The cooks
The ponjangmacha is a metaphor for what is good in their marriage. Its confinement is in truth a kind of freedom; here, they have learned how to give each other their space. Ninety times a day, they bump hips and graze fingers reaching for the hotteok at the same time, giggling, at their age, like the children they were when they first met and fell in love.
Anticipating the requests of their most loyal customers, they have learned to finish each other’s sentences, but relish the occasional surprise, as they do when the old woman who orders the plain sundae every Tuesday, reaches one day for the spicy hot sauce. They pick their fights carefully and have mastered the art of arguing well, practicing on the man who complains each day that the odeng burns his tongue, swallowing their pride, and finding the words that will ensure his return the next day, and the day after that.
From mid-day until late evening, they exist in the world of the ponjangmacha, merging and separating, merging and separating, like the molecules of steam that rise, invariably, from the simmering tteokbokki.
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