Home used to be a hospital. Middlesex House, formally Middlesex Hospital, is where Ethan Huang wakes up on June 23rd, 2016, just as he has every day for the past year. Thursday, he thinks, is the real hump day of the week. Wednesdays are simply lost in the middle, but Thursdays are when you can feel yourself waning. He reaches to check his phone, but doesn’t stay there, lying and awake, for long. The bedsheets are scratchy and he can feel them rubbing against his skin now that he’s awake. Olivia says that there’s no need to buy new ones—these aren’t old at all. She is one of those people, he often reflects, who is unpredictably frugal for the most random of things, as if saving twenty pounds on sheets makes up for spending a thousand on a trip to Venice.
If only the ground floor of their building still was a hospital, then he could just roll out of bed and flop down the stairs to get to work. Pop back up midday to feed Cheerios or to use a private, unclogged toilet. Unfortunately, though, work is a morning’s run away. He fills up Cheerios’s water bowl, tucks his ID badge into his drawstring backpack, ties up his running shoes, and, taking one last glance on the way out at curled-up Cheerios and sleeping Olivia, creeks out the door and into dawn.
This morning he remembers, in the back of his mind: today is when we find out the results from that EU Referendum.
Pouncing off the front steps, he feels the push of warm summer breeze. Past the Starbucks, the tube stop, the early risers. Their flat is absurdly expensive as a result of being close to a tube stop and, therefore, a Starbucks. Ethan isn’t sure how much, precisely, their two quaint white rooms cost—Olivia only asks him for a small sum each month, but he knows that his meager contribution has to be far less than half the rent. He keeps pace past the standardized coffee-bean aroma that drifts out Starbuck’s open glass doors. Despite being perpetually sleep-deprived, as most people his age casually are these days, he prefers to avoid caffeinating himself on the daily. He favors, instead, the relaxing, sedative feeling of melatonin dripping through his body throughout the day, keeping him in a calm, elated sleepy-state. His morning runs are enough to boost him through the day.
Curving onto Whitfield Street, Ethan passes by the restaurant where he and Olivia had their first date, back when they were both in grad school. They had graduated just last year and, the day after chucking their caps in the air, immediately moved in together—or, he moved in with her, that is.
He remembers how shaky his hands had been across from hers, so much so that he had to shove them under his thighs. Sweating over a plate of hummus, he had accidentally called her “Olive.” Her fluffy hair perfectly twisted and pinned back with an emerald clip. Questions of getting-to-know-you’s that quickly evolved into broader, more theoretical discussions—the earliest sign of compatibility.
Would she marry me if that’s what it took to stay?
Having made it through the busier streets, Ethan picks up his pace and takes a shortcut through Richardson’s Mews, feeling himself finally beginning to wake up and recognize the tangible details around him. He sees the grown shadow of a lantern and the uneven cobblestones ahead of him. A telecom tower in the distance makes him wonder where the old one used to be. In the 70s, Olivia had told him once, there was a marvelous telecom tower in Fitzrovia that had revolving restaurants and shiny viewing galleries. No one ever discovered who had placed the bomb that shattered it all.
My Visa expires next May.
He emerges from the passage to Fitzroy Square Garden, a large patch of pleasant grass and trees that is barred off by black fencing. He weaves between the fence and the surrounding benches that face into the botanical zoo, going around and round in loops. He has acknowledged that this probably looks silly, considering how the garden is so small and that it takes less than a minute to circle it all, but he does it routinely anyways to avoid wandering too far.
Others have it much worse.
On the third loop around, he passes another runner, all Nike—the man’s dark clothes with the signature swoosh did, in fact, make his running appear automatically athletic. Ethan and him nod to each other in early-bird solidarity. On the fourth loop around, Ethan discovers that the man is also circling the square, but in the opposite direction, which makes it awkward when they begin to see each other for the second, third, and fourth time. By their fifth shared loop, they purposefully divert eye contact, both cautious that their relationship as cordial strangers go no further.
I wonder what Nike man voted for.
He stops at a bench to tie the lace of his right off-brand sneaker.
If I have to leave London, it won’t be the end of the world. Just annoying that I’d have to move back in with my parents in DC for a bit. Being with them always makes me feel like I’m aging backwards—I become more sensitive and angsty around unconditional love.
Continuing on his routine route, Ethan slows to rub the foot of Francisco de Miranda. Miranda had lived in Fitzrovia for less than two years, but London was quick to claim him as their own, solely because he did a historically prestigious thing. “Precursor of Latin American Independence: He lived here for a bit!” Ethan likes him because he’s one of the only non-white man statues he’s spotted in the whole city. Eventually, all these boot rubs will accumulate to one proper shoe shine. You’re welcome, Miranda.
Wish me luck, Miranda.
Across from Miranda is the ugliest building Ethan has ever seen. It reminds him of what happens when someone fails at Tetris.
Am I a bad person for only paying attention to politics that may affect me? Or that aid me in conversations with Olivia’s friends? But…that article in the Wellbeing section of The New York Times said that reading the news makes you more depressed, so aren’t I justified in keeping my intake limited and choosy? Besides, British politics are far more diluted and confusing. Also, SNL and talk shows and Twitter are there to give me the bare bones.
Goodge Street is a slight relief for the senses, but overwhelming in a different way. He runs into Wrap It Up! and gets his usual for lunch, stuffing the wrap in his bag along with a wasteful clump of paper napkins. He isn’t sure what the chain store means by their subtitle “Global Wrap Artists”; everyone standing droopily behind the counter is as blonde and British as could be. The Chinese Chicken Salad wrap isn’t amazing but is something to eat; he has had it so many times that, now, it doesn’t taste like much at all, which Ethan isn’t sure is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s hard to know if you like the taste of bland. People love white bread, after all, but then will get out of their chairs and carry their salmon dishes up to the waiter if it hasn’t got enough lemon or salt.
Olivia had shown him this place, and he doesn’t care enough about food to try anywhere else. She’s always trying to show him new places, teach him British phrases, pay for things. Ethan knows she has nothing but good intentions, but it could get tiring, pretending to like and appreciate things.
His wrap bounces against his back as he runs down the street. Every place around here, he notices, is a strangely bright color. All trying to be unique with their pop art, retro facades, and fun lettering. Olivia is always saying how proud she is to have been born and raised in historical Fitzrovia, “a real community-focused area.” To Ethan, the area basically seems like an extension of Soho. It rejects non-colored, non-commercialized buildings like a virus—everything coming down to perfect appearance.
What would the world look like in black & white?
Newman Passage. Where he and Olivia had their first kiss after their dinner at Delish. Not at all drunk but feeling slightly faint, they pushed and pressed against the painted brick wall, tasting olives and lamb. He remembers thinking how beautiful she looked against the wall of rainbow. The world had seemed less artificial then; he’d known less, seen less, been intoxicated.
Is this a college fling turned into a co-cat parenting friendship?
Turning into Crabtree Fields, he sees an orange man at the end of the lane.
Past the orange man, he reaches the infamous turquoise wall: the housing development Olivia is working on under her family company. Ethan is never not impressed by her. She is thoughtful and bubbly, a much better parent to Cheerios than him, but can also look so domineering with a notepad and pen. As the sticker on her laptop says, she knows how to “get shit done.” He can never tell, though, if what she is doing is what she really wants to do—sometimes, he feels like she is caught up in the chain, working to fulfill a certain slot in the company, however important and complex that role entails.
Of course, he would never bring this up. They didn’t talk about things like that and he didn’t question her choices. Simply suggesting that she didn’t like her job would make her instantly hunt out reasons to love it. And to be honest, he didn’t want her to find more reasons to love it. That made him an awful, terrible boyfriend, he knew. But he was tired of having to turn slightly away from local newspaper headlines that indicted Bedford Passage Development.
He pauses in a spot of shade on the street. He has never stopped to read the blurbs on the turquoise wall, which are plastered on signs down the block, making it seem as if the construction barrier is a museum exhibit. He figures he should give them a glance; Olivia had stayed up typing them out just last month, and she’d be pleased at dinner if he had a specific phrase in mind that he could compliment her on:
Luxury market housing created within 200-year-old historic workhouse surrounded by charming communal and walled gardens.
Walled gardens? Were the Bedfords really that concerned that people would come steal their flowers? He knows, of course, that it isn’t outsiders stealing that concerned the builders and necessitated the wall, but the outsiders’ mere presence at all.
He backs up, away from the sign, until he hears a blaring honk. He lurches forward and feels hot metal swipe his back.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” shouts, Ethan presumes, the driver who almost knocked him down.
Hands still quivering, Ethan reaches the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, a building that reminds him of metal lasagna. He jumps in the shower of a vacant patient’s room—something that the administration doesn’t usually allow but that he seems to get a pass on, as a result of Olivia delivering them a weekly dose of fresh scones and charm. He shakes out his wet hair and plops down at the front desk. Today will be a slow one.
Instinctively, out of both curiosity and boredom, he keeps refreshing the news. After every refresh, the hand of the barometer moves ever so slightly back and forth between “Leave” and “Remain.” What blunt words those are. Action words, but in fact indicating not autonomous actions, in this context, but actions forced upon others. These simple Arial-printed words on the screen made him queasy.
To pass the time, he also plays some solitaire. He can only play this digitally—it makes no sense with real cards. He tried with Olivia once and it ended in frustrated confusion and them playing Go Fish.
Solitaire. Refresh. Check email. Refresh. Text Olivia. Refresh.
When he sees the news, he feels lightheaded and dizzy, stomach turning and churning.
I didn’t think it would actually happen.
The results left to declare have ticked down to 0. It is decided. His body relaxes from finally knowing, but tenses up again when he considers what this dashed red line, slightly angled to the right, truly means. He scrolls down to the section that breaks down voting distributions by region. In Camden, his region, only 25% had chosen “Leave.”
On his walk home, for every four people he passes, he’ll have to glare at one.