If I Had Your Face(75)
She swishes her short hair back and forth. It has been ironed completely straight and she looks like a model blown up on the exterior of a luxury mall. “My department head might actually kill me,” she says. “Oh well.”
“It looks incredible!” says Sujin. She walks over and starts touching strands of it. “Does it feel so liberating?”
Miho nods, but her lip wobbles. “I really regretted it for an hour or two and then completely forgot about it as I was working until I saw my face in a mirror. And then I cried again. But I think I’m okay now. And Ara gave my hair to some charity so that makes me feel a bit better.”
“Ara is so talented,” I say. “Looking at you makes me feel lighter.”
“I have a photoshoot next week for a newspaper article about rising artists,” says Miho, fingering her ends self-consciously. “I told Ara I might just dye it blue tomorrow. Electric blue. I’ve always wanted electric blue hair, like Powerade.”
“Whoa, whoa. Take it one step at a time,” I say. “Give yourself a week at least to think about it. I wouldn’t recommend doing such drastic things all at once because you might regret it.”
Sujin pokes me from behind.
“See?” she says. “You would be such a natural for that job. That’s exactly what Manager Koo said to me during my first consultation. Then she sneakily recommended a dozen more things I should do.”
* * *
—
YEARS AGO, back when I was still conflicted about whether to proceed with my surgeries, I went to a well-known fortune-teller who told me that shaving my jaw would take away all the luck that follows in old age. But when she took down my name and date and time of birth and calculated my saju and my future, her face changed. She said that my later years held only terrible luck, so I should try everything I could to alter my fate.
Grimacing in pity, she told me that because of the shape of my nose, all the money that would flow into my life would flow right out again. And she told me that I had the weakest luck in love—that it would be best to marry late, if at all. She said I had the same saju as a famous historical commander, who went to war knowing he had nothing to lose because he knew the fortune of his later years, and he died with honor and glory.
It is easy to leap if you have no choice.
* * *
—
ON SATURDAY MORNING, I find myself sitting in the waiting room of Cinderella Clinic, skittish with nerves for the first time in all my visits here. I place a hand on my right knee to try to stop it from shaking, but it’s taken on a savage life of its own.
Usually when I’m here, I pass the time judging the other patients, with their oversized sunglasses and overinjected noses, typing furiously on their phones with both thumbs. Make sure Yo-han isn’t late for his Lego lesson. Did you hear that Daesu got into XX school? Or something scathing to their husbands, I am sure, although I cannot imagine what texting a husband is like. Honey, I made your favorite doenjang stew so please come home for dinner for once in your life. Or, those lipstick marks on your shirt collar wouldn’t come off so I cut it up into ribbons while you were snoring, have a nice day!
Today, however, I focus on the staff behind the desks. Three of the four pink-blazered assistants I know well but the fourth must be new. She looks young and cautious, and keeps darting glances at the other assistants typing on either side of her. I give her a hard once-over. What made them pick her? She looks stupidly timid and not pretty at all—she has not had much surgery—just her eyes and maybe filler as far as I can tell. Her hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail and her hairline is an embarrassment of uneven, patchy fuzz. I touch my own hair out of habit. Even if I haven’t been to the salon in two weeks, my nightly hair masks have ensured that my ends are silky as seaweed.
The other assistants have been here for years, since I have started coming here. They are nice enough, with syrupy sweet voices and brutal efficiency in getting you to pay up front. They have a very particular way of making you feel as if you are lucky to be a patient here, while also giving the impression that they are secretly looking down on you, so that you end up spending a lot of money to force their respect.
Hoping that they will glance up from their screens, I try to infuse admiration into my face. My cheek muscles hurt from all this beaming.
My phone buzzes and I check my phone. It’s the manager oppa. Good morning! Hope you are having a nice day so far. What are you up to? He has sent a coffee coupon and a winking bunny emoji.
I smile in spite of myself. At first, I did not even notice his niceties—so many little things he would do for me here and there. But now there is no mistaking that he likes me. It is cute and not yet annoying.
Just a makeup lesson, I text him, because even if he is nice, he is a man and he is in Madam’s pay. Besides, probably nothing will come of this anyway.
* * *
—
THE RECEPTIONIST CALLS out a name and the woman sitting on my left gathers her things and stands. As she walks into the consultation room I hear her asking about what’s on sale this month. I’ve been coming here long enough to know that the sales don’t mean much because you can haggle about anything, but that doesn’t stop me from leaning over to the brochure rack and picking up the latest flyer.
“Get Ready for Summer!” A girl in a scarlet bikini is posing by a pool and the sale prices are listed below. Only the “petite” procedures—the noninvasive ones—are featured. I’m sorely tempted by the “Strapless Package,” which includes Botox for the back of the shoulders, “fat kill” injections for the underarms, and a choice between Healite II LED therapy or cryotherapy. I tried Healite several times last summer and I liked the results. Going down the list, I am reminded I need more armpit whitening and lip edge injections because the little curls on either side of my lips have begun to droop. I blink and make myself snap out of it—today, I need to focus. From my bag, I retrieve the slim notebook that the married lady gave me from her office, and I check the talking notes that I went over with the girls last night. I have written down the list of girls I have referred here. This includes Miho and Ara because they made appointments earlier this week too so that they could come drop my name and bolster my chances. Ara in particular was very intrigued by all her options after her consultation but said she might start with something small, perhaps just a filler shot for her nose.