7
Nomination
Danbi did not observe the Sabbath.
After Sunday services, there were insurance and small-business seminars to give, youth to mentor, and church meetings. After church ended, often she and Taehun Shin entertained clients.
Shin and Danbi were a constant presence at church.
They now owned the fourth-largest insurance brokerage in Orange County, with the largest Korean base, and many of their clients attended Gospel Presbyterian.
They were active ruling elders sitting on the most important committees.
On holidays, Shin led prayers at the popular eleven o’clock service, and Danbi circulated during the various coffee hours.
Their work naturally bled into Sundays, and the two spent the day ducking in and out of all three services.
Their weekend nanny would pick up Anna after the church sitters were gone and drive her home in the company car.
Although Shin spoke English beautifully, Danbi couldn’t seem to speak it, despite ongoing efforts during her six years in America. Her English reading and writing skills were excellent. However, she could not speak it without a heavy accent and grammatical errors, which embarrassed her.
“When you learn to speak a new language, you must look foolish,” one American tutor told her, and she fired him.
Danbi refused to make mistakes and lower herself in the eyes of native English speakers.
Shin and their employees dealt with the English-only customers.
At church, she spoke only her flawless Korean.
Danbi was thirty-six years old. Physically, she had changed only a little in the new country.
Still young and alluring, she devoted considerable time and attention to her appearance.
Motherhood had forced her to be more thoughtful about her sexual power.
With a daughter in school, she realized that she had to get along with at least a few important mothers to learn about the best classes, schools, and teachers, so she befriended the mothers who mattered, refusing to have her child left out.
Anna was six, and she had marvelous tutors.
The first grader went to the premier elementary and middle school hagwon for mathematics, reading, and writing in their neighborhood of Woodbridge.
On Saturdays, Anna had private lessons for golf and tennis, but it was becoming clear that the child was better at golf.
From the golf hagwon, Danbi learned the name of the best children’s golf instructor in Southern California.
Although Danbi could have had almost any man, it was Taehun Shin she wanted.
Once she realized this, she also understood that if she got him to leave his wife and three sons, he’d have no real money to speak of.
No matter how hard she worked at HRI, she’d never be able to earn the kind of capital she’d require for their new life from her salary alone.
Danbi had almost no money of her own, so she decided to accrue capital and valuable information, especially when the IMF Crisis occurred and panic set in at every level of the company.
She knew better than most that sex relieves tension.
Bonhwa Han, a vice-chairman at HRG, became her mentor.
After Shin was fired, Danbi asked the vice-chairman to teach her about investing post–IMF Crisis.
At first, they met privately in hotel rooms. He gave her $25,000 US when she playfully teased him about telling his wife.
Certain men of significant stature, she had learned, wanted to do things that their wives did not enjoy.
Vice-Chairman Han preferred sex outdoors, and after she took care of his specific needs on a penthouse hotel balcony at twilight, she let him know that she required a certain amount of money in American currency.
During another meeting, at a party on a boat in Seoul, they had sex in one of the stalls in the men’s bathroom. The following day, he brought her a beautiful purse filled with dollars. Each time, he brought more, and when she refused to meet him again, he raised the offers.
Not once did he get cross with her flirtatious threats and financial requests.
If anything, he seemed to respect her more for the increases.
However, as he grew more outlandish in his fantasies, Danbi lost interest. She drew the line at recording outdoor sex.
Soon he grew possessive, tracking her movements. More than once, he had her followed.
Danbi ended it wisely by introducing him to another young woman who had a far greater appetite for risk and money.
Not long after, she chose the vice-chairman of a telecommunications company.
In no time, she learned about his kinks, involving domination and bodily emissions.
After a few meetings, she also learned which telecommunications companies would survive the IMF Crisis.
Under his tutelage, she took the capital she had received from Mr. Outdoor Sex, bought the stocks, and held them.
The masochistic ejaculator had been correct in his stock picks, and if only she’d had more initial capital, she and Shin would have had a far larger nest egg to start their company in California.
Shin never knew of their existence, and in her mind, none of these encounters mattered because they meant nothing to her except for the capital they provided.
Danbi had merely raised money for her new venture.
She could not help that he was under the false impression that their insurance agency was being backed by her cousin Frank Lim, when in fact, she was the sole owner of the holding company.
She was deeply in love with Shin, and she had allowed him to father a child with her. Much had changed between them over the years; however, she was as attracted to him now as she had been when she first met him right out of college.
Of course, men still wanted to sleep with her. It was obvious from the way clients and strangers behaved. There was a way a man looked at you, handed you his business card, offered to buy a meal, which all led to when he’d plot a way to pass you a hotel room key.
Danbi valued her prowess. Nevertheless, even if she could, she would not exercise her sexual power unless she was willing to pay the price she’d paid before.
Before Anna, she had not cared what other women thought of her.
Now, as a mother and as a business owner, she put on the frock of church elder to cloak the deep reserves of her power.
So she changed her clothes and makeup. If, as a young single woman, she could have played a sexual ingenue in a pornographic film, now, as a mother of a little girl, she had to play the elegant and cool businesswoman to be an alpha or beta in any women’s group.
Elegance—a personal quality other women accepted—and raw erotic availability simply could not coexist. Danbi maintained her figure, and beneath her expensive clothes, she wore the lingerie of a prostitute that Taehun Shin could not resist; however, in the presence of other women, she looked chic, costly, and vaguely maternal.
For this Nominating Committee meeting, Danbi had selected an imported black pantsuit cut close to her slender figure, with a long row of pearl buttons and a pair of beige-and-black ballet slippers to highlight her small and narrow feet.
Her throat was exposed, and her only jewelry was her emerald-cut diamond ring and channel-set wedding band, which she had purchased herself.
Danbi served as the cohead of the Nominating Committee along with George Hong, the highly esteemed president of a real estate company.
Like most men, George, eight years her senior, was attracted to her, and Danbi allowed a bit of joking when they were alone.
But she admired his wife, Sobin, whose family owned George’s business, so she also made sure to talk about her husband, Taehun Shin, and how he liked to do tae kwon do, which was true.
Seven elders had gathered after the late-morning services.
Among the numerous items on the agenda was the election of two elders for this committee.
In practice, any elder could be nominated for a seat, but in reality, it was far trickier because so many elders wanted to be on this committee, which allowed greater influence on fast-tracking or blocking a person’s ascent in the community.
“We have twenty-one candidates to go through. Fifteen women and five men. I should add that Ryu Seong-tae has been nominated again,” George said, without mentioning that Ryu had nominated himself.
After several business and tax scandals, Ryu and his wife had been going through different churches in the area trying to sanitize their reputations.
After becoming an elder at Gospel by a fairly narrow vote, Ryu now sought even higher status with a seat on the Nominating Committee.
Danbi glanced at the agenda, scanned the list of nominees, and crossed off Ryu. There were at least two Kohs she recognized on the list, including Elder John Koh, who’d been nominated by George’s wife, Sobin, who had been a customer of his late wife, Helen, at Mrs. Chung’s Emporium.
Over the course of the meeting, the seven elders quickly whittled down the list to three people, and John Koh remained.
“Does John Koh even want to serve?” Danbi asked, even though she knew the answer.
No one could be nominated unless they had already agreed to serve if elected.
“I mean, really serve. Also, doesn’t he roll off in a year and a half, requiring a Sabbath year?
I think he must be quite busy in his work. I heard they’re expanding.”
“That’s why I nominated him,” Sobin said. “We lost Elder Park because he moved, and we need someone who wants to serve out the remainder of Elder Park’s term. He’s perfect.”
Another elder asked, “What is his work?”
“He manages a nail salon,” Danbi said with a polite smile. “He doesn’t own it. He runs it.”