Who: Esme and Anya What: Anya needs a place to stay. Why not crazy fortune teller lady? It's the beginnings of a sitcom! Where: 1102 When: The evening Anya arrived. Warnings: None.
Esme had finally gotten her apartment into some semblance of order. The few pictures she’d kept in storage were hanging in her room, and the rest of the place, which, while bare, was starting to take on that strange, transient quality of home. It was easy enough to make a place feel like home, of course, but there was a difference between feeling comfortable in a hotel room and feeling like you were home when you walked in the door of an apartment.
It still felt empty, but that had nothing to do with a lack of furniture.
When the knock came at the door, she was making dinner - stew and dumplings, something hearty and plenty of it. Her absence had done nothing at all to change her appetite. She lowered the heat and tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot before setting it on the counter and going to the door. She checked the peephole and saw a face she didn’t recognize, not right away. She paused upon pulling back, then shook off the feeling and opened the door slightly. “Can I help you?”
Anya had gotten off a multi-hour flight three hours earlier, and it had taken her that many hours to find her way to Bellum Letale. The straits, where she had lived her entire life, were a string of almost 2,000 islands, and the inhabited ones were only a few miles wide and a few miles long. There were no subways and no real airports; there were no cabs or Walmarts. People walked everyone, or they rode bikes and motorcycles, or they sailed their tiny boats here and there, rowed to and from. Getting to Bellum, however had been an adventure (albeit a tiring one). By the time Esme opened the door, Anya’s red hair was damp with sweat and clinging in messy clumps to her cheeks, and she was very grateful to see the older woman’s familiar face.
“I need a place to stay,” she said, her tone indicating that she hadn’t really considered being turned down. Knocking on doors and being invited in was par-for-the-course for Anya; she didn’t quite get New York.
When she saw her through the crack in the door, she opened it the rest of the way. She remembered this girl. She’d made an impression on her as she traveled through the keys and back to the mainland. Though she’d been one of a hundred, a thousand faces whose fortunes she’d read, she’d managed to stand out.
“A place to stay?” she echoed, not following her for a moment. She’d told the girl to...what, to come to the city? No, to come to this building. And now she was at her door looking for a bed to sleep in. She also looked exhausted, run ragged.
She opened the door wide enough to allow her passage. “I’m just cooking dinner,” she said.
Anya didn’t hesitate even a moment before walking into the apartment. She had a bag in each hand, and she smelled of the salt and the sun, and she smiled over her shoulder at Esme. “It smells delicious,” she said truthfully, and she dropped the bags gracefully and went in search of the kitchen. She didn’t ask, and she didn’t wait for Esme to follow; she let her nose guide her to the stove, where the stew was bubbling. “What is it?” she asked curiously, looking over her shoulder and fully expecting to see Esme there.
She was there, hair pulled back from her shoulders into a low bun to keep it out of the way while she cooked, wearing a plain black t-shirt with a dangerous neckline. “Beef stew. With dumplings. My father’s recipe.” She walked back over to the pot and found the spoon on the counter, turning the dumplings over so that they cooked all the way through. “It’ll be a few minutes still. Why don’t you sit down?” She expected an explanation of how Anya had made it to New York, but that could come in a moment.
Anya peeked into the pot before doing as Esme suggested, but when she sat down it was with a grateful sound. “New York is nothing like home,” she said, and it was slightly excited and not-at-all critical. “I bet no one outside this building knows who anyone is. You’re all anonymous,” she said, and she leaned forward and pillowed her cheek on her hands on the table as she watched Esme. “Do you like that about this place?” she asked. She hadn’t decided how she felt about it yet, and it was obvious in the tone of the question.
“I prefer the small details of the city to the anonymity,” she said, setting the spoon down again and docking her hip against the counter. “For a lot of people, though, that’s why they come. Why did you come?” She was curious to hear whether she’d simply taken her prediction very seriously or that she’d just decided a change was for the best.
Anya didn’t sit up when the topic went serious, and she didn’t look worried or concerned about the shift in the conversation. “You said to come, and so I came,” she said. It was as simple as that, really. Anya was impulsive to a fault. “I was sick, and when I got better, I decided to come. I’m starting classes here this month, and I have a job to pay for school at a zoo.”
She smiled slightly. “Good enough,” she said. The stew was finished cooking, so she pulled bowls down from the cabinet. “Why the zoo?”
She did sit up then, and it wasn’t clear if it was the mention of the zoo or the lowering of the bowls that did it. “I’m studying oceanography, and they have an aquarium that is supposedly in shambles,” she said, a little bit of energy coming back at the topic. “I’ve talked to the owner in e-mail, and he seems inclined to let me do whatever I want to bring it to life, as long as it doesn’t cost anything.” It didn’t sound like she considered the latter to be any sort of impediment, and that was because she didn’t think it was. “You’re calmer here,” she said a moment later, unexpectedly, and she got to her feet and went to help ladle stew; again, without permission. She wasn’t particularly concerned with social queues or personal spaces, and it showed.
She didn’t mind passing the ladle over and allowing her to allot herself as much as she wanted. It amused her a little, in fact. “Probably,” she said. “I left here to find what peace I could. I came back for my sister. She lives upstairs from here - she’s about your age, actually.”
“What are you going to do with your aquarium?” she asked, and took the ladle from her when she was finished, fishing a pair of spoons out of a drawer and leaving them on the counter for her to take one.
Anya opted to slide up onto the counter with her bowl, and she dipped her fingers in the warm liquid and then sucked them clean. “Make the fish happy,” she said easily, and the look she gave Esme said she knew perfectly well that was an odd statement. Fish and happiness, they didn’t usually belong in the same sentence.
She took her bowl and her spoon and slid onto the counter opposite. “What do fish need to be content with life?” She folded her legs, getting comfortable before blowing on a spoonful of hot stew.
Anya continued dipping her fingers in the stew and sucking them clean, and she pondered the question. “The same things we do,” she said finally. Everyone needed something different to be content with life, and she didn’t see why fish were any different. Anyway, it wasn’t for her to fishy happiness, but rather to facilitate it. She lifted the bowl to her lips, and she drank the broth and then set it aside and picked up the spoon, holding it up and examining it. “Do you know Stefan?” she asked a moment later. It didn’t matter if Esme did, but Anya was curious about her only cousin. “And why doesn’t your sister live here, with you?”
“I do,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Because she’s living with Stefan, at the moment. How do you know him?” She watched her curious behavior with the spoon, not commenting on it, just observing.
“My mother and his mother were sisters,” Anya said. “Did you know them?” The question was past tense because her aunt, she knew, was dead. And Esme hadn’t seen Ekaterina in the keys (that Anya knew of, at least).
She shook her head. “When Stefan came to us, he had only his grandparents,” she said. “His parents had already died.”
Anya made a soft, noncommittal sound at that. She knew her cousin had been raised by her grandparents on her mother’s side, but she knew little else. Still, she was grateful to have somewhere to stay, and she gave Esme a sweet smile as she slid down from the counter.
She started to walk out of the kitchen, and she threw Esme a playful glance over her shoulder. “Do you mind if I paint my room?” She’d seen a hardware store on the way, and she wasn’t afraid to use a paintbrush.
She set her spoon down in her bowl. “Three rules,” she said, lifting three fingers. “One, you tell me if a man is coming here, so that I may give him my approval or dismiss him appropriately. Two, you pay for your own groceries and clean, and I will not charge you rent, poor college student. And three, I demand to see your aquarium when the fish are content again.” She shrugged. “Other than that, do what you like.” She waved a hand, going back to her stew. “Go find some paint.”