Flowers of Mold & Other Stories Read online

  “How about this? If you return the dress, I’ll let you go. But just this time. Next time, I won’t be able to help you out.”

  Her clothes are still hanging in the changing room, just as she’d left them. She changes in the storage room and is about to leave through the back door when she turns and comes back. She sticks something in his pants pocket. It’s the Las Vegas lighter.

  According to his calculation, she should come to the store on the 25th. But a week goes by and she doesn’t appear. In that time, the season has changed, and knitwear has started to invade the store. Before the month is up, every last trace of the gray dress will disappear. The pillar is often reflected on his sunglasses.

  He calls the number on the lighter. A boy who sounds like he’s in the midst of puberty answers. “Are you coming by car?” he asks. When the man says he’ll be coming by subway, the boy says, “Hold on.” He calls out to someone, asking where the man should get off if he’s taking the subway. “The nearest stations are Yongsan and Hannam. But you’ll have to walk for a while. Head toward Itaewon. When you reach the main street, you’ll see a sign.” He then adds, “At the door, ask for me—Fifty Won. You know, like what you’d need for the payphone.”

  Las Vegas. Just as the boy said, the neon sign is easy to spot. It flashes on and off from a high-rise building, attracting attention. Las Vegas spelled out in Korean would blink in orange and disappear, and then the English would blink in purple. The man ends up taking a taxi instead of the subway. He’s too anxious to transfer trains and then walk. Although the neon sign flashes on top of the building, Las Vegas is deep underground. When he grabs the handle as thick as a loaf of bread and pulls open the front door, he sees carpeted stairs leading below. A slow song oozes up the stairs the color of red beans. At the very bottom is a glass door. He pushes it open to find himself in a large ballroom. On a circular stage in the center of the room, men and women embrace each other, swaying gently like mollusks to a 4/4 beat. A mirrored disco ball turns slowly, scattering shards of multicolored light on the floor. All around the room, dancers clad in bikinis dance on platforms, and round tables covered in white linen surround the stage. Instead of getting a table, the man sits at the bar. He doesn’t even know her name. Even her features are a bit vague in his mind. A pale face like that of a wax doll, a mannequin-like figure, pupils as deep as a well. With this description alone, no waiter would be able to find her.

  He is about to raise the small red lamp to signal a waiter when the music ends. The people dancing on the stage return to their seats and the lights dim. A spotlight beams down. Just then, a woman comes on stage, pushing a wagon. It’s her. He recognizes her, despite the thick stage makeup. The people cheer. She’s wearing a bow tie around her bare neck and a silk hat on her head, and a bundle of feathers is attached to the bottom of her sleeveless leotard like the tail of a bird. Each step sends the feathers swishing like a fan and each movement makes the sequins on her costume sparkle and catch against each other. Instead of greeting the crowd, she gets down from the stage and stands in front of a drunk man in the audience. He is chewing on a strip of squid jerky, the end of his necktie tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt. He looks up at the woman with glazed eyes. As soon as her hand brushes against his shoulder, a white dove appears and flutters into the air. People gasp. She walks over to another man with mincing steps and strokes his shoulder. She raises her white-gloved hand and uncurls each finger to release another white dove.

  The water she pours into a page of newspaper folded into a cone disappears and she correctly guesses the card an audience member is holding. The show builds momentum. While she is getting flowers in a pot to blossom, a waiter wheels a silver box the size of a medium fridge to center stage. A human form is outlined on the doors. Each compartment has holes for the head, hands, and feet to fit through. A drum roll sounds. Her eyes skim the crowd. They stop on the man’s face. The bartender mixing drinks behind the bar pushes the bewildered man forward. The people sitting at their tables turn to look at him. Reluctantly, he walks toward the stage. The woman looms closer. The audience’s applause rings in his ears. She looks up at his face and whispers, “Trust me.”

  He steps into the box. The three doors close one by one, and he sticks out his head, hands, and feet, just as she instructs him. She puts a red handkerchief in one of his hands. She turns the box once. He watches her. She faces the audience and brandishes a machete. He has seen this trick before. She turns the blade flat and sticks it in near his chest. As soon as the blade comes in contact with his chest, it shrinks like a spring. Someone whistles. The middle compartment of the box pushes out like a drawer and he is thrust to the edge of the box where he gets squashed in the small space. His body twists into an S shape. But to the audience, his body will seem as if it has separated.

  “Can you wave for us?”

  The man flutters the handkerchief. He wriggles his toes, too. The drawer is returned to its original position and the woman chants the magic word. The compartment doors open and he steps back onto the stage. He is covered in sweat from nervousness. He walks back to the bar, accompanied by applause. Pulling the wagon behind her, she shakes the bundle of feathers on her bottom and disappears backstage. The disco ball begins to spin again and a dance track plays. The stage fills with drunk people once more.

  When he has emptied two bottles of beer, he hears a rasping noise. The woman is wearing a cloak that comes down to her ankles, but the back of her cloak bulges out from the feathered tail on her costume. He now understands the secret behind her fluid hands, like a flower bud opening, as she stole CDs or handkerchiefs from the store.

  “Thank you,” she says, her husky voice drifting out from between small red lips.

  She takes a seat on the stool next to him. When the bartender smiles knowingly and places an empty beer glass before her, she narrows her eyes at him. The man orders another beer and pours it into her glass.

  “You’ve come to my rescue two times now,” she says, sipping her beer. “You see, it looks like I pick a random audience member, but it’s all planned. I only realized after the show started that the person I work with wasn’t there. Can you believe it? He didn’t even call me to let me know he couldn’t make it. That’s when I saw you. My name is Choi Sun-ae, by the way. Here, they call me Luna.”

  Choi Sun-ae, who stands to go back on stage, whispers into his ear. “Not just anyone can become a magician’s assistant. It only works between a father and daughter, brother and sister, or husband and wife. Or lovers.”

  Now, Choi Sun-ae no longer comes to the store. Instead, he goes to Las Vegas. She works twice a week at Las Vegas and twice a week at Fantasia, which is a block from Las Vegas. Every time she switches locations, she loads her equipment into a van. The back of the van, with its seats folded down, contains all kinds of magic props, as well as three white doves inside a birdcage and several sequined costumes with feathered tails. As his visits become more frequent, he naturally becomes her assistant, and when she chooses him from the crowd, he even pretends to look awkward and uncomfortable. Before the show, they practice backstage in the dressing room.

  “There are basically two techniques in magic—deception and sleight of hand.”

  The man steps into a box. Choi Sun-ae shuts the door and puts on a large padlock. When she chants a short magic phrase and opens the door, the box is completely empty. There’s a space beneath the box that’s invisible to the audience. After he goes into the box and the door is shut, he quickly opens the secret trapdoor at the bottom and hides his body in the small space. But because of his size, it’s not easy to shut the trapdoor seamlessly.

  “I’m an only child. Mom was Dad’s partner, but after she died, I naturally took her place. It wasn’t hard. He was a magician before I was born. I grew up playing with his magic props, instead of with toys. Dad spent all his time off stage developing new magic tricks. I’ll show you his secret notes some day. I’ve been performing at clubs since fifth grade. It was fun to
spin plates and do tumbles, but when I entered middle school, it was hard to catch up to all the studying. Of course, I lost interest in books. I barely graduated. If I’d been a boy instead of a girl, what do you think would have happened? Dad wouldn’t have had a partner then.”

  Choi Sun-ae, who has been chattering away, clamps her mouth shut. It’s at times like these her eyes get that deep-as-a-well look, so deep a bucket wouldn’t be able to reach the bottom.

  •

  He and Jeong are standing in the CEO’s office. The office is on the top floor of the Cosmos building. When they had knocked on his door just moments before, they had found the CEO dozing, slumped against the high-backed chair. He sits up straight and sighs.

  “You!” he says, pointing at the man. “How long have you worked here?”

  It would be exactly three years by the end of the year.

  “I guess you start to go through the motions after three years. How about you?” he says, jutting his chin out toward Jeong. Jeong started a month after the man.

  “Yup. Three years is long enough for rust to grow on a rearview mirror.”

  He gets up from his chair and walks over to the window. He gazes down at the Myeongdong streets.

  “There’s a gaping hole in my business because of you two. I don’t think you realize there are plenty of people who’d love to take your place.”

  Jeong and the man write formal apologies. The CEO tries to intimidate them by threatening to cut 20 percent of their paychecks for three months if they don’t shape up. It’s two in the morning when the man gets home after the shows at Las Vegas and Fantasia. So of course he’s fighting to stay awake in the mornings, from the moment he climbs onto his pedestal. Although he has managed to hide his drooping eyes with his sunglasses, his concentration has dropped and all he does is wait for closing time.

  As the man is shutting the door behind him, the CEO calls out in an annoyed voice that if they want to get paid, they should work for it.

  In the bathroom, Jeong and the man chain-smoke.

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m nothing but a rearview mirror.”

  Jeong is venting, but he sounds like he’s ready to crawl into a hole. Jeong is dating Miss Lee, one of the salesgirls.

  “Let’s see who quits first.”

  Jeong stamps out his cigarette on the bathroom floor and gets back onto his platform.

  •

  It was a weekday and because the store had just opened, things were slow. There were about a dozen customers at most. Still, they should have been prepared. The man dozed off and Jeong was chatting with Miss Lee, looking down from his pedestal. Right then, the CEO, who had come downstairs to inspect the store, saw a girl in a large trench coat. They should have known as soon as they saw the trench coat—it was autumn, but the temperature got as high as 25 degrees Celsius at noon—but he noticed her only when the CEO grabbed her wrist with both hands as she tried to escape, crying, “Shoplifter! Shoplifter!”

  When they took off her trench coat, objects spilled out onto the floor. How could so many things fit inside a coat? The man was amazed. Four CDs, a small purse, two pairs of jeans, a pair of dress shoes, a belt, a box of days-of-the-week panties. The CEO yelled at him and Jeong, asking what the hell they had been doing while she was cleaning him out. Her parents came in. She was in her last year of high school and was planning to take the university entrance exam very soon. On the verge of tears, they claimed she had stolen from the stress of studying. The CEO demanded she be reported to the police or they pay fifty times the total amount she stole. They chose to pay. The paycheck the man received at closing time was 20 percent less than usual.

  •

  The shutters are lowered over the entrance and display windows. The whitish heads of the mannequins seem to be floating in the dark. He and Choi Sun-ae park the van in the lot across the street and take the long way to the store. It’s 2:10 A.M. when they get to Myeongdong after the last show at Fantasia. They pass a few drunk people on the way from Euljiro 1-ga Station to Myeongdong Station. The wind carries smells of urine and vomit from the alleyway. If there is anyone around, Choi Sun-ae will signal him by whistling. He can find the keyhole for the shutter with his eyes closed, since he and Jeong take turns opening and closing the store.

  He unlocks the shutter in one try and flips open the alarm cover. He punches in the security code and disables the alarm. He lets Choi Sun-ae in and then follows her, closing the shutter behind them. It gets darker the deeper they walk into the store where the security lights don’t shine. He fumbles in the dark. The dust that has settled on the floor rises and tickles his nostrils. His hands keep bumping into clothes hangers and he almost trips and knocks over a CD stand. They have to come and go without leaving a trace.

  “It’s okay, I’ll do it,” she says.

  Choi Sun-ae takes the lead. She stands in front of the pillar. She feels for the rack below and pulls something out. He stands between the mannequins and keeps watch. Choi Sun-ae picks up hairpins, a broach, and a dozen pencils as she walks toward the doors. Objects disappear inside her cloak. She stoops and goes out into the street. The man, about to follow her out, casts one last look at the mannequins. Sorry, I’m off. He reactivates the alarm, lowers the shutter, and locks it.

  Choi Sun-ae has taken the dress she has admired for so long. Spreading it across her knees, she smiles like a child. She pulls out small objects from her cloak and lays them on the van floor. She is triumphant, as if they were precious booty she had won.

  “They won’t notice a thing. And even if they did, who cares? I took just as much as they took off your paycheck.”

  They sit in the back of the van and eat instant noodles. In an hour, the sun will come up.

  •

  As the squid jerky became stale, it took on the smell of the ink from the bag, but Choi Sun-ae chews happily on a strip. Her face reveals both the artlessness of Choi Sun-ae and the dazzle of Luna.

  “Luna is the goddess of the moon. The first time I went on stage with my dad, the owner of the club gave me the name. But it was only much later I found out who she really was. A college student who’d been watching my show came backstage to see me. He told me Luna loved a shepherd and she put him to eternal sleep so that he’d never leave her. Luna has another name, but I forget it now. I think she and I are alike. I mean, can’t you tell by my obsession with this dress?”

  Choi Sun-ae is wearing the gray dress. The pleated skirt looks good on her narrow hips. After watching the scenery and prattling for some time, she sleeps, nestled up against her chair. They should arrive in Busan in about forty minutes. He wants to be awake when they cross the city border.

  Choi Sun-ae has found work at the nightclub of a new hotel in Busan.

  “The hotel’s called the Mirabeau. I made my decision as soon as I heard it. The Mirabeau—doesn’t it sound great?”

  She’s excited. Now, he will become her official partner. Her magic props will get shipped once they find a permanent address.

  Rain starts to fall. It quickly becomes dark. The cars turn on their headlights. The bus driver pumps the brake pedal a few times and slows down. He glances at the rearview mirror and proceeds to change lanes. But the cars in the next lane honk and cling to the side of the bus like insects. The bus swerves. It tilts a little to the left and the tires skid. Would our kids play with magic props, too, instead of toys?

  He looks toward the front windshield where the wipers are sweeping away the rain. Above the windshield hangs a small picture of a young curly-haired girl on her knees, praying, with the words Please keep them safe … It’s something many drivers put up in their buses. Suddenly, the man’s body is hurled to one side, and the image of the girl whirls through the air. The scenery outside the window stretches like taffy and the marsh below the embankment surges up. He is tossed in the air like laundry in a washer.

  He opens his eyes as if in a dream. Blood is trickling down his cheek from his eye. The seats hang overhead. Those in seatbelts are
upside down, still strapped to their seats with their arms and legs dangling limply. The bus has flipped over. The man’s right foot is caught in a vent. Frantically, he looks around for Choi Sun-ae. It’s impossible to see out through the big crack on the front windshield. Moans come from all over the bus. He turns his head and notices the large rearview mirror on the side of the bus. It’s bent, and there are cracks spread across it like a spider’s web, but in it he can see the inside of the bus: the shattered windows, heaps of broken glass, curtains fluttering upside down in the wind, the crumpled seats dangling precariously as if they could drop any second, the bloodstained seat covers stamped with the words SAMCHEONRI TOURS, and arms and legs, as motionless as mannequin limbs.

  He also spots Choi Sun-ae’s gray skirt in the cracked mirror. He tries to free his foot, but it doesn’t budge. He wipes away the blood that’s flowing into his eye and looks at the rearview mirror again. He can’t see her face, but it’s definitely her. The gray skirt is flipped up and her legs are draped over the back of a seat. His gaze travels up her legs and stops at her crotch. There, unlike the rest of her slender frame, which has virtually no body fat, is a distinct lump. A lump of flesh that can’t be hidden with tight underwear—the unmistakable bulge of male genitals. Suddenly, there’s a splintering noise and the seat hanging over him smashes down on his head. Everything goes dark.

  He comes to on a metal cot in a white, eight-bed hospital room. His nerves responded to the needle the nurse stuck him with, and he woke up with a yelp. Vials in a stainless steel container rattle as they’re wheeled away. He sees the freshly painted white ceiling and yellow fluid dripping from a plastic bottle. A tube snakes from the bottle to his left arm, held in place with tape. His leg, in a cast up to his thigh, hangs suspended in the air.