Seoul Survivors (12 page)

“Bad girl? Me?” She dropped his hand and placed her palms on his shoulders, her breasts skimming his chest.

“I watch you dance,” he whispered hoarsely. “You very much alive in your body, I think.” He pushed her back a little, frankly admiring her, and she felt something secret loosen between her legs. “And you have very detailed mind,” he continued, nudging her into the doorway of the shop.

“Here?” They were only partially hidden from the boulevard, but he reached into her dress, grappled with her bra and coaxed out one of her breasts. Her knees buckled.

“Ahh. You smell Summer Passion.” He bent his head to suck greedily on the puckered nipple.

She closed her eyes, moaned and gripped his shoulders. She wanted him to take all her weight, lift her from the ground, into his arms.

“Here?” he urged, his other hand kneading her bottom, fingers inching down toward her wet panties. “You cannot come to my house, Sy-duh-nee. I married.”

He was getting taller, she was getting shorter, curling into his chest. He was kissing her neck. But . . . “You married?” she repeated stupidly, pushing him away. Of course he was; he was Korean, after all.

“I married, but I want free.” He cocked his head and pressed his groin against hers. “What you think? Do you want sex?”

Yes she did, she did want sex, quite badly as it happened. “We can go to my place,” she said. “I live round the corner.”

“Solo?”

“
Ne
, solo.”

“Is artist style,” he said, pinching her nose. He rearranged her clothes. He held her hand all the way home.

His flight got in at eleven a.m., but Johnny didn't bother to call. Sydney would be crashed out in bed with her sexy clubbing clothes still on; he figured he'd just crawl in beneath the covers and give her a rude awakening. Then he'd whisk her back out to the airport for an evening flight to Thailand. He had a suite booked at the Phuket Hilton to start, then they'd head to a smaller island. Man-o-man, he needed some sex on the beach.

In the black cab from the airport back to Itaewon he fired off a few quick self-congratulatory emails from his MoPho—it couldn't hurt to remind people there was only one Johnny Sandman, only one key operative capable of dealing with every last bullet point on the agenda. Even Kim had to admit that no one else in Asia could have co-ordinated PAT. The multiple bribes necessary to ensure the smooth completion of Project Aid Truck had required every ounce of his considerable political and administrative expertise, but thanks to months of his bullying, account-laundering and string-pulling, thirty North Korean women had now been smuggled across the Chinese border to Beijing, taken from their villages in the false bottoms of International Aid trucks. Not one had been lost in the border crossings, where summary execution was always the outcome of capture.

And who'd flown out to meet and greet?
Who else but Johnny Sandman
? he thought, pressing Send for the fifth time. Certainly no one from that bunch of lousy pen-pushers and conference junkies had volunteered: no one else in fucking ConGlam or GRIP ever got off their asses and out into the field—except Kim, of course. That must be why she hated him so much. Territorial bitch. Well, the Doc couldn't get on his case about
any
aspect of this trip—in fact, even she would have to give him a little, heh heh,
PAT
on the back. For thanks to his logistical genius and considerable personal charm, arrangements were now in place for thirty happy peasants and their medics to travel on to a safe house in Kyonggi-do, an hour south of Seoul—a place he himself had sourced, if he recalled correctly.

He had also, he informed his boss in LA, gained the trust of the surrogates. With his clean-cut features and dirty-blonde hair Johnny
Sandman was the Hollywood face of their new future, and in this role of Western hero he had overseen the tiniest details of their care. Two of them had pneumonia, but wouldn't touch pharmaceuticals—they said it would be bad for the babies—so expensive herbalists had been engaged. Another woman needed major dental work, which had had to be booked. The rest of them had traipsed around the hotel after him, giggling behind their hands whenever he cast them as much as a stray glance. By the time he'd shown them the video, the ladies were all Silly Putty in his hands. Beijing might have been a hassle at times, but it had also been a golden test of Johnny Sandman's new powers of Empathy and Persuasion.

Admittedly, the success of the trip did away with his last excuse for not bringing Sydney into the picture yet, and it was way too late to find another girl now. He'd been thinking positive, though, during the long nights in that crap Beijing hotel. They hadn't been getting on too bad lately. Okay, she wasn't quite as down and dirty in the sack as he liked, but a guy could always play away occasionally. And sure, she'd been driving him crazy with her moods and sulks ever since she got that OhmEgo job, but between the OxyPops and his anger transformation techniques he'd managed to soothe things over—those training sessions with Andrew Beacon had been worth every red cent ConGlam had paid for them.

The taxi was crossing the river. He switched off his MoPho and leaned back in his seat. Things were on track. Johnny Sandman was moving on up. And what a journey it had been.

Of course he'd been furious when they'd ordered him to go to Vancouver for the
Moving from Anger to Passion
course—what kind of a hokey dumbass did they take him for? The Sandman didn't sit around discussing his shitty childhood with a bunch of no-hoper losers, no fucking way—but the head honchos had been firm on this matter. They didn't want him to “lose his edge,” they'd said; not lose his cool quite so often or so dramatically. He'd been pissed when they'd alluded to the Incident—which they
knew
was really just “Natural Exuberance”—but then, just as the fumes were seeping out of his nostrils, they'd thrown in the sweeteners. He'd get a big bonus if he brought the Queen of the Peonies back with him—the Doc was demanding a girl with no social network in Seoul, so he could see it made sense to recruit her in Canada. Plus, if he came back to Korea with Beacon's certificate he'd get not only the raise but a new title: Head of Korean Operations. He'd be doing the same shit as before—schmoozing, grooving and opening up new markets—but
with a hefty pay increase, and the responsibility of overseeing the two new projects for a minimum of five years.

Johnny had visualized the business card: “Johnny Sandman, HKO.” It sounded good; he'd agreed and they'd shaken on it. And later, on the plane to Vancouver, he'd thought: why not Head of Southeast Asian Ops? The current post-holder was in his sixties and had racked up luxury offices and apartments in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing and Bangkok, plus a retirement package to die for. All Johnny had to do was manage his five-year profit margin to spec and keep that uppity Dr. Kim in line and then the sky was the limit. Obviously ConGlam thought he had long-term potential or they wouldn't have been investing shitloads in this top guru course, complete with five-star hotel accommodation.

He'd been surprised to discover that Beacon wasn't some tired old hippie but young, well-built and well-tailored.
Raking up the past
, he'd said on that first day,
was a discredited therapeutic method
. His technique was all about reprogramming the psyche by internalizing key phrases: “paint your big picture”; “impress with passion, not your fist”: concepts which had gradually started to make sense, even “own your own errors,” initially the hardest to accept.
Hey, the Sandman don't make mistakes
, he'd told Beacon during the
Moving from Regret to Redemption
session,
and if you say sorry for the unknown unknowns, you'll end up shitting law suits: everyone knows that.

“Human relationships aren't all legal contracts, though, are they?” Beacon had replied. “Often taking emotional responsibility for your behavior is in fact disarming: it dissolves blame and lets you both—?”

He'd opened his arms and embraced the room.

“Play a New Game!” the other participants had chanted. The saddos were all clutching copies of Beacon's book; they'd obviously been up all night reading it.

“But that's not what I'm saying,” Johnny had insisted. “I'm saying, what if you didn't do anything wrong?”

“Johnny, try looking at it this way: saying sorry doesn't necessarily mean accepting blame for a situation. It can just mean that you feel sad that the other person feels bad; or that you're angry with a general situation that caused their upset. It can be an
empathic
statement. And Empathy—” He'd pointed his finger at the group again.

“—Opens Emotional Doors!”

Johnny hadn't ever thought of the word “sorry” like that before—in fact, the word hadn't really ever figured in his vocabulary.
But Beacon had made him spend the day saying it to people: “I'm sorry that your flight was delayed”; “I'm sorry you had a rough meeting”; “I'm sorry that your grandmother died”; right up to “I'm sorry that you're mad at me.” He sort of got the client-and-colleague role-plays; anything that impinged on business one might reasonably expect to feel annoyed about. The more personal exchanges, though, he found ridiculous: why the fuck would he feel sad that some old woman he'd never met had kicked the bucket? And the trick to saying “I'm sorry that you're mad at me” without taking blame was, apparently, to say it warmly, and that didn't come easily at all. But that lunchtime he'd taken himself out to the park across the road and suddenly, as he was doing his power walk, it had clicked:
showing empathy was a way of getting people to trust you
—or, like Beacon said, of opening doors. And it was far more energy-efficient to walk through an open door than to kick it down. By the end of the day he'd got “I'm sorry” down pat.

Later, when things had started getting tense with Sydney, he'd tried to put the strategy into practice. It wasn't always easy, especially if she'd really punched his buttons, and sometimes she wouldn't accept an apology unless he also took blame, but he'd been amazed to discover that if he did grit his teeth and choke the words out, she usually calmed right down. Fuck, if he'd known that years ago, he might've ended up getting hitched to Veronica instead of having a restraining order against him in two states. Looking back—as, despite himself, he'd found himself doing on Beacon's course—the end of that relationship had not been Johnny Sandman's finest hour. But hey, Veronica was fine now. He'd Googled her one night and discovered she was married with two-point-five kids and running some sort of dog boutique in Buttfuck, Texas. Clearly, Johnny and Ronnie had not been meant to be. But seeing her Facebook photo—her with her family—a strange mix of feelings had stirred in him: a weird relief that she was okay; followed by a counter-attacking surge of conviction that she'd always been just dandy, that he'd done nothing wrong except love a cheating bitch who had fucked the whole town whenever he was off on his tours of service. Underneath both of these reactions, he realized later in a long, halting, private session with Andrew Beacon, was a new kind of jealousy.

He used to be jealous of the guys Veronica flirted with. Now, he realized, he was jealous of
her
.

“Jealous of her? Why do you think that is?” Beacon had asked.

“Fuck, man, I dunno—'cause I want to give fucking Chihuahuas Brazilians all day?”

Beacon had waited. He was good at waiting.

“I guess because she's found someone,” Johnny had found himself muttering at last. Fuck, this was embarrassing.

“Someone special.”

“Someone who'll put up with her, more like.”

“Do you think you can do that too if you want? Find someone?”

“Look, Beacon”—he'd needed to make one thing clear—“I never wanted to before—not after Ronnie, anyway. Out in Asia, it's sex-on-a-stick, man, hookers or girls—
women
, whatever—who are dying to swivel on a big Western cock.”

“But now you feel differently?”

“I guess—no . . . I dunno.”

Beacon had pressed the tips of his fingers together the way he did when he was about to go off on one. “What's your big picture, Johnny?”

At least that had been easy to figure out: “I want the jobs ConGlam is grooming me for by sending me on this fucking touchy-feely course. I want to be ConGlam HKO, and in five years' time Head of SEA Ops.”

“Good, good: excellent clarity and focus. Now, why do you want those jobs?”

“Because I want people to know Johnny Sandman isn't some thug who got lucky with a few trend-spotting predictions. I'm a fucking genius, I know the Korean markets like the back of my hand, and I want people to show me some fucking respect.”

“You want people to see that you're special.”

“Damn right I do.”

“And maybe you want a woman to see that you're special too? To recognize not just your talents, but the whole you?”

“Women? Women are a fucking nightmare. You buy them shit; you give them head; they take off with some Mexican waiter.” He'd laughed, but Beacon hadn't joined in.

“Sometimes, Johnny, the big picture has aspects that are initially out of focus, but they get clearer as time goes on. As you continue to transform your anger, you may find that you will want a female companion to share your new passionate energy with. Or you may decide that a wife might be a career asset: someone to help you with social networking. But even stay-at-home wives can be demanding, and trigger old anger patterns. I sense you're in a transition stage;
you may not be ready to think about this yet, but if in the future you want to come back for our ‘Relationships: Moving from Difficult to Different' seminar, as you've taken this course, you or your company would get a twenty percent discount.”

Beacon was a hustler, straight down the line; Johnny liked that about him. They'd left it there, but that night, looking down at Sydney as she was sleeping, Johnny had wondered if maybe this girl wasn't just a hot property he was importing to Seoul, a sparky stray with no family, just what the Doc had ordered. It hadn't been the easiest of assignments, but he'd risen to the challenge, asking for a girl new to the agency, and specifying no college education.
I like a girl to have some innocence about her still
—real
innocence, if you know what I mean
, he'd said.
Of course I do, sir, and we have just the young lady for you
, the woman had replied. And whoa, he'd struck gold.

Sydney was just a kid, really; anyone could tell she wasn't a seasoned ho. No anal, no threesomes, no drugs, got drunk after three glasses of wine, and he'd had to remind her more than once to stick her pinkie up his ass during her enthusiastic but less-than-accomplished BJs. But whatever. She could learn all the sex tricks; he could teach her those. Because maybe Sydney was someone a little bit special—someone who might hang around for a change, look good on his arm at top-brass events, make the bosses feel jealous, even. If things went as planned, she'd be working with him for the next twenty years, after all.

So he'd tried extra-hard to make her laugh; he had bought her a teddy bear; cuddled her. And the day she said she'd think about coming back to Korea, he had gone back to his hotel feeling tense as a murder suspect waiting for the jury to deliver the verdict. But he couldn't beg her. No, that wasn't Johnny Sandman's style. He'd gone to the gym, worked out for hours, swum hundreds of lengths, and the answer had come to him:
serenade her
. The next night he'd sung her his favorite Sinatra song and lo and behold, she'd fallen for it. Fallen for
him
.