“Have you heard of a bar called Seven Stars?” The question comes out abruptly. Useless—the man will tell her nothing more.
“Never heard of it.”
“And the Korean Killers? The gang that broke up almost ten years ago?”
“Like I said, I’m not like your parents,” he mumbles, avoiding her gaze. Yet, from the way his face tenses for a second, it is obvious that he is holding back something.
“No, of course not, you weren’t shot in cold blood.” She cannot help saying it, although she quickly regrets it, remembering his wife buried in Montauk.
“You think it was me who sent the KK to kill your parents?” he retorts sharply. “I don’t have that kind of money, and even if I had, I’m too old to get involved with a gang.”
So he is aware of the KK’s arrest. Who would have told him? Mr. Lee? Mr. Lim? Someone else? What was it that the mysterious caller had said?
They do not kill your parents… They watch you.
Was there more than one person behind it all? Was there a group of them who had hired the gang? Who are they?
“Is that what you told them? When they came to you?” She is jumping the gun. But there is no other way. Nothing to lose.
“I told them it was a foolish idea,” he says wearily. “I told them they shouldn’t get the gang involved.”
So it is true. There was more than one. Many who’d been wronged by her parents, who might have plotted the murder together.
“Your parents had both the INS and the police behind them. They were basically invincible. Each time someone got deported, someone’s store got shut down, someone’s life savings got stolen, all anyone could do was just look on and hope that it wouldn’t happen to him next. Your parents left them no choice,” he says, staring vacantly at nowhere particular, as though he has reached the end of his defense. “Except the gang wasn’t supposed to kill…”
Maybe they didn’t. Maybe her parents were already dead by the time the KK arrived at the scene, just as the gang claimed.
“That’s as much as I know,” he says, stubbing out the cigarette. “I can’t give you their names. I won’t do that. Besides, I don’t know exactly who was involved. All I know is that some of them got together to come up with ways to stop your parents. The KK must’ve been their only option. You can get the police to question me if you want, but my answer won’t change. The police, the INS—they got all they could out of your parents anyway. They went after so many Korean stores for whatever violation they managed to squeeze from your parents. It’s all politics, white politics. The police will only be glad to wrap up the case now. How perfect that it should be the pack of Korean grocers getting rid of their snitch, who’d gotten past their usefulness! Koreans killing each other, it only proves their theory that immigrants are parasites.” Then he fixes her a long gaze and adds, “Whoever killed your parents were victims. They were desperate, even more desperate than me.”
So the end of the story.
So that’s how her parents came to their end, she tells herself. A bunch of Korean grocers who’d hired the three ex—KK members to threaten her parents, except their plan didn’t go as intended: the shots were fired inadvertently, such shots, such final shots. Except she is feeling no relief.
Nothing remains except for the smoke, thicker than the night. The air is hot, moist, stale. The rain outside, she can hear its knocking. Its relentless knocking. She wants to say something, anything that will ease the pain, for him, for herself. But there are no words. Instead, she glances at the photo once more. The unchanging face of the middle-aged woman who never had a child, who breathed her last breath somewhere in Montauk, whose cry still fills this room after thirteen years.
Suzy finally rises. She is afraid, suddenly terribly afraid of stepping outside.
“Take this,” he says, holding out an umbrella.
His loneliness is permanent, she realizes. That must be why she noticed him over a week ago at McDonald’s. Recognition among the same kind.
Avoiding his gaze, she says hesitantly, “When my sister came to you… how much did she know about our parents?”
He contemplates her for a while before saying, “Your sister—I’d never seen a young woman so haunted by grief.” Then he asks quietly, “Who do you think interpreted for your parents all those times with the INS?”
20.
FIRST IS THE HEAT. The unshakable heat inside her bones. The darkness is there as well. Then the wetness. The soaked sheets. The body curling into itself. The eyes are shut. The mouth is so stiff that she must be dying of thirst. Where’s the water? Is anyone there? Will anyone find her? Will anyone know if she disappears? The last thought frightens her. It is not death that makes her squirm, but a death with no witness, a death with no explanation.
Before her are the rolling hills. Each one appears so smooth that she wants to reach out and brush her fingers across its surface. She imagines plunging her body between the folds. She thinks if only she could get there she wouldn’t come back. She keeps wiggling her arms and feet. But the hills are far away, and she cannot reach them. Her body seems to be stuck to a gigantic futon, mixed in sticky breath. She tries to open her eyes, but the weight is impossible, as though a giant thumb is pressing on her eyelids. It is unclear how long she’s been lying here. Hours, even days.
Between the hills emerges a face. An exquisite face behind a chunk of hair. The eyes seem familiar, such sad eyes, they bring tears to her own. The lips are painted in red, so opulent that it hurts to look at them. The fingers between the strands are painfully delicate; she wants to gather them in her palms and kiss each fingertip. Such a luminous face that there must be night surrounding it.
What remains is the heat that will not let go. What remains is the girl who will not lie still. The girl who remembers nothing.
Four rings.
The phone’s been ringing all night.
On the wooden floor, next to the futon, are several banana peels and an empty bottle of water. Someone must have carried her up the stairs. Someone must have found the key in her coat pocket. Someone must have laid her feverish body on the futon. Someone must have put the hot towel on her forehead and watched her fall asleep before slipping out the door. Bananas and water. Enough to keep her afloat for days. Bananas; she has no recollection of chewing through their yellow meat.
Who was it?
Damian?
Grace?
It’s been days, she is sure of it. A flood of sunlight poured in through the cracks between the blinds, only to slide away several hours later. A clock radio clanged with the familiar 1010-WINS chime. Doors have slammed at consistent intervals, as though the neighbors leave for work at the same time only to return exactly eight hours later. Cats meowed just around midnight, serenading the moon. Even in her deepest exhaustion, she was surprised that such things signaled the passing of time with an astounding accuracy.
But the heat is insufferable.
Now comes another face. The same black hair. The same heartbreaking eyes. The same pursed lips, across which a finger makes a cross to say hush. Now two where there was one. Two identical faces floating parallel. It is not clear which one was first. Upon a closer look, they no longer seem identical. A slight incongruence, although it is impossible to pinpoint what. She thinks she recognizes the one on the left. She is almost certain that one of them is her own, but which? She keeps turning from one to the other. What could be more terrifying than failing to identify one’s own face?