I stood where I was for a good minute after she’d disappeared, blinking at the spot she’d last stood in. This was my very first go-see and I’d bombed it because what? I was too big? My waist was too fat? Good grief, how could it get any smaller without removing some non-essential organs?
Part of me wanted to cry. The other part reminded me that rejection was part of the business and to log this first one in the books and keep going. Checking my next appointment’s address—it was at eleven—I consulted the map for a moment to make sure I knew where I was going, then I left Zelda Zhou’s studio with a flourish.
Someone really needed to tell her that it didn’t matter how “bold” the industry had deemed you, it should still be considered high treason in the fashion world to mix a chevron skirt with a paisley blouse.
The rest of the day continued in a similar fashion—at least in the sense of it being unusual and surprising. I thought I’d known all about how eccentric the fashion world was—I’d been reading about it since the first time I opened a fashion magazine at the age of seven—but reading about it was entirely different from being thrown into the three-ring circus with them.
Some clients treated me like I was the sibling they had been separated from at birth, and some behaved like I was no more human than the cell phone glued to their hand. Some wanted me to walk, some asked me to pose, only a couple actually glanced through my portfolio, but all of them were what I’d classify as supremely unique. I didn’t know if I’d booked any jobs, but I definitely knew I hadn’t booked a couple.
By the time I left the studio of my last go-see a little after seven, I was so tired I was half tempted to curl up in one of the lounge chairs inside the women’s restroom waiting area and fall asleep. The bathroom was warm, and the thought of taking to the streets in my heels again, finding a subway station, and praying I made it back to the apartment felt like being tasked with solving the equation for nuclear fusion.
With the help of a few strangers, and a whole lot of help from luck, I somehow managed to make it back to my new apartment building. Before I climbed the stairs to the sixth floor, I took off my heels. When I glanced down to see the damage, I winced. I’d rubbed a few blisters raw, and my feet looked like I was nine months pregnant in the dead of summer. Swollen, blistered, and red. Hopefully no one wanted to book me for a barefoot photo shoot.
After I walked up six flights of stairs, I pulled out the key Soren had given me earlier, unlocked the door, and walked (hobbled) inside.
“Hello?” None of the lights were on inside, but it didn’t feel right to just come in without announcing myself first. This might have been my apartment now too, but I still felt like the stranger. “Soren, are you here?”
When there was no answer, I flipped on some lights. I should have just left them off. The apartment looked like someone had held a party and invited the whole city. Clothes were strewn around, dirty dishes were scattered everywhere but inside the sink, and junk was littered between the rest of it. I’d only been gone a day, right? This morning, the place had been mostly tidy. How had it gone from that to this in ten hours?
Wandering into the bathroom to throw some cold water on my face, I found the sink coated in shaving cream and scraps of facial hair. Wet towels clumped on the floor. Dirty clothes in another pile. Toothpaste spots dotting the mirror above the sink. The toilet seat lid up, the toilet paper roll empty to boot.
Deciding I’d had a long enough day without trying to process just what degree of a slob I’d moved in with, I clomped to my “bedroom.” After shimmying out of my jeans, I slid into my sleeping bag, closed my eyes, and imagined I was going to wake up and everything would be better.
Everything was worse.
That was what I woke up to the next morning. Soren was one of those heavy-breather types when he slept, which I probably wouldn’t have even noticed if we had actual walls instead of flimsy, bamboo dividers.
I woke up when my alarm first went off, wondering why I still felt tired after getting ten full hours of sleep. My feet looked worse than they had last night, but I was hoping a warm shower and some movement would help with that.
Sliding out of my sleeping bag, I gathered my outfit for the day before moving toward the bathroom. Soren must have been working last night, because I hadn’t heard him get back. It was kind of creepy to realize I hadn’t stirred when some guy I barely knew crawled into a bed no farther than fifteen feet away from my own.
The apartment was dark, but a hint of morning light cast through the windows, revealing an apartment that had gone from messy to warzone. What in the hell? My feet rolled to a stop when I saw the table covered in books, to-go boxes, soda cans, and an assortment of baseball paraphernalia. Something hanging from the blades of the ceiling fan caught my eye.
My face pinched up at the same time I covered my eyes. Jockstraps. He was hang-drying his jockstraps from our ceiling fan. Trying to erase the image of Soren’s unmentionables dangling from a ceiling fan from my mind, I darted for the bathroom before I could take in anything else that would cause permanent mental scarring.
I’d barely made it three steps before I tripped over something right in the middle of the hall. My hand managed to brace against the wall to keep me from falling, but the incident had my blood pumping and my anger stirring. What was his giant duffel bag of baseball crap doing in the middle of the hallway? Probably the same spot he’d let it fall off his shoulder, then decided that was as good a spot as any to store one’s personal objects.
As I took my shower, I reminded myself what he’d done for me so far. He might have taken messy to a new level, but he was a decent human being. That didn’t do much to make me feel better. I was living with this messy, decent person. In a confined space. For at least the next six months.
Given I trended toward the neat-freak end of the spectrum, I found myself entertaining the knowledge I’d rather be sharing an apartment with a tidy, not-so-decent individual.
My shower went extra long, thanks to yesterday’s lack of one and today’s necessity of working out some irritation by loofahing the heck out of my skin. I came out looking pink from all the scrubbing.
Once I’d dressed and gone through my standard morning ritual, I left the bathroom. Soren was still asleep, which was probably for the best since I likely would have greeted him in an unpleasant way to start a new day. Especially when I noticed the carton of milk left out on the counter. From back here, it looked like it was already growing mold.