Misook flies into Incheon International Airport and is met by her sister HeeJung. “It is so good to see you, sister,” she says as the two women embrace. “But I hope you are hungry because Mother and Father are at the restaurant ordering food as we speak.” And so we watch her join her parents, surround herself with the people she loves most in the world, and eat a Christmas Eve dinner filled with fish, crab, octopus, pork, all the many wonders of Korean cuisine. A feast of food, of love, of the joy of living. Misook is at home. Her heart swells.

Doug cooks a Christmas dinner for Gabriella and the two eat Cornish hens, baked potatoes, mixed grilled vegetables, cornbread, and, of course, coffee. Lots of coffee. There is music, there is conversation, there is a fire in the fireplace, and a glow on their faces, in their stomachs, in their hearts. We can see these two enjoy each other’s company and what once started out as working sessions are now strictly pleasure. For both of them, without anyone else in their lives, they are becoming family.

Jenny finds herself part of a family of three which revolves around her. She is the shared commodity, the one in the middle that joins the other two. And so Christmas dinner isn’t so much about sitting at the table and sharing food as much as it is about lying in bed and sharing her.

Nick cooks dinner for two even though there is no one else to share the meal with him. He sets the table, though, with two place settings–two plates, two sets of silverware, two wine glasses, two napkins, even two glasses of Pellegrino with lemon. A dinner with candlelight, Sinatra’s Songs For Swinging Lovers in the background, enough plates and saucers to guarantee the use of the dishwasher afterwards. He pours wine in both wine glasses, fills both plates with rigatoni and meatballs and sausage, and though he eats from both plates, he does not finish everything except he does empty both wine glasses and manages to have refills. Then he settles back in his chair, looks across the table at the empty chair opposite him, and suddenly feels superficial. A man without connections. Not exactly how he wanted to feel two days before his surgery but one doesn’t always get what one desires or deserves.
So he sits and continues eating his dinner alone, sharing his meal, his wine, his thoughts with no one. Alone with his fear and anxiety, preparing himself for what will come, to face it on his own.

Gia would like to be alone this day, to sort out her thinking, to clear up her mind, but, as usual, her aunts, her uncles, her cousins here in America won’t let her. She should be happy she knows to have family here and most times she is but sometimes, like now, they get in the way of her private life and here, in this country, she is finally on her own, has learned to be an independent young woman, but her family does not seem to recognize that.

Christmas Day comes and goes without ceremony for Ali since he is Muslim and does not celebrate the holiday. He is just thankful for the week off between Christmas and New Year’s when Doug closes down the operation and everyone gets a week’s vacation. This is the time he spends reading and visiting with friends, cooking traditional Turkish meals and arguing politics till late in the night. He should be happy during this week but somehow he is not. His mind, after all, is on Gia, wondering where she is, what she is doing, who she is doing it with. This is not healthy, he thinks. He does not need any complication in his life. But here it is and he is stuck with it. And contrary to popular belief, this mild depression does not help him write.
So instead he finds himself at a party with Turkish friends, dancing in the middle of a living room, twirling and clapping his hands over his head, losing himself in forced merriment, a man on fire but not for the woman he is dancing with, not for any woman present, but for an image in his mind, a picture in his brain.

Miyo doesn’t know what has come over her, but she cannot get enough of either man. She spends the entire day and most of the evening in bed with Hector and then makes love to Yugi each night when he comes home until he collapses from exhaustion, falls asleep in her arms. And as she drifts off to sleep each night, holding Yugi, knowing Hector will be coming as soon as the morning comes and Yugi leaves for work, she feels content. It is as if she is blending one into the other, mixing their fluids within her and transforming two men into one. She doesn’t know if it’s healthy, and she certainly doesn’t care, but it seems a natural progression for her. And though she knows this is probably morally wrong, and psychologically dangerous, she feels fulfilled.

It wasn’t intended but somehow it seems fitting that it takes place, this meeting of Misook’s with her ex-boyfriend Joo-Il. She meets him in a tea house in Insadong that they used to frequent years before. The air is heavy with the aroma of various teas and memories, so many memories, a cloud on their eyes.
“Your hair,” he says, “is different now. You have streaked it with red.”
“Just something different,” Misook says. “You know me, I like change.”
“Yes,” Joo-Il says, nodding sadly, thinking, perhaps, he, too, was a part of her changes. “I remember that.”
Suddenly Misook feels so sad, so heavy in her chest, a weight she had not anticipated that she cannot quite bear. And she smiles quickly, a smile to mask what she feels, a sudden, false smile that does not go by undetected by Joo-Il.
“Are you well?” he asks, his voice tender, his eyes so soft, so sensitive in this dusty light. “Are you happy, there, in America?”
And she nods her head, says, “Yes, I am happy,” to this man, this man who was her first real love, her ideal, the only man she ever thought, at one time long ago, she could marry, and wonders, with what must surely be some variation of regret, what happened to the years between then and now. Who has changed, she wonders, this man, my first true love, or me? And, of course, she knows the answer—she has changed, she is no longer the girl he thought he loved, was never the girl he thought he loved, though she did truly, in her way, at one time long ago, want to be.
Joo-Il talks about his life, about mutual friends she no longer contacts, about Seoul as it is today, as it once was to them–young, in love, students talking of their future dreams–his plans now, an apartment he has bought, of work, of money, of dreams forestalled by the overbearing burdens of life. And Misook listens, smiles, laughs at jokes that are indeed funny, sees him still so animated, his lively eyes, his boyish charm, and thinks, I still love this man, but I could never be with him, here, in Korea, in a life that could not be my own. To surrender what is hers has always been her dilemma and as she watches Joo-Il and learns to love him again, she also bids this love, this man, farewell.
And as she leaves the tea shop and feels the cold winter air on her hot cheeks, tears come to her eyes. And later, in her car alone, parked on a side street before driving back to her sister’s apartment, she cries for all that she has lost, all that she is losing, all that she has gained, all that still awaits her back in her new home country, back where her heart now belongs, where her heart truly belongs to her, is hers for the giving, the taking, the living.

Nick’s operation takes longer than anticipated but long enough to remove a lobe from his right lung since those two little spots the doctors were not concerned about proved to be cancerous. When he wakes, hours later, to find Doug by his bedside, he learns just what awaits him now and his heart grows heavy as a new fear arises in his life, clouding what once was his future plans.
“There will be more tests,” the doctor says, “to make sure it hasn’t spread to the lymphatic system. And if it hasn’t, then there will be no further cause for concern.”
“And if it has?” Nick asks.
“Well then there’s chemotherapy, radiation treatments, other options to explore.” The doctor then gives what is probably his best bedside manner smile and adds, “But let’s not think about that now. Let’s concentrate on getting you strong enough to go home by New Year’s.”
And Doug and Nick exchange a glance that says everything that need be said about friendship, about the bond between two people who have learned the hard way about love and loss and life. And Doug reaches over and rests his hand lightly on Nick’s wrist, not wanting to touch his shoulder for fear of disrupting what healing must be taking place beneath all those bandages, and sits in silence with his best friend until Nick drifts off to sleep. And his heart, Doug’s poor, troubled heart, begins to crack once again, and tears cloud his eyes as he walks to the parking lot to begin the long drive home.

MinKyung comes with dinner–a dragon roll, some shrimp and vegetable tempura, an assortment of sashimi style tuna, salmon, mackerel, and some noodles she boils in water on his stove and serves in a broth. She moves around his kitchen, rearranging his drawers, changing his cupboards, repositioning his drain board. The kitchen is her province and he lets her take possession, knowing full well that Gaby will change everything when she comes on New Year’s Eve. But it does please him immensely to watch her move about in his kitchen and make herself at home.
They eat at the kitchen table in his alcove overlooking his deck. They drink tea, talk about the forthcoming holiday, act like an old married couple even though they’ve known each other only four months. Doug does not want to think this, but it pleases him that they are so comfortable together. And as he watches her clean up afterwards, his heart fills with regret thinking it will end.
“I must go,” MinKyung says. “But I will be back next year, “and she smiles. “That is what you say, is it not?”
“Yes,” Doug says. “That is what you say.”
She smiles at him then, in the doorway, the light behind her so her face is in shadows, a mystery to him now, then, always. And before he can smile back properly, she is gone. And Doug feels an emptiness in his heart.

“Watch it, old paint,” Nick says, standing inside the living room, watching him. “You’re beginning to get deeply involved again.”
“I can’t help it,” Doug says. “And you’re a fine one to talk. Don’t you get involved, too?”
“Never,” Nick says and laughs. “But don’t take an old fool like me as a role model. Be your own man.”
“I always am,” Doug says. “Which is basically the trouble.”
Nick smiles and moves slowly, painfully through the living room and eases himself down very carefully onto an easy chair. Doug watches concerned. “How are you feeling today?”
“Well I’m not planning on taking up tennis,” Nick says, “but if it weren’t for all this medication they have me on, I’d sure love to get back to some serious drinking again.”
“The way I see it, this operation may have had one very positive result: drying you out.”
“Hmmmm,” Nick goes. “A cloud in every silver lining.”
“Anyway,” Doug says, “you don’t like MinKyung?”
“I didn’t say that,” Nick says. “I just said be careful. You have the tendency to get too involved. And from what I could hear, she sounds like she’s very fond of you.”
“I am lovable,” Doug smiles.
“Yes, you are. Just use judgment on whom you’re lovable with.”
And now it’s Doug’s turn to go “Hmmmm” and he does. Nick meanwhile lays his head back against the chair and closes his eyes. “Are you tired?” Doug asks.
“Yes,” Nick says. “I’m tired all the time. I think maybe I’ll just nap a second, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” Doug says. “Rest.”
And we leave those two friends: one sleeping somewhat soundly in a chair, the other silently keeping his vigil. We leave them momentarily to check in on some others.

To Hector who watches from his car as Yugi comes home and enters the doorway, climbs the stairs that he himself only recently descended. And Hector keeps a silent vigil on the house as lights turn on, turn off, silence settles on the street where he sits in his car, the cold seeping into his bones before he finally turns the car on and returns home to rest for the next day, the next visit to this house. And the next day will come, and then another and another all the long days to New Year’s and beyond.

To Jenny fast asleep in Jeff’s bed as Jeff and Vivian prepare the menu for their New Year’s Eve dinner, plan the sequence of events afterwards–who will do what to whom for how long and then what is to follow. And as they plan, Jeff finds he grows hard with anticipation and Vivian, being astute as always, helps coax him to where he longs to be–in bed with Jenny, with Vivian, inside and out, a night of pleasure, of pain, before the next day’s celebration of the passing of yet another year. the advent of a new one, the allure of the promise of tomorrow.

To Ali who reluctantly agrees to accompany friends from work to Times Square the next day to huddle with thousands of other people to watch a ball descend during a countdown to signal the end of one year and the beginning of another. He thinks that that is not what he would prefer to do but it is something he has never done and according to his good friend Zia who has done it many times in the past, one should do it at least once if one truly wants to be an American. Ali isn’t sure he wants to truly be an American since he disagrees with its foreign policy more often than not, but he does think it will be one new experience for him, perhaps he can even get enough inspiration from it to write a poem, and besides he has nothing else on his agenda. Zia is a good friend, too, and he seems to relish the idea of being in a mob, so Ali can’t see any harm in passing from one year to the next among so much humanity.
Then Gia calls to ask what he’s doing for New Year’s and when he tells her, she gets all excited. “That sounds great,” she says. “Can I come, too?”
“Sure,” Ali says. “Others from work will be there besides Zia. There will be a group of us.”
“Awesome,” she says. “I’ll meet you at your place then, okay?”
And suddenly what seemed like such a mediocre idea takes on a greater significance than he could have imagined. And hope for the new year sprouts in his heart. And he can’t wait for what tomorrow brings.

And tomorrow brings us to New Year’s Eve dinner at Doug’s with Gaby arriving with the champagne, the preparation of the fish, a roast, vegetables, wild rice. And here is where Doug extracts a promise from Gaby to say nothing of Nick’s presence since no one knows he is there recovering from his operation. Now only Gaby sees the changing of bandages, the long incision in his back that will eventually leave a long ugly scar where the muscle was cut, the ribs spread, the lobe from his right lung removed.
And Nick, for his part, is almost serene, a man who has accepted pain, suffering, the possibility of a shortened life. His only regret, at this point, is not being able to drink until after the medication ends.
So they sit down to dinner and Nick, who has no real appetite at all, picks at his food while he watches Doug and Gaby interact, the banter, the laughter, the long looks across the table, the way their bodies relax as the other speaks. And he feels a little sad as the old year ends, thinking himself as the proverbial third wheel and wishing he were someplace else, with someone else, only that is no longer possible and that realization makes him even sadder.
Finally, Nick retires and Gaby and Doug sit by the fire and talk through the evening until dawn brings in the sun, the new year arriving without snow, a good omen, Doug thinks, and he smiles to himself as he gazes at Gaby’s reclining form on his rug, a blanket he draped over her covering those gorgeous dancer’s legs, but he knows they are there, she is here, sleeping, and he feels a little weary but not tired, sleep is not an option for him.
So Doug rises, goes into the kitchen and brews strong coffee, boils some potatoes, slices them and some onions, and makes his famous home fries in preparation of a hearty New Year’s Day breakfast for three. And Nick appears, in slippers and flannel robe, his eyes looking like ghosts on the prowl. And he says, as Doug changes his bandage, “Be careful, old friend. But do not be cautious.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you have two women who love you. Be careful in picking one but once you decide, don’t be cautious. Throw it to the wind.”
“You think they both love me?”
“If not yet, they could.” And Nick smiles. “Hell, I’d love you, too, if I was of that persuasion. You are a true gentle man.”
They look at each other then, a long look that speaks volumes, of years weathered together, of times past, of time now, of time, hopefully, to come. And no further words are spoken for Gaby begins to rise in the living room and breakfast, their New Year’s Day first meal together, is cooked, is served. The day begins.

And after her New Year’s Day breakfast with her family, Misook calls Nick to wish him a Happy New Year but only gets his voice mail. “I’m not here right now because I’m someplace else.” And she wonders where that someplace else is. Out, she thinks, with friends, a party, perhaps, sitting in an armchair, a drink in his hand, music in the background, maybe some couples dancing, a club, or some concert. She tries his cell phone number, the cell phone she coaxed him to get, a family plan, actually, his and hers connected, a digit apart, but there no answer, either, turned off, perhaps, if at a club, or forgotten at home since he only really uses it for her and Misook guiltily realizing that she has not been calling him for quite some time now.
Later in the day she logs onto Yahoo Messenger as planned and chats with Eric, small talk, what are you doing, what did you do, did you eat yet, what, and so on until he begins the usual dialogue of do you miss me, I miss you, this apartment misses you, it’s so lonely here without you. And she, of course, wonders how the apartment could miss her when it does not even recognize her presence, there is no trace of her there, in that apartment, it is so very much him.
And though she keeps the dialogue light, her heart feels heavy, the weight of which pulls her farther from him and into a well of her own. Afterwards, she has dinner with her family at an all night fish market in Busan, the city where her father’s business is located. And as she laughs and eats her fill of freshly sliced fish, watches her sister’s husband and her father drink toast after toast of soju and basks in the warmth of family, her mind drifts back to Nick once more and she dials his number again, listening to the ringing at what must be close to noon in New York on New Year’s Day in the living room, in the bedroom, the ringing that goes unanswered except by his voice mail, “I’m not home right now…” and she leaves a message, “Well you must be having fun somewhere, Poppa, since you are not there. Hope you are well wherever you are. My family wishes you a Happy New Year. Me, too, Poppa. Me, too.”
And then back to family, to dinner, to the New Year in Korea, and all that awaits her from now on.