Issue 22 - 1992

Coe Review • Issue 22
swimming away from the attachment like a slippery fish. Jenny
laughed and laughed whenever the sun came out, whether it was the
sun in the sky or the less reliable sun in my blue-steel eyes, for, as
her cousin Alice explained to me, there are many different suns; as
evidence, Alice cited the tale of the great Korean poet who got drunk
in front of His Majesty and composed the following lines: “I see
three moons: One in the sky, one in your eye, and one in your cup.”
- When Alice stayed over, Jenny and Alice slept together in Jenny’s
waterbed and I slept on the living room couch, because although
Alice knew that Jenny and I usually shared Jenny’s bed, Alice had
not actually seen evidence that we did; if she had, she would have
had to tell her mother, even though she loved Jenny and knew that
Jenny would suffer when Alice’s mother (who was so conscientious
as to place folded tissue paper inside the family’s shoes to keep them
from accumulating dust overnight), was obliged by reason of that
conscientiousness to call Jenny’s mother on the phone; in the
meantime Jenny and Alice and Alice’s friend Ivy went out with me
to a Korean restaurant on Geary Street; while I sat at a corner of the
table stirring the raw egg and raw beef around in my cold metal bowl
of Yuck Hwe Bi Bim Bop, the others laughed and talked in Korean
and conducted symphonies with their chopsticks, turning hunks of
marinated chicken and beef and tripe on the little grille which the
unsmiling waitress had placed in the center of the table, and the meat
sizzled and the yellow flames shot up and warmed our faces; and
every now and then Jenny would take a wet lettuce leaf and shake it
down onto the grille to discipline the flames. - “Ooh!” she cried
gleefully, holding up another chunk of smoking meat. “Intestines!”
The Korean girls all had tiny mouths and smooth taut faces.
When Jenny smiled, her face was like a wide golden shield. They
talked about movies which they had seen. “It was such a comedy,”
laughed Alice. “I couldn’t believe it.” - “I heard it was really bad,”
said lvy. - “I just liked the title music,” said Alice. - They talked
about Jenny’s brother Richard, mostly in Korean so that I did not
obtain a lengthy catalogue of his imputed qualities, but the way the
Korean girls sighed through pursed lips made it clear that Richard
had lapsed into error, and from the occasional English phrases which
were thrown to me in afterthought I gradually came to understand
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