#lee m.

[vitalphenomena]

@soothfog said:

Lee quietly built a snowman outside Spirit's home. Its body faces her bedroom window. She recognizes its plaid trapper hat as the one Lee habitually wears; seeing it there feels as strange as spotting your mother's goose-shaped birthmark on her elbow—on a stranger's. Heavily dangling from the end of its feeble twig arm is a plastic grocery bag. Inside the bag (were Spirit to journey out) she would find hot chocolate packets, a fifty dollar bill with a yellow sticky note seamed onto its face ("for COMMUTING!" it begs), and a copy of Frankenstein with a napkin repurposed as a bookmark; its housed page suggests this may be their next chapter to dissect.

SPIRIT'S STUDIO APARTMENT IN HARLEM HAS VERY FEW WINDOWS. This has become appealing. Spirit does not own a step stool or a ladder. Even if she did, she does not already possess the knowledge required to install curtains of any sort. The lack of natural light in here is an overall positive thing considering how many days she spends hungover or depressed or both.

The snow outside makes things brighter, though. Forces her to roll off her mattress and contemplate asking someone on Tinder if they want to bring her some blackout curtains and a drill.

She sees the hat and gets excited before she registers that it is on a snowman. She's worried Lee is being held hostage and this is a ransom letter from God, so she puts on shoes and a cardigan in order to go outside and investigate.

The plastic grocery bag crinkles and flutters in a slight breeze. Spirit shudders as she retrieves it.

Without substantially roomy pockets, she's only able to rummage around in the bag without taking anything out. She regards the sticky note with a peculiar sense of guilt mixed with irritation. She doesn't know why she wants to cry.

Finally, the book. Spirit tucks the plastic bag securely underneath her arm as she investigates the marked page. Until this point, she has not owned a copy of Frankenstein; all of their work has taken place with Lee's printed out passages.

Until this point, she has not owned a copy of any book.

///

Back in bed (with a mug of hot chocolate placed on the floor beside her), Spirit unplugs her phone. The movement requires her to adjust the hat on her head. She dials Lee.

[vitalphenomena]

@soothfog

TO COME TO THE SEVENTH FLOOR OF LEE'S APARTMENT BUILDING IS ALWAYS A BIT OF AN ORDEAL, BUT DAFNE WOULD NEVER COMPLAIN. Not to Lee. That would be absurd, and terrible customer service.

Also, she knows better than to say bad things out loud. People seem to understand her until they don't.

"You know," ginger and delicate, she says, distracted by the task at hand in the way that hairdressers can be, "I have room on my schedule to see you more often than every eight months. In case that's something that you were worried about."