Demon's Door (13 page)

But Jim walked directly over to Kim, and stood in front of his desk, and said, ‘How is Maria?'

Kim Dong Wook pushed back his chair, stood up, and bowed his head. ‘I am Kim Dong Wook. I am honored to meet you, Mr Rook.'

‘You've met me already, sunshine. Don't try to pretend that you haven't. I killed my cat and you brought him back to me. But that was yesterday, wasn't it?'

‘I am sorry, Mr Rook. I am sorry for what happen to your cat. But each day is every day. Today is today. Today is first day of new semester, yes?'

Jim said, ‘How is Maria? More to the point,
where
is Maria? She's not in the ER at Cedars-Sinai, I know that for a fact. The West Hollywood police have never heard of her. So where the hell is she, Kim?'

Suddenly, the tension between them was so electric that all of the students in Special Class Two fell silent. Arthur smacked T.D. on the shoulder, so that T.D. turned around and realized that Jim had arrived, and that something very heavy was going down. He switched off ‘Chase Da Cat' and put down his boom box and said, loudly, ‘Wass happenin' man? Wass occurin' here? Somebody goin' to fill me in?'

Jim ignored him, and kept his eyes leveled on Kim Dong Wook. ‘I may be many things, Kim, but I'm not green.'

‘I did not suggest such a thing, Mr Rook. I know that you have much deepness.'

‘Well, you're right, I do have much deepness. In fact I have more deepness than you will ever know. So you had better be careful what you say and do, because otherwise you'll be in deepness, too, and that deepness will be deep doo-doo.'

Kim's face remained impassive, so Jim leaned forward until their noses were almost touching, and said to him under his breath, ‘I don't exactly know what it is that you're involved in, Kim. I'll admit that much. But I do know that it's concerned with time, and spirits, and maybe one spirit in particular. And so let me just tell you this: Special Class Two are under my pastoral care, and if anybody so much as touches one hair on their heads, they'll have me to answer to. You got it?'

Kim bowed his head again. ‘Whatever you say, Mr Rook. But in Korea there is a proverb, if you speak of the fox, it will come. English translation – talk of the devil.'

Jim looked at him for a long moment, saying nothing. Kim looked back at him, and Jim was sure that he was giving him the faintest of smiles. But then Jim turned around to the rest of the class. ‘Good morning, Special Class Two! My name is Mr Rook – rook like in the bird, and I want to welcome you to another inspiring year of remedial English!

He went over to the chalk board and scrawled the word
phonetic
. Then he pointed at Tamara and said, ‘You want to read the TV news, don't you, Tamara? Why don't you read this word for me?'

Tamara's cheeks flushed pink. ‘How did you
know
that?'

‘Oh . . . I'm like
The Mentalist
. Or Sherlock Holmes. I can see that you're all dressed up and your make-up is absolutely perfect. Who comes to college looking as nifty as you? Only a girl who has dreams of being a TV news anchor.'

Tamara stared at the word on the chalk board for almost half a minute. Then she said, very slowly, ‘Pah-
hon
-tic.'

‘OK,' said Jim. ‘Good try! How about you, Arthur?'

‘That's easy,' said Arthur. ‘It's “phone” like in “phone” and “tick” like in “tock.” Phone-tick.'

‘Nearly,' Jim told him. ‘It's actually pronounced “fo-netic.” And what it means is, the way a word sounds when you say it out loud, rather than the way it's spelled in the dictionary. This first semester together, we're going to study how to pronounce words correctly, and I promise you that this will help you tremendously when it comes to expressing yourself, not only when you're writing but when you're talking, too.

‘Do you know how many times I've seen my students write, “It's a doggy dog world,” when they really mean “dog eat dog?” And “taken for granite” when they mean “taken for granted?” And “prespire” instead of “perspire?” And “nucular” instead of “nuclear?”'

Arthur put up his hand and said, ‘I don't see the problem. If the person you're talking to understands what you mean, like, what's the difference?'

‘The difference, Arthur, is that you have to make yourselves a life in this world, whether you like it or not, and this world is totally hard and totally unforgiving. OK – maybe your friends understand what you mean when you say “a blessing in the skies” when you actually mean “a blessing in disguise.” Maybe your brothers know that “sose” means “so as”, and that the Heineken Remover is what you give to somebody in a restaurant when they're choking. But nobody else in this totally hard and totally unforgiving world knows that. And they won't show you any mercy, believe me.

‘You understand what I'm saying? I'm here to give you the ability to talk sense, and to write sense, and to make something out of your lives. This is your last chance, before you go out there.
I'm
your last chance. If you don't listen to me, if you don't do what I tell you to do, you're going to leave this college like helpless little lambs, and the rest of the world will pick on you, like buzzards, and rip you to pieces.'

‘Shit, man,' said T.D. ‘You makin' me feel seriously
scared
here. I thought college was where you s'posed to come for reinsurance.'

‘So you should be,' Jim told him. ‘The world is a very scary place, and you don't even know the half of it. Especially if you say “re-
insurance
” instead of “re-
assurance
.”'

Arthur howled with laughter and slapped his knee and said, ‘See, bro! You need that phone-tick stuff
so-o-o
bad!'

Jim went over to the stationery cupboard, unlocked it, and took out a sheaf of lined paper. ‘OK, class,' he announced. ‘I'm going to give you a little warming-up assignment to prepare you for the days and weeks of drudgery that lie ahead of you.'

‘Oh, no,' said T.D. ‘Here come de drudge!'

Jim pointed a finger at him and said, ‘That was good, T.D. A very good wordplay. If there's one thing that I always encourage in Special Class Two, it's playing with words. Making up jokes. Thinking of double meanings. Finding new ways to describe things. Now let's see if you can play with enough words to describe what you would do if you unexpectedly inherited one million dollars.'

Elvira's hand shot up. ‘Buy myself a Ferrari!' she said. ‘A
purple
Ferrari, to match my nail-polish!'

‘Are you kidding?' said Leon, curling his lip. ‘You could buy yourself at least
five
Ferraris for a million dollars.'

‘OK, then, I'll buy myself a purple Ferrari and a red Ferrari and a pink Ferrari and a green Ferrari and a black Ferrari with glittery bits.'

‘And you wouldn't think about giving any of that money to charity?' asked Teddy. ‘You wouldn't give up just one of your Ferraris so that some children in Africa could have some clean water to drink?'

‘I don't know, maybe. So long as it wasn't the purple one.'

They all sat down at their desks and Jim walked up and down the aisles, handing out sheets of paper and ballpens to those students who hadn't brought their own. He had reached the back of the classroom when the door opened and Maria Lopez walked in, carrying her gold vinyl bag over her shoulder. Jim felt a tingling jolt, as if he had been Tasered.

‘Maria?' he said.

‘Yes, sir? Is this Special Class Two?'

She looked perfectly well. No lacerations, no blood. Her black hair was tied up in braids, just as it had been yesterday, and she was wearing the same bronze satin blouse and the same jeans and the same multi-colored necklace of wooden beads.

‘Yes, this is Special Class Two,' said Jim. He looked at his wristwatch. ‘You're a little late. Eleven minutes, to be exact.'

‘
Muchas apologias
,
señor
. My brother, he was supposed to give me a ride to college this morning but at the last minute he said he could not do it.'

‘OK,' said Jim. ‘It's Maria Lopez, isn't it? Why don't you sit right down in the front row, Maria, next to Janice?' He nearly said ‘Sticky' but managed to stop himself.

Maria sat down, and as she did so, Jim turned his head toward Kim. ‘How are you feeling today, Maria?' he asked her, without taking his eyes off Kim. ‘Fit and well? Ready for a hard day's English?'

Maria looked puzzled, because she didn't really understand what he meant. But she nodded and said, ‘
Sí, señor.
I am ready.'

Jim laid a sheet of paper on the desk in front of her. ‘I have my own pen,' she volunteered, holding it up to show him. Still he kept his eyes on Kim, and Kim continued to stare back at him. They were like a mongoose and a snake, sizing each other up across a clearing in the jungle. Neither of them had to say anything. Both of them knew what had happened yesterday, although Kim had the advantage of knowing
why
it had happened, and what was going to happen next.

‘Right!' said Jim, loudly. ‘You have thirty minutes to write down what you do if you were given a million dollars. Don't worry about spelling or punctuation – not today, anyhow. If you want to buy a yacht, but you're not so sure how to spell it, I'd rather you wrote down “y-o-t” than change it for something else that you think you
can
spell, like “SUV.” I want to see what you're good at, but I also need to see what you're having trouble with. I want to get an idea of who you are and what you want out of your life.'

He sat down, opened up his bag, and took out
The Memory of a Goldfish.
He had left his Hot Tamales wrapper at page 27, but when he opened it up, he realized that he hadn't actually read this far. Even though he could remember coming to college yesterday, and sitting here with this book open in front of him, he couldn't remember anything that had happened in the last three and a half pages.

‘
I woke up. When I opened my eyes I discovered that there was a woman lying next to me, with her arm resting on my chest. She had coppery hair and white skin and more freckles on her face than stars in the sky. She exuded that strange smell that red-headed women often do, half metallic and half animal. I lifted her arm away and sat upright, and said, “Who are you? What are you doing here in my bed?”
'

Maybe he
had
read this page, and maybe it had subconsciously inspired him to have a dream that Summer had been lying next to him, when she hadn't been there at all.

He turned back a page. ‘
“I think I'll go down to Madam Georgina, and ask her to tell my fortune,” I said. But she said, “I don't agree with any of this mumbo-jumbo
”'

That was so close to the lyrics of the Robbie Robertson song that he had been playing in his car on the way to college that it was eerie.

He looked around the class. They were all writing with intense concentration, although some of them were writing very slowly, and mouthing the letters out loud as they wrote them. The only student who wasn't writing was Kim Dong Wook, who was staring at him with that same suggestion of a smile.

Jim felt suddenly very cold, as if all the blood had drained out of him. Outside the window, he could see Mrs Daumier's drawing class, sitting on the grassy slope, but a large cloud must have slid across the sun, because the slope was almost in darkness.

EIGHT

J
im was sitting in the faculty lounge at lunchtime, talking to Walter Armbruster, the history chair. Walter was a bulky, wide-shouldered African-American, with grizzled gray hair and a taste for jazzy silk neckties. As usual, he was complaining about the sandwiches that his wife had made for him.

‘She
knows
I hate turkey. How long do you think we've been married? Seventeen years! And she
still
makes me goddamned turkey. Worse than that, turkey with cranberry sauce!'

‘Maybe she's trying to punish you,' Jim suggested. ‘Think about it: is there something you've done to upset her? Maybe you forgot your anniversary. Maybe she's lost some weight and you haven't noticed.'

Walter opened up one half of his sandwich and inspected its contents. ‘Look at that. It's not even fresh turkey. It's
pressed
. It probably contains more preservatives than Tutankhamen.'

Jim picked up the other half and took a bite. ‘It's OK. It doesn't
taste
like turkey. In fact it doesn't taste of anything at all – so what's your problem?'

‘Well, you're welcome to it,' said Walter. ‘One more turkey sandwich and I'm calling a divorce lawyer. What's wrong with pastrami now and again? Or a little Swiss cheese? But what do I get? Goddamned turkey, every goddamned day. Yesterday, turkey. Today, turkey. And guess what I'll get on Thursday?'

Jim said, ‘You didn't come to college yesterday, Walter.'

Walter blinked at him through his thick-rimmed eyeglasses. Then he said, ‘No, I didn't, did I? I went to the Watsons next door, for a barbecue.'

But then he rubbed the back of his neck and said, ‘Was that yesterday? Or was that the day before? I have the strangest feeling that I
did
come to college yesterday. But I couldn't have done, could I? The fall semester only started today.'

‘Do you think you might have been here yesterday?' Jim asked him.

‘How could I?'

‘I don't know, Walter. But I have the feeling that I was here yesterday, too.'

Walter gripped his shoulder, and squeezed it. ‘You know something, Jim? I think you and me have been in this teaching game far too long. The kids have got to us at last, and we've finally lost it. Next stop the funny farm.'