She looked at my plain clothes and called me a custodian, then downgraded me to an intern when I corrected her. “The executive lift is not for people like you,” Secretary Baek said, pointing toward the service elevator. Nobody in that corridor asked my name or which floor I was going to.
A woman quietly advised me to take the service car instead. When I asked how anyone reached the floors above sixty-one, she said employees climbed three flights twice a day, every day. Baek laughed and called that her own incompetence. The woman lowered her eyes. Something about that small humiliation stayed with me. Then the light caught a white watch on Baek’s wrist, one of eight in the world. I knew it immediately. I had chosen that exact watch for my mother-in-law’s birthday and asked my husband to order it. I looked at Baek again, wondering why she was wearing it.
