Exit Strategy
BY TAMMY HEEJAE LEE
Tyler James Bangkok, Restrict Ego, acrylic, recycled objects, collage, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
Exit Strategy
Tammy Heejae Lee | APR 2022 | ISSUE 15
She could always fake someone’s death.
It was a ludicrous idea, but one Pearl held onto as a comforting thought. She desperately needed to quit her job, but Pearl had never quit a job before and she was afraid of how her boss would react. At least a fictional death would give her an excuse to leave with absolutely no strings attached, a way out without needing much of an explanation. It was a last resort, albeit a terrible one, but every time Pearl found herself dreading her boss’ text messages constantly lighting up her phone screen or taking Uber after Uber around the city to do his every bidding, she calmed herself down with the assurance that all it would take to be rid of him forever was a well-crafted lie.
Pearl rolled over to check the time on her phone and then immediately wished she hadn’t. In fifteen minutes, she would have to get up and start getting ready for work. She was sick of wearing the same oversized sweater and slacks combo, of doing her makeup soullessly in front of the mirror with The Devil Wears Prada playing in the background, of getting squished against other commuters on the Muni with their backpacks digging into her chest. Pearl closed her eyes and willed herself to think about literally anything else, like the cute vendors of The Bud Stop selling flowers in buckets. Going out in Soma and then getting hot dogs sold on the sidewalks afterwards. The sandwiches at Rhea’s Deli while picnicking in Mission Dolores with her friends. Positive things to remind her of why she moved to San Francisco in the first place.
The sound of her alarm (“Eye of the Tiger”) blared into Pearl’s left ear the moment she finally felt rested enough to drift back into sleep. She pressed her face deeper into her pillow, wishing her bed could swallow her whole until she had sunk into a different world, one where she wouldn’t be required to go into the office. But Pearl’s alarm went off again, and again. Every beat with a cymbal smash was a reminder that Pearl belonged here, in this reality, one that required her to get up and start the morning routine she had been trying so hard not to think about.
*
When Pearl first applied to the job on Indeed, the listing’s title said: “EMAIL ‘HIRE ME PLEASE’ IF YOU WANT A JOB ASAP!” There was nothing about the scope of the work other than that it was an administrative position, entry level applicants welcome. Pearl was desperate for a job that would make her enough money to join her friends who were already working in the city. She envied the way they were able to shop for nice clothes or order an endless amount of drinks without having to transfer funds from their savings into their checking accounts in dimly lit bar bathrooms. Pearl emailed her resume and cover letter to the job listing and was immediately invited to interview the next day, conducted through a temp agency.
During the interview, the recruiter had assured Pearl that she was going to be very happy working at the firm because she would wear a lot of different hats for the role.
“The CEO is known to be extremely generous,” he told her. It was almost like he was trying to convince her to take the job, and not the other way around.
On her first day, Pearl wore a navy blue Ralph Lauren button up and a black and white tweed skirt. She went up the stairs of what seemed like a random duplex in the middle of all the shops, restaurants, and yoga studios on Union Street. After ringing the doorbell, she was met face-to-face with an older white man in a sports coat, who grinned at her with anticipation.
“Welcome in,” he said, introducing himself as Ron. “I like your school girl outfit.”
Pearl automatically stuck out her right hand, but Ron lifted his in the air. His fingers looked like they were permanently cupped together, in a way that resembled a claw. There were crisscrosses of white scars and staple marks around his wrist.
“Fell out of a second story window at a party in Malibu when I was younger,” he said, cheerfully. “Almost had to amputate it.”
Pearl followed Ron to where he gestured towards an empty desk and computer. The wood on the desk was chipped everywhere, and the computer screen was dusty like it hadn’t been wiped in a while. Her recruiter had mentioned that it would be a boutique firm of sorts, but whatever she had been picturing, it certainly wasn’t this.
Over a lunch at a country club in the Presidio, Ron explained to her what kind of company he ran (real estate development), what her duties were (to assist him in all administrative tasks), and how important he was (he dated ex-Victoria’s Secret angels and could be written about on Page Six if he wasn’t careful). Pearl nodded while stirring her creamed broccoli soup, unsure of how these things were related to one another. He hadn’t asked a single question about her during the entire meal.
When the check came, Ron opened his wallet with a flourish. “You won’t have to worry about meals while working with me.”
Pearl smiled weakly in response, willing herself to ignore the sinking feeling that she was making a terrible mistake.
She couldn’t articulate that same dread to her parents when they called her later that night, not while they bragged about telling their friends and family members about Pearl’s new job and how she was supporting an important executive. She didn’t have the heart to tell them about the temp agency or her office and its lack of other employees. They told her they were proud of her, and what a relief it was that Pearl could now fend for herself as a real adult.
After hanging up, Pearl crawled into bed and decided she would endure the job. Not because she wanted to, but because she felt guilty of disappointing everyone if she quit without even trying. One year, she told herself. One year of her life was nothing. Pearl could learn how to work with Ron and perhaps even excel at her role in that time. Then she would move on to other opportunities, ones where everything her parents believed about her job now could eventually turn into the truth.
*
Pearl’s daily tasks ranged from getting the necessary permits to demo the three properties Ron owned, talking to contractors, and visiting the homes located in different neighborhoods to update Ron on their progress. Ron texted her his orders on iMessage even though they were only a room apart and ignored Pearl’s questions that required his guidance. She didn’t have the faintest idea of what she was supposed to be doing or how she would do them most of the time. It felt like what Ron needed was a site manager or a landscape architect, not a twenty-two year-old girl who didn’t know a thing about preparing houses in a short amount of time. Regardless, Pearl was left on her own to figure everything out.
At the end of every week, Ron wrote her a check for a thousand, sometimes two thousand dollars as a bonus for her hard work. Pearl hated the way her fingertips itched while she watched him write them, how easily her suffering could be compensated.
“I think we do really good work together,” Ron would always say before giving them to her. “We make a great team.”
After Pearl’s first couple of months at the firm, Ron began dumping all of his personal affairs onto her. He asked Pearl if she’d mind booking a private investigator to spy on old business partners who had wronged him, if she could construct break-up texts for a string of girls in his stead or plan extravagant yacht parties. Pearl’s eyelids were rubbed dry from the stress, the skin cracked and raw no matter how much Vaseline or eye cream she dabbed on them. She often skipped meals and bathroom breaks so that she could continue working, and Ron’s constant stream of text messages late into the night made it so that her pile of to-do’s were never-ending and more exhaustive by the day.
Sometimes during moments of weakness, Pearl would text her parents that she felt overwhelmed and wanted to leave, hoping they would agree with her. Instead, they told Pearl to keep going.
“Over time, you get used to it,” her mother wrote. “Hang in there, sweetheart.”
“Being tired is not a reason to quit,” her father said.
“This company would be nothing without you,” Ron would remind her at the end of every week, and reached for his checkbook to write her another bonus for her trouble.
Pearl’s mistake was thinking that someone would understand how she felt. No one knew about how on some mornings, Pearl entertained the thought of stepping out a little farther off the curb where she waited at the bus stop, just enough for the forty-nine bus to give her a light tap. She didn’t want to be injured, she just needed a valid excuse to skip work for a day, maybe two if she was lucky.
The only thing that kept her from doing so was picturing herself working from her hospital bed with an IV drip attached to her arm, where the recklessness of her actions would have been wasted for nothing.
*
One morning in October, Ron texted Pearl with a task more pressing than the rest: he wanted to throw one of the biggest costume parties he had hosted yet. Pearl blanched at the mountain of to-do’s that would arise from such an event. The date he gave her was Halloween, which was only two weeks away.
“I want Maple to be the venue,” Ron continued. “Some of my guests will stay the night.”
She wasn’t sure if she read his text correctly at first. Maple was the least developed of the three properties. There was absolutely no way the mansion would be ready in two weeks’ time. The floorboards were rotting, there was no working refrigerator or stove in the kitchens, and the whole house needed to be fumigated and painted. Regardless of whether Pearl would be able to book all the vendors in time, it would be physically impossible for them to hide the deformities in the house. It was a health hazard: there was black mold on all the ceilings and walls, and Pearl knew Ron would come up with an easy, unethical fix, like “Just hang up some velvet curtains to hide it all.”
Pearl went to the bathroom, where she couldn’t stop herself from touching her eyelids again. They were rubbed raw to the point where they looked like scales, with tiny scabs of blood in between some of the cracks. Normally she washed her hands without looking at herself in the mirror in order to hurry back to her desk, but something about how lifeless her hair looked, how astonishingly sallow and sad her face was, made her stop and stare at her reflection for a beat longer.
Here was a person who was obedient, but erased, Pearl thought. Here was someone who had lost herself with work until that was all that was left of her. A person who completed someone else’s orders like she didn’t have a voice or life of her own, with no time for friends or even herself anymore. Pearl had never once thought that she would become someone whose light was extinguished because of her job. What was she even working for now?
“Pearl?” Ron’s voice echoed in the hallway. “Can you call some vendors for me while I go out to lunch?” She listened to the sound of the front door slamming shut, his thunderous footsteps down their stairwell.
Pearl knelt down and proceeded to retch into the toilet. Nothing but sour spit and a bit of the water she drank earlier came out, but she rubbed her sternum to cough and spit some more until she was sure there was absolutely nothing left inside of her. Once she was finished, she clenched her teeth while brushing the welts on her eyelids with a damp paper towel, trying to touch them as lightly as she could without hurting herself.
*
When Pearl woke up the next morning, she felt eerily calm. She didn’t flinch at the sound of her alarm, or give in to the panic of rushing through her morning routine. She had gone to sleep thinking about how she would get rid of Ron, and came to the realization that she had known all along what she had wanted to do. The beauty of an escape plan was how once things were set into motion, she would feel numb to the things that used to cripple her with fear.
Ron texted her like he always did: “Please make sure the caterer for the party is Diana and her team. And we’ll need about nine mattresses and linens for every room. You can take my Costco card and get a few Uber XL’s.”
Pearl’s response was simple. “No.”
Ron: “???”
She typed out the sentence she had been thinking about since her first week on the job: “I’m afraid I have to quit.”
Ron called her in a matter of seconds. “What do you mean you’re quitting? The party’s next week for Christ’s sake!”
She drank from the water bottle on her nightstand slowly, waiting out the sound of Ron’s impatient breaths on the other end. All Pearl ever did was rush to get things done for him. Today she wanted to take her time, for once.
“There’s been a terrible accident,” she said.
Pearl figured she might as well try the lie if it meant Ron wouldn’t convince or bribe her with more money to stop her from her decision. She had wanted the fastest exit after all, something that couldn’t be argued against. Pearl knew Ron. He treated her like he owned her, like she was a piece of property that meant less to him than the properties he actually owned. But Pearl was numb now, truly unbothered to the point where she didn’t feel any sort of remorse towards him whatsoever.
“What happened? Are you okay? Who’s hurt? Are you at the hospital?”
The alarm in Ron’s voice made her pause. Pearl had never heard this kind of tone from him before, she was so used to him demanding one thing after another. She was familiar with his impatience, frustration, and anger, but not this—whatever this was. If Pearl didn’t know any better, it almost sounded like Ron was genuinely worried about her.
“Pearl? Who’s hurt? What kind of accident was it? Tell me the name of the hospital you’re at, I can call around to see if any of my doctor connections can help.”
In all of the ways Pearl imagined this conversation would go, she never dreamed that Ron would offer to help or cared about her enough to try, work abandoned. It just didn’t feel right. Ron’s job here was simple, all he had to do was let her go. A clean cut in which there’d be nothing left to say except his regret that their time together had to end so abruptly.
“I know you’re feeling stressed,” Ron continued. “Just talk to me, Pearl, tell me what’s going on, I just want—”
Pearl lowered the phone and pressed the “end” button with her thumb without a second thought. She never should have given Ron the opportunity to speak. When Ron called her back, Pearl blocked his number immediately, and then reported his email address as spam for good measure. She hated how even until the end, Ron was telling her what to do, during his timing, all while expecting that Pearl wouldn’t refuse him. What would have been the worst thing that happened to her if she left him without an explanation? Or told him the truth, even?
Suddenly, it was quiet. No alarm, no phone calls or text messages or morning buses outside her apartment. There was nothing but the sound of Pearl breathing heavily from the adrenaline of what she had just done.
She leaned back into her pillow, cautiously. The sunlight through her blinds left long stripes on the wall next to her bed. Pearl had gotten so used to commuting while it was still dark out and working in a windowless office until the sun had already set each night, that something as simple as a shadow on her wall felt different and distantly familiar.
Pearl drew the covers up to her chin and closed her eyes. For the first time in a year, there was truly nothing for her to do, nowhere she had to be. The silence was still unnerving, but in a way that made her crave more of it.
The day finally belonged to her now, and Pearl decided that all she wanted to do with it was rest.
Tammy Heejae Lee is a Korean American writer from Davis, CA. She has a BA from UC Davis and an MFA in fiction from the University of San Francisco, where she received a post-graduate teaching fellowship. A Tin House Summer Workshop, VONA/Voices and Sewanee alum, her writing has appeared in Sundog, The Offing, and PANK, among others. She is currently a 2021-2022 Steinbeck Fellow in fiction at San Jose State University, where she is working on her first novel about expat and hagwon culture in Seoul.
Tyler James Bangkok (TJB) is a queer, American artist who has lived and worked in Asia for ten years. Currently, based in Bangkok, where it lives with its Thai-Taiwanese boyfriend and their dogs while freelancing as an artist, producer, and doing community engagement. TJB was a founding member of Minneapolis Art on Wheels. Through creating video, painting, programming interactive video instruments, and performances, TJB seeks to explore its queer fantasy and the abstract world within and to affect and shape reality. With life experiences between male and female, Eastern and Western culture/ideologies, capitalism and socialism, and the developed and developing world, TJB finds the history and tradition of dada collage techniques useful in engaging people and mixing perspectives that different groups might have. TJB's “collage lifestyle" aims to create intersectional points of view. Thus, it always wants to use collage to bring various ideas or objects together to show their context, clash, or how they work together. As a queer kid growing up in rural Minnesota, it always felt suffocated and like there was something off-balance about the USA. TJB is also deeply inspired by the Situationist International and their constant critique of capitalism, control, and creative and social agency in society. Their concept of "detournement" or flipping pop culture images to show the reality behind the facade of what they represent is vital to TJB's practice. Also, TJB firmly believes in the powers of collage in manifesting and creating “chaos magic.”