Counterattacking the Tax Office
···Rattle! ···Rattle! ···Rattle! ···Rattle!
The taxi swayed violently beneath us.
It had been a long haul—first a plane from Boston to Texas, then another taxi from the airport in, all the way back to Garden Queens.
Outside the window, the familiar, homely sights of Garden Queens drifted by.
Along the roadside, weathered newspaper stands displayed faded headlines.
...
I tore my gaze away from the window.
What mattered now was reviewing the resumes laid out on my lap.
They were the perfect kill-time project for the long ride to Garden Queens.
Flick.
I flipped through them one by one.
These were the resumes that had come pouring in after I posted the opening for a secretary.
Most of them belonged to first-year students trying to earn tuition money or pocket cash.
Plenty of them were smudged with ink or formatted like a disaster.
But one resume stood out from the rest.
Caroline Channing.
Her basic information was neatly organized at the top.
Eighteen years old, from Brookline, Massachusetts.
In high school, she had served as captain of the cheerleading team and vice president of the student council, and her yearbook even described her as the student “Most Likely to Succeed.”
Her Harvard entrance scores were in the top three percent.
Under special experience, she had listed junior modeling work for Boston Magazine.
The rest of the resume mostly painted the picture of an only daughter from a comfortable middle-class family, and at the bottom of the page, a handwritten note in the margin caught my eye.
[P.S. I make great coffee. The golden ratio is 2 spoons of sugar and 2 spoons of creamer. Also, in high school I planned five surprise birthday parties for my teachers, and not once did anyone catch on before the big reveal! I’m really good at keeping my mouth shut, so please hire me :) ]
The round, bouncy handwriting had been pressed into the page with a pink ink pen.
Most Harvard students’ resumes were dry, arrogant lists of achievements and abilities, but this emotional appeal was unexpectedly fresh.
Come to think of it, she said she hoped to become a secretary someday, didn’t she?
I remembered my last conversation with Caroline.
It wasn’t a difficult job, after all. It might be worth letting her try.
Then Victor, who had been peeking over the documents in my hands from the taxi seat beside me, went wide-eyed.
“Huh? Hold up. This is Caroline, isn’t it?”
“You know her?”
“Of course! If you don’t know her in our class, you must be a Soviet spy or something. Blond, pretty, tall, laid-back, nice to everybody—of course she’s insanely popular. The social clubs were practically fighting over her. She turned them all down because she said she was a work-study student and didn’t have the time.”
Victor flailed dramatically and shook my arm.
“Sanha, we have to go with her. No question. Her communication skills are already proven, right? And her reputation as a work-study student is solid, so her work performance has to be too. Plus everybody likes her, so the first impression at outside meetings would be—”
“Rejected.”
At that moment, Grace, who had been sitting in the front passenger seat staring out the window, cut Victor off flatly.
Victor flinched and closed his mouth.
Grace spoke in a voice cold enough to frost glass.
“What does beauty or popularity have to do with hiring a secretary? And look at this note.”
She tapped Caroline’s handwritten addendum with one finger.
“A smiley face? What is this, some social club? We’re handling business worth millions right now. Someone with flowers blooming in her head is going to have trouble adjusting to real work.”
“······.”
Victor started to say something, then glanced at Grace and swallowed it back.
Arms folded, Grace answered with icy certainty.
“When someone draws a smile on an official document, I don’t think you can expect them to draw a clear line between business and pleasure. It’s not my place to interfere, but if it were me, I wouldn’t hire her.”
“Still, her practical experience looks decent······”
“I always judge by efficiency and risk. She’s a variable that could drag down focus. Look, Victor—you’re already all dazed and dreamy over her.”
“Y-you’re way too harsh······ dazed and dreamy, seriously······”
Victor pouted miserably.
I looked back over how this whole situation had even started.
Grace in the front passenger seat. Victor beside me in the back.
The two of them had followed me to Garden Queens because of a modest New Year’s gathering in the club room a few days ago.
We’d been eating chicken wings and nachos to celebrate the long-term rental contract between Sanha's Antique Shop and Paramount when Victor had suddenly blurted out:
“Now that I think about it, isn’t this kind of unfair? You’ve met my dad and even my little sister Vivian, but I’ve never met your family.”
He had carefully suggested that he’d like to meet my parents and properly greet them as well.
“My dad said something the other day. He told me to send your parents his thanks, Sanha. Said they’d given his son a good friend. So, on that note, mind if I say hello in his place?”
Then Grace, who had been quietly sipping black tea beside us, naturally joined the conversation.
“I’m coming too. As your partner, understanding the kind of environment you grew up in will help our business going forward.”
She’d called it business, but her eyes had been full of curiosity.
And that was how the visit to Garden Queens had been set in motion.
Skreeeeech—
The taxi came to a stop beneath the sign for Lee's Gas & Service.
Instead of the old peeling metal sign, a crisp illuminated sign now shone over the station.
In one corner of the parking lot sat a glossy black Buick Roadmaster.
It was the car I’d ordered last month as a birthday present for my father.
Next to it stood the battered Ford truck my father had been driving for years.
Rust-eaten, paint flaking away, the truck he’d been driving since the earliest days of his life in America.
My father said he’d scrap it once he had a new car, but I had grown oddly attached to it and didn’t want him to.
Maybe because it reminded me of my father rising before dawn to load cargo and deliver fuel.
These days, I was the one driving it.
Come to think of it, the house has changed a lot too.
A second floor had been added, and the exterior had been freshly repainted.
Even the windows had all been replaced.
I’d have to go inside to see whether the high-end furniture and appliances I ordered from Boston had actually arrived, but from the outside at least, it was no longer the shabby house it had once been.
Then—
Bang!
My mother, wearing an apron, and my father, still in work clothes, opened the door and came out.
“Oh, my son!”
My mother rushed over and wrapped me in a hug, then spotted Victor and Grace behind me and grabbed my father by the arm, shaking him excitedly.
“Honey, honey! Sanha brought friends! New friends from Harvard!”
“You must have had a long ride, son. Come in, come in. It’s not much, but you’re welcome here.”
My father cleared his throat awkwardly and greeted our guests.
Behind him, I could see my uncle ambling over.
“Oh? That’s the same friend we saw during the old warehouse search, right? The one with Rick.”
“Hello! I’m Victor, the one you met back then! Thank you for remembering me.”
Victor recognized my uncle and bowed with an eager grin.
My uncle chuckled.
“Of course I remember. You were the kid scribbling like mad beside Sanha. You had it rough that day.”
“Yes sir! I’m Victor Hamilton. I learned a lot from you back then!”
We exchanged some small talk and then headed inside.
The moment we stepped in, the rich aroma of toasted sesame oil hit us full in the face.
The dining table was loaded with enough food to break the legs off it.
In 1992, in a rural Texas town with no Korean market, somehow my mother had managed to get her hands on ingredients like this.
There was braised short ribs, simmered so long the meat looked tender enough to fall off the bone, with plump chestnuts and jujubes tucked among the sauce; japchae glistening with colorful garnishes and translucent noodles; spicy kimchi stew bubbling in a stone pot; freshly grilled croaker; and tteokgalbi.
It was obvious at a glance that my mother had been preparing for days—or more likely, ever since she heard we were coming.
“It’s nothing fancy, but eat as much as you like. I hope it suits your taste.”
“Wow······ Ma’am, what is all this? This is incredible. You really went all out······”
Victor took one bite of the short ribs and his eyes went round.
“It’s delicious! Seriously delicious! Better than the steak I had at Harvest!”
Meanwhile, my father asked Grace in a low voice,
“How’s Sanha doing at school? Is he keeping up with his studies? There are so many talented students there, I worry he might feel intimidated······”
“Sir, he’s not just doing well—he’s on another level. No one in his class can keep up with him, and even the seniors about to graduate don’t have anyone who can match him. If you want to compete with Sanha, you’d need the professors themselves.”
Grace set down her spoon and continued in a crisp voice.
“I’m learning a tremendous amount from Sanha.”
“That’s right, that’s right.”
Victor quietly chimed in as well.
At their praise, bright smiles bloomed across my father’s and mother’s faces.
My father gave a bashful cough, but the broad grin on his face refused to fade.
My mother kept piling side dishes onto Grace’s rice bowl, marveling all the while.
“How can our student be so doll-like and pretty? Your name is Grace, right?”
“Oh, yes······ thank you.”
“Eat lots and lots. You must be exhausted from studying.”
With a warm hand, my mother placed a piece of short rib on Grace’s spoon.
Grace’s eyes flickered.
She stared at the meat resting there for a long moment, as if she couldn’t quite believe it was real.
I grinned at her.
“There’s no free inheritance, but there is such a thing as a free meal. That’s what you get when you go to a friend’s house.”
“······.”
Grace’s lips moved a little, then closed again.
Then she put the meat into her mouth and chewed slowly.
“······It’s good. Really. So good.”
Her elegant, precise pronunciation got blurred by her cheeks puffing out with food.
My mother seemed to find her adorable and kept moving japchae and pancakes onto her plate.
“So. Our pretty Grace, what are you and Sanha?”
“Mom. If you keep joking like that, the kids these days won’t know what to do······”
Just as I tried to cut off my mother’s shameless teasing, Grace answered in a bright, clear voice I had never heard from her before.
“We’re dating with marriage in mind.”
“Grace. If you keep joking like that, parents these days won’t know what to do······”
Honestly, what was this awkward atmosphere even supposed to be?
***
After dinner, night deepened.
At my mother’s firm insistence, Grace took my room on the second floor.
Victor and I were automatically sentenced to the living room.
Snore—
Victor, who had been happily drinking every bottle my uncle handed him, was already passed out on the living room sofa.
I escorted Grace to my room.
“You can’t come in. I’m changing.”
Grace half-closed the door and turned her head away with mock primness.
“Okay. Call me if you need anything. I’ll sleep on the living room couch.”
As I turned to grab a pillow and blanket, a pale hand suddenly slipped through the crack in the door and caught my sleeve.
“······Wait.”
Grace puckered her lips.
“You’re really just leaving?”
“······”
“Come in for a second.”
I followed Grace into my room.
She perched on the bed and started looking over the framed photos on my desk.
The one she picked up was a black-and-white photo of me at age five.
“Is this you? Goodness, look at those chubby cheeks! You’re holding a butterfly in your hand! You look like the Butterfly King!”
“Ugly, right? Everybody says that.”
“No, you’re cute. Your eyes are exactly the same as they are now!”
For a while, we chatted while looking through the photos.
Grace ran her fingers over the pictures of my childhood and smiled softly.
My bed, my desk, the space soaked through with my scent.
Most of the furniture and appliances in the house had been replaced with expensive, modern pieces, but my room had been left exactly as it was.
Grace sat in the middle of it all and wrinkled her nose.
“······It smells nice. A comforting smell.”
She murmured that into the pillow, burying her face against it slightly.
“I think I’ll sleep really well tonight.”
“Want me to turn off the light?”
“Yeah. Please.”
Her eyelids were already growing heavy.
I quietly turned off the lamp and left the room.
***
When I came down to the first floor, Victor’s thunderous snoring echoed even here.
It was the dead of night, and everyone was asleep.
“······”
I put on a padded jacket and headed for the shed in the backyard.
The new car, the remodeled house, the new appliances and furniture······ but above all, what was new was what lay inside that shed.
···Creak!
The rusted iron door opened, and a foul mix of mildew and oil hit me in the face.
My eyes, adjusted to the dark, took in a familiar sight.
Flour sacks filled the shed to the brim.
But inside those enormous sacks were not flour, but tightly packed bundles of one-dollar, five-dollar, and ten-dollar bills.
The notes were stained black in places from the truckers’ oil-slick hands, and coins rolled about on the floor like grains of sand.
I lifted one sack of bills from the corner.
Damp diesel stench.
This was dirty money that hadn’t been laundered yet—literal black gold.
The clean money from the antique business had already gone into the account, but these greasy stacks of cash still lacked a proper source trail, so they’d been piling up in the shed all this time.
But there was no way we could keep stacking cash in here forever.
We had to deal with it before rats chewed through it or moisture rotted it away.
Step, step, step.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind me.
It was my uncle.
“Why aren’t you asleep?”
“Just checking to make sure the money’s still here.”
“Mm. I was actually hoping to talk to you about this problem anyway······”
My uncle reached into his coat and pulled out a crumpled envelope, holding it out to me.
A plain white government envelope.
Stamped at the top was a red eagle emblem, and beneath it, in typewriter font, were the words Department of the Treasury - Internal Revenue Service.
It had been sent by the IRS.
“This came a few days ago. It’s a request for information. They’re telling us to voluntarily report our business registration status and recent transaction history. It’s not a huge deal yet, but······ that’s only yet.”
Worry ran deep in my uncle’s voice.
“This isn’t going to cause problems with your school, is it?”
“Don’t worry, Uncle. This is exactly what I expected.”
“What? You expected it?”
“Yeah. Honestly, part of the reason I came down here was for this. Running from it won’t solve anything.”
I tore open the envelope and checked the contents.
“So I’m going first.”
“Where?”
“To the IRS.”
“!”
I slowly shook the bright red envelope in my hand.
“If we just sit here and wait for them to come at us, we lose. We have to strike first.”
“······”
At my bold declaration against the tax office, my uncle stood there with his mouth hanging open, completely speechless.