God Hates Us All

We move like a pack of wolves. Gene and the Englishman are the advance scouts, chasing each other down the streets with an energy verging on sexual, at least for Gene. Ray and Sunny are the alpha dogs, king and queen, still dancing down the street. Ray serenades her with an old song I half recognize. Sunny, thank you for the truth you let me see/Sunny, thank you for the facts from A to Z…. Sunny, a stranger to our alphabet, basks in the attention. Janie and I make up the rear. At some point she loops her arm around mine. I don’t stop her.

Gene breaks from his scouting and does a sort of jig in front of Ray and Sunny. He’s grinning like a madman. “Am I going to see you two do some fuck-ing?”

“No you will fucking not, you goddamn fairy,” replies Ray.

Gene giggles. “Maybe I’ll trade beds with Chris.

That way I’ll be riiight beneath you.”

I sense a shift in Ray’s mood. “Back off, Gene,” I say. “Mr. Moneybags doesn’t have to rub elbows or any other parts of his body with our sorry asses.

He’s staying at the Four Seasons.”

Ray stops as quickly as if he’d been punched in the gut. “Fuck.”

“You’re not staying at the Four Seasons?”

“Devi told me to cancel my room. ’Cause I’d be staying with her, right? Why waste all that money when I could be supporting some family of six in Nepal? Enough cow dung to last two winters …

That fucking bitch!”

We idle for a while until the news settles in. The English-man finally breaks the silence. “Bollocks,” he says solemnly to Ray. “I guess Gene’s going to get to see you fuck after all.”

Sunny’s face clouds with confusion, her disposition, for the first time tonight, at odds with her name. “How much farther is this place, anyway?” Ray barks at no one. “I’m getting a fucking cab.” He drags Sunny toward an intersection with a higher concentration of motor traffic.

The Englishman catches up to them. “In all seriousness, mate, you’re not going to bring her back to the hostel.”

“Why not?” demands Ray.

“It’s against the rules.”

Ray reaches the intersection and flags a passing cab. “Fuck the rules.” He guides Sunny into the car and looks at me. “Hurry up.”

My arm is still intertwined with Janie’s. I could let go and sprint toward the cab, were I that kind of asshole. Instead, I split the difference, half-jogging as fast as her little legs will allow. Gene and the Englishman interpret my drunken chivalry as an open invitation. They race toward the cab, piling in before we can.

The cabdriver glares skeptically at the six figures crammed in his backseat. He’s even more concerned when we tell him we’re going to the Superior Guesthouse. “You ditch fare,” the driver says, his voice clearly singed by experience.

Ray searches for his wallet — no easy task, given the increasingly confused Korean hooker on his lap. “Seriously,” the Englishman says. “Let Sunny out of the cab.”

Gene, who’d beaten the Englishman into the car and earned the right to sit nearly on top of Ray, sounds his agreement. “He’s right. It’s against the rules. You should let her go.” Gene grabs Sunny’s chin between his fingers and speaks into her face.

“You should go.”

“Get your fucking hands off of her,” says Ray, who has finally pried the wallet from his pocket. “I will break your god-damn fingers.”

“You should let her go,” says Gene.

Now Ray is screaming. “Where’s my money?”

He looks at me. I look at Janie. “Why are you looking at her?”

“I’m not.”

Janie just stares out the window. “Mr.

Moneybags spent it all at Suzie’s,” she says.

“She might be right,” I say. “I saw you drop a lot of money back there.”

“You should let her go,” says Gene.

“You should shut the fuck up!” says Ray. I catch the driver’s reflection in the rearview. He’s obviously regretting his decision to pick us up.

“You don’t even have any money,” says Gene.

“You should let her go.”

Now the brakes are squealing. We’re thrown forward by the momentum. The driver is yelling at us. “No money?!”

All eyes turn toward Ray. He opens his door and scoots out from underneath Sunny, dragging her behind him. The rest of us quickly join the exodus.

“I call police!” screams the driver, speeding away.

We’re on a street that even in my short time in Seoul feels vaguely familiar — the major thoroughfare with the wide side-walks. Janie renews her grip on my arm. “It’s this way,” she says, dragging me along.

I look over my shoulder at Ray, who has Sunny’s hand in a vise-grip. His bleary eyes bulge white with cartoonish panic. “What do you say, Ray?” I hear myself using a delicate voice, like a negotiator talking a jumper off a ledge.

“You should let her go,” repeats Gene, and it’s one time too many. Ray is spinning on one leg, dragging the other like a tetherball around a pole.

There’s a sickening crunch as his flying foot connects with the bridge of Gene’s nose. Gene crumples to the ground, holding his face. Blood spurts out through his fingers.