Thirty-Seven

When I return to my car, I spot the shoes first: tattered Nikes, soles falling apart, both laces untied and trailing on the ground. They point skyward, the socks threadbare and dirty.

“Hello?” I take a step closer. “Hello? Sir? Are you okay?”

I step off the sidewalk and peer through the bushes to find the rest of the body, which is limp and unmoving. I reach down and press my fingers against his flesh. His skin is cold and gray, the dull color noticeable even in the darkness. Gingerly, I touch his wrist, like they do in the movies. There’s no pulse. Nothing. I shuffle closer to look at his face and gasp.

It’s the man from earlier. The man I gave my coins to, the one by my car. I saw him hours ago, and he was fine then. What happened? I crouch over his head and hold my hand in front of his nose and mouth. He doesn’t stir. He’s not breathing.

I lift one of his eyelids and fall backward in surprise, landing flat on my back. Everything is hazy. My eyes are filled with stars. An airplane crosses the sky, its lights blinking.

The man’s eyes are blue.

And he is dead.

The first time I saw a dead body was when I was twelve years old. Halmeoni lived down the street from us, and when Ji-hyun and I were children, she used to watch us any time our parents had to work late. On Sunday mornings she took us to church. We were close to Halmeoni, and when she suddenly passed, Ji-hyun and I were devastated. Her funeral was pushed back again and again while we waited for family from Korea to arrive, and it was a full month and a half after her death by the time we finally had the ceremony.

Umma pushed me toward the casket first. “Go on,” she said. “Say goodbye.” Her eyes were filled with tears, and as terrified as I was, I knew I couldn’t disobey her, not when she was in such a state. Halmeoni’s eyes were closed, but there was nothing peaceful about her expression—she was stiff and gray and grimacing as if we were disturbing her peace. And maybe we were, crowded around her, staring down at her corpse like she was part of an art exhibit.

All I could think about was the fact that the body in front of me had already been dead for six long weeks, that she was rotting slowly from the inside out. When I heard Ji-hyun’s footsteps behind me, I covered her eyes with my hand. “Don’t look,” I whispered.

In my nightmares, I saw my grandmother, chasing me, the skin falling off her bones in patches. My grandmother in her coffin with worms digging through her flesh, a river of black blood running out from under her. My grandmother with cockroaches crawling over her skeleton. I had to sleep with the lights on for months after.

This man’s face has none of the waxy unnaturalness that Halmeoni’s had, and if I didn’t know better, I would have assumed he was sleeping.

Seeing him, I’m inundated with memories: George, fast asleep on the couch. George, staring at me across the table. George, his fingers slick with saliva, squeezing a freshly cleaned fish eye. George smiling. George and his blue eyes.

The knife is in my hand before I know what I’m doing. It sinks into the eyelid easily, like he is not made of flesh and bone but softened butter and cheese instead. Blood spills out onto my hands. My stomach knots painfully, but I force myself to continue.

I expect the eye to pop out easily, the way I’ve imagined it in my dreams. But even after I’ve cut around the socket and removed the flap of skin that is his eyelid, the eyeball stubbornly refuses to budge. I take a deep breath and use my nails to dig it out. The optic nerve snaps, and I am left holding an oozing mass in my fist.

Bringing it close to my face, I stare, hypnotized by its color. It’s gorgeous. Stunning. Beautiful. I want to taste it, to chew it, to swallow it whole. But a sudden scatter of footsteps behind me brings me back to the moonlit sidewalk, the stars so bright overhead. Paralyzed with fear, I shove the eyeball into my pocket and lurch out from the bushes, back onto the sidewalk, into my car. In the rearview mirror, I see a flash of green.