by Frances Cha
When I said this, Hanbin looked at me without saying a word and I knew that he was shocked. I hastily said I’d just read an article written by a journalist who had gone undercover at a love motel as a cleaner, and then his expression eased somewhat. He laughed and said that his hotel was not like that. He actually believed it too.
* * *
—
RUBY LOVED HOTELS also. She had one of her people forward her all the hotel news—which ones were serving a new afternoon tea, which one had a new executive chef, which one had a new spa package, and she would scoop me up and off we would go.
One time she called me to a hotel presidential suite, where she had her papers spread out all over the conference table. She had ordered three tiers of mini cakes and bonbons with afternoon tea, which she was eating while typing on her laptop.
“What is this?” I asked when I walked in. The suite was breathtaking for its size alone. Every surface seemed to be wrapped in marble, and I had to pass through two foyers just to find her.
“Eh, it’s super old,” she said, rolling her eyes and pointing to the crystal chandelier. “This is straight out of the nineteen forties or something. I told them they need to close the hotel for a few years to renovate. At least.”
I wandered through room after room, touching the edges of beautiful sofas, gilded frames, satin curtains, and a real fireplace mantel. There was a bright red Steinway grand piano in the living room against a startling floor-to-ceiling view of the city. In the bathrooms, tiny crystal bottles of perfume lined the shelves and clusters of peonies were floating in crystal spheres.
“Do you see the swan’s head?” Ruby called to me. “Where are we, czarist Russia?”
She was referring to the faucet on the deep soaking tub, from which a slender gilded swan’s neck and head emerged, water meant to spout from its beak. I secretly thought it quite lovely, and had run my fingers along the curved neck.
When I walked back to where Ruby was, she was on the phone ordering more room service. “What do you want?” she asked me, covering the mouthpiece.
When I shrugged helplessly, she rolled her eyes again. “Can you send up some grilled scallops—on a bed of mixed greens. Fresh, not frozen. Balsamic sauce on the side? And actually, can you send someone to pick up an Italian sandwich from that sandwich place on the corner—the famous one? I forget the name.”
Slamming down the phone, she grinned. “Seafood for me. Sandwich for you. I’m going to write down the time and the temperature of the food when it gets here. This is real work, you know. Presidents don’t wait for shit when they’re staying here.”
“What is going on?” I asked. This was unusual spending, even for her. A presidential suite on a weekday afternoon for no apparent reason?
“Oh, our company just bought this hotel,” said Ruby, waving her hand around. “I read it in the news, because no one ever tells me anything, so I called Korea and asked them to arrange a stay immediately. And then when I got here, I asked for this suite!” She laughed. “They’re going to kill me when they find out, but they won’t dare tell my father. They’re just going to have to figure out a solution.”
I stared at her wide-eyed. “But what if they do tell your father and he’s furious? Isn’t this going to be, like, tens of thousands of dollars or something? Hundreds of thousands?” I really had no idea.
“I kind of hope they tell him,” said Ruby. “At least he’ll know that I am following the company news.” And she continued spooning strawberry shortcake into her mouth.
Do you wonder, then, that I can’t paint anything other than Ruby? That scene in the suite, I can see as clearly as if it were before me now. I painted it two months ago, as a tea party on a lily pad on a lake, a swan spouting tea into her teacup, with peonies and rubies in her hair. Hundreds of fish heads bobbing on the surface of the lake, turned in her direction.
When she told me that Hanbin was coming over after class, I excused myself to go work on my final project. I did not want to see him impressed by Ruby, what she could command at will. I did not want to think that they would be sleeping together on the bed like a cloud.
But now, I think perhaps that’s precisely why he likes me—I am a welcome change because with me he can play the role of the provider. There is a limit to how much Korean men are willing to endure female money, especially if they are wealthy themselves.
* * *
—
AFTER THE EEL, I am thinking Hanbin is going to suggest a movie or heading to a hotel room, but he says he is tired and he’ll take me home. It must have really been a bad day at work—perhaps another guest yelled at him for being slow with the luggage.
He drops me off in front of my office-tel, and I wave goodbye to his retreating Porsche and walk forlornly up to the apartment. Usually, I am the one who is fending off advances, saying I am too tired for sex today, and no, you cannot see my work or my room.
Inside, I mope about some more, touching the spines of books I have been meaning to start for ages, rummaging through the kitchen cupboards to see if there is any ramen left, staring at my colorless face in the bathroom mirror.
Finally, I start working again in my room—beginning a sketch on a small letter-size sheet of paper. A sea of thrashing eels, above it, floating, a four-poster bed, from which I am looking down. This time it is not Ruby, it is me, and I am naked. I erase lightly and coax one of the eels to become a slender tree. I start adding tiny starlike flowers onto the branches.
I shouldn’t be going into such detail with pencil—this is a stupid little sketch—but I can’t help myself. I used to do this a lot—sketch out the entire idea first before re-creating it as a larger painting or a sculpture—but I don’t usually do it anymore. It vexes me, but relieves me too, working in minutiae, in pencil, thinking about oils. The flowers should be a dusty pink—or would coral work better? Should there be a butterfly or two? Should they turn back into eels and come into the bed?
I do not realize how much time has passed when I look up and see that Kyuri has come in and she is standing in my doorway staring at me. Her head is hanging to one side the way it does when she is just drunk enough to say the most outrageous things, but not drunk enough to go to sleep anytime soon. I sigh. This probably means I won’t get more work done—it’s just as well.
“You know what I think when I look at you?” says Kyuri, tilting her head abruptly to the opposite side. I can practically see the fumes of alcohol wafting off her.
“What?” I say. “And hello to you.”
“I wish I had a talent that had decided my vocation for me,” she says. She sounds aggrieved. “So that there never was a choice. Of doing anything else.” What she is implying is that I am lucky and she is not.
“Art doesn’t feed you,” I say, indignantly. “So many people who are a million times more talented than I am can’t get a job, or they can’t sell their paintings. After this fellowship, who knows what I’m going to do?”
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.
“Oh,” I say quietly. It is on the tip of my tongue to say so many things—“How do you know?” “Who is it?” or the futile “That cannot be true.” But it is easy to see from her face that she is telling the truth. I have to hold on to something because I feel as if I am about to keel over. I turn around—and totter back to my room like an old lady. I feel as if I am floating above my body—watching myself find my way back to my paintings. In my torment, I cannot process this.
I do not want to know. I do not want to know.
“Miho,” says Kyuri. She is behind me, her voice soft and compassionate now. She regrets telling me.
I wave my hand at her without looking behind me, to signal to her to go away.
In my room, I take up my little drawing. With a pang I realize that this will be painful for me to look at from now on. It is a pity, because I already loved it. This does not mean I will not be able to work on it, though—I can attack it with more fervor, more anger, and most likely it will be the better for it.
I feel as if I am sleepwalking, and I wander into the bathroom and start running the shower. It occurs to me that I will have a great deal of time from this moment on. Thank goodness I will be able to work.
I take off my clothes and my jewelry—my gold necklace with a palette-shaped pendant was of course from Hanbin, as was my eternity ring of tiny black diamonds.
The glass and the mirror are soon swallowed up in steam and fog. Closing my eyes, I endure the hot water beating down upon my head and body.
What am I to do now? It gnaws at me bleakly, this question. For all that I had thought I protected my heart, knowing this would happen one day, I am not prepared.
I wish I were dead, so that I did not have to feel this pain.
* * *
—
I REMEMBER MY AUNT telling my cousin Kyunghee and me, when we were small, that my grandmother had died of anger. She had choked to death on han—the pent-up rage from all the pillaged generations before her—seeing her parents die before her eyes, having served her mother-in-law as a body slave until she aged long before her time. To have a son—my father—that turned out to be a weak fool, led astray by a cunning daughter-in-law—my mother.
My aunt told us that we inherited my grandmother’s wrath, that this kind of potent han could not just die off with the passing of an old woman. That we should be careful to curb ourselves, to avoid situations that could lead to altercations.
You do not know what you are capable of, she said with a sigh. We nodded fearfully. She herself regretted certain incidents in her life, my aunt said. And she didn’t want us to end up feeling the same.
* * *
—
THE IDEA TO EXTRACT the SD card from Hanbin’s dashcam comes from the latest drama that Kyuri is watching. Since she refuses to tell me how she found out about Hanbin, and since I have nothing else to say to her, the television has been blaring nonstop for the past few days and we have settled into a chilly coexistence.
The scene that gives me this brilliant idea unfolds on the screen when I sit down at our tiny table with the ramen I made. In the drama, the chaebol son is in love with the girl who everyone thinks is his sister. The father, who suspects this unpalatable relationship, sneaks into his son’s car at night and extracts the SD card from the dashcam. Reviewing the videos confirms his hunch.
The scene with the SD card arrests me, and I swivel my head toward Kyuri to see if it is occurring to her that this is occurring to me. She pays me no attention. The wa
y that she is sitting on the floor with her back and neck completely stiff makes me suspect that she must have gotten another treatment. Most likely a session of that bone therapy she is addicted to where they massage the shit out of you for two hours. The one time I went, on her recommendation, I asked for face therapy and they started pressing my jaw so hard I cried for them to stop. When I asked for my money back, they refused, so I gifted the rest of the sessions to Kyuri. That, they allowed.
But the dashcam—this could truly work. Hanbin had installed one that records the inside of the car after he had his laptop stolen by a valet parking attendant.
The trick is to get Hanbin out of his car long enough that I can take out the SD card. After studying videos online, I am pretty sure I can do it fairly quickly, but I will fumble if I am frazzled about getting caught.
* * *
—
I FINALLY DO it on the day that we are meeting his friends for drinks in Itaewon. After he picks me up at the studio, he finds a miraculous street parking spot just a block away from the restaurant. We are walking there when I take a deep breath and say that I just realized I left my phone in his car.
“I’ll go get it,” I say.
“No, no, let me. It’ll take me two seconds.” He is already turning back when I add that I think several of my “female items” also must have spilled out of my purse. There is nothing like the mention of menstrual products to send a guy running in the other direction.
And then it is the easiest thing in the world to obtain the evidence.
* * *
—
AT HOME AFTER drinks, I go through the videos on my computer. After scrolling and scrolling, I find it: the one of him having sex with a girl in his car. It is dark and it is difficult to see because the images are blurry, but the rhythm and sounds are unmistakable. I stop the video and close my eyes. Then I crawl under my desk and curl up to see if the sharp stabs I am feeling will go away.