I'll Be Right There (11 page)

When I poked my head into the store, the woman came out. I asked her the name of the plant, and she said it was a
table palm. Inside the shop, there were more flowers withering than blooming. The balsam and hyacinth had lost their petals, and even the leaves were wilting.

“Are you young folks heading back from a demonstration?” the woman asked.

We weren’t sure what to say. The furrow in her brow deepened.

“When will this country ever stop rioting?” She sighed. “I can’t open my shop. It’s closed most of the time, and there’s so much tear gas in the air that all the flowers have wilted. Look at this. I was raising two birds in this cage, but they died yesterday. And look at my face. Even at this age, I have acne that won’t go away. It’s from breathing tear gas every day.”

Her voice was raspy.

“Take whatever you want,” she said. “Everything is so wilted that it would be wrong to take your money.”

Sullenly, she picked up the table palm that I had asked about and put it in a bag.

“When you get home, transfer the plant to another container and water it. I’m sorry we couldn’t leave you a world where no one has to riot … I’m so sorry.”

Myungsuh had been staring blankly at my feet when the woman surprised us with her apology, but he suddenly dashed across the street to a phone booth.

“This is going to sound as ridiculous as telling you that a cat hatched an egg … You kids may be in the right, but if you keep this up, the rest of us will have to protest as well. We’ll have to protest all the protesting.”

She smiled bitterly.

“You kids aren’t doing anything wrong, but we can’t live this way.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“We have to make a living, too.”

She was talking to me as if we were related. I didn’t know how to respond to her. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I kept bowing my head. I hoped Myungsuh would hurry back. The longer she talked, the more anxiously I gazed at where he stood inside the phone booth across the street.

“We failed this time around, but you have to leave a better world to the next generation.”

The woman locked the door to her shop, the melancholy look never once leaving her face. Then both she and the flowers vanished, making me wonder if I had imagined everything. All that was left of her shop was the cold metal roll-down gate. My knees gave way, and I sat on the ground and watched as he finished the call and ran back to me.

He sat down at my side.

“Miru’s coming,” he said.

Miru.

“I asked her to bring you some shoes,” he said.

“That must have been a surprise.”

“What size are you?”

“235.”

“Same as Miru.”

He seemed to know everything about her.

“Where is she coming from?” I asked.

“Myeongnyun-dong.”

We were in Anguk-dong. Since the buses had stopped, Miru would have to walk the whole way. That afternoon, when I planned my long route home through downtown, I had assumed it would take me two hours. I had even thought about taking a three-hour walking route instead. But several hours had passed since I left the campus, part of which I spent being carried on his back from City Hall, and I had only just reached Anguk-dong.

“Did Miru move there from Dongsung-dong?” I asked.

“We lived together in Dongsung-dong.”

“What?”

“We lived in a house that Miru’s parents got for her and Mirae—her older sister,” he said.

“Miru has an older sister?”

He started to nod and then stopped and fumbled with the plastic bag. He grabbed my hand and put it on his knee. I could feel the dirt on his jeans.

“To be honest, I don’t want you and Miru to become friends. But you two are always asking about each other.”

Miru asked about me?

“And you’re both persistent,” he added. “You look for each other. It’s been a long time since Miru showed an interest in someone else. I should be happy about it, but instead I’m worried.”

“Why?” I asked.

His laugh sounded hollow.

“I guess we meet who we’re supposed to meet. After all, look at how you and I met.”

“Why are you being so serious?”

He laughed and asked if he really sounded serious.

While we waited for Miru, we sat against the closed shutters like scattered members of some enemy troop and talked.

“The three of us lived in a house on a hill in Dongsung-dong. We grew up together. Mirae was a year older, but the three of us were almost inseparable. She left for college first and lived in a boardinghouse, but when Miru and I joined her in the city, their parents got us the house. We lived together, but we were just friends.”

“I understand.”

“You do? Everyone else thought it was weird.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a guy and I’m not related to them.”

“But you said you grew up together?”

He stared at me. I was thinking about Dahn. Dahn may have said I didn’t love him, but I loved the time I spent with him. He and I could spend time together without having to talk. Even when we ran out of things to say and were both silent, it never felt awkward. We could sit across from each other for hours without saying anything at all. I would read, and Dahn would draw in his sketchbook. It felt completely natural to us. When one of us said something, the other understood ten times as much. That’s not something that happens right away. It builds over time while you’re growing up together.

“You’re different from the others,” he said.

“How so?”

“I thought I would have to explain why I lived with two girls, and I even had a speech prepared, but when you said you understood, you took the wind right out of me.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything, then.”

He laughed weakly.

“Why don’t you live together now?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

He, too, was different from the others. The things he said could seem cold, but he said them so gently.

“Who is Miru looking for?” I asked.

“Someone who disappeared.”

“Who?”

“I don’t have to say, right?”

“No, you’re not obligated.”

“Obligated?” His voice got quieter. “Even if I don’t tell you, you’ll find out if you keep spending time with us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Miru is almost here.”

Something was fluttering in the dark across the street. I took a closer look. It was Miru’s skirt. I remembered the day I saw them on the way to Professor Yoon’s office. The two of them were walking beneath the zelkova tree, and Miru’s floral-print skirt had billowed up in the breeze. It clashed with everything around it and filled me with a strange sense of anxiety. Miru was stepping off the sidewalk and into the street, as if to jaywalk instead of taking the crosswalk. We watched her. She still had her shoulders hunched and her head hanging down. It was strange. Though Myungsuh was right next to me, and though he was the one who had called
her, I felt like she was heading for me alone. I unconsciously scooted away from him. Just before she reached us, a white cat leapt down from her arms and walked toward Myungsuh.

He reached out his arms and picked up the cat. They seemed to know each other well. The flowers on Miru’s skirt flickered before my eyes, and then there she was sitting between us, before I could get a look at her face. She unzipped her bag, took out a pair of sneakers wrapped in newspaper, and set them down next to me. Myungsuh must have told her everything on the phone, because she did not ask why I was barefoot or why we were sitting there. She didn’t even offer the usual greetings. I slipped on the sneakers and began to tie the laces, but she reached out her hands toward my feet. I couldn’t take my eyes off her scars. She started to tie the shoes herself but then stood up as if the position was uncomfortable and moved so she was sitting directly in front of me. Then she redid the loose knots, retying them one by one and tugging on the bows to make sure they were tight. She did it so naturally that I didn’t have the chance to tell her I would do it myself. I was surprised I didn’t pull my feet away. I felt comfortable letting her touch my feet. Her scarred fingers moved between the white laces. Even Myungsuh was watching quietly. Her hands, which had always remained hidden in her pockets or under her desk, were moving freely in front of us.

“These were my sister’s shoes,” she said.

She sat down between us again. Her voice was clear and subdued. It was as if she had been with us the whole time, rather than having just met us, or even as if we had been traveling together for days and had only stopped for a short
rest. I would never have guessed that I could feel so comfortable with them. The tension Myungsuh and I felt each time her name came up had gone away and left me feeling weak. I realized I had been acting silly when I scooted away from him the moment she showed up. Miru’s sister’s shoes fit like they were my own. It was as if I were a different person from the one who had been talking to Myungsuh just moments earlier. My mother died without knowing this about me, but when I first came to live here, I avoided forming a deep relationship with anyone or anything. Whenever she asked if I had made any friends, I told her I hadn’t yet. I felt abandoned. She had sent me away as soon as she learned she was dying, peeled me off of her despite my not wanting to leave her side, so the last thing I wanted was to feel close to anyone. I couldn’t bear the thought of telling someone about myself or of spending time with someone. I chose to be alone in order to keep things uncomplicated, to avoid perplexing emotions. My cousin used to say to me, “You don’t really believe you can survive in this world alone, do you? No one makes it on their own.” Sitting there in the street, I realized that Myungsuh and Miru had succeeded in getting through to me.

“What happened when you went to the island?” Myungsuh asked Miru.

“I didn’t find anything,” she said.

“Please stop looking.”

They both got very quiet all of a sudden. To dispel the awkwardness, I asked if they were hungry. Myungsuh said he was, but Miru did not answer.

“Shall we go to my place?”

They turned to look at me.

“All I have is perilla kimchi,” I said, “but I’ll make rice. I have plenty of rice. Let’s go.”

I grabbed the bag with the table palm and stood up. They followed me. Miru picked up the cat. Its snow-white fur moved gently in the dark. Miru ran her scarred fingers through the cat’s fur and stroked its neck. The cat stared at me with eyes as blue as the sky at dawn. When we reached the main street, Myungsuh said he was too hungry to walk and flagged down a taxi. The buses were still not running, but taxis had begun to appear. Had the protest finally died down? The streets were deserted; few people were out at night. Myungsuh sat in the front, and Miru and I sat in the back. When she saw me staring at the cat, Miru offered to let me hold it. It was the first time since bringing the shoes that she had looked directly at me. Her dark eyes studied me. I set the plant down on the floor of the cab and took the cat. Its tail stiffened at first but soon relaxed. The soft fur brushed against my cheek. The cat sat in my arms and stared idly out the car window at the darkness and at the trees that lined the road.

“She likes you,” Miru said.

“Excuse me?”

“She’s sitting still.”

I was not fond of cats. A very long time ago, when I had gone to visit my mother and was taking a nap with her, a cat had come along and sat down beside us. The first to awake, I was startled and threw a book at the cat and yelled at it. But it just strolled away coolly. The next day, the cat appeared again, urinated on the floor in front of me, and walked away.

I slipped on its urine. My mother said, “See, you threw a book at it, so it left its pee for you.” That memory kept me away from any more cats. When I first moved to the city, there was a cat in my cousin’s building as well. I don’t know what happened, but the landlord filled the building with tenants and moved out, leaving the gray cat behind. My cousin would often feed it. I asked her once why the landlord left it behind, and she said that cats are more attached to places than to people. And that was why cats are so often found in abandoned houses.

That story of Saint Christopher has been stuck in my head ever since the first day of class. I wanted to know more about him, so I searched through book after book in the library
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1. Because he carried the Christ child across the river, Saint Christopher is still regarded as the patron saint of travelers. Some taxi drivers and truck drivers even keep medals of Saint Christopher on their dashboards like talismans. At the same time that he was an ascetic who sought to realize the will of God through hard work, he was also a messenger with something very important to transport and deliver
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2. In that sense, Saint Christopher is also a Christ figure. The name Christopher is derived from “Christ”; the “ph” comes from a Greek word meaning “bearer.” Christ, who carried all of man’s sins and agonies with him onto the cross in order to save humanity, was both an ascetic who carried the world on his back and a messenger sent to earth to deliver God’s will. When we look at it that way, then the Christian Christopher can also be seen as a combination of Atlas and Hermes of Greek mythology
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