Zwerfster Chic

by Billie Kelgren

  On to a peninsula!

  At least we’re making progress.

  We arrive as the sun slips into the hills behind the city, landing atop one of the tallest buildings in downtown and taken by private elevator to the floor labeled as E. We come to a somewhat palatial entry hall where we’re greeted by a deferential gentleman who leads us to a small waiting room off the central hall. He and Mia speak momentarily (in Korean, I assume) and after we’re left alone, she strolls over to the wall of glass. I follow and marvel at the view of Busan, which lays below us at our feet in a startling radiance of oranges and teals and whites. It’s breathtaking.

  “Does he work here? Or live here?” I ask. The entry hall appeared more like a stately residence than a place of business, but then maybe things are different in Korea.

  “He stays here when he’s in the city. His sister, Soojin, lives in Busan, but I think his father’s moved back to Daegu.”

  She tells me that Roland Park-White owns the top five floors of the building. The one above is for business and the three below are his private residence, kitchens, and staff quarters. We’re on the fourth floor of this little condominium, but “four” is apparently an unlucky number with some people in the region, so maybe that’s why it’s E. It’s as though the bottom fifty…sixty…hundred floors have no reason to exist other than to hold Roland Park-White high up into the Busan atmosphere.

  I guess crashing on little sister’s couch is out of the question. Her place probably doesn’t have a helipad on the roof, for one thing, so what could he do?

  Ten minutes later, a different man, this one dressed in business attire, knocks on the door and lets himself in. He speaks in English and asks for me to wait there while he takes Mia upstairs — Mr. Park-White will be available shortly. I feel somewhat slighted, having had my surviving pinstripe sent out to be cleaned that morning. I’m looking good and I don’t like it going to waste.

  Then Mia gives me that look, the same look Mom would give us to wordlessly check our unacceptable behavior.

  My eyes shoot to the floor, appropriately rebuked. I never change. It’s reflex.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be offensive. It’s only that my sister has a large scar on her cheek.” He traces the path on his own cheek with his thumb, trying very hard to express regret for making me self-conscious. Him — the billionaire — made me — the homeless orphan — feel bad about myself.

  Heartless bastard!

  “She got it when we were both young. It was my fault. I was being careless.”

  “Mine’s from dogs,” I tell him, sweeping down the left side of my body. Suddenly I feel stupid. He really doesn’t need to know anything about me. He was looking for Mia when he arrived — Ms. Garcia, he said when he popped into the room. He’s obviously confused as to why she’s not there.

  “Someone came to get her,” I tell him. “Upstairs.” I point towards the ceiling helpfully, as though he might not know where upstairs might be. Boy, I can be such a dit sometimes.

  “And you are?”

  “A friend of Ms. Garcia.” What? “I mean, an associate. I work for her.”

  “I’m Roland Park-White.”

  He comes around and offers his hand. I take too long to respond and he looks at his palm, as though he’s wondering if I think he wiped his ass with it or something. He starts to pull back and I shake my head clear of the stupidity.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think you want to talk to me,” I say quickly.

  He gives a short, abrupt laugh.

  “I’m probably the richest man you’ve ever met. I can talk to whomever I please.”

  Not so quick there, mister. I’ve hung out at David Getting’s place.

  He appears horrified with himself.

  “I’m sorry. That makes me sound like a right jumped-up yobbo.”

  It’s strange, but there’s a slight but noticeable shift in his accent. Before, he was speaking with all the formality of a businessman in Asia. Now, though, I catch the subtle hint of the burly beach Australian that’s also evident in his face and stature, like he’s about to ask if I want a Fosters or something.

  “Well, glad to know that the richest man I’ll ever meet says things to embarrass himself, too. Thought I was the only one.”

  “I’ll have Ms. Garcia brought back down,” he says, pointing off in some indiscriminate direction. He then cocks his head. “Tell me. Do you have a sister?”

  My mother worked as a servant in Die Baai. My father was an Afrikaner, born and raised in Rhodesia, back when it was Rhodesia, who immigrated to Die Baai for a summer before moving permanently to the States. Sometime during that summer, I came into existence. My mother died when I was a young girl and I moved to the States to live with my father, who worked a number of small jobs all having to do with sales or something — the kind of stuff a daughter would have no real interest in, so if you were to ask me, I could be understandably vague.

  See? My mother was Black and my father was white and I am still Coloured. I have no brothers and sisters, which is not only easy to remember, but also gives reasonable justification as to how I ended up in Seattle, part of the drug trade. Economic instability, unstable family life, general uncertainty while growing up, that sense of displacement and feeling that my life has nowhere to go. I drifted from school, to the Army, to the street, and I ended up in L.A.

  I was supposed to get a break after my work in Seattle, a chance to go see my real family, show them that I was, in fact, alright. I was in Seattle during the summer of 2001, in deep, and my super had to call them to let them know that I wasn’t dead after shit went crazy in September. I really wanted to see them, but one of the skags decided to deal his way out by providing us with an in with the people down in L.A. We had to move quick, though, because once word was out of our bust, anyone seen as walking away would be labeled turned and the only help they would get from anyone anywhere in the business would be a bullet to the back of the head, to help elevate the misery of their life. That’s why Ellie Pretorius moved to L.A. — to escape the shitstorm happening up north.

  Our “help” was not much help, as it turned out. Seems he was more important in his own head than anywhere else. That’s why I ended up hooking up with a pair of nobodies that came from nowhere who had only arrived in L.A. themselves. They set up shop in the back room of a dingy, smelly public library.

  No one expected anything from Byr and Kel, least of all me, at first. But after I hung with these guys for a couple of weeks, it was clear that they were going places. Or we would all be dead, eaten by our own. I reported this to my super, but he was a long-liner who knew the game. He knew that agents will believe that they are either stuck in the wilderness or in the thick of things — one extreme or the other. He acknowledged my representation of these guys with a skeptical eye and told me We’ll see.

  Back those days, I was with Byr pretty much every day. We had plenty of time to talk.

  “Are you white? Or are you black?”

  He was always asking me these strange questions. Some days, we were downright philosophical.

  “Depends where I’m standing.”

  We were sitting in the tatty chairs of the library. That is, I was sitting up on the back of the chair, with my feet on the seat, so I wouldn’t feel so small next to Byr. That’s why chairs get tatty, because of people like me. Miss Soho, the ancient black woman who ran the library, didn’t like me doing this, but she quit bothering us sometime ago. Her name was actually Sojourner, as in Sojourner Truth, but with the way the Hispanics pronounce their Js, she became Miss Soho to everyone.

  “If I’m standing in front of a white person, I’m black. If I’m standing in front of a black person, I’m white.”

  “What if you’re standing before a Chinese person?” Byr asked with a sly smile. He wasn’t really expecting an answer, but I told him “I’m scary” and he laughed. He knew what I meant.

  “One of these ghetto punks told me yesterday that I’m not ‘black’.”<
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  I understood what he meant. Mom was often told that she wasn’t black.

  He pauses to light the tip of his cigarette using an ornate vintage silver lighter. He glances up to find me watching him. He can see what I’m thinking.

  “Yes, I know.” He grins awkwardly. “What am I going to do? Quit now?”

  “You’re awfully young.”

  My best guess is that Roland Park-White is somewhere in his early-to-mid forties, but I say this knowing that I’m absolutely terrible at guessing the age of Asians and whites, so Roland Park-White is doubly troublesome for me. I get the impression that his sister is some years younger, maybe close to the difference between Naddie and me.

  “Our mother died about five…no, six years now, I guess. Of the same thing,” he tells me, waving the smoldering cigarette about as though it’s a loaded revolver that he threatens to place to his own temple. “They think there’s a genetic component that makes my sister and I more susceptible. I found out too late.”

  “Your sister’s okay?”

  He smiles every time I mention her. Is it wrong, to like a guy whose entire livelihood deals with matters of arming terrorists, perpetrating civil wars, and generating overall instability in the world to pressure down commodity prices, simply because you find out that he absolutely adores his little sister? I mean, how really bad can he be?

  “Yes. She’s fine. She’s too smart to smoke, but she kills herself slowly with shitty relationships.”

  It seems wrong, the ultra-rich swearing. You get the impression that they should be more…posh sounding, that they’re trying to look all ghetto by sprinkling in a few appropriately placed fucks, shits, and Jesus H Christ’s.

  “You don’t like her husband.”

  “Ex-husband. Finally got her out of that mess.” He takes a long draw off the cigarette as he sits back. He’s rather relaxed, for a scum-sucking merchant of death. “He only married her because he believed he could get away with treating her terribly, and she only married him because she believed no one would want to marry her with her…”

  He stops himself. He’s worried that he might offend me once more.

  I smile, to show him that I’m not bothered, though, in truth, I am.

  I always am.

  “It’s why I’m here, and not back home,” he tells me. “Sorry about that confusion, but it was all rather sudden.”

  “You’re here to take her back with you.”

  He seems surprised that I would recognize this, happy that I understand.

  “She’s changed, though. It’s been a long time. Last time I saw her was when our mother died. That’s a long time. She seems different now.”

  “I just saw my sister last week.” Was it a week ago? Two weeks? How long have I been out of the States? “It’s the first time I’ve seen her in nearly two decades.” …because I was in prison. No, maybe not. “She’s different now, but she’s also still my little sister.”

  “How do you deal with all that lost time? The divergent paths of your lives?”

  I shrug. How did I deal with it? I never really thought about it. I just ran away.

  “Guess we talked about the stuff we shared. About being back at our folks’ home. The things we used to do together.”

  He shakes his head. “We can’t go home. Not to our father. We did not have a happy childhood with him.”

  “Then somewhere else, when you were both happy.”

  He regards this for a moment.

  What the fuck am I doing?

  “Why are you here?” he asks.

  I guess all that money gives him the ability to see into my thoughts.

  “What? I’m here with…” It’s so hard, calling her Ms. Garcia.

  “No, I sense that it’s something else.” He gestures to his own eyes, then points at me. “I can see it.”

  Holy shit! Maybe all the money does allow him to do it.

  “I’m trying to get home myself. Hoping to get something I can use against David Getting, so I can get back home.”

  “Now there’s a prick very much like our father,” he says with an ironic smile. He then turns his upper body to stub his cigarette into a nearby ashtray. “The memory card. You want the information on that card your friend says she has.”

  “I guess.”

  He chuckles, as though he thinks I mean to be coy, not ignorant.

  “Guess not. It’s what you want.”

  He fishes through his pockets, finds his pack of cigarettes, hops one out, and places it loosely between his lips as he continues the search. I figure he’s looking for his lighter but he instead pulls out a small, black device which he holds up by the tail as though it’s a mouse. It looks like a cheap little memory card reader.

  “You need this, though. This is what she wants.” He’s amused with himself. “Only one in existence.”

  Shit! Can I reach him quickly enough to put him down and take it? Of course, I’d have to get out of the building, too.

  “Why show it to me?”

  He shrugs as he puts it back into his pocket and then pulls out the lighter.

  “What are you going to do?” He pauses to put a flame to the cigarette, taking one long drag before sitting back again. “Beat me up and take it? You won’t even make it out of the building.”

  Like I said.

  “Are you going to give it to Mia…Ms. Garcia?”

  “Have to see what she has to offer.”

  “Why give it up at all? Aren’t you worried about the effect it’ll have on everyone else? On your sister?”

  “It was her idea, actually. She worries about me. About redemption.”

  “She’s religious.”

  “No. Not at all. Neither of us are. But she’s worried that if there is something, a heaven or an afterlife, that I won’t be there to greet her when she arrives. She wants to…cover all our bases? Is that the right phrase?”

  I nod.

  “I guess I better go and try to find your Ms. Garcia,” he says as he lifts himself off the couch and heads for the door. He pauses in the doorway. After a moment of thought, he looks back at me with a slight and sad smile.

  “There’s a playground where we used to play. Maybe I’ll take her there.”

  I feel good about myself, that I’ve helped a dying man before it’s too late.

  I moved to Boston during the time of desegregation, though by the time I arrived there, the worst was over. Apparently, people in the city were not nearly as progressive as the rest of the country had thought. Not when it came to their own children, at least. Like I said, prejudice is a personal thing.

  The whites thought I was Hispanic, the Hispanics thought I was black, and the blacks thought I was white. No one wanted me, it seemed. It really didn’t bother me much, in those early years, seeing where I was coming from. Only later, when people were using these labels as a means to exclude me, did it become hurtful. Not because of race, but more because I believed that what they really didn’t want around was me, and that they were simply using race as their go-to excuse.

  Leave it to me to make racism into a manifestation of my own personal insecurities.

  I feel bad, punching the guy repeatedly in the face, but what am I going to do? I told him he has to wait and maybe he doesn’t understand English, so I have to get the point across somehow. I mean, I’m pretty sure I understood him and Mia when they were shouting at one another in Korean. He’s blaming her for what happened, and I’m not certain that he’s not right, but hell if I’m going to rescue him first.

  “Gimme your hand!” I shout at Mia. If the elevator shifts, I’ll be sliced right in two across the shoulder blades.

  Dammit, Mia, do you see what I’m doing for you here?

  The guy tries to grab my arm again, shrieking at me, and I push his face away as I hold my other arm out. She steps forward and the two get into it and I beat him about the head until he finally relents and steps back.

  Yeah, dumbass! Let’s not waste our time here!

/>   I wrestle her out with the guy lifting from behind, and then the two of us pull on him until we’re all sliding across the floor. He then immediately claws his way up her legs, over her body, and puts his hands about Mia’s throat as he throttles her, smashing her head into the marble floor. She scrapes at his face, bringing more blood, as I sit next to them and punch my heel into his ear until he finally releases her. He’s still shouting, probably as much from being deaf as he is out of anger or fear, but eventually he scrabbles away, getting up and pushing through a door hidden among the oak panels that leads to a stairwell. That has to be the emergency exit.

  Thank God they have an emergency exit.

  Leaving Mia sitting on the floor (she’s gingerly holding an arm that’s soaked red with what may be her own blood), I run over to the other end of the great hall to the ornate set of stairs that are now made of shattered oak and blackened carved maple. They had led upwards, and it was where I last saw Roland Park-White before the blast concussion caused a rush of dust and debris to corkscrew down, knocking me on my ass as the building swayed.

  Can it sway? Can a building this big actually move from the force of a blast? Jesus, can it suddenly topple over on us?

  I find him at the foot of the stairs, buried beneath a heap of crap, half of which pierces through his body. His face is turned away at an odd angle, as though he’s trying to ignore me, and when I check for a pulse, most of his neck is missing and there’s no blood flowing, so…

  Mia is sitting there, in the middle of the floor, scanning the ceiling above, probably wondering if it’s going to soon come down on her. She then looks in my direction, wide-eyed, and asks me what I’m doing, shouts at me that we have to get out of there.

  Is she really capable of doing such a thing?

  “Be there in a second,” I say, though with the way my ears are still ringing, I’m not certain if I said it out loud.

  I rummage through what remains of Roland Park-White’s pockets until I find the black device, consider it for a moment before I slip it into my own.