Anne opened the door and tried to pretend she wasn't out of breath. She still wore the silly pale pink pajama pants because she had tossed her jeans in the laundry, and she was just now remembering that she'd put the laundry basket in the bathroom so she could add in the towels--ten minutes ago she couldn't imagine where it had gone. The spaghetti-strap shirt was an indeterminate gray, but the only bra she could find was (quite visibly where it went over her shoulders) a rainbow-worthy green. She'd taken a shower earlier and now her hair was curling madly in every direction, escaping the loose ponytail she'd tried to restrain it with and merrily tumbling over shoulders, ears and eyebrows. Though small, Anne was not slight; she was made of curves, not lines, and an unkind person might have called her dumpy. Yet she seemed comfortable in her skin, and no one could have said she was overweight or unattractive, especially with the twinkle in her dark eyes and the uncertain flutter of her graceful fingers to indicate the interior of the apartment. "Come on in."
Anne's apartment was the same shape as everyone else's, but she had done so much with it that stepping in was like stepping into an entirely different building. Rather than a riot of color, the living room began gently, in pastels. The couch was striped in pastel primaries, both thick and long, facing a room stuffed with furniture painted white. There were soft pastel green rugs, pastel curtains in the feminine style, and modern free-standing lamps that drifted upward like paper pillars. It was the walls that really drew the eye, for the landlord's default white had been used as a backdrop, a canvas.
Anne had decorated her walls with acrylic cuttings in bold colors. A large oak tree like the one standing on the corner of the sidewalk below stretched out its branches and shed green leaves all along the wall, where they tumbled forth toward the kitchen, borne along by some invisible, two-dimensional wind. Each cutting was exact, detailed, and undoubtedly made by hand; little spirals of white were visible through the tree's trunk and branches, giving the illusion of wood, and the fragile little skeletons of the leaves showed through the tender teardrop shapes.