Free Food for Millionaires (25 page)

A pair of elderly women stopped by the counter to admire the boaters trimmed with fabric roses. They looked like twin sisters, somewhere in their late eighties or nineties, spry and impeccably turned out in Mainbocher-style suits.

Judith opened her mouth, but Sabine cut her off. “Judith, take last week’s break time off, too. I never want to hear about you letting her borrow against her break time. This credit issue is something Casey needs to fix.”

Judith said yes, then switched to serve the older women, who now stood before her.

Casey’s neck flushed scarlet.

“And you. . .” Sabine faced Casey, trying to smile at her. Her voice grew gentle. “Stop by my office today after work.”

“Sorry. Can’t do it. Tina will be here after work. I haven’t seen her in over a year.” Casey had missed her MIT graduation. She wouldn’t keep Tina waiting. “Tell me whatever it is you want to now.” She wasn’t the least bit ashamed of her behavior that afternoon. If Sabine wanted to fire her, take back the offer to pay for B school, have her return the watch, Casey didn’t give a rat’s ass. She’d grown up without Rolexes—her friendships were not negotiable for legal tender or gifts. Casey refused to make eye contact. The more she thought about it, the angrier she grew. “I said I was sorry, Sabine. You know I wouldn’t have left unless it was urgent. Ella had a genuine crisis.”

Sabine didn’t know whether to be insulted or impressed by the girl’s fantastic nerve. “But you have a job, Casey Han. Work comes first.” She felt she had to teach Casey an essential lesson in business: “Everyone, sweetheart, can be replaced.”

“Fine.” Casey shrugged.
Replace me
was on the tip of her tongue.

Sabine took a long breath and touched Casey’s forearm. How could she break into the girl’s glassy gaze?

“I’m not here tomorrow. Let’s talk next week. When all of this will seem foolish.” Sabine smiled at her again. “Okay, Casey? Everything all right?. . . Casey?”

“Yup.” Casey smiled back at her boss.

As she walked away, Sabine turned once. Casey’s body had grown rigid and tall, like a cornstalk. She could be heard asking one of the two women if there was something she’d like to try on.

Until closing time, Judith and Casey worked alongside each other, giving off the air that all was cheery at the hat counter. Neither spoke to the other, however, when there were no customers.

The interview for a summer research fellowship at Einstein had gone overtime, so Tina never showed up at the store. Casey had gone home, and Tina finally arrived there an hour and a half after they were supposed to have met.

Casey let her in. Tina had never been so late, but even that was okay. It felt so good to see her. The sisters hugged each other—neither able to remember the last time they’d embraced.

“What’s that noise?” Tina asked, looking around.

“Oh!” Casey dashed back to her sewing machine to turn it off. The industrial-built secondhand Singer she’d bought in Chinatown for seventy-five bucks worked perfectly but made an intense whirring racket when it was on.

Tina dropped her coat and handbag on a nearby folding chair. “Wow,” she said, taking it all in. The apartment was more spartan than she’d imagined, with only the most essential furniture.

In one corner of the L-shaped studio, there was a full-size futon mattress, and beside it, three stacks of books were piled on the floor. A Sony Dream Machine clock-radio sat on top of a copy of
Sister Carrie
. A naked extension cord snaked out from the base of the brass floor lamp. Near the window with a partial view of the Hudson and Jersey City, there were two different-looking sewing machines, including the one Casey had just shut off, a stumpy wooden stool, and opposite the Pullman kitchen was a white metal café table and two folding chairs. The closet—large by New York standards, almost the width of one of the shorter walls, with its shutter-style doors thrown open—was bursting with colorful clothes. On the bottom of the closet, multiple pairs of shoes and boots were strewn about—mismatched and their mates far apart. Dozens of hatboxes attached with Polaroids of their contents dominated the apartment. No sofa, coffee table, bookshelves, or rugs.

“What are you making?” Tina asked, her manner curious and thoughtful. She squinted at the sewing machine.

“I’m entering a contest.” There was a juried exhibit for accessories at FIT, and she and Roni, the cheese seller, were entering as a team. They had designed a collapsible straw hat and matching handbag with a special compartment for the hat.

“Contest?”

“I know. It’s weird.”

Tina raised her eyebrows and shoulders simultaneously. Not much surprised her anymore when it came to Casey.

“Hey, I’m starving.”

“The food’s on its way.” Casey had ordered the pizza right after Tina called from the station. Her sister wore a blue crewneck sweater and navy slacks. Her hair was cut in a blunt style, giving it more movement. She’d taken off her snow boots on the floor, and with her legs splayed out, she wriggled her toes in shabby black socks. The Einstein interview had gone well, and she’d accepted an on-the-spot offer.

“Sex has made you even prettier,” Casey remarked, noticing the sock’s thinning fabric on the balls of her sister’s feet.

“Thank you.” Tina’s black hair swung in lovely chunks when she laughed. “I’m employed and engaged.”

“What?” Casey shouted. “Are you serious?”

“About which part?”

“You know what I’m talking about. You’re twenty-two. Honestly, I won’t think poorly of you if you don’t marry him. What’s wrong with just living with him?” Ella had married her first. Chul probably wasn’t like Ted. Dear God, let that not be the case, prayed the agnostic in her mind. Casey wondered if she should talk about Ella now. “Have I failed you? Taught you nothing? The first man you had sex with!”

“Correction. The first man who made love to me.”

“I stand corrected. Excuse me.” Casey was clutching the handbag pattern in her hand. She was wrinkling the corners of the taped-up pattern paper, so she went to place it in her black portfolio leaning against the wall.

“I thought you’d be happy,” Tina said, sounding dispirited. She’d been so relieved on the way over here with a summer fellowship in hand. She hugged her knees with her hands.

“I am happy for you. Truly.” Casey had looked forward to Tina after such a bizarre day. But this was a shock, too.

“Then you’ll come to the wedding.”

“Yes. I will come to the wedding. Of course,” Casey said. Tina was still upset with her about the graduation. Casey hadn’t gone because she couldn’t deal with her parents and went to a Kearn Davis outing instead. It was work related, but truth be known, she could’ve gotten out of it.

Tina didn’t want to talk about the wedding anymore.

“Now, here’s the bad news.”

“So that was the good news, then?” Casey laughed.

“Ha, ha.. . . Dad’s building burned down last Sunday,” Tina said calmly. She lifted a cover off a lone hatbox within reach. Her eyebrows arched in wonder at the wide-rimmed straw encircled with pink fabric peonies. “Pretty.”

The pizza arrived, but Casey couldn’t eat. She watched Tina devour her first slice while she discussed the fire and how the insurance would come through soon. Tina had dealt with all the paperwork that her parents couldn’t read. Faulty wiring had caused the total loss. Nobody was hurt because it had happened on a Sunday. No one had bothered to call Casey, making her realize that she must’ve missed many other things and would miss more as time went on. Casey was feeling left out, but Tina was excusing her parents, because they were hurt too by Casey’s withdrawal from their lives. “They didn’t want to bother you at the office,” Tina said. Their father wasn’t the same, she added.

Three years ago, when Joseph bought the building in Edge-water, Casey had gone to the closing with him. Leah had called her at school. “Daddy is going to buy a building. Our retirement money will be the down pay. Elder Kong said it was a good investment.” Leah told Casey where the closing would take place. Tina could have gone—her father might have preferred that—but she was in Boston, and it was cheaper for Casey to show up. And Casey was older. So she skipped her microeconomics class, took a train to the city, and met her dad at the bank lawyers’ offices. Though her father understood almost everything, his lawyer talked mostly to Casey, and she translated whatever else was needed. After all the checks were passed out, Mr. Arauno, the seller’s lawyer, handed Joseph the keys. Mr. Arauno told Joseph that he had a nice daughter. After the closing, Joseph drove Casey to the building before taking her back to school.

“I saw the building. After the closing,” Casey said.

“Yeah?” Tina sprinkled garlic powder on her second slice.

That afternoon in Edgewater, the sun had glowed fiercely on the modest storefronts of Hilliard Avenue. Her father’s building was a three-story brick with two shops on the ground floor—a pizzeria and a small electronics outlet. A side door opened onto a modest carpeted lobby with stairs that led to the professional offices on the second and third floors. Joseph didn’t say much as the two of them walked around the building. He walked into the electronics store, and the salesman asked him if he needed any help. Joseph shook his head no, picking up a Panasonic answering machine that was on special, then putting it down. He never told them that he was their new landlord. Casey followed him when he walked out. They peered into the pizza shop. It looked clean. After they toured the two ground-floor stores and checked out the dentist’s office and the accountant’s office upstairs, they left the building. Casey returned to her father’s blue Delta 88, which was parked not ten yards away. Not hearing his footsteps behind her, she turned and saw that he was standing beside the building; his right hand was pressed against the brick of the facade. Her father was smiling.

“How is he doing?” Casey asked.

“Lousy. What do you expect?”

“Can’t he get a new one? With the insurance money?”

“Mom said he doesn’t want to risk it. And you know her. She’s no gambler. They’ll probably put the money in a savings account.”

What Casey had seen on her father’s face that day was pride. Some happiness.

“He looks much older,” Tina said.

“How old is he again?”

“He turned sixty in June.”

“I sent him a tie,” Casey mentioned. She’d bought an Hermès necktie that had cost over a hundred dollars and mailed it to him from the store, although it would’ve been far easier for her to just walk it over from Kearn Davis.

“Mom told me.”

Casey nodded. The last time she spoke to her mother was around Thanksgiving, when she’d told her that she was working through the holidays for overtime money. For turkey, she’d gone to the Gottesmans’, where Sabine was hosting a dinner for twenty of her favorite strays.

“Sixtieth birthday. That’s—”

“We didn’t do much for his
hwegap,
” Tina said.

“Damn. That’s right.” Casey jerked back, sighing loudly. “Damn. Damn,” she muttered, disgusted with herself. Their parents were often invited to these fancy potlatches thrown by well-off adult children to celebrate their Korean parents’ sixtieth birthdays—the sum of five zodiac cycles. A person was supposed to have completed a full life cycle by living from zero to sixty.

“That was near your graduation, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Tina said quietly.

“So in the month of June, I managed to miss both your graduation and Dad’s big birthday. You can say that I have a genius for fucking up. They don’t get better than me.” Casey was afraid to ask what Tina had done for his birthday. No matter. She’d never had favored nation status.

“There’s another big party at the seventieth, I think.” Tina tried to sound hopeful.

“Yeah, I should’ve earned my first million by then. I’ll be thirty-four. Let’s just book the banquet rooms at the Plaza now.” Casey was sinking in an ocean of shame.

“Shut up, Casey. It’s going to be okay. This isn’t a guilt session. I wanted to see you,” Tina said with a smile.

She started to talk about Chul. He was likely to focus on cardiology, she said, beaming, at UCSF School of Medicine. His father was a professor and his mother a radiologist, and his three sisters were lawyers. Chul was the baby. Joseph and Leah had already met Chul’s parents in New York after Thanksgiving. Everything had gone fine, Tina said with a little shrug of doubt. Casey listened to her talk, trying not to interrupt—a bad habit of hers—and she observed how Tina’s face brightened when she spoke of him. Casey wanted to believe with all her heart and mind that true love could exist and that marrying young with the first man you made love to could yield a faithful bond. She wished that for her sister right then and there. She didn’t mention what was happening with Ella and Ted. What purpose would that serve?

Tina had to leave at ten so she could take the subway home to Queens. They embraced before parting, and this time the gesture felt easier. Why hadn’t they done this sooner?

Casey shut the front door. The apartment wasn’t much, but it was tidy, and it was hers. She lived in Manhattan—it was called the city, though it was also a borough like Staten Island or the Bronx. Her first year at Princeton, a freshman from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, had asked her where she was from, and when she’d said New York, he’d said, Oh, where? When she’d answered Queens, he’d stared at her as though she’d been lying. Because only one borough counted as New York.

The night from her window was blue and black with the skyline of Jersey City twinkling far off in broken bits and pieces. Next to the sewing machine, her contest hat rested misshapen on the head block, needing more steam to block it than what her teakettle could generate, and the handbag fabric lay uncut on the stool. It felt later than ten, and Casey went to brush her teeth to get ready for bed. Tired and spacey, she stubbed her foot on the open closet door. She bent over to take care of a broken toenail. Her nail clippers were in one of the Kearn Davis gym bags that she used for storage. The Redweld folders with photocopies of her B school applications were also stuck in there.

Why hadn’t she told Tina about applying to business school? Ella, Ted, and Delia, Dad’s building, Tina’s internship and marriage. Life was either breaking down or fusing together. She was trying to start something new. It was hard to picture what her life would look like beyond this moment. Casey couldn’t tell her little sister about trying something new again. For surely it was possible to fail another time.