Roommate Generation

A Short Story

Roommate Generation

“Millennials are now the ‘roommate generation’ after being squeezed out of home ownership by high housing costs.” ~ Redfin CEO, “Business Insider.”

In Iris’s dream, she luxuriated in the space. Not the features of the home, those were fuzzy and indistinct. Some blend between brick and iron and wood with open walls that spilled out onto valleys, hills, and rocky mountains. The setting kept changing, but always there was space… high ceilings, thick leather couches, a professional-grade espresso maker, and windows twice her height. Her dreams never made up their mind on where this mysterious abode was located, only that it was hers to curate and fill the way she—

WHAM!

Iris jolted awake, sitting straight up, tangled in her covers. Her heart slammed against her chest, from zero to one hundred. Breathe. She felt blindly for her phone. 7:00 am. Her roommate, Tricia, had just left for work. She flopped back. She would have felt bad for her roommate, but she felt worse for herself. She technically didn’t need to be up for another two hours, and it had been a late night working through the casting options for the commercial.

Nope… she was awake. She couldn’t remember her dream. It was a vapor on the breeze, but it had been a good one. She remembered that. Why get up today? What’s the reason? It was a game she played with herself. Iris was not a morning person, and when she was in college she had grasped at anything to get herself to class on time. That was over a decade ago, and she still lived with a roommate.

Iris liked her roommate a lot. They had lived together for over a year at this point, but there were some rituals that came with living with a roommate which Iris was tired of. Like the door slamming at 7:00 am.

A cappuccino. That was a good reason to get out of bed. Iris levered herself up, shuffled into the hall, and brushed her teeth.

The kitchen sink was filled with dirty dishes. Iris forced herself to take deep breaths. Tricia made spaghetti and meatballs last night. Had fed Iris right when she walked through the door. Iris forced herself to remember just how grateful she was for that dinner. She had been starving. She turned on the faucet, set the coffee to brew, and cleaned the dishes.

Perks of working at home, she could wear whatever she wanted. She got into her most comfortable jeans, a soft knit sweater, pulled a plush beanie over her head, and brought her laptop over to the dining room table. “Dining room” was a generous description of the space between the kitchen and living room. Thankfully it had two glass doors, and when she was in the zone her subconscious could trick her into thinking she lived in a high-rise apartment with views of a cityscape, not the heavily trafficked main street right next door.

Cappuccino in hand, she halted. The table was covered. Colors. A tangled mess of colors. It was like a cat had come and torn up the magazines. Wait, it was Tricia’s crafting supplies. Right, she had been working on a project last night… but it was still here. Iris stared at the table.

If she moved it, she was actively wrecking Tricia’s process.

But I have to do work… I guess I could sit on the couch.

She considered this for about two seconds before dismissing it. No, she wanted a desk. This was her home too. Work trumped arts and crafts. Iris collected all of the magazine scraps, glue, scissors, and paper, and carried them into Tricia’s room. Table cleaned, she sat and absorbed herself in her work.

A notification signaled in the upper right-hand corner. Iris did a double take. A meeting, downtown, with a new client. What time was it? Shoot. She had lost herself in her work. Her stomach grumbled. Right, she hadn’t eaten.

In short order, she had her laptop packed, a more professional top on, a fresh thermos of coffee, and a bagel in her mouth. She went to the door to grab her coat… Where was it? She combed through the layers and layers of Tricia’s coats. She flung her arms wide. Where was it?! Her eyes drifted downwards…

Her coat was on the ground, in a rumpled heap. She picked it up and shook off the dust with more vigor than strictly necessary, grumbling to herself.

“How many coats does one girl need, anyway?”

But that was Tricia: a fashionable lady. Why have two pairs of shoes when you could have twelve? She jammed her sneakers on, sending the other shoes clattering, and was out the door in the next second.

*          *          *

Tricia was SO hungry. SO tired. She could eat a whole chicken at this point.

Leftovers, she reminded herself. You’ve got leftovers.

She moved the mail to one arm (Iris never remembered to pick it up, but Tricia didn’t mind), and scraped her key into the lock. She dropped the key into the small dish on the side table and took her shoes off. She stopped.

The shoes were a mess. Shoes which she had carefully reordered and organized this morning… again. It was like Iris was intentionally trying to make them a mess, like she hated order, and sought to imbue her surroundings with the same relaxed way she dressed.

No, it’s not intentional. She was just in a rush heading out the door, just like you usually are, Tricia talked herself down. She closed the door, hung up her coat, and reordered the shoes. The flowers on the side table were dead, but Iris had put them there and Tricia didn’t feel comfortable touching something that didn’t belong to her… even if they were dead… Had Iris noticed they were dead? Did she like dead flowers? Did she think they were moody? Tricia didn’t like moody things. She liked color. Cheerfulness. Anything to brighten her day.

Tricia picked up the mail and sorted through it. She brought Iris’s to her mail slot. It was packed. Overfull. She barely managed to wedge a few more pieces in there. She brought her stuff into her room. There was something on her bed. Weird. She didn’t—what?!

It was all her crafting supplies, magazine pictures she had carefully cut out and begun arranging on a piece of paper. It was one of the only things that relaxed her. With a corporate job in a plane white office, cutting out flowers and other colorful images was the only thing that grounded her, got her back into her body after a long day working on budgets, staring at screens with numbers, and Iris had just… dumped it on her bed???

She pawed through the cutouts, checking to see if anything was missing. Her hands were shaking with anger or hunger, she couldn’t tell. No, don’t react. Eat food. Maybe you’re not thinking straight. Breathe. To be fair, it wasn’t her table. Well, yes it was, she had purchased the table, but it was for both of them. Iris probably needed the space to do her work. Tricia forced herself to stop digging through the papers.

“Go get food,” she ordered herself.

She walked past the mail. Stopped. Backed up. Yanked the mail out, and put it on Iris’s unmade bed, convincing herself she wasn’t being petty, just helpful, like Iris had helped her.

The dining room table was clear. No, it wasn’t. There was a mug… a dirty mug.

“I guess I’m the only one not allowed to leave stuff on the table, the table I bought,” she muttered. She took it to the sink, rinsed it, and opened the dishwasher. It was full… of clean dishes…

Iris was here all day. All day. Did she not have a second to empty the dishwasher? No, perhaps that was Tricia’s job, along with getting the mail, ordering the shoes, and providing the table. Stop it. Eat something.

Tricia unloaded the dishwasher while the bowl of spaghetti and meatballs reheated. She gathered all her collaging materials, brought them back to the kitchen table, put on a pair of sound-canceling headphones, and went to her happy place.

Iris came home, and Tricia stayed focused on her project. The next morning, While Iris was still asleep, Tricia framed the completed picture and gently tapped a nail into the wall. She hung it. There… wasn’t that nice? There was nothing on this wall. The bright colors immediately enlivened the space. A special pride glowed in her chest. The day had only just begun and she’d already added some beauty to the world.

Before leaving she carefully pushed all of her crafting supplies to the back half of the table so that it wouldn’t be in Iris’s way. She left her bowl in the sink and hurried out the door.

*          *          *

WHAM! Iris started awake. She groaned into her pillow.

Dishes… in the sink… again.

Crafting supplies, back. She tried to ignore it as she worked. Then something caught her eye. A picture… on the wall. What the—when had that gotten there? It was so… pretty.

She made a face.

They were putting up art now? Then she had one or two pieces that might work in that space. She went into her room and took out a framed monotone abstract print. She took down Iris’s homemade collage and replaced it with the expensive print. She had purchased it directly from the artist. There, much better. There was rhythm, pattern, a vibe. Tricia would love it.

Before leaving the apartment, Iris put all of Tricia’s coats back into her room, on her bed. Tricia had given her the idea by putting mail on her bed. Tricia had probably just forgotten about the coats like Iris had forgotten about the mail. She hurried out the door, late for her meeting.

When Iris got back that evening, the savory scents of cheese, dough, and meat welcomed her inside.

“Is that meat lovers?” Iris asked. Tricia grinned at her.

“Yep. Here’s a plate.”

The lights were off and the two of them settled in to watch an action flick.

The next morning, when Iris came out into the living room, she saw what the darkness had hidden: her print was gone. There were now three more bright and colorful pictures hanging on the wall. Her mouth hung open.

The traitorous pizza box was stuck behind the trashcan. Tricia had used food to distract her! Iris walked back into her room, grabbed two more pictures sitting on the floor, and a hammer. Two could play at this game.

*          *          *

Iris added more pictures to the wall. Tricia put a shoe rack next to the door, which Iris approved of until she saw it held only Tricia’s shoes. Iris’s shoes were dumped in a bucket next to the cute shoe rack.

Iris left more coffee cups on the table, unaware. Tricia bought flowery throw pillows. Iris turned those throw pillows around. Tricia tossed the dead flowers out… and turned the pillows forward again. In passing, Tricia and Iris said nothing to each other, the tension building in the air. Things reached a head when Tricia rearranged the entire living room.

Iris walked into the living room and stopped short, wondering briefly if she had walked into someone else’s apartment. She picked up the flowery pillow. Tricia lunged around the corner from the kitchen, eyes wild with dark circles beneath them, brandishing a plastic ladle.

“Unhand the throw pillow!” she shouted.

Iris screamed and threw the pillow at her.

“Tricia! You scared me!” she said, clutching her heart.

“Stop moving my stuff!” Tricia said.

The mitts came off.

“Oh, you want to talk about moving stuff? What’s this?” Iris asked, grabbing the bucket of shoes and shaking it at Tricia as if it were a loaded gun. “And what’s this?” She gave the cute shoe rack an overexaggerated sweeping gesture.

“I got tired of picking up your shoes! You always leave a mess.”

“Mess? You want to talk mess? What about all the coats you kept here? There wasn’t room for even one of mine!” Iris proclaimed with an accusatory finger.

“You moved those! Without my permission, I might add. Just like you moved all my craft supplies. And why do you think you can just take down my pictures?”

“I DON’T LIKE FLOWERS!!!” Iris screamed.

“YOUR NAME IS A FLOWER!!!” Tricia screamed back.

“And you used food to distract me to get those up! You scheming woman!”

“Well, maybe you could make me dinner every once in a while. Why is it always me?”

“I have meetings in the afternoon. You get home before I do!”

“Then at least unload the dishwasher, if you’re here all day.”

“Then put your dirty dishes inside the dishwasher! Just because I work from home doesn’t make me your live-in maid.”

They had edged closer and closer to each other and were screaming in each other’s faces at this point, unrestrained.

“That’s for sure. Do you know how many mugs are here? Look! One, two, three—oh look! That one’s got a skin on it.”

“Yeah, I admit it, that’s pretty gross…” Iris began, feigning humility, “But not as gross as you leaving dishes in the sink for me to clean EVERY MORNING!”

BANG! BANG! BANG! Iris and Tricia jumped.

“Hey! Keep it down in there! Other people are trying to sleep!” yelled the person on the other side of the door.

“GO AWAY!” Tricia and Iris yelled in unison.

They waited. Nothing. No sound.

They looked at each other and then collapsed onto the couch, all the wind gone out of their sails. They sat in silence, staring off.

“Who doesn’t like flowers?” Tricia asked. There was no animosity, just confusion.

They both looked at the weird mish-mashed gallery that had accumulated on the wall.

“The colors are too bright, flat. Besides, flowers are so obvious. How about some nuance, some depth,” Iris said. “You’re right about the mugs. I’ll cut it out.”

“I’ll stop leaving dishes in the sink. Or at least, I’ll try,” Tricia said.

She picked up one of the flowery throw pillows.

“I have to return these. Don’t I?” Iris nodded, grateful. Tricia sighed. “I’ll make room for you in the shoe rack if you agree to use it. Maybe we just do three pairs each?”

Iris nodded.

“I’ll take the pictures down,” Tricia said, resigned.

Iris looked up. “I’m kind of digging it, actually.”

They both stared at the wall. It was a strange compilation of bright colors, cut-out pictures, monochrome, geometric shapes, graphic designs, and photos. They frowned.

“Why does that work?” Iris asked.

“Maybe it’s the balance?” Tricia guessed.

With that, the two of them set to work putting the living room back in the right order.

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