Table for One, page 7
Even if you’ve come to the department store to create rather than to spend, suitable self-presentation is a necessity. The efforts I make for myself include avoiding wearing the same outfit multiple days in a row, reddening my lips with a lively shade of lipstick, and using the hairdryer to tidy my hair as soon as I get to the powder room. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m a consumer. I have to show that I could be one, if I decided to.
The department store doesn’t need to worry about my freeloading. The opulent trial creams that I apply on my skin and the sample perfumes I spray on my clothing are expenses already covered by the store. And this isn’t the only place that offers free things. There are more ways than you’d think to avoid unnecessary spending. If you take the white envelopes from those automated machines hidden in the corners of banks, you can use them as envelopes like they were intended, or as memo paper. If you pick up a stack of napkins in a café, the paper quality’s not bad for note-taking. Books you can just check out at the library. You can also read magazines and newspapers and watch movies there. New books: read them at a large bookstore without buying. If you really want to go to the theater, just enter your name into raffles to watch preview screenings for free. Free internet abounds in public spaces, so if you aren’t desperate, you don’t really need to install it in your home. As long as you have a laptop—or even if you don’t have one—there are lots of places to finish up urgent business. Department store lobbies are equipped with computers for customer use, and plenty of spots offer Wi-Fi. Whenever I turn on my laptop in the fourth-floor bathroom, there’s a total of ten wireless networks available, and six or seven of them are open for anyone to use. All I have to do is click “Connect.”
I flip open my computer. Using the limitless electricity that the fourth-floor bathroom provides the writer—me—I compose my novel. The title of the book is Invader Graphic. It’s the story of a man who works for a brokerage firm, except he’s about to quit.
* * *
“Mr. Gyun Kim: 129th out of 176 employees.”
When he starts up his computer, the above caption flashes onscreen for five seconds before disappearing. That one sentence has the force of a starter pistol marking the beginning of a race. The sound of the pistol dissipates quickly, but every one of the runners standing at the starting line hears it. Just like gunfire, the wording on the computer screen also vanishes seconds after it appears, and no employee can ignore it. Today, Gyun will live as number 129. Yesterday, he was 108; the day before, 95. There’s a regularity to the numerical changes—each day, Gyun’s ranking is a little bit worse than it was before. Tomorrow morning, his performance today will be broadcast with a pistol-like bang as soon as he arrives at work and turns on his monitor.
Gyun is someone who lives by the second. When the stock markets are open, when he’s staring at the computer screen, his expression changes on a momentary basis. He smiles for a few seconds, and then he cries for a few more. Only at 3:00 p.m., after the markets have closed, does Gyun escape the boundaries of this cruel quantification. Gyun has worked at the firm for three years, but even now his customers frequently make him anxious. There are those who come into the office carrying vases to give him, and others who bring spirits or neckties, or lye and pesticides, which they threaten to kill themselves with if Gyun doesn’t protect their investments. Some brandish family photos and knives as they harass him. Productivity is calculated on an hourly basis, and the results hover behind him like a shadow. The markets operate without even a break for lunch.
From wake-up at five until bedtime after midnight, Gyun’s most immediate need is to stay abreast of the issues that affect the stock market. Invader graphics—which never show up in the news—are nothing more than a distant topic of conversation with little relevance to Gyun’s life. But that’s exactly why he has so quickly grown enamored with them. Every day, when his duties are finished, he logs on to an invader graphic network online. When new posts haven’t been uploaded for a few weeks, Gyun begins to reread messages from the first page.
The term “invader graphic” refers to a kind of colorful tile mosaic, a recreation of characters from the video game Space Invaders in ceramic form. The phenomenon of decorating walls with images of these invaders, like graffiti, has existed since 1998. Gyun learned about the invaders in 2008. In the ten years since their inception, invader graphics have spread across the world, to a number of major cities. No one knows who is creating them, or exactly how many of these mosaics there are on earth, but the mystery surrounding the invaders is why they’ve become legendary. An unknown artist turns city spaces—the walls of buildings, slums, and pipes—into canvases, and upon these canvases, he resurrects the once-digital characters.
The artist usually wears a mask as he works. Several photos of him have been made public, but no one is certain if they’re of the invader graphics’ creator or someone impersonating him. It’s not just the artist now—copycats affix their own invader images to surfaces in public spaces everywhere. They’re all anonymous. And they all work with tiles. The population of invader graphics increases at a staggering rate with each passing year. Each one varies in size, appearance, and location. It’s always surprising when you see an invader on a roof or a sign, somewhere out of the reach of human hands. You wonder how it got there. But that’s a question that only people in the know can answer.
* * *
At 11:40, I close my laptop. It’s time for the cleaning patrol to make their rounds. According to the inspection log on the wall, the bathroom is to be cleaned once every two hours. It’s best to avoid sticking around during patrol times if you want to make a habit of writing in the bathroom. That’s just a rule of the trade.
The rest spot in front of the elevator isn’t far from the bathroom, so I can escape there quickly. Fortunately, there’s also a rarely traversed staircase and a public phone booth nearby. If I’m bothered by the elevator, with its constantly opening doors, I go up to the fifth or sixth floor. After waiting upstairs for exactly twenty minutes, I come back down to the fourth-floor bathroom, and the next two hours are once again free of disruption.
Soon after I’ve dodged two bathroom checks, the morning is over, and both my mind and my belly have grown empty. It’s time to go to the underground food court, where the sample corner is open to anyone. Freshly fried pork cutlets, vegetable pancakes grilled golden brown, fat sausages—I grab a skewer of each and chomp on the bite-size morsels. Some days, I come across udon noodles in paper cups, or fruit to cleanse my palette. After I fill my hungry stomach, I head to the basement bathroom. Or to one on the second or third floors—they’re not bad options, either. This time, I actually need to use the restroom. I walk into a stall, do what I have to do, nab a roll of toilet paper, wash my hands, and apply hand cream. I brush my teeth, too, and gargle some mouthwash if it’s available. Then I step onto the escalator, and it’s time to depart for my next destination.
There are three types of people riding the escalator down from the first basement. They’re traveling to the second basement to eat in the cafeteria there, or they’re going to the underground parking lot, or, like me, they’re aiming for the sofa by the side of the second-basement cafeteria. I sit down on the couch and flip open my laptop. I write for forty minutes, until my battery reaches 20 percent. I charged it in the bathroom, but it’s nearly depleted already.
* * *
“Mr. Gyun Kim, you’re 129th out of 176 employees.”
When he returns from lunch and turns his monitor on again, the gunfire rings into the air once more. Until tomorrow’s rankings come out, the results from yesterday follow his every step. But Gyun is tormented less by these intermittent notifications than he is by all the people ceaselessly looking for him. Everyone wants to talk to him—from the full-time investors, dressed up every day in a suit and tie for their jobs on the trading floor, to Gyun’s clients complaining about their rights as customers. There’s a limit to Gyun’s ability to digest the verbiage around him. Unabsorbed words from his conversations begin to float around the empty air. ㄱ, ㅣ, ㅏ, ㅅ, ㄷ, ㅁ … not infrequently, consonants and vowels mix together in front of his eyes and begin a game of Tetris, all while his coworker is still talking. Even as Gyun nods appropriately while the speaker talks, he struggles to keep up with the Tetris screen hovering before him. If a ㄱ falls atop a ㄴ, or a ㄷ falls on top of a ㄹ, then the row is cleared, but it’s always the wrong pieces that pile up. Nothing that can empty out the game’s increasingly crowded corners appears before him. Additionally, because of the figures that have already accumulated, there’s no time for strategic decisions. Gyun wonders, “How will I—” and is interrupted as a new letter falls with a plop. He hasn’t even reached out to move it when yet another shape drops down. Game over, the screen says.
Gyun’s company lets its workers off relatively early compared to other businesses, but closing time becomes meaningless when there’s a late meeting or guests to entertain. On days when there are no conferences or client dinners or overtime, Gyun’s coworker suggests that they get a drink together. The two usually go for sake.
The coworker married last year when stock prices were shooting up. Now that prices are in the tank again, he finds both his house and his job to be a burden. As soon as stocks started to fall, his wife developed an unusual interest in his work. He comes home late just as often as he did last year, so he doesn’t understand why she questions his occasional tardiness. Even when his wife is just asking what it’s like to work in finance, he finds her questions irritating. After he’s left for the office at seven in the morning, his wife goes to their computer and types familiar words into the search engine. Broker, branch office, work duties. “Broker,” “branch office,” “work duties”: results with information about all three topics materialize onscreen. Strangers on the internet are kind. Brokers, or people who think they know a lot about them, upload information. His wife pores over what she finds. The posts are endless. At 7:00 a.m., once the man is off to work, his wife turns on the computer to peruse facts about the day-to-day of other women’s husbands. She asks questions and receives answers and contemplates even more, and then new information is available online for those with the same worries and frustrations as her. Now, when Gyun’s coworker talks about what he’s going to do at work that day, his wife sometimes doesn’t believe what he says. He doesn’t know it, but she’s become an expert on his job.
The coworker with a wife who trusts stories on the internet more than she does her own husband tells Gyun not to get married. Instead of replying, Gyun brings up invader graphics. Not long after the topic of conversation changes, they part ways.
On his way home, Gyun discovers that several of the sidewalk blocks beneath his feet are broken. Chunks of concrete are completely gone, like missing pieces in a puzzle. As soon as he takes his eyes off the pavement, he sees loose fragments, ready to fall out of their frames, everywhere he looks. The world transforms into an enormous piece of concrete. According to a story Gyun heard when he was young, a Dutch child once died using his body to block a crevice he’d discovered in a dyke. Perhaps that’s how invader graphics originated, too: just like a hand can cover a single hole, maybe the tiles are there to plug the voids in our pockmarked world. As Gyun stares attentively at shattered sidewalks and open manholes in the street, he turns toward his house.
* * *
When I exit the department store, it’s almost 3:00 p.m. I’m not technically leaving the property. I step through the back door—or maybe it’s the front. It’s at least the entryway opposite the one I pass through in the morning. Outside is a coffee shop attached to the main building. Recently, a second café was added next door, so my options have widened. Regardless of which shop I choose to patronize, by the time I leave, I’m carrying with me an entire store’s worth of three-gram sugar packets and napkins.
I spend three hours in the café, or maybe four. The available seating isn’t the only thing I’m making use of. There are also the neatly laid-out packs of white and brown sugar, napkins, ice water with lemon, milk in thermoses, straws, and other freebies available upon request—and everything disappears quickly when I’m around. I typically occupy a seat without ordering, instead filling my bag with the many items available for customers. Truthfully, I have no use for straws or stirring sticks. But even though they’re arranged in perfect order, leaving the display intact seems like a loss, so I steal a few. I can’t exactly explain it, but the act of taking is a comfort. Sugar is the best thing to take. The more disorganized my life becomes, the more the packets in front of me sparkle. They’re just like gold: scintillating, and without an expiration date. If I’m wanting for gold, all I have to do is gather some sugar.
Sometimes groups ask if they can pull one of the chairs at my table over to their own. The small act of giving up one’s extra chair can feel very symbolic. Without a barrier to block the emptiness beneath the table like a windshield, my two legs are exposed to the world. If I were holding a coffee, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but since I’m not, it’s a grave problem. When I first began to frequent coffee shops without buying a drink, I was afraid that customers would stare, so I would place abandoned cups on my table. Not to drink the remaining beverage inside, but so others would see the cups and assume that I, too, was a customer.
Now I know that it’s a bit better if I sit in a corner seat, or somewhere on the second floor. I pass the counter confidently, as if I’m meeting someone upstairs. Once I’m on the second floor, I lay my things out on the table and fall into my work. In the morning, the bathroom provides my electricity; in the afternoon, the café keeps me plugged in.
When I attended college and even once I had a job, spaces like this held a slightly different meaning to me. I visited the department store a few times a year, perhaps when spring was turning to summer and summer to fall, and rarely did I spend more than twenty minutes in the bathroom. I had no need to search for electrical outlets, either, and I never filled my bag with straws or napkins.
My reason for preferring the department store to other venues is a very practical matter. Alternative destinations abound: libraries, university campuses, and parks, for example. And on days that I don’t make it to my preferred office, I do frequent those other facilities. Sometimes I even pay bus or subway fare to trek out to a distant chain bookstore. Cultural centers are decent places to work, too. On summer nights, parks or the Hangang riverbank become worthwhile studios. Life has an intimate relationship with temperature, and the best place for sleeping out in the open is also the best spot for writing.
But libraries are crammed with patrons, and they’re not as comfortable as department stores. Parks lack electrical outlets and air conditioning. Train stations are chaotic. Playgrounds are dangerous. If you’re a solitary adult hanging out by the jungle gym, it’s only a matter of time before misunderstandings arise. Child disappearances have put the public on edge, and playgrounds are for kids, anyway, not adults. The cheapest place to write is at home, but my house is filled with family members who just want me to leave during the day. So the department store is where I go.
* * *
“Vacation?”
When Gyun asks to take a summer holiday, his coworker is surprised.
“Have you seen the new hand dryer in the bathroom?” the coworker asks Gyun. “The managers installed it to save on the cost of paper towels. What about the new bidet? That’s to stop spending money on toilet paper. And have you noticed how the water pressure in the toilet is weaker than it used to be? It’s to reduce the water bill. Do you understand what I’m saying? We’ve reached the point where we’ll have to turn in our resignation letters on double-sided paper. In a work environment this bleak, going on vacation might mean you’ll never come back!”
Gyun’s colleague explains to him the correlation between time off and daily rankings. But Gyun decides to purchase a plane ticket anyway, one to Paris. On the day of departure, he boards his plane. Not counting travel time, he has four days to savor fully. All Gyun does the first two days of his trip is walk. He walks and walks, hoping for that moment when an invader graphic tile will serendipitously come into view. But his object of desire doesn’t materialize. Surrounded as he is by unfamiliar walls and signs, it would be hard for Gyun to catch sight of an invader even if there were one. On the fourth day, he purchases a map. It’s a map marking the locations of invaders spread throughout Paris. The Eiffel Tower may be the city’s icon, but to him it’s no more than a signpost marking the location of an invader graphic. The Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay and the many bridges along the Seine River are no different. Gyun encounters the first invader graphic of his life on the wall of the Palais de Tokyo. At a glance, the red-and-white tiled alien could easily be mistaken for the flag of an unknown country. On a street corner between the Paris Opera and Place Vendôme, he encounters another: a green body, with red eyes, against a blue backdrop. Gyun doesn’t tremble when he sees it, but he is beginning to appreciate why invader aficionados pursue their beloved invaders so relentlessly.
The treasure hunt—reminding him of childhood games—continues. It’s not simply a matter of locating a slip of paper in a designated area. Now the whole world is Gyun’s playground. He comes across his third and fourth treasures, one after another, in Marais. He pulls out his camera, and the invader graphics fill the viewfinder. The photos function as location markers. Back at the hotel, he boots up his computer and connects to the invader graphic network. But the invaders he’s just captured are already old news on the site. While Gyun’s camera lens was taking aim at the mosaics, others hunters were on the prowl as well. In fact, there seem to have been several invader marksmen in the area. Gyun shuts his laptop. According to rumors, Paris is speckled with over three hundred invader graphics, and not all of them have been discovered. Gyun is now an archaeologist who’s been dropped into a city brimming with relics—except he’s leaving town in just two days.
