I hate having to squeeze on the train in the morning. Masses upon masses of people, pressed up against each other so that there isn’t even room to fall when the train jerks to a stop at each station.
It doesn’t help that I’m not tall like Elisabeth, towering over the hoi polloi in her 4-inch (on sale) Jimmy Choos. I, on the other hand, often ended up nose-to-pit with a stranger.
Every morning, blank-eyed strangers all squashed together in such uncomfortably close proximity that all we can do is pretend the other doesn’t exist.
Which was precisely what I was doing this morning. Pretending that Elisabeth and Nick were strangers. They didn’t exist. To their credit, they’d been doing pretty much the same.
Nick shifted awkwardly from one foot to another, hiking his laptop bag further up his shoulder and shot me a pleading look. I cleared my throat gave him my best ‘this is not the time’ expression.
Later, in the lift of the Verve building, Elisabeth finally broke the silence, saying crisply, “I don’t know what the big deal is. The bed had to be broken in sooner or later.” A choked gurgle escaped from Nick’s throat.
The night before, I had heard noises coming from somewhere outside my room and was convinced that someone had broken into the flat that the three of us shared. I remember thinking that it was just my rotten luck that we would be burgled on our first night in the new apartment. I picked up the captain’s ball trophy that I’d won in secondary school and crept outside, only to see that Nick was already standing in the living room with a weird expression on his face, like a cross between horror and sheer embarrassment.
“Did you hear something too?” I asked.
THUD. THUMP. “Shit! Do you think the burglar’s got Elisabeth?” I panicked, rushing forward towards her room.
“Elis-!” I never finished my sentence because Nick had come to life at that moment and clamped a hand over my mouth. “It’s not a burglar!” he hissed. Realization dawned upon me even as my brain cells started to die from oxygen deprivation. I slapped away Nick’s hand.
“She’s uh, probably having a nightmare… or something.” I said, backing into my room.
“Yea,” Nick agreed. “Or something.”
A particularly loud moan from the direction of Elisabeth’s room was followed rapidly by the staccato of two slamming doors.
“Broken is right.” I muttered under my breath. I wonder how many beds that girl goes through a month.
“I didn’t see anyone leave this morning,” Nick said, adjusting his spectacles nervously. “There was, right? Somebody, I mean.”
There was a moment of silence and then Elisabeth raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. And as she spoke, her voice started to increase in volume and pitch. “If you are implying that I am incapable of getting a man and that I have to resort to using a--“
DING. The lift doors slid open at the 14th floor and Elisabeth paused mid-screech. Nick gave a terrified little squeak and made a dash out the door.
Elisabeth turned to me and smiled. The kind of smile a great white gives Nemo just before chewing off half his orange-and-white stripey body. “Oh, don’t worry; it doesn’t happen all that often. I have standards, you know."
As we strode out the lift on the Verve floor, I contemplated my options : earplugs from Daiso, maybe a Bang & Olufsen surround sound system…
I felt a vibration in my pocket and took out my phone.
“Hw much $$ u think 2 put up soundproof walls? -N”
