IF I DON’T SPEAK TO THE PRESIDENT, THEY’RE GOING TO KILL HIM. I HAVE PROOF THAT THE MEN JAESUNG WAS WITH ON THE NIGHT HE DISAPPEARED WORKED AS SPIES FOR NORTH KOREA.
Even though I know you’re dead, the vision of you about to be killed makes my heart lurch. Lloyd sounds convinced. I try to smooth out my shaky voice. “Tell Sax you and I will fly right out of the county airport to meet with President Reagan.”
BUT THERE’S NO TIME.
“Faster than all the security required to bring the president here. Come on, Lloyd, this is a college in Pennsylvania. And you’re holding hostages in this room at gunpoint.”
BUT ONCE WE’RE OUT OF THIS ROOM, THEY’LL SHOOT ME.
I speak to the Lloyd I remember from Korea. “You’ve got to leave this room somehow. The president is not walking in here. Be realistic. What did you think was going to happen?”
IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN THIS WAY.
“If you didn’t come in here with guns and Daiyu looking like this, I would have gone with you.”
He stares me down.
“Okay,” I say. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have, but now I believe you. You’ve made me believe you. I needed to hear you say it. You’re right. I’m listening now. Tell me about your proof.”
Lloyd walks to the desk and takes out scissors. He knows where everything is in this room. He moves in this jerky fashion, so I can’t help but flinch as he approaches, unsure what he’s about to do, stab me with them or—and then he grabs my feet and cuts through the tape around my ankles. He’s in a hurry, looking back at the window, and doesn’t seem to register how the tape doesn’t go completely around my ankles. I hold out my wrists so he can cut them too because he’s going to release me, isn’t he? Instead he shakes his head and picks up the phone and yells into it. I WANT A CAR TO TAKE ME TO THE AIRPORT. ME AND THE GIRLS. ONE WAY TO WASHINGTON, DC. AND I WANT TO MEET THE PRESIDENT. CLOCK IS RESET TO ONE HOUR. GET ME THE CAR. A CAR AND MONEY. WE’LL NEED MONEY. A THOUSAND DOLLARS. A CAR AND A THOUSAND DOLLARS. I JUST WANT TO TALK TO THE PRESIDENT.
I can feel a glimmer of hope spread throughout the room. Between the car and the airport, there’s bound to be a way to free us from this lunatic. And he thinks I won’t run.
42
You and I were sitting against the chain-link fence in Incheon. The tour group was in the hotel, but we had snuck out. We were returning to Seoul the next day. “Do you believe in curses?” you said. Your question surprised me. You were practical about everything but this.
“It’s 1985, Jaesung. Curses are old superstitions. People hurt people.”
“My father lost his lower leg in a tractor accident when he was a kid. His brother died of smallpox. His father died in his sleep.”
“Any family, especially back in the day, had someone die of things like that. One of my mother’s sisters died of smallpox, another one of pneumonia. Surviving childhood was a feat. I’m sorry—those things are horrible, but I wouldn’t call that a curse.”
“My great-grandfather married a woman who was really sick. It was probably leprosy, my dad said. He cured her of it, which shocked everyone—probably not a cure, but that’s what he called it—then he left her to study in China. He wanted to be a scholar and never came back. He was actually detained by a Chinese official, we found out later, but his wife thought he’d run away to start a new life, and she killed herself, cursing him and any children he’d have. There’s been nothing but tragedy in every generation since. Like that song ‘Arirang,’ where the woman says if you throw me away, your feet will get diseased and you won’t be able to walk any further.”
“But how did he have children if his wife died?”
“He returned to Seoul eventually and married and had two children before he died of a mysterious illness.”
“Every illness was mysterious back then.”
“True,” you said with a laugh. Then you were serious again. “But it’s always been that way. As if fate or some monstrous thing was determined to make my family suffer, each one of us. And I know it always will be.” You said it so softly, as if you expected the ground to open and swallow you whole for such an admission. As if not saying it too loud would keep it from happening. But then nothing happened, and I tugged at the arms you’d crossed over your chest, and you opened them and pulled me in. And you said, “I want my life to be useful.”
And I said, “You think you’re going to die?”
“We’re all going to die, Yoona.”
“But you promised me and Lloyd you wouldn’t sacrifice yourself that way.” My eyes started to tear.
“Hey,” you said and kissed them. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You promise?” I said.
You nodded, and better than a kiss was pressing my cheek against yours and memorizing the way it felt. Our arms around each other. Listening to our breaths. We nestled together against the wind coming off the ocean. “I’m holding you to that promise,” I added.
“Do you have something you’ve never told anyone?” you said.
“Mine is boring,” I said. I didn’t know about fate, but there were real monstrous things out there to be feared, and they came in the shape of real people doing terrible things to other real people. Not just pronouncements of curses. Someday, I reasoned, someday you’d meet my parents, and I didn’t want you to feel sorry for my mother. She’d made me promise not to tell anyone. I could picture it, you meeting my parents, meeting my sister, Willa.
“Boring to you might not be boring to me,” you said.
“Trust me, you’ll find it boring,” I said.
You pressed your cheek farther into mine, and we clung to each other, the clinging becoming a burrowing and hunger and kissing that didn’t say enough of what we wanted to say. I wanted to chase that stupid idea you had about the curse out of your head. I wanted to show every bit of you that I had the power to change your mind, because isn’t there a saying about that? About curses being broken by love, small and big gestures, small and big love? As long as the real-life monsters stayed away, we’d be safe. I wanted to break the barrier of clothes and skin between us, and you were about to pull my shirt over my head, we would have had sex there on the beach against that chain-link fence, except Lloyd’s voice sounded through the billowing wind in the dark. Your name, my name, calling to us. We paused for a second, but then kept going, your mouth on the rise of my breast. My lips on the back of your neck. And I wished for just a few more minutes with you before Lloyd found us. Your hands beneath my skirt. Could Lloyd look for us in the opposite direction? And then I felt the spray of sand on my bare legs, and Lloyd stood in front of us in his sneakers, his hands on his knees, peering down at us. You leaned back, pulled my shirt down. I smoothed my hair out of my eyes, brushed sand off my knees. He said the guides were going room to room, taking attendance.
43