Employee of the Year

Chapter 34 - The Wandering Ghost

The week of July 17.

The next weekend I finally left the house for a special service honoring Charlie up in Korea Town. The family funeral was held back when Marcus and I were still in jail, awaiting our hearing. But once Marcus was released, he insisted on paying for an event to honor his deceased head of security. The Park family chose the venue, a traditional Korean-style funeral home on a side street near Olympic and Normandie. I saw dozens of co-workers from Passion in attendance along with members of the extended Park family, all of us wearing our finest, formal black attire.

            I removed my shoes at the entrance and picked a white chrysanthemum from one of the giant vases as instructed. I placed the flower in front of a giant framed photo of the deceased. I lit a stick of incense and bowed in front of Charlie's picture. Then I turned and bowed to his wife and daughter, dressed in matching, coal-colored Chanel outfits. Charlie's wife, Hyuanh, looked like she had lost ten pounds since the last time I saw her. His daughter, Alison, the high-powered MBA who worked downtown and drove the new BMW was composed and attractive.

            Once all the guests passed through this memorial, we gathered in a reception hall in the back of the funeral home. Marcus took the podium and delivered his eulogy.

            "People ask me the secret to my success. I tell them the key is to surround myself with people who are wiser than I am. Charlie was definitely such a man. I remember clearly when I first interviewed Charlie for a job. Passion was a small, unknown bank. I had a reputation as a scruffy, young upstart in the financial world. Nobody expected my venture to survive. It was hard to find good people at that time.

"Charlie was willing to work for me because he'd just lost his own business in the riots. Here was a man who'd just been through my worst nightmare. Yet Charlie was resolute. He never showed a hint of weakness or despair. I asked Charlie what it was like to lose everything to the looters. He told me: 'A man should never be afraid to lose as long as he has something to believe in.'

"For Charlie, his work and his family were the things he could always believe in, no matter what danger or hardship came. He had achieved peace and harmony in both his profession and his personal life. This is something, quite frankly, that I have never been able to do."

            Marcus's voice cracked a little as he finished his speech. I knew it was genuine. I could tell that he had lost someone he cherished, loved, and trusted. As Marcus stepped away from the podium, Gina approached and whispered something in his ear. Whatever it was, it clearly sent a shock. The two of them abruptly left the service without explanation.

            The rest of us stayed and mingled in the reception hall. I bumped into Stanley Kim, Charlie's nephew, who had been so rude to me during his stint at Passion before he was arrested for running a scam to steal laptop and headsets from the call center.

            Stanley greeted me with a humble smile and a sincere handshake, with no trace of the arrogance I remembered from the days of the ping-pong tournament. They must have taken away his cocky attitude along with the rest of his personal belongings when he checked into jail.

"I am sorry I disrespected you, Temo. I was a different person then."

"It's OK, man."

"I'm not sure it is OK. I was a real asshole back then. I deserved to be punished. Something had to be done. Something had to set me on the right track."

"We all make mistakes," I said.

"That's right. But we can try to correct them. We can change. Nothing's written in stone."