There Will Be No Violins: 4

Quinn lives in a shoebox of a 2-bedroom apartment. In Surry Hills. This is her natural habitat. When Quinn first moved in, she wanted to live alone. She wanted it to be a place where she could blend into the walls and become a part of the fixtures and the decor herself and become lost in time along with them.

She caved to economic reality.

She shares it with a roommate, Andy, and a colony of cockroaches that have achieved a higher level of civilization than their human counterparts. The rent costs more than Quinn’s soul, which, to be fair, is a pretty decent trade-off. The property market etc. We don’t need to go into it.

The decor hasn’t been updated since a period that Pinterest tells her was the 1960s.

Remember Pinterest?

Green linoleum sits comfortably with rusted-out chrome fittings.

Her apartment is on a quiet street, lined with trees, nestled among the rows of other small townhouse-style homes from 100 years ago and warehouses converted into apartments. There are cafes within easy distance, and a train station as well. On weekend mornings, her street is home to couples who bring their dogs when they go out to eat breakfast.

If you walk for twenty minutes in one direction, you will find yourself in the city, where Urbanlist will tell you there is a beating heart and a sense of life, and if you walk in another, you can lose yourself in the Inner West.

It’s quite easy.

Well. Every morning, Quinn wakes up and stares at the ceiling, wondering if today’s the day she’ll snap like a twig in a bushfire. She hasn’t yet. This surprises her.

Quinn drags herself out of bed, careful not to disturb the delicate balance of dirty laundry and empty takeout containers that form her room’s ecosystem. Somewhere in the background, a Google Home device, out of place in her decaying time capsule, is droning a response to a command that she’s already forgotten. She shuffles to the kitchen, where the cockroaches have been guarding the Nespresso machine. They’re considerate that way.

Quinn sits by the window, peering out at the Sydney skyline. The city gleams like a jewellery store display case, all shiny and expensive and utterly unattainable.

Her phone buzzes. It’s her boss, Mr. Krapowicz.

He is a Venture Capitalist. His family has money. He is therefore blessed with the contagion of genius.

“Meeting @ 9:30,” the Slack message reads.

Quinn breathes. She counts. Self-soothing, she believes it’s called.

She puts on her game face — it is a masterpiece of cruelty free concealer (good job) and false optimism (bad job) — and heads out into the world. The cockroaches wave goodbye, already planning their next evolutionary leap. Maybe opposable thumbs this time.

At the cafe around the corner from an unnamed co-working space, Quinn orders a dozen oat milk lattes and brewed black coffees in the cups with little leaf designs on the side. Mr. Krapowicz likes leaves. He says they remind him of growth potential.

She arrives five minutes late. This will matter less over the next few months. Time will start to lose all meaning. For now, it is uncomfortable, but it is not commented on.

The beverages are placed on the reclaimed wood table of their preferred meeting room. The rest of the staff trickle in.

Mr. Krapowicz is the last to arrive, his Patagonia vest already creased from power naps taken between pitch meetings. His perfectly dishevelled hair simultaneously suggests both “I don’t care” and “I spent an hour on this.”

“Right,” he says.

Quinn’s mind drifts as Mr. Krapowicz waxes poetic about scaling and blue ocean strategies.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, a drone delivering avocado toast crashes into the glass. It slides down slowly, leaving a streak of guacamole.

Eventually, the meeting ends. Nothing has changed. There’s talk of the blockchain.

Quinn returns to her hot desk, a 2x2 square of barnwood and sticky notes. She stares at her MacBook, willing it to burst into flames. It doesn’t.

Later, Quinn walks home past a row of jacaranda trees, their purple blossoms scattered on the sidewalk like bruises.

Quinn stops at the corner store, choosing a ready-made salad and a bottle of wine. The clerk doesn’t look up from his phone as he rings her up.

At home, she eats standing up in the kitchen, fork scraping against plastic as she watches the sky fade from blue to pink to a deep, velvety purple. The wine is mediocre, but she drinks it anyway.

Her housemate — Andy — is watching Ex on the Beach: Kyiv.