Chapter 14: Seen

The envelope said the board would meet at nine on Monday to consider "the fitness of the chief executive."

Three board members had already signed the page.

Jin-woo read it standing in his doorway, with the aids back behind his ears and Yeo-reum at his right shoulder.

His uncle had left as soon as he handed it over.

Yeo-reum had told him, facing him, that the stairs were behind him.

"Three names," Jin-woo said. "With his own vote that is four. He needs four."

"So you need two days."

"I need to be calm for two days."

She shut the door, and she locked it, and she turned off the hall light.

"Not that kind of calm," she said.

"What kind?"

"Come here."

She took him by the front of his coat and walked him backward through the bare room to the bathroom.

It was small and white, with a deep old tub under a frosted window, and it had never been used for anything but washing.

She turned the taps all the way on, and steam began to climb the tiles.

Then she put her hand on the switch by the door and flicked it, and every light in the little room came on.

He flinched.

"I want to see you," she said. "All of you, in this. No dark, no lamp turned low."

"You have seen me."

"I've seen you with something to hold onto."

"The stool."

"The sleeping bag."

"The back of my own hand."

She pulled his coat off his shoulders.

"Tonight, I want you to have nothing to hold but me."

He stood very still, and she watched the thing she had been afraid of cross his face.

"I am not good at being looked at," he said.

"I know. That's why I'm a very good artist."

The corner of his mouth moved.

She undid his shirt one button at a time, in the full white light.

At the bottom she kissed the thin pale scar below his ribs.

He breathed in.

Then he lifted both hands to the sides of his head, where the black hair hid the small beige pieces, and took them out.

He put them in her palm.

His eyes were bright, and nothing else about his face moved at all.

She understood that she had been handed something heavier than the case on the shelf.

"Thank you," she said, and she held up her hand in front of him and made her mouth big and slow. "Thank you."

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