Body Gold

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"Before you came 'round,

My heart would never beat much faster,

Before you came 'round,

I was ready to slow down."

She was thinking about it all day Monday, but it wasn’t until she had almost finished did she finally lean against the doorframe and say to Yeri, ‘Hey, do you mind doing me a huge massive favour? I promise I’ll make it up to you.’

Yeri looked at her suspiciously from the washer at the back of the room. ‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Could you please cover my shift on Wednesday for a couple hours?’

‘What?’

‘I’m working two PM until close. Could you cover for me from, like, six PM or so? Please. I’ll make it up to you.’

‘What for?’

‘No reason.’

‘Really now.’

‘It’s confidential.’

Yeri laughed and turned the faucet off. ‘Is it now,’ she said. She looked at Joohyun again. ‘Well, whatever you say. I’ll cover it, sure.’

‘Thanks. Thank you so much.’

‘But you’ve got to cover for me some other time. Or come party with me.’

‘Sure. I will. Any time. Thank you.’

‘Uh huh,’ Yeri said with a grin.

Her week was the busiest she’d had in a long time. Perhaps there was something in the truth of this that was pathetic but if so Wendy didn’t have the time to sit and ponder on it. Monday consisted entirely of going back and forth at the CD printing place half an hour from her apartment by bus and working out the final cover art and packing it all up. Tuesday she spent twelve hours searching up the addresses of as many music critics and reviewers as she could find, as relevant or as insignificant as they might be, and posting off copies of her CD and attached letters to all of them. Knowing it was likely she would get a grand total of zero replies from anyone.

She knew also that if at any point in the process she would have had to come into personal contact with someone – by it on the phone or in person – there would be a good chance nobody would ever see or hear her EP at all. The internet was good. It allowed for a certain level of anonymity beyond the physical and the immediate. They knew her name and they knew a little bit about her from the letter she’d typed and printed out fifty or sixty times but they didn’t know anything else. They never saw the nerves or the panic attacks or the way she found it impossible to look anyone in the eye for more than a minute or so without breaking down entirely. Anyone but Seulgi and now Joohyun.

On Wednesday she waited. The irrational and impatient part of her brain was angry at having received no responses in twenty-four hours and it kept her restless during the early afternoon. She sat in her apartment practicing with her guitar, singing to herself in the cold isolation of her room, thinking about tonight. By five PM she had done nothing but check her emails and recheck them as if something might drop there suddenly but it did not. The day was growing red and raw and losing its light.

There were no texts on her phone. She knew Seulgi would be there and that was never in doubt. What remained murky and uncertain was her own participation. Something inside her had been calm and accepting of the weight of the world in her previous two performances and maybe it was the alcohol but maybe not. Perhaps instead it had been Joohyun. But tonight there was no Joohyun. So just before she left to catch the bus to Dangju she went into the kitchen and took her coffee thermos and a bottle of soju from the fridge and filled the thermos and took a long drink of it.

On the way out she rang Seulgi. It hummed three times and then Seulgi picked up and said thinly, ‘Hey, I’ve just finished work. I’ll be there by, like, ten past six. That’s not too late, is it?’

‘I won’t be on until seven, so you’re fine for time.’

‘Okay, cool. I’ll see you there.’

‘Yeah,’ Wendy said, taking another drink. She stood under the bus shelter with the guitar case in one hand and the thermos in the other like some sort of covert alcoholic from a more wretched existence. To the outside world she looked fine. Likely that was all that mattered.

‘Are you okay?’ Seulgi asked.

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘No reason. Just asking. I’ll see you in a bit. I can’t wait.’

‘Yeah. Me neither. See you then.’

When Seulgi had hung up Wendy allowed herself to sigh. It wasn’t that she was lying to Seulgi. She would never willingly do such a thing. More so that she had no idea whether she was okay or not. Her life was balanced as always on this precarious tightrope between feeling fine and watching it all fall apart in the blink of an eye. And this was no different. Six minutes later the bus arrived and she paid her fare and sat right at the back with the guitar case on the empty seat next to her. She watched the world pass her by too quickly. Everything was always moving too quickly. Time had no notion of patience as she saw it. Never could have.

It was just after six when she arrived. She went on through the front with the guitar case and into the main room. It was moderately busy as she entered. The bar was nothing she hadn’t seen before. There were tables with booths and plush benches all along the sides of the rooms and a small partition running down the middle and a pool table in the far back corner and a makeshift area at the front that had been fashioned into a sort of stage with a single microphone stand and a stool already waiting for her. She found Seulgi stood leaning against the counter at the bar on the right. She looked at Wendy and smiled and pulled her in for a hug and said, ‘There you are.’

‘Here I am.’

‘Are you ready?’

Wendy hid her shaking hands best she could. ‘As ready as I can be,’ she said.

‘What time are you on again? Seven?’

‘Yeah. But I need to go and warm up my voice and stuff. And make sure I’m ready.’

‘You’ll be fine.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Come and tell me if you’re not, yeah? Just come and fetch me. I’ll be right here all night. Unless you want me to sit down or anything.’

Wendy shook her head and smiled a soft and tired smile. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘You can stand wherever. Or sit. I don’t mind. I should go tell them I’m here.’

‘Sure. Good luck.’

‘Yeah,’ Wendy said. She went on through into the back and nobody stopped her. There was a door with a sign that said employees only and she opened it anyway and went through into a corridor with three rooms. The first was open when she stood in the doorway and coughed to get the attention of the man sat at the back reading something on a piece of paper on the desk. He was tall and slim and looked at her and stood and smiled. ‘Are you Wendy?’ he said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Nice to meet you.’

‘You too. Where should I put this?’ she said, nodding to the guitar case in her hand.

He motioned down the corridor. ‘Next room along. Are you ready to go on at seven?’

‘I will be. Thank you.’

‘No problem. Let me know if you need anything.’

‘Thank you,’ she said again. In the next room she closed the door behind her and set the guitar down in one of the armchairs. There was a desk with a mirror and a second chair and here she sat gazing in at herself like some foreign or alien form, unsure of how to comprehend it. It hurt to look at her there. Appearing so outwardly normal and knowing in her deeper heart she was not at all. She drank off half the thermos and set it on the desk and put her hands out in front of her face. They were both trembling uncontrollably. Her chest felt already as if it might collapse in on itself at any moment.

She thought about going back out and talking to Seulgi, but what would she say? What could Seulgi do? The calmness Seulgi provided was only a temporary balm. Seulgi couldn’t go on stage with her, or for her. It was Wendy alone that had to face the music. She wiped her eyes and tried an old trick her mom had taught her – counting her breathing as slow as possible, almost like counting sheep before bed. When that didn’t work she balled up her fists. And when that too failed she picked up the thermos and drank the rest of the soju with a grimace and set it back down and began to cry.

It was just before seven when the knock at the door shook her from her dreaming. She realised she had been crying a long time. And yet in the mirror she looked no worse than before. She thought perhaps this was to be her curse. To be so indistinguishably normal from an outside perspective. ‘Come in,’ she mumbled.

The promoter stood with his hand still on the doorknob and said with a polite smile, ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yeah. Give me a sec. I’ll just get my guitar.’

‘Okay. The mic’s all set up for you.’

She thanked him and he nodded and went on out. There were very few tears left to cry. She opened out the guitar case and tuned the neck a slight and took the longest and deepest breath of the night. Thinking first about Seulgi and then, strangely, about Joohyun. About Joohyun an awful lot.

They were all watching her as she went out and sat on the stool. The stage was no stage at all. Just a space at the head of the floor with a thin and narrow knife of spotlight from somewhere above. It smelt of smoke and the cold from outside and soju on her own breath and the room was spinning and not with the alcohol. All of it was too much and too sudden. There was the EP and her CDs and the critics she’d sent them to and the music itself and the people and they were all there watching her. Maybe they were the critics. More alike than she realised.

She glanced toward Seulgi at the bar and it did nothing to calm her nerves and only when she looked back at the body of the crowd did she realise Joohyun was sat there at one of the tables on the left. There was a soft drink in a glass beside her. She had her hair down loose past her shoulders and in the low light she looked like a dream and she smiled and gave a little thumbs up.

Wendy smiled back. It was a gesture that came to her out of nowhere. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her hands went to the guitar and as if on cue the room fell utterly quiet, like marionettes on command. Slowly she began to play. She played and they listened. As she sang and sang some more they listened entranced. She had an extraordinary voice. Even she was aware of that. The promoter had told her fifty minutes for her set. Wendy played five folk songs in Korean and followed them with a guitarless ballad and then an English poprock track in acoustic that went:

We couldn’t turn around,

‘Til we were upside down,

I’ll be the bad guy now,

But know I ain’t too proud

The end of the verse was a belt that had the crowd momentarily stunned. Her hands moved effortlessly on the strings. In the chorus she sang:

Seasons change and our love went cold,

Feed the flame ‘cause we can’t let go,

Run away, but we’re running in circles,

Run away, run away.

She played on until she had exhausted those fifty minutes and then she played one more as an encore to a round of applause. When she was finished she just sat there for a while. She would not look anywhere but at Joohyun, smile so bright she could have searched it out even in total darkness, clapping all the while. When eventually Wendy stood and bowed and went into the back she was smiling herself. She found the promoter in the corridor with his arms folded. He said, ‘That was really great. Thank you for coming tonight.’

‘Thank you.’

He asked if she would like to perform again and she said that maybe she would. Ten minutes later with her guitar in the case she went out into the main room. Seulgi was still at the bar. She turned to Wendy and smiled and held up her drink and said, ‘That was incredible! Seriously so good. Like, so good. Your voice is just…you know what I think about your voice. You don’t need me to tell you again.’

‘Yeah. Thanks.’

‘What? What’s up?’

Wendy was looking to the side. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet,’ she said with a little hesitation.

‘What?’

She waved over at Joohyun. Seulgi turned in time to see her standing there behind them, unsure of what to do with herself. ‘Seulgi,’ said Wendy, ‘this is Joohyun. Joohyun, this is Seulgi, my best friend.’

‘Hi,’ Joohyun said.

‘Hey,’ said Seulgi. ‘Nice to meet you. Are you a friend of Seungwan’s?’

‘Seungwan?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She is,’ said Wendy. ‘I thought you were working late tonight.’

Joohyun gave a shy and disarming shrug. ‘I thought I was,’ she lied. ‘Then I checked the rota and realised I’d gotten it wrong. I should’ve text you.’

‘Thanks for coming tonight.’

‘Any time. That was an amazing show. Again.’

‘Thanks. Do you want a drink or something?’

‘Sure.’

‘Seulgi?’

Seulgi looked at Joohyun and back at Wendy and nodded and said in a small voice, ‘I’ve got to get back, actually. Got a bunch of work I brought home from the office that I should be doing for tomorrow.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah,’ she lied. ‘Tonight was great, though. I told you all you have to do is believe in yourself.’

Wendy just smiled. Seulgi turned to Joohyun and said, ‘It was nice to meet you.’

‘You too.’

‘I’ll see around, Seungwan.’

‘Yeah,’ Wendy said. When she was alone with Joohyun at the bar she ran a shaky hand through her hair and coughed and said, ‘Do you want to go for a walk? I’ll tell you everything.’

‘Yeah. We can do.’

It wasn’t until they were halfway down the street that she slowed down and said, ‘Seungwan is my name. My Korean name, I mean. Son Seungwan. Wendy is just the name I go by to, well, to most people, really. It’s my stage name, I guess. I mean, it’s also my actual English name, so I didn’t just make it up or anything. It’s not technically just an alias. It’s on my official documents and stuff. But yeah, even in Korean, people call me Wendy. Most people do anyway. It’s a long story as to why.’

Joohyun was quiet. As if encouraging her to continue and so after a moment’s hesitation she did.

‘It was the alias I decided on when I first started making music back in college, because I thought having an English name would be better. I thought Wendy would be easier than Seungwan to market myself as, you know? For an international audience. I know that was probably me getting ahead of myself, but yeah. That’s the story. And ever since then it’s just sort of stuck even in Korean, too. I don’t know why. But I think it’s because it’s kind of a front for me, if that makes sense. It’s a sort of defence mechanism. I can pretend I’m Wendy and that’s different from who I really am. I can sort of partition away the anxiety and the panic attacks and the depression from the rest of it. I can pretend that Wendy is me without all of that. It doesn’t really help, but I like to pretend it does. It makes me feel safer that way. I know none of that probably makes any sense.’

‘It does,’ Joohyun said. ‘It definitely makes sense.’

‘There are, like, four people in the world who call me Seungwan still. Actually, it’s exactly four people. My parents, my sister, and Seulgi.’

‘She seems nice.’

‘She is. Sometimes I think she’s too nice and too caring to be friends with me. Feels like all she ever does is give and never takes. She’s too selfless. She’d drop anything for me in a heartbeat if I ever told her anything was wrong. Hell, she has done, loads of times in the past. But yeah. That’s what the whole Seungwan thing was about.’

Joohyun was silent for a long time. Hands in the pockets of her leather jacket. Then she said, ‘What should I call you? Wendy?’

Wendy thought about this. The truth was – and it was a strange truth – she didn’t mind at all. ‘You can call me Seungwan,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind. Honestly.’

‘Are you sure? I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable or anything.’

‘I won’t. Seungwan is fine.’

‘Okay,’ Joohyun said with a smile, all teeth and starlit eyes. ‘Nice to meet you, Seungwan.’

‘Nice to meet you too, Joohyun.’

The next three weeks seemed to pass like nothing at all.

What was most striking about this corridor of time was that all her thoughts had shifted from: Wendy Wendy Wendy, to: Seungwan Seungwan Seungwan.

Even when they were together she was thinking about her. There had been three performances in as many weeks. All three had been in smoky and dimly lit bars to a handful of patrons most of whom were much older than they were and in every one Joohyun came along and sat somewhere near the front and watched and listened with her heart swelling and her breath hitching and a burning glimmer in her eyes she hadn’t felt in a long time. Perhaps ever.

And they would end the same way. With Wendy finishing and bowing and coming out later and the two of them walking in silence for a long time in the cold like wayward travellers on a path to nowhere. Wendy hefting her guitar case along. Small smiles between the two of them. And each time Joohyun would smell the soju on Wendy’s breath but she never said anything. They would walk until they came back to Joohyun’s apartment and on the third occasion she invited Wendy in and they drank black coffee and talked and Joohyun even had the bravery to read another one of her poems. It was dark in February and dark in the streets and there in the warm light of Joohyun’s apartment Wendy watched and listened with a smile on her face and butterflies in her stomach. When Joohyun had finished all she could say in response was, ‘Beautiful.’

‘I don’t think it was.’

‘Beautiful. That was so beautiful. Is all your poetry like that?’

‘Most of it. Some of it’s in free verse, too. But mostly simple rhyme schemes and metres because I’m not intelligent enough for anything else.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with simple. Not when it sounds like that.’

‘Others would disagree.’

‘ others,’ Wendy said. The silence that followed felt almost uneasy. As if she had approached a sacred topic. After a long pause she shifted in her chair and finished off the last of the cold coffee and said, ‘My EP’s doing alright.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. The streaming numbers on Melon are doing amazingly, honestly. Well, amazing for an indie debut album from a literal unknown. Still not on the charts or anything proper. And I’ve had eight reviews back from critics so far, which is eight more than I expected. And I didn’t expect anything for months. It’s only been three and a half weeks since I sent the CDs out.’

‘I’ve got them all on my playlist.’

‘I know. You’ve told me.’

‘Just thought I’d remind you,’ Joohyun said with a precious grin. ‘And “Dance For You” is still my favourite.’

‘It’s one of mine too. But I also really don’t like it at the same time.’

‘Why not?’

Wendy shrugged. ‘Because of the synthpop sound in it. It makes me want to get on stage and vibe to it, but I know I’ll never have the confidence for that. That’s the last thing I’ll ever do. So it’s kind of a double-edged sword, really. It’s as if I made it knowing I’d never really perform it.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It’s true,’ said Wendy. She picked up her coffee and realised it was empty and set it down again. Then in a voice barely her own she said, ‘I’ve got another gig coming up. Biggest I’ve done yet. By far, actually.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Lost Village Festival.’

‘Wait, what?’

Wendy shrugged. ‘I got the email this morning from a talent agent asking me to perform as part of the official lineup.’

‘What’s Lost Village Festival?’

‘It’s a three-day music festival in Namyangju. In the woods. I guess that’s where the name comes from. Apparently there are four or five different stages, all that play different musical genres. The email said the offer was for me to play a forty-minute set on the Hidden Forest stage. I looked it up and apparently every year it’s basically the indie local stage, for all the up-and-coming unknown Korean acts to get their name out there. Mostly indie-electronica, occasionally synthpop or bassline or house music.’

‘Holy . Are you serious?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I only got the email this morning.’

‘Yeah, but you look so calm.’

‘I’m not,’ Wendy said, and it was the truth. Yet it seemed in Joohyun’s presence all the problems of the world fell away, if only for a brief time. ‘I still haven’t said yes yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘I won’t be able to do it.’

‘Why?’

‘Performing in a bar in front of twenty drunk people in the dark is one thing. Performing at a festival is another. And performing my own music, too. No covers.’

‘They’ll all still be drunk. That’s what festivals are for. The only difference is they’ll be more of them.’

‘It’s a pretty big difference.’

‘You should totally go for it.’

Wendy was quiet.

‘I mean it,’ Joohyun said. ‘You might not get another opportunity like this. It could be a genuine shot at getting your name out there. At being a star.’

‘I don’t know if I want to be a star.’

‘Well. It’s up to you.’

‘Will you come along?’ Wendy said. ‘To the festival.’

‘When is it?’

‘The first weekend of March. Friday to Sunday. I’m performing on Saturday. Well, I will be if I accept.’

‘Namyangju is, like, two hours from here. And I’ll be at the festival on my own. Do you know what it’s like being at a festival on your own?’

Wendy shook her head. ‘I don’t go to festivals,’ she said. ‘Too many people. I can’t function in crowds.’

Joohyun nodded in understanding. For a moment she looked as if she thought she had gone too far, been too thoughtless. Then she said, ‘It’s not fun. Not at all. But if you’re performing, yeah I’ll come along.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ll find out who else is performing. It’s a really good lineup, even if it is mostly indie and electronic stuff.’

‘I don’t really care. I’ll just be there for you, honestly.’

Wendy smiled again. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll say yes, then. I think I can do that.’

‘You can. I know you can.’

And for the first time in life, Wendy left thinking that perhaps she could. Perhaps there existed within herself the capacity to succeed for once. And only Joohyun had stirred that within her. Thinking:

I deserve this, don’t I? After everything I’ve been through, I deserve this. Please. Let me have my glimmer of hope. Let me be happy again.