Cherry Wine

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“Where is she?

The girl who is just like me.

I heard she was hiding,

Somewhere I can't see."

There were things of the world Kang Seulgi did not understand and things she thought she never would.

Of these things were ephemeral worries, problems that were trivial. She wondered whether she would ever know what possessed people to spit on the sidewalk or not wash their hands after using the toilet or cough without putting a hand over their mouth. She wondered why people would patently and almost ritualistically refuse to step on the cracks in the pavement as if such superstitions were alarmingly real. She wondered on many things and in all this time spent alone nothing ever seemed to become clearer. In the winter when it rained and the nights grew long she would sit by the window of her apartment and watch the rain run over everything and watch the mess it made of the world. Pale streaks on dustmottled glass. Cars passed in silent slishes. Lights in the rainfall swelled like bokeh. Things out there seemed no simpler. No closer to being figured out. When the nights grew longer still she would sip hot chocolate and savour the sweetness and begin to think that perhaps it was better that way. Perhaps there was reason in the absence of reason.

It was every evening after work that she would stop and think by the forked avenue four streets from the bus stop. Where she would savour the little things. Small things other people wouldn’t ever notice or pay attention to. The minutia of life. From under the awnings watching the autumn rain run in the gutters, the dappled glint on the shopwindows across the street. In winter the snowdrops faintly falling, their curious descents unmarked. On the roads and then gone. Spring, the cherryblossoms turning in the pale corridors of light in the park. And then summer. It became over time a sort of daily ceremony to her. There were places she wanted to be and every one of them seemed out of reach. And these places were not so much physical destinations as journeys foreign and unfamiliar to her. As if she longed to know where she would end up but held no knowledge of how to get there or even where that place in her life was, distant reflections on troubled water. And it was impossible to see through it or seemed such the same.

It was seven thirty on a humid day in June when she stood by the two branching avenues and for the first time in as long as she could remember chose neither. She looked like something out of an old movie, posted up on the street corner with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her coat and her face to the sun with a pained wince. There was a slight failing light left and it was very beautiful. Far to the east beyond the shopwindows and over the dimming streets the rosepink flues of the day fell creased into the clouds and disappeared. A dwindling sunset. You could almost smell the heat. Could almost reach out and touch it.

Standing there Seulgi thought about many things. In the way dreamers usually do she imagined herself in scenarios whereby she was more fulfilled than she truly was, dreamt visions of herself at warm barbeques in backyards or enjoying tall strawberry daquiris on cooling sunkissed beaches or occasionally at expensive restaurants either by herself or with some other imagined person equally distant and unfocused and sipping chilled wine freshly poured from the bottle. Summer was best for these momentary illusions because summer was the realest season, the most proper alighting of the senses. Everything had an olfactory tangibility to it that no other time of the year could match. She thought about her job and how that bachelor’s degree in archaeology had done nothing to get her that job because it was a nine-to-six deal at a burger joint thirty minutes from her house by bus and about an hour on foot, which she often did and not for the exercise. She thought about where she would be twelve months from now at twenty-six. Then she thought about two years and five and fifteen. Who knows. The world works in mysterious ways. It was only the smell of grilled pork down the street that broke her from such a hopeless trance.

She shuffled along the avenue almost hopeless in contention and wondering how long it would be before the streetlamps came on and the light was entirely artificial. She had been here before. Seoul was not unusual to her. But there at that time with the sun cast low against her back it all seemed strangely different, somehow unshapen and reformed in different patterns and conflagrations, streets distorted in the afterglow and places she didn’t recognise and alien signs everywhere. The bus stop was somewhere far away. Her house was east of her and she stopped for a minute to soak in the timbre of sound and then continued westward down side streets like a lost pilgrim.

About fifteen minutes later something her mother had told her on the day she had moved into her university dorm came into her head. It was: Do what makes you happy and you will never work a day in your life.

It had taken Seulgi almost ten minutes to stop crying once her mother had unpacked the car and driven off. It took her two hours to realise her mother hadn’t made that up at all. She’d just read it online somewhere. Everyone said it.

And yet the weight it carried even in her absence was greater than Seulgi had expected. She took it with her. It had been the first semester of her freshman year and then the rest of the year too. Then it had been the following two years. It had been there with her when she stood on stage at her graduation ceremony with her certificate in hand and a beaming smile on her face and her mom stood somewhere among the dim crowd clapping with a smile of her own. Do what makes you happy and you will never work a day in your life. There were other things she had said but none as effortlessly powerful and none as lasting. Because there was something in that one phrase that allowed it to be applied to anything in Seulgi’s life and she knew it. Work, love, ambitions, passions. Put your heart into something and it will give you everything in return. But two years at a restaurant that only sold burgers fries and room-temperature Cokes had numbed the effectiveness of that platitude somewhat.

By the time she stopped walking it was almost half past eight. She stood leaning against a window shutter trying her best to look like she knew what she was doing. Perhaps nobody cared, but it was the thought of people caring that pushed her to moderate action. The cars that passed in long headlight beams cut up the scarlet dark like vivid hallucinations. By now the streetlamps were on in full. She took one good look around and realised she didn’t quite know where she was. Everything appeared familiar and yet distinctly foreign to her. Across the street the only shops not already closed for the night were two restaurants on the corner and a 7-Eleven and further up a small and homelylooking wine shop with the name printed in bold pink English that read: Once Upon A Vine.

For a long time Seulgi just stood there. Cars passed and she stood. She put her hands in her pockets and took them out and put them back again. No longer was it humid or even warm. Nobody even noticed her there. A couple guys going past smoking cigarettes. A lady with a sour scowl in a business suit warbling into her phone. Two brief sirens somewhere distant. Seulgi checked her phone. It had just gone half eight. She took one more look down the street and crossed in a traffic lull and made for the wine shop.

She stood by the glass a moment trying to peer in and almost immediately realised how it must look from the inside and stopped again. The streetlight cast her down pale and looking at odds with herself by her lonesome. She pushed the door in and entered to the faint tringing chime of a doorbell overhead and the smell of rosemary. It looked a lot bigger on the inside. Something about it was oddly calming in an instant. The shelves were of a wood almost crimson and filled with winebottles at odd angles protruding. Down the centre ran an impressive wine rack and a table stacked with bottles glittering in the warm orange light. The floor was a clear lilywhite marble and the counter to her right upon immediate entry was the same darkly cured wood, the same wood shelf behind and to the back a single door. On the table sat an oldfashioned till and a little bell to ring and three incense sticks slowly smouldering in a brass vase and a dogeared paperback copy of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood with the red cover faded and a crease down the spine.

Seulgi waited a moment by the door in awkward silence. There was faint music playing from the storeroom behind the counter, something with a lilt of electric guitars and oddly pleasing. A thin coil of smoke drew up from the incense sticks and vanished in the moteless light. She stood by the counter and looked about. It was then she realised there were no other customers and she didn’t quite know why she was there anyway. She rang the bell and waited and rang it again, a small and tinny instrument that was half broken and barely made a sound. The storeroom door was already ajar and when it opened further a small woman stepped out and smiled and pushed the hair out of her face with a look Seulgi found strangely unreal. She wore a black jacket over a mustardcoloured shirt and black jeans and she was very pale and gorgeous and that much was immediately obvious. When she smiled again in apology Seulgi took a moment to look at her properly.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Didn’t hear you the first time. Need to get this thing fixed.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Seulgi, not knowing what else to say.

The woman looked at her with a sort of curious temperament. As if she too were taking measure of Seulgi as Seulgi had been her. She nodded to nothing in particular and offered another pleasing smile that had Seulgi’s heart stuttering.

‘What can I help you with today?’ she said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Anything in particular?’

‘I don’t know,’ Seulgi said again.

‘Well, what did you come looking for?’

‘I don’t know that either. Sorry. I just came to look around.’

‘To browse.’

‘Guess so, yeah.’

'Well,' the woman said. She leant her arms on the desk and smiled so that Seulgi could see her truly again in the warm amber light. She looked almost porcelain. Her hair was a jet black and halfway down her back and in her leather jacket she had a style that defined effortless grace.

‘Sorry,’ Seulgi said again.

‘For what?’

‘Don’t know. Figured I should just say it for coming in here and wasting your time.’

The woman smiled. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Time spent having fun is time not wasted.’

She looked at Seulgi and her smile dropped into a scowl that was almost comical. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Did I say something?’

‘No. No, it’s just- never mind.’

‘What?’

‘That sounded like something my mom used to say to me.’

‘What did?’

‘The thing about time spent having fun or whatever.’

‘It’s a pretty common saying.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said, scratching her head. ‘I guess it is.’

‘So can I help you with anything?’

‘I could do with some suggestions, I guess. If that’s not too much to ask, I mean. I mean, I just came in here because it looked cute. And I liked the name.’

The woman’s face warmed again. ‘The shop name?’

‘Yeah. Once Upon A Vine. Cute. Like a play on words, right?’

‘Yeah. I don’t get many people talking about it. I guess it’s because it’s English, and most people just put a couple English words on their t-shirts or posters or menus or whatever to sound cool even if they don’t know what it all means. But I wanted something with a bit of a kick.’

‘It’s cute. Has a nice ring to it.’

‘Thanks,’ the woman said. She ran a hand through her hair and looked at Seulgi for a second or five too long. ‘About that wine.’

‘Yeah. I’m not being too much of a nuisance, am I?’

‘Course not. It’s my job to help customers. You got any preferences?’

‘No. At least, I don’t think so. Sorry, I don’t know anything about wine. I just came in here on a whim.’

‘Sometimes that’s the best.’

‘Guess so,’ Seulgi said with a wistful smile. She looked at the brass bowl and nodded. ‘Are those incense sticks?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Rosemary?’

‘How’d you know?’

‘My mom used to put them around the house all the time. She used to say it helped with concentration and mental clarity.’

‘I just like them because they smell nice.’

Seulgi laughed. ‘Fair play,’ she said. ‘I think I’d recognise that smell in my sleep.’ She took a moment to think of what to say next and ended with: ‘Is this your place?’

‘What? The shop?’

‘Yeah.’

The woman nodded. ‘I bought it a few years ago and turned it into what it is now,’ she said. ‘Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.’

‘That’s so cool.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Seriously.’

‘Have you never seen it before?’

‘Probably,’ Seulgi said. ‘But I probably paid no attention to it. No offence, of course.’

‘None taken.’

‘But I don’t pay attention to much. Kind of a character flaw, I suppose.’

The woman giggled in a way that had Seulgi wishing she could capture it and listen to it again. The sharpest of cheekbones, the straightest of smiles. A hand running through her hair and then her fingers rapping lightly on the wood of the countertop as if she had never been laughing at all. ‘So,’ she said, ‘what sort of wines do you like? Cherry, red, white?’

‘Any. I don’t mind. I don’t drink enough wine to really have any preferences. I’m kind of a total newbie.’

‘As in, you’ve never drank it before?’

‘As in, the only time I drank it was at uni when I bought the box wine off the shelf for, like, five thousand won. And that was only because it was the cheapest way to get wasted.’

‘Wow.’

‘Yeah. Not the best thing to admit around someone who owns a wine shop, right?’

‘I don’t know if I can deal with a customer like that,’ the woman said.

‘Sorry.’

‘Anyway, what’s your budget?’

‘My budget? Oh, for wine. I don’t know. Mid-range, I suppose? Sorry, I’ve no idea. I don’t even know what mid-range is. I don’t know why I said it. But yeah.’

The woman looked at her for a moment with a wry and curious smile. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I think I can work with that. Wait here. I’ll be right back.’

She disappeared into the storeroom before Seulgi could say anything else. While she was alone she tried to formulate possible strands of conversation and came up empty. She didn’t know where she was or what she was doing or whether she wanted a bottle of wine at all. She didn’t know what time it was or when the bus would stop running either. She knew only that the woman behind the counter was far too pretty to be sensible and had a voice like warm chocolate and a smile so very captive. The door remained ajar and Seulgi remained with her hands idly fondling the brass bowl for a couple more minutes. When the woman came back out it was with a carrycrate of wine bottles four of which she set up on the countertop in a row like carnival ornaments.

‘Okay,’ she said. She turned the labels out to Seulgi as if they were items on display that she would be familiar with. The first was a bottle with a scarlet tint and a red twist cap. ‘This is a Fullerton red,’ she said. ‘Pinot noir, to be exact. Three Otters. Amazing taste for the price, like fresh cherries and just a tang of liquorice. Got to be one of my cheap favourites.’

Seulgi looked at it. The woman modelled the second bottle, darker and taller and with a thin neck. ‘This is a Chianti Classico, a modern Riserva red.’

‘I don’t know what any of that means.’

‘It’s just the brand of red wine, don’t worry.’

‘What’s it like? Taste-wise, I mean.’

‘Very tart and rich and a bit wild.’

‘Wild?’

‘Think roasted plums and raspberries. Even a little hint of tobacco. It’s a spicy one.’

'That just sounds like you're making things up.'

'Oh, it gets wilder than this. Clearly you've never had anything serious to drink.'

Seulgi just looked at her. It was clear from the glint in her brown eyes and the glow of her pale skin that she enjoyed talking about wine a great deal. As if such wasn’t obvious before. The woman pointed to a third bottle. It was a wide goldcoloured bottle with a plum neck. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is a Faive. Nino Franco, Italian made. One of the best Proseccos you could ever get for this price. Tastes like fruit salad. Like apples and strawberries and a bit of lime. I love it.’

‘What about this one?’ Seulgi asked, pointing to the last bottle.

‘This is one of the newest ones I’ve got in stock. It’s a 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon from Mayacamas.’

She looked at Seulgi and as if realising Seulgi had understood none of it continued anyway. ‘One of my absolute favourites right now. You know this first one I mentioned? With the cherries and fruit and liquorice taste?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s like that, but everything’s so much richer and fuller and you get this amazing nuance of herbs in there. And it smells great. Although, give it fifteen years and it’ll be even better.’

‘Fifteen years?’

‘Yeah. Just throw it in the cellar and let it age a bit. I can see this being a real sleeper hit in a decade or so.'

'I honestly can't tell if you're making fun of me or not.'

'What? No. I mean it. Have you never heard the saying Aging like Wine?'

'Well, yeah. But I thought it was just that, you know?'

'What?'

'A saying.'

'Where do you think sayings come from?'

Seulgi thought about it for a moment. Then she said: 'I have absolutely no idea.'

'Well, they come from the truth. Seriously, you leave this thing a good decade and you've got yourself a seriously puncher on your hands. A real treat for any occasion.' She looked at Seulgi again and dipped her head a slight in embarrassment. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I get carried away sometimes.’

‘It’s okay. Makes sense. Are all of these foreign?’

‘Yeah. Mostly from Italy.’

‘Do you get all of your wines from abroad?’

‘Not all of them, but a lot, yeah. Europe just has better vineyards.’

‘Must cost a small fortune.’

‘I make do,’ the woman said with a smile. ‘So, are you interested?’

‘How much do they cost?’

She pointed to the first three. ‘These are all about the same price, forty thousand won.’

‘And this one?’

‘A hundred and forty.’

‘No thanks,’ Seulgi said. ‘I don’t think I’m that much of a wine lover at this point. Not to be rude or anything. Sorry.’

‘That’s not rude.’

‘But those others are within my budget.’

‘You fancy tasting them?’

‘Am I allowed?’

‘Sure.’

‘But what if I don’t want them then? I mean-’

‘Don’t sweat it,’ the woman said. ‘This is what these are for. For people to taste. Otherwise they wouldn’t know what they liked, unless they’d specifically come for a certain wine.’

‘Do people do that? Come for a certain wine, I mean.’

‘Oh, yeah. Mostly the older stuff I’ve got imported from France and Tuscany. Anyway, you want a taste?’

‘How about that one?’ Seulgi said, pointing to the first bottle. The woman reached under the desk and took a wine glass and unscrewed the cap on the first bottle and poured a slim helping into the glass. She held it up in the light and gave it a shake and held it out for Seulgi. ‘There you go,’ she said.

Seulgi took the glass and sniffed at it. It smelt just like the woman had described, of cherries and liquorice. She held it to her lips and drank it down with a slight grimace that had the woman laughing.

‘You’re not supposed to do it like that.’

‘What?’ Seulgi said.

‘You’re meant to keep it in your mouth a while. To let it settle. That’s how you get the best taste out of it, once your mouth has become accustomed to it. But how was it anyway? Any good?’

‘I like it, yeah.’

‘Like?’

‘I mean, you were right. Cherries. And I like cherries.’

‘You didn’t look like you were enjoying it.’

‘I just don’t drink enough wine, is all.’

‘What about when you go out for meals?’

‘I don’t usually go out for meals.’

‘And what about when you do, though?’

‘I usually just have a sparkling lemonade.’

The woman giggled again. In the dim light they shared a glance that Seulgi couldn’t quite get a proper read on. Outside the world had dimmed to nothing but streetlamps and car headbeams. ‘So,’ the woman said, her voice low and lovely, ‘do you want this one?’

‘Sure. Thanks.’

She took the bottle and screwed the cap back on and put the other bottles in the carrycrate. ‘Are you paying by cash or card?’ she said without looking back at Seulgi.’

‘. I totally forgot.’

The woman stopped. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Can’t pay?’

‘No, it’s not that. I just totally forgot I’d have to pay for it, you know? Not in a rude way or anything. But card, I guess.’

‘You’re funny,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

When she came back a second time from the storeroom it was without anything in her hands and with a look of pre-emptive apology on her face. She stood a moment behind the counter and shrugged. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Really sorry about this.’

‘About what?’

‘I kinda forgot we’re all out of the one you wanted. It’s one of the ones I’ve been meaning to get for a while now, but no one’s wanted it, so I just forgot about it.’

‘Oh,’ Seulgi said. ‘That’s okay. Thanks for looking.’

The silence following was almost disconcerting. She stood with her hands in her pockets trying to formulate something else to say. It was strange in a way that she couldn’t explain. How the dark of the evening and the absence of the buses running meant nothing to her. Just standing there with the radio playing faintly from the backroom. Smell of rosemary receding. The woman looked at her and dipped her head and looked at her again. ‘I could let you know when it’s in,’ she said. ‘Probably the end of the week. Or maybe Saturday. But it won’t be long, I know that. I could keep you updated if you wanted.’

‘Sure,’ Seulgi said without thinking. Perhaps it was the thought of the wine or perhaps something else. Likely that.

‘Can I take your number or something? Or you name. Or both.’

‘Seulgi. Kang Seulgi.’

The woman took a little notepad from under the desk and the stub of a pencil and scrawled it down and underneath it Seulgi’s phone number with a little star next to it. ‘I’ll text you when I get it in. If that’s okay with you, I mean.’

‘Yeah. Fine by me.’

‘Great. Sorry about that again.’

‘It’s okay,’ Seulgi said. She stood there in the silence just thinking. The woman smiled and she smiled back. ‘Well. I guess I should be going. I think I’ve missed the bus.’

‘Sorry about that.’

‘It’s not your fault. Thanks for introducing me to wine and stuff. It’s like a whole new world.’

‘You’re very welcome,’ the woman said with another faint smile. When Seulgi by the front door she stopped with her hand on the frame and turned and with a moment of hesitation said, ‘I didn’t get your name.’

‘Why do you need my name?’

‘I don’t. I just figured, you know.’

And there was that same smile again. That lightning in a bottle, a capsule of perfect time. ‘Irene,’ the woman said. ‘Name’s Irene.’

‘Nice to meet you, Irene.’

‘Yeah. You too, Seulgi.’