This Burns My Heart (28 page)

Yul grabbed Mr. Shim and tossed him against the opposite wall. Shim’s body made a loud thud and began to slide down toward the floor. Yul reached for him and pulled him up, and held his body in place, as he punched him in the stomach and ribs. Shim spat more and more blood.

“Yul, please stop. Let him go!” Soo-Ja pleaded.

Yul’s strength seemed almost supernatural. She had never seen it before—the power of his fists—and she wondered if he had kept his anger hidden, buried beneath hard soil until it could no longer be held down, finally breaking through as an earthquake.

Knowing she had to act, Soo-Ja pulled Yul away, grabbing him from behind, a strange kind of hug. His body felt heavy but warm against hers, and it came to her easily, glued to her, letting her pull him away from the bloody man, who fell to the ground. Soo-Ja saw that thankfully, Mr. Shim was still breathing.

Soo-Ja wondered how closely they had gotten to beating him to death. As she held Yul, her face against his back, her arms clutching his, she was struck by the realization that this was the first time she had touched him in years. Both of them breathed heavily. Soo-Ja feared that she would never have a chance to talk to him about what had just happened, and certainly not get to touch him as she wanted to but in the middle of this mess—a bloodied man screaming obscenities on the floor, a crowd looking on in both horror and approval—she was able to whisper quietly, in Yul’s ear (nobody saw it, she was still behind him), “Thank you.” In response, he discreetly squeezed her hand.

Mr. Shim rose slowly, his clothes covered in his own blood. Then, when he was completely up, he caught Yul’s face staring angrily back at him and, after a second of suspense, Mr. Shim suddenly ran out of the hotel, each leg practically knocking the other out of the way, arms flailing in disarray.

With Mr. Shim finally gone, and the door slamming behind him,
Soo-Ja let out a sigh of relief. Her eyes took in the front desk area—pieces of glass littered the floor, and soil from the fallen plants had spread everywhere. Next to her, Yul looked like a cracked boulder.

Soo-Ja waited outside the bathroom while Yul dressed his wounds. The hotel was still fairly empty at this time, and she had to turn away only one guest, directing him to the other lavatory, at the end of the hallway. Yul had left the door slightly ajar, so they could talk. Anyone watching them would just think of her as the hotel manager and him as the guest she was helping recover from the earlier fight. But when they spoke, in the cautiousness of their words, they spoke as lovers.

“I pictured your husband when I was hitting him,” said Yul. He had his back to her, but she could see his reflection on the wall mirror as she stood just outside the door. He had taken his scrubs and his shirt off, and she could see some marks on his body. His physique was not as muscular as it had been in his younger years, though he still had a well-defined chest and strong arms. There was a certain tiredness to his body that evoked in her a feeling of warmth.

“I wondered where the anger came from.” She realized then that he could see her, too, reflected in the mirror. There they resided, side by side, within the cut glass frame: he in his corner, she in hers, only inches apart. She watched as Yul reached into the first aid kit laid open on the sink. He dabbed a cotton swab into alcohol and began to clean off the blood. He then tore up the strips of gauze and the white tape expertly, moving as swiftly as a man getting dressed in the morning. His knuckles were soon covered with small patches of gauze.

“You shouldn’t be doing this kind of work, Soo-Ja,” said Yul.

“The money’s not bad. The owner of the hotel pays me above market rate.”

“Why isn’t your husband here? Dealing with drunks is better suited for a man than a woman.”

“Min wouldn’t be good at the front desk. He’d be too afraid to charge people.”

“No. I mean it. Seriously. How can your husband let you work here? Where is he? Why isn’t he here?”

“It’s not always this bad,” said Soo-Ja, hoping to sound convincing.

“You could still go to diplomat school. Put Min in charge of things. Think of yourself for a change.”

“Yul, that was more than ten years ago. I can’t tell Thailand from Timbuktu anymore. And I kind of like hearing people speaking Korean around me, instead of, say, Swahili.”

“You could still do it. A lot of people start careers in their thirties.”

“Well, that’s part of the reason. Women diplomats are common now. There’s nothing special about it. If I can’t be the first Korean woman diplomat, then I’d like to be the first something else. That’s why I’ve been taking astronaut lessons,” said Soo-Ja, smiling.

“You want to go to the moon?” asked Yul, smiling back.

“No, but sometimes I want to send Min to the moon,” said Soo-Ja, with a straight face.

Yul smiled at her again. “Promise me you’ll find something else. Anything. Promise me you’ll quit the hotel.”

“I can’t do that,” said Soo-Ja.

“You cannot work here,” he insisted.

“Please don’t say anything to Min if you see him.”

“Maybe I should introduce him to my wife. Maybe they will like each other and go off together,” Yul said ruefully.

Soo-Ja could not tell if he was joking or not. “Don’t say things like that. It’s not fair to them.”

“You’ve met my wife. Is she anything like me?”

“Why did you marry her, then?”

“I was getting old,” said Yul, as he threw away the extra strips of gauze. “And patients find it odd when their doctor is a single man, especially when they bring their children in.”

“I noticed you still don’t have children.”

Yul placed the gauze, the alcohol, and the scissors back in the kit. “Eun-Mee does not want any. She says children, especially babies, are selfish and mean-spirited.”

“Well, they’re also easily lovable and very naturally kind,” said Soo-Ja, smiling.

“What about Hana? Does she remember me?” Yul closed the first aid kit, placing it on the floor. He then reached for a clean shirt hanging from a hook on the wall. He put it on quickly, and she could hear the whooshing sound he made as he thrust his arms into the sleeves.

“I’ve told her the story many times, but always leaving out the part you played,” said Soo-Ja. “Which means I leave out the most important part.”

“Well, if I were to tell the story of my life without mentioning
you
, I’d be doing the same.”

Yul emerged from the bathroom and stood at the door, looking directly at Soo-Ja’s face for the first time. His eyes were as beautiful as she remembered, a light kind of brown. She gazed into them, swam in that lovely shade, rested in the round of his iris.

“How can you go about your days, knowing everything that you do?” he asked very quietly, so that she had to lean forward to hear him, almost folding into him. “It’s hard, you know, to find happiness with someone. That becomes more clear to me with every passing year. I can never forget the day I asked you to marry me, before your wedding. That day has been burnt into my brain, and I can recite things you said like lines from a favorite song. I can’t say I haven’t seen you in eight years, because I have. I’d have pictures of you in my head and I’d ration them out carefully. I wouldn’t use them up; I’d savor each sweetly. Because at one point each mental picture would disappear—I’d lose it. I’d have it, I’d see you, then I’d lose it. You were elusive even in my memories.” Soo-Ja felt the longing in his voice tear at her. “Am I going to have to spend my whole life running after you? I have so little left now, just that day, you standing in front of me, the ink on your fingers. I always ask myself, What if you had said yes? Our lives would have turned out so differently.”

“I think of that day, too,” said Soo-Ja. “You’re not the only one.”

“If I left my wife, would you leave your—”

“Please stop.”

Soo-Ja heard a hotel guest coming their way, and she moved Yul toward a dark area underneath a stairwell. They stood there quietly for a moment, and she waited for the man to round the corner. When all was silence again, she turned back to look at Yul and saw his impossibly serious face, and his sad, broken eyes, casting a shadow over her mouth.

“Soo-Ja… I love you.”

Soo-Ja felt his words caress her ears, and when he brushed his lips against hers, she did not resist. For a while, they stood still, exchanging breaths. She could feel the warm air come into her mouth from his, and though they did not kiss, she could feel his tenderness surround her, and she let it fall over her skin, like a silk sheet.

In the old stories her father read to Soo-Ja as a child, once a climactic event took place, the story would stop there for a moment, only to be picked up again the next day, or sometime later. But as she grew up, Soo-Ja realized, of course, that there were no chapter breaks in real life. Something exciting may happen to you, like getting a first kiss, or winning a race, but it may be followed by something completely mundane, like remembering to clean the earthenware jars, or to empty the chamber pot, or to pick up food at the outdoor market. The day’s big event was soon forgotten, and though it became relived in the retelling—all the emotions coming back in the descriptions of what happened—it soon turned into no more than an anecdote, like something that happened not to you, but to somebody you knew.

That is how Soo-Ja felt when Min burst into the hotel a few hours later, his face red as a ripe mango, his body shaking with anger. His buttons had come undone, revealing his white undershirt, and she could feel energy vibrating from him a meter away. He had just heard what happened, and, for him, it was as if it had just happened. How odd, thought Soo-Ja, that he arrived as drunk as Mr. Shim himself, and for all of his anger at Mr. Shim for trying to hurt her, her husband and Mr. Shim looked and sounded much the same right now; the only difference, it seemed, resting on the fact that she was married to one, and attacked by the other.

“Where is he?” Min asked, furious, almost shouting.

“He’s gone,” said Soo-Ja, after a brief pause. She knew he meant Mr. Shim, though for a fraction of a second she thought he meant Yul.

Min headed back out the door, toward the street.

“Where are you going?” Soo-Ja asked, running after him.

“To find him!” Min yelled back.

“Stop! You’ll never find him. And curfew is only an hour away. I don’t want you to get stopped by a policeman in your state.” Soo-Ja grabbed him by his arms and pulled him back in. She could hear the loud noise from the street beckoning him through the half-opened door.

“Let me go! I’m going to find him! No son of a bitch gets away with touching my wife!”

“Get hold of yourself!” Soo-Ja said, dragging him to a chair, where he reluctantly sat. Close to him like this, she could smell the chicken and beer on his breath, mixed in with the scent of his body. She could picture the last hour of his life: running from the sul-jib to the hotel, his sandals flapping on the ground, as he bumped into people in the crowded streets, worry sculpted on his face.

“How did you know what happened?” Soo-Ja asked him.

“Miss Hong told me.”

Miss Hong, the chambermaid, was a girl of twenty or so, recently arrived from the countryside. She was so shy she never looked Soo-Ja in the eye, preferring to look down at the floor and bowing slightly whenever she spoke to her. Soo-Ja had noticed Min glancing at Miss Hong a few times, and once she overheard him telling her the plot of a movie he had seen—he went to the cinema almost every afternoon—and he described it as if he had written it himself, just for her.
How charming he must seem to her!
thought Soo-Ja. An older man, her employer, the “owner” of the business.

Soo-Ja was about to ask Min how and when Miss Hong told him, when the five Pearl Sisters groupies suddenly burst into the hotel, back from their concert. Their voices came in first, singing “Nima” in unison followed by their teenage bodies falling on one another’s, all arms and elbows, necks and hips, moving forward like a single multilegged spider.

Nima—my adored—who went so far away

Nima—my honey, my love—are you coming back?

The full moon rises, then sets again

The day you promised to return is long gone

All five of them wore roughly the same thing: long-sleeved black turtleneck shirts, interlocking metallic belts, knee-high boots, and sleeveless white coats with a red lining. Soo-Ja and Min watched as the girls made their way past them in the front area, keenly aware of the two of them, but without acknowledging their presence. They were not in the same room, the girls and Min and Soo-Ja; they sped by like planets. Their drunk, bouncing joy seemed to feed off the couple’s stillness and gain its certainty and power from having them there to witness it. Their happiness was of an aggressive kind, meant to evoke envy. It wanted to take something away from you.

When they were gone, Soo-Ja and Min unfroze, and Min was ready to continue his demonstration of rage. Was she being too cynical? Soo-Ja wondered. Perhaps it was real. But Soo-Ja held off on her own reentry, as she was waiting for the girls to come back in a matter of seconds. Which, with the precision of clockwork, they did.

“Where is our stuff?” Nami yelled out. Nami acted like the leader of the pack, while the others stood behind her like foot soldiers awaiting orders.
Am I a fortress of some kind
, Soo-Ja asked herself,
with guests as invading armies trying to get to the other side? Is today some kind of battle day, as predetermined as the moment a comet hits the sky?

“Yes, where’s our stuff?” echoed her second-in-command, a girl with cat’s-eye glasses and an almost bridgeless round nose. This gave rise to the others, too, joining in the chorus, repeating the words, their voices quickly becoming indistinguishable from one another.
Where’s our stuff, what kind of a hotel is this, you are low class, and this place is low class.

Soo-Ja felt adrenaline rush to her veins, her shoulders growing higher, her face becoming tighter and harder. She was not afraid of the girls at all—they were just teenagers, barely older than her own daughter.