Martin Limon - Slicky Boys

“You buy me drink?”

Eun-hi coiled her body around my arm and leaned over the bar, her shimmering black hair cascading to the dented vinyl counter. I inhaled lilacs.

“Tone oopso,” I said. No money. “Payday’s not until Friday.”

She pouted. Red lips pursed like crushed cushions.

“You number ten GI.”

Ernie leaned back on his bar stool. “You got that right, Eun-hi. George is definitely number ten Cheap Charley GI.” He tilted his head back and swigged from a frosty brown bottle of Oriental Beer.

We were in the U.N. Club, in Itaewon, the greatest GI village in the world. Shattering vibrations careened off the walls, erupting from an out-of-tune rock-and-roll band clanging away in the corner. On the dance floor Korean business girls, clad in just enough clothing to make themselves legal, and American GI’s in blue jeans and sports shirts gyrated youthful bodies in mindless abandon.

It felt good to be here. Our natural environment. My belly was full of beer and my petty worries had been flushed away by the gentle hops coursing through my veins. Still, I was surprised Eun-hi had talked to me and I wondered why. Usually she remained aloof from all GI’s except those who were willing to spend big bucks, which-on a corporal’s pay-didn’t include me.

Eun-hi stood up and pushed a small fist against her hip. She was a big girl, full-breasted, tall for a Korean woman. Long leather boots reached almost to her knees and white hot pants bunched into the inviting mystery between her smooth brown thighs. Dark nipples strained to peek out at the world from behind a knotted halter top bundling her feminine goodness. Eun-hi was a business girl. One or the finest in Itaewon. Finer than frog hair, to be exact. A GI’s dream, a sailor’s fevered vision, a faithful wife’s nightmare.

My name is George Sue o. My partner Ernie Bascom and I are agents for the Criminal Investigation Division of the 8th United States Army in Seoul. We work hard-sometimes-but what we’re really good at is running the ville. Parading. Crashing through every bar in the red-light district, tracking down excitement and drunkenness and girls. In fact, we’re experts at it.

Gradually, over the last few months, more girls like Eun-hi had drifted into the GI villages. More girls who’d grown up in the twenty-some years since the end of the Korean War, when there was food to be had and inoculations from childhood diseases and shelter from the howling winter wind. Eun-hi was healthy. Not deformed by bowlegs or a pocked face or the hacking, coughing lungs of poverty.

She must’ve felt the heat of my admiration. At least I hoped she did. She took a step forward.

“Geogie,” she said. “Somebody want to talk to you.”

Ernie shifted in his stool, straightening his back. I stared at her. Waiting.

“A girl,” she said.

My eyes widened.

She waved her small, soft palm from side to side.

“Not a business girl. Suknyo.” A virtuous woman.

Ernie leaned forward. Interested now.

“Why in the hell would a good girl want to talk to George?”

I elbowed him. He shut up. We both looked at Eun-hi. She shrugged her elegant shoulders.

“I don’t know. She say she want to talk to GI named Geogie. In Itaewon everybody know Geogie. So I tell you.”

“Where is she?” I asked.

“At the Kayagum Teahouse. She wait for you there.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”

“No. I never see before. She come in here this afternoon when all GI’s on compound. Ask me to help her find Geogie.”

“How’d she know I’d be here?”

Eun-hi laughed. A high, lilting warble, like the song of a dove.

“She know. Everybody know. You always here.”

It wasn’t true. Not always. Sometimes Ernie and I hit other clubs. But it was true that we were in Itaewon almost every night.

Ernie set his beer down. “What does she want?”

“I don’t know. She no say. You want to know, go to Kayagum Teahouse. Find out.”

She placed one shiny boot in front of the other and thrust out her hip.

“You no buy Eun-hi drink, then Eun-hi go.”

With that, she performed a graceful pirouette, held the pose for a moment, and sashayed her gorgeous posterior across the room toward a group of hell-raising helicopter pilots.

Ernie looked at me, lifting his eyebrows.

“A suknyo,” he said. “Looking for you?”

“Yeah. What’s so surprising about that?”

“Oh, nothing. Except you’re a low-rent, depraved GI and no decent Korean woman would get within ten feet of you.”

It bothered me. Where did he get the idea that I was depraved? Sure, I preferred girls who were young. Eighteen or nineteen. But I was only a few years older than that myself. What was wrong with that?

“Not so depraved,” I said.

Ernie stood up. “Shall we go?”

“Aren’t we going to think about this first?”

“What’s to think about?” he said. “A virtuous woman wants to talk to you. You think of yourself as a knight in shining armor. Maybe a horny one but still a knight. Besides, I’m curious.”

He was right. It was enough to get anybody curious. Itaewon was, by edict of the government, for “tourists” only. Translated-American GI’s. And any woman caught in the area of the GI clubs, without a VD card proving that she was a registered prostitute, was subject to arrest. Whoever this suknyo was, she had risked losing a hell of a lot of face by coming down here.

“Yeah,” I said, standing. “I’m curious, too.”

I slugged down the dregs of my beer. We grabbed our jackets off the backs of the bar stools and headed toward the big double doors. Outside, the smoke and noise and smell of booze faded behind us. The young doorman bowed. I figured him to be about thirteen years old, either a distant relative of the owner or some urchin they took in off the streets. He was wrapped in three layers of grease-stained sweaters. A gauze mask protected his mouth and nose from the cold.

I took a deep breath and felt the fresh bite of winter.

Itaewon was layered in crusts of snow. Neon lined the road running up the hill, flashing and sparkling through the latticework designs of frozen white lace. Shivering business girls, half naked, stood in alcoves, arms crossed, peering out over the rims of their dark-lined eyes, searching for the next customer.

A GI winter wonderland.

We twisted up our collars and shoved our hands into our pockets. Ernie blew a great billowing breath through tight lips.

“Cold out,” he said. “Colder than a GI’s heart.”

At the Kayagum Teahouse it was easy enough to spot her. She wore a white cotton blouse buttoned all the way to the neck, and her face was a smooth oval, like an oblong polished pearl. Her mouth was moist and red, and shining eyes gazed steadily at the world in dark seriousness. Her name was Miss Ku.

She handed us a note, intricately wrapped into the shape of a flower, and asked us to deliver it to Cecil Whit-comb, a soldier of the British contingent of the United Nations Honor Guard.

As a civilian, she wasn’t allowed on the compound to deliver it herself.

I was hesitant at first but Miss Ku pleaded with her eyes. They’d been lovers. They’d broken up. She wanted to see him one more time.

Each word was pronounced carefully. Precisely. As if the English had been memorized after long hours of study in a library. She told me that she was a graduate of Ewha, the most prestigious women’s university in the country.

She apologized for becoming involved with Cecil. It was a mistake. She’d met him at a British-Korean Friendship Day at the British Embassy. He was in civilian clothes and she didn’t know he was in the army. She bowed her head.