He watches the rain from the balcony. It falls in sheets. Just beyond he can make out the faintest insinuations of gingko trees in the park across the street. It’s as if he has always known them to be there. That same park where, on clearer days, he would watch the Korean girls lie in the grass on their stomachs reading. They wore big hats and sunglasses and they rubbed their ankles together, their sandals stacked neatly beside them. He watched them scissor their legs back and forth and bounce their bare toes gently in the leaf-strewn grass. He would walk and take notice of the books they read, MacBook for Dummies and Being and Nothingness. And it was in that park where the woman in the floral-patterned jumpsuit and visor sold tophoki from a cart which she ladled steaming into black to-go bags. They were spicy and chewy and most of the time so hot he couldn’t eat them until he had made two loops on the walking path. Hours in that park enamored by the trees, their size and uniformity. There were hardly any trees where he was from. There were, but they weren’t granted any of the reverence the Koreans seemed to bestow upon theirs. He collected elephantine maple leaves the color of their namesake, oak and gingko the shape of upturned skirts and carried them like a stack of documents back to his small apartment where, inside, he pressed them to dry in his phrasebook.
“It’s monsooning,” he calls to Mr. Park, who is sitting on his balcony smoking a thin Korean cigarette. His wife goes about unclipping the shirts she had clothespinned to the banister.
“It is not the season,” he says back.
“No?”
“This is just rain.”
“I see.”
“Fall is coming,” he says. “Is what it means.”
He says something cruel-sounding in Korean to his wife. She nods and goes back inside. He watches for a moment longer, thinking Mr. Park might say something else, but he doesn’t. He lights a cigarette.
“They’re American,” he says, waiving the pack at him. “Marlboros. My sister sent me three cartons.”
“I’m surprised they weren’t confiscated.” Mr. Park laughs or perhaps coughs. “They used to be illegal.”
*
Rain kept him awake on his first jet-lagged night in this strange, electric country where everything had a buzz to it. There were wires all over his small apartment, tethering his building to other buildings. Even his miniature bathroom with the shower nozzle connected to the toilet and no wash basin, just a drain in the center of the mint colored tile floor, had wires. The refrigerator had wires dangling over the upper rack from where the last tenant had ripped out the dome light. They had also left a bag of onionskins. He lie on the mattress, which he found to be both too narrow and too short, and listened. He thought of drowning and then of electrocution, but fell asleep before he could assign one his preference.
And it was that cybernetic rain which stunned him like an insect on his fourth day in Seoul when he creeped out for toilet paper. It fell so rapidly and ceaselessly that he couldn’t even see the fried chicken sign he had used as a landmark for his alley. Lost, he walked into what he thought was a shoe store but was surprised to see a few people seated at small tables eating. An old woman he would come to know as Ms. Kim urged him to sit and brought him pots of bubbling red soup and rice and shredded squid. She told him to eat and he did. He pulled out a 50, 000 won banknote and handed it to her but she just groaned and tucked it back into his shirt pocket. She topped off his soup and brought him two hardboiled eggs and a pint of beer. He would eat at her place all but daily, Ms. Kim affectionately calling him, Lost Dog, and once, using a few University students as translators, propositioning him with marriage to her overweight spinster niece.
Then the smell of rain when, on his first date with one of those University students, they hid from bloated thunder clouds in a booth at some unnamed restaurant. He had so craved the authentic Korean experience and after studying the menu, finding only the names of soft drinks written in English, he asked her what was good here and she had said, Don’t worry. She ordered in dove song Korean and told him to be very excited. He was. They sat by a window and watched pedestrians snap open umbrellas and start walking more quickly. The whole city was cast in the yellow-gray of a sunny day given over to downpour. She reached for his hand when the server arrived with their food. She wanted to feel his excitement. The server set down a massive plate of spaghetti and meatballs and a small bowl of hand-torn basil leaves. He could not contain himself and fell into the most impolite and uproarious laughter.
What? Just like home, right? she said.
And it was that humid misting rain on the afternoon they hiked to yet another giant statue of Buddha seated in a temple. On the way they saw the man in robes walking pigeon-toed with his tongue sticking out. He stopped and watched them pass though not before offering them an unbalanced bow which she then returned. When they reached the summit, she kissed him and he touched the small of her back, damp with rain, her honeyed sweat. There was a sign, he noticed, as they descended the road to where she had parked. It was written in Hangul but a cautionary sign pretty much looks the same in every language.
What does it say? he asked.
It says do not give rides to drifters.
Drifters?
She pointed to a facility that he hadn’t noticed on the way up.
For crazy, she had said with that wrinkle-nosed smile that wounded him.
It had rained on the night they fell soaking into the billiards room in Gangseo. They were the only ones there and they smoked and drank pitchers of Cass in the half light of the room. She racked and he broke. They ran two games, tied one to one, and on the tiebreaker she shanked her call and he was able to drop the 8-ball center pocket with barely a breath. Punish the loser, she said giggling.
How do you mean?
She bent over the table and hiked up her thin, yellow dress. He had been in Seoul for three months and now here he was standing behind this woman bent over a pool table, her face pressing softly into the felt.
Spank me, she said, her voice so small and girlish. He did and she let out the softest moan. When she rose to face him, she had a line of blue chalk on her jaw. He brushed it off with his thumb.
This would be rain then, too, on the afternoon they sat in a heated tent drinking beer after class when she told him about the year she would do abroad in New York.
It’s funny, she said.
What is? he said.
I’m not so sure.
*
Mr. Park’s wife comes back onto the balcony and nudges her husband. He says something back to her that sounds like an escalation, but her tone will not be outmatched. She slaps him on the shoulder and he relents with a series of aggressive nods. Then she picks up a broom and with the stick pokes the belly of tarp sagging over their awning and they all watch as the gray water rushes soundlessly to the alley below.
“You should come eat with us,” Mr. Park says.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, it’s okay.”
“Okay,” he says. “Sure, sounds great. Now?”
“Yes.”
He stands and makes to head over, knowing that to decline would be a greater insult.