by Min Jin Lee
“Blackjack, Casey,” he said after their coffee and pie. “Blackjack.” He shifted his shoulders comically.
Casey smiled at him and nodded, but she was thinking about Hazel McReed’s hat, which she’d left in the trunk of the car. The color and shape had made her curious about Hazel.
Unu took care of the check with the meal vouchers and left a twenty-dollar tip. He was raring to go play cards. For him, the casino must have been the way walking through Bayard Toll was for her, she thought—the stimulation, the temptations, its diverting effects. In life there were so many things you couldn’t afford, yet you couldn’t bear to go through it without some hope, and you had to at least visit your wishes periodically. For her, she craved beauty and images of another life, and for Unu, he must’ve fallen under the allure of chance.
The smoking floor was where the better players hung out, Unu explained. But even for a girl with a near two-pack habit, her eyes watered and her throat constricted. Seeing Unu get so excited here disturbed her a little. His physical appearance was markedly different from that of everyone else there—he was tall, youthful, and clean looking. There was no other way to describe him. His skin was so clear, his brown eyes bright with good sleep, and he still wore these prep-school clothes—not much different from the things he’d worn as a boy in private school. All he needed was a blue blazer, and he’d become the nice fraternity brother he’d been at Dartmouth. This was Casey’s first time at a casino, and naively, she’d expected something glamorous, like in a gangster movie; instead, the floor was crowded with the beaten faces of paunchy old men, drawn women with marionette lines edging their mouths. There was an obvious sadness about the people there, and if she weren’t with her boyfriend, she would’ve turned around and walked away.
Blackjack sounded like a simple enough game—the object was to accumulate cards with point totals near twenty-one or twenty-one itself. You were bust if you went over twenty-one. Face cards were worth ten points, and aces were worth either one or eleven points. But soon enough, Casey saw there were greater complexities and jargon that would take some schooling, and she was neither alert enough nor sufficiently interested to follow what Unu was teaching.
“Let’s play a little,” Unu said, and Casey followed along.
The waits were long at the two-dollar tables and nearly empty at the fifty-dollar-minimum tables. Finally, they found a spot at the ten-dollar table. Casey played exactly two hands and lost forty dollars. Unu took her seat.
His change was immediate. He became extremely quiet, smiling at the female dealer only when he wanted a card, and when he did, he’d tap his card once lightly with his index finger. Mostly he appeared to be studying the dealer’s quick hand movements. Casey didn’t know if he was counting cards—couldn’t fathom remembering the sequence and numbers of cards dealt within six decks of cards. She was taken by the grace of the dealer’s hands—how she drew the cards from the shoe, the way she swept them up in a single motion when the game was over. The dealer wore two rings on each finger and wore clear polish on her well-tapered fingernails. Unu was winning here and there, but mesmerized by the dealer’s dexterity, Casey didn’t realize until Unu got up from his seat that he’d been steadily winning over half a dozen hands. He had begun with five hundred dollars and in thirty-two minutes he was ahead by twenty-six hundred dollars.
“What’s the matter?” she asked when he stood up, getting ready to go. His pile of chips had multiplied.
“We’re going to change tables. I’m feeling my luck return.”
Casey didn’t believe in luck.
“I think you’re my charm,” he said, kissing her cheek.
She walked alongside him, feeling nothing like a moll. She was so sleepy that it was hard for her to keep her eyes open, and the smoke in the room had thickened like a gray soup. She had no desire to smoke at all.
At the fifty-dollar table, Unu won again. There were only two men seated there beside him. They had a male dealer with slicked-back hair and an earring. The three players, all experienced, beat the house repeatedly. In fifty-two minutes, Unu was ahead by nine thousand dollars. Watching him win was vexing for Casey, because the colder he grew, the better he played. He displayed signs of neither confidence nor happiness. He was someone else entirely. It had been that way the first time she’d seen Jay Currie play tennis, where he went from being the affable literary boy to a cutthroat athlete. Casey couldn’t help being pleased to see him win, but she felt afraid to touch him or to say anything because he was so eerily calm, and she didn’t want to disturb his concentration. She was very tired of standing.
When the hand was over and he had won another seven hundred dollars, she tapped his shoulder. “Baby, can we go now? I’m very sleepy.”
Unu turned around and faced her. “Open your purse, please,” he said, and Casey did as he asked. He put aside ten fifty-dollar chips and poured the rest into her purse. “Can you take these up for me?” he asked. “Let me play just a little longer.” For the first time since they’d walked onto the floor of the casino, his eyes betrayed a flicker of worry.
Casey looked at him earnestly, not knowing what would be good for him. “I’ll go upstairs and take a bath. You play and I’ll wait up. Okay?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be up very soon.”
When Casey woke up the next morning, it was eight-thirty. Unu was lying beside her, dressed in the clothes he’d worn the night before. On the bedside table, there was a large pile of fifty-dollar and hundred-dollar chips. She moved closer to look at him, but the smell of cigarettes in his hair and clothing repelled her. His eyelids quivered ever so slightly, and she wondered what he was dreaming of. Casey got out of bed and pulled the bedspread over his body.
Church services would begin in half an hour. There was no way they’d make it back to the city. Lately, Casey hated missing church. She blamed herself, for it hadn’t occurred to her to ask for a wake-up call, which was something she normally did when she traveled for work. But the casino didn’t feel like a hotel. This place was geared to make sure you stayed out of your room, and in the morning light, the room appeared even less attractive than when she’d first walked in. It was free, she reminded herself, and obviously Unu had had a good night, and she’d slept a lot. Casey showered, got dressed, and made coffee in the room.
When she checked her overnight bag, she saw that she’d forgotten to bring her Bible and notebook. She felt like kicking something. It had been such a long time since she’d gone away that she didn’t realize how routinized it had become for her to read her chapter, to write down her daily verse. She might forget about God for the whole day, and often did, but it had become part of her morning rituals, like her shower, coffee, and teeth brushing. And because she was missing church, too, she felt out of sorts.
There was no newspaper outside the door, either. Her fancy travel style with Kearn Davis had spoiled her for perfectly good and free hotel rooms, and Casey had to laugh at herself. When she’d come out of the shower, the towels had felt scratchy compared with what she used at home and at the five-star lodgings she’d stayed at for work. It was absurd for her to have these princess expectations with a pauper’s pocketbook. She drank her coffee from a Styrofoam cup and wondered what was the point of rising in the world if the height was so insecure. Her mother and father had never even stayed at a hotel.
Unu was sleeping soundly. And why did it bother her so much to miss church and her Bible reading? Surely she didn’t follow most of the Christian precepts: She was sleeping with a man whom she couldn’t marry even if she wanted to; she couldn’t stand her parents and had minimal contact with them; she still felt allergic to most Christians and do-gooders; and she wasn’t at all sorry about any of this. The Bible was clear: If you believed, you were to turn away from your wickedness. Casey had scarcely shifted. Yet in her resolute irritation and unimproved state, she was looking more for God, if that made any sense at all. She hoped for a clue as to what to do next.
Unu’s e
yeglasses rested precariously on the nightstand next to the heap of chips. Casey walked toward the table, curious as to how much he’d won. She still had the eight thousand–plus dollars’ worth of chips in her purse. There was nearly double that on the nightstand. Was that normal for him to win so much in a night’s playing? Who was this man sleeping on the bed so innocently? Casey picked up a hundred-dollar chip. The black chip with gold numbers felt solid in her hand. It must have been something to have this kind of payout. Was it intuition, strategy, or gut feelings? Was it math skills in tandem with good memory? How would he ever walk away from this life? she wondered. There was something sexy about what he could do, but she had seen him lose big, too. This life was too erratic to admire, and Casey recognized that she craved steadiness in a person she loved. He was so different from Jay, whom she had come to love like a relative, and though Unu was the Korean one, he did not feel familiar to her. And she was different now, too. She put down the chip and opened the top drawer of the nightstand, fishing around for hotel stationery. This would be a good time to write Virginia.
There was no stationery. However, there was a copy of a Gideon Bible. Casey sat down to read her chapter in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians and scribbled down her verse on the memo pad by the phone: “Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him.” In that chapter, Paul was talking about what kind of life you had when God called you to have faith and how you should respect it in all its complexities. To be honest, Casey wasn’t crazy about the apostle Paul. He was difficult and arrogant, and she didn’t think he liked women. There were many things about the Bible and God that confused and irritated her, but Casey couldn’t dismiss this faith bizarrely growing inside her like a gangly tree sprouting from a concrete pavement. She often thought about her college professor Willyum Butler and wished she could talk to him, but he was dead. Death. That was upsetting, too.
“Good morning,” Unu said, squinting at her. He fumbled around and found his glasses.
“We missed church,” she said, disappointed. But she didn’t feel angry anymore. “Do you think we can go back to the city now?” She smiled at him. “After you cash in your chips, that is?”
“I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “I was doing well, and I wanted to make back the rent.”
“The rent?” Casey tried not to look worried.
“I was behind.”
“I have my paycheck,” Casey said. She hadn’t known about the rent. But how much were you behind? she wanted to ask him. “You can have whatever I have. I live there, too.”
“You gotta pay your debts with it, baby. That was the deal,” he said. “Besides, I made eighteen thousand dollars last night. Not including what you took up in your purse.”
“Do you win that much. . . often?” Casey asked. It was more money than she could imagine. It was almost tuition for school.
“It’s the most I have ever won. In my life. And I’ve never needed it more. Now, the problem is cashing it in and walking out.”
“Will there be a problem?” She didn’t know if he meant that the casino wouldn’t let him.
Unu shook his head, as if he were telling himself no. “I’m not going to return to the tables today,” he said. “Hey, let’s go eat breakfast, then I’ll drive you back.”
Along the highway, he apologized again about not returning the night before, and Casey told him to forget it. It was really okay, especially seeing him more lighthearted.
“I feel a little bad that we stayed for free, ate for free, and you won all that money.”
“Believe me, I’ve paid my dues,” he said, and coughed a little.
Casey nodded, thinking that was probably right.
“Do you have a cigarette?” he asked.
“No,” she said after checking her bag.
“Check the glove compartment.”
Casey popped it open. There were two packs of Camels and a green sheet of paper. “What’s this?” She glanced at it.
Unu was shifting to the left lane and couldn’t look her way.
The green paper was a schedule for Gamblers Anonymous. The Wednesday smoking meeting near Fourteenth Street was circled.
“Have you gone?”
“Oh, that.” Unu noticed the schedule in her hand, then turned to look at the road. His hair was still wet from the shower, and his sunglasses shielded the discomfort in his eyes. “I went. Once.”
“And?”
“Cigarette, please,” he said, and Casey lit one for him. “Radio, please.”
Casey turned it on, and a Hall and Oates song came on: “Private Eyes.”
Unu began to bob his head, his lips pursed, as if he were getting into the music.
“I saw them in concert,” he said. “At Foxwoods. Randy, that guy you know from yesterday, gave me a ticket. They opened for Carly Simon.”
“I love Carly Simon.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said, smiling. There was so much he didn’t know about her. They had never discussed music, for instance.
“There’s more room in a broken heart. . .” she sang.
Unu tapped his chest with his left hand. “Well, don’t break mine, baby. There’s a warehouse in here already.”
Casey folded the schedule and returned it to the glove compartment.
For the remainder of the ride, they talked of where to go for dinner to celebrate his winnings. Casey tried to be enthusiastic about the money but found it difficult. She had grown up without money, and it hadn’t occurred to her how she could have it exactly, but gambling felt like a dishonest way to acquire it. She could argue to herself that it wasn’t stealing, and clearly it was legal, but the whole thing made her feel uncomfortable. Perhaps it was seeing the faces of the elderly men in gabardine slacks, the fabric shiny in the seat and knees, pulling down the levers of the slot machines, their bold eyes full of cherries. Unu had said to her earlier when he was explaining blackjack, “You can beat the house, and you should beat the house.” That made it sound as if you were taking money from a faceless company, but walking through that smoking floor had made Casey see that the house was filled with men and women who were bored, wistful, and full of pipe dreams. It was their foolish money that had built and furnished that edifice.
Unu suggested going to Thirty-second Street for dinner that night. Kalbi and naengmyun. The works, he said—a real feast. Casey said why not. She turned up the radio and tried to enjoy Unu’s happiness.
5 BLOCK
CHARLES HONG DIDN’T HAVE TO SAY ANYTHING. The choir sensed that they were far from good despite the increase in the number of practice hours from four to six. It was the way that the choir director couldn’t smile, his lips thinning from exhaustion, and how he’d ask them to repeat the unsatisfactory bars, unwilling to make eye contact nearly. There was a conscious restraint on his part from expressing his unhappiness with their performance, but Charles was more transparent than he thought. After Wednesday evening rehearsals, the men went to eat barbecue and the older women and the ones without young children rushed to New China Hut for jajangmyun. At the late dinners, the choir members discussed the director and their failure to be better.
In a curious way, his refusal to affirm any improvement—for there had been some modest gain in his two-and-a-half-month tenure—only fueled their desire to work harder. Their persistence may have originated from their complicated Korean hearts. Also, they were impressed by his intense efforts with no expectation of a larger salary. The chair of the church finance committee, Elder Lee, also a baritone in the men’s choir and the owner of six beauty supply shops, signed the choir director’s small paychecks himself. If there was no money to be made, then surely, Elder Lee reasoned, this was a man of immense talents who served the Lord alone and not mammon. The choir director of their little Woodside church had a doctorate in music and graduated from Juilliard! Yes, they chided themselves: They must labor to please the new choir director. At the close of these midweek meals, it was generally agree
d that in a year or two, under Professor Hong’s direction, they would be a superior choir, worthy of touring their sister churches in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
What stirred in Leah’s heart was pride whenever the women in the choir spoke of Professor Hong with reverence. She never said anything in these discussions, despite Kyung-ah’s occasional prodding at the professor’s favorite soloist, and none of them knew that she’d been to his house twice accompanied by Elder Shim when the choir director had suffered from chicken pox: once when Elder Shim had to leave her to go to the hospital and another time shortly thereafter to bring him groceries. At the store, while she hemmed trousers or sewed loose buttons on shirtsleeves, Leah recalled the afternoon spent alone at his house with vividness. Bits of the day would turn up in her private thoughts: The choir director kept only two pots and one frying pan in his many kitchen cabinets, his socks were navy blue wool or white cotton, his Baekyang undershirts had a V-neck, and he read mostly American newspapers and magazines as well as the Hankook Ilbo. In moments of vanity, she wondered if he’d kept his shoes ordered as she had arranged them in his closet, or had he cast them aside in his unused bedroom fireplace as before?
The soloists, both male and female, concurred that Professor Hong’s extra work with them after practice had changed their voices for the better. He was a demanding but brilliant voice coach, and the soloists looked forward to their sessions with him. Leah was no different.
Yet she couldn’t look at him during practice when Kyung-ah was there, because her blushing became pronounced. To avoid this, whenever he faced her direction, Leah studied her score, making check marks on the margins with a pencil.
On the first Wednesday rehearsal of June, Charles asked Leah to stay behind to practice for Sunday’s solo. He dismissed everyone at nine o’clock instead of nine-thirty, but no one was upset by this. The choir members grabbed their light jackets for the cool, springlike evening; they were impatient for their dinner.