Jennie
I don't open the folder then and there. I wait, scandalously teasing its edges with my thumb until I find a nice quiet place to wrap my head around the contents.
Happily Ever After does enough business in the infamous Park Hyatt Seoul that the bartenders will occasionally throw me a glass of wine on the house. I know it's a stretch since I've been out of work for the better part of a year, but I decide to treat myself regardless. I'm going to start this wedding off on the right foot, and maybe the glitz and glamour of an infamous Seoul luxury hotel will inspire me.
Through the brass-lined doors, the doorman directs me to The Timber House in the left wing of the lobby. The seats are maroon leather, the bar table polished wood, and I sequester myself under an antique lamp.
I'm rusty and I know it. I used to fit right into this world, but when I look at myself in the mirror across the bar, I wince. My teased brunette curls have already softened, and my lipstick is starting to fade. I've got potential: a year shy of thirty (and clinging on to it with everything that I have left), a heart-shaped face, eyes that look sometimes hazel and sometimes green under the right light (or with the right mascara), and slender to boot (slender but not skinny, I'm still pinch-able, in a way). But I've let myself go, and it shows in the bags under my eyes and the wrinkles in my white, flower-patterned shirt. I tug a hand-knit beanie out of my purse and pull it over my head. This isn't a beanie kind of place, exactly, but my hair is not currently for public consumption, so desperate times, call for desperate measures.
"What'll it be?" The bartender materialises out of nowhere, smartly dressed with a perfectly coiffed pompadour. He already looks bored with me, and I know that he's got my number. It's like he can smell that I've been drinking out of wine boxes for the past few months.
I hold my own. I clear my throat and ask with my best faux-elegance, "Is Jay B here?"
He narrows his eyes, looking totally confused. "No one by that name works here, honey."
Right. I flew too close to the sun with this. No free wine for me. I backpedal with a smile and then say, "A glass of your house white, please."
That'll put enough of a dent in my pocketbook. He leaves to pour my glass, and I relax my shoulders a little now that I'm outside his line of scrutiny. The folder waits patiently in front of me, unopened. I'm suddenly less confident than I was when I walked in. Bloody pompadour bartender has crushed my high spirits. Is it possible to be so rusty that you can never un-rust?
Grow a pair of ovaries and open it, Jennie.
I flip the folder open and I'm hit with a post-it note. In Jessi's handwriting, there are these inspirational words: Don't mess it up.
Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence. Ironically, her challenge does light a fire within me, to prove her wrong. I roll my eyes, paste the post-it note to the inside cover, and start riffling through the contents of the folder.
My mission, should I choose to accept it, involves the bride, herein known as Mina Manoban, and the groom, aka Bambam Bhuwakul. Mina is drop-dead gorgeous; even her candid shots look like headshots. Wide eyes, a tiny nose, and a bird-bone figure. Her smile is just a little too wide for her face, which only makes her seem genuine and all the more precious. I'm not getting any bridezilla vibes from her, but it's hard to make that kind of prediction without meeting her up close and personal. Weddings do strange things to people.
You know that first-hand, don't you, Jennie Kim? Or have you forgotten how you broke a lawn chair, smashed a wedding cake, and threw up on the father-in-law all in the span of five minutes?
There's that cold prickle at the back of my neck. My wine arrives, so I sip it to distract myself as I drive into Bambam's page. Immediately, my assumptions about Mina's good nature line up, because he's the half of the couple that makes people wonder how they ever ended up together. Big-boned with a mess of black hair that no one ever taught him how to style. He's wearing plaid in every one of his pictures and, in one, standing in front of a farm labelled Bhuwakul family home.
Popular girl and farm boy. Who would have thought? Already, I can feel the struggle of putting these two disparate pieces together, but I like the challenge. After all, who am I to put true love in a box?
But that's not my only challenge. When I see the wedding date, I nearly spit my wine out.
It's two weeks from now. Two damn weeks. I check and recheck to make sure that it isn't a typo.
So Jessi isn't giving me a starter wedding. This is a shotgun, high-stakes job.
No problem. Right? Like learning to ride a bike on the freeway. Full of potholes. With dogs chasing you.
Sounds really damn easy...