Along the highway, he apologized again about not returning the night before, and Casey told him to forget it. It was really okay, especially seeing him more lighthearted.
“I feel a little bad that we stayed for free, ate for free, and you won all that money.”
“Believe me, I’ve paid my dues,” he said, and coughed a little.
Casey nodded, thinking that was probably right.
“Do you have a cigarette?” he asked.
“No,” she said after checking her bag.
“Check the glove compartment.”
Casey popped it open. There were two packs of Camels and a green sheet of paper. “What’s this?” She glanced at it.
Unu was shifting to the left lane and couldn’t look her way.
The green paper was a schedule for Gamblers Anonymous. The Wednesday smoking meeting near Fourteenth Street was circled.
“Have you gone?”
“Oh, that.” Unu noticed the schedule in her hand, then turned to look at the road. His hair was still wet from the shower, and his sunglasses shielded the discomfort in his eyes. “I went. Once.”
“And?”
“Cigarette, please,” he said, and Casey lit one for him. “Radio, please.”
Casey turned it on, and a Hall and Oates song came on: “Private Eyes.”
Unu began to bob his head, his lips pursed, as if he were getting into the music.
“I saw them in concert,” he said. “At Foxwoods. Randy, that guy you know from yesterday, gave me a ticket. They opened for Carly Simon.”
“I love Carly Simon.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said, smiling. There was so much he didn’t know about her. They had never discussed music, for instance.
“There’s more room in a broken heart. . .” she sang.
Unu tapped his chest with his left hand. “Well, don’t break mine, baby. There’s a warehouse in here already.”
Casey folded the schedule and returned it to the glove compartment.
For the remainder of the ride, they talked of where to go for dinner to celebrate his winnings. Casey tried to be enthusiastic about the money but found it difficult. She had grown up without money, and it hadn’t occurred to her how she could have it exactly, but gambling felt like a dishonest way to acquire it. She could argue to herself that it wasn’t stealing, and clearly it was legal, but the whole thing made her feel uncomfortable. Perhaps it was seeing the faces of the elderly men in gabardine slacks, the fabric shiny in the seat and knees, pulling down the levers of the slot machines, their bold eyes full of cherries. Unu had said to her earlier when he was explaining blackjack, “You can beat the house, and you should beat the house.” That made it sound as if you were taking money from a faceless company, but walking through that smoking floor had made Casey see that the house was filled with men and women who were bored, wistful, and full of pipe dreams. It was their foolish money that had built and furnished that edifice.
Unu suggested going to Thirty-second Street for dinner that night. Kalbi and naengmyun. The works, he said—a real feast. Casey said why not. She turned up the radio and tried to enjoy Unu’s happiness.
5 BLOCK
CHARLES HONG DIDN’T HAVE TO SAY ANYTHING. The choir sensed that they were far from good despite the increase in the number of practice hours from four to six. It was the way that the choir director couldn’t smile, his lips thinning from exhaustion, and how he’d ask them to repeat the unsatisfactory bars, unwilling to make eye contact nearly. There was a conscious restraint on his part from expressing his unhappiness with their performance, but Charles was more transparent than he thought. After Wednesday evening rehearsals, the men went to eat barbecue and the older women and the ones without young children rushed to New China Hut for jajangmyun. At the late dinners, the choir members discussed the director and their failure to be better.
In a curious way, his refusal to affirm any improvement—for there had been some modest gain in his two-and-a-half-month tenure—only fueled their desire to work harder. Their persistence may have originated from their complicated Korean hearts. Also, they were impressed by his intense efforts with no expectation of a larger salary. The chair of the church finance committee, Elder Lee, also a baritone in the men’s choir and the owner of six beauty supply shops, signed the choir director’s small paychecks himself. If there was no money to be made, then surely, Elder Lee reasoned, this was a man of immense talents who served the Lord alone and not mammon. The choir director of their little Woodside church had a doctorate in music and graduated from Juilliard! Yes, they chided themselves: They must labor to please the new choir director. At the close of these midweek meals, it was generally agreed that in a year or two, under Professor Hong’s direction, they would be a superior choir, worthy of touring their sister churches in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.