The Queen of Tears Read Free Page B

She’d never seen fat fish before, but these fish were definitely fat, aggressive, and slow. When they’d been a bit smaller and—it was now hard to imagine—cuter, they used to constantly chase the poor clown loach around. Of course they’d never catch it; the loach was always a sleeker, faster fish, but at least back then, they got exercise. Now they simply floated around the plastic plants, waiting to get fed. The tank was too small. The growth of all three fish was probably stunted because of the lack of space. While she screwed the cap of the fish food back on, Won Ju watched the clown loach scramble for leftovers that sunk to the bottom of the tank. It hovered above the gravel, sucking up the scraps. Won Ju got back to vacuuming.
    While she was busy pushing the Eureka Enviro Vac with the True Hepa Filter over the plush white carpets of the apartment for the second time, Won Ju’s husband stepped into the living room. Dressed in only black Calvin Klein boxer shorts, his usual home attire, his dark, athletic frame looked attractive, but manufactured, in a way. His body was a three-dimensional map of hard mountains and squiggly rivers. It was as if a cartographer drew out what his or her ideal map would look like. Kenny plopped down on the black leather sofa. She turned off the vacuum. “Sorry, did I wake you?” she asked.
    Kenny rubbed his stomach. “Yeah.”
    He stood up, walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “What time is dinner?” he asked.
    Won Ju followed him. “How does eight o’ clock sound?”
    “What time is it now?” Kenny asked, squinting at the clock on the microwave oven.
    “You need glasses.”
    “Why don’t we just take her to the Club?”
    The Club. “You know my mother, she only eats Asian food. I made reservations at the sushi bar by the hotel she’s staying at.”
    He took out a bottle of Mauna Loa Hawaiian Natural Spring Water and in one swig gulped half the bottle down. He looked around the kitchen and smiled. “You sure it’s clean enough?”
    She walked back to the living room and sat at the dining room table. “You know how she is.”
    Kenny walked in and sat across from her. “Unfortunately. Where’s the kid?”
    “Oh, out with his friends.”
    “You didn’t give him money, did you?”
    “No.”
    “Good. You know, instead of hanging out at malls and staring at that computer all day, I’d rather see that kid at the beach or something. It’s cheaper and healthier.”
    Won Ju got up and turned the vacuum cleaner back on before he finished.
    -3-
    “Crystal,” who had borrowed the name from thousands of strippers before her and many who were sure to follow, had been born Monica Mahealani Sellers. As “Monica,” she had been a damn hottie in Waianae High School, a bit flat-chested, though. When she transformed herself into “Crystal,” or the doctors did anyway for the price of a high school diploma and a year of toil at McDonalds, she began to shed her clothes for money. She remembered this as she looked at Crystal’s body in the full-length mirror. Unsatisfied, she walked to her closet and grabbed a pair of four-inch white platform shoes. She put them on and walked back to the mirror. Much better. It wasn’t that her legs were short; she was five-eight and had pretty long legs. But she’d always wanted to be taller. Crystal always wanted to be taller than most men.
    She cupped her breasts. Worth every cent. She turned around and looked at her buttocks. Still as high as a kite. When she faced the mirror again, she ran her metallic-lavender fingernails through her thin stripe of black pubic hair. She tingled. She stepped back and tried to soak it all in. No tan lines, no wrinkles. Abeautiful body, a real moneymaker. Just one problem: a scar. A surgical scar on the lower, right side of her abdomen. It was because something was ruptured, or something was bleeding, that’s what she remembered the doctors saying. She’d been in pain and fourteen—naïve