Participants:
| Scene Title | Make Your Own Kind Of Music |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Life is hard. |
| Date | December 6, 2010 |
Hamilton Heights - Ingrid and Lene's Apartment
Everything is Avacado and Mustard.
It is the immediate recognition of color and value with morning sunlight a muted gray when filtered through clouds, spilling in through canary yellow curtained windows. Socked feet thump noisily over the floor in swift whump-whump cadence, followed by the snatch of a hand grabbing a crinkled bag of potato chips up from the couch. They're rolled shut between small hands with a noisy closure.
"Joshua," is breathily exhaled, and Jolene Marley exhales a huffed snort that blows a wavy lock of red hair away from her face. Turning away from the sofa, Lene passes by the hunter orange plastic coffee table. The clock-cat on the wall, its slitted eyes flicking back and forth, reads 7:43 on his belly, meaning that she has the house to herself if Joshua isn't face down on the sofa.
Bare legs sweep Lene across the floor, the too-large men's dress shirt she wears wrinkled from having been slept in, buttoned down over narrow frame. It provides a boxy silhouette for her torso when she passes by another window, depositing the rolled bag of chips in a cobalt blue bowl on an avacado-colored formica table.
Skidding to a halt on the yellow linoleum floor, Lene turns to look slyly over her shoulder at a book-case as if it said something untoward to her, one brow slowly rising and a crooked smile crossing her lips. She wheels about, hands folding behind her back as she storms across the apartment, dipping down to crouch in front of a low shelf where a tightly-packed shelf of very thin, paper-sleeved items are laid out. Most people in this day and age wouldn't know what to do with a record if it hit them over the head.
Lene has other plans with it.
Catching one album with a fingernail, Lene slides out a preposterous looking album cover detailing a cloudy blue sky, a bubblegum pink scrollwork border, and a dark-haired woman in white sitting in a chair. Both corners of Lene's mouth curl up into a smile as she reads the title, Bubblegum, Lemonade, and… Something for Mama, the 'Mama' in the title of course being elaborated on below as Mama Cass.
Shaking out the record inside, Lene lays the sleeve down on the floor and stands up, coming eye level with an old but remarkably good as new record player. Lifting up the arm, she lays the record down, eyes the surface for a moment and sets the needle down, then presses a button on the front of the record player, eliciting warm pops and hisses over the tall stereo speakers on either side of the bookshelf.
Green eyes close, her hips sway to one side, and Jolene winds herself around in a snaking turn, headed back to the kitchen just as guitar and strings begins. Lifting her hands up and raking them through her hair, Lene tosses red locks around on her way back across linoleum flooring with white socked feet.
Right when she crosses the threshold into the kitchen, a woman's voice begins singing out from the speakers.
Nobody can tell ya'
There's only one song worth singin'
Swaying to the beat and rhythmically walking to that same tempo, Lene slides on those socked feet across the floor towards the sink, turning on the water with a tap of her wrist to push the lead on the spigot up, then slides sideways towards the coffee pot. It's flanked by a pair of dancing ceramic pigs with the words cream and sugar on their bellies. The coffee pot comes out with a clunk, whatever was made before dark and cold in the bottom.
They may try and sell ya
Lene's lips begin to move, mouthing to the lyrics with a waggle of her head from side to side as if taking the song personally.
'Cause it hangs them up to see someone like you
You gotta make your own kind of music!
Sing your own special song!
Make your own kind of music even if nobody else sings along!
Dark and old coffee splatters into the sink, right into the drain which she only now notices is clogged with cold tendrils of pasta and a chunk of meat. "Joshua," is grated out between clenched teeth as she angrily sets the coffee pot down beside the sink and leans over the sink basin, staring down into the clogged drain catch with a roll of her eyes and an overly dramatic sigh.
You're gonna be knowing
The loneliest kind of lonely
As she leans forward, Lene feels something cold and metal slip from where it was secured by her shirt. Swinging like a pendulum from around her neck by its chain, a tarnished and battered old locked replete with scrapes and scuffs twirls jut inside her field of vision. At the sight of it swinging like that, Lene's eyes widen and her throat hitches in the back of her throat.
"You want this little girl? You want it back? You know what you gotta' do. C'mere."
The voice echoes in her head like a gunshot.
It may be rough going
Just to do your thing's the hardest thing to do
One of Lene's hands lashes out, snatching the locket as if someone were going to take it. She wheels around, completely forsaking the mess in the sink to clasp the locked between both hands. Her throat tightens, works up and down in a rough swallow as her eyes well up with tears. Those green eyes flick around the apartment, to the light spilling in through the windows, to the kitschy furniture, to all of the creature comforts and she cracks.
You gotta make your own kind of music!
Sing your own special song!
Make your own kind of music even if nobody else sings along!
Covering her face with one hand as if the apartment would judge her for breaking down, Lene's lips press together tightly, a hiccuped sob escapes her and she crumples down onto the floor with her back sliding along the front of the cabinets. When she collapses down onto the linoleum, bare knees press together, one hand desperately clutches her locket as her shoulders jolt up and down, the noise of her crying breaking over the high volume of the music.
So if you cannot take my hand
And if you must be going, I will understand!
Lene's thumb slides along the side of the locket, whatever designs it had on the outside long since worn away by mistreatment. It opens, though, on tiny and delicate hinges. The pictures inside, concealed partly by Lene's fingers, are brown and black, bubbled on the surface and unrecognizable. The locket was in a fire, at one point in time, and the pictures didn't survive. Lene knows what they are though, who they are, and as she chokes back another hiccupped sob, her hand over her mouth moves up to hide her tear-streaked and reddened eyes.
But you've gotta make your own kind of music!
Sing your own special song
Make your own kind of music even if nobody else sings along!
Her crying makes arrhythmic whooping over the sound of the music, runny nose snuffling back. Her hand squeezes around the locked, clicking it shut as she hunches forward to hide her face against the backs of her bare knees, whining out a keening, lonely sound as she wrenches her eyes shut and tries to hide from the world around her. No matter how hard she tries to pretend, she can only run so far and so far from the life she left behind.
But you've gotta make your own kind of music!
Sing your own special song
Make your own kind of music even if nobody else sings along!
She won't go to class today.