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By Root 1393 0

Women were free to smoke in America and should not be confronted. Disciplining other people’s children in America was not okay. He drew for them on a piece of paper the shape of a football. With great discomfort, Dr. Song touched on American standards of personal hygiene, and then he delivered a mini-lecture on the subject of smiling. He concluded with dogs, noting how Americans were very sentimental, with a particular softness toward canines. You must never hurt a dog in America, he said. They are considered part of the family and are given names, just like people. Dogs also have their own beds and toys and doctors and houses, which should not be referred to as warrens.

When they finally began their descent, Comrade Buc sought out Jun Do.

“About Dr. Song,” he said. “He’s had a long and famous career, but in Pyongyang, you’re only as safe as your last success.”

“Safe?” Jun Do asked. “Safe from what?”

Comrade Buc touched the watch that Jun Do now wore. “You just help him succeed.”

“What about you, why aren’t you coming with us?”

“Me?” Comrade Buc asked. “I’ve got twenty-four hours to get to Los Angeles, buy three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of DVDs, and then get back. Is it true you’ve never seen a movie?”

“I’m not a rube or anything. I just never had the opportunity.”

“Now’s your chance,” Comrade Buc said. “Dr. Song has requested a movie about sopranos.”

“I’d have no way of playing a DVD,” Jun Do told him.

“You’d find a way,” Comrade Buc said.

“What about Sun Moon? I’d see a movie starring her.”

“They don’t sell our films in America.”

“Is it true that she’s sad?”

“Sun Moon?” Comrade Buc nodded. “Her husband Commander Ga and the Dear Leader are rivals. Commander Ga is too famous to punish, so it is his wife who gets no more movie roles. We hear her next door. She plays the gayageum all day, teaching that sad, wandering sound to her children.”

Jun Do could see her fingers pluck the strings, each note striking, flaring, and losing timbre like a match that burns to smoke.

“Last chance for an American movie,” Comrade Buc said. “They’re the only real reason to learn English.”

Jun Do tried to gauge the nature of the offer. In Comrade Buc’s eyes, Jun Do saw a look he knew well from childhood, the look of a boy who thought the next day would be better. Those boys never lasted. Still, Jun Do liked them the most.

“Okay,” he said. “Which one’s the best?”

“Casablanca,” Comrade Buc said. “They say that one is the greatest.”

“Casablanca,” Jun Do said. “I’ll take that one.”

It was morning when they landed at Dyess Air Force Base south of Abilene, Texas.

Jun Do’s nocturnal schedule served him now on the other side of the world. He was awake and alert—through the Ilyushin’s yellowed window, he could see that two older cars had pulled onto the blacktop to meet them. There were three Americans in hats out there, two men and a woman. When the Ilyushin rested its engines, they rolled up a metal stairway.

“In twenty-four hours,” Dr. Song said as a farewell to Comrade Buc.

Comrade Buc executed a quick bow, and then opened the door.

The air was dry. It smelled of hot metal and withered cornstalks. Fighter jets, a row of them, were parked at a shimmering distance—they were things Jun Do had only seen in inspirational murals.

At the bottom of the stairs, their three hosts were waiting. Standing in the center was the Senator, who was perhaps older than Dr. Song, yet tall and tan in blue pants and an embroidered shirt. Jun Do could see a molded medical device filling the Senator’s ear. If Dr. Song was sixty, the Senator must have had a decade on him.

Tommy was the Senator’s friend, a black man, much the same age, though leaner, with hair that had gone white and a face more deeply creased. And then there was Wanda. She was young, thick-bodied, and had a yellow ponytail sticking out the back of a ball cap that read “Blackwater.” She wore a red cowgirl shirt with silver snaps.

“Minister,” the Senator said.

“Senator,” the Minister said, and there were general greetings all around.

“Come,” the Senator said. “We’ve got