Where To?

Chapter 5

Clair was ecstatic about fairy lights. I have obtained confirmation of this fact the night I went back to The Mansion, which we learned was called

"Mednarodni grafični likovni Center, MGLC for short." I iterated onto my phone's mic.

"Med-nah-ROHD-knee, graphEEK-knee, lee-kov-knee ...center. Is that right?" Clair's mouth stretched the widest I've ever seen that it showed her back teeth. Pretty gross but mostly comical.

"Jesus, Jillian, I'll just call it the MGLC." Clair rolled her eyes again. I wonder if she's ever seen the back of her head at least once in all the times she's rolled her eyes, but I kept that to myself.

"Yeah, sure. Great job, Clair." I fixated my eyes on the stony façade of the museum, only to gaze back at the screen when Clair feigned an 'awww' at the sight of the lights shining along the pathway.

She scrunched her face up in one hand, to which I teased her was the proof of her fatness. She denied it again, obviously, but she did confirm that the pathway lights looked 'enchanting.'

"Why didn't you tell me you'd be walking down such an aesthetically-pleasing walkway?" she sounded so hysterical, you almost thought Clair liked museums.

"Uhm, last time I checked, Clair doesn't do museums." I raised an eyebrow at her matter-of-factly. Her eyes trailed off in thought and she then gave me the nod of defeat.

I hung up on her blurrily waving bye after she told me to leave her all alone in her lonesome, since I didn't bother to invite her, she said. It sounded so petty, I thought, but shook my head and waved it away. I shoved my phone in my pocket and tugged on the hem of my sweater trying to get a bit more warmth until I stepped into the warmer atmosphere of the museum.

That night, I took a long look at the birds piece Clair was so hung over. I realized that you could look at it two ways: they're either running away from the flock, or they're running away with it. I guess, to me, they looked like they were running away. Because art is an artist's truth, subjected to his or her own reality. And either you know what he or she meant to say by the yellow to red to black ratio of the birds and the length of the canvas, or it just speaks to you in your own language. That is all you can do as you stand there squarely in front of the piece, staring with the precision of a doctor, or a mathematician, or rather, with meticulousness.

I texted Clair.

"I'm staring at your bird piece," I hesitated to take a picture and attach it to the text, so I tried my hardest to explain what I saw the best way I linguistically can.

I told her there were more black birds than yellow and red ones. And the people, looking pretty young to me – like a new family – they were pitch black too against the canvas. The black kind of made me feel uneasy, the way dark scenes in horror movies entailed suspense, or mystery. I told her they looked like they were running away from them instead of running with them.

"Ugh, stop texting me about this," she replied in between the dark movie scene text and the text about running away from instead of with. You could imagine her groaning into the phone with the emoji that followed.

I couldn't stop taking my phone out every time I had something to say about a piece, and she leaves me on read every time. I understood that, given today was a work day for her. She had spent yesterday shopping around the district, specifically Zara, where she had two big paper bags from. Pants and coats, she said, but I wasn't a girl to speculate it was more than those. But I grew up with my well-off cousins casually shopping at the cheapest designer brands they can save up for to know a little bit more to know better. This was Clair, after all.

Going back to texting Clair all night, I thought I would get at least one 'shut up' text. But at the end of my night out, when I hailed a cab back to the hotel, she sent me a text

"Geez, Jill, you couldn't stop missing me tonight? I have a tall wall of text to read now!"

I knocked on her door when I got to her floor, just to check on her and work. I asked who she was sending all these emails to, and they were mostly business correspondents. The one-fourth of the emails she received would be school notes she has to brush up on. Business never appealed to me, so I took it as my cue to leave.

"Oh, hey. We have plans tomorrow, be ready by ten thirty." Clair called from her bed. I was taken back a bit; still I gave her a quick nod.