She slammed the door behind her, as she entered the apartment with a bucket full of fresh clothes that smelled like a valley filled with green somewhere that was fake. It slammed shut extra loud, a little louder than she hoped it would, but the doors in this building had a way of doing that. And gravity didn’t help a lot either, especially considering that the house wasn’t built on a straight piece of land. Either that, or the construction workers all had vertigo.
“I’m putting your laundry down here next to the couch. Are you ready yet?” She said in a semi-loud voice, so he could hear him in the next room.
He, was tieing his shoelaces before standing up from the bed and walking to her. “Yeah. I suppose so…” his sentence ended abruptly as he remembered to comb his hair one last time, “… almost done.” He looked up at her and she immediately knew it. She made a quick mental note to get ready for a series of questions, and then another one to remind her to stop making mental notes. She had already known this was going to happen, and she didn’t need any mental notes.
“Who were you talking to in the hallway?” he asked.
“Oh, you heard?” She pretended to be oblivious to common sense. It was either a defense mechanism, or just something she did for shits and giggles. This while, continued to comb his hair and pretend nothing was out of order or out of the ordinary. “Yeah. It was pretty loud.”
“Oh. No one,” she started, while looking around to see if she was forgetting anything of her own. But mainly just to avoid eye contact. “it was just your neighbor. The one that plays guitar?”
He smirked a little and said, “of course it was the one that plays guitar.”
She stopped in her tracks just a few multiseconds before he could even finish his sentence, because she was expecting this just as well. Although perhaps she herself didn’t realize this, in keeping up with the silly games all couples probably play. Involuntarily. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she enquired for herself.
“Nothing. What were you guys talking about anyway?” he continued.
“Oh, just this and that. He was asking if I live here by myself, so I told him about you,” she said, before quickly adding, “and us! And I told him where we go to school, and that he plays guitar well.”
He stopped combing his hair, and just stood there for what seemed like a quick second. This was another thing that was sort of expected and unexpected at the same time. Like you know it’s coming, but you’re never too sure, so you sort of push the envelope to find out. Sort of like those things, you know?
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he enquired.
“What? What do you mean? I think he plays the guitar well.” she retorted.
“And how exactly do you know that?”
This made her think for a while, but a very short while. If she had stopped to think longer it would blow her whole spot, and she was losing credibility by the second. “What do you mean? We hear him through the walls all the time…”
“Through the walls, all the time!” he repeated, trying to make a point. “And how do you judge someone’s musical talents while listening to the distorted sounds that you only hear through a damn wall??”
“Wow, are you serious?” she said, with great disbelief. Much greater than it actually was, of course, she didn’t want to lose any more credibility.
“Yes?? How do you figure someone’s good at something without even seeing it for your own eyes. For all you know, it could be a recording of some really distorted guitar player.”
“Wow, that’s one of the most retarded things I’ve ever heard.”
“Really, you’ve never heard of Scientology?
“Wow,” she repeated, still feigning disbelief, and without much else to add. “…wow.”
“That’s it? Wow?”
“I don’t know what else to say to you, that’s one of the most unbelievable things I’ve ever heard.”
“…”
“…”
“No it isn’t.”
“Yes it is.”
“That’s dumb.”
“No, what you said was dumb.”
“wow, forget it.”
“I already have.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
With this they both finally decided they were ready to go out, without talking to each other of course. Talking to each other would mean one of them was weaker than the other somehow, wouldn’t it? Of course.
They walked quietly together for a while, her with her pouted lips, and him with a cigarette in his mouth. They decided to stand at the corner of the street and wait for the rest of the group of people that was joining them for dinner.
“I can’t believe we argued over something so stupid,” she finally said.
“We’ve argued over dumber things… and what do you mean stupid, anyway? I was making sense.” he retorted.
“Making sense? No you weren’t.”
“Yes, I damn right was. You’re probably the only person that doesn’t see any sense in it.”
With this, they saw the people they were waiting for walk towards them and her first response was to hush him up before he could continue what she considered to be “the most ridiculous thing shes’ ever heard.”
“No, no one will see the sense in that because there isn’t any. Now if you can be quiet, we can go to dinner with these poor folks.” she pleaded.
Small talk ensued as expected, hand shakes, hugs, the usual social obligations.
“So where do you guys want to go eat?” asked Jim, or Joe, or Jane, it doesn’t matter who.
He quickly made way into the conversation without even considering the question, and said:
“Ok, here’s a hypothetical question… you hear someone playing an instrument through the walls of your apartment, right?”
She just rolled her eyes.
