NEON NIGHTS

♦ ♦ ♦

Seulgi was walking across the lobby before she could even register her own steps.

Her heels clacked on the marble. Already she could hear music upstairs, the ten and eleventh floors and maybe the twelfth. This building she had never been inside of before. This building that was beyond everything she stood for, every part of her. The stairs were out of service. Beyond the lobby lit only in dimness the elevator was already closing and she held out a hand and shifted her bag higher on her shoulder and shuffled a little faster. There were three people in the elevator. The man in his pressed and fitted suit held the door until she was inside.

She could smell his cologne, three squirts on his neck and one staining his collar and two more his belt and two on each wrist, rubbed together in a circle, tapped and tapped again. She could smell the musk of the woman he was arm in arm with and the woman at the back of the elevator and she could smell the wine in their tall glasses. These people were like this building. They were not like her and she was alien to them. They wore form fits and Gucci accessories and she wore an old dress bought for twenty thousand won. They drove Ferrari opentops and had chauffeurs and their chauffeurs had form-fitting suits and Gucci accessories and she hailed a cab from her house an hour away. They worked in investment banking and had their own firms where they sold real estate to actresses and lawyers and she pressed coffee eight hours a day in a cafe ten minutes from her old school.

The elevator hit three, hit four. With each ascent it seemed to hum. As if in its mechanisms there existed some deeper purpose devised only for her to listen to or understand. It hit seven and then eight and they were talking beside her and laughing and sipping wine and the music was trembling and wayward and vague and she was very much aware again that she was not a part of this world and never had been. And that she had no part here at all.

The man next to her nudged her. She turned to him and smiled. He smiled back. An affable smile, the smile of a man who did indeed sell property to people for markup prices and then call them ers behind their backs later. 'Are you on your own?' he said.

'Oh.' She smiled again. The elevator opened out on ten and immediately she could hear the music and people chattering staccato. 'I'm just here for a friend.'

He had already gone and so had the women and she was alone. For a moment she stood there, emblazoned in the inner redness of the elevator light. As if this outer dark posed for her some greater terror, some more dedicated challenge. There were people in this enormous expanse laughing over champagne and cognac and bourbon and there were men in their thirties and sixties and they were all talking and laughing. She thought for a second maybe they were laughing at her but that was a pointless and needlessly presumptive thing to think. They had not noticed her at all. She was as faceless to them as them to her. They talked and laughed. The elevator closed. She hit the button for 10 again and it opened and she stepped out.

It was dimly lit in red and white. There were two long black couches in the left corner of the room and here people sat lounging in Oxfords that cost more than a year of her rent and people drinking from stainglass tumblers and people laughing again. There were people at the bar and people at the second bar and people looking for the third bar and people pouring drinks for themselves and for each other. There were two men smoking Cohibas near the back of the room and all was dim and smoky. There were men inspecting Audemars watches as if they were toys. And there were people dancing and the music running under her feet and in her ears and Seulgi stood there listening and watching like a being displaced from time, like something brought up from another side of life and given witness to this strange display of what she couldn't quite explain. It looked all like something fathomed out of the fevered mind of a career hedonist.

She took her bag off her shoulders and pried out her phone and checked the time and put it back. It was almost ten. She wanted already to leave. Somebody came past her and bumped by and she apologised very quietly into the nothingness of that space as if apologising to a ghost. There were maybe two hundred people crammed into the apartment. An apartment bigger than her house. Bigger than five of her houses. And more people in the corridors and more upstairs and on the twelfth floor. She could barely hear herself. Some of them watched her. Men eyed her, leered at her. Women spoke among themselves. Perhaps about her, perhaps not. It was growing dark outside but the sun had not yet set. Through the long glass sliders she could see it form a sort of distant halo in the membrane of the world. Like something slowly melting in the reaches of space. Like something confined to a dream.

They partied on. She walked about and she looked. Out onto the balcony and into the cold, shivering against herself. She asked people. Asked one woman leaning over the row of plants at the edge of the balcony, peering down into the absolute insignificance of Seoul as it now existed.

'Excuse me,' Seulgi said. The woman looked at her. She was maybe thirty and very pretty. She smiled.

'Hello,' she said.

'Do you know anyone called Irene?'

'Irene?'

'Yeah.'

'I don't think I know anyone called Irene. I think I'd remember if I did. That's a pretty name.'

She tried to stand straight and fell against the railing. Seulgi moved to hold her but she just giggled. Like a child. 'It's alright,' Seulgi said. 'Thank you anyway.'

On her way back inside the woman called out to her. 'I hope you find your friend,' she said. Seulgi opened the sliders and went in.

She had come a long way for this and she would not go home. It was not the physical distance nor the cost nor the ground covered that equated such a burden but something else, something greater and uncountable. Something on a very different level altogether. As if there existed some asset of the universe that had guided her to Irene knowing it meant something very important for the both of them. It was a party Irene had invited her to but it was something else, it was an offer of the unspoken and the unsaid that held in it some enormous weight.

She stood there for a while. Not knowing where to look. At the bar at the far end two men were clinking glasses. She had seen one of them earlier in the elevator. She looked back out at the sliding doors again. The sun was going down. Behind her the lights were going haywire in their configurations, all green and red and intermittent and repeating here and there across the ceiling and over the floor and between people and between the darkness. She stepped through into the light and went over to the bar and when the bartender came over she asked for a beer.

'We don't do beer,' he said.

'What do you do?'

'Not beer.'

'I'll have a whiskey.'

'Bourbon?'

'Sure.'

'How do you want it?'

'In a glass.'

He looked at her for a minute and then he laughed. 'Well,' he said. 'Alright.'

The music seemed to dip and rise and dip and rise. As if it were some undulating thing working in tandem with those that were dancing, as if they shared some stronger connection to it. Someone went stumbling through the hallway to her right and she watched for a minute bodies disappearing into the darker parts of the house. People materialising out of this distant past and out into the sordid light again. Like ghosts, or in the neon afterglow like hiccups seen on a grainy film, coming and going in shadow.

The man came back and pushed a glass in front of her. It wobbled a dark and thick auburn. 'How much?' she said. He looked at her and he was quiet. Then he said, 'You don't pay.'

'What do you mean I don't pay?'

'That's not how it works.'

She made to question him but he was already halfway to the other end of the bar and he did not look back. She tipped the bourbon up and inspected it. She had not drank bourbon more than two or three times in her life and she hated the taste of it. It tasted above her tax bracket. It tasted like Irene.

The two men at the bar had slunk off. A woman with blonde hair sat in their place and sipped lightly at a tall glass of something clear and bubbling. In the great and candid loudness of that place she looked like a mimeartist and she moved with a certain grace that was almost captivating. Seulgi studied her a moment. She studied the men in suits on the couch, the three women in lowcut red dresses moving with ease on the dancefloor, the woman with the pinned-up hair opening the sliding doors at the other end of the room, the man coming out of the bathroom rubbing at his nose and sniffing, the bartender pouring three strawberry ice daquiris with one hand. They all seemed to be interacting with the same alien tendencies, like beings from another world entirely, something so very lost on Seulgi, so very uncomfortable. She did not belong here among these people. She watched the bartender finish making his drinks and the woman sip at her champagne and she winced at the flicker of the dancelights and then if but for a moment she thought: I should just go home.

The bartender looked at her. It was too loud to hear but he seemed to be asking her a question. When he came closer she could hear that he said, 'Do you want another?'

Seulgi looked down at her glass. There was still a clear film of bourbon shuddering in the bottom. She held it up in the light and tipped it back and set the glass down on the table and grimaced. 'No,' he said. 'No. You're alright.'

Then she turned and walked away. She was almost at the door when she stopped. Someone laughed. The music was playing loud in her ears. Everything seemed to be moving all at once. Everything seemed to be slipping away. She looked back down the hallway. There the light petered away and people transpired out of the dark like memories and maybe just maybe Irene was there but what did it matter? What could the result possibly be? She had no right being here and Irene had no right inviting her. She thought for a minute about whether she would even recognise Irene's face. Perhaps she had already bumped into her somewhere between the lobby and the elevator and the balcony outside and the dancefloor, pushed past her with an awkward smile and a nod and a Sorry or Excuse me and gone their separate ways, like two ships in the night. But the notion of such a thing was childish and useless. She could trace the shape of Irene's jawline with her eyes closed. She could remember her even in dreams.

Seulgi looked at her phone. Just gone ten. Time felt like it was slipping away. It always did with Irene. She took one look back at the door and with her bag over one shoulder pushed along the hallway and into the dark of the house and turning she took the stairs two at a time.

There was a door on the landing. Inside seemed to contain some grander world yet something much the same. Like a box enclosing within something alive and vibrant and constantly in change. She put a hand on the knob and took a deep breath and turned and opened it and stepped in. Here were more people sat about on couches of plush black leather drinking from tall glasses and laughing and more dancing around varnished woodfloors and a bar on her right and the stink of champagne and the heady mix of cologne enough to make her head spin. She stood for a minute, peering into the chaos unfolding. The music was loud enough to hurt. Everywhere she turned people were dancing or laughing or holding on to each other or making out under the lighted arches or slinking off to the corners of the room or finding hallways darker yet and turning forbidden doors and disappearing. 

She pushed her way through to the dancefloor. Someone nudged her about. Someone spilt their drink on her arm and apologised profusely and Seulgi smiled and nodded and said It's okay and pushed past, clamouring for the veranda. The sliding doors were open already. All glass and a cool breeze. She stood in the doorway wiping the wine from her arm and then she looked up and out and at the girl stood at the end of the veranda with her back to Seulgi. She froze. The music ran under her feet and out and the lights trailed, evaporated behind her. People danced, laughed. Someone fell over. Seulgi stood there. The bourbon had already gone to her head. Part of it was telling her she was drunk and she was seeing things in that wishful manner that insobriety can often produce but she knew with absolute certainty that she was not seeing things and the woman out there on the veranda was Irene, her Irene.

For a while she just stood there, fixed between the outer cold and the inner pandemonium like a visitation, unable to move. Irene didn't turn around. Her hair was pinned in a neat ponytail and she wore a black back knit dress and she was leaning over the railing as if taking in the air. Seulgi watched her. It was very much Irene. She hadn't changed at all.

Slowly she stepped out. Her hands were trembling. She turned and closed the sliding door behind her and immediately all fell deathly quiet in such a manner she wished she had left them open. When she turned around Irene was looking at her.

'Seulgi,' she said. She was smiling ever so slightly.

'Hi.'

She expected Irene to say something but she didn't. She just stood there, her hands on the railing behind her, smiling gently. A soft wind was blowing. From there she could see the last of the sun melting away. They were so high up, so far away from anything at all. All of Seoul seemed like a castellation inkdried and printed into the seams of the world. Like an eternity captured in a moment. The music had been caught behind her, trapped behind the doors in a solitary silence that felt like forever. She stood there clutching the chain of her bag and pursing her lips.

'I saw you earlier,' Irene said.

'Where?'

'Down there. Asking about me.'

'Why didn't you say anything?'

'I was up here.'

'You could've shouted down.'

Irene smiled. That same delicate smirk. That ever-so familiar glint of mischief. 'I thought I'd make you wait.'

'Wait for what?'

'To find me.'

'What if I just went home?'

'Well.'

'Well what?'

Irene didn't say anything. She was looking around. As if there was something in the quiet between them that was interrupting her.

'I shouldn't have come,' Seulgi said. 'I didn't want to.'

'Why?'

'I don't fit in here.'

'Don't be silly.'

'I don't. This isn't my sort of scene.'

'Not your sort of scene.'

Seulgi shrugged. 'You know what I mean. I feel like an outsider.'

'You never used to have any trouble.'

'I always came with you, that's why.'

'Not always.'

'Always.'

Irene didn't reply. Seulgi nodded towards the sliding doors. There were people inside dancing in the neon. Like paperfolded figures in flitting shadow. Like waxworks seen in the shine of the bad glass. 'All this,' she said. 'All this was your scene. Your type of thing. I never fitted in. I was always the one standing at the edge acting all dumb and not saying anything.'

'You never complained.'

'Yeah, because I had you.'

Irene made a curt little nod of acknowledgement.

'Stop it,' Seulgi said.

'Stop what?'

'Stop that.'

'I'm not doing anything.'

'That little smirk. You always used to do it whenever you were satisfied with yourself.'

'I'm not doing anything.'

'I don't like it.'

'I'm seriously not doing anything.'

Seulgi turned back towards the doors.

'Wait,' Irene said. 'Seulgi.'

She turned again. Irene had stepped away from the railing. She seemed to be contemplating something. 'Just stay a while,' she said. 'Please?'

Seulgi was quiet a long time. Then she said, in a voice barely her own, 'Okay.'

'Want a drink?'

'No. I'm good.'

'Had one?'

Seulgi nodded. 'They don't do beer.'

'I know they don't do beer. You don't drink it anyway.'

'I do now.'

'No you don't.'

'Yes I do. I started drinking beer.'

'Why?'

Seulgi shrugged. Irene watched her with that same smile on her lips, that smile that told Seulgi everything and nothing, a smile she had seen so many thousands of times day in and day out for longer than she could remember. A smile she hated and loved, a smile that reminded her in equal measures of the good and the bad, that smile conjuring so many lost times, so many wasted days contemplating, looking back. When she saw that smile she remembered sitting by the beach with Irene laying beside her. She remembered drinking Martinis. She remembered telling Irene she never wanted to be without her. She remembered crying until her chest hurt and yelling and calling Irene names and Irene calling her names back and telling Irene she was a liar and she never wanted to see her again.

The good. The bad.

There was something in the way Irene looked at her that was inescapable. Something that convinced her maybe soulmates really did exist. If only in passing.

Irene smiled again. 'I'm glad you came,' she said.

'Are you?'

'Yeah.'

'Why did you invite me?'

'Why not?'

'Really?'

Irene gave a tilt of the head that was unreadable.

'I haven't heard from you in three years,' Seulgi said. 'Nothing. Not a word. Not even a happy birthday.'

'I know.'

'And then you message me out of the blue and invite me to this.'

'Yeah.'

'Didn't even say anything.'

'Right.'

'Didn't even tell me what it was.'

'No.'

'And you expected me to just snap at the opportunity. Of course you did.'

'Well.'

'Well what?'

'You showed up.'

'Yeah,' said Seulgi. 'I did.'

She shifted her bag. Inside they were still dancing. It was growing dark now. What lingered of the day was drifting away. 'I suppose you want to know why I showed up,' she said.

'No.'

'You don't want to know?'

'I don't care.'

'Don't be stupid.'

'I don't care,' Irene said again.

'You knew I'd show. You did, didn't you?'

Irene shrugged.

'You knew I wouldn't be able to ignore it.'

'I didn't know anything.'

At that Seulgi had to laugh. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and the wind pushed it right back. 'Why did you invite me?' she said.

'I don't know,' said Irene.

'Really? Is that the truth?'

'That's the truth.'

'I know you too well, Irene.'

'And?'

'And it's scares me that I think you're kind of telling the truth.'

'I am. I don't know why I invited you. I just had this impulse.'

'This impulse.'

Irene rubbed her left arm. 'I don't know,' she said. 'It sounds bad when I put it like that. But I don't mean it to be bad. I just really wanted to see you.'

'You really wanted to see me.'

Irene nodded. There was something so momentarily sincere in that gesture it was almost painful to witness.

'That the truth?'

'That's the truth,' Irene said.

'You could've text me. Or called.'

'I couldn't.'

'Yes you could.'

'You know what I'm like. I'd never be able to bring myself to do it.'

'So you invited me here.'

'I knew you'd come.'

'Like a lapdog,' Seulgi said.

Irene laughed dryly. 'Your words, not mine.'

'Is there something you want to tell me?'

'No,' Irene said. Her voice so quiet in that great space. There was no sun now. Just a small and placid darkness over Seoul. 'I just wanted to see you.'

Seulgi looked at her for a minute. As if she might elaborate on this but she didn't. She just stood awkwardly, almost childlike in her waiting, swaying gently. Seulgi ran a hand back through her hair. She was proud, always had been. And she would never admit how close she was to tears, to losing it all. Irene had not changed. She was still ever so beautiful, so very pale and sharpfaced and delicate. She could still trace the alabstrine lines of Irene's collarbones, her neck, her chest, the flush of her palely dolled cheeks, the sootblack piping of her eyes. She was still the same Irene. She was still so dangerously close to perfect.

'What am I doing here?' she said.

Irene smiled. Sometimes when she was content she would smile with her eyes closed, a sort of calmness at the world. This was one of those times. 'I don't know,' she said. 'But don't go. You're the only reason I'm here.'

'That's a lie.'

'And the free wine.'

'That's more like it,' Seulgi said.

'Stay a while?'

Seulgi looked about. They were dancing still, always dancing. And the lights were still dancing with them. And Seoul was dancing too. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I've got to get back.'

'No you don't.'

'How do you know?'

'What've you got to get back for?'

'I've got to do some watering.'

'Some watering.'

'Yeah.'

'What are you watering?'

'My cactus.'

'You're going to water your cactus.'

'Yeah. What's wrong with that?'

'You don't water cacti.'

'Is that true?'

Irene giggled. 'No. But if you had a cactus, you'd know that.'

'Maybe I just forgot,' said Seulgi.

'Come on,' Irene said. 'Just stay. You don't have to mingle with anyone.'

'I do because I know you will.'

'I won't. I promise. I don't want to anyway.'

'That's not like you.'

'I've changed.'

'Uh huh.'

'Seulgi.'

'What?'

'I miss you.'

She looked at Irene. Irene looking at her in turn. The glimmer of something hopeful and nostalgic in her glassy eyes. Eyes to swallow whole the night. To make it all go away. She didn't know what to say to that. She stood there trying to formulate some sort of coherent response and soon her bottom lip was trembling.

'Seulgi.'

'I miss you too.'

Irene smiled. Eyes closed.

'That doesn't mean anything,' Seulgi said. 'That's just the way people are. They miss things they lose. Whether they can help it or not. Whether it's healthy or not.'

'I know.'

'It doesn't mean anything.'

'I know.'

'I'm serious.'

'Seulgi. I know.'

'I just don't want you getting the wrong idea if I stay.'

'Sounds like you're trying to convince yourself more than me.'

'I am.'

'Seulgi.'

'What?'

'Don't overthink things.'

'I always overthink things.'

'I know,' Irene said, smiling.

You don't know anything about me, she wanted to say. You haven't known anything about me for three years. I'm a different person now. Completely different. Things change. But she looked at Irene and all that fell away. Things change, things remain the same.

'I need a drink,' she said.

'I'll get you one in a bit.'

'I'll go get one.'

'No,' Irene said. 'Wait.'

'Don't want to go back inside?'

'Not particularly.'

'You weren't kidding about not mixing.'

Irene shook her head. She looked almost gravely serious. 'Listen,' she said. 'About what happened between us.'

'Nothing happened between us.'

'Everything happened between us.'

Seulgi laughed. 'Yeah. Sure. But you know what I mean.'

'I just wanted to say- '

'Don't.'

You've had three years, she wanted to tell Irene. But no words escaped her. Just a soft hum at the base of .

'Seulgi.'

'What?'

Irene laughed.

'What?'

'You're doing that thing you do when you're mad,' Irene said.

'What?'

'Where you scrunch your face up. Your eyebrows kind of bunch together.'

'Really now.'

'It's cute.'

'Cute.'

'Yeah. Cute.'

They fell silent. As if both formulating words to say and finding nothing. Then Irene said, 'I just wanted to say, about what happened- '

'Please,' Seulgi said. 'Don't. It's in the past.'

'But we're in the present.'

'And it's in the past. Leave it there. Please.'

'Okay.'

'I mean it.'

'Okay. Okay.'

It felt very cold all of a sudden. As if all the heat in the universe had been away at that moment. Seulgi ran a hand through her hair. She walked up to the railing and stood looking out. She knew Irene was watching her but she would not look back, would not peer into that devastating visage. That gaze that would capture her again so utterly. 'It's cold tonight,' she said with a sigh.

'Yeah. But beautiful.'

'It was earlier.'

'It still is.'

'You always liked it at night.'

'It's always calmer,' Irene said. Seulgi turned and she was there beside her at the railing, peering out at the lamplit night, the interminable hum of the streets so far below running with the music, the silhouettes on ghosts dancing in the corner of her eye, and Irene's face there so prominent, so beautiful, so arresting. Her own private Medusa. It hurt to look and it hurt to turn away.

'Helps me think,' said Irene.

'Yeah.'

Irene turned to her and smiled. 'You're thinking of something,' she said.

'No I'm not.'

'You are.'

'I'm thinking of a lot of things.'

'Like what.'

Seulgi shrugged. It was coming in cold again. She could see the strobelights in the danceroom flicker behind them. 'I don't know,' she said. 'About the way things are. Way things have been.'

'Right.'

Seulgi moved to speak but nothing came out. She found there was nothing much she could articulate without sounding profoundly inconsequential. Irene was biting her lip.

'I really did miss you, you know,' she said.

'Yeah. I know.'

'We had something good, Seulgi.'

'We did.'

'Something really good.'

Seulgi looked out. The spires of the officeblocks coagulating in the eye of the moon. Already the sky was full of stars. 'Some things aren't meant to last forever,' she said.

'Some things are.'

'Some things can be good for a short time.'

Irene smiled that same content smile. 'The star that burns twice as bright.'

'Burns half as long.'

'We burned bright, didn't we?'

Seulgi smiled. There were tears in her eyes. 'We did alright for ourselves,' she said.

'I still love you, you know?'

'Yeah.'

'I think a small part of me always will, in some way. Nothing will ever take that away from me. No matter what.'

'I know.'

'Seulgi. Seulgi.'

Seulgi looked at her. Her glassy wobbling eyes. Her smile full of melancholy. She could hear the wayward bloodbeat of her own heart going rapid in her chest. Could smell the lemon musk of Irene's perfume in the cool air.

'I'm glad you came.'

Seulgi just smiled. She turned out again to the darkness. Stars lay sprent across the cosmos like dice thrown from a cup. The moon seemed to pulse against the sky.

'It's nights like these I miss the most,' she said.

'Me too.'

'Nights like these I'll miss the most.'

'You don't have to.'

'What was it we said again? Stars that burn twice as bright.'

Irene smiled a weary smile. 'Burn half as long.'

'Yeah. I need a drink.'

'I'll get you one.'

'No. It's okay. I'll go alone.'

'You sure?'

Seulgi nodded. But she did not move for a long time nor did Irene and they were both silent and both almost crying. Beside them the night danced on. Dancing, dancing. Seulgi made for the door. When she was almost across the full length of the veranda Irene called out to her and she turned back. She looked so small there, so insignificant. The neon light twisting and distorting on her pale and ephemeral face.

'Yeah?' Seulgi said.

'Whatever happens tonight, don't let me go tomorrow.'

Seulgi just smiled. For what felt like forever she just stood there. So many lifetimes come between them in that fleeting moment. So many could-have-beens and never-weres. Never-haves. She stood in the cold and smiling and Irene smiled back through wet eyes and she nodded and said nothing. Then like something formed entirely out of the night she was gone, lost again in the endless dancing, dancing, dancing.