Wings & Hearts

With a start, I awoke to find myself in a strange bed, in a strange room, missing my usual clothing. Uh, great. I hadn’t realized I was actually drunk enough to sleep with someone… I realized with relief that my underwear and tights were still on - though the tights were ripped so heavily from my misguided walk that I definitely looked the part of a woman of the evening - like they were some sort of chastity belt. They might not have been made of steel, but they were good enough for me. My head felt like it had been split in two by a large man wielding an axe, and my stomach heaved like it wanted to make a break for freedom out of my esophagus, but before I could go anywhere - even to the bathroom! - it was necessary to find some sort of breast-covering-apparatus, which apparently did not include my missing clothing. Where the hell had my polo gone? The cardigan I had been wearing? Skirt? Shoes? Something?

I wrapped the comforter of the bed around my shoulders and trailed my way over to the closet - only leather jackets and trench coats there, I was obviously in Jyrki’s room and it was obvious that he didn’t hang his shirts up in the closet like normal people did. I went to the nearest possible source of a t-shirt, the imposing armoire which was the only piece of furniture in Jyrki’s room aside form a nightstand and (obviously) the bed. I steeled myself to what I might find in his armoire and pulled open a random drawer in the middle.

Bingo! Oversized t-shirts in shades of black on the first try! I brimmed with pride as I pulled one over my head and shut the drawer; before I left the room I made the bed and tossed his dirty laundry in the corner (I was actually looking for my cigarettes, but couldn’t find them).

“Hello, hot coffee,” I followed the scent trail down the long hallway to the familiar kitchen. Hanna sat slumped at the “bar” area of the kitchen, balanced precariously on a tall stool; Jyrki stood in the middle of the kitchen in a robe and a pair of thick woolen socks, a spatula in hand. I barely suppressed a gag at the smell of egg.

“Bathroom’s back down that hall, love.” Always helpful, Jyrki brandished the bacon grease-covered spatula; I turned tail and fled from the sickening smell.

After a good half-hour of prayer to the gods of porcelain, I was finally able to stumble down to the kitchen. Hanna had been replaced by Ville - I could only speculate that she had her face buried in another bathroom or had fallen asleep again, she had been more drunk than I the previous night. Ville produced a nearly-smashed pack of Marlboro’s from his pocket.

“Mine?” Man, I sounded husky - and apparently wasn’t capable of forming sentences so quickly after violently ejecting my intestines.

“I saved these from you last night, you got a little too rough with them,” He explained. I was all too happy to snatch them from his hand and collapse into a small ball on the floor with a new cigarette.

“Want something to eat?” I looked up at Jyrki with a look that I hoped clearly stated coffee and smokes were all I could handle. It occurred to me that although he was very cordial and I felt like their friend, I didn’t know the three people in the apartment very well at all. I felt that I knew Jyrki least of all, actually - Ville wasn’t very difficult to figure out, Hanna was a sweetie, but Jyrki was just so damned mysterious. It felt like I was less his friend than someone who had simply been swept up in his gravitational pull, and then captivated by the pulls of the other two like a rogue asteroid turned slowly into a moon over eons.

Only it had taken one night to be captivated by the three.

“Where’re my clothes?” I asked as quietly as I could. My question was bet with loud laughter from Jyrki and Ville both; Hanna shushed them as she entered the kitchen, clutching her head as if her hand were the only thing holding it on her shoulders.

“You yakked on them.” Oh, the ever-eloquent Hanna.

“They’re currently on an adventure in the land of our wash machine, sweetling.” Jyrki supplied, handing me a cup of black coffee as he spoke. I accepted the cup with my thanks.

“Good to know.” I realized with a start that I clutched my head much like Hanna had. With a sigh, I took a sip of the coffee - which sent me sprinting down the hallway once more, swearing to myself that I’d never, ever, ever drink again.

How the hell could I have let myself do this to myself? I was a fucking Organic Chemistry student at the exclusive Faculty of Science at the University of Helsinki. Good God, I could understand and apply the Quantum fucking field theory (on a day when I didn’t have my head shoved down the u-bend of a toilet). Once again I re-emerged, determined to get something in my stomach that wouldn’t come back up - a piece of bread supplied by Jyrki (still wearing a robe and woolen socks at eleven hundred hours) stayed in my stomach, only after that did I attempt more coffee and a fag.

“I feel like shit,” I mumbled, staring at the mug of coffee in front of my nose; I had curled up into a little ball and rested my head on the cool tile of the kitchen floor, the coffee and an ashtray rested close by.

“As you should. You and Hanna both.” Ville shrugged, downing his second cup of coffee of the evening. I reached out to ash my cigarette and nearly dropped it. Shaking.

“Yeah, you two would have had that whole bottle of Jack straight if Ville and I hadn’t stopped you.” Jyrki was staying quite far away from my position on the ground, leaving me to wonder exactly what (if anything) he wore underneath that pink-tinted robe.

“Well thanks,” Hanna mumbled into her own coffee.

“I agree.” A thought hit me - Paavo! He was probably worried sick! “Have you… er… had any visitors?” I asked, sitting up only to take a few quick mouthfuls of coffee.

“What?”

“Oh God, my brother’s going to kill me,” Well, if he had really wanted to find me, he could have come to the apartment in person; apparently he didn’t miss me too much. The two coherent people gave me odd looks - wondering how old (or young) I really was, perhaps? Hanna just laughed. After a few moments of consideration, though, I decided I didn’t care any more, my brother’s awareness of my whereabouts simply wasn’t important. There was something more important on my mind.

“Got any good movies?” God, my priorities were screwed the fuck up.

“Come on, let’s get you up.” Jyrki helped me to my feet and we relocated to the nearby living room where movies were in enormous piles. I lit up, feeling a little bit better.

“Do you have The Lost Boys?”

“Do I have the - is that even a valid question, look at me!” He handed me the case from the atop the television and pressed rewind on the VHS player. “I’ll just be a minute, gotta get out of these socks.”

Jyrki returned dressed in a pair of jeans and a (very appropriate, I thought) Lost Boys t-shirt; Ville was in tow. They sat on either side of the couch, leaving me to curl up into the dress of a t-shirt I was wearing as they engrossed themselves in conversation about the movie over my head. There was no room in my mind for anything except for my smoke, my coffee, and the damn movie they were chatting through. Finally, I cushed out my cigarette into the nearest butt-filled ashtray and laid my head back on the couch.

I woke again in that strange bed, a packet of cigarettes in one hand, Jyrki’s shirt bunched up around my neck as if I had either attempted to take it off or hang myself because of my headache… wait… what headache? What time was it, anyway? Whatever time it was, I needed to get home, which meant I definitely needed more clothes than what I was wearing. I wandered out of Jyrki’s room again as I fixed the shirt and pulled my hair up into a messy ponytail.

“My clothes?” I asked Ville - who was looking forlorn. Hanna must have gone home.

“Unfortunately, while we have a washing machine, we haven’t one of those new-fangled dryer things yet. They’re hanging on the line.” I was hit with a vision of riding the rail back to the flat in Jyrki’s dress of a Hanoi Rocks t-shirt and my torn up tights; I suddenly felt sorry for the man who I had thought homeless on the first day of classes at U. Hel, he might have simply been in a situation like mine.

“Er. I don’t have a headache any longer, but walking home in this?” The Goonies was still playing in the living room, I could see Jyrki’s black-haired head there, silhouetted against the television screen. “Neither of you would have something for me to wear?” Oh God, this was going to be ridiculous. Ville gave me one of those ‘What the hell do you expect me to do?’ looks, and I frowned deeply in response. “Aw, come on…” Puppy dog eyes did not work on the tattooed man.

“Jyrki?” I singsonged my way to the living room where he was attached to the television. “Jyrki…” His gaze didn’t disconnect even when I crawled onto the couch beside him. He was either dead or asleep, or perhaps he just didn’t care, or loved the Goonies more than life.

“Huh, what?” The black-haired man seemed to snap out of a trance, his long locks fell into those piercing blue eyes.

“Jyrki, Ville won’t give me anything to wear so I can go home,” I pouted, sounding for all the world like a sullen child. It was sort of true, though, I wasn’t used to not getting what I wanted easily. It wasn’t a spoiled rotten thing, it was a fear kind of thing.

“What do you want me to do, you’re not fitting into my pants any time soon.” He was right - I would have had to grow another foot taller. Ville, however, had a stash of Hanna’s jeans around somewhere - and if not, he wore girl’s sized jeans anyway.

“Steal me some? Or tell me where they are so I can steal them myself.”

“Uh-uh, no way, you’d die if you went into that room. It’s a black abyss of cigarette butts and beer cans, you’d get caught up in cleaning the entire thing, it would take years.” Strange how he had me pegged (correctly so) as the strange, Obsessive-Compulsive girl already. He got to his feet laboriously and disappeared.

Minutes later, he came back with a folded up pair of jeans.

“Hurry, don’t let him see you if you can help it.”

“Aw, thanks honey.” I kissed Jyrki’s cheek before I went to change. Jeans weren’t a new experience for me, but they were definitely strange in that they weren’t mine and therefore didn’t fit correctly, they weren’t khaki, and I lacked a ribbon belt with which I could hold them up. Before I left, I gave each of the men a hug, my clothes tucked in a plastic bag under my arm.

“Sinikka, why don’t you come with us tonight - Ville’s getting his sleeve finished.” I quirked an eyebrow.

“Did the group like me that much, Jyrks?” I asked, tugging Ville’s oversized pants up by the waist. Thank the Lord Paavo wouldn’t be home when I finally arrived - it was nearly fourteen hundred hours, his last class of Friday ended at sixteen hundred hours.

“I don’t give a shit, Ville and I liked you. So come, yeah?” I left with the address of a tattoo parlor scrawled on my arm in case I didn’t make it back before they were scheduled to leave at sixteen thirty - and a phone number in the off-chance that it looked like I would make it.

I arrived at the flat just in time to rip off Jyrki and Ville’s donated wardrobe and book it to the shower before Paavo was scheduled to be home; I was thankful that he hadn’t been able to catch me return to the flat wearing black.