Chapter 40

                                    

                                          
"But I really don't feel like going," Lisa groaned in defiance when they stepped in inside her apartment. The now-familiar eerie silence of her own place did not surprise her anymore. There was something missing, she knew. She just couldn't pinpoint what it was. Or maybe she did and she just didn't want to linger much on the thought yet. 
                          
Lisa saw Leo jumped from the couch and scuttled away towards the uppermost of the stairs and Luca, the good boy that he was, remained on his stupor above the cabinet and only raised an eyelid to check on her and her tall and lanky companion. She smiled at the sight of her two boys. Leo wouldn't have scuttled away if it was Jennie who was with her.
                          
"Oh my god! Please, don't use that tone on me. Besides, it has been decided that you're coming with me--"
                          
"Decided by who?" Lisa asked and plopped herself on the couch. She was occupying the whole space, leaving her companion, who smelled mostly of airport and summer, standing in the middle of her living room, checking the tiny cobwebs hanging on the chandelier. 
                          
"By me," the other woman said while scanning her eyes on the state of Lisa's apartment. "Besides, it's a good opportunity for you to expand your circle, meet possible clients and maybe find someone that will make you get out of your lab once in a while," she explained her intentions and added, "You really need to get out of your lab and do a bit of cleaning in here." She just ran her finger on the specks of dust lying on the frame of one of Lisa's displayed black-and-white photo of her two cats and clicked her tongue in disapproval. 
                          
"I'm actually getting out of my lab more often than you know," Lisa replied without looking. Her forearms were raised on her face, covering her eyes. Her feet resting on the armrest. "Leave the dusts alone. They make a good story."
                          
The tall woman with an apple-cut hair rolled her eyes at Lisa, even though she knew that the younger woman wasn't looking. At least she knew how to vacuum her place in New York, no matter how unorganized she could be most of the time.
                          
"Good to know," she said sarcastically and sashayed towards the solitary couch, where Lisa was lying. She slapped Lisa's feet off the armrest. Lisa scooted over and made room for the woman. 
                          
"Yes. But I need to work on some rolls tonight, though," Lisa said and pushed herself up to sit. 
                          
Doona, Lisa's old friend and mentor in photography wasn't having Lisa's display of enervated spirit. She just flew in from New York, made a quick stopover in a dress shop to get her dress fixed and went straight to Lisa's place, hoping that the younger photographer was in the country. Especially since the last time that the two of them talked, Lisa was somewhere in South America, with the loud sound of drums and street parties on the background. 
                          
"Lalisa! What did I tell you about being a photographer?" Donna asked her friend. 
                          
Doona had met Lisa by accident a few years ago when Lisa was still a newbie in photography. A tall, lanky woman with a ridiculously huge camera bag strapped on her shoulder, looking awkward and lost in the sea of abstract arts and throngs of people. They had met in Korea, in the village of Dongpirang, when the place was still littered with homegrown artists painting on the walls from sun up to sun down, to save the dying village from being demolished. 
                          
Doona was one of those who had been invited by a group of artists to present the colorfully-painted village to the rest of the world through her lens. And Lisa back then was an amateur who went there for the sole purpose of testing her new camera for a photowalk. The young enthusiast had bumped into her, causing her compact camera to fly off her grip and landed hard on the hard pavement. She could still remember the horrified look on Lisa's face when they both saw the compact camera lying on the pavement, looking pathetically broken. And the rest, they would say, was history.