Everyone, in their own way, is OCDed, or thinks they are. When you walk down a street, children would skip a tile if it's colored a different color. Sometimes, adults would too. A child might drink their juice container even when they're sated. Sometimes, adults might too. If a chocolate's wrapper were to rip in an uneven line, a child must feel apprehensive. Sometimes, adults must too.
In a bar, a somewhat-cracked marble white clock points to 23:10. A man meets a young thing at the bar, twists his ring finger self-consciously, he follows her home, and ruins an eight-year marriage that cost him two children, an alimony and the love of his life. But, if the bartender were to spill the requested drink and were to have to remake it all over again, the customer, then, would have his drink at exactly 23:13; fate is tested, the man would smile at the young thing, would probably pay for her drink, twist his ring finger assuredly then walk back home.
Like an alimony, OCD is not something a person can afford. It takes a toll on you. And, like an affair with a younger woman, it's filled with excuses as to why you did it.
To tell people you are doing something because the clock told you so. Inexplicable, Cara is aware. But, she believes, wholeheartedly, that having 24 hours a day was not random, the Egyptians did not wake up one day and decided to have 24 hours a day. The cosmic world: the sun, the stars, the universe; God decided on that. She does not take that for granted. For, a day might make a difference. Sometimes, a minute does too.
That's why when Cara enters her home, leaves her keys with its F.r.i.e.n.d.s purple keychain in the Windsor blue entrance key bowl, and habitually turns to the clock to find it precisely five minutes to twelve, she knows this message conveys something to her because when an eleven occurs with two fives, that's good luck.
Cara, being the kind of person who never utters a word she can't fully spell, the reason she never pronounces the word malheureusement out loud even though it's her favorite French word, looks down at her camisole with the intention of dissecting today's choices. How to know if this was a red camisole day?
Should she have picked a color that matches the jacket of her friend? Or the car of another? Or perhaps the headband she saw on the landlord? Has anyone ever matched their clothes to other peoples' items? But, then, people don't really do what clocks tell them to do, either.
S looks down at the shoes she absentmindedly took off, and she holds them looking at them anew. To her, they are an unwelcome- from a fashion point of view, a necessary- complement to the outfit, they should be given the same priority one considers a jacket or a scarf. But, she has never liked them. Sadly, they can make or break the whole attire. She frowns at her own perfect in a range from a summer dress to an A-line skirt wedged heels and walks down her Pomeranian-peach polypropylene carpet to her bedroom. She stops as her eyes align with her current read. Her eyes usually do that, go look, literally, for things she's postponing. The purpose is to give her one more thing about which she ought to feel guilty later at night. She shrugs leaving her copy of Murakami's Dance Dance Dance chameleoning with her living room's white table.
Her eyes, being the uncontrollable organs they are, keep swerving downcast toward the infamous shrimp pink card. S makes an attempt to shut her superstitious self off. She has a big day at work tomorrow. She grabs the card and, tentatively, she walks into her bedroom. Hues of orchid and azalea pink surround her altogether, Cara isn't a purple girl but Mrs. Kitty's last tenant was a colorful, seemingly happy, and judging from the scribbles of Romance novels' male protagonists down the kitchen wall where the cabinets normal people would only store things that never to be used but regifted, is a vehemently, vividly and vitally loyal romance reader. Cara uses the cabinets for her additional blender, salad spinners and some who-would-they-hurt-really liquid measuring glasses. Some people might call these tools superfluous, redundant and items of a controlling, obsessive cook. But, Cara doesn't think she's any of that. She doesn't even cook that much. She places the shrimp pink card on the ivory bedside table and treads purposefully to her wardrobe. Considering, she settles and changes into her pair of buttermilk yellow pajamas, then makes her way into her en suite bathroom, giving a wide berth to her bed or anything nearing it like the bedside table with the infamous card, all the while her disobedient eyes swerving sideways. She grunts the uncontrollable spasm away. Once in her bathroom, which unlike her colorful room, is a mundane wisteria blue, the boring death-like wisteria blue, she grabs her mint green toothbrush, places a dollop of retro green toothpaste and scrubs her not-as-white-as-she-would-have-wanted teeth. Apart form her salmon cotton Turkish towels, her make up products, the linen set Matt gifted her from Switzerland and the little olive vanity unit she got at half the price in a little shop down Washington Blvd, the rest of the bathroom consists of achingly deteriorating walls with shy colors that were once viably turquoise or even a shade darker, and plasters that are hanging on to dear life, not even a paint coat could save them, or two: that Cara knew firsthand. As she scrubs her canines diligently, moving the toothbrush upward, downturned brown eyes stare back. Some might contemplate life decisions washing dishes, going for a late night ride or walking their dogs. Cara is an obsessive cleaner, a careful driver and one without pets, her contemplation hours are reserved for the two and forty five seconds (doctor-recommended) of ruthlessly (probably not doctor-recommended) scrubbing her teeth enamels. Thinking back to her seeing Will, she feels like crying.
She considers calling Emma.
There is a silent kind of hurt where things are kept inside, not to protect the other person but to protect yourself. An agonizingly ugly part that's forcefully hidden because once it's out, once it's freed, it can not be stifled or controlled. It feeds off the months- perhaps years-kept anger and comes out in unforgivably, corruptively and detrimentally colossal waves.
Like an epidemic, it spreads out of proportion, it contaminates everything around and within the process annihilates its carrier.
She refrains.
Mahogany brown eyes blink into a spotless yet poorly, dimly and sombrely black-rimmed mirror.
Just as Cara's corpus callosum shuffles inappropriate thoughts about the hot cerulean-eyed new guy, her loyal, caring and supportive boyfriend rings her. Stabbed with anguish over her cerebral act of cheating, she leaves the mint toothbrush on the withering washbasin and picks up the phone. iPhone.
She contemplates whether Matt is calling to be the bigger person, or if he's looking for an apology. Or, worse, a fight. After all, it has been five days. She considers this, but just as her ringtone indicates the end of the call, she chooses to meet him half way.
"Hi!" She beams, excitedly. Her fingers enclosing the mocha brown phone case worriedly. On her fourth phone call with Matt, Cara realized she has a specific voice quality she uses only with him. She never arranged for it to happen, she knew some girls work to maintain that specific seductive tone, but with her it just happened. She doesn't think it's seductive, but she knows it's solely his.
Matthew answers back.
"I'm good, thank you"
He replies with a question.
"It's tomorrow, yeah. Dan's sent trillions of emails. Honestly, I'm surprised he didn't knock on our doors himself"
Suddenly, nervously and guiltily she chews her lip. A toxic taste of toothpaste mingles with her saliva. She starts spinning in circles, walking round her bespoke four-doors wardrobe that, like an unfit bra, can barely contain her clothes, moving along her perfectly-meted study, its wooden top coated in a magnificently rich layer of sand dollar brown with slender gazelle legs. Her excursion nearly ends at her full-size maple-framed-but-obsessively-white-painted bed. A nanosecond later, she resumes treading.
"No, it's not hot. It was nice actually. For May, anyway"
Diagonally, she strides to the bed and back. Then retreats to half a circle.
"Hmm, I was out with them actually"
Matt's reply stops her in place, she's staring at the shrimp pink card. The corner of her left eye eyeing her conspicuously large, overused yet never-full bark grey hamper.
She frowns at her one pair of grey sweatpants folded neatly inside.
Maybe the topic just came up but angrily, unjustifiably and perhaps quite dramatically, she forms a question into her brain Is there a reason for Tom to tell you my whereabouts?
Before she speaks, Matt mentions how the topic just came up.
If this were Taylor Swift, she'd make a song about the compatibility between his subconscious mind and hers.
He continues rambling about teasing the ever-observant slightly-hyper-vigilant and colossally-brilliant best friend of his.
S smiles. She knows that Matthew is reserved in nature. He only blabbers like this with her. It warms the fabric of her buttermilk shirt all the way outwards from her warmed heart.
After Matthew hangs up, with a soft goodbye, babe that dings, sings and rings in her head like a lullaby, S walks back to the bathroom grinning like a Cheshire Cat, the infamous muscle on the left side of her chest is pumping blood vigorously. The breath she takes, or the breaths she takes, is and are mingled with an innocuous flavor of toothpaste, fields of azaleas and plumerias filling her already intoxicated head, and white dwarves stars floating around her like she's their orbit, the centre of mass, the centre of the universe. Being loved does that to a person.
She retrieves her toothbrush and resumes the one minute and twenty seconds left. But, is no longer thinking. She is scrubbing her molars rigorously, but she's simply staring into her world of galaxies, feeling all the love in the world is at her disposal.
Just as she finishes, she stares down at the mint toothbrush, her vision treads ever so slightly downcast to the ovary washbasin then ladders up towards the moonlight grey victorian cornices, sideways to the debilitating julep green bathtub and finally all the way down to her lavender bathroom slippers. A collage of colors runs haphazardly through her brain: mint, buttermilk yellow, mocha brown, coral red, julep green, moonlight grey, lavender. She blinks the colors away. As the colors ricochet, an idea is formed out of their shrapnels.
Immediately, excitedly and a little irrationally she hurries out of the bathroom and strides towards her bedside table. She retrieves the card and beams proudly at it as if just figured the Turing enigma code. The question wasn't whether today is a red-camisole day, but whether Red was actually the color of today. Beauty in Red her mischievous little brain tantalizes the words of the beautiful boy. She frowns upon her brain.
She grabs a number of dijon yellow Post-its from her study's ovary white drawer. With a red pen from her white pencil-case of poppy red pens, she neatly scribbles down names of colors.
Each day needs its own color, and that's exactly what she's going to do.
Cara usually tells people who know her very well that she's not the type to exaggerate, she's a realist. She can be a dreamer sometimes, but in essence she makes sure her dreams to reflect reality, not the other way around. Her friends absolutely disregard this remark, reminding her every chance they get that she does tend to exaggerate, to the point she overplays ordinary, mundane things. As she empties her white pencil-case of coal black pens, fills it with the Post-its with the colors' names on them, she contemplates that maybe, maybe her friends aren't mistaken. Or, right on the money. She shrugs the thought away with a Haiku: A rainbow of color. Excited is good. Girl on a mission. Okay, she does tend to exaggerate.
Sitting cross-legged on the parquet floor, she blindly picks at a cutout paper from the pencil-case. She is extremely, insensibly and childishly excited that she needs to take a breath before opening the piece of paper.
The three-letter word puts a serendipitous smile on her face.
Two red shirts, a pomegranate petal-sleeved thing that would be perfect with a matching beret but not an all-red ensemble, Cara thinks. Except she doesn't own a beret. Not yet, anyway. Quickly, uninterestedly and absentmindedly she glances at a classic zinnia-red blouse with poet sleeves that wouldn't work either. Her paprika red dresses are either too tight, too ostentatious or too unprofessional, she takes a step inside her closet, and for all the good the past month and a half of meditation does her, she loses her balance. She looks up and realizes it wasn't physical imbalance that threw her out of the closet, it was the force of the perfect piece urging her to take her step right back. She stares in wonder at the beautiful coral red romper with its playful ruffles of flowers at the shoulders and its daring V neckline hanging below a blazer with a shade slightly darker. She stares, blinking her love into the all red ensemble. But, upon her fourth blink, she realizes the red jacket is a no. S already knows which pumps to go perfect with the outfit. She's not a shoes person, but she loves her pumps. Just as her brain juggles her purses choices, unlike footwear she absolutely loves purses, her iPhone rings.
She takes off her Eternity band set, retrieves her iPhone from the nightstand where she delicately puts the rings.
She sees the name on the screen and inwardly curses.
"Hey! I'm sorry. I meant to call you" She lies. "I just got caught up" She tells the truth.
Nelly hums an answer.
"Is everything okay with you? Like, are you ready for tomorrow?"
Nelly answers affirmatively.
"Nell, we don't go laconic on one another. What's wrong?"
She sighs long enough for S to get apprehensive. She then gives a long monologue about how Emma can't be trusted.
S knows what brought this up, but she doesn't have the will to discuss this. Again.
"Nells, honey, Emma is different. Some would call her an original. That's not necessarily a bad thing"
Nelly retorts that it isn't necessarily a good thing either. That Em is like a movie character who's too sweet at the beginning of the film only to find out she was the killer all along.
"And, you tell me I exaggerate. Look, just go easy on her, please. Let's focus on work these days. God knows we have a lot to do"
Nelly agrees with a reluctant whatever.
Her jagged breath is the only proof she's still on the phone. Just as Cara makes an attempt to ask what's wrong, Nelly blurts out that Scott isn't coming.
Instantaneously, uncontrollably and instinctively Cara's eyebrows ladder up all the way to her hairline.
"For an on-again off-again boyfriend, Scott is really doing an awful job. Wasn't it your turn to dump him this time? You guys keep count, right?"
Just as Nelly provides Cara, minutely, with every little punctuation mark missed or enhanced, every letter capitalized or downplayed, every intonation high or low, too high or too low, there's also a too medium in Nelly's book, Cara wanders back to their last fight: Nelly has just met his sister and they didn't exactly get along. So, Nells, being the let's-jump-to-conclusion kinda gal, tells Scott that his sister isn't invited to their wedding, her words being I don't even want her to come near my children, we can send pictures and I'd still be worried about black magic and will have to arrange meetings with exorcists, and no, she's only engaged in her mind, Scott hasn't proposed. The point is, Nell and Scott are the made-for-each-other couple, the when-you-know-you-know meant-to-be movies-based-on-their-romance-story couple. Genuinely content for her friend, Cara smiles warmly.
"Okay, but what prompted this? I thought he promised to show up for you?"
With everything happening today, Cara hasn't really stopped to think about the big day at work tomorrow. She frowns, but as her eyes swerve to her jar of colors, her frown alleviates and morphs into a reluctant smile.
Nelly whines how full of excuses he is.
"That I agree with. What is it this time? Paranoid mum, possessive boss, or jet lag? How come he never uses those, jet lags make the perfect excuse"
Reluctantly, soundlessly and what could be perceived as shamefully, Nelly answers.
"What?" Cara's laughter is genuine. "His sister's wedding, really? Look who's not invited to the wedding, now! Karma is a Miley"
Nells retorts back. Good-naturedly, cusses a few words.
"Nell, he adores you, you know that. I wouldn't be worried, honestly"
Nelly asks how are things with Matt.
Truthfully, confidently and lovingly, Cara answers. "Perfect".
