23. Not At Home
NOT AT HOME
MARINA
“Where have you been?”
Marina let her bag slide out of her hands and onto the floor. It landed with a dull thud on the linoleum. “I thought you knew everything.”
The apartment smelled like garlic and scorched rice — someone had let a pan go too long on the stove again — and the single bare bulb over the kitchen table buzzed faintly, throwing everything in that flat, unforgiving light.
Sven walked back to the kitchen, whistling tunelessly, the sound trailing off down the hallway.
“Had a nice trip?”
“Not as nice as you did with?—”
Marina put both hands on Esmee’s shoulders and squeezed.
“Miss Wu, Miss Park, a driver, and that MOFA liaison officer took me to Wonsan and tried to make me go to Songwondoon Children’s Camp, where I refused.”
“Ri Sung-cheol,” Esmee mouthed. Then: “Yes, that must have been fun. I was here all day with Sven.”
Marina’s eyebrows shot up.
“I can be in a house with a guy without tagging him, you know,” she said, voice low, close enough that Marina caught the ghost of Esmee's perfume — something floral and expensive, entirely out of place for someone who lived in a flat with a broken coffee machine.
“Congratulations.”
Esmee cocked her head. “Unlike some…”
“Giovanni and Aya are back home in Brussels. We should meet with Tobias tomorrow and get some news about them.”
It was Esmee’s turn to grab Marina’s shoulder. She pulled her in, and whispered in her ear: “I know you’re fucking him.”
Marina threw Esmee’s arm off of her. “I’m not.” Which was true. What they had was not a fuck. It was something else entirely.
It wasn’t until she was lying in bed when the magnitude of her tree yoga hit her.
What had she been thinking?
Her face was getting pink and her eyes were prickling.
She felt helpless.
She’d crossed a line. She had fallen in love with a man trapped inside the DPRK. She would never get him out. She was going to leave him here, soon, and then what would happen?
If she got pregnant, she’d raise their child alone in Belgium, point to the sun dawning over the horizon and say, “Daddy’s out there. I think.”
She got out of bed and pulled back the curtain.
The night sky was deep black velvet, the stars brilliant white. She searched until she found Saturn, its rings wrapped around the tiny sphere of the gas giant.
In a few short weeks she would be back in Brussels, looking up at the same sky.
And he would still be here.
She couldn't come back for him. She couldn't write to him.
She couldn't call him. Unauthorized contact with foreigners was a violation of hte National Law.
But even worse, she was a foreign government official.
Contact with her could put him under suspicion of spying.
He would be put under investigation. He would be disgraced, lose his job, thrown in jail.
He would go behind the wire, and his entire family would disappear inside a prison camp.
She'd never see or hear from him again.
Her chest tightened. She couldn't seem to drag in a full breath.
She got back into bed and rolled onto her side, where she could still see the sky. When she boarded the plane, he would be a plane flight away but just as remote and untouchable.
“Please help us,” she breathed.
Then she closed her eyes.