Scene 4
Lexa was fidgeting with the loose strands of the green scrub and that had been continuing for a while now. Clarke had been changing in the bathroom for her morning shift as a barista, yet she could also feel her sudden nervousness.
She waited for a bit, tying up the laces of her boots in slow motion just in case Lexa asked something. She felt like Lexa wanted to say something, but one way or another, she wasn’t.
“I have work as a barista just down the street, “TonDC”. Morning shifts.” Clarke played with the band of her bag-purse, deliberately delaying. “I’ll see you later then?” it was more a question than a statement if Clarke was being honest so she let in hang mid-air.
Lexa still was yet to say anything as she stood by the window awkwardly, her feet tapping her wooden ground. Clarke could see her bite her lower lip even from standing at a complete opposite of the room. Clarke seriously wanted to ask her what the heck she was thinking at the precise moment, but then again patience was never the blonde’s strongest virtue.
“What is it Lexa?”
“Nothing. It’s just …. I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Can I stay here, was that un-riddled question that Lexa was asking.
Clarke instantly recalled her previous words. Lexa didn’t have a home anymore. Clarke had been staying in New York for 8 months without coming into human interaction of late. She just went to work, smiled and served, came to this humble abode, ate take-out food, painted when she wasn’t stuck with a painter’s block and gained few pounds. And would often google search suicide attempts and apparently even forget to pay the gas bills as well. That had been life for Clarke for 8 months and once a month she would leave her mom a message to let her know that she wasn’t dead. Until the day she will be.
Her apartment wasn’t small but it wasn’t your typically apartment either. It was just a very spacious space where the kitchen had oddly blended with the living room and the bed in her other room was big enough to fit 2 people, luxuriously. And she even had a well to do bathroom. But all in all, her apartment was simply very …. Untidy. Dirty for which Clarke could care less.
Clarke didn’t have a time to do a pros and cons list over having a stranger over but then again, what was the worst thing that can happen.
“You can stay here.”
She could tell Lexa was a bit aghast at her confirmation but she didn’t have a time for process it, before she jogged through the 5 flights of stairs and almost ran her way to her job.
Lexa walked the same corridor that she had walked in a little over 2 years span in her apartment building. Her motion slacked at her apartment came close. She knew what she was about to see, and even tried her best to prepare herself for the blow up her face but still she worked until a very sleek black door graced her. Apartment 307. And a white notice was pasted on it with red and yellow tape prohibiting anyone and as it seems even the owner of the respective apartment from entering.
Seized by the Bank. Do not entry.
For a second, Lexa thought of tearing past the tape and insert the key, turn around the knob and enter her premises. Consequences be damned. But that dreadful thought lasted for only a second. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. She didn’t want any other avoidable trouble for the rest of her company mates. Lexa retraced her steps to the fire exit of her building. She motioned up the back stairs and entered her room through the crystal white glass window.
The room looked the same last she remembered. White, pristine with two walls merging the sky white with ocean blue. The bookshelf seemed untouched, each book arranged in alphabetical order. Her bed felt like it had been unslept in for a very long time. She took out a duffel bag from the cupboard and quickly filled it out with all the necessities. And a few and other things here and about.
Clothes. Check.
Money. Check.
Passport, visa, and her other college and bank documents. Check.
Toothbrush and its spare, and all other little but important things. Check.
Before wrapping up for once, she did a final do over at her book shelf before grapping a few torn out books.
Lexa did her best to sort out what was important and what wasn’t but her hands gripped onto anything that they came across and pressed it further in its confined space.
She changed herself into much presentable clothes, discarding the slightly itchy green scrub. She looked at herself into the mirror, tugging the shirt into her skinny black jeans. Putting on her same old overcoat, she tied up her threads of her boots before taking an everlasting look at her small arena before departing permanently.
She had always been used to working, even in her idle hours so time and again she would look upon at the blonde’s hanging clock. It was still hours for her to come home and Lexa felt uneasy.
She had been astounded when the blonde had agreed to let her stay at her place even though they were strangers. Well, not strangers anymore, but that didn’t imply they were friends, cuddly buddy or anything. They were just something. But, yet again, when Lexa did a do over at the unruliness of Clarke’s apartment, it made her insides cringe. It was dirty to say the very least.
Clothes were scattered in heaps, so much so they even smelt. Clarke seemed to have generously skipped laundry for eternity it seemed. There was a hidden rolling chair which was downing in beer bottles and scribbled doodling. There were two ridiculous stage lights and sort of Christmas lights that coloured up the grey stall pillars. Her desk was a culmination of all Clarke’s interests smashed in one. Her laptop screen was open, there was a half empty water bottle, bacteria infested pizza pieces and innumerable photo-framed as well as sketched pictures. Some hanging loosely on the red bricked wall, some scattered on her desk. One picture that caught her eye seemed like a handmade collage. It had a fascinatingly chubby blonde girl with 2 teeth missing, presumably Clarke, smashed between two older people which Lexa thought as her parents. Clarke had borne an uncanny resemblance with her father, who held a joyous Clarke. Adjacent to it, was yet another Clarke centric picture but this time she smiling proudly with a certificate and a grad cloak on, her purple tongue tangling out with another brunette and raven haired girl. The trio somehow perfectly well in the picture.
The water coloured paintings intrigued Lexa even more. The picturesque landscapes brushed in such accuracy that Lexa for a moment mistook then to be photographed. They were that good, and then there were some charcoal paintings of unnamed people. Beautifully sculptured eyes, whether they were fingers or a sincere smile or just a face. They were daunting and so tragically beautiful.
The pictures, weren’t that many, but all held memories, some high some low, all frozen in time. They all made Lexa wonder how many souls Clarke would be leaving behind if they were to actually go through the plan. How many hearts would be mourning for her? Somehow that feeling didn’t settle well with her. And the thought itself took Lexa at a jolt.
She went to the bathroom which wasn’t at all pleasant, with blonde hair stuck at the drain hole of the bathtub. It carried a smell of distinct cat hair but in reality there wasn’t any cat. Lexa made her way to the unused kitchenette, daring to rub her finger through the layered dust. Way too much dust. She inhaled one long sigh before finalizing her thoughts then started rummaging through the drawers from disposable gloves. She armoured herself with a rather distinct mop, shoved the cupboards for detergents or any other cleansing agent and tied an handkerchief around her nostrils like a guard against the notorious smell and allergic dust she would be diving into. Like we say, cleanliness is godliness, or so Lexa believes. On the bright side, this will help her kill her time, if it doesn’t kill her first.
Lexa almost puked when she rushed into the dustbin, her arm stretched as far as humanly possible from her, dumping an atrociously dead rat and a similarly portrayed pizza piece. Lexa deduced that most likely the poor rat was food poisoned by what seemed by close inspection, a year old fungi inhabiting chicken barbequed pizza slice. Clarke must have an unhealthy liking to too much pizza.
Clarke inserted her key and turned open the door knob, only to be greeted by a dark apartment. Pitch black. Oh my god, did I forget to pay the electricity bill as well?
Clarke flashed her empty hands vaguely and aimlessly into the air after her search for her phone in her bag went to vain. She tried to find the switch but to no avail even calling out for Lexa for a third time in a row when she heard no reply. With ginger steps, she moved forward only to come crashing straight into her untimely placed chair lamp, bumping her toenail straight into the thick wood.
“Fucking hell.” Clarke shrieked out in hard whisper, pressing to the lamp for some sort of illuminating guidance. There on the couch, lay a sleeping Lexa, oblivious to the world around and also to Clarke dented pain, it seems. Clarke tiptoed to the brunette, who was awkwardly snuggled into a blanket, a worn copy of Wuthering Heights open on her chest. There wasn’t any extravaganza in the scene, yet it bore a certain serenity. A layer of peace that was spreading through Lexa’s face. No worry. No pain. No anything. Just sweet slumber, with pale light shadowing the slight tanned skin which added a glow to it. In that very moment, something miraculous happened. Clarke didn’t realize when that yearn, that need arose inside her, like phoenix from its burnt ashes, to draw this second to white canvas.
Clarke stared at her. No, she wasn’t staring at her. She admiring the sleeping beauty in front of her who suddenly opened sleep dazed green eyes to meet her blues.
“Clarke?”
“Hi.”
“You are here. Let me just sit up.”
Lexa readjusted her oversized shirt and brushed aside a few of her messy strands before discreetly moving around to the switchboard.
Clarke was at the verge of losing her voice. No, scratch that. She has already lost them. Her apartment that had been always as sixes and sevens was now pristinely polished. All belongings in uptight in their place. It appeared hygienic, too hygienic for Clarke in her whole 24 year old passage on Earth.
She didn’t exactly mean to squeal in her bottled up joy, nor spill out her thoughts right then and there but unwillingly she still did. “This looks like the very first time my dad redecorated this apartment.” She promptly pressed her hand over her mouth, shuddered at her own mouth’s betrayal at those spilled words, one she couldn’t believe she had actually said. Her father’s sudden demise had still left her with a hollowness, even though it has been years.
Lexa noticed the stiffness that had worked up in Clarke at the most likely slip of tongue of her father. She didn’t enquire. Prying never did anyone any good.
“Your place isn't all that bad. Not to mention, it is precisely located.” Green eyes shifted to the Brooklyn Bridge that enamoured Lexa.
Clarke lightened up a bit. She politely replied. “You didn’t have to do this, you know” pointing to the sudden cleanliness of her surroundings.
“It’s the very least I could have done. Moreover, I’m one for hygienic living, anyway”
Clarke was one her third beer while Lexa was still meandering on her first one, her face thumped impatiently on her right hand as her mind racked to the possible answers to Clarke’s question.
So, what do you wanna do first? Your any … wish I guess?
Her eyes were on the verge of shutting into oblivion when the chime of her phone. Another message from Raven and Octavia. Oh God. Which part of “I’m will be staying away at dad’s NY apartment until I get a grip of myself” didn’t they understand?
Clarke had a desire of reading the unread message, or rather those zillion unread messages that had been piling up in her inbox. She had stopped bothering to open up facebook, had called for a short retirement from twitter and her non updated Instagram pages. She swiped the screen again when another text came vibrating it, but as of late, she pretended she didn’t see it coming.
It was nearing to midnight. She looked up at the brunette who was fishing around with her finally empty beer bottle but her lips were still shut in tight line.
She snapped in a low voice.
“Don’t tell me you have done everything you have wished for? Come on, there must be something you didn’t do or I don’t know, put up for later. I mean, what are you like, 23? You can’t be that old.”
Lexa’s face cringed. “I’m 25. I don’t know. Can I think about it for some time?”
The firm voice had a gentleness in it. And when she spoke in a barely inaudible voice, slightly embarrassed, Clarke’s snappiness just snapped in the November night.
“Ok.”
Settling on Clarke’s couch, Lexa shivered a bit underneath the thick blanket. The brunette tried to plough deeper into its interior but fairly, the couch was a bit small for Lexa. Not that, she was complaining or anything.
Clarke was about to turn off the midnight lamp in her living room when she saw feet or a major part of Lexa’s legs sticking out, hanging mid-air down the couch. Even in the faintness of the light, she could see the brunette try to fidget, adjust herself in her current position but Clarke could clearly see her struggling. So Clarke did the one thing what she didn’t know she would be doing.
Clarke hadn’t shared her bed, with anyone, platonic or otherwise in her time here. It felt odd and somehow it carried the mild allegation that she was cheating somehow, even though she wasn’t. But she felt like it, especially when she saw the other side of the bed dip underneath the stranger’s weight.
Lexa had shown her reluctance and had dismissed the idea of invading Clarke’s bedroom, bickering constantly that the couch was fine. Ok, it wasn’t fine, but she could have had worse. But after an hour of tossing and turning with utter discomfort, she finally gave in. Gathering up her pillow and her blanket, soft steps creaked open the unlocked bedroom door. She put down her pillow and shuffled underneath the covers, adjusting herself to the fluffiness of the mattress.
Clarke was alarmed when wintry feet touched her warm ones accidentally, “Your feet are like ice popsicles, wear some socks.”
"But Clarke I can’t sleep with socks on.”
So Clarke dealt the final card on her hand. “My bed, my rules.” Lexa could feel the unflinchingly harsh glare until the very point when the brunette had socked herself and then the blonde turned over her back and faced away from Lexa. Her eyes dulling in another colourless sleep.