InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I request the highest of fives"

harper jones is on the run (jonesycakes) wrote in light_of_may,
@ 2014-01-16 11:26:00

Entry tags:

2009-10-01, harper, lizbeth

don't forget the fortune cookies!
WHO | Harper & Lizbeth
WHERE | Golden Dragon
WHEN | Late evening

Harper Jones was a little proud of herself for maintaining her composure and making it to the hospital with Zoie in tow without having a total nervous breakdown... Well. At least she waited to have her meltdown until after Zoie was with her doctor and locked behind closed doors. She waited there all night, almost dozing a time or two while she sat on the edge of the stiff vinyl chairs in the waiting room. Every time sleep began to pull her away from reality, the slightest sound would jolt her awake. It was usually a nurse or someone passing by, the rubber soles of their shoes squeaking against the linoleum. Each time, Harper hoped that it was someone coming to give her an update on Zoie, but there was no word until early the next morning. She wasn't allowed to see her friend until after dawn and by that time, she was too worried to cry. Harper waited until she was safe in her car, after she had seen that Zoie was alright and had been urged to go home and get some rest. Once the door was locked, Harper held her head in her hands and let out a few wracking sobs. She didn't cry for very long; soon her anger took hold of her -- just where the hell had Nora been? For years, Zoie's letters had been filled with how much she could depend on her older sister, but in a moment of dire need, she was no where to be found. The thought irritated Harper beyond belief and it stuck with her all the way home, where she crashed on her couch until early that afternoon.

Waking up, Harper should have been motivated to open the bakery up, but without Kahlan there to really give her a push (she'd seemed a little downtrodden since her spell hadn't worked over at the school), she found lazing on the couch to be easier. She simultaneously relished and despised how quiet it was; Crayola, for some ungodly reason, wasn't in the apartment. As lazy as she was being, she knew that he would have sent some wisecrack her way if he'd been home. She wasn't altogether surprised. The cat had a penchant for escaping and going his own way whenever her was bored, despite how the doors and windows were locked before hand. Harper had a sneaking suspicion he had outside help, but she didn't know from who. For all she knew, he would just give mental shouts to passersby and beg them to be released because some mad woman had cat-napped him and was holding him prisoner.

When she finally pushed herself up from the couch, she decided she was going to go outside. The idea was that she was going to walk around town until she found her familiar, but she wasn't going to hold her breath. She needed some fresh air to get this restless, icky feeling to crawl away from her skin. She didn't do well being worried; she wanted to be her normal carefree self, not this pitiful mess who was constantly dwelling on her grandmother being trapped in the school and one of her best friends almost dying on her. She was stomping down the sidewalk, her boots scraping against the cement, trying to pull herself out of her funk when she caught the smell of cooking food. She didn't know, or care, what it was she smelled: it smelled fucking delicious.

A quick glance around and she realized that she was standing just outside of the Chinese buffet. She knew she ought to be looking for Crayola, but it suddenly occurred to her that she had not eaten all day and she was ravenous. Harper dashed in through the door and paused near the hostess stand. The restaurant was almost empty and she could have easily sat down in one of the booths and had herself a mini-feast, but she'd already spent too much time away from her couch. A waitress approached her and she barely smiled and said hello before she asked "Takeout? I can do takeout?"

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abletoforgive
2014-02-13 10:53 pm UTC (link)

“Boredom” was the word of the night. The past two hours had been spent with her counting the minutes as they ticked by on the clock. Lizbeth hadn’t been completely alone. A table would come in, eat, then leave – at which point, another table would come in and the cycle begin all over again. She wouldn’t have minded it being so slow if it she hadn’t worked a double today; as it stood, she was more than ready to go home, regardless of what she might find when she got there. At first, she bid her time by going through all the closing side-work she had to complete by the end of the night, that way she would be able to leave as soon as the sign was flipped to close. Once all that was finished -- or at least as much of it as there could be while there were still customers inside -- Lizbeth began to patrol the restaurant for other chores. She had started off by refilling the salt and pepper shakers, but it didn’t take her long to move on to other, intricate tasks. For example, she had pulled out a chair so that she could dust the upper part of the walls as well as the light fixtures. One would think that all these things would have taken a large bite out of her time remaining -- it did not.

Lizbeth had resigned herself to watching television, an activity that she hated performing on the clock. She was a hard worker and there was a part of her that felt incredibly lazy in sitting around and doing nothing. Her boss didn’t mind, at least not when he had seen that she had done everything possible to keep herself busy; the only thing Lizbeth didn’t understand was why he didn’t close early to save himself from paying her for catching up on her shows.

She had been sitting in a booth, near her one and only table, counting her money when the chime of the door opening caught her attention. There was a pause before she stood while she wagered whether or not the woman who had walked in was a to-go order or not; it was one of the few games left she had to entertain herself with on this dull night. With her friendliest smile stretched across her face, Lizbeth stood and greeted the other woman. Before she got out a ‘How can I help you?’ the blonde had begun frantically asking about to-go food. Called it, she thought with a smirk. “Of course!” As she answered, she reached for one of the Golden Dragon’s paper menus. “We can fix you special orders, or you can make a to-go box for yourself, but we weigh by the pound.” Lizbeth stood silently and waited for the other woman to make her decision. She had always been the definition of patient with other customers and tonight, especially, gave little care as to whether or not this customer took several minutes to decide what it was she wanted. She may have been standing now, doing nothing, but at least she was doing something that could be described as her job.

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jonesycakes
2014-03-14 05:44 am UTC (link)

Harper fidgeted on the spot as she accepted the paper menu and began skimming the dishes listed. A growl from her stomach voiced that it would like to have at least one of everything and she almost opened her mouth to say as much. "When you say by the pound," she tilted her head slightly, a playful and inquisitive look on her face. "Do you mean literally by every pound of food? Wait, does that make me sound like a cow? Christitdoes." She rocked her hips slightly, causing her skirt to swish around her knees. She then took a good look at the waitress standing in front of her. "Do you like wearing that thing?" She motioned to the polyester kimono that hung on the girl's shoulders. "I mean, is it comfy? It looks kind of silky which is always cool, but it looks like it'd be hell to work in." Yes, this was changing the subject but Harper was having a little trouble deciding what she wanted to eat and this was just her way of buying herself a little extra time.

Knowing it was going to be a hot minute before she was able to decide on what she wanted to eat, Harper hopped over to the nearest booth and slid into it. "You can ignore me if you want; I'm just hungry enough that I could probably swim through the buffet and never come out again. Don't let me steal you from work or your other tables or anything." She glanced back down at the menu and the letters began to run together. Every dish sounded the same and yet different enough to appeal to her. Nothing stood out immediately and she groaned. Actually, the sound that whined past her lips was similar to a petulant child being told to do something that they really did not want to do.

"Heeeeelp me." She mouthed up at the waitress, a desperate look in her eyes.

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