Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

DJ looked up at the glimmering tower. “You live here?”

Sun-ho joined him in admiring the building. “Nice, huh?”

He produced a key card and used it to unlock the building’s mirrored front doors. Instead of heading for the elevators, Sun-ho took the fire stairs, swinging his bad leg down each step before holding the rail with two hands and dropping the good. DJ and Mina trailed him for two flights until they came to a concrete corridor for infrastructure access — here were the distribution panels, the fire sprinkler valves, a freight elevator. Sun-ho used his card to beep open a tiny janitorial closet that smelled of fast-food wrappers and dirty clothes. Taking most of the closet space was a molded plastic chair on which rested a large black backpack. Plastic bags and jugs of water hung from the ceiling, and there was room for a single stack of cardboard boxes. From a box, Sun-ho grabbed a couple of cell phones, which he pocketed.

DJ asked, “What is this, some kind of storage unit?”

Sun-ho displayed two dirty automotive fan belts.

“For the weight,” he said, “there’s nothing stronger than a Toyota fan belt.”

Mina took quiet stock of the closet. “Are you living out of here?” she asked.

Sun-ho swung the pack onto his back. Then he turned to DJ. “I’m sorry I only have one chair,” Sun-ho said, staring with a strange seriousness in his eyes. “I can get another if you like. Do you want me to get another chair?”

DJ didn’t know what to say. “Is there a lack of seating at the meeting or something?”

Sun-ho didn’t answer. He grabbed the chair and closed the door, but before it swung shut, DJ got a glimpse of what had been under the chair: a water jug, half filled with what looked like urine. He wondered about Mina’s question. Could someone live in a closet? Could a person sleep sitting up? He and Mina exchanged a look.

Sun-ho was already headed down the hall with his chair, then pressing the call button of the service elevator.

“How long have you been in this building?” DJ asked.

“It’s a very exclusive address,” Sun-ho said.

When the elevator doors opened, the three of them stepped inside. Sun-ho swiped his card to press the roof button. Soft tones marked the floors as they flashed past.

“The meeting’s on the roof?” DJ asked.

Sun-ho handed DJ the key card. “So you can get out of the building,” he said. The card was marked with a name and an apartment number.

When they arrived, the roof was dark and windy.

“I don’t understand,” DJ said.

“There is no meeting,” Mina said.

Sun-ho said, “You think I would go to one of those brainwashing sessions?”

“What about the Gangnam ladies?” DJ asked. “Do they exist?”

“I’d never betray Willow like that.”

DJ stepped out onto the roof. The tar under his feet was soft. Fragments of cloud blew past, their bellies aglow with the light of traffic and commerce. Beyond the curtain wall was a skyline of twinkling amber. And then the dark rope of the Han River.

As his eyes adjusted, DJ noticed two brown cylinders: helium tanks.

Right away, Sun-ho started to strap the plastic chair to an outcrop of conduit with a rope tether. He cow-hitched the fan belts to each arm and began filling a towering clear balloon with helium from a tank.

In disbelief, Mina turned to DJ. “Are you going to stop him?”

That was a good question.

“Are you really doing this?” DJ asked. “Assuming you don’t die from the cold or the lack of oxygen or the landing, don’t you think they’ll kill you?”

“Traitors,” Sun-ho said. “That’s who they kill. Not heroes.”

“You can’t really believe that. They kill anyone they like.”

“Okay, I’ll grant you that,” Sun-ho said. “But you don’t have to worry about me.”

Sun-ho tied off the first balloon with a braided cord and attached it to a fan belt. The chair lifted, held only by the rope tether, where it danced on plastic toes. Sun-ho began filling another, the gas hissing, the balloon bent and whipping in the wind.

“Willow is much younger than you,” DJ said.

Sun-ho didn’t respond.

“You two have barely spoken.”

Sun-ho called to Mina. “Do you know ‘Arirang’? Would you play ‘Arirang’ for me?”

With a look of bemused wonder, Mina opened her accordion case and began to button the first slow chords, and then from the piano keys came the ancient melody.

“Yes, beautiful,” Sun-ho said, attaching another balloon. “Dongjoo said you were talented. Did you know this song is from the Joseon Dynasty? Six hundred years, that’s how long our people have been singing it. Do you know the words, will you sing it for me?”

“ ‘Arirang,’ ” Mina sang. “ ‘Arirang, Arariyo.’ ”

Sun-ho rolled the tank to the chair so he could anchor it with his weight. Backpack in his lap, he began to fill another balloon.

“Listen to reason,” DJ told him. “Willow’s father is in the Party. Anyone his daughter married would have to be a member. It would never work.”

Sun-ho looked up from his plastic chair. “Don’t you believe in new beginnings?” he asked. “Where’s your sense of possibility?”

To signal an end to such talk, Sun-ho began singing along with Mina, a duet accompanied by the accordion and the hiss of helium. DJ looked up to the balloons as they filled — angry, they spun and tugged in the turbulent air.

When six balloons were filled, you could almost see the chair’s weightlessness.

Sun-ho turned those wide, sad eyes upon DJ. “ ‘A thousand ri with every stride,’ ” he said. It was the start of a propaganda slogan they’d all been forced to say a thousand times.

DJ asked, “Why are you going in the dark?”

“Light, dark, it doesn’t matter,” Sun-ho said.

DJ felt his eyes getting hot. “It does matter,” he said. “I don’t want you to go. You’re all I have.”

Sun-ho nodded. “Think of it this way. I’m what you had of the North, and you’re what I had of the South. We’ll always fit together like that. We’ll always be a team.”

DJ shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“Come on,” Sun-ho said. “ ‘A thousand ri with every stride.’ ”

DJ was silent.

“ ‘A thousand ri with every stride.’ ”

DJ finally finished the sentence: “ ‘The winged horse Chollima flies.’ ”

Sun-ho smiled, warm and large. Then he loosened the knot that freed the tether. But he did not float into the sky. The chair’s legs rattled. Then they started skittering across the roof, picking up speed until Sun-ho was slammed against the curtain wall, the balloons violently whipping.

DJ ran over and put his hands on the chair to weigh it down. “You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said. “You can’t even get off the roof, let alone to North Korea.”

Sun-ho smiled again. “A simple mistake,” he said. “I forgot to give you this.” He lifted the backpack and held it out to DJ. When DJ reached for it, Sun-ho paused. “Don’t get on the ferry,” he said, his eyes large and intense. “If you follow their rules, you’ll become one of them.”

DJ took the heavy pack, and when he did, Sun-ho was gone, snapped up into the sky, spinning wildly and swinging until he was no longer visible.

DJ felt the weight of the bag, recognized the metallic clatter of its contents. He didn’t need to look inside to know it was filled with catalytic converters. He kept looking at the place in the sky where Sun-ho had been. There was no way Sun-ho could get what he really wanted; there was no way he could sail a thousand years back in time. Maybe the closest a person could come was North Korea.