Feminine Fatality

2.

Lancy, who spent the night staring in the mirror and conversing with her toothbrush, was hastening into attending work on time. Beni was stretching out her toes from atop the stolen pillow, laptop perched on her lap. Her Econ paper was still a mess in the making, so she had set an early alarm to work on it, though the amount of words actually getting down were negligible.

"When are you going to fall in love?"

Lancy looked at the three socks in her hand, all varying shades of the same hue, and tried to choose the pair that matched most closely. The third wheeler, she flung at Beni.

"Hey!" Beni flapped the sock away from her lap, "you could've just said: 'we can talk about this later'."

"Maybe I don't wanna talk about this, ever," Lancy said, pulling on her shoes, fabric thin and style modern.

Beni made a clicking noise with her tongue, "then let me say my opinion, at least."

"I'm pretty sure that's the only reason why you asked it in the first place."

"Lancy," she whined, "I can't bear my heart to you if you act all snappy with me."

Lancy rummaged around in their coat closet, though Beni so rarely cared to even wear a sweater, that the space essentially belonged to her. She took the long arms of each jacket and compared them with the clothes she was currently dressed in. Claudia didn't enforce much of a dress code, she just fancied her employees dress in black. But black had ranges, undertones, textures, fades. Getting a coat to compliment was one of the most arduous tasks of the morning.

Pulling on a leather one and realizing that Beni had gone silent, Lancy looked up from double knitting her laces, "So... are you going to tell me?"

Beni miffed, "Later."

Beni was not much of a morning person. Lancy blew a kiss from the entrance's threshold, not wanting to dirty the floor with the outside muck on her shoes. She caught the kiss but didn't reciprocate.

Just was she was about to slip out the door, Beni called out:

"You have a lunch?"

She rested an elbow on the jamb to keep it from falling shut, "I took your leftovers."

"Ugh, I'm going to have to cook again." With drywall blocking their sight, Lancy could only guess Beni's expression; eyebrows drawn into an arrowhead, eyes dead, mouth tight.

"There's enough left," Lancy offered, guilt momentarily bruising her breaths. Not receiving a response, she returned to the earlier conversation:

"I think the manager will let me off early. We can talk about, about love, then."

Beni blew a kiss, loud enough to be heard through the wall.

Lancy, with her morning bettered by Beni's forgiveness, left the apartment complex with a joyous jump down the staircase and into bare payment.

...

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you want to return this...because it got run over?"

The customer held out their grey blazer, a wonderful, thick material Lancy was always an empty bank account balance away from buying. Its shoulder pads, world renowned - as claimed by Claudia - had travelled through beneath the layers, shifting so far that one was protruding from the breast pocket. She could not even see the other, prompting a little, 'Oh God,' from her lips.

"It was my neighbour," the customer rushed to explain, "he was backing out of the driveway and somehow managed to not notice my blazer while looking out for pedestrians."