by Jimin Han
YOU’RE NOT MAD ABOUT YOUR MOTHER?
I look at him the way I’ve been trained to look at my father. “You went all the way to Lakeburg like you did that time you helped me, when my mom was in the hospital. I was thinking that was really nice of you to do that. Go all the way there even when I treated you horribly. Been thinking you were always a good friend. Good friend to Jaesung. Good friend to me. You’re right—I cut and run all the time. Too much, really. Even with this pregnancy. Hard when I feel so sick all the time, you know? Is the car ready? Call Sax back and tell him we’re in a hurry. I have to use the bathroom. One of the problems with being pregnant.”
“Don’t, Yoona, don’t do this,” Faye pleads.
THE BATHROOM? IS THAT SOME SORT OF TRICK?
“I’ll use the bathroom far away from here once we have the car and the money. It was my parents who really wanted me not to have this baby. You took care of that problem, so I can deal with it now. You went overboard, like you do, but you saved me, really.”
YOU THINK I SAVED YOU?
“We have to hurry now if it’s going to work.”
WHAT’S GOING TO WORK?
“I didn’t go home because they gave me hell on the phone about it. Typical.” As I talk, I have to speak in a low voice. My head is pounding, a dozen microscopic hammers battering me in different tempos inside.
“Look out the window and see what they’re doing out there. I’ll get the girls ready.”
He looks confused.
“Honestly, that temporary FBI thing Sax said sounds like a lie. Serena said something about it, but it sounded fake.”
SERENA’S A BITCH.
“We have to bring them both, don’t you think? We don’t know who we will have to use to get through whatever roadblock they’ll set up. You know they’ll try once we’re out of the building. Maybe we’ll need Serena too. Maybe we should stop by her dorm, if they haven’t evacuated the campus.”
BUT HE SAID PRESIDENT REAGAN IS GOING TO FREE JAESUNG.
“Did he? I didn’t hear that. I heard some bullshit about you being made part of the FBI.”
“Yoona, why are you saying that? She’s wrong, Lloyd. Don’t listen to her.” Faye pulls at my arm.
“Jaesung always said you were gullible. Really smart but gullible,” I tell him.
Lloyd looks from me to Faye. Then he looks down at the handgun, his thumb caressing the handle.
“What are you doing, Yoona?” Faye hisses.
Lloyd looks straight at me, and I don’t blink. DON’T LET THEM GET CLOSE TO THE DOOR OR ELSE THEY’LL ESCAPE. YOU REALLY THINK HE’S LYING? There’s a flicker of the old Lloyd who came to Weston a month ago.
“Is the car ready?” I say.
Lloyd backs up to the window, and when he turns his head, I point to Heather for Faye to help her up.
I CAN SEE THE VAN. THEY’RE FILLING IT WITH BRIEFCASES. IT MUST BE THE MONEY. THE MAN WITH THE RED HAT IS GONE.
“See? Sax is trying to make sure you feel safe,” I say, and I’ve got my arm around Heather now, and I motion Faye to follow with a finger to my mouth signaling her to be quiet. Faye takes Heather’s arm, and Heather whimpers in pain. We make our way to the door.
IT’S A CHEVY LIKE MY DAD HAS. I’LL TELL SAX TO PUT A MEDICAL KIT IN FOR HEATHER. YOU’RE RIGHT—WE’LL NEED HER.
I nudge the desk with my hip and shove it over with my free hand. Just a few more steps and we’ll be at the door.
97
Lloyd picks up the phone with a smile on his face, as if a load is off his shoulders. I’M GOING TO TAKE CARE OF EVERYTHING, he tells me. Into the phone, he shouts, YOU TRIED TO FOOL ME WITH THAT TEMPORARY FBI SHIT, SAX. BUT WE DIDN’T FALL FOR IT.
“Who’s ‘we,’ Lloyd? Who didn’t fall for what?”
‘WE’ MEANS ME AND YOONA. WE HAVE PLANS. IT’S GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT NOW. TELL PRESIDENT REAGAN TO INFORM CHUN DOO HWAN AND KIM IL SUNG THAT WE HAVE JAESUNG KIM’S BABY. THEY HAVE TO FREE HIM. HE’S AN AMERICAN. AND, IF WE HAVE TO, WE’LL EXPOSE THE KCIA SPY WHO IS WITH HIM. I’M NOT GOING TO LET MY BEST FRIEND SUFFER BECAUSE OF HIM.
“Stay in front of me,” I tell Faye as loudly as I can manage with my stomach in knots and nausea rising in my throat. “Come on, Heather, a little further.”
“Yoona, what are you doing?” Faye says and refuses to move.
“Open the door, Faye,” I tell her. “I got Heather.” We pivot so we are sideways to Lloyd. And she uses her right hand to open the door. I can feel cool air. “Move toward it, that’s right,” I continue.
DON’T GO YET, YOONA. SAX SAYS FIVE MINUTES. Lloyd’s voice is steady.
“Just seeing if anyone is in the hall,” I tell him without looking back.
BUT THEN THEY CAN ESCAPE. YOU DON’T KNOW, BUT—STOP, CLOSE THE DOOR.
“Now,” I say to Faye. I push Heather toward the door so she stumbles into Faye, who is now in the hallway.
I’LL BLOW A HOLE STRAIGHT THROUGH ALL OF YOU.
But I’ve made sure I’m between the shotgun and Heather, so when we both stop at the sound of his words, he would have to shoot through me to kill her, which he’s saying he’s going to do—my brain processes this as if it can’t accept self-sacrifice and refuses to move my feet when Heather takes another step. I don’t follow, and she’s in his range now.
“Lloyd, Lloyd, don’t do it. Let’s talk it over.” Detective Sax’s tiny voice comes through the phone on the floor as Lloyd repositions his grip on the shotgun, and it breaks my paralysis. I step closer to Heather.
Heather and Faye are pinned to me.
That’s when Lloyd says what I’ve been counting on him to say—some unconscious part of me has known all along. MOVE OUT OF THE WAY, YOONA.
“Hold on, Lloyd, slow down. Don’t do anything to ruin our deal. The car is ready outside now. It’s right there, Lloyd,” Sax urges.
YOONA IS GOING TO MAKE ME KILL HER AND JAESUNG’S BABY. HOW CAN I STOP HER?
“You can’t.” I speak to him over my shoulder.
A few more steps. If Lloyd pulls that trigger, we’re all doomed. But I know he won’t shoot your baby.
“Keep going,” I tell my friends and turn to face Lloyd again.
98
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS, YOONA? OUR CAR IS DOWNSTAIRS. WE CAN GO TO THE AIRPORT AND GET ON A PLANE. PRESIDENT REAGAN IS WAITING FOR US. WE CAN FREE JAESUNG. YOU AND I CAN SEE HIM AGAIN.
“You don’t have proof, Lloyd.” I feel a calm spread through me. Is this what the students felt before they lit themselves on fire? Did you feel this when the other car collided into you? The door is still open, but my friends have gone through. “Give yourself up,” I tell Lloyd.
BUT WE’VE GOTTEN WHAT WE WANT.
“I don’t care what you do to me—I’m walking out right now.”
SERENA HAD A FAX FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE KCIA. IT’S PROOF, ASK HIM—ASK SAX TO SEARCH HER ROOM. I TRIED TO GET HER TO SHOW IT TO ME, BUT SHE WOULDN’T. I’M SORRY I HAD TO SHOOT HER. I’M REALLY SORRY. YOONA, PLEASE. HE’S ALIVE. THE FAX SAYS HE’S A PRISONER IN NORTH KOREA. THE STATE DEPARTMENT KNOWS ABOUT HIM. THEY KNOW, AND THEY’RE GOING TO LET HIM ROT THERE. WE’RE SO CLOSE. THIS IS OUR REVOLUTION, YOONA. WE’VE DONE IT. THE SMALL REVOLUTIONS MAKE THE WAY FOR THE BIG ONES. REMEMBER WHAT JAESUNG SAID ABOUT SMALL REVOLUTIONS. THIS IS OUR REVOLUTION, YOONA. DON’T GIVE UP ON HIM NOW. HOW CAN YOU GIVE UP ON HIM NOW? I DID ALL THIS FOR HIM, FOR YOU.
Lloyd is talking so fast I can hardly understand what he’s saying. The room begins to spin, a record that is on fast-forward. What you said was there were many paths to revolution. What would you say about what Lloyd is doing here now?
YOU KNOW I HAD TO DO IT. SERENA IM IS A SPY. WHAT MUSICAL PRODIGY TAKES A YEAR OFF TO GO TO A CRAPPY SCHOOL LIKE WESTON? IT DOESN’T HAVE A MUSIC PROGRAM. I KNEW HER STORY WAS FULL OF SHIT. DID YOU EVER HEAR HER PLAY THE CELLO? EVER? SHE WAS LURING YOU TO NEW YORK WITH THAT INTERVIEW TO KIDNAP YOU. I MADE IT QUICK, FOR YOUR SAKE. ONE SHOT, LIKE ALL THOSE SPIES DO IT.
Se
rena’s face hovers before my eyes. “You and me, we’re not so different,” she used to say. “Okay, we are, but not really, not at our core.”
“Why didn’t anyone hear you shoot her, Lloyd?” I try to hold on to logic. I can’t believe what he’s saying. Not Serena too. There’s no bottom to this falling nightmare. Lloyd’s voice goes on and on.
IT WAS HER FATHER’S FRIEND. SHE SAID HE WORKED FOR THE KCIA AND GOT HOLD OF AN INTEROFFICE MEMO. THAT’S WHAT I WAS TRYING TO FIND. I ONLY MEANT TO SCARE HER WITH THE GUN. I MEANT TO MAKE HER GIVE ME THE FAX OF THAT MEMO, BUT SHE SAID I WAS CRAZY. SHE SAID IF YOU WERE PREGNANT, THEN I MUST HAVE RAPED YOU, AND I TOLD HER NOT TO SPREAD LIES. BUT SHE WAS GOING TO. SHE WAS. I HAD TO STOP HER. JAESUNG WOULD HATE ME. SHE WOULDN’T SHUT UP. I HAD TO SHUT HER UP. SHE WOULDN’T SHOW ME THE FAX. SO I HAD TO FORCE HER. YOU UNDERSTAND I DID IT FOR JAESUNG. FOR YOU. WE COULD USE THAT FAX TO PROVE THEY KNEW. THE STATE DEPARTMENT KNEW ABOUT HIM.
99
Lloyd’s voice is babble now, nonsensical babble. So much gone. Everyone gone. And I’m at the center of it. Me. Me. Me. What have I done?
100
“Yoona.” It’s your voice calling to me. “Get up.”
101
I’m kneeling on the floor. I don’t remember how I came to be on the floor. I stand up. “You have a memo?” I can hear my voice, and it’s shaky. Lloyd still has the shotgun pointing in my direction, but he’s lowered it.
THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES SENSE IS THAT TONGSU CHO MUST HAVE BEEN A NORTH KOREAN SPY. I REMEMBER NOW THERE WAS THE SMELL OF FISH. WE WERE DRIVING TO THE DOCKS. JAESUNG WAS KIDNAPPED. SHIT, HE PROBABLY AGREED TO HELP UNIFY THE COUNTRY BY WORKING WITH THE NORTH. BUT HE MUST HAVE CHANGED HIS MIND ONCE HE GOT THERE. HE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE. THE MEMO SAYS HE’S IN PRISON. IF HE WANTED TO GO THERE TO HELP, WHY WOULD THEY PUT HIM IN PRISON, YOONA?
“Show it to me, Lloyd.”
I THOUGHT YOU AND I COULD GO BACK TO HER ROOM AND SEARCH IT FOR THE ACTUAL MEMO. IF YOU JUST LISTENED TO ME, I WOULDN’T HAVE FORCED DAIYU TO COME. I WOULDN’T HAVE MADE HEATHER AND FAYE COME IN HERE. BUT YOU WOULDN’T EVEN TALK TO ME. DO YOU KNOW HOW THAT MADE ME FEEL? LOOK WHAT I BOUGHT—I WANTED TO THINK IT COULD BE OUR BABY. ALL OF OURS. WE WERE THREE—A TEAM IN KOREA, WEREN’T WE?
“Let her go, Lloyd.” Sax’s voice comes through a bullhorn.
JESUS, WHAT THE FUCK. Lloyd lurches to the window and pulls aside the curtain, peers outside. It’s the farthest he’s opened the curtain, and sunlight is streaming in, the mute October light of afternoon. Is it afternoon already? My abdomen aches, and I think I’m so past wanting to pee that I’m cramping. Lloyd rushes to pick up the phone and shouts into it. NOW YOU HAVE THE GIRLS. WHERE’S THE CAR?
“It’s over, Lloyd. Let the girl go.” Sax continues to use the bullhorn.
YOONA, TELL HIM YOU WANT A CAR.
“Ask him for the memo,” I tell him from the doorway.
OKAY, OKAY, WAIT. He holds the phone back up to his ear. ARE YOU THERE? IN SERENA’S ROOM THERE’S A MEMO FROM THE STATE DEPARTMENT. TELL YOONA YOU FOUND IT. He motions for me to come to the phone, but I don’t move from the doorway.
102
Sax’s voice comes through the bullhorn, distorted at the end. “Come on, Lloyd. We’ve searched the entire room, and there’s no memo. You’ve got to save yourself while you still have time. I can help you, but not for much longer. Give me a chance to help you, Lloyd.”
Lloyd holds his free hand up, covers his ear. His eyes are frantic. YOONA, YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME. SAX DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THE MEMO LOOKS LIKE. HE WOULDN’T KNOW A CONSPIRACY IF IT HIT HIM OVER THE HEAD.
“You’re pointing a gun at me, Lloyd.”
WHAT, THIS? He drops the gun, and it bounces on the floor once before lying there. THIS WAS THE ONLY WAY.
“Lloyd.”
His hands are open and empty. YOU WOULDN’T FUCKING TALK TO ME. I FOUND THE MEMO. I FOUND OUT SERENA WAS A SPY. I FOUND JAESUNG. ME, I FOUND HIM ALL BY MYSELF, BECAUSE YOU STOPPED TRYING. WHY DON’T YOU BELIEVE ME?
“You’ve lied from the beginning.”
I KNOW, I KNOW. BUT THEY WERE IN OUR WAY—DON’T YOU SEE THAT? THEY’VE ALL BEEN IN OUR WAY. HOW CAN WE SAVE JAESUNG IF WE’RE NOT ABLE TO DO THE HARD THINGS? HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THAT PART. YOU KNOW HE WAS RIGHT.
Something suddenly occurs to him. He shakes his head as if he’s emerged from being under water. IF YOU THINK I’M GOING TO LET YOU WALK AWAY BEFORE I GIVE YOU THIS . . .
He inserts his hand into his inside coat pocket, at the chest. When his hand emerges, I think it’ll be another gun. My father had a series of pistols. I flinch.
I hear a click, but nothing happens. Sunlight warms the room. Lloyd seems oblivious to it. He’s silhouetted with his back to the window, and his hand emerges from his coat pocket. In one motion, he unfurls pale-blue infants’ footed pajamas with a tag dangling from the sleeve. IF WE COULD JUST FREE HIM, HE COULD SEE THIS. LOOK, IT HAS SNAPS. YOU CAN SNAP IT TOGETHER LIKE THIS.
The blue footie hangs from Lloyd’s hand, and his fingers rub one of a row of snap buttons that run down the baby pajamas. WE CAN GET HIM OUT. I PROMISE YOU HE’S ALIVE.
I don’t imagine you outside the cab window anymore. Instead you’re in a prison without windows, and you don’t believe I’m coming for you. Your shoulders slump, your head bends to your chest, and your feet are bare. I see Lloyd and myself, maybe a baby in my arms, bursting into your prison cell. You didn’t forget, you’d say.
“Wait,” I call out.
103
He shoots me. And then there’s the sound of voices and sirens, and I feel cold air, as if it’s winter and I’m in a snowstorm. But I’m flat on the floor and above me is the white ceiling. Suddenly, I’m wrapped in a sheet, and hands hoist me up, and then the sun is in my eyes, and the rays are strong like when we were in Korea, pressing down on our heads. Something tells me to turn my head to the left, and I hear your voice. Just like the last time I saw you, you’re saying, “Wait.” And then you’re here. Your face floats above me, and you say, “I told you I’d see you soon,” and I can’t believe it’s really you. Lloyd had me convinced you were in a North Korean prison, but here you are. How did you get here?
People crowd in, and you’re pushed away, and I say, “Don’t leave me,” but they’re prodding and pulling at each other, and you disappear from view. And then for a long moment there’s silence, which makes me think I’ve lost my hearing. And then someone says, “Watch out,” and there is another explosion of gunfire, but this time many bursts, as if I were sitting too close to fireworks on the Fourth of July. The floor vibrates, and I feel rather than see Lloyd disappear from this life. I say, “Wait, you were right, Lloyd,” but he’s gone. And I hear someone say, “That was close. We thought he was down. Everyone thought it was over. Who knew he would still try, even in that state, to shoot the girl?”
Which girl? Where are Faye and Heather?
“One, two, three, lift,” someone says by my side, and I’m suddenly on a stretcher. Beyond is the face of a kind woman who looks like our postal carrier in Lakeburg, who says, “You’re going to be all right.”
“Heather, Faye?” I ask.
“They’re fine.” She’s sticking a needle into my arm.
“Could you find Jaesung for me? He was just here a minute ago.”
“The detectives will answer all your questions, don’t worry, honey,” she replies and pulls a blanket tight over me and tucks it under the stretcher. I tell her I have to see you, but she and others are rushing me downstairs now, and the stretcher sways from side to side. “Go back,” I tell them. “He doesn’t know where you’re taking me.”
“Shh . . . ,” the woman coos to me. “There’s no one by that name. Close your eyes and count backward from ten. I promise you it’ll be all right.”
104
The finality of her words comes crashing down around me. No one by that name. I can’t trust my own eyes anymore. Didn’t I see you a minute ago? Or is Lloyd right
about you? Are you in a prison in North Korea? The concrete walls, the iron bars, the floor stained with blood and shit and hopelessness—did you shake those bars in despair? What have they been doing to you? Then all of a sudden I remember again your face outside the window of a cab in Seoul, your hand on the edge of the door, your beautifully imperfect finger. A voice in my head—did it know the future?—shouts at me, Get out of the car right now. Open the door. Tell him you don’t want to leave yet.
And you said, “I’ll see you soon.”
There’s a rush of air. We’re outside, and there’s the sound of car engines starting up around us, like when I saw you last in Seoul. Lloyd is gone, I have no doubts about that. But you? Why does it feel like a promise even after all this? I’ll see you soon.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Timing has been a significant factor in the publication of this book. The perfect agent for me, the perfect editor, along with friends (who provided the perfect support for me) came into my life at the perfect moment. Even my family cooperated in spectacular fashion. As this manuscript goes into production, I’m deeply grateful to the following:
My husband and our daughters; my teaching partner and confidant, Patricia Dunn; my lovely agent, Cynthia Manson; and my brilliant editor, Vivian Lee.
Thanks to Dara Kaye, Janice Lee, Al Woodworth, Marlene Kelly, Merideth Mulroney, Emily Mahon, Dan Byrne, and Gabriella Dumpit.
I couldn’t have written this book without Kate Brandt, Gloria Hatrick, Deborah Zoe Laufer, Maria Maldonado, Kim Lopp Manocherian, Alexandra Soiseth, Katharine Houghton, Gwendolen Gross, and their families.
Thank you to my own family, particularly Cathy and Henry Byon, and their children and spouses (especially Juyeon Byon). Many of your stories and questions made their way into this story.