Lloyd points the handgun at each of my friends in turn and finally lands on Heather. But then he picks the scissors off the floor and cuts the tape off her feet. She reaches down to rub her ankles with her bound hands.
Lloyd moves to Faye and cuts her feet apart too, and she sighs. I see him wince and hope he doesn’t change his mind, but he steps back. EENY, MEENY, MINY, MO. WHY SHOULD I LET YOU GO?
“Pick me, Lloyd. I have to go. We worked on the sit-in together, remember? It’s tomorrow, remember all our plans? Daiyu’s the one who lies all the time. She pretends to like everyone, but she—” Faye says. She’s pushed herself to a standing position. “You can’t let this derail the sit-in. Think about everything you did for it. And I know you believed in it, it’s just like this Korea thing. If you let me out of here, I can—”
SIT-IN? YOU THINK I GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THAT? YOU AND ALL THE KIDS HERE WORKING TO END APARTHEID WHEN THE ONE WHO WOULD SAVE THE WORLD IS BEING TORTURED. YOU’RE OBLIVIOUS TO WHAT REALLY MATTERS. YOU’RE MANIPULATED BY WHATEVER THE MAINSTREAM PRESS TELLS YOU IS IMPORTANT. WHAT DO YOU CARE ABOUT APARTHEID? YOU’RE A RICH WHITE GIRL FROM CHICAGO. THE APARTHEID MOVEMENT WILL BE FINE WITHOUT YOU. YOU’RE THE MOST SELFISH PERSON I’VE EVER MET.
“I’m not selfish,” Faye says.
There’s silence, and Faye seems too close to Lloyd, and I’m afraid he’ll swing at her or worse. He stares at her even though she’s looking at the floor now, still standing but wavering. Heather must have sensed it too. She says, “Look, I never did anything to you.”
Lloyd whirls toward her. He waves the gun in Daiyu’s direction. BUT YOU DIDN’T HELP ME. DAIYU HELPED ME. Daiyu sits on the desk by the door.
“That’s a lie. She was afraid of you,” Faye says, re-energized, it seems.
“I wasn’t.” Daiyu stands.
“Faye, we were all afraid, but she did help him at first,” Heather says. “All that time Yoona was sleeping with him.”
“But I never . . .” I know I’m sputtering and can feel everyone’s eyes on me, especially Lloyd’s, and he looks at each of us in turn. I have to be careful here.
“I told you they were together,” she continues.
“She told me she hated him. I was the one who told her to help him,” Faye says, and she’s sitting up again.
“We both told her to stay away, and if she’d listened to us, we wouldn’t be here right now,” Heather says.
“Stop it, stop fighting! Can you hear yourselves?” Daiyu shouts.
“We wouldn’t be here if we’d never met Yoona,” Faye says. There’s silence as everyone looks at everything in the room but me.
“Lloyd, this is between you and me. Let all of them go. Sax will be so relieved, he’ll give you whatever you want if you do that,” I tell him.
THAT’S A LIE.
“He’d be a hero, he’d think he’s the best hostage negotiator around—just give him the girls, and I’ll stay with you. I’ll make sure we get what we want.”
Lloyd taps the gun against his forehead. FUCK, FUCK, FUCK.
“We have to seem reasonable. Be diplomats. We can do it, but not with so many hostages in this room. It doesn’t make us look good. Jaesung wouldn’t want it this way.”
He jumps to his feet, snatches the phone, and speaks into it. DETECTIVE? YOU THERE? I DON’T WANT TO SEE ANY OF YOUR MEN AT THE DOOR WHEN SHE GOES OUT. OR ELSE YOU’LL BE PICKING UP A BODY OUTSIDE THE DOOR. DO YOU HEAR ME?
I feel faint upon hearing his words. He’s going to free one of them.
“We’re working this out, Lloyd. Why would you think I’d try something like that? You still would have three girls inside after you release one. I’d be very bad at my job if I did something like that.”
Lloyd nods as if it makes sense to him. LET PRESIDENT REAGAN KNOW I NEGOTIATED. I GAVE HIM ONE. I’M REASONABLE. He grabs Daiyu by the arm and pushes the gun into her back. GO. GET OUT OF HERE, BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND.
Lloyd opens the door a crack and peers through, then goes back to Daiyu and holds on to her like a shield. She looks back at us, Heather, Faye, and me, sitting on the bed, farthest from the door.
GO AND TELL THEM I DIDN’T HURT ANY OF YOU. Lloyd pushes the gun into her back.
“We’ll be okay, Daiyu,” I call out to her.
She blinks and nods. Faye lets out a sob, and Heather shakes her head back and forth.
57
Serena walked with me to Intro to Asian Literature and then, in her usual manner, left me to sit by herself, aloof and alone. It was just the way she was. She didn’t feel comfortable in crowds. It was not a huge lecture, but fifty was too large for her even though the auditorium could seat two hundred and fifty. I sat up front. Julian Wong was my favorite professor. But today I sat in class and heard nothing he said except for a poem by Hwang Chiu called “Even the Birds Are Leaving the World”:
A flock of white birds
Leaving the field of reeds
Fly in one, two, three files,
Honking, giggling
Carrying their own world,
Separating their world from ours
I was sorry I was late again with an assignment, but I couldn’t concentrate. I waited after class for Professor Wong and then walked with him, explaining I’d drop off my paper the next day. We were outside by then. He said he had a meeting across campus, but he listened. You would have liked him. Even when he was busy, he seemed interested. When more students joined us, clamoring for his attention, I moved aside. I picked up my pace and recommitted to writing that paper I owed him.
With all the students on campus spilling out to the quad between classes, I wouldn’t ordinarily have noticed, but somehow that morning I did. A boy was standing in the middle of the walkway with a backpack on one shoulder, like so many students on campus, but something was different about him. He stood by the statue of the founder in the middle of quad, where the four paths converged. I made a move to cut across the grass, and out of the corner of my eye I saw that he’d taken steps too, off the grass, into my path. I knew right then that it was Lloyd.
He put down his backpack as if he had something breakable inside while keeping his eyes on me. I was in front of him in seconds, dropped my book bag on the ground at my feet, and we hugged each other. There was only one awkward moment, when he turned his face one way and I turned the same way, and he kissed me on the lips.
“I’m sorry it took so long to get here,” Lloyd said. He looked the way I remembered him but with slightly puffier cheeks, as if he’d been crying or up all night. Dark circles under his eyes. He was wearing a green T-shirt and jeans. It was only September, but we’d already had frost that morning, and it was less than fifty degrees. I wondered if he was cold.
“What’s this new look?” he said, apparently noticing what I was wearing too.
“What’s wrong with it?” I said.
I pulled at the gray sweater that I wore over a white button-down shirt. Serena and I had found a secondhand store downtown last week and bought vintage men’s shirts, long black skirts, and combat boots. A modernized interpretation of a hanbok.