Wednesday, 15/10/2008
The next day, Lily spent the morning and most of the afternoon working. Her so-called office was the smallest room in the house and shared walls with the living room, bedroom and kitchen. Aside from a mini stereo on her desk, it was dedicated only to work-related things so as not to have needless distractions. Her current project involved translating a set of small kitchen appliance manuals from the same product line to three different languages. She could do German and Italian with ease, but the French she wasn’t quite so good at yet, and it required looking up words and even grammar more often, which is why she rarely took projects that required it. If she did, it was multi-language projects like this one, and the shelves in the room contained a selection of dictionaries and other such helpful books to help with that, on those languages and more.
As she’d noted to Amelia, her doing translations while being bad at communication was perhaps a little strange. One way she attempted to not let that hamper her work was – as she’d also mentioned – getting involved in projects that were more technical like user manuals, rather than ‘social’ such as fiction. It was definitely duller work but also easier for her. Understanding technical terms was much simpler to her than understanding subtext, cultural references and other such things. Although she did read fiction in other languages in order to learn more, she wasn’t very confident at all in her ability to convey those things well enough to focus on doing fiction translations, though she had done a few short, small-scale story translation commissions.
The deadline for this project was still quite a ways away, and like most freelance translators, she was usually paid per word. Since she didn’t have anything else lined up yet, she wasn’t in any particular hurry. As such, she decided to call it a day a bit earlier than she normally might’ve. She paused the music she’d been listening on the mini stereo. When working, she generally only listened to instrumental music because lyrics could end up distracting her. Today she’d opted for some supposedly relaxing classical performances, but they’d failed to produce the relaxation she’d been looking for – namely to get her mind off the previous day’s lingering anxiety.
She was just considering changing clothes to catch up on some of the neglected exercising when the doorbell rang. She’d not heard any cars arriving, but then again, the music had been on. The delivery truck had already come and gone long ago, so who...? The door to her ‘office’ was just past where the hallway turned into the living room, and so it took but a mere moment to get to the front door.
“Hey, you,” greeted a familiar voice from a familiar face as she opened the door. “Sorry, I realize I should’ve asked before coming. I was supposed to call you on the way, but my phone’s battery died, and my car charger’s missing.... Well. Anyway. Here I am. Were you in the middle of something? I can of course come back another time.” Lily, who was wearing what looked more like pyjamas than anything else, shook her head in response, sending waves through her unbound hair – which in turn caught the slightly embarrassed Amelia’s attention. “Whoa! I knew your hair was long, but... it’s really something when you have it free like that.” Now it was Lily who got flustered.
“I do not let it be free very often. It gets in the way... oh. Come in.” She retreated from the doorway to allow Amelia inside. As they stood there, the guest reached out her hand before suddenly stopping.
“Sorry, but... may I?” She gestured toward Lily’s hair. Despite feeling a bit uncomfortable at the sudden request, her friend nodded. Amelia grasped a handful of hair strands, letting them run through her fingers. “So thick and smooth. I already thought so before, but you must really put a lot of care into it, huh?” Her host shrugged, looking decidedly embarrassed. “I must say I was a bit surprised. You had quite short hair back then and didn’t really seem to care about it all that much. What made you decide to grow it out this much?” Indeed – now that it was unbound, it was reaching nearly to the knee. Amelia was pretty sure it was the longest hair she’d ever seen in person. As a result of her question, Lily appeared to actually blush, though she couldn’t be sure in the dim lighting of the hallway.
“It is because...” Her host turned away to hide her face. “Because you said you... liked it. Back then.”
Amelia felt so dumbfounded that her jaw nearly dropped. Though she didn’t specifically remember saying so, it was true – she had very much admired her friend’s fiery red hair despite its relative shortness at the time and had often stroked it when Lily had fallen asleep on her lap or next to her. She even combed it for her quite often as she didn’t have much interest in doing it herself but usually allowed Amelia to do it. Anyone else... not so much. But to think that such a passing comment, no matter how genuine, would lead to this. Just how long had it taken, and how many countless hours had been spent taking care of it? It might not be as red anymore, but she considered it absolutely lovely regardless in all its lustrous glory. She stepped up to hug her friend from behind, causing her victim to flinch slightly in surprise.
“You know, you really can be pretty weird sometimes.” She muttered the words into her friend’s ear, or as close as their height difference allowed her to. Lily in turn closed her eyes and leaned her head back against Amelia’s.
“Yes. I know.” Lily couldn’t help but wonder just how weird Amelia would consider her if she knew that Lily had really liked what Amelia had done to her hair, that first time back at Saint Cecilia’s – but the reason she didn’t start taking care of her hair herself in order to get her friend to do it for her, again and again, because she enjoyed it that way?
Comments (0)
See all