PEPPER P. (saltedand) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-05-26 21:45:00 |
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She gave it the weekend. After the conversation with Selina, what Pepper thought of as the realistic one, she picked up food at the market and she ignored the day-book sitting on the kitchen counter that stared accusingly at her each time she passed. Like it remembered the to-do list that charted neatly around the weekend and the glass tablet that sat on the hall table, its screen cloudy and dark. She cooked. She cooked the way her mother had done before her mother had died and the way her father never had. She bought a punnet of tomatoes picked from the vine in somebody's greenhouse and she ate them just like that, with a glass of wine, tomato after tomato, sweet-tart burst on her tongue. She gave it the entire weekend and she ignored the Memorial Day preparations around her, the cluster of unfamiliar faces in the hall downstairs visiting the neighbors. Her father had died the year of the heart-attack, the year of spiraling medical costs fended off with really good Stark health insurance (she tried not to think about the outcome of that; of being uninsured for the first time in a decade). She cleaned. It was difficult, because she had a maid-service, one that came during the week to water the plants and feed the cat, and change the sheets and the place was clean, but she cleaned. She wore jeans and the heels stayed in the closet. She wore sneakers, and a tee-shirt from Georgetown she wore to the gym because it wasn't crisp or clean cut and it certainly wasn't tailored. She gave it the whole weekend, whilst the ratatouille congealed on the stove where it sat, and she gave the cherry pie to the neighbors who had family over. They didn't know her name. She didn't know theirs, so they both pretended they didn't notice and the pie was transferred over safely. And she sat on her couch, her expensive, soft white couch with the rug over her knees as television, mindless blared out over her, a year's worth of TiVo stacked up on screen. Because it wasn't as if there was a replacement. It wasn't as if she wanted to be there any less and she wouldn't find anywhere with mold-covered coffee cups and brilliance, classic rock and a million dollar art collection to curate in her spare time. There would be jobs. But her job had become her life, and Pepper didn't know how you parsed the two back to their boxes without a vacancy opening up at her feet. She gave it the weekend. The three hundred dollar dress hung on the back of the closet door and she thought about returning it, about taking it back because it didn't do what it promised in the soft, expensive light of the store. It hadn't polished her, given her the veneer of being expensive and glossy and desirable the way it said it would when she turned to see the back view in the mirror. Or he wouldn't have left her stood by the side of the car in the garage, wondering what it was she'd done wrong. She put the dress in plastic and she hid it in the far end of the closet. Pepper liked warm and she liked classic and that meant wood, not glass and metal so the way the hair-slides jumped and hovered at the edge of the room whenever she passed her bedroom was the only sign it was all wrong, and she didn't notice that. She wrote her letter at the living room table with a glass of wine at her elbow. Cursive. Flowing, pretty. She'd not forgotten how. It said 'new opportunities'. It said 'reached the end of fulfillment here'. It said 'contractual obligations' (of which there were none; Pepper had worked with HR when the transfer from accountancy to Tony Stark's assistant became effective and they gave her anything she asked for in the hope she would stay). What it didn't say (but it did) was 'lack of trust'. Because she couldn't go back to before, even if she wanted to and she didn't. Not after the tears, after the TiVo finished spitting back episodes of something called Scandal at her, and the wine was only half-finished. She sat with the letter sealed in front of her and she thought about the tomorrows. She had no make-up and ratty sneakers on, and tear-streaks dried on her face. And she couldn't think about tomorrow, everyone back in the office. She couldn't think about putting the armor on to get herself there and to leave with everyone watching her go. She took the envelope late Memorial Day. She went to the building (dark, except for the Penthouse) and she rode deliberately in one of the elevators banked at reception, one of those where JARVIS didn't say hello immediately. She left it on his desk, in the in-tray she knew he rarely checked, and she wrote a post-it on top, lavender, just in case he didn't open it. Summing it up. 'I quit', written in cursive too. She laid it on top of her key-card, the badge she pinned to her suit and she left the whole mess in his in-tray and walked away. The lights glowed once, and they died as she left each section of the building; energy efficient and intelligent, and she watched the building from the outside snuff out her presence like a candle. She walked to the subway, to rattle her way home and to try and find what was left of herself after ten years being something other than alone. |