Lisbon EP. Chapter 2. A blind date

Helen Vechurko
11 min readMay 26
Cover art collage
Photo and design Helen Vechurko

Lisbon EP Chapter 1. This is not a success story

“Dear passengers, you can turn on your electronic devices and set the flight mode off. Welcome to Lisbon!”

Dear passenger, you have just landed at the point of no return. No matter whether you are giving yourself the right to fail, we both know in your universe, this is never an option. No matter you say life is a wonderful journey, we both know, on this adventure you have to fight, but at the moment you deny it.

[ “Quem me vai dizer no amor O que é bom ou ruim” Soothing Mayra’s Andrade voice, no clue what it means. Your ears hurt after the landing ]

After half an hour of guessing the metro exits, I’m finally meeting my host. She is tiny and she has black hair like all Latin people in my imagination. I’m very bad at geography, so don’t ask me where she is from. Although my temporary home is within a walkable distance from the station, her boyfriend is giving us a lift. They couldn’t imagine someone moving this light-handed.

Don’t expect cinematic details about the city at this point. It’s close to midnight, and it’s slightly raining. The subway looks like a subway; the night is dark. We are in the residential area with the neat block houses. Nothing shocking. Nothing fancy.

My new home smells like a floral air freshener from the department store. Somehow it’s very welcoming. Ana, that’s my new homie’s name, gives me instructions on how to use appliances. And at this point, I’m getting anxious. Because you have to worry about extremely neat people going to check everything after you. And you have to worry about messy people as their sacred chaos will affect your peace. And they still are checking how well you did the dishes, disregarding them constantly leaving breadcrumbs all around the table. Ana belongs to the type that will wipe the kitchen twice after her cooking and the third time after you cleaned after yourself. It doesn’t change she is super friendly.

Important note, to save on bills we are doing laundry on weekends. And since it’s too humid, she is going to show me the dryer at the laundry nearby.

Before I’m going to bed, Ana hands me a water bag. An important detail you should know about houses in Lisbon: there is no central…

Helen Vechurko

Creative director. Writing fiction