Pop Singer: A Dark BWAM / AMBW Romance (3 page)

Singing meant something to me—I was the one who gave my parents the most inspiration for all of our hit singles.

LBC Records was more than an extension for money laundering: it was my heart and soul, the last bit that mom and dad had left for me.

“I always wanted to sing in front of people,” mom had told me, when we were leaving for Beijing one night. I remember the operation being a delicate one: we were off to see a couple of Triad members about extortion plot—millions of dollars being raked in. She had her best dress on, an A-line skirt and a halter top. Her tattoos sprawled over her arms, and she nonchalantly smoked a joint while our drivers took us there. My dad laughed.

“She has a beautiful voice,” he said. “Have you ever heard her sing?”

The first song I ever wrote went something like this:

Shadows over an empty valley

The wind in my face, the sun in your eyes

Being with you is a challenge

Because of all of your lies

And she sang that back to me, my mother did. I rested my head on her shoulder, as she walked me back and forth. I didn’t understand everything of what we were doing back then.

Crime was still a foreign concept to me. Seeing muscular men in tank tops walking around and talking about who they just “popped,” like it was nothing, like life did not matter.

I could not express my feelings to anybody though. I was already considered a “flower boy.”

They didn’t respect me, these other guys.

I suspected Hae-il did not either.

“We shouldn’t have to ask people time and time again to be on their best behavior and give us what we need,” Hae-il said. He took out a cigarette lighter, and then pulled out a blunt. With a couple of deft movements, he lit up, not even offering me one. “Sorry. These are hand-rolled. Take a lot of time. Anyway, they should be able to get the shipments over to our side without any of this fuss. I take it that you’re just hiding your anger all on the inside, maybe for your next heartfelt song?”

I grimaced, annoyed. “I’m angry like you, but I have other things on my mind. Besides, losing one or two shipments doesn’t really matter in the long run. We can get others. Have you checked in with Eun-jung and Kyung-joon?”

Eun-jung and Kyung-joon were our best undercover agents.

And they were some of the most intelligent, kind people that you could ever meet.

Eun-jung: a chiseled face, tall, and lanky, with long black hair, silky sharp like a knife edge. And Kyung-joon: beefy, with round arms, sort of like a bouncer’s, but with the force of a battering ram—he might’ve come off as a pudgy person who never did much in the way of exercise, but boy, could he destroy.

We sent these two on special missions to infiltrate the Chinese border, to wine and dine the officials whenever we needed them to grease the palms of their lowly staff and look the other way when we were conducting shady activities.

They were usually incognito in hospitals, since both of them worked as doctors in previous lives, although Eun-jung tended to take over administrative duties like the front desk of certain places around Busan or Gimhae.

But Eun-jung and Kyung-joon frequently encountered difficulties. Being undercover all the time was hard.

“I heard back from them,” Hae-il said, “but I think they’re still trying to work on getting the Beijing diplomats to agree with our imports. Sometimes those diplomats complain way too much. You know how it is.”

Pure methamphetamine. That’s what they wanted over in Beijing. And the purity was oftentimes under scrutiny. Pickiness was the name of their game. They wanted only the best. But it wasn’t always possible on account of North Korea’s inconsistency. North Korea was where most of the drugs were produced: heroin, methamphetamine, amphetamine, black tar…

“If you just keep worrying about everything,” I said, closing my eyes, “then you’re going to jinx everything. Relax. It’s only been about two days since we gave the last order. If things go bad, then we make a pit-stop over there. So what? Punch a few heads, get what we want, done deal. It’s simple.”

Although I knew it was never like that. Things always got sticky when you were in the world of crime.

I heard footsteps beat across the wood flooring. Hae-il tapped me on the face. I crossed my arms. We stared at one another.

“You better be getting ready for your show,” he said. “Or am I going to have to carry you out of ‘bed’?”

“You won’t have to carry me anywhere.” I stuck my foot off the side of the bench press, slowly edging away from the steel of a barbell overhead. “I’m getting ready.
I’m
getting ready. But I still think you’re worrying too much.”

As I walked away for the stairs leading to my real bedroom, Hae-il said, “You think I shouldn’t worry. When I have the world to worry about…”

The game of politics would be kept up for some time. A game of cat and mouse. Queen, king. Chess! Between the gang and my life as a popstar—it culminated in a lot of stress on all sides. But I wanted to make sure that I had the upper hand in terms of anxiety.

Because I knew that Hae-il was the type of person to get stressed out over small, minor details.

I knew he was the type of person to get flustered…

Ever since we were in kindergarten, really.

We had just known each other for a long time.

Too long and never close. We weren’t friends, just partners in business. His parents left him when he was a teenager, so he got attached to my family pretty quick, my parents taking an interest in him—or maybe pouring their pity on him.

“If things go wrong,” I said, “then I can go check them out myself. I haven’t been to Beijing in a long time. I haven’t managed to get over there in a very long time, actually. I’m looking for a vacation though. What do you think?”

Hae-il was standing behind me, his brows furrowing. He had a round jaw and a tiny nose. Eyes that were so dark, they looked black. Unlike my chiseled chin, aquiline nose, and hazel eyes—well, no wonder I was on the cover and not him. Whenever he did this—furrowed his brows—he could’ve been cast in a movie as a mad scientist. His unstyled hair didn’t give him any points either.

And I’m not the vain type of guy either. It’s just if he was going to take potshots about my being a popstar, then his attractiveness was fair game.

I could tell he was calculating something in the depths of his mind, maybe a plot to overtake me.

It would only be a matter of time.

The Double Dragons and others had become decentralized. Aside from the mansion house in Gyeryong, we really didn’t have a headquarters anywhere. Few people in the Double Dragons knew about where I lived.

Even the ones who helped staged the coup.

In total, I think there were maybe about three or so members working for us.

High-class, top-quality agents.

But it would only take time to reveal whose side people were on.

“I’ve got nothing,” Hae-il said, patting me on the shoulder. I flinched for a moment, and then I reached out for him as well. I stared into his tar-pit eyes, watching his round features. Fraternal twins: same mindset, different objectives.

“All I know is,” I said, “is that you worry way too much. You just need to relax, and let the chips fall where they might. And then, we can figure out what to do. Until then, I’m going to go and prepare for the show.”

I started walking away, listening to Hae-il pick up one of the barbells in the room. As I turned down the staircase, I saw him in the corner of my eye, getting ready for a work out.

Close but never tight.

That’s what our relationship was.

HENRIETTA

“I knew you would go far, what did I tell you?”

My dad was on the phone, screaming at me. Excited, he wanted me to fly away to Korea pronto. I was kind of surprised, considering he didn’t expect people play nice with black people over there. He sounded apprehensive, but at the same time happy, tense all the same.

“Are you sure though you want to go there alone? How long is the entire ordeal going to be? Are you really going to live in Korea for the entire length of the stay? You can always come back to my place if you want to come home early.”

I answered all of his questions for him, although I tried not to sound annoyed. He could be so overprotective. I had to spread my wings already. I needed to go on this trip not only for myself, but to prove to everyone what I could do alone. “Yes, I’m going to go there by myself. It’s only going to be for a year or so. It’s not like I’ll be away forever. I don’t know if I’ll come back to your house anytime soon, but I don’t really have a reason for coming home.”

I felt a strain in my vocal chords, as if I was having difficulty fishing out all of the words to tell him. My father and I didn’t have the best relationship. Even though he helped pay for college—my room and board mainly, by living at home—his blessings came with all sorts of strings attached.

He wanted me to major in certain things, wanted me to have certain jobs, wanted me to be a specific person.

So when it came time to tell him about what I really majored in, and what kind of jobs I really wanted to have, well…

Needless to say, there had been a ton of arguing and a ton of fighting. I remember many nights, screeching at the top of my lungs, trying to get him to understand exactly where I was coming from.

“There’s a huge value in having the arts around,” I had said. I was pacing around and around the island in our kitchen, trying to make my father see the point of what I was doing. He didn’t value the arts at all. And he didn’t like the thought of his daughter being a sculptor. I could already imagine him pulling out the poverty lines.

“You going to become a starving artist,” he eventually said. “If you don’t shape up, and you don’t start majoring in things that make you some damn money, then I am not going to support you all the way when it comes time to pay rent. I’m not an ATM machine. I’m not someone who can just dish out loads of money whenever you feel like. I’m not someone who can just pay your way through life. You going to have to figure out how you’re going to make it out there.”

“But I—”

“I know what you want.” He came around the countertop, as if he were a shark swimming around in a bowl, trapped with an enemy, his own flesh and blood. And how could that possibly be? We were supposed to be like good friends. “I know what you want. I had dreams one time in my life too. Did I ever tell you the time I wanted to become a backup dancer?”

Okay, so my dad wasn’t exactly a hard-core guy or anything. He was kind of a softie. But he did look out for me, and throughout his yellings, he only wanted to ensure that I would have the brightest future possible.

“No,” I said, watching him closely. “No, I didn’t know that you wanted to become a dancer before. Tell me more about that.”

He then explained how at one point, he went to take ballet lessons at a local studio. Of course, being that he was a black man, people made fun of him for miles. There were all sorts of comments and questions about his sexuality. There were all sorts of explanations about why he wasn’t “masculine.” Why he wasn’t “black enough.”

“I told everyone fuck it,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I wasn’t good enough to be a dancer. And I’m not saying that you’re not good enough to become a sculptor. But you’ve got to face the facts at the same time. How many people make a living off their sculptures? How many people actually have it in them to go all the way? Are you really going to push yourself? Are you going to become a dilettante?”

At that moment in time, I had already finished my sophomore year in college. I was deciding for myself what path I would take in the future: and a fork appeared in my road. I would either listen to my father and become practical or I would go all the way for myself, and push myself as hard as I possibly could in the arts.

It’s obvious what decision I chose.

When I graduated, I remember my father hugging me so tight, but at the same time echoing the same kinds of sentiments. By then, he hadn’t had much faith in me still.

Especially when I revealed to him that I was going to move halfway across the country to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

On the map, it doesn’t seem like a long distance. But in reality, Texas stretches on forever. There’s tons of space between Nebraska and Texas. And there were tons of reasons to worry.

“How are you going to pay for yourself? Is a day care center really going to fill in all of your bills?”

We were standing back in the kitchen when we had this discussion. Swimming around the island countertop. Staring at one another, my father in his T-shirt and jeans, me in my sweatpants. I felt as if we were getting nowhere in the discussion of where my life was headed.

Worse, I was beginning to feel a loss of faith not only from him but from myself. It was as if I didn’t or no longer could believe in where I was going. But at the same time, I needed to prove that I could pay my own way. I needed to prove my worth to my father. That majoring in art history wasn’t a complete miss.

“I know it sounds a little bit strange,” I said. “But this daycare thing will give me a huge boost in my income.”

“From zero to… what?”

“So I’m going to go from zero to a couple grand per month. Can’t you be happy for that? In a low cost of living area, that’s good.”

He, needless to say, was not pleased at all.

Still.

“If those people end up being racist to you, I’m going to fly over there and give them a piece of my mind,” my dad was now saying, right over the phone. I shook my head. The last thing I needed him to do was gallivant across the Atlantic to Asia. And show up next to perfect-man Jong-soo? How embarrassing. No way.

“I promise nothing bad will happen at all. If anything, this is going to open all sorts of new doors for me. Ones that have been closed off. I’m going to be on my own two feet, and I’ll have the prestige of a major contest behind my back. How many people get to say that they won a contest for the arts? In their specialty? Very few people.”

“And who exactly sponsored this entire contest?” Dad said.

I hadn’t told anyone. I’m not going to lie: it was a little bit sketchy. The institution was called the Higher Museum, which didn’t turn up much on the Internet. I mean, there were a couple of reviews about the site and location of the actual museum itself. Lots of five stars. But the actual place was on the very brink of Seoul, and then there was still travel to Daegu. I had a coordinator talking to me via email. But I had never talked with her over the phone. Everything was done online.

But then again, I was born in, like, the 90s or thereabouts. Didn’t it make sense that almost everything was done online? Even college applications were. How many people except those who went to Ivy League schools have an interview for college? Business schools barely did those anymore. Only maybe for the high elites did you have to do so.

I found my happy voice and said to my dad, “It’s going to be all right. It’s sponsored by the Higher Museum.”

There was a pause on the other line. I knew my dad had never heard of them. I barely knew who they were too. But to keep the illusion of knowledge up, I said, “If anything’s wrong, I’ll come crawling back to you. I promise.”

Dad laughed. “All right then.”

Although that was not true. I did
not
want to move back home, at any cost, no matter what. I was too prideful and too stubborn to really do that. Which was the other reason why I decided to go to Texas—far enough to keep him satisfied but not so close where he’d be all up in my shit.

I was still sitting on my bed, about to get ready for work. I had on my uniform, all the while Latasha was herself changing into her own clothes—a nice lace-up A-line skirt and a blouse. She was far more prestigious being a bank manager in my father’s eyes than me.

“I’m just saying,” he said, his voice breaking over the phone. “I just want you to be safe is all.”

“I understand, dad. But if anything bad happens at all, I can just come back home. I said that already. Besides, I’m going to South Korea, not North Korea. I hope you know the difference.”

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t think they’re not any less racist!”

I rolled my eyes. They couldn’t possibly have been any more regressive than the people I had met in the United States.

Besides, there were ignorant people no matter where you went. Black or white, Asian or Hispanic. There were tons of people who didn’t know other cultures or ethnicities or races or sexualities or whatever it might be.

“Everyone needs to trust me and let me put in my two weeks’ notice. Only once I’m on the plane will I have my regrets. And they’re going to be small regrets. Like, not bringing along my favorite haircare products or something. I promise you,” I said, ready to hang up, “I’m not going to regret going to Korea. I’m so ready to begin a new life someplace else. Be happy that I won.”

I could feel the joy creeping back into my voice again.

“I’m always going to be looking out for you,” dad said. “Because you’re always my baby girl.”

“Aw, that’s sweet dad. But seriously, we don’t live in a dangerous world anymore. Trust in me this one time.”

“I will,” he said, “but the last time I trusted you, you ended up at a daycare center.”

I sighed. There really wasn’t any way to get my father to see the light. We said our goodbyes, saying sweet nothings into the phone. Then I hung up, placing my cell phone down into my pocket. I spruced up my hair—I was going all natural that particular day, yes honey—and turned to face Latasha, who finished dressing. Sometimes, girl, she could take forever to get her clothes on. And she was itty-bitty.

But she had always liked dressing business professional. I couldn’t blame her, considering she looked great, especially when she got on her red pumps. Divine mama!

“Are you off the phone now?” Latasha said, coming over to me. She started stabbing at her ears, pushing in two earrings. She looked over herself in the mirror. Her apartment was right next door, but we often liked to prepare together in the mornings. It made everything seem less lonely, and it made our lives feel as if we were one with each other. Like we were sisters or something.

Or at least, I felt like that.

Even if I knew Latasha didn’t exactly treat me like a sister all the time.

I’m not going to lie, a part of me wanted to escape from the United States because I felt a sense of loneliness. Because going abroad would mean not facing people like Latasha anymore. People who were very invested in themselves, and could only spare a chance to worry about others in little pieces, fragments of their lives.

No more frenemies, only foreigners.

I had a fantasy that in Korea I would discover a family. I would find a community of other artists and we would all live in harmony or something. Like communally. Everything would be shared. And I would have no more worries. And maybe no more taxes.

Okay, don’t blame me for sounding a little bit like a hippie-anarchist. But I was young back then and wanting more out of my life. Seeking meaning and all that. When you’re young, that’s what everything feels like.

Important.

“I told him everything,” I said. “I really got down and deep into my feelings. I think he respects me now. Or at least, I want to believe that he does.”

I fixed a piece of my hair that was flying away from my forehead, leaned close into the mirror to make sure that I didn’t have any nose hairs or something really disgusting, and then I walked away to the front door.