Moonlight Arcade

Lin and her flatmate welcome a new tenant into their student apartment during the hottest summer of their master's degree. Life seems to change as the dishes in the sink start to pile up.

Chapter 1

It was the year of the heat wave, and none of us had bought fans yet. When Runa Chatterjee moved into our apartment, the urgency of her buying a fan was far less pressing than mine because her arrival came with a designated departure date. I still had a long time to go, and by the end of the semester, Lin and I would welcome a new flatmate.

I held higher expectations after she joked that her surname was rather fitting—that she was in fact a chatter-box. I misread her lightness of being as an open invitation to friendship, but after a few attempts, I quickly realised that Runa Chatterjee had no interest in cooking mutton together, playing badminton, or watching DIY videos on YouTube with Lin and me.

The day she arrived, Lin and I were in the kitchen, our heads buried into thick laptop screens, planning our schedules for the following semester. Runa’s sun hat was wide and ample. Her wide brown eyes seemed to absorb so much; they gave the impression that she was a better listener than she truly was. Along with the weird pun on her own surname, she also misunderstood Lin’s formal introduction of herself and started addressing her as Lin Clare. Lin and I giggled and conspired to never correct her.

We decided early on that the language of the house would be Denglish. Runa and I, though, communicated in Bengali, and we often code-switched around Lin.

The day of her arrival was the first and last time the three of us drank chaai together, and by the end of the second week of summer, a new cleaning schedule had been printed out, women’s toiletries in the bathroom grew exponentially, and Runa Chatterjee settled in like she’d always been living there.

Chapter 2

I was well accustomed to student-led Thursday night fever and often found myself with friends at the local student bar. When I bumped into Runa, I was left with equal parts of envy and relief. Envious because it had taken me months to find friends, despite a full-time degree program alongside a likeminded cohort; and glad that Runa, despite arriving on exchange, had seamlessly found her footing at our sister university.

Pursuing a master’s meant slicing the week off to the weekend earlier than permissible. The impact of a Saturday night should ideally have zero consequence on a Monday morning lab.

And as Lin often said, “If it’s a course on Fridays, it’s a course beyond my academic pursuits.”

For our degree in Computer Science, Lin and I decided to pair up for a lab, prioritising ease. But it was far more challenging than we had anticipated. Lin had important subjects to wrap up before winter. Out of consideration (and since her absence and sudden dismissal of house chores were a new feature in the two years that we had known each other), I didn’t mind washing her thinly rimmed steel bowl every once in a while.

Based on the content available in the document, the document parser was to be trained to classify a given document into one of seven labels. Lin preferred to write up the report and clean up my ugly, albeit functional code and I gladly built the parser, holding on to a lifelong dread of academic writing.

During my later years in our friendship, it dawned on me that my support towards Lin’s homestretch was neither altruistic nor an act of peer-driven sympathy. If washing her singular dinner bowl meant immense gratitude and her dusting the entire flat, I would do it a hundred times over. Akin to this was the building of the document parser.

Our magnanimity in picking domestic peace over righteousness had worked for us. In any case, I was generally predisposed to let sleeping dogs lie, and spent most of my 20’s swallowing up words that held weight and value. When red lines overpopulated Runa Chatterjee’s cleaning schedule column, I begged Lin to talk to her. Lin never caught the irony, and neither of us possessed enough interest to confront Runa about her dismissal.

If it had not been for my mother’s penchant for engineering, I would have led my happy, unruffled life with zero interest in challenge, discomfort, or adventure in far-off lands. Looking back now, Runa Chatterjee was perfectly cut out for a 2-year-long media studies program across four different universities in the EU, much unlike myself, who sobbed fat sobs at the mere thought of leaving Mumbai, a city I loved, cherished, and grew up in rather contently.

Chapter 3

The first time Runa brought a man over, it was a Thursday night. Much like my summers in Mumbai as a child, I was standing in front of the refrigerator, holding open the hem of a My Chemical Romance t-shirt to let cool air in, occasionally fanning the fabric. Runa and her guest reeked of alcohol and tobacco and gestured warm greetings at me that were not to be remembered the following morning. They scurried off into her butterfly-themed room, and that night I fell asleep praying that they didn’t catch a glimpse of my tattered bra.

When I set out to the plant pop-up at the closest marketplace the following morning, there lay a lazy Friday silence in the flat, and the pair of Adidas running shoes lying outside Runa’s door was gone. My dry-eyed research from the previous night had led to ominous revelations regarding plant care—it would cost an arm and a firstborn to keep alive plants, especially the kind Runa had invested in for her room. I was immediately envious of her setup, an over-commitment adorned with plants. Decorative aspects outweighed the functional, leaving me to question my own intuition for good design.

Since a peace lily and monstera were deemed fit for beginners, I was determined to foster a green thumb.

My maternal instincts towards peace lily one (PL1), peace lily two (PL2), and the monstera grew out of me like nasty weeds on untamed garden beds. I cringed and fussed over my attachment to the new living entities cohabitating with me. I even employed a baby voice to coo them through Satan’s summer.

I skipped to the plant pop-up again and bought two new flowering plants to celebrate their three-month-long survival. When I got back home charred to the bone, I rewarded myself with iced tea, an acceptable replacement for hot evening chaai, and decided to interrupt Runa Chatterjee’s day by offering her a glass.

I knocked on her door a couple of times, and I could hear a faint presence of music.

It was a Saturday evening, and I assumed she was out, either buying groceries to tide over the horrifying desertion of Sundays in Stuttgart or knee-deep in another media literacy event as Head of Design.

When I tentatively pushed the door open, I found her napping in bed, her limp head awkwardly propped onto a pillow. Her fat headphones pressed into the side of her cheek, and the rays of the sun danced upon transparent eyelids, bouncing off sweat beads on her hairline. There was something about Runa’s untamed baby hair that persistently caused knots in my chest. I caught myself computing how she managed to look so young when she was actually older than me—not by much, but enough to notice a difference in our capacity for detachment.

Her room was a microcosm of its own in our otherwise bare and messy flat. Purple suncatchers lined the smaller window on the top right, and the laundry basket lay stacked to the brim with shockingly folded clothes. I was left feeling deep disdain. Her treatment of her own room appeared dear and personal, and the treatment of the flat, an obligation. There were countless times Runa Chatterjee had defaulted on our cleaning schedule, and I wondered if it was because she was too busy or because she simply didn’t care.

I left the glass on her study desk, a messy, not dirty surface cluttered with stationery and electronics. The jack of her headphones lay parallel to the port, and I gently tapped the space bar on the keyboard to facilitate an afternoon nap in sunny silence. If she was too busy to clean, she probably needed the rest.

Chapter 4

One morning, Lin asked me to drop off a package to Moritz’ postbox on my way to class. Moritz, Lin’s boyfriend, lived in an adjacent student dormitory, and his weekly presence in our flat was a welcome source of desensitisation to the presence of strange men in a domestic living space. We got along just fine, and I could never quite tell if he actually enjoyed watching DIY videos on YouTube or if he was just mesmerised by Lin. Smart and beautiful Lin, who was so well versed in the etiquette of GPU sharing.

I had had my own streak of a long list of exactly two partners during my time in the flat, but Lin didn’t like either of them. She found my first boyfriend rather clumsy. He broke one of the only two flutes of champagne in our kitchen, and she didn’t like Sana because every time she took her makeup off in our bathroom, she left stained cotton balls around the sink. I was left with genuine sadness and ennui when my relationships ended, and so both times, Lin and I ate ice cream on the couch and watched The Voice of Germany seasons 5 and 6 until Lin couldn’t stand the show anymore.

I skipped briskly below as many ledges as I could to dodge the rain. As I approached the dormitory, the postbox was distastefully demarcated by litter. Stubbed cigarettes, ripped-up envelopes, a flyer for the “Aerospace Engineer’s Space-Angels” Bible-study group, “Mittwoch ab 20 Uhr”, and a Vietnamese food delivery menu stained by the print of a muddy flip-flop.

As I tried to locate Moritz’ surname on the steel flaps, I caught a glimpse of a flyer buried under a ripped envelope and angry balls of crushed advertisements. The print looked familiar, a deep blue with a loud neon-yellow lollipop print. Frustrated by Moritz’ mysterious missing name and a wet shoulder, I bent down and fished the damp flyer out.

“Moonlight Arcade. Pay to play,” it read.

The paper had suggestive graphics. A young, headless body of a woman on her knees, crouched over a joystick in the centre. On three corners of the flyer- a cat in sunglasses sipping a mimosa, a pink pool doughnut, and an “F” for Facebook to @Miss Luna Cat. I left Moritz’ package at the sheltered entrance of the large framed door and decided to skip class that day, heading home in the grossly timed rain, soggy flyer in hand.

I changed into tinier, dryer clothes and climbed into bed with my water bottle and laptop. Respite from the heat, but at what cost, I thought. I looked up Runa Chatterjee online. I found public playlists on YouTube and her BlogSpot from when she was 16. She had no other form of social media, but I found a poem she had written for her best friend. It left me in a bundle of scepticism, tenderness, and jitters.

I didn’t care much for Runa Chatterjee’s sexual escapades, but the resemblance of the soggy flyer to the image being edited in Photoshop on her computer the day I made iced tea sent the magnetic needle of my moral compass into a frenzy. I argued with myself that the frequency with which Runa had boys over was reasonable, at least for all the times that I was home. Aside from one regular face—a history major—I once recognised a project partner from an Information Science elective eating cereal in our kitchen on a Friday morning.

I connected my laptop to the monitor, rain spritzing upon the ledge of my window dangerously close to a heap of wires. I looked up Miss Luna Cat on Facebook and found no evidence of my flatmate on the profile. It was simply a paid sexual service for special play. I logged out of my Facebook account and tried to log in to Runa’s Facebook with her email. The passwords I attempted were mere guesses, like birthdays and lazy and weak passwords. Neither Runa’s personal nor student email (rather obviously, yet a shot in the dark) led to a successful login.

I meandered into what seemed to be the last possible attempt to Miss Luna Cat’s identity. Runa Chatterjee’s Facebook login security question popped up.

“What’s the name of your childhood best friend?”

I typed in the name of the best friend her poem was dedicated to, frenzied, dry-mouthed, and chomping down on a gritty thumbnail I had chewed off minutes ago.

“Incorrect answer, try again,” the text croaked in red.

Chapter 5

Her attempt to run a racket out of our shared home upset me to a great degree. Runa, who had no dearth of funds, had the capacity to live in 4 countries across the span of 2 years, invest in interior design for a 12-square-meter room, and thrift vintage Chanel had no glaring reason to offer sex for money. It could all be a coincidence, and I couldn’t figure out what bothered me more—her earnest disposition when present or her deep disinterest in our lives while she lived in a mysterious self-contained bubble.

Then one Sunday opportunity arrived, and Runa asked if I wanted to cool off with some payash. What began as an offering ended up being a long-drawn-out cooking session of Bengali food for her sister’s birthday.

Runa raked up a thirty-euro bill at Asia Supermarkt, the money for which I had decided to forego under my newfound suspicion of her financial situation, and that day I learnt more about her than I ever did.

“My sister was my best friend, you know,” she said as she massaged yoghurt into a fibrous piece of meat.

“You have a sister?” I asked, entirely presumptuous in my tensed phrase.

“I had a sister. Luna. She would have turned 25 today,” she said, in her usual inaudible chatter.

After the preparation of an elaborate meal, I cooled off in my room, and Runa ran off to one of her festival committee meetings. She had audaciously remarked, “it’s payash, not rice pudding,” a comment I found unwarranted, and she failed to bring up the grocery bill.

I welcomed her absence, and it was too clammy to eat, especially after she had created a general air of despair around the entire activity. I fell asleep, stomach full from an awkward snack at an awkward 6PM.

The next morning, I dragged my feet into the kitchen, disoriented, as one usually gets by the strange passage of time. The night before left an awful crick in my neck, and I had sore muscles from dehydration. The food we made was left out; the smell of diced onions hung heavy in the air. The sheer sight of the messy kitchen stirred the acid in my stomach, and I stormed across to her room, thudding loudly on her door.

“Why didn’t you clean up?” I asked, exasperated.

“I’m sorry, I was really tired.” She picked at the corner of her eyes, groggy and in a state of daze.

“That’s no excuse. You said you’d clean up.”

Her fingers stopped picking at her face. Before she could form a word with her lips parted, I confessed.

“Moonlight Arcade. Pay to play. You’re Miss Luna Cat, aren’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She shook her head, turning away, attempting to shut the door on me.

“Runa, this is insane. Are you soliciting out of our house?” I shrieked.

“It’s not what you think it is,” her voice quivered as she placed her hand on my arm and dragged me into her room.

If she didn’t want me to yell in her room, and if Lin hadn’t heard already, I would inform her in a quieter fashion.

“We could all be suspended. We could all be deported! You’re insane. Do you need money? Is that it?” I was screaming now.

“I’m telling Lin,” I added, turning away. “Wait. Wait! It’s not what you think it is. I’m just… It’s a sport. It’s like a sport for me. Money’s just a silly add-on. To make sure the men stay in line. It’s my hobby, I don’t know how to…”

I was appalled at her brazen disregard for the dangers she had put herself, our apartment, and our lives in. I failed to wrap my head around her strange interest, and I was angrily grappling at a myriad of reasons. How had she managed to go unnoticed this whole time? What good could come out of such a pursuit?

“You can’t tell Lin Clare. Please. She won’t get it,” she begged. Tears streamed down her face as she placed both hands on my arm.

“Clear the fucking kitchen up,” I said, walking away, and I slammed the door shut.

Chapter 6

Lin and I lugged two suitcases each to the airport. Runa had a backpack and a carry-on. Her stuff had metastasised in front of our eyes, and I thought to myself that this must be the price you pay for good décor.

She hugged us goodbye, and Lin’s eyes blurred over. As their arms slid off each other, Lin confessed,

“And by the way, Runa, it’s not Lin Clare. It’s either Lin or Clare. Lin Clare is like saying chaai-tea.”

Her comment cracked us up, Runa’s hand flying over her mouth. She winced in embarrassment, begging for Lin’s forgiveness.

“Thanks,” she said, turning to me.

It was the first and last time I held her.

On the day of her sister’s birthday, her confession had given her away. The Facebook security question answer was in fact “Luna.” With as many login attempts as I had made, I assumed Runa must have received an email. Perhaps she had suspected that someone had found out before I stormed into her room the following morning. Perhaps she hadn’t checked her email and, unlike me, slept soundlessly the night of the event.

For weeks after, we stayed out of each other’s way. I stopped picking up Runa Chatterjee’s chores, pitting my loyalty and friendship to Lin against Runa by dismissing her piled-up dishes in the sink and shoving her week-old laundry to the edges of the shared drying rack. She left apology notes under my door and never invited another man to the arcade again. In turn, I never told Lin.

Twice she wrote letters conveying genuine apology and explanations in an attempt to indulge her own guilt. I read her first letter, experiencing a feeling most closely aligned with indifference. I tossed the second into the trash, unopened.

“You kept my secret,” she switched to Bangla as we stood outside Departures.

I felt a deep ache in my muscles. The kind that makes you realise the ephemerality of time.

“Thank you,” she smiled, pushing her trolley away in the opposite direction.

“Take care, Runa. I hope you find another sport you like,” I said, as Lin and I waved her goodbye.

Just like PL1, PL2, and the monstera, the plants Runa left entrusted in my care would soon die too.