"Wait," Erna says, "explain it one more time."
"Oh my god." Levi tilts his head back, looking upward and pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. He rubs the titanium barbell there as he explains one more time. "Scissors beats paper." He makes the corresponding signs with his free hand. "Paper beats rock." He sighs and looks to where Erna is sitting on the stoop. "And rock beats scissors." He lets his hands fall as she watches him closely, her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
After a pause, she says, "How the hell does a piece of paper beat a rock? It's nonsense."
Levi throws his hands in the air and stomps the sole of his boot against the step he's standing on. "Because paper covers ro—," he stops himself before he loses his temper at something so stupid. "You know what's nonsense? Any person over the age of five not knowing how to play rock paper scissors."
Erna presses her lips into a thin line, tilts her chin up haughtily and looks away. "Well it sounds stupid."
"Good," Levi says. "Then go grab my tea and you don't have to play."
Erna's aloof composure breaks suddenly and she shouts, "Get your own goddamn tea, you dirty punk!"
Levi smirks. "You have to get your coffee anyway."
"And you have to get your stupid, weak-ass, dry leaf water anyway, so take your other hand with you if you're not too busy jacking off with it and use it to grab my fucking latte while you're at it," she spits out.
"So this is where rock paper scissors comes in," he says in a calm, even voice.
"Ugh." Erna makes a disgusted face. "Can't we just flip a coin?"
"No," he deadpans seriously and emphatically.
"Why not?" she whines.
"Because the last time we gambled you cheated," he reminds her.
"How is this not gambling?" She asks as she stands up, smoothing her skirts and rolling her shoulders back when satisfied.
"It just isn't." Levi smiles confidently.
She narrows her glacial eyes at him. "Sounds like a game of chance to me."
"If that's what you think." He puts his cigarette out on the stoop railing and tosses the butt into a nearby trashcan. "Best two out of three, loser has to go pick up drinks." He moves his right hand behind the small of his back and when she takes the cue and does the same he says, "I'm going to say 'rock, paper, scissors, shoot' and on 'shoot' you throw your choice."
"This is dumb."
"What's dumb is that you've never done this before. You're the only person I've ever met who didn't play this when they were a kid."
"Well, my childhood was…a little unorthodox," she concedes in that rich, haughty, whiskey-soaked voice that reminds him of black and white movie stars like Lauren Bacall.
She focuses on his arm like she's trying to see his hand through his midsection. He focuses on her eyes.
"Rock, paper, scissors, shoot."
"Bullshit," she mutters to herself as she stares angrily at his fist. She retracts her scissors and puts her hand behind her back again.
On the next round she throws paper and he throws scissors. She stomps her foot at him. "How do you do that?"
"Just go get my tea."
"No," she says. "Again."
Without argument he lets her say "Rock, paper, scissors, shoot," and he wins again, this time with paper. She makes an angry little scream and is about to challenge him again, but he calmly tells her, "It gets easier to read you the angrier you get."
Her face is turning red. He can tell that she's absolutely livid. It doesn't surprise him that she's a sore loser.
He smirks to himself as she picks up her purse and walks away muttering, "You infuriating…of all the dirty, rotten…no good, cheating…"
"I take it black," he casually calls after her.
She yells back, "Motherfucker!"
Levi laughs quietly to himself as he sits down on the stoop to wait.
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Eren hums to himself over the hiss of the espresso machine, pouring out an especially dark, strong shot of espresso. He reaches for a bottle of lavender syrup that Armin set aside for him while he was making lavender rosemary sugar cookies last night. He's uncapping it when suddenly a loud bang makes him flinch, spinning to face the door and ducking almost completely beneath the bar. The bottle slips from his hands and he fumbles to catch it before it falls to the floor. When he gets a grip on it he pops back up above the bar only to see his new worst nightmare glaring at him from the other side of it, staring him down with steely grey eyes veiled by a thick fringe of black bangs.
"You flinch an awful lot around me," Erna notes.
Eren sighs and asks dejectedly, "Do you have to kick the door in every time you come in here?"
"It's hardly every time. Honestly, you're so dramatic."
Eren isn't so sure about that. It seems that lately every day she kicks the door to the café open hard enough to make it seem like a shotgun and stalks in fuming about something or other, acting ready to literally rip the intestines out of anyone who would dare to try and talk to her. "Yeah. I'm the dramatic one," he grumbles under his breath as he turns away and sets the syrup bottle on the counter behind him.
"What was that, emerald eyes?"
"I said, 'here's your latte.'" He spins around with the to-go cup he prepared only two minutes before, knowing that she would be there to get it at almost exactly 9am. He flashes a fake smile and slides it across the bar.
She glares balefully at the cardboard cup with a nearly perfect rosette poured into the top with steamed milk and then at him.
A bead of sweat forms over Eren's left eyebrow as he stares back at her, holding his smile, determined that today is the day he's going to prove that she doesn't scare him.
Awkward tension sets in as she focuses on him with her ice-cold eyes. They stay frozen for seconds in a silent stand off.
Eren isn't going to let her get to him. No matter how disapproving she looks or how vitriolic her words get. He waits for her to say whatever cruel, cutting thing she's going to say, prepared to let it slip right off of him like water.
Her hand moves quickly and there's another loud noise. Eren flinches again, thinking she's throwing something or going to hit him. When nothing crashes or connects with his face, he opens his eyes. She's wearing a very satisfied smile. Her fingers are half-covering a five dollar bill that she just slapped onto the counter.
She doesn't gloat about making him wince. She doesn't need to. Instead she says, "Large tea, please."
Eren wasn't ready for this. He stammers, "I…um… Does that mean you don't want this?" he gestures to the latte. "Or… I'm confused…"
She says, "I can see that." She slowly retracts her fingers from the five-dollar bill and leaves it lying there on the counter.
"Sooo…" Eren draws the word out, hoping that she'll give him some guidance.
"So get me the fucking thing I asked for? This is a café, right? You still work here?"
"Umm…" Eren's hand reaches for the back of his head nervously. "Okay. What kind of tea do you want?"
Erna thinks for a second. "What does Levi usually get?"
Eren blinks at her, still confused, but he can answer easily since Levi gets the same thing every morning. "Organic Garam Masala."
Erna's eyebrows crease at what sounds like nonsense words to her. "What even… No, I don't care. What is the exact opposite of that?"
"Umm…" Eren thinks. He doesn't normally consider tea blends and their opposites. "I guess Jasmine Ginger Peach? It's light and fruity, whereas Garam Masala is really dark."
"Then I want that."
"Do you want a dirty chai blended latte? I can make one that tastes like maple syrup and vanilla," Eren asks a little eagerly, thinking that if she wants both the tea and the coffee then she might finally be willing to try one of his special drinks.
He is mistaken. "I want you to shut your hipster mouth and get to work on my order."
Eren's shoulders slump like she's just deflated him. He frowns as he turns around to get the tea and another to-go cup. Satisfied finally that she's broken his high spirits, Erna explains to him while he works, "It's for Levi, not me."
"Oh," Eren says. Before he takes the jasmine tea blend from its drawer, he tries to be helpful. "Um, I think Levi actually hates white teas."
"Pretend for right now that you don't know that and never said it, and I'll let you keep the change."
Eren still doesn't understand, but he goes ahead and puts her tea together without further comment. He puts it on the bar next to her latte very tentatively as if he's offering a cup of tea to a rattlesnake.
"That wasn't so hard now, was it?" She says it smugly, adding with a wink, "I'm sorry that I overestimated you. I'd thought throwing a tea bag into some hot water would have been no trouble. I'll remember from now going forward that your talents are restricted to squiggling milk into elaborate designs on the surface of my coffee."
Eren's mouth drops open a little. He raises a finger to make his counterpoint to her insult, but no words come out. Erna gives it no notice and reaches for a little wooden stirrer at the end of the bar. She nonchalantly swirls it through her latte and obliterates the perfect white and brown rosette pattern that Eren had been so proud of until there is no contrast, no definition between the white of the milk and the deep brown coffee. All of the delicacy and precision that went into the art of it, the culmination of days and hours of practice, is reduced to a muddy light brown in two seconds.
Before Eren can shriek at the loss and bemoan the ephemeral quality of his art, Armin comes out of the back, both arms balancing large white porcelain plates filled with rows and stacks of cookies that look like they belong in a baking magazine photo spread. He perks up when he sees the two, paying no mind to the silent contest going on between them, he says, "Good Morning, Erna. Want a cookie on the house?"
Erna is never quick to answer these kinds of questions, regardless of her feelings about sweets or her hunger. She treats Armin's generosity as if it is loaded and her eyes narrow as she regards him with careful suspicion.
Before Erna is finished weighing the pros and cons of accepting the favor, the melancholy monotone girl sweeps in from the back office. She's busy with a clipboard, marking down inventory, but she is able to multitask, keeping track of numbers with her pen and scolding the cheery blonde with her somehow soft and severe voice. "Armin. No freebies."
He is unfazed, same way he would be if Erna treated him with the same malice she abuses Eren with daily. He smiles at the red-flannel clad girl and says, "But Mikasa…" She doesn't glance up from her clipboard. There is no sign that she's listening, but he persists anyway. "Not even for Erna?"
Erna had been grasping the cup of tea in her left hand, about to pivot on her heel and leave. The utterance of her name stops her and she stands stock still, half-turned away from the counter. It leaves her cold. She doesn't like anyone using her name. Logically, she knows that the brats know her name, but hearing it out loud is over familiar and too personal. She wants anonymity. She wants to be more invisible.
Mikasa hums distractedly and looks up. "Oh," she says, "Yeah, that's fine."
Erna rolls her eyes. Her shoulders slump, as she feels forced to turn back around and accept the gift. Armin puts six petite cookies in a bag and winks as he extends it to her saying, "She likes you."
Erna scoffs as she sets her drinks back down. She slams her coffin purse on the counter, opens the latch with a flick of her wrist, flips the lid open, snatches the bag of cookies, and buries it. She hisses, "She likes my money, and that's what I like about her. Practical and efficient and none of this sunny, small talk bullshit."
Mikasa lifts her eyes from her clipboard again to ask Erna, "Are they bothering you?"
Erna slams the lid of her coffin closed and hooks it onto her wrist. "Every goddamn day." She snatches up the two cardboard cups and is swiftly out the door.
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"What the fuck is this?" Levi asks darkly before he even brings the lid of the cup to his lips. He must have smelled the difference. Erna was hoping she would at least get to see a good spit take before he realized that she fucked him over.
"It's tea."
"Bullshit this is tea," he says, taking the plastic top off the cup and pouring its contents out onto the sidewalk in disgust.
His reaction isn't going the way she had anticipated. She hadn't thought about just how disappointed and sullen he would turn out to be without his morning tea. Inexplicably, this makes Erna feel bad. Guilty, almost. She doesn't like the feeling, so she lashes out. "Should have gotten your own fucking tea."
He sulks. "You did that on purpose."
"Like hell I did."
"You did because you're a sore loser and an immature, vindictive little—"
"Say it," she dares him.
He doesn't say it. He won't call her a bitch. He'll never get down and wallow in the dirt with her, and she hates it. Something inside her rages against the goodness in him, with all his self-discipline and sense of honor and morality.
The air is filled with uncomfortable silence. That is until Levi spits. A perfect globe of sputum hits the sidewalk, right in the center of the puddle of jasmine tea. Then he says, "Large latte with skim milk."
"Hm?" Erna hums confusedly.
"That's what you get every morning," he says. "And I couldn't give a fuck about your coffee order, but I know it anyway, so don't try to act like you don't know what kind of tea I like."
This is one of those rare moments where they tacitly admit that they are friends. They dance around it, because neither of them knows exactly what to do with that fact except be sarcastic and cynical about it and push each other's buttons, saying semi-awful things and then smirking. That's how they are friends – through insults and thrown elbows. Not through admission that they give a shit.
Erna is in a tough spot, because she really didn't know what kind of tea he liked. She never cared to notice. She's not in the habit of caring about anything about anyone. The fact that she didn't know makes her feel even worse.
"I'm sorry." She annunciates clearly and then clenches her jaw.
Levi is in the middle of placing a cigarette between his lips and he mumbles, "Don't want your apology. Want my fucking tea."
He lights it, and he puffs. He won't look at her.
"Fine!" she yells, loudly and abruptly. She seems to stamp her boots all the way up the sidewalk, pausing once midway to turn back and shout at him, "You're such a bitch!"
He smirks to himself.
When Erna tears into the café again, Eren is resting his chin in his hand, leaning on the counter on his elbows. As she stalks up to the bar, he pushes a large to-go cup toward her with a single finger and says, "Here."
After glaring at him for a moment, she tears the lid off to reveal the dark, black, bitter tea that Eren made up right after she left.
Erna rifles through her pocket for a five-dollar bill. As she does, she asks, "How did you know?"
"I'm good at more than latte art," he answers smugly. His face softens for a moment and he looks like he's going to tell her it's on the house, but when she puts the cash on the counter, he thinks better of it and keeps his mouth shut.
She leaves without any further sarcasm or snark. Eren looks around and checks that Mikasa isn't nearby before he puts the five dollars in his tip jar.
"Did you spit in this?" Levi asks after he takes the lid off the cup and checks that it's the right kind of tea.
"No," she says grimly. She watches him take a sip, then she says, "but I did come in it."
She finally gets that spit take that she'd wanted. Not because Levi believes her, but just because of how unexpected that was.
He looks at her with about a half and half mix of disbelief and wonder. "Did you grow up with brothers or something?"
She's sitting down on the stoop again now, picking up her abandoned latte and holding it to her lips even though it's gone cold. "Nope. Four sisters. Why?"
"Trying to figure out where you learned to talk the way you do."
"Women can be vulgar and disgusting too," she says. "It's equal rights or whatever."
Levi hums in acceptance. That's fair enough. Still, she's the only woman he's ever met who talks more like a teenage boy playing Call of Duty.
Erna's coffin buzzes and she opens the lid with one hand while still sipping her latte. She pulls out her cell and looks at the caller id disdainfully. Levi can't see what it says, but he can see how annoyed Erna looks when she says under her breath, "Fuck off, slut," and smashes a button to ignore the call.
"Problem?" he asks.
"My sister."
Levi waits a second to see if she'll explain more than that, but she doesn't, so he asks, "You don't get along?"
"I get along with this one better than the others, but even so I don't like being called all the fucking time. I talked to her yesterday and let her annoy the shit out of me, and then she called twice while I was sleeping and she has the fucking gall to call now during my consistently scheduled and guarded coffee break. Bitch needs to learn her time zones."
The phone buzzes in her hand again. This time she presses the ignore button with a vengeance. She tosses it carelessly back into the open coffin. They're quiet for a moment. Then she tells him, "You're lucky you don't have a family."
Levi responds sarcastically, "Never thought of it that way." Then something out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. A nice, shiny black car that, at first, he assumes is Erwin's because it's the only car that ever comes down this street that isn't beat to shit, dying on its last legs. But he turns his head to look and it's not Erwin's BMW, it's an actual Bentley. Levi can't remember the name of the model, but he knows it runs around 300k. Even drug lords around this neighborhood wouldn't be able to afford that. He is taken aback for a second.
"That's fucking weird," he points out to Erna who is still only looking at her latte and hasn't noticed anything yet.
She looks up at him, then turns to see what he's looking at. She focuses in on the car, narrows her eyes and squints at it slowly trolling up the street, then her eyes blow wide open, she drops her latte and says in a panic, "Oh shit." The coffee spills all over the stoop. "Shit!"
"What…" Levi looks at her and something is evidently very wrong. He's never seen her actually looking scared and the unfamiliarity of it makes even him feel a little panicky himself.
"No, no, no, no, no," she repeats to herself as she closes the lid on her coffin purse and stands up.
Levi stands there in confusion, not knowing if he should try to help or ask what the fuck is going on or what. He doesn't have time to anyway. As Erna spins around and reaches for the door, the Bentley pulls to the curb. The rear window rolls down and Erna freezes in place, still reaching for the door, as a voice from inside bellows, "Erna Bronwyn Raban!"
"Bronwyn?" Levi looks over his shoulder at Erna and raises an eyebrow.
She hangs her head and her shoulders go limp. Her arms hang in defeated at her sides as she turns around and mutters, "Fuck me."
Levi stares, wide-eyed in confusion and wonder as a driver in uniform gets out of the car and walks to the side to open the rear door, and out steps a couple that he swears materialized out of one of those TV dramas about the rich and powerful. The man wears a suit that probably cost more than the sum total of every apartment that Levi has ever lived in. The woman is, in classic New York fashion, dressed all in unembellished black aside from the huge diamond earrings and a white mini Givenchy bag. She takes off her large, round sunglasses and wrinkles her nose at her surroundings. She brushes her deeply dyed, perfectly styled brunette bangs to the side and mutters something in complete disbelief to her husband.
He looks like a volcano of rage about to erupt. His face already red and his nostrils flared, staring at Erna as if he'd like to shoot her. Just as it looks like he's about to say something, his wife pushes past him and takes three heel-clicking steps toward the stoop, nearly shrieking, "What in the hell are you doing here, young lady?"
Levi looks to Erna. He feels like he just got caught in the middle of a shoot-out. It doesn't feel safe to run, but it doesn't feel safe to stand there in the middle of it either. She opens her mouth to answer something, but the woman interrupts her.
"Have you lost your mind? Breaking the lease on your apartment, quitting your job without notice, and moving to…? John, where the hell even are we?"
The redness in the man's face is dying down now that his wife is doing all of his shrieking for him, and he looks a little more stately, turning his nose and chin up a bit, he answers, "Does it matter? It's all the same cesspool once you're below Prospect Park."
Again, Erna begins to open her mouth, but is stopped by the woman holding a palm up, telling her, "I don't even want to hear it." She points angrily at the Bentley behind her and says, "Get in the car this very instant." She doesn't even wait for an answer, taking it as a foregone conclusion that Erna will do as she says, she turns around and starts to walk back to the car, placing her sunglasses back on her face and saying, "Honestly, what are we supposed to tell people? If anybody finds out about this I swear I'll die of embarrassment."
Finally, Erna speaks.
"I'm staying here."
By this point the husband has taken a polished wooden pipe out of his breast pocket, filled it with tobacco, and is in the middle of lighting it with urgency, but he stops at this task and looks up at Erna on top of the stoop in disbelief, like maybe he didn't hear her correctly. "You're what?"
The wife turns from the car, balls up her fists in rage, and leans forward into the big intimidating strides she takes toward the stoop. Levi instinctively backs up. He's not a part of this. He tries to blend into the brick walls behind him. He is so confused and taken aback that it doesn't occur to him to just go back inside. He wonders what the fuck all this is. Who are these people? Why isn't Erna destroying them verbally the way she does everyone else?
"This is where I live now. You can't just put me in your car and take me away. That's called kidnapping and it's illegal." That New England accent that is usually only a suggestion in her voice, something one has to listen for, is now fully present.
"Don't get smart with us, young lady," the man says before raising his lighter again to start his pipe.
"Erna, we are your parents and you will obey us," the woman says. "Honestly, are you mentally ill? What would possess someone to leave Manhattan for…whatever this is?"
Levi sputters and almost spits out the sip of tea he'd been taking. Parents. He just assumed that Erna was hatched fully formed with a clove cigarette in her hand. He regrets drawing attention to himself, because it makes Erna remember that he's there behind her. She grabs his wrist and pulls him forward with a lot more strength than he would have thought she could muster. She makes him stumble forward even though he's trying to stay firmly against the wall.
"Mom, Dad, this is Levi. We're dating."
Levi chokes. He tries to pull his wrist out of her bony hand, but she holds him in a death grip and says, "Actually we're engaged. I live with him now. I'm not going anywhere."
Both of her parents' jaws drop. The mother pinches her sunglasses daintily and tilts them down to look over them. "You can't," she says in quiet disbelief as if Erna just decided to tell them that she's going to marry an actual cockroach.
"Completely out of the question. What would people say?" Her father mutters around his pipe.
Her mother is becoming more desperate as she realizes how serious her daughter is. "Erna, we let you have your little rebellions to a much more forgiving extent than any other family would tolerate, but this is too far. Think about how this makes us look. People are already talking about you walking out on Sina Publishing and disappearing. Don't make this more of a scandal than it already is."
"Everything is secondary to your precious reputation, isn't it?" Erna whispers darkly. Then she says more loudly, "I don't give two fucks about what you tell people. Tell them I did go mad. That's what you think anyway. Tell them that you had to have me lobotomized like Rosemary Kennedy. That will probably give you some social cachet."
"Oh you'd love that, wouldn't you, you morbid little—" Erna's father takes his wife by the arm and distracts her from finishing that thought. She composes herself again and puts on a sickeningly fake smile. "Erna, honey, if you won't come home, can we at least compromise? We'll just tell people that you've moved to SoHo and you can make at least a few appearances in the Hamptons and at some charity functions, and we'll just keep this whole…thing…quiet."
Erna scowls at both of them and she wraps both of her hands around Levi's arm, clinging to him like ivy. She looks up at his face, gives him the fakest look of adoration and says, "Only if my fiancé can come."
Levi quietly struggles to get out her grip again, but she digs her nails into his skin.
"Are you trying to kill your mother Erna?" her father asks. "You know that's impossible."
"Okay, bye then," Erna says flippantly, giving them a cheery smile.
Her mother gasps and staggers backward to the car. Her father points at her and says, "You have two months to get yourself together or you can consider yourself disowned."
The driver opens the rear door. The couple disappears into their three hundred thousand dollar car shaking their heads, and their driver, probably the only one with the good sense to realize that they are only about a mayfly's lifespan away from getting mugged, squeals the tires as he speeds away.
Erna finally lets Levi go and she crumbles to the top step of the stoop, her hands shaking a little as they open her coffin purse. She fumbles for her cigarettes, her precision gone.
"You're an asshole, you know that?"
She turns around and looks up at Levi.
He puts his tea down on the railing. He's lost his taste for it. "I'm a fucking person, not some prop you can use to piss off mommy and daddy."
Erna opens her mouth, but doesn't know what to say.
"Fuck you."
He turns around and rips the door open, letting it slam behind him as he disappears back into the building.
Erna tilts her head back and groans to herself. She takes a cigarette out of the pack, holds it up, pauses to regard it carefully, then says, "Fuck me," and takes out a second one. She puts both of them in her mouth and lights them together.
She takes two deep drags before her phone buzzes again. She answers it this time.
Instead of 'Hello,' she says, "Fuck you Deirdre! You're fucking dead to me!"
"Wait, Erna," her sister pleads, "I tried to tell you. Mom and Dad were asking about you and you wouldn't get help and I'm worried about you. I supported you leaving when I thought you were going to get help, but you just keep getting worse and maybe it is best if you go home. I love you and I'm so afraid you're going to…"
"You're so fucking dramatic. Fuck off to your farm or whatever because I'm done."
Erna claps her phone closed and then says to no one, "Dumb fucking cunt. Selling me out." She inhales more from her two cigarettes and burns her throat. She sighs. Deep down she knows she's justifiably angry with Deirdre, but also she's angry at herself for fucking up with Levi. She sighs and says, "God damnit."
Her phone buzzes again. This time she drops it on the stoop, lifts her boot, and stomps the shit out of it until it's broken into pieces.
She sighs again and looks up at the building behind her. Her conscience is nagging at her to go fix things with Levi, preferably before he leaves for work…if they even can be fixed, she thinks. She wonders how much time she has before he leaves. The reflex to reach for her phone and check the time hits her and she smacks her palm against her forehead.
"What a day," she says as she opens the door and starts up the steps.
