If I Had Your Face(52)
* * *
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MADAM SLAPS ME when she finds out. It is Monday, the day after, and I am fixing my makeup in the dark, cramped waiting room. She comes running as fast as she can in her tight lace minidress and high heels. She is on the phone but frantically looking for someone. You, she mouths, pointing a bony finger at me. You, come.
Snapping my compact shut, I get up and follow her into an empty room. In the quiet darkness, I can hear a tinny, otherworldly voice yelling on the other end of Madam’s phone.
I will ruin you. Do you understand what I can do to you? WHO I AM? WHO I KNOW? You will never be able to work again! To my horror, I recognize the crackling, hysterical voice. It is Bruce.
Madam tries to placate him at first, but he does not listen and keeps screaming. Her body has gone rigid and she keeps clenching and unclenching her free hand—the painted talons folding and unfolding.
“She is here right now and I will kill her myself,” she seethes into the phone. “Let us handle it. Please, just think about it for a few days before doing anything hotheaded, please. I am so sorry.”
When she hangs up, she slaps me so hard I fall to the floor. I was already crying from terror and she is so angry that she picks up a whiskey glass from a set on the table and throws it against the wall. It shatters around me like fireworks.
“You fucking cunt,” she screams. “Are you out of your mind? What have you done?”
At the sound of the breaking glass, the door swings open and girls swarm in as Madam yells for someone to bring her an empty bottle. If not for Yedam and Seohyeon holding her back, she would be smashing a bottle against my head. I heard she did that once, to a girl who slapped a customer. The girl had already been in a great deal of debt to her when it happened, and she had had to get more than fifty stitches in her scalp. The customer had been about to sue the shop but stopped, mollified, when he heard about the girl’s injuries.
The manager comes running in and tells Madam that things will be fine, that Bruce is just angry now and it will pass, and isn’t Kyuri the shop’s ace? So many men asking for her every night and Madam doesn’t want to lose all that business, does she?
Breathing hard, Madam stands in the middle of the room, not looking at anyone. The only sound I hear is some quiet, stilted sobbing, and I realize that it is coming from me. Then she turns on her heel and stalks out without another word and the girls help me up and hug me. They are asking what happened, why is Madam so mad? They want to know so that they won’t repeat my mistake, whatever I did.
I tell them that one of my regulars is angry with me and leave it at that.
* * *
—
FOR A WEEK I hold my breath and live as if I am swimming in a dream. At work, in the rooms, I am bubbly, I am witty, I am effervescent to the point of frenzy. A few of my customers ask me why I am so high. “Did something exciting happen? Share the good news!” they say when I can’t keep still and bounce around, drunk out of my mind. They think I am even greater fun than usual.
“You are why I come here, Kyuri,” they say, slapping their thighs appreciatively and calling the waiter to order more drinks. I sing, I dance, I do splits and my tight, rented dress rips and they scream with laughter. “This is not what I expected from a ten percent joint,” say some of the new customers who are here with the regulars, but they say it in an entertained and not disapproving way.
All the while I am praying that Bruce’s fury is cooling. The manager has already told me that Madam added a charge for her broken glass and cleaning bill to my debts to her.
“Just so you know, she might charge a few other things to you too, just to relieve her anger. I would let it go if I were you,” he says nervously, pulling at the cuffs of his sleeves. He is new and very nice, unlike the other managers. He looks like a teenager with overgrown bangs—although he must be in his late thirties at least. His skin is terrible, and I want to recommend some face masks to him because he is so nice. I am sure it won’t last long, though, his niceness. Money will turn him soon enough. When he warns me, I say nothing, just pick at my nails, which need repolishing. I have been neglecting them shamefully.
* * *
—
ON FRIDAY, one of Bruce’s friends—the pudgy lawyer—comes in with his clients and co-workers. When I hear this from Sejeong, who has just come into the room I am working in, I excuse myself and hurry over to his.
“Oh, no, no, no,” he says in alarm, his plump face flushing when I walk in and sit down next to him. “Not you.”
“Why?” I say gaily, tossing back my hair as my heart starts to pound. “Aren’t you glad to see me? I missed you so much!”
“I heard what happened,” he says in a low voice. “Our group of friends—we all know.” He leans forward and whispers, “I didn’t want to come here, but my client insisted, okay? And I could have told my client the story too and he definitely would have gone somewhere else, but my girlfriend’s place happens to be close to here and I want to stop by before I have to go home.”
I look at him unhappily. I’ve only had a few drinks in my first two rooms, but my heart is already starting to feel as if it’s being squeezed.
“I don’t know that what I did was so wrong,” I say. I know I shouldn’t talk about it, especially here and now, but I just can’t help myself.