” Ray replies, already leading her toward the dance floor. “Sunny days are here again.”
“What about you, Mister Christopher? Mi-Hi always talk about you.”
“That depends,” the Englishman says, calling after Ray. “Mr. Moneybags! Are you paying for our dances too?”
Ray continues toward the dance floor without looking back, using the hand that isn’t attached to Sunny to acquaint the Englishman with his middle finger. “I take that as a no,” says the Englishman.
“Next time,” says Miss Suzie.
“Except for the tragic-looking guy!” Ray yells back from the dance floor. “He gets whatever he wants!”
Miss Suzie turns to me. “He mean you?”
“No, not me.”
“What kind of girl you like?”
“Right now? I don’t know if I like girls at all right now.” She squints at me with a professional eye.
“No. You like girls. Just wrong girls. Wrong girl.”
“Impressive.”
“I know,” she says, holding my stare. “Don’t worry. You find right girl. Maybe you dance with me tonight?”
“I’m flattered,” I say. “In America, the men have to ask the women.”
“So ask me, then. Go on. Your friend say it okay.”
“Ask me after I’ve had another few of these,” I say, raising my cup of yellow. She winks at me and moves on to another table. The Englishman, struck by a fit of acid-induced chattering, spends the next twenty minutes listing the pros and cons of maintaining intimate relations with three different women in three different countries. There seem to be a lot more cons, and I tell him so.