Midnight Moon

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"You with the sad smile, don't lose your courage,

Dance in the high tide, and don't be worried."

It wasn’t until Friday evening that she thought about telling Seulgi, which was strange. Seulgi was usually the first person she would turn to for anything, and perhaps this was no different, because the truth was she had told nobody about Joohyun. What was there to tell? They were friends at best and likely in all reality little more than strangers. But sitting there in her apartment alone and silent Wendy had to fight back a smile at the thought of her.

She lay on her bed and closed her eyes and tried to sleep and for a long time could not. Thinking partly about Joohyun and partly about what tomorrow held in store for her. The bar was a small and smokylooking place not far from her apartment and perhaps that was worse because the more intimate it was the more room for criticism, the easier to pick out disapproving faces and wary glances from members of the crowd. Her hands were trembling. Even there, alone in the dark, listening to the clock in the livingroom, did she start thinking about alternatives. Ways to excuse herself from the performance. How many more family emergencies could she conjure up? How many would she allow herself?

Instead she slept it off. Yet when she awoke in the morning her hands were still shaking and she had bitten her lip in the night and it tasted of blood and all she wanted to do was lay there and sleep away the day and the night and perhaps another ten days, too. It wasn’t the thought of performing that kept her from stirring. Simply it was the thought of doing anything, the overwhelming act of something. Motion of any kind was a Herculean task. She lay there wrapped in her covers thinking about nothing until the afternoon. When she finally rose and forced herself to shower and change into suitable clothes it was almost five PM.

Half an hour later her phone hummed on the table. It was a single text from a number she didn’t recognise. It said:

Hey, are you still on for tonight? – Joohyun 😊

She thumbed her lockscreen and typed a reply that said yes she was and she was smiling for no good reason at all. Thinking first: Maybe I can do this after all. Then sitting on the end of her bed catching her breath with her head between her knees telling herself not to be so stupid. Optimism was for the misguided and the naïve and this was the real world. Cold hands and a cold heart. But by half past six she was outside the bar in her jacket, thermos in one hand and guitar case in the other, fighting back the bitter air and warming herself and looking around and through the warp of the glass into the smokiness of the room and telling herself again that perhaps she could do it after all. It wouldn’t take much, would it?

She went in and up to the bar. Nobody was watching her but she thought they were, as she often did, a trick of the mind convincing her that she was disliked everywhere she went. That people only tolerated her in passing. The Styrofoam cup in her hand was vodka. Her breath smelt a slight of it. She smiled as best she could at the bartender and when he came over she said, ‘Can I talk to the manager, please? My name’s Wendy. I’m supposed to be performing tonight.’

He looked at her as if he had no idea what she was talking about. Then he pointed to the back of the room, beyond the small stage and the pale floodlights, through a black curtain. ‘Two doors down on the left,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

She knocked and waited. Trying to calm herself down. She was very much aware that she was sweating and there was nothing to be done about it. He opened the door and looked at her and smiled and said, ‘You must be Wendy?’

‘Yeah. Sorry if I’m late.’

‘You’re not late,’ he said. He let her into the room and told her everything the email had told her. She could play a forty-minute set and however many songs she liked, to her own liking. Then he passed her an envelope full of money and smiled and she had to try impossibly hard to stop her hand from shaking when she took it from him. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘You’re expected on in about fifteen minutes.’

‘Okay. Thank you.’

When he was gone she set her guitar case down on the floor and took out her guitar and set it on the table beside her. The room was small and quiet. People outside much louder. Thinking: I wish Seulgi were here.

She drank about half of the vodka with a grimace and almost threw up and forced down another mouthful. Knowing that it might not even help. It might make things worse. But it might make them better. At one minute before seven she went on out into the hallway and through to the main room and up onto the stage. A single stool and a single spotlight and the dark of the bar and darker still the faces of the people in the back. Joohyun was among them. In the low and dim light Wendy could make her out only barely at the rear of the room, sat alone at one of the table booths with a beer in front of her.

She sat with the guitar neatly in her lap. She wasn’t crying but her lips were quivering and her stomach felt like ice and it hurt to move or to swallow her saliva and her fingers felt cold and numb and useless. The cup of vodka was still in the room backstage. Everything fell deathly quiet. She took one more look at Joohyun and closed her eyes and began to play and sing. After the first song she waited for applause that never came. The second song was an airy ballad in English that went:

You are my light,

Dark cities, you fill the loss of the day,

You are my love,

Radiant and pretty, over seas

You find ways of bringing hope,

The lonely hours, gloom of night

She played from another world, another universe of her own design where she and she alone existed with her guitar and her voice and nothing else. Her final song was an old song she had learnt from her parents that reminded her of a time long ago. When she was finished she said very softly, ‘Thank you.’

It was only a moment before the room broke out into applause. She bowed and smiled and would not look back out at the collective of clapping hands because she was almost crying and she could barely walk into the back of her own accord. She set her guitar down in the case with the grace and caution of someone who believed it their only possession in the world. Her breath stank of vodka. Five minutes later the manager knocked and entered and smiled at her and said, ‘That was a great performance. Thank you for coming tonight.’

‘Thank you for giving me the opportunity. Really.’

‘Are you interested in performing again anytime soon?’

She forced a smile. ‘I’d love to,’ she said.

‘I’ll get in contact with you by email if anything comes up. Do you want a drink or anything from the bar?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thanks again.’

When she was alone she allowed herself to break down. There were no tears. Only a wretched sort of tension that constricted her chest and slowed her breathing to a crawl and had her holding onto the edge of the table as if she might fall otherwise. Her teeth were chattering. First thinking of Seulgi and then Joohyun for whatever reason. It was almost half past seven when she hefted up the guitar case and tossed the cup of vodka into the trash and went out through the front door and into the bitter and unwelcoming cold of the night.

‘Hey stranger.’

She looked at Joohyun. She was stood just around the side of the door leaning against the wall with her arms folded for warmth and she smiled at Wendy and Wendy had to smile back. ‘Hi,’ she said.

‘That was amazing. Absolutely amazing. Your voice is just…wow. I’ve never heard anything like it.’

‘It was okay.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Thanks for coming tonight,’ Wendy said.

‘I told you I would. I’m glad I did, too.’

‘Me too. I mean…you know.’

Joohyun smiled again. The silence they shared in was comfortable in what it said and what it opted to avoid. She shifted away from the wall and said in a quiet voice, ‘Do you want to go for a walk or something?’

‘Sure. Where?’

‘You could walk me back to my place. It’s not far from here.’

‘Okay.’

‘A friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go to a party with her tonight.’

‘Yeah?’

Joohyun nodded. ‘The one I work with at Coffee King. You might have seen her.’

‘About your height? Looks quite young?’

‘Yeah. Yeri. Seems all she ever does is party. But I wanted to come here instead. Glad I did.’

‘Me too,’ said Wendy, smiling a slight.

They walked back in quiet. One not knowing what to say and the other not knowing how to explain what she did want to say. Wendy with her hands in her jacket pocket and not because of the cold. The night lay sprent with so many stars they looked like Braille and a coinlike moon hung in a pale circle and it was such that should no moon ever shine again Wendy would not be all that disappointed at its exit. It was almost half an hour until Joohyun stopped outside the doors of a tall apartment block somewhere in central Myeongdong and said, ‘I live here. Second floor.’

‘Okay,’ Wendy said. She stood there with her hands in her pockets. The cold made her hairs stand on end. Joohyun ran a hand through her hair and looked about and seeing that they were utterly alone she said, in a soft voice and with a hint of a smile, ‘Do you want to come in? It’s freezing out here. For a drink or something.’

‘Sure.’

She let Wendy into her apartment and locked the door behind her and threw her coat down on the back of one of the chairs in the livingroom. It was a small and homely little place. The kitchen and livingroom were all part of one contained space, no wall to divide them. On the left was the kitchen countertop and the cupboards and cooker and opposite was the livingroom table and three wooden chairs and a TV hanging on the wall above their heads when they sat. At the far end of the room was a single large window with the blinds pulled all the way up and a table with a reading lamp and a handful of pencils and stationery and notebooks. It smelt of lavender.

‘Do you want coffee?’ Joohyun said. ‘I’m pretty good at making coffee.’

‘Sure,’ Wendy said. She put her jacket on the back of the chair and sat at the table and studied the room while Joohyun set the pot to boil and poured out the coffee. It felt like a home from a movie. There was a sort of absent wanderlust to it, a place you could get lost in. The window in particular. Nights spent under the thin eye of the moon, a sallow knife of light. Joohyun sat opposite and passed her the coffee in a pink porcelain mug. For a long time Wendy just sat there. The coffee was hot and bitter and had a rich aftertaste of roasted beans and she could smell the lavender of the room in it.

‘So,’ Joohyun said.

‘So.’

‘Do you do that often? Perform, I mean.’

‘Tonight was my first time.’

‘Really?’

Wendy nodded. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘You look like you think I’m lying.’

‘No. It’s just, you looked like a natural up there. Really. It was amazing. I think I’m in love with your voice.’

‘I’m not a natural. Not at all.’

‘Well, you looked it.’

Wendy glanced down at her coffee. The steam rose and was lost. Chewing on her lip. Her life as far as she saw it was comprised of many moments stood on the very precipice of an impossible ledge, feet firmly teetering above the void, urging her to jump. No matter how small the ask. And this was one of those times. She set her coffee down and looked at Joohyun and back down at the table and said quietly, ‘I was meant to perform the other week. The one I invited you to.’

‘Yeah, you said.’

‘It wasn’t an emergency or something. Nothing like that. But I told the promoter it was. I said something had come up and I had to leave. That wasn’t the reason at all.’

Joohyun just looked at her. The understanding in her eyes was such that Wendy had to take a moment to compose herself. ‘I have this problem,’ she said. ‘Had it for about as long as I can remember, really. I have really bad problems with anxiety. It gets worse in social situations, but it’s never really good. It’s always just sort of there and I can’t make it go away. I’ve been medicated for it for years but all it really does is, well, stop the panic attacks. Or not even. Just makes them much rarer. But there are times it still gets to me. That was one of those times. I don’t know why. I never do. I think that’s the worst part. But I got backstage last week and I just clammed up. The whole world felt like it was shutting down around me. I couldn’t even breathe. So I went home and closed the door and called it a night. That’s the truth.’

Joohyun was quiet.

‘I don’t really tell people about this,’ Wendy said. ‘I think maybe a dozen people in my life know. And less actually take it seriously. There are four people in my life that I feel calm around, and only one of them isn’t related to me by blood. So, yeah. I try to stay positive, but it’s hard sometimes. It gets very hard. It’s nothing like most people think it is. That’s the worst part, to me at least.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, everyone is different. Whether it be depression or anxiety or anything else – no two diagnoses are the same. And people for whatever reason seem to often believe they are. So whenever people would see me laughing or cracking jokes at a party or something, they’d look at me and be like, “I thought she was supposed to have social anxiety? I thought she couldn’t talk to people in public. I thought she was depressed.” Well, a lot of the time I do struggle with that, but not always. And it goes deeper than that. A lot of my anxiety comes from my own thoughts when I’m alone. It just manifests itself more strongly when I’m around others.’

She looked down at her coffee in her hands and sipped it and continued. ‘I don’t know how to explain it better than that apart from using an example. When I was younger, it took me more than two years to use an ATM.’

‘To use an ATM? What do you mean?’

‘I couldn’t do it,’ Wendy said. ‘I know how that sounds. Trust me, I do. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even draw money out of my account, because every time I’d go near it or even think about it I’d clam up and start thinking to myself, “What if people think I’m an idiot? What if they’re talking about me? What if they’re laughing at me? I’m just a nuisance.” Stuff like that. And then I’d just shut myself off and start panicking and I’d break down crying and that would be the end of it. It took me more than two years to just go and stick my card in the machine and draw money out. I had to get my mom to do it for me. That’s what it is for me. That’s the worst part. How it affects my day-to-day life away from what people can see. And because of that, people seem to think I’m lying, or I’m exaggerating. But it is what it is, I suppose. I try and look at the positives. I think that’s the best way of going about it.’

Joohyun broke into a gentle and calming smile. ‘I never thought about it like that,’ she said. ‘I never really thought about it at all. Thank you for saying all that. Really.’

‘I don’t know why I did. Sorry. I feel like I’ve just dumped a load of random stuff about my life on you for no apparent reason, out of nowhere.’

‘It’s okay. I don’t mind.’

What she said next took a lot of courage and a little stupidity. ‘The only way I’ve ever found of properly dealing with it is with alcohol.’

‘With what? Your anxiety?’

‘Yeah,’ Wendy said. ‘Tonight I had, like, half a bottle of vodka before I went on stage. Smuggled it in a coffeecup. That’s why my breath smelt like vodka.’

‘I didn’t smell it.’

‘Well.’

‘Are you drunk?’ Joohyun asked.

‘Not really. Maybe a little tipsy, but it’s worn off now. But I guess it worked. Or something did. Because I never thought I’d be able to go out there and do it.’

‘I’m glad you did. Do it, I mean. Not, you know…get drunk. But your voice is just incredible. And the songs you sing are amazing, too.’

‘Thanks.’

She looked ready to say something else when her phone started humming on the table. For a moment she just looked at it. Then she picked it up and swiped the screen and held it to her ear and said, ‘Hello? Yeah. I know. Yeah. What, right now? Are you serious? Yeri— No, Yeri— Can’t you just— Right. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah, I will. No, just stay there. I’ll ring you when I’m on the way. Yeah. Okay.’

Joohyun put her phone in her pocket and glanced at Wendy apologetically. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry, but—’

‘You’ve got to go?’

‘Yeah. Yeri’s a little, uh, out of it.’

‘Drunk?’

‘Quite drunk. I’m really sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ Wendy said with a little laugh.

‘I feel like if I leave her she’ll probably end up in, like, Busan or something. Or in some random guy’s bed. Or girl’s, just as likely.’

‘It’s fine. I understand.’

‘We should do this again sometime.’

‘How about next Friday? I mean, I’ve got another performance next Friday. You could come to that if you want.’

The smile that crossed Joohyun’s face had her glowing. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’d love that.’