Page 11 of You Had Me At Annyeong!
‘Yeah, well, what’s done is done.’ Timira is losing her patience a little seeing Alice firmly in the mood to chastise her. ‘In a way, I’m glad I didn’t involve them at all. Can you imagine their disappointment if they’d borne witness to their daughter getting blindsided the way she did? And then to see her having to kiss her job goodbye thanks to the same man? Say what you will, but I’d like to think I saved them a hell lot of heartache. Timira for Daughter of the Year, yo!’
This time it’s Alice’s turn to keep quiet.
Alice recalls the excitement in Timira’s eyes as they had wandered jeweller to jeweller on Bandra’s Waterfield Road in the shiny afternoon sun. She had waited patiently as Alice finished a blowout and make-up session for a VJ-turned-actress she and Bhaskar used to both have a crush on during their middle school years. Alice vividly remembers Timira humming Bruno Mars’s ‘Marry You’ as they walked out of the salon that Alice had rented the previous year to set up her own hair and make-up studio. She recalls Timira’s face turning crimson everytime a store attendant complimented her by saying how lucky ‘the guy’ was. Every memory of Timira’s from that afternoon breaks Alice’s heart.
‘And you. Please, okay? Who gifted Rod bottles ofgochujangand fed him extra servings of meat at every meal? You! That was YOU!’
‘I was only being nice because he was your BF!’
‘I don’t recall you ever disapproving of him.’
Alice shifts uncomfortably and grimaces, recalling all the times she thought she spotted a red flag around Rodrigo but a look at Timira’s glowing-in-love face had stopped short of her saying anything every single time. She now bites her lip and silently chides herself for turning a blind eye, especially as she recalls a particularly unsavoury memory of the time she spotted Rodrigo dropping off a young woman actor at an early-morning shoot she had been hired for. She had overheard the actor dropping hints about her romantic night with a male celebrity she refused to name, but Alice did not wish to plant suspicion in Timira’s mind without any proof. Of course, she later had her revenge the best way she could, slapping the actor’s face hard while prepping her face. ‘It’s how us Koreans do our serums, you see. The harder you hit, the better the skin absorbs the products!’ she had lied coolly.
Gah, I guess I should’ve been more transparent about my feelings about that ass. Could’ve saved her some trouble, I suppose …
Shaking her head ruefully, Alice buries her face deeper inside the pillow while Timira prattles on.
‘In any case, I’m just glad it’s over. And I’m fine, you know. You can tell, right?’
Alice doesn’t respond.
‘Alice, Ally, Aloo. Look at me, hey!’ Timira pokes her index finger into the nape of Alice’s neck and proceeds to tickle.Wriggling away from her finger and giggling, Alice lifts her head up from the pillow and throws it back.
‘What? What do you want?’
‘Look at me, noooo! I look fine, right? I don’t look sad and mopey, do I?’
Alice takes a long, hard look at her nutty friend’s face—her overgrown bangs, the dark circles around her eyes and her sunken cheeks that don’t break into dimples as often anymore—and smiles.
‘You are right. No one can tell. You look great!’
‘Hah, I knew it! I’ve had to work very hard these past couple of weeks so Mum and Dad wouldn’t find out. You know what that’d mean, right? Oh, God! Just the thought of it …’
Timira mock shudders and turns her face away to look out of the window overlooking the pool.
Oh, you nutcase. I’m glad you think you have everyone fooled.
Turning back to face Alice, Timira continues, ‘I could be an actor, you know? I’m a natural, I think.’
She slides her hand underneath her chin and pouts a little. Alice laughs and recalls all the day-drinking and weeping courtesy of Timira at her place since they’d come back from holiday and the concerned, worried-sick calls from Timira’s mother about her child indulging in bizarre activities like clearing off the pantry overnight, buying boxing equipment and punching the sandbag through the night, talking to herself and weeping behind closed doors, throwing away many of her belongings.
A great actor indeed… Alice smiles indulgently, lovingly.
‘Oh, by the way. Have I told you how happy Ma has looked of late?’
‘Huh, what?’
Alice is taken aback by Timira’s sudden change of topic.
‘Ma. My mum, your gossip partner, teehee!’
Alice gulps. She shares a close relationship with Timira’s mother—a fact she knows Timira loves and abhors equally.
She will have my head if she finds out we’ve been talking. Right, I just need to play dumb here. Argh, when will this end? Did we pay for such a long session?
‘You’ve not come home in a while so you’ve not seen it. There’s a glow to her face. Of course, it has dulled since I told her about quitting work but …’
Timira’s words trail off as, out of the blue, she recalls the incident with the AirPods and remembers the wicked smile on her mother’s face. The one that had made her suspicious about what her mother might have known.
