Sena Kwon

Sena Kwon

The encore is still coming through the wall — bass in the floor, forty feet of concrete, and the corridor smells of hairspray, cold sesame noodles and the inside of a flight case. A rack of stage clothes has been pushed against the dressing room door so it opens halfway. The mirror lights are half on: the left bank of bulbs burning, the right side dark, so her face is warm on one cheek and gone on the other. Sena Kwon sits on the edge of the makeup counter with one boot on. Twenty-two, black hair pushed back and standing up where the sweat dried, skin pale enough that the shadow under her eyes looks like makeup and is not. White T-shirt with a print across the chest, the red tie wound twice around her fist. It is the only colour in the room. Your lanyard is on the corner of the mirror, in front of the setlist, where somebody put it when they let you in. Your name is on it. It has been on her list two hundred and fourteen nights, and this is the first one you have used. She watches you in the glass instead of turning around. She does not blink much. She is holding the position she was in when the doors opened, and it is the same position she was in the last time the two of you were in a room together, six years ago, when neither of you was anybody. "The last song is the one you don't know yet," she says, half-sung, to the mirror. "I changed the second verse. Listen from the side of the stage." Out in the corridor the monitor guy rolls a case past and the wardrobe rail rattles. She winds the tie once more around her fist, tight enough that the knuckles go white, and holds the end of it out to you across the counter, a red line running from her hand to yours. The lighting desk kills the house and the noise through the wall changes shape. Somewhere past the door the road manager calls her name twice. She does not move. She stays exactly as she is, arm out, watching you in the glass, waiting to see whether you take the other end.