My Seoul Man

Chapter 29

I couldn't concentrate.

My brain was throbbing. And the smell of the big boxes of donuts on the tables just outside the Superintendent's office door was making me sick to my stomach.

They were meant to be a special treat for the district staff. But the thought of food made me queasy the morning after Rusty's.

So, I took a tiny sip of the bitter hangover tonic AJ had handed me on the way out. They sold all these little bottles of "medicine" at Ahn's. Some just loose on the shelves and some really expensive ones in big, fancy looking boxes locked up in special glass cases like the kind groceries stores lock up the expensive whiskeys and champagnes in.

He also had some sort of probiotic thing you could sip before you hit the club—that wasn't Korean, though. It was some kind of new thing that changed how your gut dealt with all the alcohol some kind of way.

But of course, we hadn't planned to wind up line dancing to all kinds of crazy country songs in a little ramshackle saloon off I-10 that just happened to be owned by a dude who went to Mexico a few times a year looking for the freakiest friggin mezcal he could lay hands on. Gave us women this sweet, almost creamy one that tricked us into drinking 'way too much.

It's a nice high, the high you get from mezcal. More druggy than boozy. At least that's how it works on me. So, I slung my arms around AJ's neck and let him sway me through all these twangy, sobby, Old School country songs only a little throwback bar like Rusty's would still have on the jukebox.

I hated that shit usually. Even though a lot of my older family members actually played it right alongside their "gut bucket" blues songs that also drove me nuts. They were "kin" to each other, those two kinds of music. AJ mentioned that, in fact, while we were swaying.

Born of the mixing and matching that went on both socially and genetically down in "rebel" country despite all the old taboos. One of the eldest family women I'd known as a child could "clog" like you see white people back up in the Appalachian "hollers" do. She'd raise up her long skirt a little bit and go to stompin'. And I'd laugh myself into a hiccup fit every time.

The memories of her and that sweet, slow sway at Rusty's soothed away some of the pain. But Jerrod's face—Brawley, remember? The interim superintendent I actually liked?

Yeah, let's get back to the morning after all that swiggin' and swayin'.

Jerrod had excused himself to take an urgent call just as I sat down in front of his desk. But he was turning this oversized paperclip end to end, end to end, end to end on his big desk with the hardest eyes I'd seen since I looked into the rheumy gaze of that old Lloyd guy at the end of the bar the day before who got grumpier and grumpier as the night wore on.

Sat there hissing crazy shit to himself over the drinks AJ paid for. Probably hating himself for accepting them. God, how awful it must be to be mad at the world all the goddamned time.

It sure was awful to feel the way I did that morning. I kept rubbing the ring on the chain around my neck like I was trying to make AJ appear like a genie or something.

And he did, in my head. Looking all sleepy sexy...

It was so hard to leave our beds the mornings after by then. I hated to shower off the nights before.

Wanted to take all the sights and sounds and tastes and smells out into whatever world I was headed for like an invisible force field all the crazy would just bounce off of.

The herbal drink was easing the pain some by the time Jerrod hung up and said, "Okay, well, there's no way to make this any less painful so let's just rip the Band Aid off fast."