Oh, it felt good to laugh.
It seemed I hadn’t laughed all night, not since before I was puking in the parking lot behind the bar with Fiona and Won, their murmuring voices reassuring me that I’d be feeling fine soon enough. I felt soft for Fiona suddenly. And then, something else, for myself. I felt strong, more sure on my feet than I’d ever been, before tonight.
Years later, I’d think back and remember this night, this moment, standing at the foot of the stairs outside Won’s apartment. The night-blooming jasmine giving off its sweet, heady scent, carried through the air on a gentle breeze. A dog barked somewhere down the street, twice. Then it was silent again, except for the steady thrum of midnight freeway traffic, the sound of fast cars cutting through the dark. A fake ID in my back pocket that would’ve fooled no one. Fiona’s idea. Always Fiona’s ideas, and me, saying yes. My best friend. We shared everything, I believed. Still, she was the one in the driver’s seat. I rode shotgun. And Won, cruising in her blind spot. Not mine, though. He told me about himself that night. I listened.
The strange feeling I’d had earlier—the one I couldn’t place, when Fiona said she and Won had kissed—came over me again. My throat tightened. I’d thought it was jealousy before, and I’d crushed it down inside of me, ashamed. I didn’t want to be jealous of Fiona. Sure, there was plenty to envy about her, but I’d never felt anything close to competition between us. Until tonight. Until I learned she’d kept a secret from me.
But it wasn’t jealousy. It was the shock of grief, that we didn’t share everything, no matter how much I wanted to believe we could. And now I held my own secret with Won, with Fiona on the outside of it.
Then something drained out of me and suddenly, I felt dead tired.
“My ass is grass,” I said. “Give me a ride home?”
Won ran upstairs to grab the keys to Shamu. The rushing freeway traffic from beyond the concrete divider wall sounded just like the ocean at night, if you closed your eyes. I waited for him to come back down, for what felt like a long time. I wished he’d hurry up.
Korean Boys I’ve Loved
There was Dr. Park, my dentist. When he put his fingers in my mouth the smell of the latex turned me on, and I made super intense eye contact with him while he scraped the plaque off my teeth. You’re a smoker, he said. Uh-huh, I replied, which made drool drip from the side of my mouth. When he unclipped the bib afterward, the back of his hand grazed my left nipple and I knew it was on.
What do you write? he asked me once. I answered, but he wasn’t listening.
This bitch is bleeding me dry, he said, his eyes watching the phone screen. Men, Korean and otherwise, were always asking What do you write? then forgetting to wait for the answer. Dr. Park was separated from his wife, and every other Saturday he picked up his twin boys from the house in Larchmont where he used to live with them, and her. He never asked if I wanted to meet his sons, and I never expressed interest. Sometimes he showed me pictures of them in his phone, two pumpkin-headed toddlers grinning. They had his mouth, his ears. Little assholes, Dr. Park called them. They don’t really like me, he said bitterly. They’re mama’s boys.
The writing wasn’t going well. I felt it coming, but it still hurt when my manager dropped me after another flopped pilot season. I needed cash, so I pinched Dr. Park’s Rolex one night. Snuck out, hit the road, I-15 toward Vegas. He knew I needed the money, and if he’d just given it to me, it would’ve been easy, but he wanted to prove our affair wasn’t dirty, when in fact. Well. Let’s just say I was alternating antibiotics—Cipro, Amoxil, whatever—every other week, urinary tract infections and tonsillitis and even pinkeye, one time. Always begging to fuck me in the ass—he said his wife would never let him, and that was why Taiwanese girls were better than Korean ones. That was supposed to be a compliment. Ha.
I pawned the watch, doubled it in an hour at the craps table at El Cortez, then somehow lost it all again. Every last chip. Nothing left to do but call him and confess. He said he understood, told me to come home and he’d give me the money I needed. When I got there he was waiting in my apartment, smoking a cigarette in the dark. Don’t know how he got in. Dr. Park had his ways. He stood up and slapped me a couple times. Guess I deserved that. Then he shoved me against the wall and really started hitting me—not in the face, you understand. Never in the face. I took it. He was crying. I felt so tired. You probably won’t believe me, but we really did love one another. Anyway, he went back to his wife. Said it was because he didn’t want to lose half his money if they divorced for real, and I had to respect that. Plus they had the kids to think about. What could I do?