If I Had Your Face(51)
And then, right behind them, the other elevator opens and Bruce stalks out, his parents and two spindly, chiffon-clad sisters in tow. A strand of hair hangs over his eyes and I want to brush it back.
Bruce’s mother is terribly thin and dressed in what almost looks like deep mourning, in head-to-toe heavy black silk. Enormous diamonds sparkle at her ears and wrists and throat.
“Why, hello,” cry the mothers, “so nice to finally meet you!”
The men shake hands gruffly and there is a disgusting orgy of bowing and compliments all around. Bruce is smiling widely with his hands in his pockets, as if he hadn’t been dreading this moment for months.
“Looks like a sangyeonrae,” whispers Sujin into my ear. “They look straight out of a drama! Can you believe the jewelry? It must be real, right?”
“Shall we go in?” they murmur and start filing past us, none of them giving us a glance. Bruce and his girlfriend are at the back, whispering and smiling together. Then he sees me.
For a second, he stops walking. I am looking at him with my head tilted, my fingers clutching the first Chanel bag that he bought me—a dark red caviar jumbo flap with leather rosettes and gold hardware. It’s a thing of beauty, this bag. My most cherished possession. He blinks in bewilderment and confusion, but almost immediately, his face hardens to stone. The girlfriend looks up at him with a question and he puts his arm around her and steers her past us, into the low din of the restaurant.
“Excuse me, your table is ready now if you’ll follow me,” says a voice in my ear and I jump a little. Sujin flutters ahead with the supercilious host and I follow in a dream. As we begin the meal, the waiter keeps recommending the damn set menu. I resign myself to spending twice the exorbitant rate I’d already budgeted in my head. At least Sujin enjoys herself—she spoons up every drop of every sauce on both our plates. “Do you realize how much that slice of abalone costs? What do you mean you can’t eat it? You are being so ridiculous, Kyuri!”
Halfway through our meal I get a text.
“Your life is over, you psycho bitch.”
It’s from Bruce, of course. From the next room, a lifetime and a universe away.
* * *
—
A FEW YEARS AGO, I had a friend who left the room salon we both worked at when she got engaged. She had been set up on a blind date by her mother’s friend and it had worked out and suddenly she was to be married. I don’t know how she paid off her debts to the shop.
We drank together often and she was so happy about her new life. She showed me the bridal furniture she was getting for the apartment she was going to live in with her husband. We sighed over how pretty the lace was on the bedroom set, how darling her little ivory dining table looked next to her accent wall.
One day, I called her and her phone had been disconnected. She had changed her number because she no longer wanted to get phone calls from me and the other girls.
I understood, of course. I had thought, na?vely, that I would be there at the wedding, holding her veil and sprinkling handfuls of rice and rose petals down the aisle. But I was happy for her to escape this life, and I did not blame her.
She called me a few months after her wedding from a blocked number. She sounded upbeat but distant. “I am always amazed by how busy I am!” she said, launching immediately into her narrative. “It’s crazy how much time goes into grocery shopping and cleaning and cooking and the logistics of running a house. And I have to look after my in-laws. They are retired so they need a lot of care. They expect it of me.”
She did not ask me a single question. At the end of that brief conversation she said that she was sorry she had changed her number and that she wished me luck. Then she hung up and she did not call me again.
* * *
—
I’VE HAD FRIENDS before who were taken in by men who wanted them to become their seconds. These girls would then leave the shop, making a big fuss about how they would invite the rest of us over to their new apartments when they were all set up. Of course there was no mention of love or anything, but what would always make me angry was the embers of hope glowing in their eyes that they could not hide. The men had told them things that fanned it. Sometimes it was a year or even two years later, but they all came back. Every single one.
They’d played house in a nice apartment, sometimes even a beautiful apartment, and practiced monogamy and invited us girls over and watched TV and waited around a lot. Their reasons for coming back were somewhat varied—sometimes they couldn’t stand the watchfulness of the neighbors, who they claimed knew they were mistresses and were afraid they’d bring the apartment prices down. Sometimes they got pregnant and had abortions. Sometimes the wives found out and they had hot coffee thrown in their faces and threats to have their uteri ripped out.
Most of the time, though, the men grew tired of it all first. And when the girls came back, they were older and usually fatter and they had to go on extreme diets and take pills and all that or the madams would shame them ceaselessly. And their hope-filled glimmers would be crushed to powder.
But back to Bruce—I don’t know what came over me that Sunday at the Reign Hotel. I have always thought of hope as a natural folly of youth that should be discarded as soon as possible.
It is inexplicable to me, and I did not know I was capable of surprising myself. Perhaps I liked him more than I realized. I should have known that I could not afford to.