Everything Belongs to Us

  When he arrived to pick her up, Namin was wearing a belted dress with a pink and brown pattern and alarmingly high white heels that made her unsteady on her feet. Her hair was curled back in huge wings away from her face. She kept pressing her lips together to check that her lipstick was still there.

  “Too much?” she said, apparently catching something in his face.

  “Certainly not,” he said, taking her hand. She must have prepared for hours. Everything in her appearance projected how much she intended to enjoy the evening. He could tell that nothing would deter her, not even him. He could have arrived naked or in an ancient clanging suit of armor and she would have asked for his arm in the same preoccupied way, to keep from falling in the uneven streets.

  It was like that all night, and not just from Namin. Sunam was universally invisible as everyone else was focused on grooming his own image, establishing his own position. No one bothered directing any energy his way, the social and practical nonentity.

  Early on in the evening, Juno acknowledged him once. Are you here, too? But he didn’t wait to hear the answer. He was haunting the door with his eyes. Waiting, Sunam knew, for Jisun, who had not shown yet.

  “Is she coming?” Sunam asked Namin, if only to snatch her attention for a second. She was pulled into one conversation after another with people who pretended not to recognize Sunam. He felt like a toddler grabbing at apron strings. Is she coming? She could ignore him only so many times before turning puzzled, surprised eyes his way, saying, “Is who coming?”

  Sunam drifted away.

  The bar was packed with foreign men in white shirts and ties, loosened and crooked around their necks. Sunam recognized the clipped lilt of Japanese, blocky gusts of German. Of course the Americans and some of their women were there, too, flaunting curly yellow hair and blue eye shadow. An army of hostesses sauntered throughout, wearing bright, heavy platform heels—slips of women strapped to their shoes like ballasts without which they might float to the ceiling like helium balloons.

  Alone in the dark, crowded place, Sunam felt a sense of freedom and surrender. He ordered drinks with a flick of the wrist. They arrived one after the other like the next turn on the disco ball. Time passed in long waves of amplified sound. Songs he knew. Songs that sounded instantly familiar, although he had never heard them before. He had not forgotten about Namin, but she was far away, ensconced within layers of popularity and social greed. Sunam felt clear-eyed and insulated within himself.

  When the strobe of a disco light caught the face of his watch, he saw that it was nearly three o’clock in the morning and he felt exhausted by the whole scene. There had been a gyrating Tom Jones impersonator in lurid purple, his belt buckle flashing in obscene rhythm as he danced. There had been neon yellow drinks and tiny paper umbrellas anchored with maraschino cherries. Pale, fleshy breasts quivering on the verge of full exposure. Glasses smashed, swept up, and replaced. Curses and cheers rising in half a dozen languages. Throughout it all, waitresses slithered through the constantly shifting human maze, wielding mirrored trays as wide as shields.

  He saw Namin sitting at a table crowded with empty bottles. She noticed him, too, sending a dazzling satisfied smile as if to say he—they—should be congratulated for their success. When he sat down next to her, she rested her head on his shoulder and snaked an arm around his waist. She said, “I had such a good time. Did you hear Juno got us hotel rooms?”

  He looked at her. Was she implying—?

  “Not us specifically,” she said hastily. “I meant for everyone. To rest until morning.”

  The opening bars of “Unchained Melody” quavered from the loudspeakers, soaking the room with plaintive lust. Newly formed couples rocked under the spinning strobe light, explorative hands flashing from shoulder to hair to rump. The sunbae he recognized as H.G., who had bragged about the oil in Saudi Arabia, swayed pelvis to pelvis with a diminutive coed, their bodies locked in private pendulum.

  “You mean so he can ‘rest’ with Jisun.” Sunam hadn’t noticed when she came in, but he had caught glimpses of Jisun in the last hour. She was at the bar, Juno by her side.

  “This again? Why are you so interested in what she does?” Namin asked. “You’ve been talking about her all night.”

  “I haven’t seen you all night. How can you know what I’ve been talking about?”

  “Well, Juno’s been tethered to her since she got here. She doesn’t seem miserable about it. Maybe she’s finally giving him a chance.”

  “Give her a little more credit,” he muttered.

  “Just because you can’t stand him doesn’t mean everyone else needs to hate him too. You don’t know Jisun like I do—maybe it’s what she needs, someone like him. He’s liked her since they were kids, you know, and all she’s ever done is treat him like dirt. But he’s steady, isn’t he, never gives up. Doesn’t that count for something? Anyway, I don’t see her doing any better on her own.”

  “Why would he give up?” Sunam said. “This is just a long job interview for him, that’s all. He’s a sleazy jerk trying to jump ahead—” They were shouting over the music. A long, lonely time…

  “Don’t be naive, Sunam. Someone will end up with her money. Why shouldn’t it be someone who actually worked for it? Besides, who’s to say that kind of dedication and purpose isn’t really love?” She paused, as if waiting for his counterpoint so she could retort. When he didn’t fire back, she said with somewhat deflated intensity, “This isn’t a morality contest, you know. It’s just life.”

  “Since when do you think life is ‘just life’?”

  Her eyes glittered with resentment. “Is your point that I’m crass? And Jisun needs to be protected from predators like Juno, preying on her future? In case you haven’t noticed, she isn’t exactly helpless.”

  Are you still mine? The melody howled. I neeeeeeeed…They gave up, pretending to be defeated by the music. They sat, side by side like stones, ignoring each other.

  There was a commotion rising on the dance floor as couples jolted apart, stumbling to give way. It was Jisun. She sliced through the crowd and marched toward their table, Juno close on her heels. It was obvious that he was trying to make her stop and listen to whatever he needed to say, but she was ignoring him in as blatant a manner as possible. At one point Juno had a grip on her blouse, and she continued walking forward with such force that he would have torn off her sleeve if he didn’t let go when he did.

  Jisun arrived at the table. “There you are,” she said as if they had kept her waiting, as if they were only just beginning the evening together instead of ending it. She sank into the seat next to Namin and threw back someone’s abandoned glass of whiskey. “What a night of endless delight,” she said with a grimace. “Am I in hell?”

  “He’s coming,” Namin said drily.

  “Can we talk?” Juno said to Jisun without acknowledging anyone else at the table. “I think you misunderstood what I meant.”

  “Listen, man. If I ‘misunderstand’ you any more clearly, I might be sick,” Jisun said. “I plan to forget about it. Can we forget about it? Sit if you want. Have a drink. Have five drinks. You’ll be happier in the morning if you don’t remember what an ass you made of yourself tonight.”

  Juno sat down and glowered at the wall. His fingers were laced together so tightly that they appeared purple with throttled pressure. His face was a mess of failed masks—disbelief, anger, forced indifference, humiliation—flickering one after the other. Sunam poured shots, which no one except Jisun drank. Couples gradually melted off the dance floor into the darkness of the bar as the music sank into melancholy. Matt Monro. Elvis Presley. Jim Reeves, crooning the perfection of lost or misplaced love.

  Jisun closed her eyes and swayed in her seat. “Why do you think it feels so good, music and alcohol? Is it just the alcohol? Or the lights—it could be that. Spinning lights and alcohol.” Whatever had happened between her and Juno, she seemed to have put it behind her. “Did you know…they used to worry more
about giving the soldiers liquor than supplies. Boots and bullets are not as important as alcohol. You can do anything when you’re drunk, you know. Do you think we could go to war, right now? Are we drunk enough? What about you, Sunam? You feeling patriotic?”

  “Too late for me. Just want to lie down.”

  “Well, it’s not a simple science. The right balance is absolutely essential. Too far, and you want to lie down. Too little, and you want to run away. Our scientists should study it,” she said. “War and alcohol, very important.”

  Juno looked at her, his eyes expressionless and flat. “You are such shit. All you talk is shit.”

  Jisun opened her eyes. “We all talk shit. So what?”

  “The difference is you believe your shit.”

  “Hey. It’s not easy. Another rare science, believing your own shit.”

  “You don’t fool me.” Juno’s face was dark and bloated, his features exaggerated in shadow. “You don’t fool anyone.”

  “Who says I’m trying to fool anyone? Relax, you don’t have to believe anything about me. Actually I suggest you think as little about me as possible. We’ll both be more comfortable that way.”

  “That’s another one of your myths you’d love us to believe. You want to be invisible, you want to be left alone. How can anyone believe that? Everything you do is meant for attention.”

  “You’re doing it again. You’re thinking.”

  “It’s late. Both of you,” said Sunam. “Let’s just get some rest.”

  “He used to be terrified. Of you, of me. Now look at him telling us to get some rest,” Juno said.

  “It’s love making him fearless,” said Jisun. Sloppily she patted at Sunam’s head, mostly missing the mark. “Namin must be taking good care of him.”

  “Leave me out of it,” said Namin.

  “She doesn’t approve of me anymore,” Jisun said. “What she wants is life, straight as an arrow. The brilliant future. I’m afraid I drag her down. Or maybe she’s afraid I drag her down.”

  Sunam could no longer tell if she was joking. “Leave it alone,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Isn’t this what I just said,” Juno said. “She loves it, so full of shit. She loves the idea of herself dragging someone down, doesn’t she? And look where she is. In a nightclub! With all of us! You think you’re such a rebel, but you’re nothing but a spoiled brat playing activist dress-up.” He looked at her with hatred in his eyes. “I give you five—no, three—years. You’ll fall right in line. Three years, you’ll be working for your dad and marry someone just like me. No one will be a bit surprised.”

  Jisun cackled. “How can anyone say the things you say without dying of embarrassment? Drink more,” she said. “You’re making poor Sunam miserable and giving me a headache. Is this why you dragged us all here? So you can yell at us under strobe lights? It’s terrible. And costing you a fortune. I hope you don’t do this often. It must be a drain on our national resources, feeding your ego.”

  “ ‘Poor Sunam’? Why does he get the special treatment?” Juno said. “Just because we didn’t let him in, he’s not as bad as we are? He’d come back in a second if we let him. Why do you think he’s hanging around Namin? He may not be smart, but he’s not stupid.”

  “I said leave me out of it,” Namin said, but she was glaring at Jisun as if she were the problem.

  “Hey,” Jisun said sharply. “I had nothing to do with this. Remember, you made me come.”

  “My mistake, then,” Namin said.

  Sunam stood up, thinking this must be it—what else could anyone say?—but no one else was standing. Awkwardly, he sat back down. Everything felt so unreal, it was hard to tell what was serious and what was a horrible overextended joke. The room seemed to tunnel around them, the world wrapped around the four of them arguing over…what? It was either nothing or everything.

  “We should get back on topic,” Juno resumed with mock pleasantness. “Let’s see. Who else shall we consider for Jisun’s future, her three-year plan? Maybe you fancy one of those yellow hairs over there? Unfortunately I see suits. Not your style, I know.” He paused to make sure he really had their attention. “But listen, foreign isn’t quite far enough, is it? Our princess needs them poor and pure of heart to get Daddy really furious. A foreign do-gooder type, then. Do you know anyone like that, Jisun? Anyone?”

  She froze. Purple lights dragged across her face, briefly illuminating the whites of her eyes. The strobe passed, but it was as if her face were permanently marked, streaks of panic giving her skin a strange gray light.

  “You’re following me,” she said so softly that Sunam could barely hear it across the table. “I should have known. He’s having you follow me.”

  She stood up. Incoherently, Sunam thought, She is the only woman wearing pants in this room. They watched her walk purposefully, even sedately, away from the table through the bar area, disappearing through the velvet curtain marking the exit. Someone should go after her, he thought. Namin should go after her. But Namin stayed in her seat, bisecting the stem of a candied cherry with a thumbnail, dragging it through the length of the stem until she had two thin fibers. She picked the thicker of the two and started again.

  “Namin? Can I talk to you?” Juno said. “Privately.”

  She looked at him. “Now?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m leaving,” Sunam said. Someone should have gone after Jisun, and he realized now it would have to be him.

  —

  THE LOBBY WAS deserted save for the massive chandeliers dripping light. He glimpsed Jisun just as she was flinging open the heavy oak door of the ladies’ room. She went inside and the door swung silently shut behind her, sealing her in as securely as if she’d passed into another dimension. Sunam paused at the door, wrestling with what he should do next. The door was hung with a wide brass W over a symbol of a figure wearing a triangle for a dress. A symbol so forbidding, he’d never crossed it even as a child.

  “Jisun?” He touched a knuckle to the door, a nearly inaudible tap.

  He waited. Nothing.

  Opening the door, he stepped inside.

  The bathroom was cold and white and mirrored, so brightly lit that he didn’t register Jisun at first. She was bent over the sink, crying.

  So many moments that night held a murky, underwater quality—the dancing, the bright, sweaty cocktails that left a sticky aftertaste in the back of his throat, the darkness sluiced through with disco light. These were moments that would come back to him over his middle decades, clearer in memory than in real time. But the hours in the bathroom, flooded with the surgical brightness of white hot lights, were microscopic in detail from the start.

  He sank down on the cold tile. His body felt light with exhaustion, as if he could get up and walk from one end of the country to the other, back and forth forever, never needing sleep or food. Jisun was weeping, a low, steady sound, and he was on the floor of this women’s bathroom. There were four toilets separated by ivory-toned stalls. The doors came down to just a handsbreadth off the floor. Each door hung at a slightly different altitude and angle, forcing him to catalog their discrepancies. The grout in the tile, which had seemed immaculate at first glance, was in fact pitted with mildew. The time in which he should have said something, profound or banal, had passed, and it was now all right for him to be sitting on the floor, a helpless witness.

  Finally, Jisun turned on the tap. She let water collect in her hands and buried her face in it, a gesture like drinking after a long drought. She, too, slumped onto the floor. The bank of sinks stood between them, and when she started talking her voice was far away, hollow, and disembodied. The room was windowless, vaultlike in its enclosed sufficiency—the perfect acoustic for confessions.

  “You probably think I’m stupid for even being surprised,” she said quietly. “You’d think I’d learn.”

  “You’re probably entitled to be surprised.”

  “Well, you and I always seem to disagree.”

  T
here was nothing he could say about that. He couldn’t contradict her, as that would only prove her point, and he couldn’t agree since he had already dissented. He let the bright sterility of the room swallow them up. For a long time he thought she wouldn’t say anything else, that he had offended her and she was simply waiting for him to leave. He wondered how long he was supposed to wait before he said anything else or if he should leave her alone. He was just about to get up when Jisun started talking.

  “Last winter, I was sitting in the house and I saw my dad come in,” she said slowly. “He was wrapped up in his coat and scarf. He always wears those hats, I don’t know what they’re called. The flat ones that snap in the front. I looked up and saw him coming in from the cold. He hadn’t seen me yet. He was wiping his feet on the mat, looking down. I could only see his coat, and the hat. And I thought, Who is this old man? He’s gotten so old.”

  She was speaking about a man everyone knew, but not the way she knew him. Sunam realized then, with a flash of pity and insight, that Jisun, in her private way, still loved her father. Despite her harsh criticism of him, despite the identity she had built for herself in direct opposition to his life, his values, his accomplishments, Jisun was still vulnerable to him, still capable of feeling bitter betrayal.

  “And I realized, one day he’ll die. He’ll be gone,” Jisun said. “All that power, that energy, vitality—you know, he can fill a room just by sitting there, just by looking at it. It won’t last. I suppose that sounds childish. Maybe I am childish. I don’t know what I’m supposed to know, I never have. I really thought he could go on forever, same as always. And then I suddenly saw. He’s old—and one day he’ll die.”