Native Speaker: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

Henry takes over Eduardo’s job, which involves receiving money from all kinds of community members. Kwang has organized a huge version of the Korean ggeh, compiling large amounts of cash with the intention of dispersing it in a rotating fashion to the people in his “money club.” Henry often thinks about his father while doing this work, knowing that he would have found it insane to create a ggeh with people outside the Korean community. But Kwang views his enormous ggeh like a family in and of itself.

In this period, Henry spends the days with Lelia and then goes to Kwang’s house to work through the night. Things are going well with Lelia—so well, in fact, that they’re flirting with the idea of having a child. But they’re not sure if they’ll actually do it, worrying that it would just be an attempt to fill a hole in their lives. And yet, it’s possible that they were trying to do exactly that when they first had a child, but the end result was Mitt, and he was so wonderful that Henry could never regret his initial reasons for having him.

Henry meets Jack at a diner one night. Jack is sick with the flu, but Hoagland insisted that he speak to Henry in person. Jack no longer does his own fieldwork, so Hoagland forces him to “tail[] unreliables” until retirement (which will only come about when Hoagland is satisfied with his work).

Jack says that Hoagland is pleased with Henry once again. The reports he has been writing, Jack says, are once more satisfactory—except, that is, for the report he wrote about the bombing, in which Henry suggested that Glimmer & Company (Hoagland’s firm) itself was responsible for the bombing because it wanted to create reasons for its clients to fund further “research.” Hoagland didn’t appreciate the idea, but Henry doesn’t care. He knew it would be taken out of the report, but he included it simply to rankle Hoagland.

Even though he has already said that Hoagland is pleased with Henry’s work, Jack now reveals that their boss thinks Henry could be including a bit more information in his reports. But Henry doesn’t care—he’s only going to be working for the firm for two more weeks, and then he has no intention of coming back. Still, Jack urges him to listen to him: he should end the job on a good note. He has a chance to make a good retirement. Jack himself notes that he had the same chance once, but he stuck around too long and now will “retire with too many memories.” The statement makes Henry think about his suspicion that Jack is under great pressure from Hoagland and that he’s no longer working with Henry’s well-being in mind.

Hoagland wants one last thing, Jack says. He wants Henry’s full report, of course, but he also wants a copy of the long list of members in Kwang’s money club. Henry doesn’t understand why. He has already explained that the entire operation is like a Korean ggeh and that it’s completely legitimate. Jack, however, reveals that there were some government officials in Hoagland’s office recently, suggesting that the money club might be of interest to the IRS. It’s possible, he guesses, that Kwang—who has lost quite a bit of money in various business ventures—is running multiple money clubs and siphoning off cash without notice. Of course, the idea of handing over this information—which is like a list of Kwang’s close family members—is dizzying to Henry, but Jack sternly advises him to do what Hoagland wants.