Suki Kim - The Interpreter

It is lunchtime when Suzy enters. “Catch of the Day = $4.99” seems underpriced, and Suzy points to it immediately upon settling on a stool. The bartender is a grinning man in his mid-forties. She has seen him before, the same time last year, when she peeked in for a cup of coffee. Suzy remembers thinking how perfect that he should be called Bob, such a compact guy with a barrel chest and permanently tanned forearms.

“You want that poached, right?” he asks with a good-natured hearty smile.

“Pardon?”

“Lady, I told you we don’t poach our fish, just fried, plain and good!” He is still smiling, so he is not annoyed, perhaps teasing a bit.

“Fried, yes, that’s fine.”

He must be confusing her with someone else. He thinks she’s been here before, which she has, but a year ago, just for coffee, could he remember that?

“And coffee, right?” He is already pouring a cup. He then brings her packets of cream and sugar and says, “Oh, I forgot, you want Sweet’n Low, sorry, we’re out.”

Suzy stares at him awhile before reaching for the mug. She takes a sip and winces at its burnt aftertaste. The coffee’s been brewed for much too long. Black, which is the only way she takes her coffee.

“No seltzer with a straw today?” Bob taunts with a wink.

Grace it must be. Grace must have been here recently. Grace, who never touches fried food and never takes sugar, who never drinks anything without a straw—he must be confusing her with Grace. When was she here? Does she come here often?

The sisters look fairly alike. When they were young, they often passed for twins. “Stupid fucks,” Grace fumed, “they think all Asian girls look alike!” But Suzy was secretly happy, for she knew her sister was a beauty. They had similar features, but Grace had longer eyelashes, a finer complexion, sleeker cheekbones, poutier lips, and blacker, straighter hair. At first sight, there was no doubt that they were sisters, perhaps even twins to those who did not have an eye for beauty. But upon a closer inspection, it was clear that Grace had far superior features, the sort of face a man might die for, as Suzy thought and often witnessed through high school, when the boys would steal glances at her older sister, who remained aloof and haughty, as though her beauty were reserved for far better things than a mere boy with his dad’s Toyota. The odd thing was that Grace had a reputation for being easy, but only with the older boys, the sort of boys who had cut out of school long ago, who hung in front of the local pool hall on their motorbikes, which probably did not even belong to them to begin with, who waited for Grace outside the school gate with helmets on, not for the sake of safety but to remain faceless, Suzy thought. Grace managed to hide it all from their parents. This must have been because the family moved so often. Before Grace could settle in with any of her troubled boys, they moved again, and Grace would find yet another pool hall, to which she would disappear on evenings when her parents worked overtime. Even more impressive was that Grace kept up her grades. Grace would sit by herself in the corner of the cafeteria and study furiously, while Suzy was cozily tucked in with her set of meek friends. Grace would never sit with Suzy. She said that it was embarrassing. She said that Suzy with her geeky friends embarrassed her. Everyone called Grace a stuck-up bitch, especially the girls who could not stand how their boyfriends kept looking at the new girl in the corner. All Suzy felt was distance. They must have been close once, but that seemed impossibly far away.

“So how about it, one order of fried cod!” Bob is all smiley, as though he is proud of having initiated this young woman into the art of fried cuisine. Suzy peers at the oversized piece of fish drenched in grease. She takes a bite while eager Bob dotes on her for approval. She gives him the sort of satisfied smile that makes him happy, then takes a long look around the bar. It is a typical beach-town dive, with a jukebox and a pool table. Against the wall is a laminated poster of a buxom blonde holding up a can of Budweiser. A few stools away from her are a couple of older men whose eyes are fixed on the sports updates on the TV screen suspended from the ceiling.

“So did you find what you were looking for?” Bob pretends to be nonchalant, but Suzy can tell that he is curious. She is not sure what to say. Is it really Grace he is taking her to be? What had Grace been looking for? She is tempted to tell him that he’s got the wrong girl, but it seems too late now, and Bob looks too earnest. So, instead, Suzy drops her gaze at the plate of fish before her.

“Thought you went back to the city. Twice in one week in this lousy weather—whatever it is, lady, you’ve gotta find it fast, so you don’t get that pretty head of yours wet again.” He pours more coffee into her mug, although she does not want a refill. Suzy runs her fingers through her wet hair, realizing only now that she left her umbrella on the train. Perhaps it is not Grace he takes her to be, but another Asian girl who had wandered in one rainy afternoon. Perhaps Grace was right after all, white men can’t tell one Asian girl from another. The fish is good. They all taste the same once fried like this. She did not realize she was hungry. She left the apartment in a hurry this morning, barely time for coffee, definitely no breakfast. The alarm did not go off again, and she woke up panicking, certain that she had missed her 8:25 train. It wasn’t until she wiped the sweat off her face and took a sip of cold water and glanced at the clock again that she realized she had more than an hour to kill. So she lay there recalling the strange phone rings and the bouquet of irises that had come accompanied by a drill or a hissing noise, which she failed to identify, which grew louder and louder until she could not stand it anymore and finally bolted out of bed, only to realize that the deadly shrill had, in fact, been the alarm chiming seven.

“See, nothing like a good piece of fish on a day like this!”

Bob is dying for her to say something, anything, so that he can say to his regulars, “That girl over there, she’s from the city, after something, she won’t say what,” or “See that Asian girl? She wanted cod poached until I told her, no, miss, we won’t have that here, not in Montauk, not at Bob McSwiggin’s place!” But all Suzy is capable of is another vague smile, a nice-girl smile so that he knows there is nothing personal as to why she won’t let him in on what she’s looking for. It would not take much to give him the one-line answer, a simple acknowledgment: “Yes, the fish’s good; yes, I’m glad you talked me into it; yes, nothing like a plate of fried fish on such a dreary afternoon.” But even that she cannot manage, for she is suddenly dying to get out of here. It is as if her parents know that she has arrived, that she is here to see them, and that not a day goes by when she does not wonder who shot them, who wanted them dead, who knew exactly how to pierce their hearts.

The numbers on the TV screen flip with a dizzying speed: Knicks 88 Bulls 70 Lakers 102 Spurs 99 Giants 21 Saints 10. The coffee is tepid now and tastes somewhat less burnt.

“Did I leave an umbrella here last time?” Suzy ventures cautiously, hoping the question might bring light to when Grace, if it was indeed Grace, was here. Something inside Suzy cannot resist. Become Grace for a moment. Embrace Grace’s trace, which might lead to Grace.

“Beats me. I keep whatever people forget in that bin.” Bob points to the plastic crate by the entrance. “You were here when, on Friday? Should still be there, but if you don’t see it, just take any umbrella you find.”

Suzy walks over and makes a pretense of looking through the crate before picking out the only umbrella among the torn jackets, chipped pocket knives, soiled bandannas, and baseball caps, the sort of leftovers no one wants. Friday, just three days ago. Did Grace come to see Mom and Dad early so that she wouldn’t run into Suzy? Does she still hate her so? Leave us alone , Grace told her at the funeral, without once meeting her eyes. Hasn’t Suzy done exactly that, hasn’t she stayed away all these years as though she had no family left in the world?