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"Ki-tae, the famous pastor," Jae says to her. "Can you believe life."
She finds this a surprisingly perfect thing for him to have said. Can you believe life indeed. It captures for her that feeling of having encountered the distant past. She looks again at the speaker's photo and thinks that Ki-tae has aged well, with dignity—all things considered.
But after a moment's solemnity, Jae raps the paper two times and recovers. "What's that thing we used to call him? Was it monkey? Monkey-boy?"
He stoops to pick up some boxes, giving her a sad view of the top of his head. When he straightens up, he is all business.
"Mr. Ro has a guy who's getting him Newports at thirty-eight dollars a box from Delaware. Thirty-eight dollars. What do we pay? Almost forty-five?"
And they're back. The old arguments. The ongoing themes in their long marriage.
"Please," she says, dismissing this with her hand. "Just . . . please." She finds it remarkable that in all the years they've spent together—six-day weeks and fourteen-hour days—they still don't agree on right and wrong. She considers his attitude to be convenient and self-compromising. Trying to get around a tax. Continuing to stock those stoppered glass tubes that hold small paper roses. Everyone knows what those are, really. Get rid of the rose, add a little copper wool, and you've got yourself a crack pipe.
Suddenly, Jae bolts. Soo knows, without looking, that the meter maid is coming. For decades, around this time every morning, the meter maid in her three-wheeled vehicle comes down their street in fits and starts. When he senses her approach, Jae jumps into the Buick parked on the yellow curb, makes a series of left turns on the presidential streets—Washington, Hamilton, Grant—and then parks right back in the no-parking zone in front of the store. His store: his curb. There is no way to make him see things differently.
With Jae gone, Soo returns to the ad.
revival! it reads.
how to live an abundant life!
teaching by reverend hong ki-tae!
She looks more closely at the photo. A gentle, pitted face; silver glasses; white hair. It is in fact a little like a monkey's. Underneath the picture, there is a brief, inspirational bio. Born 1946, grew up in the village of Haengchi under Boduk Mountain, attended Seoul National University, further studies at Fuller Seminary in California. Author of such seminal works as Take This Cup and Out of Suffering Comes. There is no mention of the poor children. No mention of the wife.
In a drawer somewhere, she still has the card she attempted to write when they'd learned the news. It was all over the Korean papers. It was reported that as many as one in seven buildings in Seoul might be compromised. But in the end, she hadn't had the words. She hadn't gotten in touch, and neither, so far as she knew, had Jae. Incredibly, over the years, they had forgotten about it.
And now, the door bangs open. The workday is made up of such interruptions. Seeing Rhonda Jones, who works in the bank up the street, Soo reaches overhead to the cigarette display and locates the pusher shelves for the Marlboros blind. She has the pack on the counter before Rhonda, who has paused to catch her breath, has fully entered the store.
"You know me," says Rhonda, laughing and gasping. Her rayon suit is stained under the armpits, and her teller's name tag pulls down the lapel.
"Smoking is very bad," says Soo in English. "When you go to quit."
"I'm trying. Lord knows, I'm trying." Rhonda sighs deeply as she opens an old-fashioned coin purse and roots for change. After a moment, she gives up trying to find enough quarters and dimes and hands over a twenty that has been folded over and over into a small square.
"Tomorrow," says Rhonda as Soo hands over her change and her cigarettes. "I'm gone quit tomorrow!"
Excerpted from Skinship by Yoon Choi. Copyright © 2021 by Yoon Choi. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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