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[Wednesday
November 11th, 2009 at 5:30pm] |
Who: Owen Ivers and Nora Deboeck, with a special appearance by Ginger
What: New "wife"? Meet ex-fiancee.
Where: Harrods in Knightsbridge, London
When: November 11, 2009
Rating: PG-13
To say that Nora and Owen had their differences would be a gross understatement - sort of like saying the Israelis and the Palestinians were prone to tiffs, or that vampires and werewolves didn't care for one another. Well, Nora and Owen got along better than all that, when they cared to, but today's point of conflict was shopping. Nora's philosophy on shopping was this: the cheaper the better. As long as it functioned, she was fine; she didn't need anything expensive and fancy. This resulted in her acquiring most of her possessions secondhand, and had been a major survival strategy during those first few years among the Imbued, which she'd spent on the edge of poverty. Nora had never been destitute - she'd always had a roof over her head, at least - but she'd been known to skip meals and the like, in order to save up for things she needed to pay for, like rent, and cell phone bills. Her financial situation was no longer quite so dire, and hadn't been for a while, but it was a habit she'd gotten into that she hadn't shaken. That coupled with her dislike of commercialism, and the end result was that she just didn't shop very often.
Owen's philosophy, to Nora's observations, was almost the exact opposite of hers. He wasn't a spendthrift, but his rule seemed to be: if you're going to buy something, buy the best. In his defense, he could afford it while Nora couldn't. And this was how Nora had come to live in a flat that looked like it had been plucked straight out of an Ikea catalog. It was also how she had come to be in luxury department store Harrods, with one of Owen's credit cards in her pocket, but no Owen. Oh, he was around somewhere, but Nora had been sent off toward the women's fashion department, while her partner had wandered off mumbling something about new luggage.
They were shopping for their trip - their honeymoon. Owen had followed through on his promise that they would take one, and set it all up, and they were to depart for eight days in Aruba in about a week. The trip itself was on her parents' dollar; they had offered, and Nora had talked Owen into accepting, because if they weren't paying it meant Owen was, and she would feel worse about accepting such a huge gift from him than her parents. Since Owen wasn't paying for the travel and accommodations, this seemed to be an opportunity for him to spend money on other things, including her. It always made Nora uncomfortable when he did that, though she knew he didn't mean it as charity. On the way over, he'd been talking about the exorbitant prices at which the locals on the island sold things, ripping off the tourists, and Nora could understand wanting to avoid that. But she'd almost had a heart attack when he'd proceeded to lead her into shiny, sparkly Christmas hell.
Nora had never been inside Harrods. She felt like she couldn't even afford to breathe the air in the place, which smelled of the gourmet foodstuffs that they sold in some rooms, and just of expensive, expensive things in others. Not everyone looked like they could afford to be here either, but then, not everyone was actually buying things. It was the Christmas season despite only being mid-November, but Nora passed by all the brightly-colored crap dripping in ribbons and fairy lights, and went off to women's clothing. She was supposed to be buying vacation things - a swimming costume, and light clothes that you wouldn't normally wear in London in the fall. They seemed to sell just about everything here, though, so she shouldn't have a problem finding what she was looking for. Admittedly, some of the food interested her more than what she found in the women's department - she was sure they'd passed a sushi bar a couple of floors ago - but she was on a mission here.
Even though it wasn't her money she was spending, the prices on these things made her raise her eyebrows about as far as they would go. She didn't look entirely out of place among the other shoppers, but she sure felt it, wandering between racks of clothes that held single articles worth more than the entire ensemble - beat-up leather jacket, sweater, and jeans with the ends frayed - that she was currently wearing. Nora waved off the perky redheaded saleswoman who offered her assistance quickly but politely, preferring to browse the selection alone, shaking her head at the prices. None of it was really her style, but she finally sucked it up and chose a bikini that wasn't too bad, and a long sundress. She'd meandered through lingerie as well, toying with the idea of surprising Owen with something, but in the end, she just couldn't bring herself to spend that much money on underthings. It was bad enough that she was spending so much on two things she'd only be able to wear for one week.
Finally, she queued up at the register and set her things on the counter for the saleswoman to ring up. Nora noted wryly that nobody bothered to ask how they were paying here, and obediently handed over Owen's credit card, managing to wince only slightly when the total was rung up.
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