“Will you be going home or do you have plans?”
“I’m going to go to the Majang Meat Market. It’s where Yang Ilwha buys her product.”
“You are serious about this food truck, then?”
“Yes. It might sound like foolishness, but feeding people is really rewarding.”
“I’ll see you at home, then, for dinner.”
In the bathroom on the fourteenth floor, I call Ellen.
“Darling! Aren’t you working?”
“I quit today.”
“Oh my goodness! What did Wansu say? Is she okay?”
I release a confused laugh. “Wansu? What about me?”
“Of course I’m concerned about you, but didn’t you take the job and stay in Korea because if you didn’t Wansu’s company would fall apart? I hope that’s not happening.”
“I told her and she didn’t appear to be worried.”
“Honey, she is not going to admit that the company is going to be a wreck if you quit because that’s not what mothers do.”
“You really like Wansu, don’t you?” I lean against the wood-paneled wall and take a moment for this to sink in.
“I told you! We have a lot in common. By the way, did she let you know I’m coming out to celebrate Christmas with you? Wansu wants me to decorate a tree and make Christmas cookies and a ham and everything. I’m already starting to think about gifts. Do you have any ideas? Not only for Wansu, but her son, too. Text me any thoughts you have. I want to get her things she can’t buy in Korea.”
A woman walks in and arches an inquiring eyebrow in my direction.
“Mom, I have to go. Someone’s here to use the bathroom.”
“Okay! I love you. Bye-bye!”
I give a nod of acknowledgment and slip out of the bathroom. Next stop, seventh floor.
Everyone is at their desks when I arrive. Bujang-nim’s face turns an ugly shade of red, while Soyou grows pale.
“I’m leaving for a new job,” I announce. “You have all been very kind to me”—someone coughs in the distance—“but there are new challenges on the horizon. Soyou, you and I have an appointment to go to.”
“You do?” Chaeyong’s brows crash together. She can’t envision a gathering with just me and her angry friend.
“Yes, don’t we?” I stare challengingly at Soyou who silently retrieves her purse and rises. I start to walk off when she calls me back. My umbrella, the Dior one, is in her hand.
“Here.”
“Thank you.” I take it and gesture for her to walk ahead of me. The eyes of the entire department follow us but I’m used to it. From Soyou’s stiff neck, she’s not.
“Where are we going?” she asks as we wait for the elevator.
“Majang Meat Market.”
“Are you serious?” She examines my unsmiling face.
“As a heart attack.”
By her confused expression, it’s apparent she doesn’t understand the colloquialism. Too bad. I don’t feel like explaining it to her.
We take the subway to the Majang station. The entrance to the market is adorned with a large, plastic, unsmiling bull’s head. Peeking out from behind the cattle is the head of a happy pig. The English phrase “Welecome to Meat Market” with the misspelling sits on top of the original Hangul “Majang Chuksanmul Sijang.” They could’ve used my services.
The main corridor of the meat market is covered in red-domed acrylic with a line of faded translucent yellow tiles marching down the center. The sides of the narrow cement roadway are lined with glass display cases full of beef and pork. There aren’t as many people here as I thought there might be. Motorcycles with coolers strapped on the back speed away, while a flatbed truck rumbles down the road.
Every cut of meat imaginable is available, from entire slabs of ribs to wafer-thin sirloin that they serve with shabu-shabu, the hot pot soups you can order at counters in food halls in the basement of the Lotte department stores. Vendors advertise the use of an upstairs grill for only five thousand won per person. I bypass what feels like a hundred beef butchers and finally land on a pork one. While Soyou watches silently, I ineptly haggle with the butcher until my poor Korean frustrates her so much that she shoulders me to the side and arrives at a price well below the advertised one. The butcher even throws in free bones. She shoves the bag in my face.
“Are we done?”
“Not yet.” I walk down the entire alleyway, cataloging the various merchants, documenting prices, getting ideas. Soyou follows. At the end, I buy two Milkis and a paper boat full of beef bites wrapped in perilla leaves. “I hope you’re with him because he’s awesome and he really cranks your engine and not because he’s promising you a promotion.”
“Cranks my engine?” she says in a small voice, nothing like the Soyou who always looked at me with narrow eyes and spoke to me with a sharp tongue.
“Hot. He makes you hot. Turns you on.” God, this discussion about my former boss is the worst. I try again. “Be with him because you want to be with him, not because of some fucked-up work dynamic.”
“Oh.”
“I want better for you, Soyou. You’re gorgeous and smart and you deserve more than a middle-aged middle manager with two kids.”
Her head comes up defiantly. “You don’t know how hard it is. There are thousands of women who are smarter or better credentialed. If I ever got let go from IF Group, who would take me? I am not Samsung or Kakao material. I do not have a family like Chaeyoung who will find me another job. I need job security. I cannot become a baeksu.”
She means a person with white hands, one who isn’t working, or, in more base terms, a loser. I pass her the paper tray with the beef bites. “Here. You’ll miss lunch.”
She takes it with a grimace. “When I first came to Seoul, I felt out of place. I wore the wrong clothes, my accent was too strong. There are many different dialects in the country, but Seoul dialect is the standard. If you speak satoori, people will look down on you. I still remember my first days, and so when we were told we always had to speak English around you, I hated it. My English isn’t good, and if you’re not good, someone will think you’re ignorant, someone will judge you.”
“Meaning me?”
She nods. Her lips tighten and she blinks rapidly, as if she’s trying to stave off tears. Soyou is not the type to cry for sympathy. She’d much rather curse you out, so her show of emotion convinces me of her sincerity. Or I could be a sucker.