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!”
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.”