Work Text:
“We'll dispose of these mementos when we're done here. That way you won't be confused later by their unexplainable presence in your home.”
“Hallelujah, man. I mean, not that I don’t want the blue sweater or the poems or… shit.”
“It’s standard procedure, Ms. Kruczynski.”
“Right. Yeah. Sorry, I thought you were trying to be fucking comforting or something.”
There’s something about Thursdays.
Sure, everyone’s always harping on how Mondays are the horrible days, how someone always has a case of them and they’re pretty much the worst day of the goddamn week, but Clementine has always figured that’s because people are always harping on about their hangovers. The key, Clementine has learned, is to wait until Wednesday for the hangover, and that way, Mondays aren’t so bad.
It’s the Thursdays that are a bitch to handle. Jesus, she’s getting old now; two day hangovers are for grandmas.
Even without the hangover, as far as Thursdays are concerned, there’s just something about them. The morning she wakes up in her apartment and everything seems just… off, is a Thursday. She’s not hungover, definitely not, though she can’t for the life of her remember what she fucking did the night before. She’s out of booze though, Clementine notices when she wakes up and checks the cabinets, hoping for a splash of something for her coffee.
Maybe somebody broke in.
She’s going to have to get the goddamn locks changed.
A card addressed to both Rob and Carrie arrives in the mail, mixed in with bills and catalogs, inconspicuous at first glance, heavier than it ought to be.
Clementine Kruczynski has had Joel Barish erased from her memory.
Please never mention their relationship to her again. Thank you.
Lacuna Ltd. 610 llth Avenue, NY, NY.
She feels like she’s falling apart at the seams. Like someone’s tugged at a stray thread and kept pulling until her stuffing has started showing through, like she’s worn and her skin’s going to fall off. It happens, she knows, it’s nothing new. It’s usually right around the time her roots have started to show, when she starts to feel unoriginal and broken and becomes that ugly Clementine doll all over again.
She goes to the Duane Reade and buys some hair dye, blue Blue Ruin, it’s called, which is pretty snappy-sounding, she thinks. Usually the names are so fucking unoriginal, like the bright orange her hair was before it started fading and growing out at the roots. It’s ‘Burnt Orange’ or something horrible like that. ‘Tangerine Dream’ sounds better, she thinks. Or ‘Agent Orange’, though people probably wouldn’t buy it, accusing it of being insensitive or whatever the hell people’s excuse is these days.
She always feels like a different person right after, as fucked up as she knows that sounds. You’re supposed to be happy just the way you are, or however the saying goes. But applying her personality in a paste, as fucked up as some people think it sounds when she says it-- some people manage to give everything away with just a look-- is how she gets by. Whether or not people think she’s crazy for it, at least they’re talking about it, right?
There’s blue under her nails somehow even when her hair is redone and dried, stained on her skin, and the sink looks like somebody murdered a smurf, but she feels more like a version of herself than she has in weeks. Ever since that Thursday when she woke up already crumbling, it’s been like that. But now she feels glued back together, like the pieces of her won’t end up in complete fucking disarray.
What a difference one little tube makes.
He hasn’t seen her since she stormed out. Since she dinged his fucking car and left her key and walked out in her boots and wouldn’t stop even when he tried to apologize for what he said.
It was so her to do something like that in the first place. He shouldn’t be surprised.
But he misses her, weekends on the couch and Kang’s and every minute, every hour of her.
He finally picks up the phone and calls her number.
“The number you have dialed has been disconnected.”
She’s about to head out on break when he comes up to her. This young guy. Maybe he’s only a year or two younger than she is, if he’s a day, but the way his eyes kind of light up before he speaks like he’s trying just a little bit too hard.
“Have I seen you somewhere before?” he asks, as she stands just outside of the store. She doesn't smoke, but after a few hours inside, she really just needs some fucking air.
“I get that a lot,” Clementine replies, “It’s the hair, I think.”
“Do you want to go out for a drink?” he asks, the words coming out in one breath, like he doesn't think he’ll be able to say it if he doesn’t spit it all out at once. It’s kind of cute, in a way, “Sorry, I’m Patrick.”
“Clementine.”
“Like the song?”
“Yeah… like the song.”
There’s a silence then, one of those uncomfortable ones where Clementine isn’t sure if he’s waiting for her to talk next, or if he has something else to say about her name or what. She picks absentmindedly at the cuticles of one of her thumbs, eyebrows raised expectedly.
“Okay, how about now?” she jumps in, tired of waiting for him to bite after only a few seconds.
“Now?” Patrick asks, like he didn’t hear her right, or like she’s shitting him. Clementine’s technically in the middle of a shift, but hell, he asked.
“Yeah, now. There’s a place just down the block. You've got to learn to live a little, Patrick.”
“I’m sorry, can I help you?”
He feels like she’s looking right through him. Like he’s just another goddamn customer. His fingers are curled around the box with the necklace in it, and he feels so fucking stupid.
She kisses this other guy. This young guy, and forgets he’s even there. He walks away, back out into the cold. Or maybe it’s not cold at all. He can’t think. He can’t breathe. The world is closing in on him and she doesn’t even care.
It’s that feeling like the walls are closing in again. Even after they get back from the frozen Charles, which usually makes her feel like she knows where she stands, that usually quiets everything down and makes her feel like herself again. But bits of her are coming apart again. It’s like in that story she used to read as a kid, The Velveteen Rabbit, only parts of her haven’t been worn off, she’s disappearing because she doesn’t matter.
Patrick. Fucking Patrick.
He’s sweet. He tries, she knows. He laid there with her and said all these ridiculously romantic things like he has ever since the day she met him. Only something inside her twists and she feels like she’s crawling out of her skin and can’t escape it all at the same time.
She gets up early and takes the train out to Montauk, doesn’t tell Patrick even though she’s sure he’s going to come by even though she told him not to the night before. It’s fucking freezing out, but she needs to get away.
The train is empty on the way there, and the beach is pretty much the same, but it’s fucking February, so it’s not like she expects anyone to go to the beach in the morning in mid-February.
Shit, it’s Valentine’s Day, isn’t it?