This Burns My Heart

Chapter thirteen

The next day, Soo-Ja could not concentrate at work. It hit her then that she hadn’t won the money at the gye, and was still 300,000 won short of what she needed to invest in the land. To make matters worse, construction workers had begun work across the street on a new building. It was to be a new electronics shopping mart—the first of its kind—and for the next few months, it would mean constant dust, drilling, and hammering.

She tried to speak to Min about her worries, but he waved her away as he went out to a bar for some lunch and sul. She knew he was still terrified at the idea of investing, though she wasn’t sure which outcome scared him more: losing the money or doubling it.

Distracted, Soo-Ja did not notice that her most recent group of guests, teenage girls from Inchon, had managed to evade their hotel bills. They were here to see a pop concert by the Pearl Sisters, who were not twins but always wore the exact same matching hairstyle and clothing on their shows and album covers—a recipe for disaster, in Soo-Ja’s opinion. Their fans were like a cult, dressing like they did, memorizing their songs, and following them on their tours.

The girls—three squeezed in one room, two in another—had checked in two nights earlier, but showed no intention of paying. So when Soo-Ja saw them emerge that afternoon (to go to lunch, she overheard them say, though it was two o’clock already, and they still looked sleepy) she told them they had to take care of their bills. They looked at her annoyed and one of them—a seventeen-year-old wearing a psychedelic shirt, a short skirt, and long boots—began to attack Soo-Ja.

“You need to coordinate better with the manager! He already told us we didn’t have to pay,” the girl snapped. She was the one who had signed for the room, and Soo-Ja remembered her name as Nami.

“I’m the manager, and I didn’t tell you my rooms were free,” said Soo-Ja.

“You’re not the manager, you’re just the attendant at the front desk. We spoke to Mr. Lee, the handsome guy with the little girl, Hana, is that her name?” Nami continued.

Min, thought Soo-Ja, what did you tell them?

One of the girl’s friends, a round-faced bulldog with giant fake eyelashes and harsh bangs, piped in, thrusting her face in between them like a child playing peekaboo: “We told him we didn’t have the money, and he said don’t worry about it! He has a handsome smile, that man! It’s good to know there are still good people out there like him.”

“We’re just here to have fun,” said Nami, looking at Soo-Ja incredulously. “Now be a good sport and follow the boss’s orders.”

Before Soo-Ja could reply, the girls swiftly disappeared out the door, giggling. But they were not the ones Soo-Ja was really mad at. She picked up the phone and called the sul-jib Min always went to. The bar manager, who knew her by now, had no trouble finding Min. Soo-Ja soon had him on the other end of the line.

“Why are you calling me here?” Min asked.

“Did you tell a group of teenage girls yesterday that they could skip on their bills?” Soo-Ja could tell she sounded like a machine gun, the words snapping out rat-tat-tat-tat.

“They’re just children, Soo-Ja, and they don’t have the money. What are we going to do, send them to jail?” asked Min.

Soo-Ja pictured him looking around the half-empty bar, eager to return to his leatherette booth. “You had no right to do that! I’m trying very hard to earn money here, and at the same time, here you are, giving rooms away. The least you could do is ask me before doing that.”

Min seemed offended. “Ask my wife for permission? That’s a new low you want me to go to, isn’t it?”

“I hope it made you feel good, letting them stay without paying, because that good gibun cost us three hundred won.”

“I’m a very generous man,” he said, and his voice sounded to Soo-Ja a bit distant, as if he had moved his head away from the receiver and said this to someone else, at the bar.

“Yes, that’s what these girls think. You are so nice to them, giving them things for free. I don’t see you offering any generosity or niceness toward me, though. I could use your help around here.”

“A hotel is woman’s work. And what’s so hard about standing around, saying ‘Welcome to the Hotel Seine’?”

Soo-Ja sensed a bit of cruelty in his voice that had not been there in a while, but she bit her tongue. “I have to go now, there’s something I need to do before the girls return.”

Soo-Ja bade Min good-bye and hung up the phone. She moved fast, lest she change her mind. She rushed to the girls’ rooms and, after glancing down the hallway for a moment, she went inside.

Clothes were strewn everywhere, creating spots of bright pink, orange, and green on the floor. Their silver-hued suitcases, featuring labels like Chanel and Hermès, looked like impressive knock-offs, with shiny fasteners and hard rough black coating. On their beds sat all kinds of expensive Pearl Sisters–related paraphernalia, including LP records still in the original wrapping, smelling like freshly minted vinyl. Soo-Ja glanced at the price tags and saw that they all added up to a pretty penny; if they hadn’t spent so much money on souvenirs, they could easily have paid for the rooms.

Soo-Ja opened their bags and began stuffing them with their belongings. When all the suitcases were full, she dragged them to her office and locked them in there. She did notice that the bags looked a bit lonely and sad, left on their own in the cold, blue room, but she stayed strong and told herself that if the girls really valued their things, they’d pay up and earn the return of their precious records and clothes.

When Soo-Ja finally came out of the alcove she used as an office, she saw there was someone at the front desk, and though she did not recognize him at first, she realized it was a guest who had checked in earlier that day. Mr. Shim? Or was it Mr. Yoo? And even though it was not even five in the afternoon, the man was clearly drunk. He had a bottle of maegju in one hand, and with the other he was undoing his tie. Soo-Ja couldn’t tell how drunk he was, as men in Seoul often tended to exaggerate their drunkenness.

They were like drunks in movies, stumbling around, heads spinning, eyes rolling to the back of their heads. Most people in real life, when they were drunk, didn’t actually look or act like that (Soo-Ja herself, on the few occasions she drank with her friends, would never have trouble standing up; she’d simply glow, red and happy, enjoying the buzz in her body). But men in Seoul did in fact do all those things you saw on-screen, not because their tolerance was any less, but because they enjoyed putting on a show—they were the real kiesang geisha girls, singing, dancing, and making spectacles of themselves.

Soo-Ja came back to her station behind the counter and gave Mr. Shim a discouraging look, hoping that he’d go up to his room. Mr. Shim was a short, obese man in his early forties, wearing a gray office shirt and a black blazer with small white dots. He had a large receding hairline, and combed his few hairs to the front, giving the impression that a skinned cat had landed on his head. But the thing she noticed the most was that he could not stop smiling a certain maniacal smile, like someone who had read that people liked to be smiled at, and thus ordered one and slapped it on his face like a prosthesis.

“You’re a very pretty agassi,” he said, calling her miss and staring at her from the other side of the counter.

“It’s not agassi, it’s ajumma. I’m a married woman,” Soo-Ja sharply replied.

“That can’t be the truth. If you had a husband, he wouldn’t let you work as a hotel hostess, and let men steal looks at you all day.” He frowned at her sternly, in an almost professorial way, as if he had caught her in a lie.

“Don’t call me hostess,” said Soo-Ja, scowling at him. “I prefer the French term concierge, which can refer to either a man or a woman.”

“I was right the first time then, agassi, you’re a single girl, which means you can go on a date with me.”

“Did you see the twelve-year-old girl who was here when you checked in? She is my daughter.”

“I don’t see her now. And I don’t see a husband, either. Is he hiding under the table?” Mr. Shim asked, mocking her. “Should I close my eyes for a second, while you make him magically appear?” He was leaning on the counter now, his head only inches away from her.

“Please go back to your room,” said Soo-Ja, very seriously.

“I’ll go back, but only if you pour me some maegju first,” said Mr. Shim, pointing to the bottle of beer he had placed on the counter.

“This is not a bar, and I’m not a barmaid. I can’t pour you a drink.”

“Be nice, pour me a drink,” he repeated, pointing to the tea set she kept at the end of the counter for her guests. There were three empty celadon cups there, as well as an empty kettle.

“Mr. Shim, why don’t you go back to the sul-jib you came from?”

Mr. Shim walked to the end of the counter and picked up the tea set, bringing it closer to them. He placed two cups in front of her, as well as the beer bottle. He pointed at it and waited for her to pour him the drink. When he saw that she would not, he suddenly raised his hand and threw the teacups onto the ground, smashing them into pieces. Soo-Ja was stunned at how quickly his flirtation had turned to anger.

Soo-Ja said nothing at first, startled by the suddenness of his gesture. Her mouth felt dry, ashen, barely able to mouth the words “Go back to your room.” Mr. Shim ignored her and remained standing there. Feeling trapped, and wanting to get out from behind the counter, Soo-Ja moved to the left, but Mr. Shim followed suit. Soo-Ja then moved to the right, and Mr. Shim blocked her way once again.

“Let me go,” said Soo-Ja.

“All right, I will.”

Soo-Ja watched as Mr. Shim stepped back, letting her pass. But when she was about to make her way out, Mr. Shim suddenly ran to the other side of the front desk area and knocked down an oak chair and a plant. Soo-Ja stood back, shocked to see her place of work—her own home, in fact—being vandalized in front of her eyes. She expected some guests to appear, brought out by the noise, but no one did, and she realized, for one very long, sharp moment, that she was all alone with him in the front area, and that the seconds ahead could stretch into minutes. She could feel her heart beating fast, alarms ringing through her body. She needed to get out. But as soon as she made her way to the front door, Mr. Shim rushed toward her and began to grab her, reaching for her arm and pulling at her clothes. Soo-Ja started to yell for help.

A few seconds later, a guest—a white-haired woman wearing a robe—appeared and tried to help Soo-Ja. Mr. Shim pushed her away, and the woman fell to the floor. As soon as she managed with difficulty to get up, the woman rushed to the back and started knocking on people’s doors.

Soo-Ja struggled to keep her clothes on, as Mr. Shim tried to overpower her. “Help me!” Soo-Ja yelled. “Help me!”

A male guest rushed out—a thin reed of a man dressed in a white undershirt and nighttime long johns. He tried to come to Soo-Ja’s aid, but Mr. Shim lunged drunkenly at him, forcing him to step back. The man appeared afraid of getting hit, and couldn’t seem to figure out how to stop Mr. Shim.

“Let go of me!” Soo-Ja yelled when Mr. Shim ripped her shirt, revealing the strap of her white bra underneath. Her hand flew over her exposed shoulder, and she held her arms crossed in front of her chest. Soo-Ja felt the tears form in her eyes.

Suddenly, just as she had given up hope that anyone would be able to help, Soo-Ja felt Mr. Shim being yanked away from her, his body pulled outward as though by powerful suction. She stood confused for a second, until she realized someone had grabbed Mr. Shim and thrown him to the floor. When Soo-Ja looked again she realized it was Yul, still wearing his doctor’s green scrubs. Yul started punching Mr. Shim until blood gushed out of the man’s face. When Mr. Shim tried to get up, Yul lifted him with his hands and knocked him against the wall.

Yul began yelling at him: “I-sae-kki! I-sae-kki! You goddamn son of a bitch!”

As Yul kept punching Mr. Shim, his scrubs became stained with red, and he looked as if he had just emerged from surgery. Mr. Shim kept spitting blood, as Yul hit his face over and over again. Soo-Ja heard the gasps from the guests watching. Knowing that she had to do something, Soo-Ja tried to stop Yul. “Let go of him, Yul. You’re killing him!” she yelled.

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.

“If you want your things back, you need to pay for your rooms,” Soo-Ja said.

“We’re not paying! The manager said we could stay for free, you dumb gashinaya!” Nami yelled. The curse word—bitch—hurt double. The word itself, of course, and the fact that it was leveled at Soo-Ja, who was so much older than they were, old enough to be a parent. You simply did not address an older person that way.

Soo-Ja tried to stay calm. “Call your parents. Or your boyfriends, if your parents don’t know that you’re here. Have them send you money.”

When she thought later about her days working as a hotel manager, she’d remember days like this the most, being yelled at by a group of guests. But it wasn’t like this all the time, nor were all the guests this bad: some left little gifts on her desk, some had children who smiled and curtsied at her, some bowed almost as low as the floor and thanked her profusely for something as small as a bar of soap.

“Are you deaf? You stupid old hag! We don’t have to pay! Now give us our things back. Or we’re going to call the police,” Nami yelled.

From somewhere down the hallway came another voice, a man’s, yelling, “What kind of a hotel is this? All this shouting all the time, keep your noise down!”

Soo-Ja looked straight into Nami’s eyes and held her gaze. “You want the police? All right, let me call them. I’ll have you all arrested for trying to skip on your bills.” Soo-Ja picked up the rotary phone and started dialing random numbers. She could feel the girls’ tough facade cracking. Soo-Ja knew how to bluff.

One time, a drunk man took a room to sleep off the alcohol, and the next morning, he told her she should let him go peacefully or else he’d beat her. At the time, another guest—a big, hulking man with almost no eyebrows—had been sitting in the front desk area waiting for his wife to come out. No Eyebrows saw her arguing with the drunk man and gave him a dirty look. Without missing a beat, Soo-Ja told the drunk man in a stage whisper that No Eyebrows was a member of the secret police and was here to protect her. He would take him to a dark room and drown him in bathwater if he didn’t settle the bill. She wasn’t sure if the drunk man believed her story, but he clearly did not want to take the chance, as he pulled his wallet out and handed her the money he owed her.

“Or would you rather just pay and go?” Soo-Ja paused for effect and put the receiver down. “I think you’d rather just pay and go.”

The girls looked defeated and seemed to debate what to do. Meanwhile Soo-Ja wondered, Was it so offensive to them, to have to pay for things? And it wasn’t just them, it was people all over the city haggling, hustling, cutting in line, and giving one another a hard time—yes, the men and women of Seoul were “on the move,” making more money, but they were so unhappy, too. It was like a virus, spreading over the crowds, every face that of someone trying to take what’s yours. They made up for it, sure, by being overly effusive to their own friends and loving to their family members, but life there did take its toll on their souls.

But the girls hadn’t used their trump card yet. Nami finally turned to Min, as if she had just noticed him. He had been quiet this entire time. “Mr. Lee, when we told you yesterday that we didn’t have money, and we were poor girls from Inchon, and we asked you, ‘Couldn’t you be nice to us,’ didn’t you smile and say, ‘Don’t worry about it, go play, and be children’? Isn’t that exactly what you said?”

Min remained silent for a while. Soo-Ja was expecting him to explain to the girls that he had misspoken, but instead Min turned to Soo-Ja and said, “Why don’t you let them have the rooms?”

That was it, thought Soo-Ja, that was their marriage right there, in those words. Min leaned closer to her, so the others couldn’t hear, though obviously they could. “The thing is, I gave them my word. I already told them something else yesterday—I can’t go back on it.”

“These girls have the money. They’re trying to pull one on us. I know the scam—teenagers with money in their hands make a bet they can get everything for free.” Soo-Ja said this for them as much as for Min. And she could tell, by their nervous shifting and glancing at one another, that it was true.

“I’ll cover for them. I’ll make up the difference,” said Min.

Why was he so eager to help them? He didn’t even have the money to do so.

“I’m trying like crazy to get enough money to buy that land by the river, and you’re here hoping to give it away,” she said.

“We don’t need to buy that land. Things are fine here,” said Min.

Oh, how she wanted to shake him! No, that wasn’t enough, thought Soo-Ja, how could that be enough, to just have enough to eat, when elsewhere there were cities in countries she longed to visit, different shades of blue in new skies and oceans, the sound of foreign tongues whistling by—a life where she could be a mother for more hours than she was a hotel manager.

“Is the price of the room worth my honor?” asked Min. “Is it worth going back on my word?”

“You should not have said anything to begin with,” Soo-Ja said.

“I don’t know of any other wives who treat their husbands like this,” said Min.

“Lucky is the wife who never had to argue with her husband about money,” she said.

“I want us to do well, too.”

“Do you? I hear the words coming out of your mouth. But I hear something else from every other part of your body. Even now, I think, you’re saying to these girls, I tried, but she won’t let me. It’s not my fault, it’s hers, she’s the one holding me back. When all my life I’ve waited for you to stand up and take charge. It is exhausting to me, all the fighting we have to do, just so you won’t feel bad about yourself.”

What happened after this happened so fast, Soo-Ja only fully registered it after the fact. And only later did she understand that the bottle was the same one left on the far side of the counter earlier in the day by Mr. Shim—she had been too shaken up to think to get rid of it. Later, with her eyes closed, she could slow the actions down enough to see Min reaching for the bottle and throwing it against the wall, the glass shattering and shards landing on the ground. Only later she could hear the girls shrieking and stepping back and some even putting their hands over their faces as Min was about to break the bottle. They knew what Min was about to do before she did; they had the benefit of seeing him as a stranger, while Soo-Ja’s sense of him had been dulled by their being together so long. These schoolgirls knew everything about him just by looking at him; she was used to unlearning him little by little, and she realized she knew him less year after year. Later, also, she saw the clear liquid splashing on the wall, gushing forth from the bottle, spreading out from the center. It made her think of Miss Hong, the chambermaid, of how sure she was that she and Min made love in the afternoons, and how he had come inside her, and how foolish that was. Later, too, she heard the cry Min let out at that moment, an odd, guttural, anguished cry—though she didn’t know if the cry came before or after the bottle exploded. She wondered how much pain you had to be in to cry out like that. But when all this happened, she did not see anything, did not think any of this. She simply felt a tug in her heart and thought, Where is Hana? I don’t want her to see this.

As Min made his way out, Soo-Ja wondered if he was going back to some sul-jib, to the arms of a barmaid. Or maybe he was going to meet Miss Hong at some agreed-upon place, where she would comfort him.

“I don’t know what time I’m going to come back,” said Min, with his back to her.

“All right,” said Soo-Ja, fighting back her tears. “Just one thing… Do whatever you want to do, with whomever you want. But don’t get any diseases and give them to me later.”

Min stood with his body very still, and Soo-Ja thought for a moment that he might turn around and strike her. Instead, he grabbed the front door with such fury she feared he’d yank it from the wall. He went out into the street, the door slamming shut behind him.

Soo-Ja remained still for a moment, collecting herself, and then she went inside the alcove, where she had been keeping the luggage of the Pearl Sisters fans. Without being urged, she brought their bags out, heavy as they were, and placed them in front of the group. She did this noiselessly, without saying anything. By the time she had come out, Nami had already reached into a red envelope in her purse and pulled out a series of 100-won bills. She placed the money on the counter—it was the exact amount; they knew exactly how much they owed. Soo-Ja saw Nami put the rest of the money back in her purse, silently, while the others took the bags and headed out of the hotel. She herself stayed in the front area for a while, and waited for the time to come to close for the day.