Soon Rae Sook

The third novel in my Underland saga was a commercial success. The first two garnered a moderate following with the black trench coat, Dungeons and Dragons crowd, but the third volume, Endor’s Return, generated an initial printing of twenty thousand, and, based on the reviews, we could expect a second run. Not the territory of fantasy writers Terry Brooks or R. A. Salvatore but enough to have my editor at Raven’s Claw set up a modest book tour.

From my home base in Fresno, I was to work my way north and west. Stops in San Jose, Santa Clara and then Palo Alto for the Stanford crowd were scheduled for one weekend. The following week I was to visit the Borders bookstores in San Francisco on Thursday and Friday with a quick Saturday trip up to UC campus at Cody’s bookstore in Berkeley. Depending on the how things went, Stacey Kilroy, my agent, might schedule more "meet and greet signings" as far north as Portland and Seattle.

The Thursday late afternoon-early evening crowd at the Borders down by SBC Park was a big success. The Giants were playing the Brewers that evening so I caught some of the pre-game crowd--teenagers who were nuts about the Ralph Loretta’s cover art and curious about what I had in store for Endor, the evil orc, in the last two volumes of the series. They detected a spark of sexual interest between him and Zellaak, a nefarious female elf from the Overland and wondered if any romantic involvement was in the works. There were your basic computer geeks as well who critiqued my web site, marveled at the specs of my server and offered up some friendly advice on how to make things bigger, better and faster. By eight-thirty that evening the stream had dwindled to a few visitors every fifteen minutes. I closed up shop, thanked the store coordinator and headed back to the Grant Plaza Hotel, one of the few places in San Francisco less than a hundred bucks a night but smack in the middle of Chinatown which never seemed to sleep.

I spent Friday working two hour shifts at three other Borders before hopping on the "F" trolley and heading over to City Lights bookstore in the Castro district for a seven to nine evening stint. A few hard core fans came to chat, but mostly I had to make small talk with curious passersby who wanted to know if I was anyone famous before they plunked down $19.95 for an autographed copy of my magnum opus. At nine on the dot I began my goodbyes to Tina, the overly efficient shift manager when a gaggle of five nicely dressed and obviously well educated Asians came up to the table. Only one was a fan, having brought two other well-thumbed titles of mine to be signed. His four companions browsed around the store while my new convert, Lee Chang, and I discussed the series. He seemed pretty up on my novels and the fantasy genre itself. He spent a good twenty minutes picking my brain, interrupted every few minutes by the rest of his crew who were interested in doing something more exciting. To pacify both worlds tugging at him, he invited me to have a bite with his entourage. They had reservations at Zuni, an "in" bistro on Market near the City Plaza and Davies Symphony Hall. Not quick enough on my feet to create a lame excuse, I bid adieu to City Lights and squeezed into a cab with them for the short ride downtown.

I was strapped for ready cash and quickly determined I was out of the culinary and cultural league of my new "fantasy" friend and his coterie. I settled for a half a dozen British Columbia oysters and a draft beer, figuring that this would be in keeping with the last twenty dollar bill I had in my possession.

There were six at the table, three women and, with my inclusion, three men. It didn’t take a mind reader to see that one of the reasons for my invitation was to balance the male-female equation, the Noah’s Ark syndrome. Everyone had a classical music background. Two of them, Lee Chang and the young woman to my right were occasional players in the San Francisco Symphony. Since I knew nothing about Brahms, Haydn or whichever Bach was the more famous, I listened attentively but was always a beat behind when it came to laughing at an appropriate moment. Occasionally my host sensed my plight and tossed me a bone.

"Tell me, Philip, how long does it take to write one of your books?"

My answer took only a few short sentences before the San Francisco Symphony’s upcoming salute to Beethoven took center stage much to my relief.

Around ten-thirty I began preparing a diplomatic path for my departure. I needed to be at Cody’s in Berkeley by 10:00 AM and then hit other bookstores around the UC campus. My chance female companion of the evening suddenly took the conversational bull by the horns and started asking about my life and how I came to write fantasy novels for a living. I had spent the past few days answering similar questions so I turned the tables and tried to find out about her.

She was one of those women whose looks, like the intricacies of fine porcelain, you need to study to appreciate. She was petite, probably no more than a hundred pounds. Her hair was jet black, the kind that is put up in a bun for formal events and left flowing down her back on casual nights like this. She was Korean, Soon Rae Sook, a cellist. She was from New York City and the Julliard School but came out here for a chance to play with the San Francisco Symphony. Only when the major composers, the war horses like Beethoven and Mahler were on the card and the orchestra needed a richer sound, did she get a chance. But things were always changing in the cello world so, if she was patient, a break might come and a permanent chair could be hers.

I loved the way she smiled. She seemed serious most of the time, but when the right moment came along, her entire face and eyes lit up. By eleven-thirty the party was on its downward slope and other venues to fill out the night were being discussed. Since I do not dance and was not interested in checking out the latest "cool" club, I decided it was time to call it an evening. Everyone wished me well in Berkeley and to my surprise Soon Rae asked if I’d walk her home. Some of the premium California vintage red she sampled had given her a slight headache and she needed some cool air.

She lived in the Haight area, ten short blocks off Market over on Masonic Street. As we walked, she hoped I hadn’t been bored with all the music talk. I admitted it was a new world for me. I was never really into music of any kind even though my readers always e-mailed me about the newest iconoclastic band that was revolutionizing the Goth or grunge scene. When we neared her building, I began mulling over the idea of just how late public transportation ran and whether it might be easier just to throw myself upon the mercy of various Chinatown triads or those denizens of the Tenderloin district and walk back to the hotel. The dilemma was quickly solved when she invited me in.

While she was putting together the makings of herbal tea, I meekly surveyed her apartment. She rented the first floor of a small three story house. Two things were immediately apparent from the decor--she was a musician and Asian. Shelves were over-piled with CDs, sheet music and large folios relating to musical scores. Any other wall space was filled by pen and ink drawings or watercolors dealing with nature: mountains, bird in flight or flowers. Each picture was as simple and as spare in composition as haiku poetry. I was admiring one drawing when she came in with the tea, announcing that the express purpose of this blend was to create calm and inner harmony, a precursor to allowing one’s mind to come to a complete stop just before going to sleep.

We sipped tea and talked. There were some delicate questions on how we each survived financially. She got an allowance from her parents. They were in business in Newburgh, New York. She was deliberately vague about the type so I suspected it might be the stereotypical fruit and vegetable market or a dry cleaning place. I told her my first Endor book made about three thousand, took two years to write and was rejected by at least twenty publishing houses before Raven’s Claw picked it up. I substitute taught now and then, literature classes mostly, to make ends meet. My latest book would bring in close to thirty thousand and the next two might double that. Another publisher had contacted me and wanted a five book series with up front money in the six figure range.

We sat on the couch until one in the morning. I apologized for running on at the mouth especially when it came to the next series of novels I had planned. I wanted to stretch the genre, not just re-work the same old ground. She yawned, got up, took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom.

"You’re the most refreshing person I’ve met in a long time," she said as she undressed.

And what male, poised on the brink of rampant sex, doesn’t enjoy hearing those words to spur him on?

Falling for Soon Rae was comfortable. The next morning I got up early for the Berkeley trek. It was as if we had been living together for decades. When I seemed perplexed about the BART trains and the ticket vending machines which had recently spit nickels at me like Las Vegas slots, she threw on some clothes and said she’d act as my guide. At Cody’s bookstore she sat in the rear, beaming as I displayed my intrepid wit before the assembled few. When things became slow, she raised her hand and asked questions based on what I had told her last night, and the crowd followed her lead. After I signed a number of books, she got in line and handed me three to autograph. I could think of nothing poetic or even romantic to write so I just signed my name and let it go at that, telling her I’d be more intimate when we got home.

We spent the rest of the day together. In between book talks, we walked around Berkeley arm in arm. By eight that evening we were back in her apartment and in bed testing the extreme limits of our pleasure-producing organs.

I moved to San Francisco. I loved the traffic lights counting down the seconds a pedestrian had until cars came bearing down. Within two weeks I was giving directions to bewildered tourists like a native. Soon Rae and I explored the city as much as we explored each other. We traded interests. She took me to concerts. I even attended rehearsals of the SFO’s upcoming Beethoven’s Seventh. She went to a few Giants games, and I tried to explain baseball basics to her. We rented Lord of the Rings and she fell asleep in my arms. What she really needed, she said, was a break from music. She’d been at the cello since she was four. She was twenty-nine, and her life had always centered on classical music. Her friends ate, drank and talked incessantly about it. The dream of being a soloist with a huge recording contract was fading. Younger prodigies were taking the main stage. Aside from music the other dominating factor in her life was her Korean heritage. I was the only non-Asian man she had been with. She was as tired of her culture and its trappings as she was by music. It was now up to me to be the social director, the caveat being no more classical music and nothing Asian--that included General Tao’s chicken and Jackie Chan movies.

My first forays into the endeavor were a success. We were regulars at the Castro Theater where we spent an entire weekend taking in Bette Davis films. Soon Rae loved the range of characters Davis played, from the conniving bitch in The Little Foxes to the ultimate victim in Now Voyager and Dark Victory. It seemed, as we stopped for a beer and a genuine Black Angus beef burger at the Rogue Brew Pub above Union Square, that she was connecting her own life to every Davis film. She saw a parallel in All About Eve. A young cellist befriended her a few years ago. They were like sisters until she discovered that her "friend" was stabbing her in the back with rumors about drug use which ultimately may have cost her a concert gig in San Diego.

On the non-cinematic front, she confessed that she had not read a novel since high school. Her first, self-imposed assignment was to tackle my stuff which she struggled through, not knowing the difference between an orc and a berserker from a hole in the ground. I bought her a copy of Frank Norris’ McTeague which she loved, especially when we traced the streets, Polk among others, he used as the setting for the book. I gave her Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and the other Salinas area novels. We drove down and spent a weekend in Monterey and Carmel. Her favorite writer, however, was Armistead Maupin and his Tales of the City books. I thought they were a bit dated but she loved the catty nature of the women. She loved it when I rented DVD versions of the old film classics which became the focal point for another stay-at-home weekend.

My own writing projects were on hold. She was the central character dominating my life. Many mornings I opened my laptop on her little desk and started pounding out a chapter, but the minute she began moving around, her smell and sounds assailed my creative juices. I found no greater erotic experience than when she, clad only in a tee shirt, would grip the cello between her knees and begin practice exercises to keep her technique from getting stale. Once she had my attention and seeing its sensual impact on me she would stop, remove the tee shirt and play nude, eyes closed and in complete rapture. These sessions would last no more than fifteen minutes before we would both be groping at each other in bed or on the couch.

After we sated our urges, I would run my fingers through her pubic hair. Unlike other women I had been with, hers was midnight black, flat and straight. I could comb it into different styles, part it wherever I wanted and even style it as if I were making crop circles. A simple whisper of my breath always brought back to its natural state, just like a high tide removes all footprints from the beach.

Once a week we drove down to Fresno so I could pick up the mail at my condo and check on things. She said she enjoyed the area. As much as she loved San Francisco it was a city filled with too many temptations and memories of her old, very narrow life. There was talk of her moving down to Fresno.

Once, when we were doing some cleaning in my condo, she wanted to hear some music. I have half a dozen CDs, most of them Christmas stuff. The only thing I had even remotely listenable was some Creedence Clearwater an old girlfriend had given me. When I put it on she was blown away. We brought it back to the Haight, and she began adapting Fogerty’s melodies for the cello. One hasn’t lived until experiencing a diminutive and scantily clad Korean singing and banging out "Bad Moon Rising" and "Proud Mary" on the cello.

I missed my publisher’s deadline. When there are no interruptions I can easily pound out two thousand words a morning, take an exercise and lunch break and use the afternoon to edit the pre-noon output. At that rate and with my characters pretty well carved in stone, I can spit out a novel every six months. I hadn’t run dry of ideas. It was the inability to concentrate. There was a whole world out there she never experienced. My full time job was to open it up for her. Creedence Clearwater was old news. She combed e-Bay for Fleetwood Mac, The Moody Blues and other popular groups of that era. We saw Mamma Mia three times. I went to Seattle for some signings and she came along. We ended up staying five days while she gorged on salmon and explored the Native American culture, especially their music. She thought we should take up biking and explore the Bay Area that way. She tried her hand at gourmet cooking. We slept, screwed, ate and couch-potatoed our way through each day. Any time Stacey called to ask how the series was coming, I created one lame excuse after another. The truth was that I was addicted to Soon Rae. Try as I might I could not serve the Muses and her.

I got up at 4:00 AM for two weeks and finally managed to produce a hundred pages, but it was pure drivel. Endor wasn’t alive anymore. He was a wooden character slicing and dicing his way through stereotypical trolls and gnomes with clichéd gusto. When I read back through it, I felt like the high school student who writes a paper on Edgar Allen Poe the night before it’s due and hopes to get at least a "D" minus because it’s typed, has a plastic cover and some nice Clip-Art. I was too embarrassed to send it out. Better to let them think I had lost it than to let them read how low I’d sunk.

Soon Rae began worrying me. She was withdrawn. Her response to what the matter might be was a cold, "It really doesn’t concern you; it’s something I have to deal with."

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that her old life, instead of fading away, had multiplied like some insidious mold in a darkened corner of her mind. There had been phone calls and e-mails to the effect that the symphony might have an opening for this or that. Such and so and so was beginning a chamber group. Europe was begging for decent cellists to fill out orchestras for the secondary concert markets. She sat on the couch for hours, mentally debating which world to choose. We had gone through all the Bette Davis films more than twice, so much so I was beginning to quote lines: "I’m lucky. I’ve always been lucky. I’ll be lucky again" (The Little Foxes), "I only want to talk about the nice things" (Baby Jane), "I didn’t want to be born. You didn’t want me to be born. It’s been a calamity on both sides" (Now Voyager). I moved on to Susan Hayward movies thanks to a Turner Classic Movies channel retrospective. I Want to Live and I’ll Cry Tomorrow were her favorites, but there were some clunkers as well--Girls on Probation, Comet Over Broadway and Hollywood Hotel, all of which were done in the late thirties. When we watched these as well as other movies, there were plenty of tears, most of which, I suspect, were induced by her own conflict rather than any mess Miss Hayward got herself into.

I figured there would be a blowup sooner or later. I dealt with her brooding as best I could. When she sensed that she had gone too far or hurt me, she’d take me to bed and we’d rekindle that aspect of our life together for an hour or two. On Halloween morning I suggested a drive down to Fresno to protect the condo from any trick or treaters. She shrugged her compliance, and we had a decent drive down with a nice stop for seafood. In Fresno I was sitting at my kitchen table separating the cleverly disguised, official looking junk mail from the rather obvious and less creative attempts by credit card companies to get me to open the damn envelope. Soon Rae meandered around the rooms like a stray cat probing unfamiliar territory. She stopped at my pine board and brick, makeshift book shelves, something she had done before and re-perused the titles.

"You know I looked up this guy Rohmer on the net."

I had an old set of Sax Rohmer books, mostly hardcovers published by McKinlay in the early 1920s. When I was looking for a model to help write my novels, I read one of his books and loved the way he ended each chapter with a cliffhanger. No one tells a story or creates suspense better than old Sax. I even modeled Endor’s love interest after Fu Manchu’s daughter, not that the general public could pick up on it. Was she good or was she evil? I read everything and began picking up his stuff in paperback just for the cover art.

"Those books aren’t worth very much. I’m not a collector anyway. I really don’t know why people want to have a writer sign their books. Sometimes I feel sorry for people who have no life so they come to hear an author read from his book and have him scribble some inane words on the title page."

"I think your Sax Rohmer hero is as bigoted as they come when it comes to Asians. They’re all portrayed as sinister with long yellow fingers high on opium."

"Rohmer isn’t my hero. I just tried to learn a few tricks about writing pulp fiction from him. I also went back and read the Hardy boys, Tom Clancy, Robert Parker and a whole slew of others just to see how they did things."

"I feel uncomfortable with these books. Don’t bring any of them back to San Francisco." Her resolute tone told me this edict was one I should not debate, but I couldn’t help myself.

"I think you have to consider the time period. Back then American fiction wasn’t very kind to the Orient. Historically Rohmer is feeding off the Boxer Rebellion and Opium Wars type of thing."

"I’ll wait in the car until you’re done with your personal stuff," and with a rather Joan Crawford, theatrical flounce of her skirt she left with only a mild slam of the screen door.

For the next three days we barely spoke. Most of my attempts to get her to open up failed. I tried to block out our relationship and forget about down what toilet it might be flowing. If she was having second thoughts about making a break from her past, I didn’t want to wait around. So I tried to get back to my book. But the minute I got into the "moment" of something, the TV would go on, the vacuum cleaner would scream or she start up with the cello, accompanying some Beatles’ tune until I just gave up and joined her torpid melancholy.

A week later I was awakened at ten in the morning by the stereo blasting out a full orchestral sound. I stumbled into the living room and found her scooched on the floor in deep thought studying sheet music. She was wearing the usual tee shirt which amply revealed the luscious cherry-shaped bottom I’d come to know and desire. She sensed my presence, stood up and went over to the cello, a score in hand.

"I’ve decided to conquer Dvorak’s Cello Concerto. This is Yo Yo Ma’s version. You have Sax Rohmer; I’ve got him."

She sat down, adjusted the instrument and began to tune it as the blaring CD ended. I sat down on the couch to watch. With each pass of the bow across the strings, her shirt inched upwards until it finally sat high on her slender hips.

"What the hell happened!" I screamed.

She stood in front of me pulling the shirt up to just below her breasts. "I’ve started a new grooming pattern. Shaved is the way to go these days."

"But I loved it the way it was. Why would you change it? How many times did I tell you I was crazy about your pubes?"

"Have I destroyed some stupid, erotic illusion you have about non occidental women?"

"I have no illusion, fetishes or anything else. I liked you the way you were."

"You liked it because it was different from all the American girls you fucked. I’m surprised you didn’t wonder if my pussy was slanted like my eyes. Now I’m just like any other girl."

I was beside myself. "Soonie, what in the world’s gotten into you? I can appreciate what you’ve been going through. If you want to go back to the symphony, music and your old friends, that’s great. And I know I’ve got faults but being prejudiced about anything Chinese, Japanese or Korean isn’t really one of them."

"I think you should go back to Fresno. For the next few days I’m going to be practicing pretty hard, and Lee Chang is bringing some people over tomorrow to interview me for a chamber group that’s being formed. Besides you have your fairy world with all its goblins and shit to write about."

I finished out the day. She went through her routine as if I weren’t there. There was a falsetto tone to her conversations when she called old friends. Occasionally she spoke Korean to someone on the other end, maybe her parents or a relative. Early the next morning I filled a few boxes and trash bags with my stuff and tossed the lot into the Explorer. When I went in to say a final goodbye, she was propped up in the center of the bed wearing oversized headphones, eyes closed with a melodic symphony leaking sound into the room. I thought I would hug her but her position was damn near hug-proof. I tried for a kiss and received a chaste cheek. I muttered foolish stuff about loving her and probably always would which caused her to take off the headset just as I was finished. She asked me what I’d said in such a perturbed way that I just waved a "forget it" at her and left, dropping the house key into the lapis-tinted, ceramic Buddha that dominated the entrance way.

There’ve been no earthquakes devastating San Francisco. Her chamber group is called Heart and Seoul Musicae, and recently they played at San Jose State. I went up there in the middle of the month intending to see the concert, but the minute I saw the intimate hall they were to perform in, I chickened out knowing that she’d be certain to see me. From the poster out front, however, I noticed that she’d cut her hair very short, no style really just bangs straight across the forehead, and she was wearing wire rimmed glasses rather than her contacts. She was non-descript, blending in with the severe black outfits others in the quartet wore and not dissimilar from the other Asian female in the ensemble save for what might have been jade earrings. The thought crossed my mind as to what I ever saw in her, but that was quickly dismissed. She was in disguise as far as I was concerned. Only I knew what lay behind that inscrutable mask.

After Christmas I settled into a routine. I began listening to cello music before sitting down to work. There are some great artists out there--Pablo Casals, Rostropovich and Jacqueline du Pre. I bought the latter’s rendition of the Schumann and Elgar concertos and enjoyed them very much. Of course there is the movie Hilary and Jackie. Maybe the less said about that nuttiness the better. I got back to writing with very little effort and the next installment, number four, of the Endor saga has been shipped off to Raven’s Claw to some acclaim and a hell of a lot of relief on both sides. Stacey thinks it will hit the stores in late spring, and wants an east coast publicity tour this time, Washington, New York City and Boston. I lie awake nights wondering whether I should send Soon Rae a copy and, if I do, what message I might write on the inside cover. Then there’s the matter of a dedication. Just a thought.