This is dedicated to Paula. Because it is very likely that she is the only one who will read this as there appears to be no real Eternal Sunshine fandom on here… Sad.
Her hair is blue.
She's not sure if she likes it. It's dark, and it makes her look especially old and pale. And sad. The roots are still brown and dead looking, and the wrinkles around her mouth stand out prominently on paper-white skin. But she steadies herself against the bathroom sink, looks hard at her reflection in the toothpaste-spotted mirror and attempts to convince herself that she doesn't care.
It's a lie; the inconvenient reality is that she cares too much. But she can ignore that.
And besides, she tells herself, she kind of likes the boldness of the blue against her orange sweatshirt- complementary colors, bright and confident, masking the inner discord. A false sense of all rightness. A sore thumb on the train.
But earlier she rummaged in her bathroom cabinet and found that box of hair dye she's been saving for a day like today. Because this morning she woke up and looked in the mirror and decided that she is blue. And not the beautiful kind. Not the kind of blue that people write songs about, the kind of blue that deserves its own section in the record store down town, that is accompanied by saxophones and shaking voices and tinged with a little hope.
No. She's a blue ruin. And she's not sure why. There's a sinking feeling in her gut as though something terrible has happened, but she racks her brain, and nothing of importance comes to mind. And there's a void inside her chest that she's never felt before, gaping and devastating, evidence that something is missing.
Something she can't quite put her finger on. Or a name on the tip of her tongue. It doesn't make any sense.
And there are shapes in the dust on the mantelpiece that speak of photographs and coffee mugs, and weren't there two more potatoes sitting there yesterday? She could have sworn there were. Large and lumpy with little ill-fitting hats and lopsided smiles. But then again, maybe not.
Perhaps she's imagining things.
Perhaps she will go to work, and when she comes home, life will make sense again, somehow.
All she knows is that she needs to get out of this apartment where everything and nothing is familiar.
Barnes and Noble is too quiet. It allows her to think too much, and feel more confused. Her coworkers look at her sympathetically, and she wonders if her depression is that apparent on her face. Customers do a double take as they walk by and are met with a shock of blue. Who is she kidding? She totally cares.
The silence is deafening, and the book titles start to become a blur, and she is relieved when a most welcome distraction walks through the door in the form of a guy. He's just a kid, really, but that's never bothered her before, and those wide blue eyes are so full of life, the way she wants to be, and so she accepts his attention without asking too many questions.
"I'm Patrick."
"I'm Clementine. No jokes about my name."
"But I have such a lovely singing voice."
"Really?"
"No."
They make small talk, and he's so eager and inexplicably determined that she smiles and gives him her number on the back of his receipt.
She doesn't tell him she's not just a concept. And she doesn't tell him that she's just a fucked up girl looking for her own piece of mind. Because today, that's exactly what she is, and she's never actually believed that about herself before, and she doesn't think she could give a very convincing speech.
She wanders her apartment and wonders.
She wonders what is missing. Has she been robbed? And if she has, what did they take?
"Nothing makes any sense."
He calls her Tangerine. She thinks it's cute. No one has ever called her that before. But when he says it, she hears someone else's voice, a ghost of a whisper holding onto that last syllable.
Tangerine.
Clementine the tangerine.
She shakes her head and meets Patrick's look of worry and puppy-dog adoration with an uncomfortable smile that he doesn't realize is completely fake. "Let's go. The frozen Charles awaits."
As if it could go anywhere. It's her constant in this life that, lately, is nothing but a jumble of missing moments and her crumbling reflection in the mirror. But she needs to see it now. She needs to see the river now. And lie down on the ice and lean her head back to watch the headlights of upside down cars as they drive right on by. To trace the cracks beneath the surface with her fingers. To watch her breath rise in the cold.
Patrick is too supportive of this venture. And he doesn't know any constellations. He doesn't listen when she tries to point one out to him. Instead, he says the most beautiful things… in a deadpan, emotionless voice, and something isn't fucking right. And she wants to go home.
"But we just got here."
"I want to go home. I want to go home. We're going home."
"…okay…"
This is supposed to be new and exciting. So why doesn't it feel that way?
Why does the hole in her chest seem to grow with every compliment Patrick pays her?
And why does she get so offended by the word "nice"?
And she realizes as she blinks back tears and rubs a space on the windshield that she doesn't have a constant anymore. Or maybe, just maybe, it was never really the Charles River. Maybe, she will find her constant somewhere else.
Like Montauk.
Montauk?
Why Montauk? she thinks, as she waves goodnight to a very confused but ever the adoring Patrick and bolts the door behind him.
She doesn't know, but she's determined to find out, and she calls in sick to her job. Her boss doesn't ask any questions which is highly disconcerting.
And in the morning she catches the first train to Montauk even though everyone knows there's nothing to see there in February.