Re: Living Room: Hannah & David
Maybe this wasn't really her world, any more than it was his. But she kept up appearances, appeared to belong. Still, he nodded, accepting her point. "Fitting in means you look right. Not that you're the same." She wasn't, and he wouldn't argue the point.
Most of the shades around them had drinks or food. He probably ought to grab one as a prop, but the thought slipped away when Hannah spoke again. "I like the sound of that much better," he said, with a small smile. That darker, cozier place.
Thinking of Molly, talking of Molly, he felt her spirit rising from the ground. Molly oozed through the cracks in the floorboards and took her place among the vibrant living, in the thick of the party, in the bright places where the sound reverberated most. Her edges shimmered and buzzed with static feedback. "Sometimes," he said. His eyes pinned a bare space in a small knot of laughing people. "Yes. There were parties, clubs. Friends. Not so...organized, not like this. Music, when there was time." He leaned against the wall. "She would have karaoke nights every other weekend. When the bar closed, we would bring everyone back to keep singing at the apartment. The neighbors hated us. Windmills of Your Mind, I remember, she sang it ten times one night. She'd got into the shiraz and she was feeling a bit morose..." His voice trailed away. He was thinking of her singing, but thinking too of the apartment. He could place every object in those rooms, walk through them blind even now. He could reconstruct its proportions right here if he had to. He knew how many steps it was from the front door to the kitchen, from the back wall of the living room to the sink, where they -
He withdrew from the thought, and from the moment. His voice had briefly animated, made alive by memory. It smoothed away, and he looked at her. "It's a shame we didn't get to see more of you."