Out of Standards

“Your funding application hasn’t been approved.”

Luca turned toward the window and looked out over Lille from the fifth floor, trying not to reread for the thousandth time the same impersonal email that had just swept away months of work.

Below, he could see patients entering the hospital, delivery trucks pulling in, and ambulances arriving.

“Your funding application hasn’t been approved.”

A simple copy-and-paste formula. Even when everything seemed secured, it only took a bureaucratic sentence to remind you that certainty never truly existed.

“Your funding application hasn’t been approved.”

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to get back to work. This rejection piled onto another piece of bad news received only hours earlier.

In four weeks, the new MRI machine was supposed to arrive. A German technological jewel worth several million, ordered months ago. Except that this morning, the technical specifications had revealed that the building was no longer up to standard.

Electrical standards. Plumbing standards. An endless list.

Who could have predicted that twenty years were enough to make an infrastructure obsolete? Fortunately the manufacturer had known all along...

Long procedures would now have to begin to carry out renovations, and months would be lost. What was perfectly clear was that his entire project depended on the use of that machine.

Eyes still closed, Luca repeated to himself:

“Don’t think about it. One problem at a time.”

But didn’t renovations require funding?

“Don’t think about it. One problem at a time.”

Fortunately, that evening he had suggested going out with Ada.

“I’d like that,” she replied, “but I first have to finish a short story, and I have a flatshare viewing. I’ll tell you the time later.”

They met at 8 p.m. There were blind tests, laughter, conversations with two physiotherapists sitting next to them who were surprised that Ada knew all the lyrics to the English songs.

“I’m Australian. It’s culture for me.”

All those little things kept them going until 2 a.m. without them even noticing.

That was what he liked about Ada. Her ability to make the outside world disappear with improbable lightness.

But everything with her was unpredictable.

He went home feeling lighter, but tired.

***

Saturday morning, he was dragging himself after the night before. His head was heavy, his body slow, as if the night refused to release him. Yet he needed motivation. He had to find it.

The next day he would be moving.

Not far, just the neighboring house, owned by the same landlady. It should be quick. But a move is still a move.

Boxes to prepare, some cleaning, objects to sort through… all those things we accumulate without realizing.

He started working early in the afternoon.

Books first. Always books.

He packed them carefully into boxes, spines upward, trying to wedge them so they wouldn’t get damaged. After the third box, he wondered if they had multiplied overnight like Gremlins.

Clothes ended up thrown into suitcases. He had neither the energy nor the desire to do otherwise.

His poor plants were lined up on the kitchen table. Some were definitively dead.

Had he really been that distracted lately?

Maybe.

Between projects, passions, and nights out with Ada, he probably hadn’t noticed. They had become the collateral damage of his digression.

He stopped in the middle of the room, looking at everything he had piled up in recent months.

He looked at his camera. He would have liked to go out and test his new infrared filter. The winter light should have been perfect for it. But the sky was gray today. And unfortunately, many boxes were still waiting.

At that moment his phone vibrated.

Ada.

She suggested browsing bookstores and then reading over coffee.

They had seen each other the night before and were supposed to see each other again the following evening for an improv theater show. So it was unexpected, but welcome.

Luca looked at the remaining boxes, the piles of clothes, and the thin layer of dust on the furniture he hadn’t tackled yet.

He mentally calculated what remained to be done and what he actually wanted to do that afternoon.

Then he wrote:

“I still have a few boxes to prepare. Shall we meet around 4?”

“4:30 at Kodak, does that work?”

“Yes.”

He couldn’t refuse her invitation.

She was one of the rare people with whom he could laugh and talk endlessly while feeling completely at ease.

And that was something far too rare.

Too rare to complicate.

In the end, he set the boxes aside to take a shower and used the opportunity to clean the cubicle.

***

They met at Kodak to develop the photos from Ada’s camera.

Three years of memories. Past lives. People lost along the way. All compiled on a single roll of film.

Then they wandered through bookstores, showing each other books they loved, leafing through those whose covers caught their attention. They stopped for a long time in front of a collection of feminist jokes.

As always, they didn’t leave empty-handed. Especially her.

They ended up in a café, each absorbed in their book, Ada holding a pencil in hand. They only occasionally exchanged comments about etymology, a rare word, or an expression stumbled upon in a page.

There was something about the moment. A comfortable silence where the other person’s presence was enough.

After that break, Ada suggested getting a drink.

They walked into the first bar they saw, sat at the counter, and ordered a drink.

After that, they wandered from bar to bar, having a drink at each stop. And as always when they saw each other, the evening stretched on. Only after many wanderings did they hug in the cold night.

“See you tomorrow.”

He got home in the middle of the night.

The house was silent. The boxes remained half-filled, waiting for his burst of motivation.

He made himself something to eat, staying standing so he wouldn’t fall asleep. The dishes could wait until morning.

He set his alarm for 7 a.m., knowing it would be difficult, but his appointment with the landlady was at 10. So it was necessary.

***

7:00 a.m. The alarm rang. He turned it off.

7:10. Another alarm. He turned it off again.

7:20. He really had to get up.

7:28. A noise pulled him from his half-sleep.

A door? He stayed still. Had he dreamed it? Impossible. He lived alone. Then he heard footsteps in the house.

Half asleep, he went downstairs and came face to face with the landlady. She was holding her keys.

“Your lease is over. We have many things to do. I’m starting the inventory.”

She didn’t even wait for an answer and calmly walked toward the garage.

Disoriented, Luca went to make coffee. His hands trembled so much that the ground coffee spilled everywhere on the counter, mixing with the condensation from his French Press to form brown stains on the wood.

It looked like something. But he didn’t have time to think about it.

He took his phone and wrote to Ada, holding the cup in his other hand, the coffee still too hot to drink.

She replied immediately.

“That’s illegal.”

Yes. But what do you do with illegality when you’re completely dead tired – or empygicephalic, as he liked to say with Ada – and don’t have the courage to point it out?

“Take care of it calmly. We'll see each other another day”, added Ada.

The exit inventory was conducted with far more zeal than the entry one.

In hindsight, that wasn’t surprising.

Missing objects he had never seen were listed in red. Not having bothered to check pages and pages of inventories, out of laziness and blind trust, was now turning against him.

Luca texted Ada.

“I’ll have to charge you… And there’s a clear lack of hygiene,” added the landlady, pointing at the dirty dishes, the trash bags not taken out, and the coffee stains on the counter.

He said nothing.

After an endless moment of remarks, he signed without protesting. Paying a few euros for objects seemed like the price of peace.

Thinking the worst was now behind him and that he could move next door as planned, Luca relaxed internally.

“This isn’t all,” the landlady said.

She placed another sheet on the already considerable pile of leases, amendments, and inventory reports filled with legal language he didn’t understand.

“As with your ex-partner, when relationships don’t go well, we end them.”

He was at a complete loss. He stared at her, bewildered. He didn’t understand what his ex had to do with any of this.

“You’ve been alone here for months, even though this house is for female students.”

She pointed at the paper with her pen.

“You don’t even pay your utilities, you’re too noisy with your guitar, and too dirty…”

She paused, then added:

“And let’s not even talk about those empty bottles…”

She let the implication hang in the air.

“I’m terminating your lease.”

His eyes finally fell on the letter.

The words “congé pour motifs légitimes et sérieux” were underlined in red.

“But I pay my share, I—”

“NO! You don’t understand. I’ll show you.”

She left the house and quickly returned with several other people. An older man and at least two women. Maybe three. He soon realized they were the parents of the girls living next door.

These strangers entered the kitchen and examined the evidence. The dishes. The trash. The coffee stains. The bottles in the cupboard.

“You see… how could your daughters live in these conditions?”

Luca stood motionless in the middle of the kitchen. His cheeks burned. He couldn’t look at anyone anymore and fixed his gaze on a random spot. His eyes landed on the shapes formed by the coffee. There you go, he thought, it looks like Starry Night.

After a moment he forced himself to look around again.

The kitchen simply looked like that of someone who had been packing boxes without motivation, who had gone to bed late two nights in a row, and hadn’t managed to finish tidying up.

Nothing extraordinary.

But under their gazes and judgments, something shifted in his own perception.

He looked at his guitar and amplifier sitting among the boxes, the empty bottles, the dead plants, the sink.

Was it really like that?

“Did you drink this much at his age?” she asked the man.

Even if it wasn’t said clearly, the word floated in the room like an aggravating circumstance in this improvised courthouse.

He tried to speak. But the words stayed stuck. Every previous attempt had been cut off.

“NO! You don’t understand.”

He didn’t understand indeed.

Just hours earlier he had still been sleeping in his bed, only lacking motivation for the upcoming move. And now he stood in the kitchen while a small assembly examined his life like tax inspectors.

Eventually the women left. Only the landlady, the man, and Luca remained.

“You will have to pay and leave.”

Why was she so relentless?

She owned several houses on this street, probably others elsewhere. An entire estate he would likely never have.

And him, everything he owned fit into a few boxes and suitcases in the middle of one of her living rooms.

“The girls next door don’t want to live with you. We have no other choice.”

Yet he had signed the new lease just last week.

“You must sign the termination letter.”

He refused. Sign that defamation?

“We can make a mutual agreement if we can’t find another solution to end the contracts.”

She began writing the agreement on a blank sheet. He stopped her. He couldn’t terminate the lease himself. But if he paid this woman while she robbed him, humiliated him, and exposed his private life to strangers, what else might she do next?

He didn’t have the tools to fight her. Not now. He didn’t have the energy. All he had at that moment were badly packed boxes, dark circles under his eyes, and arguments she refused to hear.

Finally, he called his parents.

***

That evening, when he should have been at the theater with Ada, he found himself alone in his old childhood bedroom.

It looked exactly the same as it had ten years earlier when he first left. He couldn’t sleep there.

Instead, he wrote everything he remembered. In order. Second after second. Details after details. As if the meticulous reconstruction of events might eventually produce a rational explanation. As if he were trying to find the exact moment when he had done something wrong.

He sent part of these notes to Ada. And to a few other friends. Not so they would answer. Just so it would exist somewhere outside of himself.

***

Monday morning was difficult.

He arrived at the laboratory after a long journey on public transport. He felt slow and imprecise, endlessly replaying the events. Part of him was still in the kitchen.

His colleagues asked what was wrong. He didn’t know what to say. The words were still stuck deep inside him.

None of what he had experienced was something to share with colleagues between experiments.

He could do nothing else but look at the view from his office.

It was late afternoon when he received another message from Ada.

She said she hadn’t felt comfortable being involved in the story. He realized, reading her words, that he hadn’t known when to stop nor seen the signs. But they had always been there.

She had wanted their relationship to remain light, as it had always been. And lately, it no longer felt that way to her. For now, she thought it would be better if they stopped talking.

Luca reread the message several times. It sounded like a goodbye. Only the future would tell if it truly was one. In the meantime, he could only respect the silence.

What else could he do?

Unpredictable, as always.

***

Luca thought about standards.

Machines had them.

Buildings too.

Prompts as well.

Apparently, relationships were no exception.

And he, clearly, was out of standards.

Machines get replaced.

Buildings get renovated.

But people ?