Flowers of Mold & Other Stories Read online

  “I did nothing wrong. He was the one who gave them to me. I’ll go to the police in the morning. Would they believe it was self-defense? But how would they know that? Should we go to the highway then? Accidents happen there all the time. No, no, maybe it’s better if we just leave him here. Who would notice he’s missing anyway?”

  Her parents grew short of breath, trying to keep up with her. The dew moistened their pants. Finally, the girl stopped before a tree. She dropped to her knees and dug at a pile of leaves. But there was nothing.

  “That’s strange! Maybe this isn’t the right tree. Oh, it’s that one! It’s that tree over there!”

  She ran to the next tree and dug up the leaves. But this time again, there was nothing.

  “Did you mark the spot?” her father asked.

  She grabbed the shovel from him. “I didn’t need to. I know this place!”

  She darted to another tree and dug at the base. But the man wasn’t there either. The father pulled her to her feet and shook her by the shoulders.

  “You can’t go digging up every tree for six acres!”

  “But I buried him under a tree that’s already been picked!” she cried.

  He clamped his hand over her mouth. Slippery with sweat, his hand reeked of metal. He hissed, “More than seven hundred trees have been picked so far! When the sun comes up, that number will only grow!”

  She screamed. But the noise stayed trapped against his palm.

  The sky was brightening. Soon the workers would wake. He exchanged a look with his wife, who stood behind the girl.

  Her mother pointed at the empty hole and said anxiously, “Look, dear! This is all a nightmare, just a nightmare. So wake up now, please, won’t you wake up?

  The Retreat

  The drunken words spewed by a regular of Good Chicken were to blame. The meeting was supposed to take place at the Hanbit Academy of Mental Calculation at exactly seven o’clock. The academy director wrote the words Taegwang Tenants Emergency Meeting on the chalkboard and waited. It was twenty past seven, but still no one came. He walked toward the back of the classroom and surveyed his handiwork. What hadn’t been apparent close-up was now obvious. The words slanted down from the second syllable, so that the last word ended up a handspan below. Even his sense of balance broke down as he grew old. When he was young, he used to hold two pieces of chalk between his fingers and drag them across the board, drawing double lines so straight as if they’d been done with a ruler. He still felt like a seventeen-year-old, who could run a 100-meter dash in thirteen seconds. He scolded himself for longing for his youth. There was still so much left to do.

  He went back to the chalkboard and erased everything except for the first syllable. He tried again, his tongue poking out. He was making the last stroke when the door banged open, startling him. The shuffle of flip-flops approached. His writing turned crooked once more.

  “Someone stole another tambourine. It’s the fifth one already. What would anyone want with a tambourine?”

  It was the girl from Billboard Karaoke on the basement level.

  The director carefully erased the final stroke and made another attempt. Then he stood at the lectern and looked at the girl’s exposed feet.

  “You’re late. You probably think you’ve got all the time in the world, but time doesn’t wait for you. Don’t have regrets when you’re old like me. Live each day like it’s your last.”

  She stared blankly at him from her seat and slapped her flip-flop against a bare heel.

  Right then, Ms. Jang from Good Chicken dashed in, bringing with her the smell of fried food. She looked around the classroom. “They’re not here yet? Don’t they know what time it is?”

  She had donned a plastic apron on top of her sheer fuchsia dress. The apron was splattered with grease and batter, and had faded so much it was difficult to tell what color it had once been.

  “Ah, sorry! Game just ended,” said Mr. Jeong as he rushed in, still wearing arm sleeves and his fingertips stained with chalk. “If you win twice, you’ve got to lose one. It’s the only way they’ll back off.”

  Mr. Jeong was the owner of Pintos Billiards on the second floor. His eyes were bloodshot from calculating hourly rates and watching cue balls bounce around the table all day.

  Mrs. Park complained as she climbed the stairs. “I’ve got to drag myself up here like this, because they couldn’t wait two days until the retreat? Am I the only one with a million things to do?”

  Her grumbling was punctuated by pauses. The weight she had put on suddenly made climbing the stairs difficult. When she finally reached the third floor, she hung onto the academy door, catching her breath.

  By the time the master of Goguryeo Taekwondo School jogged down from the fourth floor in his white uniform and indoor shoes, it was already 7:40.

  At this hour, the academy was the only place they could gather. The child-size desks and chairs, arranged neatly facing the chalkboard until the adults had sat in them, were now askew. They stared at the academy director, who stood at the chalkboard with a stick of white chalk in his hand, and fidgeted to find more comfortable positions. The annual team-building retreat was the only time all the tenants came together, since each one had different business hours. They began to talk about the actual reason for their emergency meeting.

  Just past midnight the day before, a man had stepped into Good Chicken. Ms. Jang, who had been frying chicken, heard the door open and poked her head out of the kitchen. He glanced about with bleary eyes and stood swaying in the same spot. His dress shirt had come untucked from his pants and was wrinkled, like a crumpled sheet of paper. She quickly removed her apron and ushered him to table #2.

  “Oh, you’ve had a lot to drink.”

  She was used to drunk customers. They could be as aggressive as wild dogs, or as meek as babies. Good Chicken was a last stop for many, a place they dropped by for a nightcap after drinking all evening. At partitioned tables, men chugged beer, sitting slouched back in their seats.

  The man ordered a half chicken with spicy marinade and a pint of beer, but Ms. Jang chopped up a whole chicken instead, dredging the pieces in flour and then dropping them in the pressure fryer. The chicken crackled as it hit the hot oil. While she fried chicken and poured beer, hands waved above the partitions to get her attention. She rushed here and there, serving more beer and pickled radish, and had her arm clutched by many. Sitting down next to the man, she tore the chicken into bite-size pieces and shoved them in his mouth. Most fell under his chair. The wooden floor was littered with cubed radish and coleslaw the other customers had dropped. The bits of food gleamed in the red light.

  Mrs. Park from the skewer shop interrupted Ms. Jang. “Hey, we don’t have all day! My skewers are about to turn to coal. Plus, how can you believe the words of a drunk?”

  She stuck her index finger in her hair and scratched her scalp. Dandruff flaked out instantly. The academy director wrote the word credibility on the chalkboard.

  “You think all drunk customers are the same?” Ms. Jang said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I guess the men who go to your shop are full of hogwash.”

  Mrs. Park jumped to her feet, sending her seat crashing behind her. “Oh, you can bet our customers aren’t the same! Just like how you and I aren’t the same, even though we both sell liquor. I don’t powder my face like a ghost and play around with drunks for some measly change. I sell food and drink, I don’t entertain men!”

  Ms. Jang glared at Mrs. Park. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re jealous!”

  Mr. Jeong from the pool hall, who had been sitting between the two women, intervened. “Now what’s that got to do with why we’re all here? Let’s hear what happened.”

  Once again the seat buried itself in Mrs. Park’s fleshy rear end. The academy director underlined credibility and said, “Ms. Jang, please try to give a brief summary of what happened. Your customers will be coming soon.”

  Ms. Jang covered her mouth and laughed. “A brief sum
mary? Oh, I don’t know how to do that, but I’ll try. Now where was I?”

  “He dropped some chicken on the floor,” Mr. Jeong said quickly.

  The man drank beer, his mouth full of chicken. Pieces fell in his glass and floated in the foam. Ms. Jang attached herself to his side and said, “If you don’t like chicken, I can get you something else. How about some fruit I bought this morning?”

  The man grew almost cross-eyed. “I’m not drunk. You want to hear a secret?”

  Clasping her face with both hands, he pulled her toward him until her face was inches from his own. The smell of chicken, beer, and tooth decay hit her.

  “This is a secret. You can’t tell anyone. Ms. Jang, you know I love you, don’t you? This building’s going to change hands soon. You know the amusement park nearby? That owner’s buying this place. Then he’s going to knock this whole thing down and build studio apartments.”

  Ms. Jang stopped talking. Everyone, including the director, was quiet.

  “Maybe it’s just a rumor,” Mr. Jeong said, rubbing his chalk-covered fingers together. His fingertips were peeling from psoriasis.

  “I thought so, too, at first. I assumed he was just drunk. But he didn’t forget to take any of his change. Trust me, a drunk person never does that. I even called him this morning to make sure, and was he shocked! He denied everything. If he hadn’t been telling the truth, there would be no reason for him to act that way.”

  “That’s right,” Mr. Jeong chimed in. “Most of the time, men just pretend to be drunk so they can cop a feel.”

  The chalkboard was crowded with the words boiled down from Ms. Jang’s account: amusement park, change hands, new construction, studio apartments.

  The taekwondo master, who, despite his small size, was nicknamed Arnold Schwarzenegger because of his muscular body, finally spoke up. “I’m c-c-completely opposed.”

  His slight stammer lent his words weight. The director wrote in large letters, pressing the chalk hard against the board: completely opposed. It was something he did whenever he stressed important information to his students. Bits of crushed chalk clung to the letters.

  “Then who’ll talk to the owner on our behalf?”

  Everyone looked at the director. He drew his lips into a thin line.

  “I guess it would be best to speak to him at the retreat?” asked Ms. Jang. “He’ll be in a better mood after a few drinks.”

  Everyone agreed. They dispersed one by one. The director straightened the desks again, but because he was upset, they kept going crooked. Even the writing on the chalkboard slanted down and was no different from his first attempt. The slanted writing bothered him.

  Mrs. Park hurried down the stairs after Ms. Jang. “Now that I’ve had a good look while it’s still light out, you’re definitely no spring chicken! Thirty-four? Yeah, right! How old are you really?”

  Ms. Jang whipped around and glared at Mrs. Park, who stood several steps above her, dressed in baggy pants. They were the sort with an elastic waistband, but it was buried deep in the folds of her flesh.

  “You got something against me? You better watch it!” Ms. Jang cried.

  “Don’t get all riled up now! All your wrinkles are showing!” yelled Mrs. Park, hitching up her pants.

  “Mind your own business,” Ms. Jang snapped, continuing down the stairs. “I heard you buy cheap gingko nuts from China and pass them off as local. And don’t you use expired chicken gizzards?”

  Mrs. Park barreled down the stairs and grabbed Ms. Jang by the hair. “How the hell would you know? Did you see me? Did you see me do it?”

  Ms. Jang shrieked, stumbling, as she was yanked this way and that. She reached back and scratched the older woman in the face and chest. Mr. Jeong and Arnold ran down the stairs to break up the fight. Mrs. Park tried to fight off the men, so that she could go after the younger woman, who fled down the stairs.

  Mrs. Park stood in front of her skewer shop, which still reeked of varnish. Displayed in the front window were all sorts of skewers. These plastic replicas looked a lot fresher and tastier than the real thing. The renovation had been completed two weeks ago. Bright fluorescent lights had replaced dim tinted lights, and some of the tightly packed tables had been removed to create more space. She had even put in a bar where the grill would be prominently displayed.

  Two years before, she had blindly trusted a newspaper ad about a skewer business being lucrative, and had opened a shop using the insurance settlement she had received from her husband’s death. But within a few days of opening, she realized she was late in the game. There were over fifty skewer franchises in the country alone. Skewer businesses had once been hot, but were fading fast. All the shops looked the same with their wooden interiors and seating so cramped one’s knees touched those of the person opposite. Even the menus were the same. Her franchisor also proved to be unstable. One day, the refrigerated truck that delivered supplies and key ingredients simply stopped coming. She called the headquarters, but the number was no longer in service. She couldn’t get her deposit back. For several months she had no customers and just shelled out money for rent. Her oldest was in the ninth grade and the youngest in the sixth grade. She used all her savings to renovate the shop. She changed the interior and expanded the menu, developing a marinade from ketchup and chili pepper paste to suit the tastes of young people, even children. During the day, before the evening customers came, she opened a small window on one side of the front display, and sold skewers off a grill to passing children and housewives. Business was just about to pick up.

  She stood outside her shop, looking up at her sign. She was on her feet every day, grilling skewers from ten in the morning to midnight. As they cooked, the marinade burned and stung her eyes. Her eyes were always bloodshot, and her face lost its suppleness from being exposed to smoke all day, like a piece of sausage hanging in a smokehouse. The scratches on her face and chest prickled. Though she had been the one to pick the fight with Ms. Jang, rage still boiled in the pit of her stomach. Just then, she remembered the skewers she had left on the grill. The pieces of chicken were like lumps of coal, scorched beyond recognition.

  Ms. Jang ran a brush through her disheveled hair and discovered a fistful of hair had come out on the brush.

  Don’t let anyone look down on you. Don’t show a single tear.

  She was never the first to pick a fight, but if someone did, she didn’t lose. It didn’t matter if it was Mrs. Park or Mr. Kwak, the building owner. She’s even grabbed drunks by the collar and forced them to settle the bill. Except for the fake tears she sometimes shed before men, she couldn’t remember the last time she had genuinely cried. She opened her compact and coated her puff with powder. She looked in the mirror at the crow’s feet around her eyes, like the cracks in a dried-up field. She pressed hard at the lines with her puff.

  She felt most at ease here. Inside her dim fried chicken joint, she was forever thirty-four. To block out the sun, she had covered the window looking out onto the street with a tinted plastic sheet. There were no other windows. When the chicken was done cooking, the pressure fryer expelled steam through the outside exhaust vent. Two fans installed in the walls were always running, removing the stale smell of cigarette smoke, vinegar, and grease. The blades were sticky with grease, covered with a thick layer of dust, like iron filings on magnets. She closed up at two in the morning each night, went home, and slept until noon. She needed to shampoo her greasy hair at least twice. Her skin was pasty, since she had started wearing too much makeup from an early age. As she grew older, her makeup grew thicker. She headed to the shop by five to meet the truck that delivered raw chicken, flour mix, and marinade. To save on employee costs, she didn’t provide take-out or delivery services. After donning her apron, the first thing she did was to make the batter and skim all the burned bits from the oil. Used oil tended to foam. She swept the floor and sometimes burned mugwort to freshen the air. It was time for the customers to start coming in. She pinned back her hair and put on her apr
on. The middle of the thick slab of tree trunk, which she used as a cutting board, was sunken in from the years of chopping. Nibbling her lower lip, Ms. Jang swung her cleaver and chopped the chicken into pieces, as if she were attacking it.

  The director sat hunched at a desk in the classroom and ate the food his wife had packed for him. It was so bland it almost tasted bitter. But if he didn’t stick to his diet, his blood sugar level increased right away. It was at a previous Taegwang team-building retreat that he’d discovered he had diabetes. There had been a long line of people waiting in front of the portable toilet, so he had gone searching for a private spot down the hill. Ants had swarmed toward his glucose-saturated urine.

  That evening he had a late dinner because of the emergency meeting. His wife packed him both lunch and dinner, since he always had a lot of things to do, even after the other teachers had gone home. He swallowed the rest of his food.

  Kwak, the owner of Taegwang Building, was a vigorous, healthy man in his mid-thirties. Though it was not yet nine in the evening, he was already drunk. He weaved his car through back alleys in order to avoid roadside checks. Only when he had parked in the small lot behind Taegwang Building was he able to relax. Drowsiness suddenly swept over him. He turned off the engine and climbed out of his black BMW. The back of the building was more run-down than the front. Muggy, foul-smelling steam blasted from the exhaust vent of Good Chicken and wrapped around his legs. The garbage bags piled on one side of the lot gave off a terrible stench. Kwak walked to the front of the building and stood before the main entrance. Two men slipped into Good Chicken. The red interior light shone through the tear in the plastic sheet covering the window. Though it was dark, he could see the chipped and missing tiles on the outer wall. The letters that had spelled Taegwang Building had fallen off with the exception of one, which barely hung on. During the day, the sign was still visible by the dust that used to outline the letters.