The Catcher in the Lye -- Chapter Two

2


I didn't end up staying at that school for very long -- a fact which I'm sure doesn't surprise anyone who knows me very well. It's not as though the kids were a pain in the ass or anything (I love kids, even though from my experience Korean children tend to have a strange fixation for sticking their fingers in the bums of their elders), or that I couldn't handle the workload; it was mostly because of my boss, Mr. Seo.

Old Mr. Seo was a real phony. Not the phoniest guy I've met, but he sure as hell is near the top of the list. With some guys, it takes you a while to realize just how much of a bastard they are; with Mr. Seo, it took me about 3 seconds. I know you're not supposed to stereotype people before you've even had a chance to talk with them or walk a mile in their shoes, but I've found that your first instinct in this case is usually correct. If some guy looks like a phony, chances are he is a phony; if he looks like a someone who plants boogers on the bottom of sofas and hotel beds, chances are he does. You can pretty much know what kind of a person you're dealing with upon first meeting them, you really can. Sure, sometimes your predictions will turn out to be incorrect. This one time, for example, I was at the public library and this twenty-something kid was sitting across from me. He had really greasy hair, like he washed it with Vitalis or something, and he wore a puke green army surplus jacket. I was reading about the Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs (I'm not bloodthirsty or anything, but I think any culture that can't even invent the wheel sort of deserves to be conquested). Anyway, when this kid gets up to leave, I notice that my day planner is missing from the table. I turn around and see the kid leaving, and get this, he's carrying what appears to be my day planner! I immediately got up, chased him out into the street and accosted him, but it turned out the kid was a divinity student, and the black book with a zipper he was carrying wasn't my day planner at all, but rather his leather-bound bible. I apologized for my mistake; but here's the kicker, see: this kid, who is supposed to be all holy and what have you, he actually scoffed at me and walked off. So he wasn't a thief (at least I don't think he was, though I never did find that day planner), but he wasn't exactly the pope, either. Like I said, your intuition about a person isn't always on the mark, and sometimes you misjudge. But those occasions are the exception that proves the rule, and even then you're half right in your assumption anyway. That's what I believe, at least.

About old Mr. Seo, what first clued me in that he was a grade-A sonuvabitch was this big black mole he has right under his nose. It actually touches the outside of his right nostril, if you can believe it. I know what you're probably thinking, "well, he can hardly be blamed for being born with a goddam mole that happens to be under his nose and touching his right nostril," but you'd be surprised how often guys like that turn out to be real jerks. It's as though they think the fact they were born with some hideous birthmark or have some grotesque scar gives them the right to be a jerk. If you don't believe me, next time you come face to face with someone like I described, just watch and see how unfriendly they turn out to be.

It wasn't only old Seo's mole, though. Not by a long shot. He had a real condescending look, and would hardly ever look you in the eye when you were speaking to him, or vice-versa. Boy, that gets annoying pretty quick, let me tell you. Plus, he never smiled, not even on my first day at the school -- which would also turn out to be my last day at the school. Pretty ironical when you think about it.

There are a bunch of other things, too, which I'll get to shortly. But first I should probably explain what happened after Mr. Kim (the name of the young guy who picked me up from the airport; he told me to call him by his first name, but it was too hard to pronounce, and I no longer remember what it was, so I'll just keep calling him Mr. Kim, if you don't mind, even though it might confuse you a
little later on) and I reached Seoul.

We arrived at my apartment after what seemed like a decade, then Mr. Kim took my bags in and asked me if I wanted to get something to eat. I hadn't even had a chance to see the place in which I was supposed to live for the next year. Was he purposefully hiding something from me? Again, when you get feelings of that nature, you're very rarely incorrect. I wasn't very hungry; Maybe a little, but what I wanted to do was lie down and take a nice, long nap, to tell you the truth; but the guy looked as though he'd practically drop dead from despair if I said no, so I told him that was fine.

Boy was that a mistake. I mentioned before that I'm not a very picky eater, but even I have my limits. Mr. Kim took me to a restaurant down the block that was no bigger than the coin-operated lockers they have at Union Square. My knees wouldn't even fit under the goddam table. Boy, did I feel out of place. It didn't help that the old lady who ran the joint wouldn't stop staring at me, either. That gets old pretty quick, let me tell you.

Mr. Kim asked me what it was I wanted to eat, and since I guessed pretty quickly that
the place didn't serve corned beef sandwiches or potato salad, I told him anything was fine and asked him to order for us both.

He did, and after the lady scuttled to the back to prepare our meal -- all the while taking the occasional glance at me over her shoulder, the sly old fox -- Mr. Kim and I sat in an uncomfortable silence for what seemed like the space between the vernal and autumnal equinox. Then he asked me if I would like a cigarette.

"I quit 35 years ago," I said.

"You were smoking when you were eight years old?" He looked at me increduously.

"Look," I said, beginning to lose my patience. At my age, it doesn't take much. "I am not 43 years old. I don't know who told you that, but they were lying. I'm 70. I have an ulcer and have had open heart surgery. Twice. Really, does this look like the face of a 43-year-old?"

In retrospect, I probably should have kept quiet, but I'm mistaken for a younger age a lot more often than you might think, and it's started to bother me quite a bit in recent years. It was sort of flattering when I was in my mid-fifties, but the novelty wears thin pretty quick, if you can believe it.

Luckily, Old Mr. Kim just smiled and went about lighting his cigarette (which, I should point out, he didn't even bother to ask if I minded). I was starting to get a little bored (and sleepy), despite my increasing stomach rumblings, so to amuse myself what I did was, I hooked my thumbs into the belt loops of my khakis, tilted my chair slightly and leaned back all cool, like the Marlboro Man (or one of the bastards in the CBS western D.B. used to write for -- I think it was called Wanted: Dead or Alive and starred Steve McQueen, who I guess was captured as the former rather than the latter, the only reason I know that being it was a clue I once had a hell of a time with in a crossword puzzle, until Phoebe helped me out). Then I began staring at Mr. Kim all cock-eyed, like I was going to pull out my six shooter and kill him dead on the spot if he so much as flinched. Boy, I can act like one helluva crazy bastard sometimes, I really can.

I could tell that Mr. Kim was starting to feel a bit nervous, and maybe a little ashamed, thinking he had offended me, so, because I've read that Orientals would rather commit suicide than lose face, I dropped my chair down and told him that, on second thought, I would like a goddam cigarette, thank you.

I didn't really, as you've probably guessed already, and was saved from having to endure one because right after I said that the old lady came out from the back room, balancing in one hand a large tray filled with I-don't-know-what, and holding a pair of scissors in the other.

Like I said, I'm not a picky eater. Sometimes I'll even eat the fruitcake Phoebe's son Henry sends me on Christmas. All I ask is that what I'm supposed to consume is at least dead before I put it in my mouth. On the tray were two small octopi, which the old lady, after setting the tray down, proceeded to cut up with extreme prejudice. Once, when I was a kid, during our family's yearly summer vacation in the Hamptons, my kid brother Allie and I had cut the head off an ant and watched amazed as its body continued to move around -- as if looking for its missing skull -- as though it were looking for something as trivial as a bit of stale bread it had mistakenly dropped on its way back to its ant hill. Boy, did that ever creep me out at the time. This was worse. The octopi's tentacles actually moved faster, harder, for a good long while after they had been liberated from their bodies.

Mr. Kim looked at me excitedly. "Have you ever had live octopus before?"

I wanted to lie and say yes, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I finally lost
my battle with my gag reflex. I threw up all over the table. I don't think the goddam octopi noticed.

After apologizing to the old lady and paying for our "meal" (at least with Chinese food you eat it and are then hungry again not long after. With Korean food, you lose your appetite, don't eat a bite, and are anything but hungry later. At least that's how I see things, being fully aware that, much in the same way some people will read anything no matter how insipid it is, people will eat just about anything, too), Mr. Kim walked me to his car as though I were an invalid. He didn't speak a word to me on our way home. I was actually more than a little frightened that he might not be driving to our shared apartment building, but rather taking me to an asylum. It wouldn't be the first time, I inwardly acknowledged.

But we did return to our building. Thank god. The sun was setting, and I was so exhausted that, halfway up the stairs, I thought my legs might give and I would collapse and break my neck tumbling down. Mercifully, my apartment was on the second floor. Mr. Kim's was on the third, one floor below the building's highest. He bade me goodnight, and I could tell he wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible, the phony. Trust me, the feeling was more than mutual.

I unlocked my door with a key Mr. Kim had given me, took off my jacket, then my shoes, and headed for what I assumed was the bedroom. My mouth tasted like the inside of a motorman's glove, and I wanted to brush my teeth and have a drink of water, but I was too tired even for that. The light inside the bedroom didn't work, so I felt my way around for a while, pretending for a moment that I was a blind child lost in a department store, until my knees crashed into what was unmistakably a bed.

I lied down, and that's when I heard a loud scream. Two, actually. The first was short and obviously from a young woman. The second was considerably louder and more aggressive. Before I had had a chance to stand up, I was hoisted underneath the bed's cover and catapulted to the floor.

"Who in Christ's name are you?" a man shouted. I heard it as though in a dream. Then,
considerably less menacingly, "fuck, Lisa, I think I just killed an old man."