Happy Any Day Now by Toby Devens Page B

done deal by any means. The North Koreans are famous for reneging last minute. They make unreasonable demands, the project falls apart, and they blame us. However, if we get there, it would be a helluva coup for our merry band.” His eyes twinkled when he said to me, “So, do you want to visit North Korea, sweetheart?”
    I was caught between stunned and delighted. “Incredible” was all I could muster in reply. I was a loyal, oh so grateful American, but Korea would always own half my genes. I shook my head in disbelief. “My mother will go ballistic.”
    “No telling Grace,” Richard admonished.
    “Not now. But if and when it goes through, she’ll be thrilled.”
    “I thought your mother was from Seoul,” Geoff said.
    “She moved south right before the war, but she was brought up in a farming village in a place called Hwanghae. If I have any relatives left, they’re in the north.”
    “And so will you be next April.” Richard grinned, obviously pleased with himself.
    “You too,” I lied.
    “I can’t fool myself. I don’t expect another year. Maybe I’ll make it through the summer. No guarantees. Now give the old man a kiss, Judith, and you two get on your way. Mmm, chocolate and perfume. Why do women smell so delicious? Well, it’s nice to know I ain’t dead yet.”
    • • •
    Stuffed on chocolates and tasting the lilac fragrance that seemed suddenly like funeral flowers in the back of my mouth, I wasn’t hungry. It was too late for Geoff to roast the rack of lamb he’d planned and I wasn’t up for the noise and hustle of the Mt. Washington Tavern. What I really wanted was to go home alone, make myself a bologna sandwich, and later climb into bed and daydream that Richard’s chemo had worked and he was in the first seat as we played the orchestral arrangement of
Arirang
, the Korean folk song my mother sang me to sleep with when I was little. At the end of the Pyongyang concert, the audience, comprised of people who looked a lot like me, stood and cheered. Lovely fantasy.
    The reality was Richard was dying and I had a life ahead of me. Which meant moving on. Only, to move on, I’d have to undo history, starting with the most recent past. The big talk had to be tonight so I could get myself in fresh trouble immediately.
    “Follow me. My place. I’ll rustle up something simple,” Geoff said as we left the Tarkoffs’. His territory. Not the best choice for the conversation I had in mind, but I was too preoccupied and too sad to protest.
    Geoff lived in a downtown high-rise with a panoramic view of the old Domino Sugar factory and the Inner Harbor. The condo’s décor was Australian sports/ethnic/music. Lots of aboriginal drums and didgeridoos among the soccer and rugby shirts hung like tapestries and framed autographed photos of his favorite dames: Joan Sutherland, Edna, and me.
    In the kitchen he rummaged through the fridge. “Let’s see what I have in here. Uh-oh. Sorry. I forgot to restock on bologna.” He turned to give me a fond and knowing smile.
    It was more of a joke now, but back in elementary school I’d been obsessed by bologna. While the other kids unwrapped Oscar Mayer on Wonder Bread or PB and J, I emptied my lunch box of leftover squid and vegetables, kimchi or cold-by-lunchtime seaweed soup packed in Tupperware knockoffs. The aroma invariably drew a crowd. “Chink-stink,” the little bastards called it, pinching their noses and ostentatiously gagging. I was mortified. By middle school we were living in Bed-Stuy, where I could have had my ass whipped for lesser infractions than smelling up the cafeteria. The shape of my eyes alone got me deliberately and repeatedly bumped in the hall by Tylana Haynes and her gang. So I made my stand, and my mother didn’t protest; she knew when it was futile. I made my own all-American bologna sandwich on the days I didn’t eat pizza or chicken nuggets off the cafeteria line, a free lunch for which I easily qualified along with most