Kimchi
Deliciously Smelly Korean Food 🙂
Fog is re-arranging itself in a slow turning dance on Mount Diablo.
Two dozen well-dressed, middle-aged couples mingle on a perpetual green lawn.
The sixteen-year-old plucks a champagne glass from a passing tray, and mouths thank you to the human holding the tray.
Mitra’s Mom whips the glass out of her hand. “Since when do you drink in public?”
Mitra says, “In Italy teenagers enjoy—”
Mom tells her that they’re not in Italy.
“Tell me about it,” Mitra says. “We’re in a republican-infested—”
“Shush darling. Politics to ourselves until Dad is reelected, and take those glasses off. Let everyone see those pretty blue eyes.”
Without warning, there is a roar inside Mitra’s head.
A silent wailing in her skull.
It is not a sound, more like a feeling, a memory.
Sometimes I think there is a map concealed in the darkness in my head.
Mom says, “What map?”
“I said I think the fat man in the dark suit is ogling me.”
Her mother follows the thread of Mitra’s look, but her gaze flits over the fat man in the dark suit and alights on a uniformed navy captain.
He smiles and Mom smiles back.
“Mom, are you flirting with a random person in a valet uniform?”
“I know you know that is not a valet—”
Olga
A high-pitched voice detonates next to them.
A brunette in a blue crĂŞpe dress with matching eye shadow and a deep neckline stands next to them, exuding Miss Dior and carnality.
Mom says, “Dear Mrs. Winthrop, it is so good to see you.”
Femme fatal inches closer to Mitra, her elbow not touching hers, but threatening to, and she whispers, “Please, call me Olga.”
Her voice has a slithering echo like the sound a brush makes on cymbals.
Mitra swings around, proffering her right hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
Olga Winthrop holds on to Mitra’s extended hand a couple of seconds too long and tells her that the pleasure is all hers. “Are you in college?”
“Cal Tech,” Mitra responds. “Physics.” She picks a chute glass filled with a pink liquid from a passing tray and drowns the contents before her mother can blink.
“Cal Tech.” Olga eyes Mitra’s lips and neckline. “Impressive.”
Mitra doesn’t miss a beat. “Parallel dimensions and naughty electrons. So sexy, right?”
Olga begins to say something when Mitra interrupts. “You have some Azerbaijani in you, don’t you?”
“Azer—what?”
“The way you pronounced the C of Cal Tech. It sounded like a J.”
Olga opens her mouth, shuts it.
“Ganja dialect,” Mitra says. “Isn’t it?”
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Minutes later, as they watch Olga Winthrop sashay away Mom says, “You should not tell people that you’re in college.”
“MILF was totally hitting on me.”
“Language darling.”
Mitra says, “I wonder how much those tits have set senator Winthrop back.”
“Shush, darling.”
“She was not wearing a bra either. So, not fair. Mom, can I get a little lift? I feel my tits are beginning to sag.”
Mom clears her throat loudly. “Wasn’t Brian coming tonight?”
“Who?”
Mom says, “Your BF. The quarterback.”
“Beefy guy, Duh-Brain, smells like motor oil?”
“Yes. No. I mean he smells fine.”
Mitra tells her that she has traded up.
“Who’s the new BF?”
“GF,” Mitra corrects her. “Korean. Thirty-nine. Divorced. Creamy skin and almond eyes you could—”
“When can we meet him darling? Friday after your Piano practice? A light supper? You know your father insists on meeting all your BFs.”
“Mom, I should tell you. I really do not play the piano.”
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Officer
Olga Winthrop eyes the navy officer holding hands with the blonde.
He is making a conscious effort not to look in Olga’s direction.
Failing miserably.
Olga waits patiently, and when the wife of the naval officer goes to the bathroom, she swan-dives for the kill.
He beams when he senses her close.
Olga whispers, “A story for every…”
“Like Scheherazade.”
“You remember,” Olga says. “Remember when we were on that island you—”
“You’ve got to go,” he says. “My wife could be—
“Fuck her.”
He smiles, so she knows it will be easy.
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THE SPY
Later that night, in her apartment, Olga Winthrop undresses slowly thinking of the lovely creature she met as she dials Brother.
A deep voice says, “What?”
Olgas says, “I was at—”
Brother interrupts, telling her that they know, that they have the officer’s semen from the condom he used. His tone tells her that she is wasting his time.
Olga speaks quickly. “Something else, someone else. The daughter of the mayor. She is sixteen. I think.”
She waits for the idea to sink in.
Olga says, “She knew I was Azerbaijani, picked up on my pronunciation.”
Brother thinks about that for a few seconds.
“How would a sixteen-year-old American girl know?”
Olga says, “Her name is Mitra as in—”
“Daughter of Surya,” Brother interrupts. “I get it. Is she adopted?”
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Marylin Monroe
As soon as Mitra walks into the one- bedroom apartment, she detects Mi-Cha’s presence, her scent.
She takes off her shoes and says, “You’ve been working out.”
“Argh!” Mi-Cha screams from the bedroom. She affects a faux Japanese accent. “Mitra-san, you insufferable. I am showered and powdered now.”
Mitra says, “Like a proper Korean Lesbian.”
“I hate that word.”
“Korean?”
When Mi-Cha walks into the living room, Mitra says, “What is with the white dress?”
“It’s very Marylin Monroe, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“You don’t know who—?”
“I do not.” Mitra scrunches her nose. “Can you open the windows when you do Taekwondo?”
Mi-Cha says, “You don’t like the way I smell. You don’t like the way I dress. You don’t know who Marylin—”
“It’s the age difference,” Mitra interrupts.
Mi-Cha nods gravely.
“I agree,” she says. “We break off tonight.”
Mitra corrects her. “Break up.”
Mi-Cha takes off a stiletto from one perfect creamy foot and throws it at Mitra.
It hits her on the arm. “Ouch!”
Mi-Cha says, “One last time before you fuck off forever?”
Mitra feigns thinking about that.
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GF
Afterwards they lie in bed, legs up, toes and foreheads touching.
Mi-Cha says, “Tonight, I want to cook Korean.”
“Or we could eat out.”
“You eat Kimchi, or I will never talk to you again.”
“Can it be without…?”
Mi-Cha gives an emphatic shake of the head banging her forehead against Mitra’s. Traditional Kimchi, she informs Mitra, is with boiled cabbage.
“Can I cover my nose?”
“Spoiled little shit. Racist—”
Mitra kisses her to shut her up.
“So,” Mitra says, “pizza?”
Mi-Cha says, “We eat proper Korean food tonight, or…”
“Or what?”
“Start thinking about living without me.”
Mitra says, “There was this Russian woman at the fundraising.”
“Slut,” Mi-Cha says, “I thought you were different tonight.”
“Not Russian. From another country that was part of Communist Russia. Turkey? How different?”
Mi-Cha says, “Turkey has never been part of the Soviet Union.”
“How was I different?”
“If you don’t let me teach you geography you will fail high school.” She does a quick intake of breath. “Was she your type?
Mitra blushes beet red.
“You slut.”
A pillow smacks Mi-Cha in the face.
Mi-Cha arms herself with another pillow. “Okay Mitra-san. It’s war you want, it’s war you get.”
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Cadillac
A girl dressed in a Tyvek protective suit gets out, slinks to the wall in front of the building’s entrance and draws a red X on the wall. When she gets back in the car, she says, “What if she really doesn’t remember? I hear episodic memory loss runs in the family.”
“Stupid disorder more likely,” the driver says. “A spoiled little brat deliberately and consciously acting dumb because she thinks it’s cute.” Then, the driver, the woman they call Nahr thinks about the alternative.
“Or she has forgotten. In either case…” She shrugs.
The girl insists. “But the oath we—”
Nahr interrupts, “I’ve sworn to protect the Goddess of Light. I haven’t sworn to protect a privileged little American brat. She doesn’t remember, she dies. Her lesbian lover and her mother will be ravaged. Daddy mayor and little brother will die gruesome deaths.”
Nahr eyes the backlit silhouettes of the girl and her lover reflected in the window of the building, listens to Mitra shriek with laughter as the Korean girl throws her to the floor, and says, “Perhaps we misread the prophecy.”