If I Had Your Face(73)

When she finally addressed me, she sounded exasperated but resigned. “Look,” she said, slamming her little book shut and making me flinch. “It’s no secret that this industry is not what it used to be and everything is hard. Everyone is having a hard time. I am having a hard time, and you bet you’ll be having a hard time too, although none of you idiots can think that far ahead, I know.”

Her pathetic, ugly face looked old then, and pinched. I thought of all the money she was saving by staying this ugly. Her eyes were not warm, but they had never been, even on my most popular days. “Run along now and make some money like an ace,” she said, dismissing me with a faint wave. And so I was released, into air.



* * *



—

DISCREETLY SPITTING OUT some meat into a napkin, Sujin says, “I think you need to find a different kind of job.”

I chortle into my shot glass. “You have spent all this time and money and pain to try to get into a room salon, and now you are telling me to leave a ten percent?” I say. “And what should I do then? Go clean toilets?” I ask playfully. It is not a question that I have ever seriously considered. Everywhere I look, there are only jobs that I cannot possibly ever land. I know this, because even though I try to avoid the news, headlines about unemployment are flashing all around the city. Just yesterday, I was stuck in traffic and had to stare at the giant TV at the Sinsa Station crossing with the announcer with giant subtitles talking about some ten-year-high and how people are going to start killing other people out of sheer boredom or whatever. Do those unemployment numbers include all the people who own buildings and don’t go to work? Every single skyscraper and shopping mall in this city has owners who live at hotel gyms and department stores and never worked a day in their lives. The most regular commute they have is probably to a room salon.

“But I don’t think your madam is good to you,” Sujin says, which makes me laugh harder. She shakes her head at me in exasperation. “I mean, I know I know, but what I mean is that you seem really stressed out these days. Much more so than I’ve ever seen you before.” The waiter brings another bottle and Sujin fills my glass.

“And what about you?” I say. “Is this making you rethink this job too?”

“No, but it’s different for me,” she says. “I am too busy enjoying being pretty right now.” She glances quickly around us, to see if anyone heard her, and blushes when she sees a man staring brazenly. “And plus, I don’t really get stressed. Or if I do, I know how to not think about it. Ara can tell you. You learn pretty early on in an orphanage, or else you sink completely. If I’ve made it this far, I’m set. And this, right now, is really the turning point of my life.” She looks at me with earnest eyes. I can tell she is on the verge of tearing up.

“I don’t know,” I say hurriedly. “Miho doesn’t seem like she’s handling her stress that well.”

“Miho?” says Sujin, sufficiently distracted. “She’ll be fine. You don’t need to worry. She is just meticulously planning revenge, that’s all. We are very solution oriented.”

I look at Sujin with amusement. “Revenge for what?” I say, wondering if Miho has told her. Sujin was being quite entertaining today, with her purported deep insights. The thing is, my current situation is not stressful. She should have seen me during my Miari days.

“She just said she found out he was cheating,” she says, reaching for a burnt slice of pork belly. “But she should have known better than to expect otherwise. I told her that he would, the first time I heard they were together.”

“Have you met him?” I ask, my eyebrow raised.

“No, but I don’t need to,” she says. “Nobody that handsome and rich is that nice.”

“I guess so,” I say with a sigh. Suddenly I feel exceedingly tired and I think of Nami. I haven’t spoken to her since the day she came over. She had texted me a few times and then stopped when I didn’t respond. Light leaked out of me whenever I thought about her.

“I have been compiling some ideas for Miho,” Sujin says matter-of-factly. “I just have to check a few things first, like which reporters will actually believe what I say, and which ones might pay and which ones accept anonymous submissions. Miho has to be patient, because it is her destiny to become famous. All of us at the orphanage always said so.”

We clink glasses again and drink. I indicate that she has some sauce on her chin and she wipes it off. Then she takes her phone and starts searching through her photo gallery.

“All of us asked her for a drawing to keep because we knew she would be famous one day. Look, this is what she was drawing back in high school.” She slides her phone over to me. The screen shows a detailed pencil drawing of a family walking in a procession in a field of flowers. The father is in the front, then the mother, and then an older daughter holding several books to her chest. Trailing behind is a short figure wearing a girls’ hanbok but topped with the head of a giant frog staring out with mad, bulbous eyes and a flickering tongue.

“Um, I wouldn’t want that in my possession,” I say, handing the phone back to her. “You asked if you could have that? How awful.”

“That was her toad series,” says Sujin. “She drew a lot of toad people in wells but this one is cheerful, with all those flowers. No dead people!” She smiles down at the photo.