If I Had Your Face(20)

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THE THING ABOUT Ruby was, it wasn’t only me or other Koreans who found her fascinating. I would be sitting with her in a coffee shop or even a library and people would just steal glances at her the entire time. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was—the sheen of her skin and her eclectic, expensive clothes or stony expression, I did not know. But it was only the most oblivious of men who would try to talk to her. Once, we were eating dinner in a new salad place near her apartment when a man approached her. He looked foreign—Italian?—and he was young and slickly dressed in a well-cut suit, clearly a finance type stepping out for a quick takeout dinner to eat at his desk. He had been looking in our direction while standing in line, and after he had picked up his bag of food, he came and stood by our table.

“Excuse me, sorry to interrupt,” he said with a slight accent, looking both cute and confident. “I have to tell you that you are very beautiful.”

Ruby didn’t look up from her food and kept eating slowly, not saying anything.

“Can I ask if you live in this neighborhood? I live and work around the corner,” he said, pointing to the window at a building that he clearly thought we should know.

His smile began to falter when neither of us responded.

“Okay, well, have a good dinner,” he said, almost sullen now, and headed for the exit. As he opened the door, I distinctly heard the word “bitch” muttered under his breath.

“So ridiculous!” I said lightly to Ruby.

“Maybe I can have him killed,” she said, her eyes slitted.

I laughed, then stopped when she glared at me.

“Next time this happens, take a photo of the guy,” she said. “How dare he think he can just walk up and talk to me?” She clenched her jaw and continued to eat, eyes flashing wildly now.

I nodded and murmured agreement. I was still learning what to say and how to react around her.



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RUBY DID TELL me, a few months later, after the gallery had opened and the other girls had quit and we’d had to find replacements who were not Korean, that my behavior was now passing muster.

We were drinking at a bar in K-Town, waiting for Hanbin and one of his friends to join us. Ruby had wordlessly handed me a real-looking fake ID with my gallery staff photo earlier that evening and I was still heady from the rush of finally ordering my first real drink at a New York bar. It was such a different world from Korea, where alcohol flowed freely for underage drinkers with only the most halfhearted of pretenses to uphold any restrictions.

“You know, I like that you’re a quick study,” she said suddenly, smiling a crooked smile.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She waved an airy hand over my outfit. I was wearing a black cashmere sweater and a long, tight leather skirt that I’d bought at a thrift store in Brooklyn. I’d heard that designers donated their unsold samples from last season there, and I’d sift through the racks for hours, searching for designer pieces with tags still attached.

“Remember when you’d wear pink fake suede?” she said with a peal of laughter.

I blushed and pretended to slap her lightly on the arm. “So what? Lots of designers use pink every season! Stop being such a boring New Yorker.”

“And you’re so easy to tease!” She choked with more amusement. Then Hanbin came in with another good-looking, well-dressed boy from Columbia and we were fortunately diverted. But afterward, her mirth would come back to me and I would sit up in bed abruptly in the middle of the night, my cheeks aflame.



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BACK THEN, Hanbin constituted the third of our trio, trailing behind us while Ruby and I would walk a few steps ahead. He was a quiet but attentive boyfriend to Ruby, always driving us places, getting us into clubs with lines, arranging front-row tickets to plays and exhibitions and fashion shows that Ruby wanted to see. The two of them never displayed any affection publicly and never took any photos together, which I thought was strange. Only once did I see them embrace, and that was late one night when I was leaving her apartment after the three of us had been watching a movie. I looked behind me as the door closed and Ruby was laying her head against Hanbin’s chest as he put his arms around her. They looked so peaceful and complete and so utterly content that I stood transfixed until the door slowly shut. I never saw them touch again.

Every time I had a show—part of my scholarship requirement was that I had to exhibit as much as I could—Ruby and Hanbin both came and stayed a long time, which meant a great deal to me. They even came for the freshman show, in which I was only exhibiting two pieces. Ruby never said much—just posed questions about other students’ work—but Hanbin was surprisingly interested in my process. He would always ask, “How long did this one take you?” and “What was the inspiration for this piece?” He looked sweetly unsure about what was appropriate to ask and I would have to resist the urge to reach up and touch the small wrinkles that formed on his forehead.

Sometimes, and I lived for these moments, Ruby would be late or she would text and cancel altogether when Hanbin and I would already be waiting for her. He would frown and sigh a little—he was unfailingly disappointed when she stood him up, even as often as it was—but then he would turn to me and say with a shrug, “So, do you still want to get something to eat?” And my heart would rise and I would nod a little too enthusiastically, and later in secret writhe with self-loathing.