If I Had Your Face(60)

An artist’s career is a phantasm, shimmering from one angle, gone from the next. I had been told over and over in New York that I needed to be part of a community, not only for encouragement and inspiration and all of those fine things but for practical job tips. Like the best restaurants to waitress at. Ruby had made me apply for my current fellowship a few months before she killed herself.

I already know that Kyuri almost begrudges me my career—fledgling as it may be—and all of our conversations usually end up running along these lines sooner or later. It is part of what I was saying earlier, her persistence in thinking that she is a victim and others have been born under lucky stars.

“Well, you are so smart to have gotten this far then,” she says enviously. “You’re so sly, you know. You weasel your way into the best things somehow.”

This annoys me so much I feel a rush of blood in my cheeks. Usually I brush off things she says that are much worse. Perhaps it is because I am hungry, or because Hanbin went away so early.

“Why do you have to put it that way?” I say. “Are you trying to pick a fight with me? You don’t think I work hard? That I’m not terrified that I am going to lose everything any second?”

“Why are you getting so upset?” she asks, genuinely surprised. “I’m just saying I envy you! That’s flattering! Feel lucky!”

Because she is so taken aback, I calm down.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I guess I’m in kind of a bad mood today. It’s nothing to do with you.”

“Why, because of work?” she asks. “No, it’s Hanbin, isn’t it!” she says with certainty.

I shake my head, hoping she will go away. I look down at my sketch. But when I look back at Kyuri, she has such a worried expression on her face that, in spite of myself, I am touched. No matter what her wrongful assumptions are, she is, at least, a friend who cares, and I know how rare that is. Which is precisely why I cannot paint a Kyuri series right now.

But when I do start it, I will do it as a gisaeng series. Perhaps I will paint her as a ghost, with red eyes. Her back arched. Syringes plunging into her face and wrists. Wearing a gisaeng hanbok. I need to do research on gisaeng hanbok. What colors they wore to seduce men centuries ago. A ghost gisaeng series. I stare at her, seeing this and more, and she recoils.

“What?” she says. “Why are you looking at me like that? What is it? Is it really about Hanbin? What did he do?”

I shake my head, to clear it, although my other strong impulse is to start sketching it then and there so that I don’t lose this. But there is a note in her voice that sets me off.

“I really wish you wouldn’t harp on him so much,” I say. “I feel like you think he’s just the worst for dating me because I don’t deserve him or something. It really makes me uncomfortable.”

There, I said it. In reality, her talking about Hanbin does not bother me as much as I just made it sound, but today I am prickly.

“You have it so wrong, it’s incredible,” she says, her voice trembling and ice cold. “Do you know how much of a dilemma I face every day? Whenever I see you, I am trying to ascertain what I think needs more protecting—your future, your idealism, your misplaced faith.”

“What are you talking about?” I say.

“I’m talking about Hanbin,” says Kyuri, spitting out every word. “And I was so conflicted about whether to tell you.”

I am wondering if I missed part of the conversation. I tend to do that a lot when I am drawing in my head. “What?”

She glares at me and takes a breath and says “Never mind!” explosively before flouncing to her room. But I am not about to let this go.

“Kyuri. Tell me now. What are you talking about?” I follow her into her room and grab her arm. If this is just mean-spirited hysteria, I do not need it in my life.

She pushes me away from her, and starts changing her clothes without looking at me. In her pajamas, she sits in front of her painted vanity and begins removing her makeup with two pumps of her costly fermented cleansing oil. There is something about this picture—of her in a lace-edged slip, in front of her oval mirror, slowly wiping off the colors of her face in anger—which is riveting. I have a violent urge to run to my room to get my camera, to capture this so I can work with it later.

“Are you sure you want to know?” she asks, turning to me and breaking my trance. Every trace of eyeliner and blush and lipstick has been removed and her skin glistens from the oil.

We look at each other for a long moment.

There is only one thing that this could be, this truth she is dangling in front of me, and in that respect, I already know.

“Just tell me,” I whisper.

She tilts her head from side to side. Then she opens her mouth. “He is sleeping with at least one other girl,” she says. “I’m sorry, I really am.” She cannot meet my gaze. “I mean, isn’t it kind of a relief in a way? This way you do not have to wait until he breaks up with you, and you can just label him a typical asshole bastard and be done with him, instead of harboring any kind of delusion that you are going to marry him, and then it will be years more of your life that you cannot afford just down the drain.”

She stumbles over these words hurriedly, sounding like one of those evangelists talking to someone on the verge of conversion.