Iktsuarpok
Iktsuarpok (Inuit) — the feeling of anticipation that leads you to keep looking outside to see if someone is coming.
“I’ll be coming over tomorrow at about 11, if it’s not too much of an inconvenience. Call me back if it is.”
Therese listened to the now-familiar noise of a piece of Carol’s jewellery clinking against the phone before she hung up, tempted once again to press the replay message button on the handset. Reluctantly, she slipped it back into its place on the chest of drawers, the click echoing through her empty room. Carol was coming over, tomorrow. The way she had simply invited herself over was a move that struck Therese as something far more than just bold — it was an assumption, the silent question that lay in whether or not Therese would call back and cancel. Of course, she wouldn’t; there was no material object in this world which could have convinced Therese to decline, but the thought lingered. She swirled her fingers in the layer of dust that had settled in the shadow of the landline, glancing over at her mobile and wondering why she hadn’t called Carol on that. They would have been able to text, that way, but this seemed… fitting. She hadn’t touched the landline in months prior to their meeting, nor had she felt that same flash of connection with anyone, in just as long. The anachronistic device represented more, suddenly, than just a means of communication. Starting, Therese glanced up as Dannie poked his head around the door.
“We cooking tonight or is it Yee Li?”
With an effect that was worryingly instant, Therese’s mouth started watering at the thought of the wonton soup her and Dannie had lived on through their university years — she could see that look in his eyes, too, the one that was raptured in the quiet hope that she’d choose the latter option. She grinned, watching the surprise that flitted across his face in reaction to such an uncharacteristic expression of joy for Therese.
“Takeaway sounds great.”
He smiled back at her, pumping his fist in a mock celebration of tonight’s dinner — they hadn’t had Chinese in ages and this was a welcome breach of their ordinary routine. As he backed out, he glanced again at Therese, at the welcome contentedness in her composure that he had missed so. The grin on his face was unmissable and Therese might have commented on it had she not known exactly the reason for its quiddity. Somewhere, in her, for the first time in months, there was hope.
"What if she's straight?"
Carol laughed across the table as Abby regarded her from across the rim of her near-empty glass, a cunning smile creasing her features. The two hadn’t had dinner together for a while and she was glad their ordinary banter hadn’t dissipated, so fragile as their relationship had the prospect to be. The blunder she’d made three years ago — a drunken wink, a stolen kiss, a deserted motel — had attached itself like a weight to their friendship afterwards and for months, Carol been worried that the two women would never quite find their way back to each other. It had been her to make the first move of apology, and the look on Abby’s face when she had opened her front door to find Carol standing there had been one so lost that Carol made the silent promise never to leave her again. Originally, she’d had to be careful to hold back on the signals she’d been so unashamed of before — no casual touches, no flirtatious grins — but now, as she reached across the table to grasp Abby’s hand in a gesture of platonic excitement, she was confident that the barriers they had obliterated were finally setting themselves back up again.
"For one, the yearning. The being in a deserted bookshop at close enough to midnight that it may well have been the next day."
Carol frowned, unconvinced. Straight girls yearned, right?
"Secondly, what was she wearing?"
A pause.
"A flannel?"
Abby chuckled, the laughter rushing from her in a knowing exhale as she shook her head.
"So she's gay. Young enough to think that wearing plaid is making some sort of sapphic statement, too. Take care of this one."
It was Carol’s turn to smile this time, her gaze slipping inadvertently away as Abby dug further into the truth she’d been avoiding until now.
"Maybe."
Hopefully, but she wouldn't even admit that to herself, yet.
A comfortable silence enveloped the two — Carol hoped, at least, that it was comfortable — and Abby tipped the last dregs of her whiskey from her glass. With a quiet wince at the alcohol content of this particular brand, she directed a pointed glance at the clock on the wall.
“Time to go?”
Monday, and Therese was awake before dawn. That wasn’t saying much, considering the sun preferred to cosy itself under the skyline until about 10am on these December mornings, but she was distinctly aware that not even the birds had started chirping their ceaseless carol.
Carol.
The thought jolted her almost out of bed, the dogged blanket falling to the floor in the jarring exposure of Therese’s bare legs to the cool air outside. Any traces of the grogginess that had whittled itself into her thoughts was gone, a wintry combination of goosebumps and chattering teeth ensuring that she was very much awake. What with the birds still resting it couldn’t have yet gone five — Therese, however, took no notice, tugging on the nicest blouse she laid claim to with fingers still stiff from the cold. Neither she nor Dannie had yet contacted the landlord about their broken boiler; in a silent acknowledgement of the money they simply didn’t have to spend on insurance, the likelihood was that the apartment would stay frosty until March drew her glorious warmth through their flat. Her feet were blocks of ice on the linoleum floor.
In a bid not to wake Dannie until at least 8, she crept from her room to the kitchen, the scent of last night’s dumplings still freshly imprinted into the crevices of the ageing wall. There were still residual stains of soya sauce on the counter. Turning to grab a cloth from the kitchen sink, Therese paused, caught out by the glimmer of her reflection in one of the glass-paned cabinets. Two tired green irises met her gaze, tinged extrinsically with flecks of brown that Dannie liked to say were actually golden, she just wasn’t looking hard enough. Certainly, though, they paled in comparison to the aquamarine eyes that had greeted her in the bookshop, ringed as they were by a darker shade that threw all claims of ‘blue-eyed innocence’ out of the window. Even now — days on from the encounter — the thought slid like silk down her spine.
It was on rare occasions in which she and Dannie ever had visitors that she was forced to take in the overall lack of care that they put into their small flat; it wasn’t messy, by most definitions of the word, but the issues lay in the dozens of tiny discrepancies that were littered throughout the apartment. A mug not cleared away, a pair of shoes by the sofa, a coat lying on the windowsill — they gathered, and before they knew it the flat was as messy as it had been weeks ago before they’d tidied it up. That was the thing with clutter. It started small and then one day, there was just a line crossed where procrastination turned into disdain and the whole aesthetic of the flat ended up looking like the aftermath of a college party. Therese sighed, brushing the rambling thoughts out of her head as she did crumbs off of the coffee table. Four hours and forty-one minutes until she arrived. For the second time this morning, Therese suppressed the shiver that rolled down her back, inhaling once and contemplating whether or not a cold shower would be necessary.
It was.
Four hours and thirty-seven minutes later, the clock read 10:56 and the world had stopped turning. Therese twisted one leg over the other in an attempt to sit in something of a sophisticated position, realising with a flustered inhale that obviously she was going to have to get up and answer the door first unless Dannie had hired a butler in the last twelve hours without her knowledge. Brushing nonexistent debris from her jeans, she stood, heading over to the kettle and switching it on in the hope that the noise would drown out the fluttering of what was ordinarily a steady heartbeat. Just as the steam started funnelling out of its spout, she flicked it back off again, irrationally worried that the sight of a just-boiled kettle would lead Carol to think that she had been watching the clock and timing exactly when to brew a pot of tea in accordance to when her newfound accomplice would walk through the door — although, all said, that was exactly what she’d been doing.
What was she going to say when Carol arrived anyway? Hello didn’t seem to cut it, nice to see you again was something that a bad villain might say to their nemesis, how do you do was straight from a bad comedy about nineteenth century Britain — all that she could hope was that Carol would choose to speak first, eliciting what would (ideally) be a competent reply from Therese. She sucked in a breath, glancing for what had to be the twentieth time at the clock — eleven o’clock and thirteen seconds — and three resounding knocks shattered the silence of her living room.
Therese almost jumped out of her skin — she hadn’t been expecting a knock, stupidly, as if Carol was going to simply glide in on a cloud of confidence and glory. It was a fun thought, really, but not one that Therese could spare the seconds to consider as she headed towards the entrance. With a final glance at her timid reflection in the hallway mirror, Therese plastered on a nonchalant smile and pulled open the door. The sight that greeted her was nothing that she could have prepared for in all her hours of waiting — almost all of her focus, for a period of time, was dedicated solely to clamping her jaw shut in rational fear of the fact that without that willpower there would have been nothing to stop her mouth dropping open in awe.
Usually, the flickering lights of that aged corridor made almost anyone look at least a decade older and three nights more sleep deprived — but of course, Carol wasn’t almost anyone and she may as well have installed a ring-light behind Therese for how radiant she looked. A smile crept across her face in response to Therese’s obvious veneration at her appearance, and she tilted her head slightly so as to keep the brunette at eye level. It was becoming increasingly clear that no, Carol was not going to be the one to speak first, and in a ridiculously flustered attempt at coming up with some form of greeting, Therese stepped back and motioned towards the apartment.
“…Tea?”
Tea. Carol cocked an amused eyebrow at the strange spin that Therese had apparently put on hello, looking generously away as the regret made itself apparent on the other woman’s face. At this point, how do you do was starting to look more and more acceptable but apart from the humoured expression, Carol made no great deal of Therese’s blunder. It was a look that Therese was already becoming dangerously attached to, its indescribable allure unmatchable by any emotion that other people could hope to display. Tea. Of all things, tea.
“Hello to you too.”
The younger woman stepped aside as Carol breezed in, inhaling once — as surreptitiously as physically possible — as her perfume wafted momentarily into the house. Carol spun, gripping Therese once again in that inescapable cerulean gaze.
“Tea sounds great, actually.”
As Carol walked through into the kitchen, Therese watched her eyes wander through the room.
“Like I said, it's a pretty small flat.”
The blonde woman’s gaze snapped back to Therese. She avoided the statement, instead casting her eyes from the kitchen and into the 'living' room — a sofa, a TV, and more books than Therese ever bothered to count — and smiling, an emotion on her face that looked something like awe. Therese could see Carol marvelling at the stacks and stacks of paperbacks that littered the apartment, her eyes squinting momentarily before she looked back at the younger woman.
“Did you put all of these into alphabetical order?”
Therese grinned, nodding her head over to a nook in the corner where she usually took to reading. It was by the radiator, and so on days when the heating was actually on, it remained to be her favourite spot in the building.
“If you sit there, you can see the twenty-six stacks going clockwise in that order around the room. The reason why some stacks are tiny is because obviously there aren’t too many authors whose surnames begin with x, or q, or z for instance.”
A look of bewildered humour crossed Carol’s face as she stepped into the corner, and she looked up at Therese as if she’d just discovered the culprit in a mystery book — enraptured, Therese thought, as if such a socialite as Carol could ever be enraptured with a someone like her.
“I'm sure there was something in Country Living about shelves being overrated.”
As Therese turned, grinning, to turn on the kettle for a second time, she heard something of a whisper coming from Carol’s place beside her, drowned suddenly out by the whistling of the appliance.
“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but… aren’t there twenty-seven?”
She was counting. With the kettle still screeching its steady tune, Therese had to make her way over to Carol in order to be within hearing range. Whether it had been deliberate or not, she’d left out the final row of novels that sat away from the sunlight, perched upon the otherwise-unused mantel. Following her gaze, Carol’s eyes came to rest on the collection of books that lay there, placed in a manner that suggested no order at all.
“What about those?”
After a moment, Therese looked earnestly up at Carol, holding eye contact for what may well have been the longest time since they’d met. A flash of something crossed the older woman’s features, gone as soon as it had come. Curiosity — perhaps.
"I was doing a philosophy class a few years back. Someone asked me what I'd rescue, if there was a fire in this building. Wouldn't be unlikely, to be fair. The first few answers were generic things — you know, devices, pets, kids," She noted the dubious look on Carol’s face.
“Not that kids are generic or anything, you know, but, as in, generic in terms of the obvious thing you’d save.”
You’re babbling. The kettle had boiled. Therese continued.
"I'd save the books."
She paused, momentarily, a frown creasing the space between her eyebrows as she traced her finger down the spine of a yellowed copy of The Old Man and the Sea — Carol nodded empathetically, chewing absent-mindedly on a corner of her lip. Another indecipherable emotion drew its steady trail across her face, featherlight in its journey, threateningly heavy in its repercussions. It was gone in an instant, though, a smile finding itself in the tide that washed all traces of melancholy away. Her eyes were fixed on the novel that sat itself on the very edge of the column.
“The Book Thief?”
The question was easy enough to discover within the words themselves. How is it here, if you haven’t even read it? Therese steeled herself, contemplating exactly how she was planning to phrase the next few words. Carol noticed it, that now-familiar glint of curiosity lighting her irises up, flares against the darkness within.
“Sometimes it’s the memories that the books carry. The… people that they remind you of. They can matter, too.”
Carol breathed in, the air between them seeming to flood itself with warmth and freeze itself over with cold, simultaneously. Blinking, she turned away, making a haphazard motion towards the kettle. The water would surely be tepid by now.
"Anyway. Tea?"