Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

  Leah rose from her assigned seat and moved to the front of the room. This was what Professor Hong wanted soloists to do. She sat quietly in the first row, awaiting his instruction. She watched the young accompanist pack up her things to go. She had two daughters, too.

  Charles waved politely at the accompanist, who bowed on her way out. At the piano, he began to play the first few bars, then stopped to scratch the nape of his neck.

  “Damn,” he muttered. He began to play again, then stopped abruptly again, shaking his head rapidly like a dog stepping out of a bath.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he answered, slightly astonished to find her sitting there, as if he had forgotten whom he’d asked to stay behind. “It’s still so damn itchy.” He rifled through his black knapsack to pull out a tube of liniment that the pharmacist had recommended. He rubbed some on his back but couldn’t reach between the shoulder blades. “Goddamn it.”

  Leah remained seated, wanting to help him but not knowing what to do. She lifted her hand slightly, as if she were reaching toward him, then pulled it back in hesitation.

  Charles scratched his neck and back. He trembled as if he were cold.

  “Does the cream help?”

  “The relief lasts for a little while.” He tucked the tube away and searched the bag again. The roll of LifeSavers he’d bought at the newspaper kiosk was nowhere to be found. “Damn, damn, damn.”

  Leah made a face, feeling sorry for the man. The itching must have been unbearable, and he’d had to control himself during the long rehearsal.

  “Would it be better if I came back later?” Perhaps he needed a moment. He had been working without a break.

  “No, no. I’m just pissed off because I can’t find the candy.” Charles laughed then, because it sounded silly.

  “I have some cough drops.” Leah handed him an economy-size bag of Halls that she kept in her purse.

  Charles unwrapped one and put it in his mouth right away. From her seat, she could hear the grumbling in his stomach. “Professor Hong, did. . . did you eat today?” Having been to his home, she knew he didn’t pay attention to things like food.

  Charles stared blankly at the back wall with its row of metal wardrobes holding choir gowns. Come to think of it, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. During the day, he’d been so absorbed in his song cycle that he’d forgotten to eat. The song cycle, commissioned by the Lysander Quartet in Boston, was due in two months and would have its world premiere at Berklee College in September. He’d almost been late for rehearsal today because his writing had been going well.

  From his lost expression, she realized that he hadn’t eaten all day.

  “I’ll eat after this.” Charles faced the hymn music.

  “If you want, I can come early on Sunday morning, and you can go have dinner now. You must be starving.” She wished she had something else in her purse beside the bag of blue Halls. The grumbling in his stomach grew louder.

  “Did you eat dinner?” Charles asked. Suddenly he was ravenous.

  Leah shook her head no. For lunch, she’d eaten a navel orange. She rarely ate before practice because she was so nervous. Even now she was nervous just to be sitting in front of him. But she didn’t worry about her own hunger. “You have to eat. You’re getting over being sick. You must take refreshment.” She was talking to him like a child, like one of her brothers, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Ever since I was a boy, I’d forget to eat when I was concentrating on something.” When his mother was alive, that was always the first question she’d ask him. “Moon-su ya, did you eat today?” Even when he lived in Germany and she spoke to him on the phone, she’d ask him the same thing. It drove his brothers crazy how she’d ship special foods to him from Korea like toasted laver, custera, and dried squid from the best shops in Seoul. Up till her death, his mother had worried that he didn’t eat enough. The thought of his mother made him feel a kind of ache.

  “I am really hungry,” he said, surprising himself in the admission. “Is there a place around here where I could buy a sandwich? I could run out, and you could wait for me.”

  There was no place that was open this late. You’d need a car to get to the nearest diner.

  “There’s a restaurant about five minutes’ drive from here. I could go and get you a sandwich if you want to wait.”

  “Let’s go, then. We can both get something to eat.” Charles picked up his bag and sweater.

  Leah swallowed. How could she do that? It would be preferable to lend him her car, she reasoned. They could not go to a restaurant together.

  “Do you have a license?”

  “No. I don’t know how to drive.”

  “Oh.”

  “Never mind,” he said. She was nervous about going with him. She was a married woman, and married Korean women didn’t do things like go to restaurants with single men. He’d somehow forgotten that her world was still in the nineteenth century. “We’ll practice for a bit, then I’ll eat something near my house.” He bit down on his cough drop and unwrapped another one.

  Leah knew that even if they practiced for thirty minutes, he wouldn’t be home for another hour and a half.

  “I’ll take you.” She picked up her purse.

  “Okay, then,” he said, and followed her out the door.

  The hostess asked them how many were in their party, and Charles said two.

  “Table or booth?” she asked.

  “Booth,” Charles answered.

  Leah sat in the brown leather booth at the Astaire Diner. She’d understood that they’d get the food to go, but now they were sitting alone at a restaurant. How could she explain this to Joseph?

  Charles ordered a hamburger deluxe with onion rings and French fries, a large chocolate shake, and an extra order of half-sour pickles. Leah asked for a cheeseburger and a ginger ale. No one took notice of the Korean couple. Framed photographs of Fred and Ginger dancing lined the orange-colored walls. The restaurant was somewhat crowded, but Leah saw no one from church. The food came quickly, and Charles asked Leah questions between bites.

  “When did you come to the States?”

  “In 1976,” she answered. “And you?” She took a small bite of her burger.

  “I’d been coming for visits since I was a boy, but I guess I settled here when I first got married in 1980.”

  Leah nodded, having heard of his two marriages.

  “But I’ve moved around a lot. Went to school in England and Germany and here, of course.” He felt so much better eating again. “I was starving.”

  Leah laughed, thinking, How could such a smart man be so foolish? Men were like children. This was what the older women in her town had told her when she was a girl, and it was often the case.

  “You must have been very busy to forget to eat.”

  “I’m working on a song cycle right now.”

  Leah wrinkled her brow. “A song cycle?”

  “A group of songs sung together in a sequence. A common theme or a story unifies them.” He shrugged. He hadn’t spoken to anyone like this in a while. Sometimes he felt that he wasn’t fit for company since he spent so much time alone. That was the thing he missed about marriage, always having someone around that you liked enough to do things with, to talk things over with. The problem was that at the end of his marriages, all he had wanted to do was never be home.

  “What is your story about?”

  “Well, it’s based on a set of poems by Shakespeare. Sonnets.”

  Leah nodded, trying to imagine what that must be like to sit down and read poems and set them to music. That sounded no different to her from magic or alchemy.

  “That must be very rewarding,” she said.

  What could he say to this? She was idealizing his work. He smiled at her, and Leah flushed deeply.

  “It’s what I do,” he said. “I am a better composer than a singer, a better composer than a choir director.”

  “Oh no. You’re a wonde
rful choir director,” Leah said with great feeling.

  Charles dismissed this. He poured ketchup on his plate, salted the ketchup, dipped an onion ring in it, then popped it in his mouth. Leah was amused because this was how her younger daughter ate her onion rings, too.

  “It keeps me from having too much salt. I have high blood pressure.”

  “Oh,” she said, embarrassed to be caught staring. “You don’t look unhealthy.” She blushed again.

  Charles nodded. “Looks are deceiving.” He’d said this in English, and seeing her confusion, he translated it loosely into Korean, and she nodded. It felt intimate to speak to her in Korean, and it reminded him of how it was with the Korean women he’d slept with before he’d married his white wives, who didn’t speak it or have any interest in learning. There were so many things you could say in a native language that made the moment immediately private.

  “I make you nervous.” He smiled and took another bite of his burger.

  Leah picked up her soda glass.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Forty-three,” she said.

  “Quite young,” he said. They were only five years apart.

  “I’m a grandmother,” Leah said. “My younger daughter just had a boy.” She smiled shyly. They were coming to visit soon. “My grandson—”

  “Unbelievable.”

  Leah didn’t know what to say. What was unbelievable about her being a grandmother? She cut her burger in half.

  “When is your birthday?” he asked. Charles’s second wife had a keen interest in numerology. She’d left him on the day generated by her numerology software.

  “February.”

  “Mine too. Valentine’s Day.”

  “But, that’s my birthday,” Leah said, surprised. “The fourteenth.”

  “No, our birthday. We’ll have to celebrate it together next year.”

  He was kidding her, of course. That would be impossible, Leah thought. She couldn’t help wondering, however, what they would do to celebrate their common birthday. It felt special to share this day. She took another small bite of her meal.

  “Maybe that’s why my songs are about love.” Charles laughed. “Though I must admit, I know nothing really about love. Or how it lasts.”

  Leah could hardly breathe.

  When the waitress slapped down the check, Charles picked it up.

  Leah pulled out her wallet.

  “Put that away. I never thanked you properly,” he said. “For coming by. I felt like dying that day, and when you and the doctor came, I was so. . . grateful. And you cleaned up my house. Then you brought over the milk and fruit.. . .” He smiled at her. “Thank you. I’ve been meaning to get you two something, but didn’t know what exactly.”

  Leah shook her head slowly. “Oh no. There’s no need for that. I. . . should thank you for being such a good teacher.”

  There was such an obvious sweetness in this woman, he thought. She also had some infatuation for him. This happened when you were a teacher. Students fell in love with you. He’d had schoolboy crushes, too, but he was a man now, and there was a lot you could do about a woman if you found her attractive. You could chase her and take her home, or if she was unattainable, you could picture her in your mind as a lovely fantasy. He didn’t think Leah got crushes often, and he guessed accurately by her discomfort when they were seated that she had never had dinner with a man alone who wasn’t her husband. He wanted to say to her, You’re not doing anything wrong. It seemed a shame that a woman this beautiful with such talents had this quiet life impoverished of feelings and experiences. She was born to be an artist, but she had to contend with a few solos a year at a small Korean church in Queens. Her stage was too small. He would’ve bet a thousand dollars that she had slept with only her husband. And more likely that she’d never climaxed.

  Charles was a modern man, and the lives of Korean women, in his view, were far too narrowly circumscribed. And religion made it even more so. His own sisters-in-law, very nice women and very wealthy in contrast with Leah, were just grown-up girls. They were hardly women in terms of how they spent their time and what they were allowed to do without penalty. The first married woman he’d slept with had enormous sexual passion. In bed, she would occasionally bite him so hard that skin broke. When Charles ended the relationship, she’d attempted suicide twice without explanation to her husband, who’d almost had her committed to an asylum. Charles had to throw all her letters away because they were too violent. The last he heard, she was doing better after she’d had some children.

  “Thank you for dinner,” Leah said. She was relieved that it was over. The excitement was too much for her.

  “You are a beautiful woman,” he said thoughtlessly.

  Leah hadn’t expected this, and Charles saw that her cheeks stained again in that gorgeous peach color of hers from her forehead to her collarbone, and he wondered if her breasts would be rosy as well.

  When she brought up practice, Charles said never mind. Could she come in an hour before service? he asked. “You don’t need as much work as the others.” So Leah drove him to the subway station. The green lamps at the station were lit. The darkened streets were empty, and the stores nearby were all closed for the night.

  “I should drive you home. I didn’t realize you didn’t have a car.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It would take you an hour each way.”

  Leah couldn’t insist because Joseph might still be awake, waiting up for her. Already she was almost late. He would likely be sleeping in front of the television set.

  Leah parked in front of the subway station beneath the elevated platform. A truck drove past and cast a moving shadow across Charles’s face. He looked like the actor who played the bad son in a soap opera she used to watch on KBS. She shifted the gear to park. Charles reached for the door handle, and Leah bowed her head to say good-bye. He retreated suddenly and kissed her on the lips.

  Her shoulders tensed, and she jerked away. This was her first kiss. Her mouth was closed. She had felt the pressure of his lips against her clenched teeth. It wasn’t something romantic like she had seen on television. She and Joseph did not kiss. It didn’t seem like something a proper Korean woman might do.

  Charles cupped her face with his hands. He kissed her again with greater pressure.

  Leah’s arms and hands froze in shock. Then in a few moments she came to, as if she were emerging from a cold bath. She pulled back.

  “Uh-muh,” she gasped.

  Charles smiled at her. “You’ve never kissed, have you?” It was a little mean of him to ask this, but he didn’t think she would mind.

  Leah moved her head no.

  “Hold still.. . .” Charles leaned in and kissed her again. “Do you feel me?” His eyes looked directly into hers.

  She’d felt the force of his lips. Was that what he meant? This was absolutely wrong, she thought. “Professor Hong, I have to go home,” she said. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

  “Don’t call me that,” he said. “I’m Charles. I’m Moon-su.” It had been a long time since anyone had called him that.

  Leah opened her mouth a bit, but no words would come.

  “Relax your face. I won’t hurt you.” He kissed her and put his tongue in her mouth, and Leah coughed.

  “I. . . I. . . have to go home now,” she said. She was crying.

  “I think you are so beautiful.” He pushed away the white hair from her face. “Like a goddamn angel,” he said in English.

  There was no one in the street. It wasn’t past ten o’clock, but the streets were bare. The yellow streetlights flickered above them. Charles was the most handsome man she had ever known. He was telling her that he thought she was beautiful. If she weren’t married, she would have let him keep kissing her. But what she and her husband did on Friday nights was something that only married people did. Only sexual relations between a husband and wife were sanctioned by God. Leah did not think much about sex, except as something she
should do to help her husband, but it crossed her mind that it might be different with Charles. The thoughts filled her with shame. Adultery could be committed in sheer thought alone—that much she knew. The great King David in the Old Testament had killed his trusted friend Uriah when Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, became pregnant with David’s child. David, the Lord’s anointed shepherd king, had fallen prey to lust. He had murdered his friend to cover his sin. At this moment, what Leah felt was a kind of desire, and the feeling itself was strange. The professor wanted her, too.

  Charles stroked her hair, and Leah didn’t want that gentleness to stop. When was the last time anyone had touched her hair?

  But he had to stop. Leah didn’t know how to make him leave the car. Instead, she asked if she could go home.

  “Do you want to come to my house?” he asked her.

  “I have to get home,” she said again. Was he out of his mind?

  Charles got out of the car, opened the driver’s door, and took her hand. Leah stepped out of the car. Did he want to drive somewhere? But he had no license, she told herself.

  He walked around, opened the backseat door, and motioned her to sit in the backseat.

  “Let’s sit closer,” he said.

  Leah bit down on her lower lip, not knowing how to make this stop. It felt like a terrifying dream with interludes of comfort mingled with shame.

  Charles kissed her and stroked her back as if he were calming a child.

  “Professor Hong. . . please, no.” Her shoulders grew rigid.

  He kissed her again, and she submitted to the pressure of his tongue.

  He put his arm around her waist and pulled her toward him at first, then gently lowered her on her back. He began to massage her breasts.

  “I want to see you,” he said, unzipping her dress and unhooking her brassiere.

  She shook her head. “Please, no,” she murmured. “I have to go home,” she cried quietly. “Please.”