Shelter(26)

Gillian was supposed to be a fling, a pretty girl to help him get over a breakup, but Kyung didn’t like playing the field that way. He preferred something steadier, something that required less work, and Gillian actually suited him better than anyone he’d ever dated before. She was twenty-nine and working two jobs to finish her bachelor’s degree, so she wasn’t always around. She accepted the fact that he didn’t want to talk every hour of the day, and she never pressed him about the things he didn’t want to talk about. “Needy” wasn’t a word he’d ever use to describe her, which was exactly what he needed, someone who just let him be. He’d lost two girlfriends in a row because he refused to get married, as if he’d missed a deadline that no one ever bothered to tell him about. When Gillian started dropping hints after their first year together, he didn’t refuse again.

“I got seven on this card,” one of the old men shouts, holding up a slip of paper. He jumps out of his chair and brings his keno ticket to the bar. “What does seven pay out, Dee? That’s like, what, fifty bucks?”

The woman slides the ticket through a machine, and the cash register beneath it opens with a ping. She counts out a thin stack of wrinkled bills onto the old man’s eager palm. Kyung makes the mistake of watching this transaction, looking the man in the eye as he pockets his winnings.

“Hey, I know you,” the man says.

“Me? No, we’ve never met.”

“Sure we have. You came in here not even a week ago with your girlfriend.”

Up close, Kyung notices that the man’s eyes are bloodshot, his skin a bright, unhealthy shade of red. “You’re thinking of someone else.”

“No, don’t you remember? Your girl and me, we’re both from Rockport. You bought me a beer last time.” The man tries to lean on the bar, but his elbow skids across the surface and he stumbles toward Kyung’s chest.

“I told you”—he pushes him away, a little too roughly—“that wasn’t me.”

The man makes a whistling sound. “Sor-ry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. He shuffles back to his table, raising his voice as he tells his friend to avoid the * at the end of the bar.

Dee walks over and refills Kyung’s glass. “Just ignore Arnie. He’s a regular idiot. I’ll have that fifty bucks back in the till in a couple of hours.”

Kyung didn’t ask for a second drink; he’s not sure if he should have one. The first went down too quickly. He glances at his change on the bar, wondering if she’ll charge him for it.

“Don’t worry about that. This one’s on the house.”

“It is?” He doesn’t understand why she’s being nice to him; he’s certain he’s done nothing to deserve it. “Why?”

“Why? Hell, nobody ever asks that.” She laughs. “I guess you just looked like you could use it.”

“Yes, but why?”

Dee shrugs and starts wiping down the bar with a dirty rag. “You don’t really seem like the type to drink on a Tuesday night without a reason.” She pauses, then adds: “That’s a compliment, by the way.”

He looks himself over, realizing that he’s still wearing his dress pants and button-down shirt, clothes that stand out in this part of town.

“So what do you do for a living?”

Kyung slowly turns his glass like a knob. It’s another double; the whiskey is almost flush with the rim. “I’m a professor.”

“That must be nice, getting your summers off and everything. What do you teach?”

“Biology.”

“You mean like cutting up frogs?”

“Anatomy, yes.”

Dee shudders. “So the kids who study that, they end up being doctors or something? Is that what you are?”

Kyung shifts in his seat, not certain how to explain that he’s the wrong kind of doctor, that he dropped out of med school after his second year. His advisors said he was book smart, but too slow to think on his feet when real patients were involved. The chances of matching into his desired residency—into any residency, they said—weren’t good. Kyung ended up transferring to a Ph.D. program in bio because he didn’t know what else to do, where else to land. He suspects his colleagues don’t think he belongs in academia, that he was only hired at the university because of his father’s influence there, a possibility that feels true even if it isn’t.

“Some of them become doctors, yes.”

Dee pours herself a shot of Black Velvet and raises it to him, lifting her pinky up to the ceiling. “Come on, shoot one with me. You’re killing me over there with your sad mug.”

He wonders if this is Dee’s idea of flirting with him. He raises his glass and downs the contents because drinking is easier than talking to her.

“You don’t spend a lot of time in bars, do you?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, here’s how it works.” She smiles, as if she’s recited her next line a thousand times and still thinks it’s clever. “I just stand here while you drink and tell me what’s on your mind. You don’t have to be shy either. I’ve heard it all before. Besides, the Sox are in the shitter, so you’d probably be doing me a favor.”

Kyung studies the gouges in the bar, thick ones where people probably scratched off their lotto tickets with fingernails and coins. He’s certain that Dee has never heard a story like his. Even if he wanted to tell her, he wouldn’t know where to start, how far to go back, when it would ever end. He slides off his stool, surprised by the distance between the floor and his feet.