by Naomi Foyle
Everything was breathtakingly familiar, and yet so horribly different. The mountains visible behind the tall buildings were the same beloved shapes as the mountains in the North. The signs were all in Hangul; they could read the advertisements and the names of all the shops and yogwans; when they opened the bus windows they could even understand the cries of the vegetable salesmen, though the accents clanged in their ears. But the streets were zooming with cars and the air was heavy and sooty, and the narrow sidewalks were chaotic with people: jostling, hustling, well-dressed, blank-faced people with no thought to say annyonghaseyo to anyone at all. There were no bicycle lanes here, and only spindly ginkgo trees poking at odd intervals out of the pavement. The bus felt as comforting as their grandmothers’ hearths compared to the snarling streets of Inchon.
All too soon, the bus pulled into the parking lot of a large hotel.
“You are going to spend the afternoon in the mog yuk tan, to recuperate from the journey,” Dr. Tae Sun announced. “Just bring your day-bags, please!”
How thoughtful he was. Mee Hee, her head still pulsing from the rollicking sea trip, was one of the first to get to her feet. She gave him a shy smile as she disembarked.
Outside, the women stood in a straggly clump on the tarmac. Shuffling to the safety of the luxurious bathhouse was about all they were capable of. They scrubbed and bathed as if in a trance, barely able to recognize themselves in the steamy mirrors behind the showers.
Later, they had seafood for dinner, right on the waterfront in an outdoor restaurant. With the help of a little soju, some of the women became giggly at last. At the foot of the table, Older Sister loudly told the waitress the correct way to stun and slice open a wet, wriggling eel. She had visited her sister once, on the coast, and learned exactly how.
Mee Hee and Su Jin sat beside the doctors and Che Dong Sun proudly explained life in the Republic, while his brother sat quietly at his side. Mee Hee gazed at Dr. Tae Sun tenderly, understanding his inability to speak. He too was dumbfounded, being here at last.
As dusk fell, they got back onto the bus. As it coughed and purred its way down the highways and through the towns of Kyonggi-do Province, Mee Hee fell asleep, her head against the window.
She dreamed of eels and octopuses until she was awakened by a sharp poke from Su Jin, who was hissing, “Wake up! We’re here!”
The bus had stopped and her sisters were gathering their belongings from beneath the seats and from the racks above their heads. Looking out of the window, Mee Hee could see a perfect, twinkling village spread out in front of her like a vision. Everything—the low thatched houses, the Meeting Hall, the trees, the two mountains rising behind the buildings like protective spirits—was exactly as it had been in the framed photos, except now, in the middle of the night, warm, honey-colored light was shining softly through the maru walls of the houses, and each spiny curved tile on the roof of the Hall was etched silver in the moonlight.
Mee Hee emerged from the bus. Above her head the stars formed a graceful canopy, bright as a length of queenly silk. The air was vibrating with the sound of crickets in the paddies and beneath their insistent ticking she could hear animals rustling in the grass, a stream dancing past, her sisters murmuring as they too absorbed the beauty of the scene.
“Come now,” said Dr. Tae Sun, gently taking her elbow. “Let me show you and Su Jin to your new house.”
Mee Hee whispered, “I am back in Korea. Thank you.” His eyes crinkled, and for a moment she thought he might speak. But he just leaned down to pick up her handbag.
“Dr. Tae Sun and I will unload the luggage from the bus,” his brother announced loudly. “Come now, you all remember which houses are yours from the photos, yes? Older Sister, please help me direct everyone correctly.”
Dr. Tae Sun patted Mee Hee’s arm. “Just a moment,” he whispered, and went to help his brother. Mee Hee found Su Jin and reached for her hand. Soon they were following Dr. Tae Sun as he carried their bags past three carved Spirit Posts into the village and up a narrow stone path to their new home.
20 / King Bling
The squeal of brakes and the stink of burning rubber seared the air. Startled, Damien looked up from his iced latte as a foreigner in a white convertible hurled a phat-looking watch into the gutter in front of him, where it smashed into bits. The car tore away. With a nibble of anxiety, Damien watched it go. Back in London, in twelve hours’ time, England would be playing America in a World Cup semi-final at Wembley Stadium. He’d been on edge all day; no matter how much he’d tried to ignore the competition, how nonchalantly he’d taken England’s stuttering progression through the group stages and early knockout games, how understated had been his celebration of the dramatic 2-3 quarter-final victory over Spain, not even a die-hard Collapsenik Hammer junkie could pretend he wouldn’t be demolished if England were denied a World Cup final on home soil by the Yanks. This semi-final had Potential Psyche-Crusher stamped through it like Kiss Me Quick in a stick of Brighton rock.
But it was like the Somme: you just had to starch your upper lip and soldier on and up into your doom. Coffee finished, he headed over to the Samsung Apartment Block to teach his next lesson. His students were a couple of rich brats who refused to do anything but play dolls and compare Sailor Moon brandware. Eight-year-old Korean females, he’d concluded, were both the original Material Girls and the ultimate dialecticians: they only wanted something if it was (a) disgustingly expensive and (b) everyone else had it. Capitalism and communism would have melded long ago if they ran the world.
That day he watched Yoon So, cool as a sadist’s cucumber, take a pair of plastic-handled scissors and chop her purple Happy Face eraser into tiny bits. Why not? She had a Hello Kitty pencil case with nine more like it inside. In spite of his better judgment, Damien was impressed. With two major earthquakes in the last month, famine in four African countries, massacres of protestors in Pakistan and Taiwan, the third Maldive atoll under water and Hurricane Rita swamping New York, what was there to be happy about? Sure, all his hagwon students were going crazy about the England-America game, planning to get up early to watch it before their morning lessons. But they weren’t facing total emotional annihilation. If it wasn’t for the fact they’d be terribly disappointed in him, he’d rather sleep right through it. When it came to world news Damien much preferred the recent item, so small you almost missed it, that Climax, Saskatchewan was officially the safest place on the planet. Now that had put a rare smile on his face.
“What the fuck do you mean, I’m not suitable as a donor?” Johnny shouted. “That was the first clause in the deal: Johnny Sandman: King of VirtuWorld.” So much for being one up on Kim. The heat didn’t help. A volley of forty-degree sunlight was thudding down on the Caddy, not cooling his temper. Jabbing at the dashboard, he raised the roof and started the air-con. Global warming had really screwed up the whole point of convertibles.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Sandman”—Kim’s insincerity oozed out of his Gotcha—“but that clause was conditional on the health of your sperm and testing has indicated an abnormal tri-nucleotide repeat in your sample: one hundred and twelve copies of the sequence. While not dangerous in itself, this quantity risks transmitting an even longer repeat to your children, the so-called Fragile-X syndrome: the most common cause of autism and a range of other intellectual disabilities.”
Fragile-X Syndrome? What the fuck was Kim up to now? “Recheck your figures, Doc,” he snorted. “There’ve never been any retards, fragile, agile or otherwise, in my family. I’d appreciate a second opinion before I take any more of this horseshit. Where the fuck are you going!” He slammed on the brakes, just in time, missing some asshole on a solar-powered scooter. Fucking rats on wheels. Someone should melt them all down into toaster ovens and stick the fat heads of the drivers inside them.
“I know this must come as a shock.” Kim was enjoying this, he could tell, more than she’d like being roasted by a couple of No-balls fucking Prize winners, he bet. “But I can ass
ure you our lab results are the best in the field. I understand your disappointment, but we cannot use your genetic material in the production of the Peonies. The risk is far too high.”
Pedal to the metal, Johnny exited Hannam Bridge and careened on to Olympic Expressway. To his right, pastel-painted LegoLand apartment blocks shimmered woozily in the heat. On his left, the Han River glittered like a blue rhinestone belt. Behind his Police sunglasses, an impulse of brainlight crackled at the edges of his vision. A fucking migraine: what else did he need? “Look, Doc, I don’t buy this for one teeny tiny minute,” he warned, digging in his pocket for his OxyPops. “If you’re such a fucking scientific genius, why don’t you get in there and erase those nuclear tricycles or whatever the fuck they are?”
Kim launched into a longwinded excuse, sounding, as usual, like she’d stuck a thesaurus in the blender with honey and lighter fluid and mainlined the result. Why couldn’t she just say, “I’ve got it in for you, asshole, and I’m not going stop ’til you’re back on Venice Beach, panhandling like the dirty junkie bum I know you are”?
Johnny tipped back his head and gulped down two pills. As the oxygen started its soothing chain reaction, first up to his fried synapses, and then down his tense vertebrae, he experienced a swift, cold surge of logical deduction. Could the Doc possibly know about what had happened at the morgue?
No. If she’d found out about that, she’d do more than just ditch his sperm, and she wouldn’t be giving him any nicey-nicey warnings, either. No, he knew what was really happening here. Breaking a personal promise to himself not ever to talk to Kim about Sydney, he growled, “The girl’s behind all this, isn’t she? She’s got you twisted round her little finger, just like she screwed me blind.”
“Miss Travers is completely unaware of our involvement, Mr. Sandman.”
“And that’s the way you want to keep it, isn’t it? When are you going to tell her I’m going to be the King at those fucking banquets we’ve been designing the menus for, hey? Or are you going to get some other joker for that job too?” Grinding his jaw, Johnny overtook a Hyundai people carrier with “Lucifer’s Hammer: The Rapture is Coming!” stickers plastered all over the back window. Inside, a bumper crop of happy-clappy Jesus Freaks were making fish faces in unison: singing hymns or practicing their sucking-off-the-Pope technique: who knew, and who cared?
“That’s something else I need to discuss with you. Recent market research has indicated a strong preference among Korean women for dark-haired, pale-skinned Englishmen. I am sorry to have to break it to you, but ConGlam have initiated talks with the actor Hugh Grant to play the role of the King.”
What? Johnny practically choked. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Kim,” he sputtered. “You don’t have a clue how much you owe me. All ConGlam ever wanted from GRIP was the ProxyBod prototype. Who backed you one hundred percent on VirtuWorld? Johnny Sandman. Who recruited Sydney? Johnny Sandman. Who’s done all the footwork, all the dirty work? Johnny Sandman. If you think you can sideline me in my own company, you’re thinking very wrong indeed.”
Up ahead, the broad, ribbed dome of Chamshil Stadium bulged out of Sports Complex Park, a giant woodlouse waiting to be trodden on by a cruel, relentless god. Johnny accelerated as Kim blabbed on, thanking him for his instigating role in the VirtuWorld project, hoping he would stay on as liaison officer, assuring him he would still maintain his excellent salary and expense account, praising his expertise, financial acumen, blah-di-blah blah blah. “With time,” she concluded, “I’m sure you will appreciate the rationale behind my decisions.”
“With time,” he mimicked her, then turned up the menace, “you’re going to regret this very deeply, Kim.”
“Are you threatening me, Mr. Sandman?” Her voice was tight and icy as a polar bear’s asshole. Johnny paused. He’d been on a knife’s edge at work since Sydney left. On the one hand he wanted to march into meetings with an AK47 and blow the entire GRIP board away; on the other, upon his return from China he’d started negotiations with Han Air and the Korean National Tourist Board and he was halfway to convincing a senior government official to subsidize off-season return flights from Europe and the States. LA was very pleased; he’d been assured a big Christmas bonus if he signed the deal by December, plus a spa holiday in Malaysia. In another year or two he’d be in a position to fuck Kim up, big time. Then there’d be no one to protect little Sydney anymore.
“Excuse me, Doc, I was talking to some selfish maniac on the road,” he replied, syrupy with sarcasm. “I do appreciate your concern for my future offspring. Thank you very much is what I’d like to say.”
“That’s what I thought. Again, thank you very much for your assistance last night. And I’m sorry to have been the bearer of bad news.”
Johnny clicked off the Gotcha. His stomach was eating him alive. It hurt talking about Sydney—physically hurt. It was painful even to think about her—he’d remember that time she got a goofy spot of soup on her chin and the lopsided smile she’d cracked when he’d rubbed it away, or how she used to wander out from the bathroom in her panties and ask him to moisturize that spot between her shoulder blades she couldn’t reach. Then his guts would contract and he’d feel like chucking up. And this morning he’d dreamed about her: that she was back, walking in the door, her little tits brushing against his chest as she leaned toward him for a kiss . . . then a tangle of worms and a cloud of ashes spilled out of her mouth, the room exploded with cackling and hissing and he’d woken up, his eyes hot with tears.
Yeah, tears: not good; not good. Even in a dream, no one made the Sandman cry. Those bitches deserved everything that was coming to them, but right now, he was going to step on the gas, turn up the speakers and blast “My Way” so loud it would break every plate-glass window in Seoul. Then he was going to smash a few squash balls into the eye-sockets of his opponents at Sports Complex. And later? He’d be taking some quality time to fine-tune his long-range plans for Sydney Travers and Dr. Kim Da Mi.
“I’m so sorry to drop in on you like this, Sydney. I just don’t know what to do.” Da Mi set her cup of pollen-water down on Sydney’s coffee table and massaged her right temple. Even her silk blouse was quivering with distress.
“That’s no problem, Da Mi—what’s going on?” Sydney tried to sound reassuring, but it was weird having Da Mi at her place. Normally they met down at the lab, where they were doing all kinds of tests to make sure Sydney could safely donate her eggs. Then they’d drink honey-water and Sydney would play with the white kittens Da Mi was cloning for the top department stores. It had been a real surprise today when the scientist had called to invite herself round.
“The King of the Peonies, Sydney, has become a major headache.”
“I thought you said he was all ready to go?”
“He was—but now you’re on board, things have changed. Our first choice was a light-haired man like you, but of course it’s highly problematic to be creating a group of exclusively blond super-children.”
“Really?” Sydney said brightly. “Wouldn’t it make up for, like, a hundred years of dumb blonde jokes?”
Da Mi didn’t laugh. “I’m sure you’ll remember, Sydney,” she said firmly, “that the Nazis tried desperately to create a dominant race of blond people. They exterminated anyone who didn’t conform to this stereotype, and in the process gave us geneticists a terrible legacy to struggle against.”
Sydney screwed up her face. “Oh yeah, right. I forgot about that. I know about the concentration camps, Da Mi.”
Da Mi patted her hand. “I know you do, darling. Young people today aren’t taught properly about the Nazis’ wider program, but I am determined not to feed into their lingering myth. ConGlam’s vision of exotic blond Peonies has always troubled me, and so I’ve finally convinced them to support different colorings. I’ve also commissioned some market research, and it appears that a dark-haired King would be more appealing to the average Korean woman.”
“It’s a great job; I bet loads
of guys would want to do it,” Sydney said encouragingly, stirring another dollop of honey into her cha. It was fantastic not having to worry so much about calories. She didn’t want to get fat, of course, but as soon as she was the Queen, she wouldn’t have to fit into sample dress sizes anymore.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that, I’m afraid. This is top secret, Sydney, but I’m very pleased to tell you that ConGlam are approaching Hugh Grant to play the King.”
“Hugh Grant?—oh yeah, that British actor. But isn’t he a bit old for me?”
“He has a lot of fans in Asia, especially since fathering a half-Chinese child. And his age would be an asset here. But there’s no question of him donating sperm; the inheritance laws would make his fortune vulnerable to future claims. And in any case, he wouldn’t be suitable as a genetic donor.”
“How come?”
Da Mi rubbed her forehead. “He can’t sing, and our Peonies must be musical. As you’re not especially gifted in that department, we need to find a Hugh Grant look-alike with a good voice—right away.”
Sydney put down her cup. “Don’t worry, Da Mi; Hugh Grant’s pretty ordinary-looking really. There must be loads of guys that look like him, and lots of them who can sing.”
Da Mi clicked open her briefcase. “In fact, Sydney, there are exactly three young men with documented singing voices who closely resemble Hugh Grant living in Korea right now.” She passed three photographs to Sydney. “A friend of mine at Kimpo Airport provided me with these,” she said. “They’re all young men who’ve arrived in Seoul in the last year. I know their names, but it’s been hard to trace them. I was hoping you could keep a look-out in the nightclubs while I try other methods of detection. There’ll be a healthy commission if you find the right person.”
More money? Sydney tried to look honored rather than delighted as she flipped through the photos. They were all of guys with dark hair, standing in an airport queue.