It's Brittany, Bitch | Ερις (eristic) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-02-24 21:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | eris, uke mochi |
i'm sure the distance wouldn't be too far
Who: Alice & BB.
What: BB helps Alice move in!
Where: Pax Letale, 405.
When: Midmorning.
"So wait, where's this one go again? AHHH I still can't believe you're here!" BB almost dropped the box clearly marked KITCHEN in large, black block lettering as she jumped up and down amid the stacks of boxes that were strewn across Alice's apartment.
"Though I don't know why you picked the fourth floor over the second floor," she added, stepping around and through the mess that she'd had a good hand in making. "I know you wanted the lighting or whatever but it's just as good on my floor."
Alice wrinkled her nose at her best friend before reaching into a large cardboard box and withdrawing a stack of white dishes. “Your floor is great! But the fourth floor is higher up so I get to see the skyline a bit more. It helps with the pictures. Plus it means I can work off any calories from the cupcakes by running up and down the stairs to see you.”
She studied the box Brittany was holding for a moment, her head tipping to the side and a strand of wavy hair falling into her face. “I think that’s all of my smaller plates. You know, those colorful ones we found in Georgetown during spring break that one year?” Turning away to put the plates she held into one of the cabinets, Alice went up on her tiptoes and slid them in carefully. “You can bring the box over here. I think this cabinet will work for all the plates and bowls.”
BB moved as she was bid by her friend. She gingerly set the box down, not wanting to mar their reunion with broken dishware, and started to unpack the multi-colored plates one by one, setting them with far more care than she'd usually apply to anything into the cabinet.
"So the shop's still a go? How long has it been open now? You should let me write a feature and post it up on my blog, or maybe we can do a vlog! A quick tour of like the ins and outs, frame it like a behind the scenes? I mean, as long as you're up to code and all that," the fast-mouthed twenty-five year old replied, looking wryly at Alice.
Alice laughed, happy to hear her friend chattering on a mile a minute, happier that she was moving into a nice apartment; things were going so well that she could barely believe it. “It’s almost six months. I’m going to do something special when I hit the six month mark. Special cupcakes or something. Maybe a sale.” She placed the last of the white plates into the shelf and stepped back, considering what to unpack next. For Alice, she often had her priorities aligned a little differently from others. Unpack the kitchen and table, then work on the bedroom, then the living room and office area. Most of her boxes were still out in the hallway but considering she was the only tenant on the fourth floor, she wasn’t too concerned she was causing a fire hazard.
“I think…” Alice began, not forgetting BB’s offer, “If you really want to write a feature because you really like the shop and the food there, then I’d be ok with that. I just…” She looked up to the ceiling for a moment, feeling embarrassed. “You have a really great hold in the internet and a lot of followers and I don’t want to, like, use that for my personal gain.” She looked at her friend nervously, hoping she wouldn’t be offended. She had nothing wrong with her friend’s site or videos, but she didn’t want to just be granted favors. She wanted to deserve the praise.
"Um, you should, and not just because I offered, skittles," BB replied, putting one hand to her hip as she leveled a slightly disapproving look at Alice. "I thought we left this low confidence stuff back in high school! You gotta use your connections, shake your bum, whatever, you know what I mean." She waved a hand, battering away her words just as soon as they'd hit the air. "You're in L.A. now, skittles, this is how things roll; if you don't take it, someone else will!" A few more plates joined the others, their newspaper wrapping falling back into the box.
"What's your food blog up to now?"
“I wrote a bunch of posts ahead of the move, just so that it can post on its own and I can concentrate on getting settled. But it’s all seasonal stuff, you know? Valentine’s Day desserts, Mardi Gras favorites, oh and pancakes for pancake day!” She grinned at that, she loved Fat Tuesday, if only because so many of the traditions from area to area focused on sweets. She turned to another box and began pulling out coffee mugs. They were various sizes but had one consistency, each displayed a city or state’s name on it. Tourist mugs, but Alice’s favorite. “Do you think the mugs should go over here? I think this is where I’ll put the coffee pot anyway, they should be together, right?”
She was moving through the kitchen again, the close proximity with BB was relaxed and familiar, and again she returned to the part of the conversation she wasn’t as comfortable with last. “I know, L.A. is all about who you know and whatever, it’s a lot like DC in that way. But it’s still strange; you know how I am.” She frowned before turning to look her friend directly in the eye. “But I want you to sample the foods, okay? I really want you to look at the place if you’re going to write something. I can even make you something special!”
BB finished up with the plates, gently kicking the box now full of newspaper toward her friend as she grinned. "Uh, hell yeah I'll sample all the foods. What's on the menu now? And where do you want this to go? Back out in the hallway? Pretty sure there's a garbage chute in the hall, but I'm not sure about recycling..." Despite her long time there in the Golden State, BB still wasn't up to par when it came to that age-old green tool of many a hippie situated in Berkeley and San Francisco.
Alice shrugged, “Yeah, I guess the hall will do. Let’s swap out the empty ones for some of the full ones we left out there.” She quickly gathered the rest of the mugs from the box she was working on and placed them gently on the counter, grabbing the now empty box and turning for the door. “Right now I’m serving pink-inspired cupcakes. Raspberry, strawberry, rose… you know, the Valentine’s day theme. But I’m going to start having some St. Patrick’s Day inspired cupcakes soon. Chocolate mint ones, maybe those ones I used to make in high school too. Do you remember? Chocolate cupcake, marshmallow topping, then dipping it all in melted chocolate and letting it solidify? Then I’m going to start bringing out the flower baked goods. Like tarts and chocolate bark that has pansies mixed in.”
She dropped the empty box onto the hall floor and turned to the rest of the boxes to read the sides and find more kitchen supplies. With the dishes away and the mugs almost ready to go, she just had to get the pots and pans in their place, the cooking utensils, and all her various cooking supplies. Maybe they weren’t as far along as she thought they were.
"Oh my god you're making me hungry. You're feeding me for helping you out, right?" BB followed Alice to the hall, following the other girl's instructions about swapping boxes. She randomly grabbed one, only to reveal that it was labeled BATHROOM as she walked back in. "Or we could get pizza and go down to my place and watch a movie! I mean, you know, just after all this hard work; I don't think I sweat this much on my runs."
Alice frowned at the box Brittany selected but didn’t say anything. It was best to have it all moved in either way and she was particular about where her cooking stuff went, while less so with other areas of her home. Instead, she grabbed a large box and tried to lift it, only discovering that it was far too heavy so she began pushing it along with her foot into her apartment. “Pizza sounds nice. I don’t have a lot of food here yet so I’m not sure I can whip up much. We might need to run to the store--I want stuff for breakfast at the very least.”
Diving into the box, she found her beloved KitchenAid mixer in a perky baby blue and gently lifted it onto the counter. Her younger sister often teased Alice that she treated her kitchen supplies like children and maybe she did a little, not that that was an issue. “We can order delivery and maybe just keep moving in? I hate living out of boxes. But I was thinking, if you aren’t super busy, maybe you could stay up here with me for the night? Just have a sleepover of sorts. I’m really happy with the view from this floor but I’m not going to lie, it’s a little weird being the only person living on this floor.”
BB nearly exploded, her grin wide and full across her face. "I mean, I guess I could," she replied. "I'll have to check my calendar, because you know I'm busy all the time," she ended teasingly, taking the box and leaving it on the counter in the bathroom. As she came back out into the main living area, her grin had not dissipated. "Of course! I might just have to do a little writing, if you're cool with that -- do you have your WiFi set up?? -- but then I'd be totally free and totally yours for the evening.
"It is kinda creepy, innit? The whole building's kinda like that so far; a few people here and there. I think Daniel and I might be the only ones on our floor, but I did hear some people moving around the other day..." She shrugged. "Nice place, kinda ritzy. They seem super picky about tenants. They, the management or whatever, they had a neighbor meet and greet the other day and I swear, it was like five people." Which, of course, was an under-exaggeration, but BB being BB, it could have just very well have been the truth.
Alice paused and raised an eyebrow at her friend. “Seriously? Gosh, I feel really lucky I was able to get an apartment then. The whole process was a little weird.” Kicking the empty box toward the doorway, she grabbed another kitchen box and plopped down onto the kitchen floor to arrange her pots and pans in a lower cabinet. “You have to tell me about all the people you’ve met so far. Are any of them nice? Anyone to stay away from? And yeah, I have the wifi set up--first thing I did! I think I put the password in the bedroom on my bed if you want it.”
"Heck yeah!" BB filed that away for later tonight, instead dipping back out into the hallway to bring in another box labeled LIVING ROOM. "So, uh, yeah I've talked to a lot of the five people who live here. There's Daniel, I told you, he's basically right next door to me. Nice guy. Then there's this weird rich couple that live up in like...I think it's the deluxe floor? Not sure if they're like married or what but the guy was kind of a douche. I was trying to figure out the pool table and he was really rude about it." BB put the box down against a far wall, across from the kitchen. She turned back to Alice, crossing her arms over her chest as she moved a little closer.
"Uhhh...then there's Aurora, she's up on that floor too. Thank god living that high up didn't go to her head like the other two. Then there's some dude Daniel is boinking, or not boinking, I don't know what's going on with them, another woman who thinks I'm stalking her, but it was just for a story, and I mean, really, stalking is..." BB rolled her eyes, laughing, "she's really just flattering herself. Her name's Nish. Um. Oh! And there's a porn star! He lives on the first floor, he has the cutest ass. I think that's everyone?"
“Oh wow,” was all that Alice could muster. She leaned back from the open cabinet, her pots and pans tucked inside as neatly as they could go, considering the list of people her friend had described. She hadn’t met a single person yet, other than Brittany, and felt a stem of anxiety from the idea of having to interact with people from such varied backgrounds. Knitting her brow, she looked back at BB. “I wonder how they’re able to keep this place open with so few people living here. And I wonder what the requirements are to get in, you know? All those people.... that’s… that’s a big variety of types and jobs and what not. A requirement can’t even be that everyone has stable jobs because, let me tell you, a new business owner?” Alice pointed to herself. “Totally considered a financial risk.”
Alice hopped up to her feet and grabbed another box, flipping the flaps over to expose its contents and smiling. “Oh, my towels and aprons!”
"Oh, skittles," BB sighed, shaking her head. Then she shrugged. "I seriously don't know what it takes to get in here. There isn't a whole lot of anything in common with the tenants I've met so far. It's weird as shit." She lowered her voice conspiratorially, moving closer to Alice to help her unpack the towels. "Daniel and I, we've been looking into some stuff that's been going on with this place, and, like, I don't wanna turn you off to it, but it's weird. Like, I dunno." She fell quiet, an uncharacteristic thing for her in the same vein as the sun failing to rise. Picking up a stack of towels, she met Alice's eye with a smile. "Where d'you want these? And by the way, you are so paying for the pizza that we get. And it will have pineapples on it!" Her change of tack was apparent, but BB made no comment toward it, hoping Alice would appreciate the shift in topic.
Alice smiled, happy to be by her friend and hearing her flit from topic to topic. This was Brittany’s way and always had been since they were kids, and it never stopped making Alice happy. “Ok, before you switch topics again,” Alice teased as she reached out for the pile of towels and grabbed them. “There should be one more box for the kitchen in the hall, could you get it? I’ll get this away and the box of dishes is here so I’ll get that started. Once we get the kitchen unpacked we can call for pizza then work on the bedroom so it’s cozy if you’re going to stay the night.”
She turned toward a drawer and pulled it open to tuck each colorful towel inside with care. “And, you know, while you’re at it you should tell me about what’s so weird about this place. What are you and Daniel looking into?”
BB was already halfway to the hallway when the inevitable question came. She frowned, a not too unusual expression for her, and she finished retrieving the asked-for box before answering. She carried it back into the apartment, setting it where Alice directed.
"OK, so, like, don't think I'm crazy or that I was stoned, because we both already considered those possibilities, OK?" She opened the box, peering inside. "So, like... We think we shared a dream. Like, legitimate, I don't know, what's that thing when you know you're dreaming but you're still dreaming? Like, you're away but inside the dream?"
Alice wrinkled her brow and reached into the box, withdrawing a second box of knives and sitting it on the counter. Glasses and utensils were all that was left in the box, all carefully wrapped in bubble wrap, and then they’d be done. Something in Alice was satisfied by the notion. She was ready to be done with the kitchen, ready for pizza, ready for more conspiratory chats about her new neighbors.
“Yeah, I know what you’re talking about,” Alice replied as she pulled the knife holder and all the pretty knives free from its box. “Like, you realize you’re dreaming but you can’t get yourself to wake up to get out of the dream. It’s like you’re trapped in the dream. Right?”
BB nodded, her enthusiasm only slightly tempered. "Yeah. Kinda like that. We were... We were us, but we weren't us. Like, he was some Leonidas dick and I was... I don't even know what I was. I don't think I was human." BB frowned, staring ahead as faint memories of the dream cascaded through her mind's eye. The tentacles, the claws, the formless being she'd become that seemed to defy all laws of physics. The feeling actually gave her gooseflesh, and one hand absentmindedly rubbed at her arm as though forcing it to remain human and whole.
"But yeah, so like. That happened. We were...whatever we were, and then we were in this room. So, to prove whether or not it actually happened, we're gonna find it." BB dropped her arms by her sides, leaning against one counter. "The room, I mean. I think it's in the lobby. It's just behind the concierge desk, so that's the hard part." She smirked. "But don't worry, I've got a plan."
“Wait, wait,” Alice began, holding up a hand and turning fully to Brittany. She leaned forward, her eyes wide with interest. “So you guys had separate dreams but you both dreamt the same thing? And then you both woke up in a room in the lobby? And you guys weren’t like, drinking or smoking something beforehand or anything like that, right?”
"No, no no no no," BB corrected, her hands waving in the air to negate Alice's assumptions. "We were both in our apartments. We don't even know if this room exists, but we both dreamt it. Look, I know, it sounds hella crazy, but I swear I had a pot brownie the night before, not of..."
Alice stared at her friend for a moment then blinked and leaned back with a sigh. “God, Britt. I definitely believe you, it’s just… strange. And you dreamt you were a monster?”
She stepped beside her friend and reached into the open box to withdraw some of the wrapped cups. Unwrapping them one by one, she was all ears for her friend, but after a moment opted to pause and gently touch Brittany’s shoulder. “You can tell me. I don’t think it’s weird. Well, I mean, I do but I don’t think you’re weird for having weird dreams.”
BB smiled. "You know I'd tell you anything, skittles," she replied, her words sounding heartfelt even though they weren't completely true. She stopped herself from touching Alice's hand, instead turning to the box. "For now, though, let's get this hot mess done so we can get pizza! And then we can talk about what you're gonna bake for me at your cupcake shop, OK?" She reached into the box as well, happy simply for the other woman's presence, content to keep the topic to lighter subjects.
Alice’s brow knit together and a frown quivered at the edges of her mouth, fighting to be seen. But Alice gave a slight shake of her head, brushing her worries off for another day, and turned her attention to the box as well. “Sounds like a plan, Britt.”