Now John finally rises to go upstairs, teetering a little, pulling his robe tightly around him. It’s almost four in the morning. He says to me stiffly, “You are done with your work?”
“Almost.”
“Finish up quickly. I’ll be back down in half an hour. You will drive me somewhere?”
I say I will.
* * *
He sits quietly in the back of the sedan. When I pull the car in front of his house, he immediately goes to the rear where the windows are tinted black. He says to drive to Manhattan by the bridge. I take us west down Northern Boulevard to the Queensboro. This late at night there’s no real traffic and the lights let us run almost all the way.
When we finally stop at a light a half mile from the bridge he says we’re going to the Upper East Side, on Park Avenue. In the mirror I see him gazing out at the shops and lots of the boulevard, the rows of bulb and neon stretching west before us like a luminous trail to the island. Manhattan was going to be the next stage, the next phase of his life. He wasn’t going to be just another ethnic pol from the outer boroughs, content and provincial; he was going to be somebody who counted, who would stand up like a first citizen of these lands in every quarter of the city, in Flushing and Brownsville and Spanish Harlem and Clinton. He would be the one to bring all the various peoples to the steps of Gracie Mansion, bear them with him not as trophies, or the subdued, but as the living voice of the city, which must always be renewed.
The place, he once told me, where no one can define you if you possess enough will. Where it doesn’t matter if no one affords you charity, or nostalgia for your memories. Where you know your family is the one thing without price. He has also spoken this in public, with fire and light in his eyes. He has sung whole love songs to the cynical crowds, told tall stories of courage and honor, doing all this without any mythic display, without savvy, almost embarrassing the urban throng. They would look up at him from their seats and see he was serious and then quietly make certain to themselves that this was still the country they grew up in. They had never imagined a man like him, an American like him. But no one ever left.
He was how I imagined a Korean would be, at least one living in any renown. He would stride the daises and the stages with his voice strong and clear, unafraid to speak the language like a Puritan and like a Chinaman and like every boat person in between. I found him most moving and beautiful in those moments. And whenever I hear the strains of a different English, I will still shatter a little inside. Within every echo from a city storefront or window, I can hear the old laments of my mother and my father, and mine as a confused schoolboy, and then even the fitful mumblings of our Ahjuhma, the instant American inventions of her tongue. They speak to me, as John Kwang could always, not simply in new accents or notes but in the ancient untold music of a newcomer’s heart, sonorous with longing and hope.
We cross the bridge to the city. The streets are empty. I drive uptown on Third and then cut across to Park. I ask him exactly where we’re going on the Avenue.
He tells me the address and street, then says low, “It’s Sherrie’s. Have you ever taken me there? I can’t remember now.”
“No,” I say.
We don’t talk after that. When we get there I go inside the marbled foyer of her building and have the night doorman ring up. It’s past three in the morning. The night man is a young Chino-Latino. He regards me another moment and then says into the receiver, “He here, ma’am.” He nods and then offers me the handset.
“John?” I hear her say.
“No.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Henry.”
“Shit.”
I tell her he’s in the car.
“Christ. Go outside then. Don’t let anyone see you. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
When she comes she rushes from the awning in a long slicker, her head covered with the hood. They don’t kiss. They don’t touch. They sit upright and John says to go to an after-hours club on lower Broadway, near all the Korean restaurants and shops. No one will trouble us there.
Some of the clubs are known as “stand” bars, where the bartenders are all women and will have a drink with you. The women aren’t prostitutes. They won’t have sex. They’ll hold your hand and flirt and maybe even kiss you if you show enough politeness. They’ll sing popular songs and tell racy Korean jokes. Nothing pornographic or even that vulgar. This is the club pretense, the etiquette. They are ready companions, and their job is to soothe the lonely feeling of these men for a woman and a homeland. The patrons are mostly businessmen from Korea, but there are others, some whites, and then some young Korean Americans dressed in conservative suits, speaking perfect English, red-faced, drunk. Investment bankers and lawyers. This is how I come to know these places, from the last stops of several bachelor parties I went to after college. After the fancy restaurants, the serious drinking, after the tall white strippers in a suite of a midtown hotel, we would arrive here arm in arm and weary with drink, sporting an almost sorrowful obedience, not even knowing that we were searching for a familiar face pale and wide and round.
We enter a second-floor “salon” bar, basically a stand bar but one with private rooms as well. I am here because in the street John insists that all of us go upstairs. Sherrie is too tired for arguments. She just winces; obviously, they’ve been here before. They haven’t said but a few words to each other. As he shepherds us inside, I think she’s expending whatever energy she has toward an idea of John Kwang in irretrievable fall. She stares off like she’s deciding on something, promising to herself that she’ll get out while she can. But she accedes to his wishes, as do I. As long as you can, you will please the father, the most holy and fragile animal.
Our private room has two leather love seats and a smoked-glass coffee table. The walls are paneled with paper screens lighted from behind. On the table is a bottle of vodka and a bottle of scotch and lowball glasses and four cans of Sprite. John sits with Sherrie. A young woman soon enters with a tray of ornately sliced fruit and a bucket of ice. She carefully prepares the drinks, whiskey on the rocks for the men, vodka and soda for Sherrie. She bows slightly as she presents each drink, the dark eyes held down.
I can smell her perfume. It’s the kind pre-teenage girls wear, that ultrasweet, virginal scent. She is exceedingly pretty, exceedingly young. Her hair is pulled up in a French twist, and her body shows clearly through her silken dress, her breasts more like fleshy rises than mounds, her hips framed low, feet and hands of a pixie. I could crack her finger bones with a handshake, dislocate her shoulder with a stiff pull.
She picks up the tray and bows before leaving. I watch her go out. I’m tired, too, like Sherrie, and my concentration flags. It settles on sights like the girl. Her shape is easy, uncomplicated. Watching John and Sherrie work toward each other in my presence is more difficult, not for their awkwardness but for how lonely they seem.
After a few minutes the girl reappears in the doorway. She’s changed. She’s let her hair down and her new dress is loose like a slip, short, the color matte black. She looks me in the eyes. She asks John something in Korean slang, something about “being okay,” and he grunts back. The girl sits down with me. Pours herself a big drink.
John has energy. He wants to talk, but Sherrie just drinks and broods against his shoulder, slumped like a young girl in the backseat of the family wagon. We sit and drink for a while, not talking, and I watch them. I know from Janice that Sherrie’s husband is away most of the time, he’s in Tokyo right now working on bridge financing for an industrial complex in Bangladesh. Janice says he’s a looker, tall and lean and impressive, that he speaks fluent German and Japanese, and that he hasn’t slept with his wife for more than a year. I ask how she knows and she says, “Take a good look at Sherrie when someone mentions him. All dried up and dead.” I push her and she admits Sherrie told her, too.