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It’s a quiet Sunday morning in San Francisco, but there is a domestic energy in Nomi’s apartment that only she can understand. Amanita remains unconscious in their bed, tossing and changing positions now and again as Nomi’s playlist switches between songs in the dock in the kitchen. Apart from that and the distant sounds of traffic, the apartment is silent. But as suddenly as Katie Noonan’s vocals stir Amanita, she rolls over and promptly goes back to sleep again.
Nomi is standing in the kitchen, slicing cherry tomatoes into halves and humming quietly to herself along with the words.
This is a woman’s story in a man’s time; this is a gentle face for a brute world.
She empties the fruits into a large glass bowl already filled with greenery, and begins pulling out condiments from a cupboard to make the dressing.
“So there is to be no meat,” Wolfgang says as he watches her, his voice and expression flat. He’s leaning against her counter with his arms crossed, but the rigid air that often permeates his demeanour is only present in the sour expression on his face. Where he is dressed in thick pants, a woollen jumper, a heavy leather jacket and weathered boots, Nomi is wearing a striped tank top and board shorts. She pads around the kitchen island, her bare feet sticking slightly to the hardwood floors, to collect a lemon from their small woven hamper of ripening fruits.
“No, Wolfie, you need proper protein. Not everyone can live on only animal carcasses. I mean, I’m sure you can find recipes for salads with meat, like salmon, or chicken, but not this one. Don’t even think about it. ” Nomi remarks, before waving the lemon in his face, as Wolfgang rolls his eyes. “Are you watching? You want to roll the lemon on the chopping board. This way it'll be more juicy when you cut it.”
Wolfgang gives her an exasperated look, but replies yes, alright as he mirrors her actions in the kitchen of his own apartment. It’s a destitute hideout, but it’s just for now, until things quiet down in East Berlin. Plus, his ability to visit others in the cluster more than makes up for the poor condition the small sublet was in.
When he wants to feel the heat and the sun smiling down on his face, he finds himself in a market square in Mumbai, where Kala’s hair brushes his shoulder as she examines vegetables.
When he needs to watch the scenery rush by him and not have to think, he is suddenly sitting beside Capheus on Van Damme, a wide grin on the bus driver’s face and a bustling hum that drowns out Wolfgang’s thoughts so that all he sees is the approaching road.
When he must be reminded of beauty, he’s with Riley in a familiarly colder climate watching the clouds slowly crawl across a sky as blue as her hair, seeing the waves lap against stationary sail boats, gazing out at a sunset while her voice pitches in song, in a language simultaneously familiar and foreign.
When he seeks solidarity, he visits Sun, and they talk – or don’t – in the cold cell of her home, where they share a companionable silence that speaks fathoms more than needs to be communicated.
When he doesn’t understand love, he’s with Lito, and Hernando, and Daniela as they go about their ordinary lives, but still finding time to express the love and gratitude for the fact that they all found each other.
When he’s missing guidance, Will appears instead, and steers him with gentle words and reason – with a soft hand on his shoulder, Will somehow finds a way to reassure Wolfgang that the cluster will always be there for him no matter what happens.
But Wolfgang never needs to look for Nomi, who’s perpetually hovering on the peripheral of everyone, making sure they eat properly, and are taken care of when they can’t do it themselves. Wolfgang knows she’s always pulling the metaphorical blanket over each dozing member of the cluster at some point in time, and that never fails to make him smile. Even now, his lip quirks as he chops his own lemon.
So when Nomi grins at him as if she has a secret, and says “But don’t worry, after this, we’re making steak,” Wolfgang finds his face grinning crookedly back at her.
In the laundry room, Kala holds up a black sock with grey stripes, and a red sock with white detailing. Riley’s face contorts like she’s just drunk expired milk. After a few seconds, she hesitantly indicates a grey basket to her right.
“Blacks and … coloured?” She says, her voice small and slow, before indicating a second basket. Kala’s face falls as she shakes her head, and Riley groans, defeated. “Oh no.”
“I’m just messing with you! You’re right, of course.” Kala suddenly exclaims, laughing, before tossing the socks into the respective laundry baskets. “It’s better for the white stitching to turn red than innocent white shirts to turn pink.”
Riley chuckles. “I don’t think Nomi and Amanita would mind, to be honest.”
“True, but you’re doing your own laundry, remember?” Kala says, ducking down to fetch more clothing. Riley blinks, and looks down at the black sock in her left hand and the white sock in her right hand. In front of her, in her childhood home of Iceland, sits only three baskets; whites, black, and a very sparsely populated basket of coloured clothes. She sighs, but smiles.
“I don’t really have a tough task here.”
Kala smiles as she sees what Riley sees, and then she gestures to the rainbow arrangement of laundry in her own room.
“Want to swap?” She says, looking back at the massive pile of unsorted laundry that has been compiled by her family. She blows a stray hair out of her face as they share a laugh, and Riley begins helping her rescue clothes from the pile.
However, the commotion is the loudest in Nomi’s living room, where the rest of the cluster is spread out between the couch and floor rug. Will reclines on the worn couch, fresh and relaxed out of the shower after the gym. Sun is perched on an arm of the couch, usually alert expression softened with affection and her feet rest on the edge of the coffee table, where the monopoly set is spread out. Capheus is sitting cross-legged on the soft and patterned area rug next to her, smiling inquisitively at everyone and their tokens. His eyes follow the dice as it’s tossed into the air by Lito, who staked claim to the large armchair the second he appeared. Capheus exclaims even more loudly than Lito when both dice land on 6.
“Just take it down a notch, Caph, let’s not forget who it is who’s going to buy the sky scraper on New York Avenue.” Lito says with ceremony, taking out his stack of Monopoly money. He begins counting meticulously, licking his fingers every few bills. He hands the money to Will, who judiciously puts it back in the box; no one wants a repeat of the last round, where Lito became angered by the dramatic turn of events that lead to his bankruptcy, and accused the Monopoly Man of antagonising him with his “diablo eyes”. He had grabbed all the Monopoly cash he could reach instead (a majority of which was Sun’s, who was building her own little empire), and began to make it rain to his own choreography of the song Pour Some Sugar On Me by Def Leppard as it came on in Nomi’s playlist.
The game quickly descended into chaos after that.
When Amanita wakes up, it’s to the smell of steak and orange juice. It’s a weird combination, but given that it’s eleven-thirty on a Sunday morning, and Nomi was cooking, she knows it will be the best thing she’s had since sliced bread. She rolls out of bed to Nomi’s rambunctious laughter, and she rubs the sleep out of her eyes as she exits her bedroom.
“What’s so funny?” She says, and smiling despite herself.
Nomi sees her and shakes her head, still chuckling. “Nothing, Lito told a really funny joke.”
“Tell her the joke!” Lito urges Nomi, and Amanita smiles as she watches the gleeful look on Nomi's face. Kala rests her head on Wolfgang’s shoulder as she plucks a cherry tomato from the salad. When she puts it in her mouth, it tastes like the lychees she bought earlier this morning at the market, and she smiles.
“You kids.” Amanita says with an affectionate grin on her face as she surveys the scene before heading into the bathroom. “Screw your mum’s blessing, Noms, I feel like we’re old and married with a family already!”
“Me too.” Nomi agrees, smiling at everyone in the cluster as they all beam back. “Me too.