he points at my face, then points at his own and rubs his chin jealously.
“I like-uh your beard-uh,” he blurts out, but then scurries off, embarrassed.
I turn to Justin. “He liked my beard.”
He nods. “It’s an enviable beard. Korean men can’t grow one like that. They just get the Fu Man Chu thing going on.”
“I like your beard, too,” I hear someone say over my left shoulder. I turn in the swivel chair and am surprised to see the girl I met at Jokers Red a few weeks ago. Jin. The girl in the long coat and cashmere. Jin. Rob Cruise’s clandestine conquest. She stands holding a tray of food and wearing a black business suit, smart and well-tailored. It takes me a second to believe it’s her. Justin clears his throat.
Before I can even shove out a hello, she marches over to our table. “Why are you playing this silly game in a food court?”
Justin and I look at each other as if we’ve forgotten. “I guess it’s our way of offering free English lessons,” he jokes. “Do you want one?”
“My English is fine, thank you very much.” She seats herself next to me.
“Funny we’ve run into you here,” I say.
“I work in COEX Tower. I’m on my lunch break, finally.”
“You work Saturdays?”
“Of course. Most Koreans do. You ESL teachers have it easy — most of you get Saturdays off.” She hasn’t taken her eyes off the board. “So can you explain how this game works?”
We talk her through it as we play, elucidating on what the coloured areas mean and how to place the high-point letters on them strategically. She nods with growing comprehension and restrained delight. I’m very aware of her proximity to me, the way she leans across my arm to cast her curiosity over the board. I want to ensure that I win this game in front of her. I clinch the deal when I place my last letter, an X, on a triple-letter score with it buttressed by an A and an E for a total of fifty points.
Jin lets out a little laugh and claps. “Wow, all that with one letter?” She turns to me. “You’re good at scoring points with very little.”
Justin chuckles at this, perhaps thinking of our night at Jokers Red. “Well, that’s the game,” he says, getting up. “I have to go if I’m going to make my private on time. Do you mind taking the board back with you?”
“Sure,” I say. I almost expect Jin to leave, too, but instead she scoots over with her tray to take Justin’s seat after he’s gone. I notice she’s eating a hamburger and fries. When I start gathering up the slates, she stops me. “Hey, aren’t we going to play?”
“All right.”
I set up another game and offer her the bag to draw her seven letters; I feel her hand muscling around in my palm to dig them out. She places them gingerly on her slate and then stares at them with great concentration, as if they might contain a plot. We sit for a long while in focused silence. For the first few rounds, Jin can only play three-letter words — DOG and WIG and TOE — but does so with great deliberation. With each hefty strategizing thought, her bottom lip sticks out, hangs there between the two streaks of her black hair framing her face. She munches on her lunch and doesn’t look up from the board.
“So what do you do in COEX Tower?” I ask.
“I work for a clothing exporter. I do sales and marketing. In fact, I’m supposed to be in Beijing on business, but all this SARS nonsense made my employer keep me home.” She proudly puts her first four-letter word on the board, BENT, doing so with both hands, the letters pinched in her fingers. She goes on to explain how her fluency in four languages results in regular trips abroad — Shanghai and Paris and London. I learn a few other things as she rambles: Though twenty-seven and professionally successful, she still lives at home with her parents — the norm for young unmarried Korean women.
I try not to cream her too badly, but when the game ends I have twice her score. She checks the time on her cellphone. “Ugh. I should get back to my office,” she moans.
“Okay.”
“It was nice seeing you again, Michael.”
“Thanks.”
She hesitates, looks at me as if I’ve forgotten something. Forgotten my manners somehow, or to ask another question. Whatever it is, I don’t say or do it. She gets up curtly and leaves. I begin putting the tiles in the bag and packing up the slates. When I look up again, Jin has come stomping back to hover over the table.
“Hi there,” I say.
“So what, you don’t ask out girls?”
My mouth falls open a little. “I, I beg your pardon?”
“Oh come on, Michael.” She begins rhyming things off on her fingers. “I engage you about Kundera at the club; I ask you to dance; I write my handphone number on a piece of paper to give you, except you never ask for it before you leave; then today I tell you I like your beard, and stay behind to play Scrabble. What’s your problem? You would think by now you’d ask me to go on a date with you.”
My problem? My problem is you slept with Rob Cruise. My problem is I’m a fucking mess. “Jin, will you go on a date with me?”
She lowers her head. “No. You’re not my type.” I feel as if I’ve fallen through the floor to land on the floor below. “That was a joke,” she says, looking up. I laugh weakly. “Look, tell me something,” she goes on. “Did Rob Cruise take you back to Itaewon since the night we met?”
“Yes.”
“And did he take you to Hongdae yet?”
“He has.”
“And let me guess — you guys always go for kalbi at that dumpy restaurant near your apartments and drink soju until you can’t stand up straight.”
“We were there last night.”
“ Ugh. So predictable! You need to see the real Korea, Michael.” She takes out a pen and piece of paper from her purse and writes on it. “Meet me here, at Anguk Station. It’s near the top of the Orange Line on the subway. Tomorrow at two o’clock. Exit 3. Don’t be late.” She taps the paper before sliding it across the table at me. “And there’s my handphone number.”
Then she hurries off before I can say anything else.
S he was one of Rob’s conquests. She was. But she is not the same as the rest. She isn’t. She is … what?
The next day I dress in my least frumpy clothes and concern myself with remembering what Jin had said: two o’clock at Exit 3, or three o’clock at Exit 2? I’m certain I know the answer, but to be safe I arrive at Anguk Station by two and bring a book along in case I’m wrong or she’s late.
She is not late. She pushes her way through the turnstiles, a purse over her shoulder, and hustles over when she spots me leaning against the wall of the marble foyer with my book. Grabs me by the wrist without greeting. “Come here, Michael, I want to show you something,” she says.
She
