If I Had Your Face(29)
Miho is already sleeping in the corner, cheeks rosy red from her two drinks. I think this is probably why Nami was able to loosen up. She grabs the karaoke mic and enters the hottest girl group song of the year—she’s of course memorized the whole routine and she breaks into the dance as she sings. It’s funny how her eyes are gleaming as she bounces up and down. She does not look like this when she’s singing this song at work, I’m sure.
Around 3 A.M., I want to go home and sleep. Hanbin is also sleeping on a chair, so I wave goodbye to Nami and the boys and drag Miho into a cab. I sleep until noon the next day and wake up with a headache.
* * *
—
THE WORKWEEK PASSES by in a haze. I don’t know why, but lately I keep getting crippling hangovers, which I never had a problem with before. And Bruce has not been by yet this week. Perhaps it is because of his upcoming engagement. Perhaps he is sick of me.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no delusions about Bruce particularly. I dated clients before who were richer or nicer than he is and I am not an idiot.
Yes, he has asked for me every time he’s been here. Sometimes, depending on his mood, he’ll give me considerable sums of money “to go buy something pretty.”
But he doesn’t give me money out of an especial fondness for me. He doesn’t smile at me over candlelight dinners or anything, and mostly we are too drunk by the time we reach a hotel room so we just watch TV in bed and fall asleep together. I think that’s what I like the most about him—that I feel comfortable enough to sleep with his arm draped over me.
* * *
—
I WAS HOPING for a few easy nights, but it’s my luck to get a string of insane drinkers this week—the type that keep making us girls drink too, instead of just getting shitfaced themselves and having us pour. It isn’t only me—some of the other girls are throwing up by 10 P.M. on one especially bad night. The customer who keeps making everyone drink isn’t even the one who is paying or getting taken out, which always pisses me off. If you’re not the one spending the money or being sucked up to, you need to shut up and be wallpaper. I almost say something cutting when this ugly, skinny guy who is obviously just a tagalong keeps trying to make me drink.
“Why waste the expensive stuff on me?” I say, trying to laugh. He ignores me and says, “Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!” with feverish eyes.
I rearrange my mouth into a smile before taking the shot with a long sigh for his benefit.
* * *
—
WHEN NAMI TEXTS me about drinking the following Saturday, I reply that I don’t want to go out because of my headache, but she can come over if she wants.
“Is Miho unni there?” she texts.
“No.”
“Is she coming back anytime soon?”
“She left pretty late this morning, so probably not,” I write back, a little annoyed.
Despite what I said about not drinking, Nami brings over several bottles of soju, along with a box of fried chicken wings, and says I don’t need to drink, the soju is for her. Her eyes keep darting around nervously until I finally snap at her to stop making me jittery.
We rip into the fried chicken in front of the TV, watching another K-pop special. It defies logic, how many new groups debut every week. The girls sashay and jump frenetically onstage in their miniskirts and knee-high socks. Nami gets up and follows some moves, singing along with a chicken wing for a mic. Her eyes look especially crazed today, glinting like marbles as she flops her head from side to side.
“You’re dripping chicken oil on the floor,” I say. Today’s hangover is not the worst of the week, but it still throbs relentlessly.
Nami sits back down when a has-been male singer, so old—in his late thirties—comes on and starts singing a love ballad.
“I should go soon,” she says, drinking a shot and looking toward the door.
“What? You just got here. What’s wrong with you today?”
She fidgets and hems and haws and then I drag it out of her. She has apparently been sleeping with Hanbin. I blink and blink as she tells me the story.
After I had left with Miho that night, Hanbin woke up and they all drank even more. Nami said she blacked out early, but what she could remember was that at some point there was just her and Hanbin in the room and she was on her knees, blowing him. He couldn’t finish, however, and insisted on going to a hotel next door, where she had blown him some more and then they’d had violent sex and fallen asleep. In the morning, they’d had sex again and then he had insisted on getting her number before she left. He’d been texting her all week to meet up again, and she’d met him yesterday afternoon and they had gone to a hotel again.
I am silent as she tells me this.
“Is he giving you money?” I ask after a long pause. She shakes her head and looks miserable. I reach over for some soju and take a swig straight from the bottle. “I guess I am drinking today.”
Nami dumps the chicken bones into the trash and then sits back down across from me and reaches for another bottle. “You know, this is the first time I’ve slept with someone who isn’t a customer,” she says hesitantly, after she takes a gulp. “But it’s kind of all a dream, like I am watching it happen on TV or something. I mean, I know it’s happening but I can’t really wake up.”