Beautiful Disaster

Although I’ve been to her apartment more times than I can count, it’s as if I’m stepping into another world. Of course there’s the addition of a cat climbing tree and a few pillows for the furry critter to sleep on, but that’s not the most obvious change. Gone is all the clutter, the tons of useless yet decorative items, leaving the old furniture looking completely different.

Everything is clean and simple, making our condo look like Ikea exploded in it by comparison.

"Alice, what’s going on?"

I’m still standing near the closed door, and haven’t even taken off my shoes and coat, but I can’t ignore this a moment longer. It feels as if I’m caught in a David Lynch movie.

Putting the cat down on the sofa, Alice turns back to me, a flicker of her old self surfacing when she raises her brows.

"What do you mean? I’ve redecorated, so what?"

"Redecorated?" I ask lamely. She nods, but then chuckles sadly, shaking her head.

"Not just my flat, though. Do you want coffee? Tea? Soda?"

Shaking myself out of my apathy, I ask for coffee, then walk over to the sofa. I sit down opposite the cat, who, ignoring the general weirdness of the situation, is licking his butt. Alice soon returns with two cups of coffee, then, after another trip to the kitchen, a plate of cookies that she puts down on the table between us. Not some fat-free, low carb, no sugar atrocities, but normal, honest-to-God homemade chocolate chip cookies. I watch with even more wonder as she pops one into her mouth, then munches for a second without even batting an eyelash.

Of course she notices my stare but ignores it, adding sugar to her coffee before she starts spooning the milk foam the top.

"How are things at the hospital?" she asks, idly scratching the cat between his ears. Forcing my bewilderedness to stop messing with my vocal chords I shrug.

"Hectic, the usual. We’ve got a new Orthopedic Surgeon; half of the doctors hate her, the nurses love her, and we’re becoming friends fast. Her name’s Zoe Thompson, and she’s from Bristol. England."

"Oh, the British Invasion is rallying for a new wave," Alice jokes, then falls silent, the moment immediately turning awkward.

"And you?" I ask, nearly tripping over my own words.

"Hectic, the usual." She repeats my sentence again, her smile slowly gaining in sincerity. "Working with the Brits seems to be a common theme of late. I’m co-designing a new line with a new design label from London.

Very low-key, off the catwalks, but she’s got great connections to a few Indie bands who we’re trying to convince to do the marketing for us if we give them the clothes for free. Who knows, SplashDump might be the new Kings of Leon in a year or two. And if not, I still get to travel to London every few weeks and listen to awesome music. Things could be worse."

It’s as if I don’t even know the woman sitting there, grinning for a moment with the obvious joy change is adding to her life.

"What about your other work, your label?" I can’t even remember what she called it, but she doesn’t seem to mind my slip.

"Sold it."

"Just like that?"

"Yup. Figured it was a good time, seeing as my assistant was ready to mutiny and defect to a major label, so I offered to let him take over.

Technically I still own ten percent of it, enough to pay the rent, but he doesn’t even need my okay on any executive decisions besides re-selling the company or kicking me out completely."

"And you’re okay with that?" I don’t even try to hide the incredulity in my voice. Her label has been the only thing she’s lived and breathed for since her second year in college, and dumping all that seems just insane.

"Do you mind if I excuse myself for a moment? Need to use the bathroom,"

I offer lamely, then quickly get up when she just nods.

"You know the way. But if you’re looking for any kind of anti-depressants or other psychotropic drugs in my medicine cabinet, I can spare you the trip.

You won’t find any."

I halt in mid-step, biting my lip at having been caught, but still continue on my way there, although I keep my activities to just taking a piss. When I return, Alice is sporting a half enigmatic, half wry smile.

"Found what you were looking for?"

"Toilet paper and soap, yeah, but without the knit doily I nearly didn’t recognize the backup roll."

"Smartass," she snorts, then nibbles on another cookie. Seeing as my stealthy attempt has failed, I go on the offensive.

"Not that I disapprove, but why the change? All this -" I look at the spartan décor around us, "so doesn’t fit you."

"Maybe I just didn’t fit the frills anymore?" she offers, then finishes her coffee and gets up for a refill. I check, she even takes real cream. No wonder she has put on weight, pushing her into the comfortable lower range of what a woman her height should be. When she returns she hauls the cat onto her lap, not reacting to his claws sinking repeatedly into her dark blue jeans.

"Do you really want to know?"

I nod, then try to be the one to offer the white flag first.

"Friends care about what happens in each other’s lives, right?"

"I guess they do," she says, but contrary to what I have been hoping for, she sounds sad. Then she narrows her eyes and looks intently at me, the cat all but forgotten. "Do you realize that I don’t even know what field of medicine you chose? I mean, I know now because I ran into Esme last week and asked her, but you must have told me hundreds of times and I only remembered which hospital you were interning for because your dad worked there for years. Doesn’t that strike you as peculiar?"

I don’t really know what to say, but I can guess what she wants to hear.

"Alice, you’ve always been a superficial person -" I can barely censor the need to say ‘bitch’, "and about as egocentric as they get. But that’s nothing new, I wouldn’t have been your friend for so long if I hadn’t accepted that, nor would I have shown up here with the expectation of finding anything different."

For a moment she seems ready to cry, but then gets a hold on herself, trying hard to pretend my words didn’t affect her.

"Well, guess that means the long version then."

She falls silent for a moment, gnawing on her lip before she resumes talking.

"I guess I finally realized that things were not right. With me. All around me.

To be honest, first I believed everything and everyone else wasn’t right, but eventually a bit of self-reflection started seeping in. After Thanksgiving -"

she stops, then swallows but goes on immediately, "I told Nate that I needed to be alone. I shut myself in, turned the phone off, disconnected the landline. I think I cried for a straight day. Then I fell into some kind of apathy, didn’t sleep, eat, shower, read, watch TV, just sat there and did nothing. I got lonely, then cried again when I saw that I only had three missed calls on my phone, and all of them were from my assistant. I went out to get a cat, for company if you will, but the local pet shop couldn’t tell me the addresses of any of the high class breeders of any of the breeds I was considering. A little desperate at that point, I went to the animal shelter down the street and picked up Mr. Fibbins. He looked so alone but kept hissing at anybody who came close, and I felt an instant connection."

I briefly look at the cat, purring and completely at ease, wondering at just how weirdly in sync they are.

"Of course when I got home he just added to the chaos, and when cleaning up after him became too much of a bother I started throwing things away that he broke. And then other things, too, until all the clutter was gone. He only drinks cream so I had to get some, and when the bottles always went bad, I started drinking it, too. Then I ran to the closest supermarket, bought a ton of chocolate, ate it, then made myself puke because I had eaten it.