If I Had Your Face(74)

I always knew they were both cracked.

“I thought going to New York would be good for her, which is why I kicked up such a fuss to the Loring Center, but I suppose that’s how she met Hanbin and now she is unhappy….” Sujin trails off. I ask her what she means.

“I was an assistant at the hair salon when I first came to Seoul, and one day I overheard a customer bragging to one of the stylists that her daughter was applying for this art scholarship to New York. I listened as hard as I could and looked it up afterward and I called the Loring Center to make them apply for Miho.” Sujin shakes her head. “The adults there never think ahead about our future—to be fair, they’re busy putting out fires, with girls like me—but that’s why those of us out here are constantly looking for information for the younger ones. That’s how I got that salon job too, an unni from the Center called me. I mean, the job was gruesome, but at least it got me here!”

Sujin grins at me, as if she is revealing a finale with a grand twist.



* * *



—

“ANYWAYS, I WAS at Cinderella Clinic this morning for my checkup and I heard that Manager Koo left,” says Sujin on the walk home.

“What?” I’m surprised. Manager Koo has been with them since Dr. Shim first opened Cinderella Clinic. I couldn’t imagine what he would do without her, since she was the one who was always bringing in new patients and convincing old ones to get the latest surgeries. Her signature move was to indicate her face and body with a little flourish and whisper, “I’ve had simply everything done, so you can ask me anything—anything at all and I will be completely honest with you.” She was marvelously compelling, to say the least.

“Yeah, I heard she moved to NVme, that new enormous hospital right off Sinsa Station,” says Sujin. “Cinderella Clinic seems to be in shock because everyone was scrambling when I got there. I guess she didn’t even find a replacement or train them or whatever because I saw the youngest assistant doing a consultation!”

NVme makes sense—it’s the huge new place that everyone is checking out because of an onslaught of recent publicity. I read somewhere that it’s the largest plastic surgery hospital in the world. The photos had shown a marble-covered twenty-story building with a spa in the basement and luxury hotel rooms on the top floors for the foreigners who came to Korea on the plastic surgery packages.

“Anyway, I told Dr. Shim that you’d be perfect for the manager job and he seemed to agree,” says Sujin.

“You what?” I stop walking and stare at her.

“At least, I think he agreed.” She looks stumped for a second, then brightens again.

“Okay, you need to tell me exactly what you said and what he said. Sujin! Are you crazy? Now I can’t go there again!”

An image of Dr. Shim’s stoic, intelligent face floats into my drink-muddled mind and I am aghast.

At the office-tel, I pull Sujin into my apartment. Miho isn’t home yet—she has started going to the studio at night again, fire in her eyes. All I ask is that she doesn’t bring her creepy canvases home. I don’t want to see any renderings of Nami’s head dangling from a stick or whatever disturbed release she’s working on.

“Go on,” I snap at Sujin.

She walks over to the kitchen and starts pouring some water into a glass. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry I said those things to Dr. Shim, but I was thinking about you and how good you would be at that job and how your madam is so mean, and it would be something different for you, you know? The worst that can happen is they say no,” she says. “All I said was that you were thinking about a job switch and how good you would be at it—after all, you introduced me and several other girls, didn’t you? And Dr. Shim nodded, like this.” She does a decent imitation of him looking brainy and nodding impassively.

I feel color rising in my cheeks as I contemplate what Sujin is saying. Me in a pink blazer, a steel name pin on my lapel, smiling at worried women who want to be looked at with warm eyes. I can’t help thinking I do not know how to handle women. But then again, I do not really know how to handle men, either. I think of all the debt I have piling up.

“Just go meet Dr. Shim and see what he says,” says Sujin, yawning now. She stands up to leave.

“I’m sure they have a thousand résumés pouring in,” I say lightly. “Probably ten thousand. I don’t have a résumé.”

“Yeah, but you are a walking advertisement for their clinic,” she says. “How many surgeries and procedures have you had done there? How many of their patients would apply for this job? I bet you are the only one. Think about it.”

As Sujin turns to go, we hear the beeps of Miho’s door code being punched in and the sound of her front door opening.

“Hello,” Miho says, her head tilting when she sees us. Sujin and I both gasp. Miho’s wild, flowing hair has been cut to her shoulders and she looks like an entirely different person. She looks younger. No, older. No, younger. Chic. Radiant. Shocking.

“I know, I know, how cliché can I get?” Miho says, laughing when she sees our expressions. “I actually cried when Ara cut it off. Ara almost cried too. I was the one who had to convince her for a good twenty minutes that I really wanted to cut it. After all her hints that I needed to!”