by R. O. Kwon
I graduated, then I moved to Manhattan. I began a job, a full-time position at the previous summer’s hedge fund. One June morning, as I walked to the train station, I saw Julian. I was lost in thought; by the time I recognized him, he’d passed in front of me, his bulk constrained in a light suit, striding in the opposite direction.
Julian, I said. I thought I saw him flinch, but he didn’t respond. He’d have kept walking if I hadn’t said it again, taking his arm. Julian, hello, I said, but the face he showed me might have been a stranger’s. He had on glasses. The reflected sunlight hid his eyes. He looked down at the hand I’d put on his arm, and I lifted it.
I want nothing to do with you, he said. I know what you are, Will.
I don’t understand.
With his glasses leveled at me like lights, he said Phoebe had told him what I’d done. That girl, he said. She’d refused to listen to him. He’d urged Phoebe to go to the police, but she didn’t want to hurt me. In his frustration, he’d said things he regretted. They hadn’t talked since. She’d loved me. It made little sense to him, but she had. I’d given Phoebe the last push into Jejah. He hoped I realized that. Oh, he’d fantasized about exposing me, but at least I had to keep living in my own skin: a hell, he said, he’d wish upon no one else.
* * *
–
They still haven’t found Jejah. Once in a while, a politician promises they’ll be located. In principle, the manhunt continues. The absence of proof, I’ve come to believe, isn’t proof on its own. I’ve noticed signs, each of which might be incidental, but not like this, as a whole, collected. I’ve received phone calls that hang up at the first ring; a mailed brochure to a concert-hall Libich revival. Then, not long ago, I left the office to get lunch at Meilai’s, a third-story Sichuan dive I liked. I was in line when I glanced toward the street. I saw Phoebe, in a striped sundress, looking up from the shade of an ailanthus. She’d lost weight, hair cut short; still, it was Phoebe. She turned, shoulders jutting out. I ran down. I shouted, but she’d gone. I’m aware of what people are saying, that she’s drowned, lost, but I also know Phoebe. I’ll open the door to a ringing bell, and she’ll be there: short-haired, face split open with a smile. You don’t even look surprised, she’ll tell me.
That morning in June, when I’d seen Julian, I went down into the Columbus Circle station. It was loud inside, the platform more crowded than usual. I sighted the source of the tumult: a band of six male dancers, in white latex tights. With bodies liberated from gravity’s laws, they swung out of handsprings into lithe spins. More people turned to watch while an express train hurtled in, the gust of wind nudging thin fabric around bare arms and thighs. The wind blew through, until it looked as if the entire population might float up out of the tunnel, cracking through its stone and earth, into the day’s hot light. We can all go. No one gets left behind. The world’s graves fling open, the giddied, dirt-stained dead rushing toward the streets of gold, alive again, at last.
The wind settled. In minutes, the local train arrived. I pushed in, then I kept waiting.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With profound gratitude to Ellen Levine, agent extraordinaire, and to Martha Wydysh and Alexa Stark. To Laura Perciasepe, best of editors. To Glory Anne Plata and Jennifer Huang, splendid publicists, and to the rest of wonderful Riverhead, especially Janice Kurzius, Jennifer Eck, Melissa Solis, Mia Alberro, Lucia Bernard, Claire Vaccaro, Jaya Miceli, Helen Yentus, Katie Freeman, Jynne Dilling Martin, Carla Bruce-Eddings, Bob Belmont, Wendy Pearl, Brian Etling, and Brian Contine.
To the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Steinbeck Fellowship, Omi International, the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Squaw Valley Writers Workshops, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Hedgebrook, the Anderson Center, and the Creative Capacity Fund, for vital support. To the Corporation of Yaddo, for the remarkable generosity of three fellowships.
To Michael Cunningham, my mentor all these years. To Jenny Offill, Joshua Henkin, Ernesto Mestre, Catherine Texier, Stacey D’Erasmo, Sheila Kohler, André Aciman, Christine Schutt, Peter Ho Davies, Charles Baxter, Amy Bloom, John Crowley, Katharine Weber, and Jennifer Kennedy, my inimitable teachers.
To Tony Tulathimutte, Laura van den Berg, Vauhini Vara, Andi Winnette, Anthony Ha, Vanessa Janowski, Raja Haddad, Cristina Moracho, M. A. Taft-McPhee, and M. Brett Smith, admired friends who read drafts of this book. To my esteemed writing group, past and present, including Colin Winnette, Daniel Levin Becker, Esmé Weijun Wang, Rachel Khong, Alice Sola Kim, Anisse Gross, Karan Mahajan, Caille Millner, Katrina Dodson, Pola Oloixarac, Jennifer duBois, Annie Julia Wyman, Katherine Marino, Lydia David Fitzpatrick, Diane Cook, and Greg Larson. To my Brooklyn College cohort, especially Andy Hunter, Hugh Merwin, Robert Jones, and Scott Lindenbaum, who saw The Incendiaries at its start.
To friends whose advice, help, and encouragement sustained me: Vanessa Hua, Bich Minh Nguyen, Kirstin Chen, Aimee Phan, Frances Hwang, Marie Mutsuki Mockett, Garnette Cadogan, Alexander Chee, Lauren Groff, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Celeste Ng, Rabih Alameddine, Josh Weil, Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, Nayomi Munaweera, Yalitza Ferreras, Cara Bayles, Matthew Salesses, Carmen Maria Machado, Peter Mountford, Alexi Zentner, Michael David Lukas, Ross White, Matthew Olzmann, James Scott, Susan Steinberg, Elliott Holt, Marie-Helene Bertino, Chloe Benjamin, Rebecca Makkai, Thomas Meaney, Cara Blue Adams, Mike Scalise, Dara Barnat, Gerald Maa, Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, Sonya Larson, Shuchi Saraswat, Harriet Clark, Jennine Capó Crucet, Elena Passarello, Hasanthika Sirisena, Dave Lucas, Tomás Q. Morín, Michael Croley, Giuseppe Taurino, Nina McConigley, Xhenet Aliu, Ru Freeman, Sarah Gerkensmeyer, Chloe Honum, Amanda Goldblatt, Luis Jaramillo, David James Poissant, Julie Iromuanya, Anne Valente, Seth Tucker, Rebecca Makkai, Kyle Minor, Mary Kim-Arnold, Michelle Hoover, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Krys Lee, Vikram Chandra, CJ Hauser, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Christian Kiefer, Lydia Kiesling, Nicole Chung, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Crystal Kim, Lillian Li, Danielle Lazarin, Adrienne Celt, Aja Gabel, Rachel Lyon, Tracy O’Neill, Patricia Park, James Cañón, Brandon Hobson, Piyali Bhattacharya, Anna Keesey, Oscar Villalon, Julie Buntin, Colin Drohan, Garth Greenwell, and Lucy Tan.
To Emily Ballaine, Stephen Sparks, Molly Parent, Brad Johnson, Vanessa Martini, Paul Yamazaki, and Dan Weiss, for recommendations and camaraderie.
To Diane Williams, and to Noon, where short excerpts of The Incendiaries first appeared in slightly different form; to Madelaine Lucas, Rebekah Bergman, Zach Davidson, Hilary Leichter, Rita Bullwinkel, and Emily Tobin. To Stuart Dybek and Tara Masih, who selected an excerpt for The Best Small Fictions. To Thomas Ross, and to Tin House, where an excerpt appeared.
To John Kwon, Christine Ji Min Kwon, Lynn Dawson, Carl Dawson, Karen Occhipinti, and Vince Occhipinti, always. To the examples set forth by Agnes Shin, Chang Ho Shin, Byung Rim Kwon, and Tae Ryong Kwon. To Clara Kwon and Young Kwon, for everything.
To Michael, first reader, my love, who believed even when I couldn’t.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R. O. Kwon is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her writing is published or forthcoming in The Guardian, Vice, Buzzfeed, Time, Noon, Electric Literature, Playboy, and elsewhere. She has received awards from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Omi International, the Steinbeck Center, and the Norman Mailer Writers' Colony. Born in South Korea, she has lived most of her life in the United States.
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