Category: Smoke (page 2 of 6)

I was dreaming of our eventual reunion on Jeju-do. I was sitting at an outdoor bar with a group of friends, and you just appeared out of the sea mist, like an animated garbage god. Drawn in some sunless studio, no doubt. Your manhwa self wore a shade of pink I hadn’t associated with you before. Nice sneakers, too. These details sent to us in dreams to distract our attention from the real game happening downtown in someone else’s dream. Okay, okay. I was in someone else’s dream of our eventual reunion. That someone happened to be on Jeju-do at the time of the dream. You see the problem. The potential for misinformation. Yes. We might never have met at all. You might have trudged on past in your costume made from plastic bottles and other detritus from the sea. You might have laid waste to Jeju-do. But … Well, you know the rest. Tell me again anyway. Okay, okay. So it turns out you were actually on your way to a costume party at one of the beachfront hotels. Yes, with an an aquatic theme. Somehow you convinced me and my friends to come along. You were draping seaweed over our hair and shoulders, sticking small plastic straws behind our ears.

The room was never completely empty, of course. You managed to hide yourself amongst my possessions, the loose ties and woolly scarves, mittens. I’d meet you on the subway, when your picture fell out of the text book I was reading. I’d meet you in the laundromat, when your red polka dot top found its way into a load of white company-issued shirts. I kind of liked the shade of pink they took on, as if granting me a higher level of entry to the company’s familial hierarchy. The privilege of puce. I met you in the convenience store, right? Was that the first time? Holding two hot coffee cans inside the pockets of your Arctic windblaster. I remembered you a different way each day, until after only one month I had begun to see your double everywhere. Or maybe it was really you each time after all. Teasing me with doppelganger effects, your eyes like arcs of moon. We met in a nightclub, remember? Swept up by the song’s energy and the thrill of touch, swirling away and meeting again at the end of each beat. I returned home to the scent of lemon from a spraycan. A neon pulse thumped in my chest and arms. I held out a hand to Buddha in the dark.

Whatever else happened, it was certainly you who came up with the name. How about PCB, like a little PC bang! We settled things over a single shot of vodka in some poorly-ventilated bar, making patents and intellectual property plans. Technological dream boosters. High on Chris de Burgh’s emotions, if only ironically. The day you pulled the disc from your growing collection of LPs and fitted its vinyl groove to the stylus and we danced to the tinny accompaniment of the device’s analogue trill, laughing as we eyed each other over small sips of vodka. We continued refining the PCB’s proposed dimensions and features. Built-in Cherry, soft Windows, Deja VU. Roaming connectivity meterbots, softchain dependability peaks, the works. Other stuff, circuit diagrams mostly. Like intricate cross-sections of existence in glowing Tron-green veins. A device as small as a human heart held in the palm of the hand. Its dynamic remediation a lamp-lit room of calm amidst the shipping lanes of transit and the straits of information.

When I got back to my tiny room everything had changed. Someone has been in here. The bed had been made, sheets strangling the mattress in a silence of white. The small bin had been relieved of its guilty burden: chocolate cake wrappers, empty grape soda cans. I opened Windows to the applause of street vendor traffic from the laneway, inhabiting the transit memory of whoever had followed the cleaner into the room. Inside the small shower cubicle, traces of moisture. That wasn’t it. Something about the hum of the small bar fridge. No, not that either. The stationery set out on its practical wooden desk. The alarm clock blinking slightly beside the bed. All traces of dust swept from the linoleum floor. Scent of peach from a spray can. As the baseball warmed up on the wall box I patched in, feeling a slight rent in time. That strange sensation I had felt in the days leading up to your departure, but still there long after our Incheon embrace. Desires like packets of dollar fives or hundreds and thousands, re-routed in transit.

Zero smokes, and drinks soju while he waits. Rumbles of traffic and subway bass. Two empty bottles on the table now. He’s been pouring one glass for himself, then placing a second in a growing pod on the other side of the table. He’s one third of the way through a pack of Smokes. The ajumma brings him rice and a small piece of fish. He doesn’t touch either, calling instead for another one please, another bottle, and some beer. Twelve smokes. Zero shuffles off to the closet to piss. When he returns to his table nothing has changed. The empty bottles and full glasses are still there. Zero drinks more soju and it is morning. His PCB makes small bleeps in its sleep, calling the wireless air. The hands of his faux-radium time-band glow softly in real street shade. He’s still sitting by the food stall but the ajumma packed up long ago and left. Zero smokes, and watches television while he waits. Day comes, and the neon dawn disappears.