This was nice, talking to a boy as if it came naturally to me. I wished I could do it better with Hanbin.
“So how do you know Byung-joon?” I asked.
“Oh, we’re family friends. Our dads went to the same high school and college. I grew up with him pretty much. What about you? Do you have a lot of friends from Cheongju here?”
“No,” I said. I could have added “of course not,” but didn’t.
“They’re back in Korea,” I said. “A lot of them moved to Seoul for university.”
“That makes sense,” he said. “Cheongju’s pretty small, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s pretty small.”
* * *
—
IT WAS SO SMALL that it felt like everyone in town knew us: the Loring Center kids. Orphaned, disabled, or delinquent. Our abandonment scared people, as if it might be contagious. Upon meeting any of us for the first time, people were amazed if we had our faculties intact, as so many did not, and shunned us regardless. In our city, the word “Loring” was synonymous with “retarded.” “Isn’t he Loring?” or “You look so Loring!” By the time we were in high school, the word was so embedded in the local vernacular that many kids didn’t even know it wasn’t a real English word.
“Can’t wait to get out of this shitty backwater hellhole,” my friend Sujin used to shriek whenever she’d come home to the Center after getting in trouble with her teachers. I was lucky: the teachers in my arts high school liked me, but Sujin had been branded a mischief-maker at her school, and we no longer had Miss Loring behind us. She was years dead by then and the directors at the Center changed almost yearly.
I never expected Sujin to actually make it on her own, but she left the first chance she could. She carved out a little life in Seoul, sliver by sliver, reporting back to the rest of us that the word “Loring” meant nothing to people there. Two of the other girls also left for Seoul not long after she did, but I was the first to come to America. Without being adopted, I mean.
* * *
—
“YOU WANT SOME more?” asked Jae, pointing to my glass, which was sitting heavy and empty in my hand.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Oh, there’s plenty here, you don’t need to go to the downstairs bar,” he said. Getting up, he walked over to one of the shelves behind me, which I now saw was stocked like a bar, with crystal tumblers and decanters filled with amber liquors.
“Unless you want cranberry again,” he said, stopping and looking at me.
“No, that’s okay. Whiskey is good.”
“Here,” he said, pouring a glass and handing it to me, then turning around to pour one for himself. “There’s ice on the table in the bucket.”
We started talking about school—which professors he liked and which to avoid—which cafés had the best seats to study in and where to buy art supplies. His voice was nice: it quickened in excitement whenever he talked about things he liked. He was more animated than the other kids I had encountered at SVA—and in his animation he seemed vulnerable, and to me that vulnerability was moving because I had not seen it since I had come to New York.
“And I heard the library pays pretty well for jobs too,” he said. “If you’re looking for student jobs. Not to assume that you are—” He stopped what he was saying, looking embarrassed. This was endearing, also.
“I actually have a job already,” I said. “I’m working in one of the student galleries.” I did not add that it was Ruby’s gallery and that was how we had met.
“Oh cool!” he said, relieved that he had not offended me. The fact that he was even worried about that made me feel a rush of affection for him.
Before I could think too much or stop myself I leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
It was just a peck, and then I drew back into my chair—what I’d done had startled both