In the beginning, decorating had seemed like a fun prospect. Despite Mimi's usual cynical outlook, there was something really appealing about settling into a brand new place with her sister and working together to make it something for them. To that point, they had lived their lives in other people's spaces – foster kids sharing someone else's bedroom, tenants renting rooms in someone else's apartment, sometimes cheap apartments with no-decorating policies because the tenants were just names that came and went when they couldn't make that month's rent. But Bellum seemed so different. For once, they had a place of their own, a place they were in together.
That was before the actual decorating had happened. It seemed like they were drowning in wallpaper and paint, like their lives had become an endless succession of scraping and priming and gluing and taking down and re-gluing and... Mimi was quickly reaching the point where she just wanted to brick up the apartment door and call it a wash. Pilar, however, was determined. Her sister's focus kept the younger of the two going. That, and the steady stream of work-friendly beats coming from their mp3 player. Thank God for that, right?
"No, I said I wanted two orders of beef and broccoli," Mimi offered, returning from the kitchen with a cold beer in her hand. Aside from soda, that was the only thing in the fridge. Maybe Pilar wanted to find a market, but her sister clearly had other ideas. "And two of General Tso's. And two of fried rice. And egg rolls. A lot of egg rolls. No, like ten egg rolls. My sister always eats them all."
At this point, she was holding the scraper up to Pilar, the phone cradled against her shoulder and against her ear. "Yeah, cash. And I'll tip you another ten bucks if you'll stop at the market and pick up a six-pack of beer. Yeah, I've got ID."
Like her sister, she was dressed down, her hair pulled up into a messy bun and held there with a couple of hair-stix. "Oh, hey, just a sec." Here she paused, looking up at Pilar. "Do we want soup?"