The marines laugh again. It’s true — their subliterate commander-in-chief will be launching an unprovoked invasion in another month or so. These boys contradict themselves by saying they’d love to get reassigned off this peninsula that hasn’t seen real conflict in fifty years. The war would be their ticket to adventure.
“But it’ll only be a three-month gig, man,” one of them says. “Get rid of Saddam, root out al-Qaeda, then back home by summer.”
“There’s no al-Qaeda in Iraq,” I point out, but assume my mumbles are smothered under the dance music.
“Yeah, man,” another marine goes on, “we’ll get in there and finish the job we started.”
Rob Cruise, conspicuously quiet for several minutes, takes a long pull on his drink and says: “I served in the first Gulf War.”
The table turns to face him. He takes another drink.
“Did you really?” Jon Hung asks.
“I did. Company C of the RCR, 1991. I took a break from university the year before and signed up. I was barely twenty.” He says this directly at the lead marine, who looks like he would’ve still been in elementary school in 1991.
Jin tilts her head at Rob. “You never told me that.” The way she says it — the gentle, almost caring tone, the slight hurt that he would keep such a thing from her — floods me with a knowledge that should’ve been obvious from the start. Oh my God, I think, she was one of the one hundred.
“So you’ve been over there?” the lead marine asks.
“Yep.”
“So what do you think? We up for a good fight?”
Rob spits laughter at him. “What do I think? I think your D.O.D. has lost its fucking mind. First of all, Michael over here is right — al-Qaeda doesn’t have any connections to Iraq. Second of all, you guys have no idea what kind of hornets’ nest you’re about to stir up.”
The marine shrugs. “That’s all part of the job, man. Army life’s full of excitement and danger — you’d know that.” He sips his own drink. “Of course, teaching ABCs to Korean kids must have its challenges, too.”
Jin’s laughter bounces off the table. Rob and the other guys need to say something to keep the balance in check, but they’re struggling. I search for words that would get Jin’s attention back, to return the ball to our court, or at least relieve this sudden tension.
I give up hope once the conversation becomes blatantly about sex. How could it not, with this kind of dynamic? The youngest-looking marine — maybe eighteen — kicks things off by lobbing a stereotype about Korean girls in bed, something about their aversion to oral sex. He meant for it to sound flirty and hilarious, but his joke sinks like a stone. It does, however, lead us to discuss other stereotypes — French lovers, American lovers, Canadian lovers. Jin, still in her coat, takes up the charge when we start imagining what kind of lovers certain people around the table would be. She deliberately skips over Rob as she does the rounds, but has a blast taking the piss out of Jon Hung (“You’d be such a businessman — you probably use a spreadsheet to keep track of your conquests”) and Justin (“You would have silent orgasms”) and one of the beefier marines (“Selfish brute — you have ‘closet rapist’ written all over you!”) Then her gaze, for the first time, falls on me.
“And you?” she says, eyeing me up. It’s only then that I become painfully aware that I had put on a cardigan before leaving the apartment. “You’d probably make love like an intellectual.”
I catch the reference right away but allow the boys their laugh — after all, I do look like someone who’d make love like an intellectual.
“Kundera,” I say as she attempts to move on.
She snaps back to look at me, her face sharp with surprise. “Excuse me?”
“Milan Kundera,” I yell over the music. “That line about making love like an intellectual — you stole it from his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.”
She blinks at me. “You’ve read Kundera?” It doesn’t come out as a question so much as a statement of intrigue.
“What the hell are they talking about?” asks one of the marines.
“Milan Kundera,” I say simply.
“Who is she?” Rob Cruise asks.
“It’s a he, idiot,” Jin snips without looking at him. “He’s only one of my favourite writers.” She holds my gaze as if goading me to go on.
“I haven’t read everything of his,” I continue with a sigh. “ The Unbearable Lightness of Being, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Oh, and his new one, Ignorance, was one of the books I read on the flight over here. I didn’t like it.”
For the first time tonight, she stammers. “Well — well I’ve read Kundera in English, French, Chinese, and Korean.”
Deliberately, I shrug with indifference. I turn to the lead marine and say: “Kundera knows a thing or two about unprovoked invasions. You should read him.”
Rob Cruise is glowing at me; this is where I hold up my end of the mutual envy. It’s as if he’s passing me a torch, giving me permission to fan the flames of my sudden stardom. He also seems mildly stunned that I’ve trumped him and the other men at the table, that I’ve touched Jin in a way that they couldn’t. “This is all too heady for me,” he yells at everyone, giving me a wink. “What do you say we dance?” He gets up from the bench, anxious to lead us like Moses down to the dance floor. The soldiers don’t hesitate; in the spirit of sexual rivalry, they rise en masse in time with Rob’s movements, each trying to claim one of the shivering sticks as they too stand, adjusting miniskirts and straightening tube tops. Jin gets up, as well, trying very hard not to look at me. She finally, finally takes off her coat and tosses it onto the bench.
Oh my God.
She notices that I’m staring but haven’t moved. “Are you coming?” she asks.
“I don’t dance.”
Her face flattens with disbelief. What, you think this is about dancing? The others can’t quite believe that I’m holding my ground, that I’m about to squander what I’ve earned. Jin waits, maybe thinking that if she stares at me long enough with that face, I’ll change my mind.
Rob Cruise stands watching at the top of the stairwell, growing impatient. “Jin, baby, let’s go!”
She’s waffling now — to leave and dance, or stay and talk? I refuse to give her an inch, and so she clucks her teeth at the air and races lithely to the stairs, her legs a rush of tendons and confidence. Rob has already begun descending, certain now that she’ll follow him. Meanwhile, Jon Hung’s girlfriend is pulling him to his feet. “Go on, baby, I’ll be right there,” he orders her. When she’s gone, he comes over to me.
“What are you, lost?”
“I don’t dance,” I repeat.
He drains his drink and sets it noisily on the table. “Milan Kundera,” he shakes his head in mock disgust. “You are in the wrong fucking place, my friend.” He then motions to Justin, who is also still sitting. “Are you coming down?”
“No, I’ll stay behind. Keep Captain Hopeless over here company.”
Jon shakes his head at me again and then is gone. I slide over to the rail to watch them all on the dance floor. I find Jin right away. She stands out in the crowd not because of her cashmere and jeans but because her body in dance is an alluring twist and spiral to the mindless