Stephanie's brows furrowed. She noticed the discomfort of her client. "It's just a matter of the reception, don't you think? Oh. If you worry about the data consumption, I will only use that to play the songs."
Lila pursed her lips.
"If your husband doesn't allow you to give the password to me," Stephanie speculated, she corrected her tone to be warmer. "It's okay. We could probably look for another alternative."
She knew she was treading on eggshells here. When suspecting some restrictions in a potential abuse case, she only thought that it fit the description. It might be less of a penny-pinching antic than a controlling behaviour, as in limiting the information the spouse could give to external parties, like sharing the resources. Maybe the husband had still considered the scope of Companions something to be wary of.
"No, it's just . . . I can give you the wifi password."
"Okay," she followed. So no restriction from the husband. And no withholding information, either, as Lila knew the password. Probably it was just the bad connection in the wifi, too. Stephanie needed to stop overthinking nowadays.
"It's that even after I give you it, you still can't use our wifi to stream the songs." Lila hunched her shoulders, her gaze directed downwards while the glass still twirling in her palms.
"Sorry, I'm not following. It's just an internet problem." Stephanie grew more suspicious as she felt she failed to grasp the covered fact. Frustration to understand what was going on often left her emotional.
"My husband restricted the traffic, so only his approved websites or apps could open."
Stephanie's heart rate increased again. How could someone do this to Lila? Restricting apps? She would understand if this was parental control. But they had no kids. The only people living in this household were two fully-functioning adults who maintained their roles in society before the pandemic. There was no way Lila's perception of reality so skewed her husband needed to impose a regulation on her internet consumption.
"May I know the reason?" Stephanie's voice faltered and broke. She was like standing at the woodland edge, weighing whether to continue to the unknown depth or turn back and go home.
Her seat turned into a cushion of pins and needles. She peered at the timer. Fifteen minutes to go. She could just think up any other topics or make them some tea and soon the jasmine aroma would drown the awkward hanging.
But she always chose the hard way. And that hard way might be the wrong way.
She braced herself for the impact. A long time ago, Stephanie took a HUET course, training for workers at sea vessels or remote areas approachable by choppers. The most dreaded part of the training was when the instructors placed the participants in a mock-up of a helicopter, put up the frame and the person floating on the pool, and then the instructor upturned the mock-up with the person inside so their head would be underwater.
The task for the person was to unlatch their safety belt which was designed a bit similar to that of an aeroplane, grab the frame to simulate grappling to remove the actual window of a chopper, then swim to the surface.
This situation with Lila was so much like it, her bracing herself for the answer Lila would give, while the ghost voice of the past instructor jackhammered the countdown in her head.
"I can't listen to any entertainment app that the government doesn't approve of. It might be due to the propaganda or false news."
Like the unholy sensation of chlorine water entering her nostrils by force, she gulped this piece of information.
"But the music . . . You mentioned you watched my ad from YouTube?"
"Months ago. You remember the rather big uprising that followed? Where two big black choppers vomiting ammo airborne while the people, Protected and Immune who sympathised with the movement, scuttled for their lives? I was scared to death reading the news. It was reported in many outlets, but my husband assured me it wasn't the case. They raided the supply posts, violating the law and endangering other Protected people who rely on supplies. The police shot or captured them."
"I was . . . there. At the supply depot. Standing in line as usual, when in the blink of an eye it turned rapidly to a war zone." Stephanie gave a stony look. The one she was yanked away by the NP personnel. The one she was running for her life in the dark.
She specified further, "The way they were protesting meant a lot more people became collaterals of the crisis. The elderly who relied on the supplies, such as my client I visited yesterday . . . I never condone attacking the food supply posts, although I know they do it as the last resort to be heard."
Lila raised her hand. "You should stop speaking in their favour, however slightest. We don't know if there's a microphone installed somewhere here."
Unnecessary coldness crept into Stephanie's spine like black tar spread in her veins, imbuing the bitter taste of her demons. What kind of a spouse did this unbeknownst to the other?
"One more question, if I may."
Lila didn't say anything, so she continued head-on. "Could you whitelist the apps, then? I think some streaming apps have no news content."
Lila shook her head. "I don't even know the password to unlock the restriction. Maybe you could just check your phone if it can connect already, rather than ask for impossible things."
Stephanie cleared her throat. "I'll retry, then." She closed the app and restarted her phone. Who knew, probably a simple act of restarting could help her from the current awkwardness.
"And it's back online." Stephanie praised to high heaven that she could continue showing her playlist to Lila. Als de Orchideen Bloeien, a 30s song composed by the late Indonesian grand composer Ismail Marzuki, played softly through the speaker.
Hm, she thought, she didn't know what was wrong with her app, but what was important was she could unearth this piece of information that Lila had no liberty in how she accessed outside information.
"This is about a broken heart, isn't it?" Lila asked. Few seconds into the song, the vibe was back to normal again.
"You speak Dutch?"
"A bit. But I understand that the chorus talks about the lover of the singer who is with someone else now." At the same time she finished her sentence, the timer dinged. The question about the song's true meaning soon vaporised without an answer as both ladies excitedly huddled before the glass door of the oven.
The pretty dough that once was pale and dotted with white oats now turned golden brown, open like a morning glory unfurled at the incision Stephanie carved before baking. The fresh bread looked appetising with its crusty top. Scattered trails of whole wheat flour dusted the surface uncovered by the flakey oatmeal.
"What a baby," Lila whispered amusedly.
Stephanie couldn't draw similarities between a loaf of warm bread and a baby. Besides, 'baby' had been associated with a lot of items that evoked soft, warm feelings of oxytocin rush. Perhaps her client felt the thing upon seeing the baked goods so she was okay with that.
"So pretty. You've got a talent for baking, Lila."
She smiled briefly. "It's only fair. Something to be comforting enough when the day is a shade darker today."
Stephanie inhaled. Apart from the sweet scent of freshly-baked bread and faint wisps of yeast aroma, she hoped to draw a string of courage from the air.
"If you need to tell me something, anything, I'm all ears. If you're scared, you know, sometimes we feel that way, right? In the middle of the day and the anxiety sneaks in without warning, or maybe at the witching hour when you can't sleep, talk to me."
Lila's eyes rounded. "That's an interesting idea. I've got some Protected friends, too, and it just doesn't cut it anymore to keep listening to the same predicaments we all have. Then, we got bored of each other. But what about you? It's gonna be outside your working hour if I do so."
"Remember that a Companion means a friend. The world isn't ending, but rebuilding. I don't want to pretend that the old rules when everything was in the status quo could still be applied now. We don't meet people who can understand us every day, right? So when you do, talk to them. Even if the person is me and the clock says it's two in the morning."
"But, why do you think I might do that? There's nothing so urgent and stressful in my life that I sacrifice my rest time, and yours, too."
But your spouse forbids you from accessing some apps or sites and you don't even know how to lift the restrictions. There was nothing okay with this household, and Stephanie didn't have enough visibility on how to escalate the case.
"For psychological emergency. We might not know when our emotional toolkits get broken and we can't repair ourselves, so we need another human to help us." And for a physical emergency, too. Fingers crossed it was a one-off occurrence, although rare.
Lila opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but clamped her lips again. She took a serrated knife to slice the bread while Stephanie helped herself with a jar of strawberry jam.
"This is nice. Having an afternoon tea with a friend, with homemade bread and sweet jam. To think about it, we never knew that we would consider this mundane activity an unattainable luxury now."
This was what a Companion was supposed to do, Stephanie reflected on her past discussions with the experts. Sometimes, a silent moment spent with a friend weaved togetherness and removed the pang of loneliness in a way a screen couldn't deliver.
"You still talk with your friends online? Having video calls with them?" she probed.
"Not much. Maybe twice a month. We got bored, you can guess. We're simply not meant to communicate and maintain friendship this way."
If it had been relevant, Stephanie wanted Lila to testify in front of the jury about this conviction. They all needed companions, so why had the departments made it difficult at first?
Before she gathered her things as the session was ending, Lila sliced more from the bread, packed them inside a plastic container, where each slice was covered by a piece of baking paper. When Stephanie said she couldn't finish them all alone, Lila suggested, "You can always give it to the . . . people . . . lurking on the streets."
Translation: the Lawless.
Realising her words rendering her Companion speechless, Lila continued, "Well, it's on you, not me, if this conversation is recorded. I don't like throwing away good food, neither do you, I believe."
Stephanie left the house thinking that she might have succeeded in tearing Lila's wall brick by brick. The lady clearly wanted to help out, but she needed to borrow Stephanie's hands to extend the generosity as she couldn't get out.
But then there was this self-preservation sense. The deniability of the request to give the food away. Why did even Lila find the need to suggest something if the audio had been wiretapped?
She got lucky when the evening bus that took her back had more than ten passengers getting back from the dock. Feeling relieved because it meant she wouldn't have to drag her feet to search for any Lawless that might put her in a difficult situation, she decided to give the bread away to everyone on the bus. Old and new faces blurred into one commonality: workers, including her. She took out the parcel and started to distribute the bread to everyone. The driver also got one. They even had to split the cuts into two each, so no one arrived home without Lila's bread.
She chose to turn a blind eye on the shadows of people behind the buildings, on the alleys, somewhere covered by the massive graveyard of the buses. She, like all other law-abiding citizens, had her own path to walk on. She wouldn't stray, would she?
Then again, very often life took a detour. The objective set in the beginning rarely matched the end result she was getting. Today, she started out wanting to know more about Lila's problems and how her presence could alleviate them somehow, but she ended up questioning her life choice. Maybe the time to get her hands dirty would come one way or another.