I Have the Right to Destroy Myself (3 page)

Where am I? K shakes his head to snap out of his daze.

The speedometer shows 180 kilometers per hour. The noise of the engine and the wind have swallowed all other sounds. K's ears pop. The hum of speed and his narrower field of vision erase reality. The customer next to him grumbles, but K doesn't pay attention. Suddenly, he sees a truck painfully climbing the incline ahead. He quickly changes lanes and passes the truck. He's alert, his nerves as sharp as a knife blade. His penis hardens; his head is empty. His muscles breathe with the Stella TX, instinctively.

He goes into a phone booth after dropping off his last customer in front of Suwon's South Gate. Nobody picks up. Where's Se-yeon? He tries to light a cigarette, but his lighter doesn't work. The fluid must be out. He tries a few more times, then flings the cigarette and lighter away. He inserts the phone card into the slot again and presses each button deliberately. The few seconds of waiting make him anxious. He tries another number. His brother doesn't answer the
phone either. K exits the phone booth, asks a taxi driver for a light, and sticks a lit cigarette between his lips. Did she go to see his brother?

K gets back in the car and races toward Sadang subway station. The radio is reporting a snowstorm in Yeongseo. K detects a tinge of excitement in the voice of the announcer, who is saying that all traffic has stopped. It starts to flurry. Will it snow as much in Seoul? If so, he has to get back before there's too much snow on the ground. K changes into the leftmost lane and speeds up.

When Judith called, C was eating the pizza he had ordered for lunch.

"It's been a long time," she said.

"Has it?" he asked casually, as if he hadn't been thinking about her at all.

"I want to go somewhere. Can you drive me?"

"Where?"

"Jumunjin."

"Why?"

"It's my hometown. And it's my birthday today."

"Come over, then."

"Okay. I'll be there soon."

That's how they decided to go on this trip. The snow started when they passed Yangpyeong. By Hongcheon, it was coming down hard, so they drove on with snow chains strapped onto the tires, but after a while, when they got to where they were now, they couldn't go any farther.

"When did you leave Jumunjin?" C asks.

"Jumunjin?"

"Didn't you say it was your hometown?"

"I just said that because I wanted to go somewhere," Judith replies nonchalantly, and keeps whistling. C can't believe his ears. He takes his hand off the wheel and leans back into the seat. The purpose of the trip has disappeared.

"So it's not your birthday, either?"

"No."

"I see. It's funny, the truth makes people uncomfortable, but a lie gets people excited. Isn't that right?"

"You would have come with me even if I didn't lie."

Perhaps she's right. Sometimes C wishes there were a reason for everything. Like when you find yourself wishing a friend you're drinking with would just suddenly keel over. It's sort of funny to imagine that he'd die from a heart attack and people would come to his funeral, drink together, follow him to his grave site, shovel dirt on his coffin, and ride back in the hearse. But no matter how you die, the world always stays the same. Like this place they're stuck in. Snow keeps falling, almost to the point of annoyance. It's like staring at the same unchanging screen for several hours. Like when the TV shows multicolored stripes before regular programs, the so-called screen adjustment period. C's tired of this darkness. He turns on the wipers and they struggle to push the snow off the windshield. He turns on the dome light. It becomes a little brighter in the car. Judith is lying back in her seat, her skirt hiked up and her blouse
open. When C looks at her, she says mechanically, like an answering machine message, "What? You want to do it?"

"I'm tired."

"Let me know if you want to." She closes her eyes again and he turns off the light. He's thirsty. C takes out a lollipop from the glove compartment. When he puts it in his mouth, his saliva pools and his thirst disappears. Judith likes Chupa Chups lollipops. When she isn't smoking she constantly sucks on them. She doesn't take the thing out of her mouth, even during sex. Every time, C is scared that the stick will poke his eye out. Actually, one did stab his left eye once. He worried he might go blind, and he was afraid to have sex with her for a few days.

C woke up late the day after K brought her to his apartment. His head felt leaden and he had no appetite because he had stayed up all night for a few days straight. He was listless but at the same time alert, the consequence of extreme exhaustion. He was in an emotional void, only able to respond to some stimulation. When he stepped into the living room he remembered his brother having sex with a woman the night before, but he was still groggy so it was hard to tell whether he had seen it in real life or in a video.

C made coffee. As the smell of coffee wafted toward the living room, the door of the guest room opened and Judith appeared.

"Can I have a cup, too?"

C poured the rest of the coffee into a cup and handed it to her. Her hair was disheveled and traces of makeup were
left on her face, as if she had just woken up. She was wearing denim cutoffs and a baggy T-shirt printed with the name of a prestigious American university on the West Coast. She looked very young in this getup.

"You look like a different person with clothes on," C commented.

"I bet we surprised you yesterday," she said, letting out a laugh, weak and leaky like a broken humidifier. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Where's K?" C asked, glancing toward the guest room.

"He went to work."

"What work?"

"Didn't you know? He's a bullet."

"A bullet?"

"You know, a bullet taxi driver. Bang!" Judith made a gun with two fingers and mimed shooting C. C jumped despite himself, and at that moment the image of her naked body lying in the living room flashed in his head. He sensed that he was about to make a dangerous choice. He was attracted to his brother's girl, this woman who resembled Judith. But he didn't want to blame it on the fatigue sweeping over him after the funeral.

Judith finished her coffee, took out a Chupa Chups from her pocket, and stuck it in her mouth. For the first few minutes, she seemed to concentrate her whole being on eating the candy. She stared intently at the stick, almost cross-eyed. C hadn't met a woman who ate candy in a while. He despised women who chewed gum. You don't need
imagination to chew gum. You endlessly work your mouth but always come back to the same place. He realized that the image he wanted to see was that of a woman eating candy, savoring it slowly—just as she did. His attention strayed to her from the morning paper he had been reading. She continued to lick, then stretched and lengthened her body. She put her feet on the coffee table and leaned back as far as possible into the sofa, and kept sucking.

"That was a game," Judith says, breaking the silence. The windshield is again covered in thick snowdrifts, and the inside of the car returned to its pitch-black state. "When I slept with you for the first time, I mean. Remember I was eating a lollipop? I knew you were looking at me. So I decided to play a game and see whether I would win you over while I was eating candy, or afterward. I decided that if you came over to me while I was eating it, I would live with you, and if you came to me after I was done, I would live with K. Fun, huh?"

She rolls down the window. A cold gust and snow rush in. She reaches up to the top of the car, grabs a fistful of snow, and rolls up the window. She turns on the light.

"I just thought of something fun to do," she says, packing the snow into a small ball, the size of a golf ball. She parts her legs, giggling. The snowball slides up inside of her. She still has a lollipop in her mouth. She shivers. Her brow is furrowed for a long time, as if she can still feel the snow on her skin.

***

That day, when C saw Judith's left hand undoing the button of her shorts and sliding inside, he stood up. She didn't stop, her right hand curled around the lollipop stick, her left touching herself. C didn't know where to go. He stood there for a while, watching her movements become faster and her expression change. It seemed that a very long time had passed. She opened her eyes. Their eyes met. She called him over. He went to her, and she pointed to her back. He held her from behind. Even then, she was writhing violently. He worried that she might be going insane. After a while, she relaxed in his arms. He laid her on the sofa and inserted his dick inside of her. She sucked her lollipop, bored, even as he thrusted. He came before she finished her candy. He immediately stood up and went to take a shower. He faintly remembers hearing her laughter behind him and, for some reason, wanting to listen to Mozart.

The fuel gauge shows that there's only a quarter of a tank left. They will freeze to death when the gas runs out. C turns down the heat. The snow isn't stopping. It's coming down heavily, like the fake snow used in movies. Judith is touching up her makeup, using the mirror on the sunshade.

"Why do you bother fixing your makeup?" C asks.

"I have nothing else to do."

"We're running out of gas."

"Are we going to die here?" she asks, penciling in her eyebrows. She looks serious, probably unsatisfied with the eyebrows she's drawing.

"It's possible."

"Cool. We'll be smothered to death by snow."

"Maybe we should walk and try to find a village. There must be something if we walk along the road."

"I don't want to." Done with her eyebrows, she's touching up her lips.

"Why not?"

"It's cold out."

"When we run out of gas it's going to be cold in here, too. And aren't you hungry?"

"A little, but I can wait. Turn on the radio."

Finished with her makeup, she smells like an apple. After his mother's body was embalmed it also smelled of apple. Apples emit an intense scent as they rot. On the radio, a dance music group is laughing with a female DJ. She's talking about the weather. "I hear that a snowstorm has hit Yeongdong and Yeongseo. Are you going to go skiing?"

"It's hard to find time because we're so busy. We all really like to ski but we haven't been in a while."

"Oh, that's too bad!" The DJ sounds hyper. "Okay, let's hear a song, then we'll continue our conversation." A song by the group that had just been joking around comes out of the radio. Compared to the upbeat rhythm, the lyrics are dull, going on about first love.

"Do you remember your first guy?" C leans his face on the steering wheel.

"No. It was one guy out of two, but I don't exactly remember which one it was. I was sixteen and the three of us
lived together for about a month. I ended up sleeping with both but I can't really remember who was first. I'm always like that. I never remember anything once it's over. I mix up movie plotlines, and a lot of times I watch a video I've seen before because I don't remember the title. I guess there hasn't been anything worth remembering. But sometimes weird things stay in my memory for a long time. TV shows like
Heo Yeong-ho's North Pole Expedition
or
Animal Kingdom.
I don't like dramas or novels. The only thing I watch religiously is
Animal Kingdom.
Did you know the lioness is in charge of hunting, but the male lion always eats first? After the males are full, the females and the cubs eat. My mom was the breadwinner in my family, too. Maybe because of that my dad always crept around like a loser. Once he was caught sleeping with a bar girl and my mom clobbered his face with an ashtray. But now I can't really remember either of their faces."

"Why did you leave home?"

"At school my teacher asked me why I didn't have my book with me. I told him my dad ripped it up, and he asked me why. So I said he rips up books whenever he drinks, and he told me I was lying. I yelled that I wasn't, and he hit me, saying that I was being rude. I didn't go back to school after that. The teacher called when I missed classes several days in a row, and then my mom beat the hell out of me. So I ran away. It was great. Nobody bothered me and I could drink and buy clothes and sleep with boys."

"Don't you miss your mom?"

"You're just like everyone else, asking that kind of question. You don't understand. Don't ask things like that. I hate people who ask questions. Guys who ask questions have a lot to hide. Instead of saying something about themselves, they always want someone else to talk, to reveal something about themselves."

The radio weather forecast says that over thirty centimeters of snow are predicted to fall before it stops.

The snowfall has become heavy by the time he gets to Sadang Station. K parks and ducks into a makeshift bar, set up on the side of the street. "One bottle of
soju
and some boiled squid, please," K orders.

The squid is lying quietly on the plate. It's tame, its body cut in horizontal strips. K remembers the time he went to Jumunjin with Se-yeon. Before sunrise the squid boats came into the brightly lit docks. The squid, thrown in heaps on the docks, moved about, tangled together. A few squirted black ink. He and Se-yeon drank
soju,
eating raw strips of squid. She seemed to be at home at the harbor. He asked her if she was from Jumunjin, but she didn't answer. She smelled like C's lotion. He asked her if she'd slept with his brother. She nodded. The scent of C's lotion cut through the fishy smell of the ocean, and K started to feel sick to his stomach.

There aren't any customers in the bar. Perhaps it's because of the snow. K throws back two shots, then eats some of the squid. The bar where he first met Se-yeon is somewhere around here. He and the other drivers had gone there
for karaoke. The five men entered a room and ordered beer, and Se-yeon came in to peel fruit for them. She peeled apples awkwardly. She looked young, despite her dark purple eye shadow. She didn't laugh once. The drivers got pissed and cursed at her, a woman selling a good time who didn't laugh. The owner of the karaoke bar came in and cursed at her, too. He dragged her outside, and they could hear him slapping her. A bit later, when she came back in, she laughed endlessly. She laughed at a lame joke, when someone groused about the taxi dispatcher, and when someone said that the Korean soccer team was likely to get to the World Cup. The drivers got pissed again. Someone called her a crazy bitch. She laughed at that, too, and was dragged out again.