Carpe Diem

It is universally understood that some things are difficult to put into words. Some feelings, some facets of human existence, simply defy the dictionary and are only, truly understood when felt.

Laurie Lewis knows this; there was nothing she could say when her beloved, childhood cat passed away and there was equally nothing she could say when she graduated university with upper second class honours. It had been a tough year for her.

Some days now, Laurie lies in the small house she shares with three other people her age, in her bed with her eyes trained on the ceiling, waiting for her alarm to instruct her to get out, and finds there is nothing she can say about the motions of her life since that graduating day, too.

It’s not as stifling a silence as grief, and it’s not like graduating when Laurie’s smile said it all anyway. The best word for it is probably ennui, but even then, that word indicates too much presence to Laurie. Ennui is something you succumb to, this (whatever this is) is just something that haunts her lamely from the corner as the alarm sounds and she gets out of bed.

There’s a little shop about a twenty minute walk from her house with a currently locked door. Laurie has the key. Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday for the last four years, the aforementioned alarm has gone off because Laurie has to open that door, stand in the shop for eight hours, and then close and lock that door again. Her getting out of bed, plodding down a flight of stairs and standing outside the bathroom is the beginning of that sequence of events.

Inevitably, Amanda, a flatmate with her own sequence of events, is still in the bathroom. She’s late but not in that hurried way. She’s always late. Amanda has big, curly hair and it carries her everywhere like a cloud; she wafts in and out of rooms, timeless.

“Amanda,” Laurie taps lightly, routinely at the door, “I have to leave in like twenty five minutes.”

Unusually the door swings open. Laurie had expected to have to tap a couple more times yet, and further exaggerate how little time she had before enticing Amanda out of her steamy stupor, so this movement, and the subsequent appearance of Amanda’s swimming capped and eye goggled head in the doorway, takes Laurie by surprise.

Amanda is a professional swimmer. Like a lot of other professional athletes, and a lot of other non-professional non-athletes, Amanda has a little good luck ritual, a lucky charm. Since the age of eight she’s been showering with her swimming cap and goggles on. Since the age of eight she’s only been getting better at swimming. Laurie always wonders how she tames all of her hair and gets it to cooperate with the idea of going underneath the swimming cap; ultimately Laurie concludes that Amanda must just be like Medusa, who undoubtedly had a special, serpentine relationship with her own hair.

Now, also much like Medusa, Amanda has frozen Laurie to the spot. She gently raises her hands to cup Laurie’s left and right cheek at the same time. The shower continues to run in the bathroom.

“Oh Laurie,” Amanda intones with a sad face, like a heroine, like a painting, “I have some bad news.”

Amanda’s bad news concerns a supermarket run-in with Quentin Bissaka. Laurie is in love with Quentin Bissaka. Amanda knows Laurie is in love with Quentin Bissaka, but Quentin Bissaka doesn’t know and Laurie won’t admit it to herself. Laurie thinks that love is one of those things that utterly defies words, she doesn’t realise that love can also be remembering someone’s birthday every year without having to be reminded, or waving hello from ten metres away, or the desire to throw an object to its recipient instead of having it solemnly pass between hands.

In light of this, Amanda has always been silently rooting for Quentin to make some sort of move. He’s the manager of a coffee shop not too far from where Laurie works. He’s tall and lean and has a very charming smile. He’s an excellent multitasker.

However, two nights ago Amanda had bumped into him down the ‘Wines and Spirits’ aisle in the supermarket and with that, all of Amanda’s hopes for Laurie had been dashed all over the floor, soberly demarcated with a “WET FLOOR - WATCH OUT” sign and then cleaned up by a repugnantly sad-looking mop.

Quentin had been holding a bottle of red wine.

“What’s that for?” Amanda had asked innocently, after exchanging pleasantries, though her hair was a thunderstorm.

“Oh, this?” Quentin had stumbled, “it’s for a… a date, I guess.”

“I see,” rain, lighting, a tree on fire, “have fun with that.”

Amanda had known that if Laurie was his date, Laurie would have said something as soon as he had asked. She would have nervously wrung her hands before calling on the work phone, but called nevertheless, and delineated the entirety of the situation right down to the exact inflection of Quentin’s words with that little voice of hers. But it hadn’t happened, so Amanda had worked out that this first date was with some other mystery babe, and this is precisely what she is relaying to Laurie now at the threshold of the bathroom, cupping the poor girl’s face and trying to be as soothing as possible.

Laurie doesn’t say anything in response. She lets Amanda coax her absent, naked body into the shower and doesn’t even mind when Amanda stays in the bathroom for its duration.

When Laurie gets out she seems to symbolically gather her thoughts with the wrapping of a towel around her head. She sits next to Amanda who has propped herself on the bath, still wearing her swimming cap. Together the two of them look like strange chess pieces, ready to traverse the tiles of the bathroom in whichever ways they’re allowed to.

“I just always thought he was going to ask me out one day you know?” Laurie says.

“I know,” Amanda replies, “me too.”

“I’ve just never got along with a guy like that,” Laurie says.

“I know,” Amanda replies, “me neither.”

Laurie turns to look at Amanda and her eyes are a bit misty, “I feel so stupid for assuming.”

“Hey,” Amanda is stern, “don’t talk like that. We’ve all seen you guys together, you have that thing. You click, or whatever. That doesn’t happen every day, to every two people. You’re not stupid for assuming, it’s not an assumption, it’s right there. It’s kind of hard to put into words, but you know what I mean, right? You guys click.”

Amanda is right on two counts, Laurie and Quentin do click, and ‘clicking’ as a phenomenon is one of those aforementioned things that’s just very difficult to put into words. Citing examples of inside jokes, a perfect record of catching and throwing things from one to the other and an air of complete, surrounding ease doesn’t really encapsulate it properly; it’s something more than the sum of all those parts.

Another thing that’s very difficult to put into words, that Laurie is just now realising, is the sort of heartbreak feeling for events that never happened, snippets of life that were never lived. She can’t see what she had envisioned for herself and Quentin ever happening with anyone else.

With this on her mind as she leaves for work, Laurie puts on her sunglasses to conceal any further misting that her eyes might suffer. She feels like that thing which is usually restricted to haunting her from her bedroom has limped out the door behind her and is following her down the road, lifeless, dragging itself across ground in chewing gum and cracks in the pavement.

The thing is, where Amanda has her swimming cap, Laurie has Quentin. He’s her good luck charm. The mere sight of him turns any day into a good day and now that magic may well belong to someone else, permanently.

Laurie gets to work in ample time and the day passes uneventfully. She mends a couple of shoes, she cuts a couple of keys and doesn’t look up expectantly for Quentin passing by once. She leaves early, deflated, the thing from her bedroom in tow.

About fifteen minutes after this, ten minutes after actual closing time, Quentin Bissaka presses himself against the glass of the front door and probes the shop interior with his eyes. He uses his left hand to help minimise the reflection. In his right hand are two glasses, and underneath his arm is a bottle of red wine - a very expensive bottle of red wine, the most expensive red wine the whole supermarket had to offer.

As mentioned previously, some things are difficult to put into words. One of these things is surely just how frustrating it is that two people who are, on all accounts, perfect for each other, missed a fateful encounter by a matter of minutes, and not only this, but that they missed each other because of someone else’s false assumptions.

Quentin is in love with Laurie Lewis. Laurie Lewis doesn’t know it yet but Quentin is determined that one day she will, once he overcomes his nerves. Quentin has planned out their first date every single day since they first met and the more he discovered about Laurie, the more the particulars of the event started to take shape. For one thing, she loved surprises, she loved green spaces in warm weather, she loved Merlot and she loved doing stuff after work. Sure, her and Quentin had done plenty of stuff after work together, but this time, this time, he really had brought up the courage to declare his intentions, to hold her hand as he leads her to the duck pond, and maybe even to kiss her as the sun sets on their first date. His housemate, Jonathan, had finally talked him up to it last week: “It’s not every girl you can remember the favourite wine of you know,” he had said, “Merlot too as well, she’s got taste.”

Eventually, Quentin gives up his bastion at the shop door. His stare isn’t going to suddenly make Laurie materialise. He resigns himself to sitting on the doorstep and opening the Merlot to enjoy a consolatory glass himself before he goes home, after all, why lick your wounds when you can drown your sorrows? He isn’t sure when he’ll next be able to buck up the courage for anything as impromptu as this. Perhaps it’s a sign.

Twenty minutes away, Laurie Lewis has just stopped in her tracks. She’s left her sunglasses at work. The sunglasses are of minor importance within the cast of her effects really, but for some reason she’s just been struck by the desire to retrieve them nevertheless. Maybe her and Amanda will go for some drinks at the duck pond later and watch the sun set, Laurie does love doing that, and she would need her sunglasses if they do. Borrowed pairs from Amanda never suit her.

She’s at a crossing, weighing it up, waiting for the light to change.

As mentioned previously, and then again before that, some things are difficult to put into words. Another of these things, surely, indubitably, certainly, is just how frustrating it is to never find out whether two people did, or not.