Rated for some swearing. This is the first piece of writing I've posted anywhere in almost a year, so not only am I really rusty but I'm also dong something completely different from the usual. I enjoy it immensely, but I wonder if the description is too much, if the style of this piece works.
CHAPTER ONE:
She pulled everything apart systematically, starting with the hemp and then moving to the shells embedded. The necklaces were tangled and still stiff and salty from last year. Pulling on memories, though, like strings of tough fibre, her fingers soon brought out several separate, separated, necklaces. The next thing on her to do list was unpack all of her clothes and put them in the small dresser and closet left for her by her parents. Under that on the list was “Burn Parents’ Belongings.” A little extreme but the bedspread, the rug, and the art were hideous and she hated them. One painting was appropriately called “The Argument,” depicting a red faced man and a small skeletal woman throwing wine.
She decided instead to jump down to the bottom of the list. In big red letters it said “CALL KAT.” A clunky red dial phone dominated a corner table on the other side of the bedroom. Kat’s number was taped onto the handle. Taped to the table was the number to the local Oriental Noodle Emporium and Gogol’s Pizzaria and Armoury, in all its misspelled glory. The number made her smile – Gogol always said, “You no need to go to College. Girl, you good enough as is. Do what makes you happy, yes? Besides, College cost money. Who wants to pay for that? I didn’t.”
She checked the drawers of the table for menus.
Nothing changed. It brought up a good memory of her parents, before they started buying paintings, when they would go to Gogol’s every other Saturday night. On the Saturdays they weren’t talking with Gogol or his five daughters, they were at the Oriental Noodle Emporium, laughing as Carter the Casanova (she was twelve and had the biggest crush on the High School senior) told myths about eastern history. All of it was lies, but it didn’t matter, because Carter the Casanova was funny.
So some things were worth keeping. Maybe some things were even worth selling.
She dialled Kat’s number. Her roommate Sam picked up. His sigh was impossible to miss. When he says hello, she thought, he won’t be able to help whining.
“Sunday? Sunday Montag?”
“Hey, Sam.” She walked over to the window and pulled up the shades. Light flooded the room, and her head felt clear. “How are you?” Her voice cracked.
“We’ve missed you. Girl, do you need any help moving in?”
Sunday ran a hand through her hair, and looked around the room. “I think I need more help moving my folks out. Some stuff I want to sell, a few pieces I have to keep but the rest I’m going to burn. That art should never have come into the world.”
“Okay. Kat’s in the shower but once she’s out we’ll be over there.”
“Thank you.” Sunday walked back to the table and hung up the phone. If Kat was in the shower, than she had the time to unpack her belongings and focus on the house.
Clothes took up three boxes. All the small things, marked “Random Shit” took up five. Containers of photographs, trinkets from vacations and gigs and the one tour that she tried to go on before coming down with the flu. One box contained nothing but bottles. One had a ship inside, a gift from her grandfather. The rest were presents from other people, though the majority were from her last boyfriend.
The small blue one held a break-up note.
Sunday sighed, rolled her shoulders, and grabbed a red pen from the menu drawer, and walked through the small house, marking the things she didn’t want. The paintings. The coffee table, the end tables in the living room, the chairs – she avoided marking the sofa, because the pen wouldn’t come out of upholstery but they were ugly enough to remember – and the wall paper. What she could move she brought into the back yard, and piled it all on the short yellow grass. The paintings, the broken chairs she couldn’t sell the bedspread.
She was moving the comforter when Sam and Kat walked into the driveway, grinning. They wore t-shirts and shorts. Sam sported bare feet.
“Are both of you insane?” Sunday rolled down the sleeves of her sweater. “It’s freezing.”
“Only when you aren’t used to it,” Kat said. “The heating’s been down for a little while. Sam and I are considering building a yurt in our living room. Great for parties, yurts.”
“I might need a yurt.” They walked back up to the house. “The radiator is at least thirty years old. I don’t think it works anymore. Where would you get a yurt, anyway?”
“I have a friend,” said Sam. “He’s a real nice guy, his name is Bart. Bought this huge warehouse and lives in it, without heating, so he doesn’t have to pay any bills. Inside of it, he and his roomies, they built the first yurt, and it spread throughout that part of the city.” His face brightened, and he winked at Kat. “We should go see them. I think – just a hunch – you and his roomies will get along.”
Sunday went into the living room. “First thing, though. Do you think I could sell the couch?”
Kat and Sam looked at the upholstery, eyebrows raised. He looked at her. Sunday felt a pang of jealousy. Their communication was silent, seamless. She used to have that, with Kat, with James, with Adelaide and Bee.
“You have to clue me in here,” she said. “Can I sell them or what?”
“Ew,” said Kat. “Babe, I know you need the money but we can just get you a job. Those aren’t selling for anything more than 5 karrse. Don’t bother.”
Sunday gave them one other sideways glance.
It took all three of them to toss the sofas to the curb. The chairs they handled individually. They fell to the ground with a thud, kicking up dust leftover from summer. Sunday stood back, arms akimbo, and looked at the scene. The ugly floral furniture moved out by twenty-somethings. What she found fascinating was that for a few moments parts of time, generations, were juxtaposed and the next they would have their backs turned on the couches. That small portal would be gone.
“Does anyone have a pocket cam?”
They shook their heads. Sunday nodded, and walked away.
The front entrance of the house led into the kitchen, which flowed into the living room. Everything about the kitchen was permanent. The stove, the small sink like a prison wash basin, the icebox. Those all had to stay. Instead of a regular table there was a low one with benches for creatures out of a fairytale, but that table was part of her collection.
Plastic dishes and utensils were the centrepiece. Sam grabbed a cup and poured himself a glass of water. The stink of iron flooded the room.
“Fuck, I wasn’t thirsty any way,” he said, putting the cup down.
“Yeah, you were.” Sunday sat and stared at the sink. “Hey, can you – “
Kat cut her off. “No need to ask.” She rested a hand on her shoulder. “And you’ll find a job. There’s this new coffee shop down town, and they have a lot of open mikes.”
“I don’t want to work in a bloody coffee shop.”
“What else are you going to do?” Sam asked.
Kat glared. “There are tons of other jobs in the city, and I am sure she could get any one she wants.”
“Sometimes the sympathetic big sister goes overboard, Kat,” Sam said. Sunday pulled her legs up to her chest, hovering between the desire to interrupt and the impulse to curl up and hide. “Okay? She didn’t go to college, she’s a musician, let’s have some realism.”
“I’m here –“
“And she came here to recover, Sam.”
Sam’s expression softened. “She will.”
“I’m tired of coffee shops.” Sunday stood up. “I’m not doing those again. I’ll start my own business, if I have to, but I won’t be a barista.”
Sam ran his hands through his hair. “Don’t count this stuff out. You know why you need to recover from something, Sunnie? It’s because you keep holding on to these things that just aren’t happening. Making a living as a musician. Getting a good job at twenty with no college degree. Girl, do you know what Gogol would say? Or Li?”
“Gogol would say, ‘Girl, you good enough as is,’” Kat said, imitating his New York accent and hand gestures. “Sam has a point. Baby, you don’t need the trappings or validations of all of this.”
“No, I don’t.” Sunday walked into the empty living room, and breathed a sigh of relief. “Because I know I’m bigger than a coffee shop. I’ll get a respectable job or I’ll make one on my own.”
Sam looked at Sunday, and then at Kat, and again they silently agreed to something.
“Okay, I’ll try,” said Kat, “to help you find something outside of a coffee shop. No promises, but I’ll try.” She looked into the living room. “What are we doing about the wall paper?”
“Burning it.” Sunday motioned to a basket under the basin of the sink. “There’s a paint scraper in there. That ought to get the glue up.”
Sam took the tool and tossed it back and forth between his hands. No one seemed inclined to get up and work, or talk, even. They hung over the table, looking at the paper and plastic centre piece. Sunday switched her hands in and out of the pockets of her sweater and the pockets of her jeans. Finally she took the paint scraper from Sam and, without a word, started tearing at the wallpaper. After a minute they joined in.
That evening it looked like the bonfire could touch the sky. This close to the city the only stars visible were the ones that flickered in the windows of the skyscrapers on the other side of the bay. She sat in the grass and looked up, up to where the stars should have been and then across, to where the red haze of the city was. Streetlight quasars framed it. Cars flew by in hordes like Orion’s meteor belt.
Sunday knew that down by the shore the sea reflected all of it.
A bit clever, maybe (you clearly know how to use the English language) but just bogs down your narration.