Jung Yun - Shelter

Kyung would like nothing more than to take a match to the drapes and watch the flames engulf them, erecting violent walls of amber where real ones once stood. Everything in the house is so old; every piece of its ancient frame is wood. It wouldn’t take long for a fire to reduce it all to an expensive pile of ashes.

“So my father and I are the same, I guess.”

“I don’t follow.”

“We both own houses that you can’t sell.”

At first, Gertie appears hurt by his comment, ready to object. But she takes a long sip of tea instead.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to criticize. I understand that my family’s situation is — complicated.”

“Well, at least you have each other, right? You’re all in this together.”

“Yes,” he says, having resolved not to cry in front of Gertie again. “We all have each other.”

Kyung unlocks the door to his office and turns on the lights, bracing himself for the noise and flicker of the fluorescent tubes hanging overhead. One by one, they buzz to life, rendering the walls an unpleasant, tobacco-stained shade of yellow. He assumed things would look different when he returned to work, but his books and papers are exactly where he left them, scattered in their usual disarray across the length of his desk. The only thing that’s changed in his absence is the smell — a musty shut-in odor that reminds him of a warm attic. Kyung opens his window, which overlooks a tree-lined quad of office buildings. The campus below is barely awake. A handful of maintenance men and early-bird secretaries travel the sidewalks, their pace leisurely, not yet hurried by the start of the day.

He deposits his mail on the ledge and turns on his computer, knocking over a row of picture frames like dominoes. The cluttered display of family photographs is Gillian’s doing. When he was first hired at the university, she decided they should decorate his office, insisting in a way that she’d rarely done before. She said she wanted him to feel at home there, and he understood the source of her excitement even though he didn’t feel it himself. None of the men in her family were the office type. He wasn’t about to take that from her, so he let her do what she wanted, organizing the bookshelves and hanging his diplomas with care.

The computer takes longer than usual to boot up, but Kyung doesn’t mind the wait. He’s afraid to see how much got away from him during his absence, the missed meetings and deadlines and requests for recommendation letters from anxious students. Classes ended in mid-May. He’d intended to take a week or two off after commencement, but over a month has passed, and he forgot to set up an auto-reply while he was gone. Now every e-mail will demand an apology or explanation, depending on how serious the delay. Despite not looking forward to this, Kyung dreads the thought of something else even more. He sits down at his desk and rolls his chair toward the aquarium in the corner. The lights in the tank are off, the water black and still. He stares inside, searching for the school of zebra fish. The fish are purely decorative — they have nothing to do with his research — but they’re living, breathing creatures nonetheless. At least they used to be. He expects to find them floating at the top, cocooned in several weeks’ worth of mold, but all twelve are alive and well, zipping from left to right and back again. He gives them a liberal pinch of food, surprised that they managed to survive for so long without it.

“Marcy took the liberty of feeding them while you were away.”

Kyung recognizes the voice before he turns to see his department chair standing in the open doorway.

“Oh. I’ll have to thank her for doing that.”

Although he doesn’t like the idea of Craig’s secretary letting herself into his office, he’s not in a position to complain. His absence has been noted — that much is clear — and he struggles to come up with a reason for it.

“It’s early,” Kyung observes. “You’re here early, I mean.”

Craig walks in and puts his gym bag on the floor. Tucked in the outer pocket is a tennis racket. “My rec league gets together before work. I just played two sets.”

“Did you win?”

He runs his fingers through his damp hair and smiles weakly. “Yes, but not by much.”

At six feet six, Craig is all arms and legs. It’s hard to imagine him playing a sport like tennis, with a racket that extends his reach even farther, but the man is constantly in motion. He walks to work every day, swims laps in the pool during lunch, does hundred-mile bike races on the weekends. At fifty, he probably does more exercise in a week than Kyung does all year.

“It’s getting harder and harder to beat him, though.” Craig opens his bag and takes out a bottle of ibuprofen, swallowing a pair of pills dry. “Don’t tell Steve you saw me taking these. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Kyung doesn’t know which of the many Steves in their acquaintance he’s referring to, but right now he doesn’t care. He just wants a chance to think. In retrospect, he knows he should have handled things differently from the start. He should have called or e-mailed to say he was taking time off to handle something personal. Had he made an effort to do this, his reentry would be so much easier now, but after disappearing for nearly five weeks without so much as a word, he knows he doesn’t deserve easy.

“I honestly didn’t expect to see you here, Kyung.”

“Yes, well…”

He doesn’t know what he’s doing here either. He couldn’t work even if he wanted to. His family left for the Cape earlier this morning. Kyung dreaded the idea of going with them, so much so that he lied — to his parents, to Connie, even to Gillian. He said his department chair called, upset that he hadn’t spent any time in the office all summer. He said he needed to show his face at work and he’d join them on the Cape the following day. What he couldn’t say was the truth — that he didn’t want to sit in a car with all of them, trapped on a drive that might take two hours or six, depending on traffic.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around for so long. I’ve had some personal things going on?” The end of his sentence lifts into a question, as if to test whether such a vague explanation will suffice.

“Kyung, I know what happened. I’m not even sure what to say about it. It’s just … horrible. Unbelievable.”

He blinks for a second. “How?”

The only other chair in his office is covered with books, so Craig takes a seat on the edge of the desk. “You know how this place is.” He looks down at his wrist, at the pale white strip of skin where his watch should be. “Faculty are nothing more than a bunch of gossips. It doesn’t take long for news to travel from the engineering building to this one.”

“I see.”

Jin never mentioned telling anyone in his department. Kyung is surprised that he did. His father should have known how quickly the word would spread, but maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he knew there was no point trying to hide what had happened to him, that some secrets would be too hard to keep.

“So how are your parents doing? How are you?”

“We’re all right, considering.”

“Is there anything you need?”

What he needs is for Craig to leave. The area around his desk is tight enough without someone sitting on top of him like this. He turns on his monitor, hopeful that Craig will take the hint and go away.

“Thanks for asking, but I’m fine. I think I just need to — refocus.”

Craig reaches over and turns off the monitor just as the desktop pattern begins to appear. “Shouldn’t you be with your family right now? Whatever you’re working on can wait.”