—Jesus, can’t you limit yourself to doing one thing at a time?

—I’m fucked, aren’t I?

—What do you mean, “fucked”? Grab your bag, we’re going to the clinic.

—Sure, that’s all we need to do, but there’s a problem.

—What.

—I’m utterly broke. Penniless.

—You didn’t make this baby on your own, we’ll shake the boy down.

—That’s the real problem.

—What’s the real problem? Just spit it out.

—I don’t know which boy I’m supposed to shake down.

According to the story that followed, the idiot DJ she was head over heels with was all right at sex but had a terrible personality and was the worst ever when drunk. Worse, he was stupid enough to believe that his personality was proof of an artistic soul, which made Jaehee more determined than ever to finally dump him. She had just been introduced by a coworker at the café to an art student who was our age, and she’d found out only later on that he had long since dropped out of art school and was working as a tattoo artist. The day Jaehee went on her first blind date with him, I just happened to be spending the night elsewhere; she had no choice (?) but to bring him into our apartment and have wild sex with him. But without a condom. It’s human nature to find the first time difficult and every subsequent time easier, meaning Jaehee had unprotected sex a few times more. With both men.

—The DJ is better at sex and the tattoo guy is better looking, which gave me a lot to think about.

In this, the Great Information Age, you might imagine she would’ve processed her thoughts a lot faster, like a normal person, but Jaehee was locked in an unsolvable dilemma as she ping-ponged between the two men for three months. I said to her that if she had this dilemma twice more, she’d end up with enough children for an orphanage, a quip she ignored. She showed me a photo on her phone. The tattoo artist’s face, she said. The man she showed me had shorter hair than the DJ but was otherwise surprisingly similar, and as skinny as a dried-up anchovy you wouldn’t even try to boil for broth.

—He looks the same as the other guy. I bet you can just have the baby and claim either man is the father?

Jaehee seemed too down to even laugh at my joke. Most uncharacteristically, she began to mumble things like “I should’ve drunk less . . . I can’t even afford food . . . I can’t ask my umma for the money, what do I do?” Which was so annoying to me that I just said:

—Forget them. I’ll give you the money.

—Hey . . . That’s too much.

—I’m not just giving it to you for free. I expect it back, with interest. But get it done quickly for now, all right?