Almond(25) By Won-pyung Sohn

“You know what . . .”

“Would you still copy me if I flipped the table and threw all the plates?”

“I said, would you still copy me if I took a broken plate and stabbed everyone here to death, you motherfucker.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s get this straight. You started this.”

“If you stop midway, you’re a piece of shit, you hear me?”

“If you stop midway, you’re a piece of—” But before I could finish the sentence, he swept all the food off the table. He yelled at the crowd, pounding on the table.

“What are you lookin’ at, you crazy bitches. Enjoying the meal, are you? Stuff your faces, dipshits!”

He hurled the pizza and all the sauce bottles he could get his hands on in every direction. The pizza landed on the shoe of the woman sitting across our table; sauce splashed over a child’s head.

“Why aren’t you following me now, you piece of shit! Why you not followin’ me!” he yelled at me, fuming. “You started it, what’s stopping you now, huh!”

A waiter rushed to stop him, but it was no use. Gon raised his arm as if to hit the waiter. Some customers began taking pictures with their cell phones while another waiter urgently made a call somewhere.

“I said, follow me, you son of a bitch,” Gon yelled again, but I was already heading out of the restaurant. I called Professor Yun just like I’d promised. He appeared before the phone rang. He must’ve been standing by on the nearby street corner in case of any emergency. Professor Yun headed straight in. I watched the mess in the restaurant through the window. Professor Yun’s trembling shoulders from the back, his big hand slapping Gon’s cheek, over and over and over. His hands gripping Gon’s head, shaking it hard. I turned to leave. It wasn’t that interesting to keep watching.

I was hungry, hardly having eaten the pizza. I stopped by a small snack bar near a subway station and had a bowl of udon. Then I headed over to see Mom. She was asleep as always. Her urine tube was dangling out of the bottle from below her bed. Yellow drops of urine were dripping down one by one. I called a nurse to handle it. Mom’s face was oily. She would’ve been shocked to see herself in the mirror. I cleaned her face with a cotton pad soaked with toner and dabbed it with moisturizer.

I walked home. It was a quiet evening. I took out a book with a typical story of a high school dropout returning home. He says he wants to be a catcher and protect children in a rye field. The story ends with him looking at his younger sister, Phoebe, in a blue coat, ride a merry-go-round. I kind of liked the ending that was out of the blue. It was what got me to read it over and over.

Gon’s face would sometimes overlap the pages I was reading. His expression when his father grabbed his head. But I couldn’t make out what that expression meant.

Just before I fell asleep, I got a call from Professor Yun. He kept pausing, giving way to deep sighs and silence. His point was that he would cover all my medical bills from the incident and that he would make sure Gon would never come near me again.

There is no such person who can’t be saved. There are only people who give up on trying to save others. It’s a quote by the American accused-murderer-turned-writer P. J. Nolan. He was sentenced to death for murdering his stepdaughter. He pleaded his innocence throughout his prison term, during which he wrote a memoir. It later became a bestseller, but he never witnessed it himself—he was executed as planned.

Seventeen years after his execution, the real murderer came forward, and P. J. Nolan was officially proven innocent. The person who had committed the terrible crime against his daughter was his next-door neighbor.

The death of P. J. Nolan was controversial on many levels. While he was innocent of his stepdaughter’s murder, he did have a serious criminal history of violence, robbery, and an attempted murder. Many said he was a time bomb, and that even if he’d been acquitted, he would’ve caused other trouble sooner or later. In any case, while the world judged the now-dead man as they pleased, P. J. Nolan’s book sold like hotcakes.

Most of his memoir was an explicit account of his deprived childhood and rage-filled early adulthood. He wrote about what it felt like to stab a person with a knife or rape a woman, and the descriptions were so graphic that some states actually banned the book. He described it as if he were explaining how to organize the groceries in the fridge or put paper neatly into an envelope. There is no such person who can’t be saved. There are only people who give up on trying to save others. I wondered what might’ve been in his mind when he wrote these words. Did he mean to reach out for help? Or was it out of deep resentment?