Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

The girls run around, inspecting everything. They race to my bedroom, where they discover only boxes of computer parts.

They come back, disappointed. “Where’s your bed?” they ask. “Where do you sleep?”

I hand out milks and point at the foldout couch right in front of them.

The Cub, feeling kinship, says, “You sleep in the living room, too.”

The Tiger asks, “Where’s your dinner table?”

“I eat my sandwiches at the counter,” I tell them.

“Don’t you own a chair?” the Cub asks.

“It’s on the porch,” I answer. “You were just sitting in it.”

“Where’s the TV?” the Cub asks.

“Just drink your milk and go to bed, you two.”

They are amped and squirmy, but they obey; slipping under the covers, they try to lie still.

The Tiger focuses on the Bermuda sloop.

She says, “I never really looked at this painting when it was on our wall.”

I glance at the sailor, rigging in his hands. He has started his journey, the all-important one. He has decided his direction and charted a course. All he had to do was choose.

“Let’s try to get some sleep, you two.”

On the porch, I begin an article about Mars rovers, but I can’t focus. Officer Hernandez keeps texting me, and so does Dodger. I don’t often think back to the Sea Scout days, but the boy I used to be, he is everywhere tonight, his trusting face, his quiet hopefulness. Also in my head is the girl with her hands on the stainless-steel table. And Dodger’s thumb drive, I keep hearing the satisfying click it would make sliding into my computer’s USB port. My mind begins filling the lost drive with a thousand images. Already I miss my computer, its calm and order, how things would stop spinning if I could just boot it up. On the driveway, the crumbs of its carcass sparkle when a car passes.

When I figure the girls are asleep, I head inside.

They are awake.

“Turn the lights off,” the Cub says. “I can’t sleep with the lights on.”

“Let’s try them on a little longer,” I say.

I sit on the side of the bed, where I unlace my shoes and loosen my collar. Then I lie beside them — me atop the covers, them below.

The three of us stare at the ceiling.

The Cub asks, “Are you the son of Missus Roses?”

“She’s just the lady I bought the house from.”

“I want a nickname,” the Cub says.

“Trust me,” I tell her. “You don’t.”

Though the Tiger is between us, the energy of the Cub radiates to me. I feel her. Her unaverted gaze. The inquisitive lift to her brow. The dark hollow at the cuff of her pajama sleeve.

“Have you ever done anything bad?” I ask the girls.

The Cub stares into space. She says a slow “Yeah,” like she’s visualizing a graveyard of her bad ten-year-old decisions and the wasteland of their consequences.

“Everyone’s done something bad,” the Tiger says. “What about you?”

“I’ve done some bad things,” I tell her. “But I’ve never hurt anyone. Not directly, not me doing the actual hurting.”

“Did someone do something bad to you?” she asks. “Is that why you brought it up?”

“A long time ago, yes. Something bad happened to me.”

The Tiger turns toward me, our faces not far apart. “Like what?” she asks.

“I suppose there are pictures of it,” I say.

“Pictures?” she asks. “What do they look like?”

I shake my head. “They’re out there somewhere,” I tell the Tiger. “But I haven’t seen them. That’s because I don’t look at pictures of boys.”

Narrowing her eyes, she tries to understand this.

She is the older one, so I tell her the truth.

“I look at pictures of girls.”

The Tiger considers this. She says, “Some of the girls on the cheer squad, they trade pictures of boys on their phones. That’s all they care about.”

She begins to tell me all about it — her friends, their crushes, the perils of a forwarded pic.

“Will someone please turn out the lights?” the Cub pleads.

The Tiger begins to sing to the Cub. It’s a song about a girl who goes alone into darkened woods. “ ‘My girl, my girl,’ ” the Tiger sings, “ ‘don’t lie to me.’ ”

The Cub sings, “ ‘Tell me, where did you sleep last night?’ ”

Together, they sing, “ ‘In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine.’ ”

“That’s a pretty strange lullaby,” I tell them.

They ignore me and finish the chorus together, “ ‘I would shiver the whole night through.’ ”

The Tiger then throws me a look. “Tell that to Kurt Cobain,” she says.

I stand awkwardly, because of my erection, and walk to the light switch.

I regard the girls a moment, their outlines under the covers, their small mouths as the Tiger leads the Cub through the final lyrics about going to where the cold wind blows. Perhaps I was too hasty with regard to the Tiger. Maybe I judged her too early. There is something about her. She does, in her own way, activate.

I turn out the lights.

Outside, I step across the yard into my rosebushes. Here, I lick my hand. I lick up and down, coating my palm and fingers. I position myself behind some Blue Skies and Bourbons, so I’m less visible from the street, and begin masturbating. It’s not about pleasure but about security and stimulation control and self-management. I’m doing it for the girls. They need me to look out for them, I understand that now. I can be a force of good in their lives. I’m the one who heard the signal. I’m the one who knows the code. What Officer Hernandez doesn’t get is that once something bad happens, it happens every minute of your life, and it can’t be undone, not by a rescue or a raid or a rope or a hundred and forty thousand dollars. The time to act isn’t after, it’s before, it’s now. And there is nothing beautiful about a pearl of semen tumbling toward a rose in the moonlight. It’s just a duty. While the innocents sleep, it’s just a thing that must be done.

Every Friday, DJ met Sun-ho for lunch. The guy had been DJ’s right-hand man in North Korea, and DJ owed him more than any man could pay. Since fast food was the only thing in Seoul that Sun-ho actually seemed to like, lunches were all DJ had to say thanks. Or maybe he was saying sorry. DJ didn’t know what to call his debt to Sun-ho, though it was more than a super-size double-meal deal could articulate. Still, in the four months since they’d defected, they’d been to Bonchon Chicken and Kyochon Chicken and Gimbap Cheonguk and half a dozen others. Today, they were to meet in Insadong for bulgogi burgers at a chain called Lotteria.

DJ set out from the male dormitory where he lived in the Gwanak District. The dorm was far from fancy, but it reminded him of home in all the right ways — unlocked doors, polished cement floors, a curfew and that feeling of being alone and together at the same time. Plus, he wasn’t the only one with troubles. On the other bunks slept men who were battling alcohol, men who’d lost everything in the economic collapse and even a few unlucky bastards who’d been sent to Iraq to fight alongside the Americans. DJ understood that in South Korea, Americans were considered friends. He’d never really believed they were the enemy. After all, hadn’t Americans invented scratch-off lottery tickets, crystal meth, hundred-dollar bills and, most important, the catalytic converter?

It was a cold February. Bundled in his heavy coat and scarf, DJ took the Blue line into central Seoul, then followed the Orange line north to Anguk Station. As soon as he exited the train, he heard echoing through the halls the unmistakable sound of an accordion playing “No Motherland Without You.” People rushed in all directions in that unnervingly chaotic way Southerners moved. No one seemed to notice or recognize a North Korean song, let alone the great musical tribute to Kim Jong-il.