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Her next concert, Bangor, Maine, was scheduled for the upcoming Friday and Saturday evening. Rehearsal was slated for Friday afternoon, using the same program, conductor and members of the Portland Symphony. No heavy lifting required. My problem was what to do with her Monday through Thursday.
The cello notwithstanding, she appeared to have no other interests. Anything I mentioned got the ubiquitous shrug. I said to hell with it and did things I wanted to do. We spent Monday evening freezing our butts off at a Portland Sea Dogs game, baseball being my all-time passion. On Tuesday she listened to music while I edited my poetry magazine and worked on my column for Sunday’s paper. That night we took in a Portland Pirates hockey playoff game against the Providence Bruins. I bought some sandwiches on Wednesday, and we took the ferry out of Portland and explored the harbor islands.
Looking back on it, I should have noticed the telltale signs. There was a lot of gentle, lingering touching on my chest when she wanted to point out something, as well as her habit of hooking her arm into mine as we walked around, even an occasional nuzzling her head against my shoulder. On the ferry she “fixed” my wind-blown hair any number of times. She, out of the blue, would speak of her personal life. Back in Korea she would be married by now “with plenty babies. Korean men very bossy. Woman down here, husband up here,” she said holding one hand down by her knees, another over her head.
She wanted to cook on Wednesday evening. At Hannaford’s she bought two jars of Ragu spaghetti sauce, a box of linguini, a plastic bag of salad and a small loaf of French bread. I think I might have been able to whip up something more exotic, but it was the effort on her part that counted. Afterwards we sat on the couch finishing a bottle of red wine, and she spoke about growing up in the shadow of North Korea and all the saber-rattling that entailed. By ten I was ready to call it a night. She went into the bedroom. I pulled out the sofa-bed, hopped in, leaving the TV on (muting the sound) to catch the evening’s captioned baseball action on ESPN. I was in that grey area, half asleep, half awake. I heard the toilet flush then a tug on the covers. It took a few minutes to bring my senses up to speed before recognizing that I was not alone. My arm flop proved that such was the case, adding further sensory feedback that whatever was sharing my bed was decidedly female and pretty much naked.
Our liaison was interesting. I was not expecting anything remotely sexual when I’d picked her up at the airport. Technically, she was my boss, and I liked my job at the paper, so getting laid versus receiving a paycheck was an easy call. And, truthfully, Soon Rae was not specifically my type; nor did she exude carnality. But as she lay naked in the bluish light of ESPN’s Sport Center, she was remarkably attractive. It was like seeing a middling suit in a store, buying it because it was on sale, bringing it home and trying it on and discovering, much to your surprise that, wow, it really does look great on me.
I don’t recall much in the way of words that evening. We fell asleep in each other’s arms until just after 2 a.m. When I got up to use the bathroom and returned, I found her very frisky. We greeted the sunrise as it streamed through my ocean-facing window with another round of pleasure before deciding that growling stomachs and the need for showers overruled any more licentious congress between East and West.
While in the bathroom I feared there might be some awkward moments, now that our relationship had evolved onto a physical level. But she was very easy to be with, so comfortable that later she came into the bathroom, plopped on the closed toilet lid and watched me shave, all the while babbling on with questions about Bangor, Maine, and the type of audience to expect.
That evening, as I got ready to pull out the couch, she grabbed my wrist and led me into my own bedroom for yet another round of passion, after which I got the best sleep I’d had since she arrived, courtesy of a friendly bed and a very soft, warm companion pressed against me.
~~~
The venue in Bangor was the Waterfront Pavilion. It’s an outdoor semi-covered amphitheater much better suited to country singers and mainstream rock and roll bands. Bare Naked Ladies had performed the previous weekend. Why they were staging a classical program was beyond me. Soon Rae, as she did in Portland, followed Debussy’s “Afternoon of the Faun” with the Elgar concerto. She was not involved in the second half of the concert, which had some overtures, William Tell and Leonora #3 capped by Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with National Guard artillery and fireworks from a river barge. She was done and back in the dressing room (a trailer of decent size) by 8:30 p.m. I’d booked a Best Western, but she was down on her playing and wondered if we couldn’t drive back to Portland. It’s a little over two hours of turnpike driving, not a deal breaker, although we’d have to come right back up again for tomorrow’s gig.
She didn’t say much on the way back, except to thank me for making two trips. As we passed Freeport, I thought that she’d enjoy the outlet shopping and asked if she’d like to spend Sunday viewing American capitalism up close and personal. She shrugged, then wondered aloud if I’d like her if she didn’t play the cello anymore. I patted her knee, being the supportive person I am. That seemed to be close to the answer she wanted. She unbuckled her seat belt and kissed me, much to the dismay of those in the lanes on either side of me. Once re-buckled she asked, apropos of nothing, if I liked cats. I shrugged, giving her an arbitrary taste of her own medicine.
~~~
Driving back up to Bangor on Saturday was a pain. There was a cold drizzle falling. The concert’s fireworks were questionable, and the crowd was half of what it might have been. The producers invited those ticketed on the open lawn to come down and partake of the sheltered padded chairs. Free coffee and hot chocolate were added bonuses.
We drove home in silence. She was tussling with the downward spiral of her talent. She thought she was mediocre. Maybe she had reached her plateau. My only analogy came from the world of baseball: an aging triple AAA player who never gets called up to the majors and one day has to decide whether triple AAA success is worth it vis-a-vis a career in car sales. Not that she understood the analogy one bit.
Sex brought her out of the doldrums, but it was like taking aspirin, the alleviated black mood, after four hours, slowly seeping back into her personality. She did brighten up when, in the late afternoon, I suggested doing laundry.
“We wash clothings together?” Her voice had a romantic lilt to it. It wasn’t as if I was planning to kiss her at midnight on the Czar Alexander Bridge in Paris.
“Sure, the laundromat is a few blocks away. I often walk over.”
She enjoyed being around the washers and dryers. I brought a book (Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems) while she had some sheet music in her huge carry-all. I began writing a poem on the sights and sounds of a laundromat; “like cantaloupes in the dryer” was a nice simile. I let her do most of the work. She enjoyed being domestic, folding my boxers and tee shirts, layering them with her own “smalls,” as the British say.
~~~
About D.E. Fredd
