Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(56)

“Eh, too much ethnic homogeneity,” I say.

“It could be interesting,” she says. “Being the odd one out for once.”

Inside I wince. Try being the odd one out for twice. Or thrice. Or forever. Be glad you have the luxury of going back to being the even one in whenever you want. But I shut up about that. I’m with Brit in a suit shop. I’m going to have fun.

I make Brit try on a men’s vest—sexy—and a men’s fedora—also sexy—and a men’s velvet smoking jacket—maybe not so sexy. I find a trim-fitting charcoal suit, brown leather shoes and a brown leather belt, and an indigo-ish tie. I give Brit my phone to hold while I change. The necktie part takes forever. I close my eyes and visualize an instructional video from the Internet.

I step out of the fitting room transformed. Brit drops my phone at the sight.

“Marry me,” she blurts, then claps a hand over her mouth for her outburst.

Then she body-slams me back into the fitting room, where suddenly her mouth and hands and legs are all over me. An ahem from the distant cashier counter forces us to spring apart.

I straighten up, pose like a goofy pirate atop a mountain of treasure, and have Brit snap a photo. I take my phone and send it to Mom.

Ok looks good, says Mom. You renting.

I close the door to change. And in the privacy of the fitting room, I silently send the photo to Joy, too.

I’d hit it, says Joy. Then quit it only to re-hit it I laugh once through my nose.

I notice the scab on my once-bloody knuckle has fallen off. The skin underneath is perfect and healed. It’s like nothing ever happened.

Knock-knock. “Are you jerking it?” says Brit from the other side of the door.

“How’d you know?” I say, write back hahahaha to Joy, and then delete our entire conversation.



* * *



? ? ?

The wedding is on a big boat that goes nowhere.

It’s an old steam cruise ship made for an old rich white guy, from back when there was no such thing as income tax or HR departments.

He was a self-made, self-educated millionaire who got to keep every cent he earned, said the tour brochure.

I fold it into my pocket and remind myself to bring it out later for my regular discussions about American mythology with Q. Lately we’ve been covering the trope of One Day When I’m Rich.

The ceremony takes place on the expansive open front part of the ship (the Internet calls it the bow), which looks like it’s been TP’d with satin ribbons and lace and bursts of white hyacinth that fill the air with honey and vanilla. We sit in the halogen sun amid a vast layered arena of sound: the iron creak of ship parts, the plash of seawater, the distant ostinato—krr! krr!—of hundreds of dumb seagulls.

The sounds are beautiful and rich and unexpected. I raise my Tascam to grab good lengths of it all. I’m not the only one hoisting a device. All three hundred attendees are taking pictures of everything. Kyung Hee’s wedding will be the most documented event in this ship’s history.

Mom looks down her reading glasses at her phone to take a photo of Dad, who takes a photo of me. The only evidence of Dad’s injury is a bulge where his chest bandage is. Otherwise, he looks neat and trim and suited up like everyone else.

There are other moms-n-dads, super-old halmeoni (grandmas) and harabeoji (grandpas) in traditional hanbok. Tiny sleeping babies. Small dogs in luxury dog strollers. Little boys and girls, kicking their sparkling patent leather shoes. Big boys like me, big girls like Joy, if she’s here yet.

Every word of the ceremony is in Korean, so I only catch about 5 percent of what’s being said. I lean in close to Dad, and he whispers his insane translations.

“He saying, ‘Woman body like church cathedral. Man is head, woman body. Cathedral womb make baby, so-called immaculate conception, jesus christ almighty. He born, he die, blood coming out, everybody contaminated with sin.’”

“Thanks, Dad,” I whisper, and lean back again.

Blood? Die? Sin?

This is a wedding?

Suddenly a string quartet breaks into song—good old Pachelbel’s canon—and the wedding party assembles. When Ella Chang steps forward in a silver dress, I whip around to find John Lim. There he is, recording her with his hand over his heart like a lovestruck Victorian.

The rest of Team Wedding assembles. There is the groom, a chiseled K-drama star lookalike leapfrogging the ranks at Samsung North America. He winks at his buddies and mutters something in Korean, and they all chant something back, and the whole party chuckles in response. I lean in to Dad for answers.

“Groom, he eating too many baby octopus, but he say don’t worry, soju killing them in stomach. His friends saying, ‘Drink, drink, drink,’ ha ha.”

Hilarious!

The string quartet changes tack—Wagner’s Bridal Chorus, no surprises here—and Kyung Hee appears. More invocations in Korean: “Marriage is work” and “Joining of the families” and blablabla according to Dad’s whispers. We sit. We stand. We sit. We stand.

Kyung Hee and the groom kiss a single dry kiss, and then it’s ding-dong done: the quartet busts into an upbeat Mendelssohn march, and we all get up to herd ourselves into the cool indoor reception area of the ship.

“What’d you think of the wedding?” I say to Mom-n-Dad.

“They doing good,” says Mom.