Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(68)

I pull her toward the festival exit and the gray, drab world beyond. I want to vanish like a ghost and pretend me and Joy never stumbled upon this place.

“Hey,” shouts a male voice. “Wait up.”

A hand touches my shoulder, and I turn. A young man, just a little older than me. He looks like me, knits his brows like me, frowns like me. Unlike me he wears a blue LA hat and a tank shirt and has muscular arms inscribed with fine geometric tattoos.

He offers me a fancy clear sealed bag containing four sesame rice cakes. I can’t bring myself to call them chaltteok right now. Rice cakes they will be.

“Dude, I’m so fucking goddamn sorry my grandma was such a dick to you just now,” he says. “Bitch can be such a bitch-ass, salty-ass bitch sometimes.”

This outpouring of heartfelt profanity fills my soul with warm orange light. It also cracks me up. I look at Joy: she’s covered her mouth to hold the chuckles in.

“That was your grandma?” says Joy.

“She calls me stupid all the time because my Korean fuckin’ sucks.”

I blink. My parents have their problems, but at least they’ve never called me stupid for not knowing Korean.

The guy jiggles the bag. “Take ’em. My way of saying sorry.”

He’s earnest, this guy. He really wants me to take the bag. So I take the bag.

“We’ll save these for dessert, I guess,” I say with a shrug. “Thanks.”

The guy gets an eager look in his eye. “Wait, you haven’t had dinner yet?”

“Uh,” says Joy.

“Follow me,” says the guy. When he sees our hesitation, he stomps his foot and waves hard like he’s performing a party-people-get-down move on stage. “Come on, babo saekkidul,” he says with a happy twinkle.

“He just called us stupid fuckers,” says Joy.

“I like this guy,” I say. “Let’s go.”

He skates through the stalls and people, and me and Joy tap-dance single file to keep up with his nimble fat white sneakers. We pass the samulnori quartet, then a stage thundering with K-pop dancers, until we reach the far end of the festival grounds.

It’s not as fancy here. Just a ring of parked food trucks and folding tables filled with diners. This crazy corrido-cum-trap-beat mash-up vibrates the air with the steady tempo of a gangster stroll, overlaid with mouthy rap in both Korean and English. I’ve never heard shit like I’m hearing right now. It is sublime. I capture it all with my Tascam.

In doing so, I capture the guy’s name, too.

“I’m Roy Chang,” says Roy Chang, “and this is my whip right here.”

He gestures toward a red food truck emblazoned with the words ALL DAE EVERY DAY. The dae means big, and there’s a five-foot-tall 大 character in case you don’t get the pun.

Roy spots my Tascam. “You a musician?”

I nod sheepishly.

“Enrique’s a music nerd too,” says Roy. “I’ll introduce you.”

Roy pounds the truck. “Hey, yo, two express VIP orders, kimchi quesadilla hana, jidori gochujang chicken and waffles hana, tres cervezas, por favor!”

“Al gesseo,” says Enrique, as in roger that.

Roy seats us at a table, and the food follows in a flash.

“What’s in this?” I say, intrigued.

“Just eat, don’t think,” says Roy.

So we do. And once I start eating, I simply cannot stop. It is a perfect mix of all the comforts of my life: the kimchi of home, with the cheese and tortillas and pickled cactus I love from being a Californian, and finally waffles, because waffles.

“Gnughngh,” say me and Joy.

“They like it,” says Roy to Enrique, who’s come over to watch us gorge ourselves.

Enrique jabs a thumb at Roy. “They call this guy the future of American cuisine, ha.”

“How the fuck can I be the future if I’m already here and I’m already a grown-ass American?” says Roy.

Enrique asks to have a listen to my music—including “Song for Brit”—and he likes it so much that he gives me his email address so we can keep in touch. I give both him and Roy my email address too, without hesitation. Because I have this strange feeling that we’ve already somehow met, and it’s like we all graduated from the same school.

We finish up our food, drink our beers. We get up.

“Can we grab your seat if you’re leaving?” says a voice.

I turn. It’s me again, another guy who looks like me, except now way older: crow’s-feet at the eyes, receding hairline. He’s with his wife, who is black. Standing between them is their daughter, who looks about seven. She’s dressed like an elf.

“Absolutely,” I say.

“Your daughter’s so freaking beautiful,” says Joy.

“Say thank you, baby,” says the wife. They all seem used to such compliments.

“Thank you baby,” sings the daughter.

I want to give the family my email address, too. But that would be weird, and so me and Joy bid farewell to Roy and Enrique and stroll away slow.

I take out my phone and start typing.

“Who are you texting?” says Joy.

I show her: I miss you, big sister Hanna.

Joy smiles and touches Send. And right away, Hanna’s reply appears on the screen.