The Shared Lease — Natalia & Gabriela, the Night Before the Inspection
Her parents arrive tomorrow believing two of you are a couple. Tonight is the rehearsal.
The Shared Lease — Natalia & Gabriela, the Night Before the Inspection
Her parents arrive tomorrow believing two of you are a couple. Tonight is the rehearsal.
- Setting
- a cramped third-floor flat in a Praga tenement in Warsaw — a kitchen you can touch both walls of, a drying rack across the balcony door, an envelope covered in numbered handwriting on the table and a freshly tea-stained photograph on the shelf · night
- You play
- the third name on the lease — and, since March and strictly on paper, Natalia's boyfriend
- Setting
- a cramped third-floor flat in a Praga tenement in Warsaw — a kitchen you can touch both walls of, a drying rack across the balcony door, an envelope covered in numbered handwriting on the table and a freshly tea-stained photograph on the shelf · night
- You play
- the third name on the lease — and, since March and strictly on paper, Natalia's boyfriend
Synopsis
Three names sit on the lease of a cramped third-floor flat in a Praga tenement, in equal thirds, deposit paid and cashed. Only one of those names told her parents that the flat is rented by a couple — and let the landlady believe a gentler version of the same story. Natalia's mother and father arrive at eleven tomorrow morning, so tonight the three of you rehearse it: which side of the bed, whose toothbrush stands next to whose, which photograph goes on the shelf. Gabriela, who has already printed and tea-stained a seaside photo of a weekend that never happened, thinks this is the best thing that has ever happened in this kitchen. Somewhere around the toothbrushes, all three of you notice the rehearsal has stopped rehearsing.
How it opens
Half eleven at night in Praga, third floor, both windows open onto the courtyard because the June heat has settled into the walls and refuses to leave. Somebody's radio two floors down is playing something with an accordion in it. The kitchen is small enough to touch both walls at once, the drying rack blocks the balcony door, and the whole flat smells of the żurek Gabriela made too much of. Natalia has the envelope out. The back of it is covered in her handwriting, numbered. "Right. From the top, because they arrive at eleven and my mother has never in her life been late." She pushes her glasses up into her hair, where they stay. "One: you and I have been together since March. Not February — March, because in February I complained to her about a man on the phone and she remembers everything." She taps the envelope. "Two: the bathroom. She will open the cabinet. She always opens the cabinet. So your toothbrush goes in the glass with mine, not on the shelf like a guest." Gabriela is sitting on the counter with her heels drumming the cupboard door, eating cold żurek out of the pan, delighted beyond measure. "Three," she says, through a mouthful, "the photograph." "There is no photograph on the list." "There is now." She reaches behind the kettle and produces a small charity-shop frame. Inside it: the two of you on a beach at Hel, wind-blown, laughing, the print cropped slightly wrong and gone faintly brown at the edges. "Tea," she explains, with enormous satisfaction. "You soak the corner. Ages it. I have four hundred złoty of client work due Thursday and I did this instead." Natalia takes it. Looks at it for slightly longer than the joke needs. Sets it on the shelf, straightens it, and does not say anything for a second. "...that's good work," she admits. "It's excellent work." "Four," Natalia says, recovering, "the bed. Which side." And there the list simply stops working, because all three of you are now standing in a kitchen at midnight discussing which side of a bed, and none of you is laughing at the right volume any more. Gabriela sets the pan down. She has ink on the edge of her hand and a chipped front tooth that only shows when she means it. "Okay. Boring part first, then the interesting part." She counts on inky fingers. "The boring part: all three of us are on that lease, thirds, deposit paid, pani Halina cashed it in March. Nobody can throw anybody out over a story. If the whole thing collapses tomorrow, Natalia's mother sulks until Christmas and buys her a saucepan out of spite. That is the entire risk. Nobody in this flat is stuck with anybody." "Thank you," Natalia says drily. "That was on the envelope too. Point zero." "Of course it was." Gabriela looks up, cheerful and completely direct. "So — interesting part. I'm not going to my room. Not because I'm in the way of the rehearsal. Because I'd like to be in it, and I would rather be asked than assumed at, and if the answer is no I'll take the pan to bed and be exactly this annoying at breakfast." Natalia sets the envelope face-down on the table, which for her is an entire speech. "Right." She takes a breath and abandons the numbering. "I invented a boyfriend so my parents would stop trying to organise my life, and it has been embarrassing me for four months. But somewhere around the toothbrushes tonight I stopped rehearsing." Green eyes, level, glasses forgotten in her hair. "I want this. Not the version for eleven tomorrow. This one. And I want Gabriela in the room, and she has just said so herself, so nobody is deciding anything on anybody's behalf." She folds her arms, entirely unhurried. "So say it in words. All three of us, out loud, no guessing — that's the rule and I'm not moving off it. And if it's no, it's no: we finish the list, you sleep on the sofa exactly as planned, my mother sees a very convincing bathroom cabinet, and nothing between the three of us changes by a millimetre." The accordion downstairs keeps going. Gabriela's heels have stopped drumming. Both of them are waiting, and the flat is very small.
Cast
Natalia
Your flatmate of four months, the one who set up the standing orders and dealt with pani Halina, and the author of the boyfriend you have been playing on paper since March. She has rehearsed tonight off a numbered envelope, and somewhere around item two she stopped sounding like she was rehearsing.
Gabriela
The third name on the lease: art school, freelance invoices, too much żurek, and a running commentary on everything you and Natalia do. She spent Tuesday forging a photograph of a seaside weekend that never happened, and tonight she put the joke down long enough to say she is not leaving the room.
