Chang-Rae Lee: Native Speaker

“Tell her that’s enough, John,” Sherrie says, pulling away from him. “John, he’s not Eddy. He doesn’t like it.”

“Quiet!”

“This is making me sick,” she answers, putting down her drink. “I don’t get you two. Is this Korean? You’re so brutal. Why don’t you just ask the manager for a knife and then see how much of your blood you can offer each other?” Now she glares at me. “What are you doing here?” she screams. “What the hell are you doing here? What do you want?”

“Enough!” John shouts, slamming his open palm on the table. The girl stops what she’s doing and holds on to me. He stares at Sherrie, his cheeks mottled red with anger.

“Maybe you will leave the room for a while!” He’s yelling at the top of his voice. His accent is somehow broken, it comes out strained, too loud. “Maybe you leave! Take the goddamn car key! Park Byong-ho shih , it will please me if you will drive her home, right now!”

“Forget it, I’m taking a cab,” Sherrie says, scrambling for her purse so she can get to the door. She almost stumbles as she rises, steadying herself on the corner of the coffee table. She tries the knob but it’s locked from the outside. She slaps at the panels. John swiftly goes to her, his hands raised. He wraps her from behind.

“Someone open this fucking door!” she yells, pushing him away. But John makes her stop. He takes her by the forearm and pulls her toward me on the sofa but she’s resisting, leaning away from him. They tug-of-war for a moment. He’s only toying with her, using just one hand and a dug-in foot, almost taunting her with his strength, and Sherrie’s starting to cry and get angry. She’s about to scream. She starts chopping at his grip. He slaps her hard and she crumples. The girl beside me is half-crying now. She has slid off me and sits on the floor with her legs still on the sofa, trying to crawl away. Now John lifts Sherrie by the elbow and raises his hand to slap her again.

I tackle him beneath one shoulder and pin him against the wall. The whole room shakes. His expression when he turns is full of contempt, as if any of this business is mine. I shout at him to stop. He tries to push me off but I stay with him. A waiter suddenly opens the door and Sherrie is able to get up on her feet and run out. This angers him, and he wants to follow her, but I hold him by hooking my arms around his front, though he drags us out to the doorway. His strength surprises me. Sherrie is wobbily descending the stairs to the street. John yells after her in Korean, calling her something I don’t understand. The waiter tells him to calm down and John shouts for him to leave his sight. He finally shakes me loose and wheels and pushes me hard with his knuckles against my breastbone.

“Who do you think you are?” he shouts, his voice louder than I’ve ever heard it. “Get your mind in order! Don’t you ever get in my way!”

“You were hurting her,” I answer.

He shakes his head in disbelief. “That woman? She has been hurting me! Do you know that? She and that dog Jenkins would have me bow down before every cheat and beggar in this city. Who is left? You? Should I get on my knees to you, too?”

He throws up his hands. The manager is here and asks if Master Kwang needs anything. John curses at him to leave us alone, going to the table to pour himself another full glass of whiskey. The manager calls to the girl but John tells him she will stay. She is slumped into the corner with her knees up against her chest, crying a little, too drunk to move.

“Have some drink,” he says to me, short of breath.

I stay clear of him.

“Do what you want,” he gasps, drinking swiftly, swallowing it all down. “You have a chance, Henry Park. Stay with me for a while. The rest are becoming nothing to me. They don’t know who I am. Even Eduardo. Eduardo. He didn’t understand what we are doing. But then I misjudged him, too.”

“He was stealing,” I say.

“What? Of course not!” he shouts, incredulous. “You think he could get away with that? You think I would allow him to cheat me that way?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But the apartment.”

“I didn’t give him any money!” he yells, slamming his glass on the table. “How many times do I have to repeat myself? He worked for me for nothing, the same as you. For nothing , except for what I might show him about our life, what is possible for people like us. I thought this is what he wanted. Was I crazy? I would have given him anything in my power. But he was betraying us, Henry. Betraying everything we were doing. To De Roos, I must think! Reports! You see, there is horror in your face. Think of mine when I found him out. I loved him, Henry, I grieve for him, but he was disloyal, the most terrible thing, a traitor. I left it to Han and his gang. I didn’t know it would happen like that, and with Helda. You are the only one who knows now. You are the world. I am telling you so the world can know. I would bring him back if I could. Bring him back right now. Say the world knows this. Say it knows, Henry, for me.”

I won’t speak for him now, not a breath or a word.

He tells me, “Then you can go to hell.”

He leans over and lifts the girl by her underarms onto the sofa. She speaks, apologizing to him. She says she is very sorry, that he must know she usually works afternoons and is not accustomed to the liquor and then the lateness of the hour. He tells her she does not need his forgiveness. She parts her lips. He strums her hair with the back of his hand until she smiles again. She clutches him around the neck. The size of her hands and wrists makes his head and back look giant. He brushes her cheek. He waits a second, and then he kisses her gently on the mouth. He holds her beneath her thigh. The girl glances up at me. He sees this, but doesn’t move an inch. My presence won’t concern him. I leave his car keys on the arm of the sofa and go out of this place. He believes I am a necessary phantom in his house. I am a lantern to him, constant, unwinking. But I am gone.

I am to meet with Grace and Pete.

I keep making false sightings of them through the day. In one, they appear to me in baby form, wrapped in saris of pearl-hued silk and winged. They hover about the downtown streets of Flushing, spying out usable souls. All the while Pete keeps trying to rub up against Grace when she isn’t looking, but he is an infant and he doesn’t have the equipment yet and ends up just peeing on her leg and her wing. She pats him on the head, kisses his cheek. One way or another, Pete always gets what he wants.

Lelia swears she does not see them. I nod toward the end of the street, across the subway platform. She strains to look, but of course it’s strangers, just another couple combing their way through the city. We move on. There is enough to worry us in the real world, she says. She knows that tonight I will be handing over the member listing of the ggeh , my remaining official duty before I leave them all forever: Hoagland, and Jack, and even John Kwang.

I don’t tell Lelia who is behind the bombing. In another time, if I felt it unavoidable, I would have presented the fact solely to mitigate the ill sweep of my own activities. Perhaps I will tell her in a future day, but presently this is dangerous knowledge, capital material, which can only serve to place her within the reach of hazard, even more than she is now. In exchange for the list and — if necessary — myself as sacrifice, I have already made Jack and Hoagland agree to keep her clear of any action or trouble. In the old narratives that Dennis practices, he might well involve a wife or lover to use against a troublesome operative; but with me he understands that he can forever count on my Confucian upbringing, press it to my brow like a tribal lodestone, a signet of the culture, which he knows can burn deeper than even love or fear.