10 #2
Danbi covered her mouth with her hands as if to stop herself from speaking. She dropped her hands in her lap and sat up straight in her seat. She was wearing a simple peach-colored silk blouse and a gray wool flannel skirt.
“I’d hoped that you would have made greater progress by now,” he said, wanting to stop this performance.
“You gave me two weeks, and this Australia project could have taken a month even if I had all the Queensland numbers. I don’t understand why—”
“Miss Jung, you are clearly a bright young person, but perhaps this is not the kind of work you should be doing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, part of what I do is to evaluate the needs of my team and department, and I don’t think this is the right place for you. I hope you understand. Human Resources will be reaching out with a package. I think—”
Her mouth fell open.
“I’m trying my best. The assignment was impossible! There have been so many absurdly difficult projects. All of which I completed. How could you do this? You wouldn’t want to be treated this way—”
John stared mutely at the glass door behind her chair. She was not wrong.
“I’ll provide a strong reference, and I think there are others who can help you as well, to find another position elsewhere. I hope you can understand—”
“No, I don’t understand. I was doing very well before you got here.”
John furrowed his brow. He was the kind of manager who could tolerate dissent, but even he was surprised by her bold insistence, especially since she would need his reference in the future.
He had fired other people before, but never like this.
Normally the person left the office understandably upset, but no one had ever shouted at him.
“You don’t like me,” Danbi whispered. “You’re jealous of my relationship with the director.”
“What?” John’s head snapped back.
“You know we’re in love, and you’re judging us. I know his wife and your wife are friends. But he loves me, and he wants to take care of me. I’m a good employee, and you’re trying to kick me out. I’m going to tell him to fire you. You’ll see. I’m not going anywhere. You won’t get away with this.”
Danbi got up from her seat and marched resolutely to his side of the conference table. She breathed in deeply and stared at him.
John pulled away from his chair, unable to look away from her. The ripeness of her youth was overwhelming, reminding him of sex, peaches—and rage.
“You’re attracted to me.” Her voice was quiet now, her eyes narrowed. “I know you are, and you want to punish me for it.”
John felt his pulse race. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You didn’t do an assignment properly. I have no choice but to let you go. Please return to your seat.”
“Men like you just want girls like me to spread our legs and throw us away when you’re done.
You think I don’t know that? I was one of the best math students at Korea University.
The only woman who could keep up with the men.
That assignment you gave me could not be done.
If I were you, I’d be preparing to leave your office, Manager Koh. ”
John looked past the glass walls. No one walked by.
Danbi moved closer to him, standing over his chair. He could smell the jasmine of her perfume.
“You want this,” she said.
John moved his chair back and remained seated.
Danbi gripped his right hand and placed it on the neckline of her peach blouse. Her hand clasped over his, she ripped open her blouse and screamed.
“Get away from me! Help me! Save me!”
She pushed up her skirt as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world and sat on the table, her legs straddling his thighs, exposing her underwear and stockings.
John tried to move away, but she clamped her calves around his thighs. She pushed aside her brassiere to expose her left breast. The pink aureole looked like a target. Helen was the only woman he had ever seen naked. He broke away from her forcefully.
“Help!” she cried again while staring at him steadily. With her left hand, she smeared her mouth to mess up her lipstick, then threw herself on the floor.
Colleagues rushed in the door.
“I didn’t do anything. She’s crazy—” He pointed at Danbi, who was now sobbing. “She’s crazy! She attacked herself when I fired her—”
An accountant, a middle-aged man and the father of two college-age girls, removed his jacket to cover Danbi’s nakedness.
“Manager Koh, I don’t think this is right,” he said.
“I didn’t do this. She’s making this up. I tried to fire her, and she—”
Shin moved through the crowd and looked at John with understanding. Danbi continued to cry, whimpering now as if she were being tormented by the memory. John shook his head in disbelief, unable to comprehend what had just happened to him.
Almost no one believed her because everyone knew John Koh was incapable of such a thing.
Danbi Jung was disliked by the women at the office and by most men on her team.
However, what everyone had witnessed was unquestionably compromising.
It was hard to imagine a woman revealing herself like that at the office.
Human Resources, Legal, and Auditing were called in to investigate that afternoon.
They interviewed John and Danbi separately.
Shin supported John, but it didn’t make things go away.
John was put on leave without pay. It wasn’t clear for how long.
John went home to an empty apartment. He sat in his living room, dumbstruck.
He didn’t know how much time had passed when the doorbell rang. Shin stood in the doorway until John wordlessly stood aside to let him in, without offering him slippers or anything to drink.
“Is your wife here?”
“She’s at work.”
“I didn’t know Danbi could do something like that.”
“I can’t believe she would lie and accuse me of something so horrible. I would never ever—”
“I know you wouldn’t.”
“I need my job—” John broke off, unable to imagine his family’s future, now at risk due to his friend’s insane folly.
Shin spoke quietly. “She is threatening to press criminal charges against you, which would be far worse than losing your job.”
“But I didn’t do it. If I tell the truth, then—”
“If you tell the truth, then I will lose my job, too, and then who will help you get something else? Do you see the predicament we’re in—”
“You were behind this. I didn’t do anything wrong—” John paused because he had done something wrong. He had been asked to lie, and he had lied.
“You asked me to fire her because you knew she was dangerous. She said you two are in love. You’re a married man with three boys. Brother, you should come to your senses.”
It felt easier for John to warn Shin than to think of himself. He had no idea what to tell Helen when she came home.
Shin looked at him helplessly. “I love her. I do. She’s crazy, but I don’t know how to make it stop. I can’t lose her.”
“If you want to go to hell with a woman like that—”
“She’s not what you think. She comes from a terrible family. Sometimes it’s like watching a trapped animal trying to survive—”
“That may be, but I know when a person cannot be trusted.”
Shin fidgeted with his mother-of-pearl cuff links.
“What will you do when she turns against you?” John asked.
“At work? Against me?” Shin glared at him. No one could understand his relationship with Danbi. She could not live without him, she had said again and again. Never would she hurt him, she’d said.
“Yes. She’d do the same thing to you if she has to.”
“She can’t accuse two men of rape. No one would believe that.”
John understood then that Shin had already considered this outcome.
“She could call your wife.”
“She already has.”
“And?” John closed his eyes, knowing Mary.
She would do nothing to stop him. She would pray for Shin’s soul and likely Danbi’s as well.
She would pray to find forgiveness. She would pray for her children.
She would not divorce him because he would be even more lost without her.
This was something Helen had explained to him once, and the logic of it would make little sense to anyone who did not believe in God the way Mary did.
“She said this will pass. It always passes.”
“Will it? Will you make Miss Jung go away?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Shin said. “I will take care of this. I have to—”
John covered his face with his hands and took a breath.
“I listened to you. Somehow I justified her being fired because she would create disharmony. Isn’t that ridiculous? Not once did I think that this could—” John couldn’t say any more.
“I appreciate what you did. I will never forget this.”
“How will I take care of my family?”
“I’ll find a solution. I’m talking to everyone I know to find you another position.”
“I’m not getting paid until I go back to work.”
“Danbi said she won’t press charges against you or the company, as long as you quit.”
“Resign?”
Shin said nothing.
“I have three children I have to educate. I have to save for their weddings and my retirement. Helen can’t work forever, and HRI makes us retire when we’re sixty-two.
Shin, I have to work. There are people who depend on me.
Bo is studying for Yonsei now, and DH is at Andover.
And Mido—” John covered his mouth with his left hand.
Shin held up an HRI duffel bag he had brought with him. He laid it beside John.
“It’s a year’s salary.”
“No. I want my job. Give that to Danbi. I want to keep my job. I deserve it. At my age, where am I to go? Can you imagine if I leave like this? People will think I might have done this terrible, terrible thing. How?”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried? She intends to stay.”
“She’s holding you by your penis.” John blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. Suddenly he remembered the coldness of her stare. “She is a twisted person.”
“I never intended for you to get hurt,” Shin insisted, but John was unmoved. “Let me see what I can do. Give me some time. We have to keep this out of the papers. I’ll do my best to persuade her to drop the accusation. I am sorry.”
John did not get up from his seat to show him out.