Breakfast at Baratie's
by Memphis Lupine
(memphis_lupine@hotmail.com)
--
Story One: Concrete Angel
IV
--
"Chamomile," the recognizable voice of The Sandman said in a low hiss, and she looked up from sipping at her vanilla milkshake to see him fidgeting with his scented cigarette. Swallowing and conscious of Joel's heavy arm wrapped tightly around her waist, she smiled in quick acknowledgement, and he pointed down the bar. "You know every person at the high school, right?" he asked, pinching his cigarette in his fingers and pulling it free of his lips to breathe out a thin column of apple-laced smoke. She nodded a second time, in slightly confused answer, and he fitted the cigarette back into his lips, taking it between his teeth and biting lightly down with incisors. "She's new," he stated bluntly, looking at Chamomile squarely with his heavily lidded eyes.
Blinking, she obediently leaned back a little from the bar, hands clasping the polished wood for balance as Joel turned from cheering the football game to clutch her waist a bit more carefully. She followed the jagged point of his nibbled fingernail, a long finger jutting from the signet ring adorning it religiously, and passed dismissively over a trio of loudly gabbing cheerleaders with her eyes. A breath hitched in her throat, a reminder of what had happened earlier in the day that stifled her breathing for a second or so, and she closed her eyes briefly to dismiss the image of Ulan swinging his legs back over his barstool. He was laughing sardonically at the wickedly grinning Natalie, her face mocking him and hands tearing open one of the complimentary packets of crackers scattered over the table in dyed baskets.
"That's Natalie Tartan," she said in a pointedly neutral tone, surveying her nails in a manner that was nervous habit. "She just moved here, and she's very," she thought for a word to describe the air that seemed to follow the redhead, "different." Well, wasn't that, like, just so nice, she remarked to herself in a voice meant to resemble that of the stereotypical valley girl.
"I can tell," he informed her, resting his elbow on the counter as he absently tapped his cigarette over a napkin he slid over reflexively, sleeve bunched up just above the joint into a wrinkled swath of blue cloth. His infamous innocent smile, the one that reeked intentions that were most assuredly far from innocent, curled his lips into the faintest exposure of his self-consciously whitened teeth. "Winchester isn't known for its redheads," he continued in a just so you know tone and she laughed, reading correctly what he meant. "Fine," he rolled his eyes, gravitating toward her, picking the cigarette from his lips once more and holding it at a tilted angle, "but just to reassure you of my affections," he flipped his sweetest, jokingly endearing face to the silver blonde, "she could never replace my love for you."
She laughed at the old joke as Joel made an unpleasant grunting noise in his throat, eyeing the server with the kind of look usually seen before homicides occurred, and said plainly, "Keep away from my girl."
"Whiskey, midget," he was answered promptly by The Sandman, a squat bottle of the amber liquid planted flatly in front of him. The thin blonde bent to stare him in the face, stating evenly, "I know you're underage, she knows you're underage, and if you try to do something stupid like drive after drinking, her pop'll have your head and ass surgically removed before the hitman kills you." This said, he stuck his cigarette back into his mouth, his duty as casual friend and somewhat responsible supplier of alcohol to the young and not quite innocent done. "Take it from someone who knows," he added seriously, and his cheeks puffed a little as if he was struggling to keep from laughing.
Chamomile mouthed thank-you at him, and he gave her a longing look from behind the counter, pleading with his eyes for a grateful kiss. She shook her head no, standing and patting his shoulder comfortingly as he adopted a heartbroken aura, and he sighed, then pushed himself off the counter, scooping up one of the rarely used menus from the stacks of folded laminated paper. "That reminds me, I need to talk to her," she spoke mostly for Joel's benefit, leaning to kiss his forehead and gently unhooking his arm from her waist.
"Ah, Chamomile my young and fair love," The Sandman turned from his perusing the menu in fascination, not used to seeing the items he had memorized in print, "please don't scare her off! I swear I'll be my usual affable self." He stuck his lower lip out and she wrinkled her nose kindly at him, reaching over to pluck the open menu from his hands and holding it up as she walked as if she had need of researching the meals offered.
Wandering over the floor, taking small steps in order to prolong the inevitable confrontation she had chosen, she bit her lip behind the protective shield of the browned paper, tightening her fingers over the slicked surface. An anxious knot gathered in her stomach as she envisioned being slighted by the smaller girl, and even worse, in front of the boy who was apparently willing to be her closest friend during the months harboring the lazy days betwixt school years, but not during the actual semesters of school. It always seemed to surprise her, imagining the excitable senior ignoring her or skimming over her existence, and she frowned minutely at the familiar tension as she felt her mind slip towards worrying over him. I am apologizing to Natalie, she reminded herself firmly, sighing as she recognized the bright explosion of orange from the corner of her eye that signified where Ulan was sitting.
Primly folding the menu with calm hands that belied her internal urge to quaver with nervousness, she held it loosely, casually by her hip, against the smooth fabric of her patterned muumuu. "Natalie," she started with an edgy smile, and the redhead looked up from chewing plaintively on a cracker as her companion coughed a joke at her. "I, um, wanted to talk to you about earlier," and her voice wavered, stammering just a bit, and she wished the floor would rear up and fall back on top of her, or something akin to that so long as she stopped making an idiot of herself. "If it's okay with you," she threw in, barely squashing the urge to rub her bared arm shyly. It took incredible force of will to even look at him, and she offered a weak smile in apology for something she did not understand herself.
Ulan stared at her with a slack face and then glanced quickly down at his palms, picking aimlessly at the weave in the hair-tie wrapped around his wrist. A lead weight settled quite neatly in her stomach and she swallowed, suddenly reminded of why it was they were only friends when May brought the last day of each school year. "Sure," she heard Natalie's voice reply, and she snapped her head up to the redhead, who was grinning with some secret meaning. Natalie glanced meaningfully at the curly-haired teenager, poking him in the shoulder with her fingernail and raising an eyebrow thoughtfully.
"I wanted to apologize," the petite girl blurted, twisting a strand of her long blonde hair, swathed into a high ponytail, around the knuckle of her index finger. "That is, I want to apologize, not that I wanted to at some point," and she paused, gently unknotting her hair from her finger and smiling in sheepish recognition at the other's youthfully amused expression. "I'm babbling, aren't I?" she asked rhetorically, trying to find some place to put her hands and settling for weaving the slender fingers together into a loose knit.
"Only a little," Natalie answered truthfully, her nose scrunching as she grinned, pinching her fingers together in an exemplifying squeeze of the air. She laughed at Chamomile's responding grimace, and casually kicked one of the sturdy legs supporting the stool Ulan was seated upon and pretending to not recognize either girl as currently existing in his perception of reality. "Ulan," she said in her sweetest voice, one dripping with saccharine poison, "I don't think it's polite to not acknowledge someone who's walked all the way over to talk with us."
If possible, he hunched even further over the bar, picking with a furious purpose at his hair-tie and keeping his head firmly away from her. Chamomile looked immensely hesitant, popping the heels of her palms together, the menu slapping the stretch of ivory skin in quiet harmony with the movements, and she suddenly appeared lost. After a few seconds with the three in what felt like a frozen spot in time, she forced a wide, soulless smile onto her face and commented in a falsely bright voice, striking her own ears with an offensive cheer, "No, that's okay, Natalie, I just wanted to get that off my chest." She waved a small, pointless wave, stepping backwards a few shortened paces, the rustling cloth of her Hawaiian print skirt tugging almost reluctantly at her thighs, and she continued swiftly, "I'm here with Joel, anyway, and I'm sure he's missing me." Flitting her eyes over the boy stoically unmoving, she twirled and slid down the bar, fleeing to the noise and chaos where her boyfriend awaited. She blew air out as she straightened her shoulders, convincing herself as she always did, this is how it's supposed to be, and she tightened imperceptibly her grip on the smooth menu.
"That makes it an odd three that you've attempted to ruin my existence today," Ulan remarked matter-of-factly to her as soon as the blonde was gone, turning his comedic glare on Natalie. She shrugged and smiled charmingly, sticking her tongue out just a bit and placing a cracker innocently into her mouth, kicking his stool lightly with her foot once more. "Next time," he added, "try wielding a shotgun and a loaded cartridge. It might be a bit more humane."
"You're so stupid," she took care to inform him, wrinkling up the wrapper and stacking it with the lopsided hill of small crumbs dotted amidst the crinkled plastic. "Two days," she held up the corresponding fingers, pinning them as if to arrest his undivided attention, "and I'm smarter than you."
"Bleh," he responded, making a rude face, and she made the appropriate sound of disgust, instantly relaxing the air into an easier feel to handle. "Unless you manage to finish your story some time soon, I doubt that," he smirked very kindly, and he flinched with a humorous gasp when she scooped up two of the wrappers, tossing them half-heartedly at his forehead. "Cheap shot!" he cried. "Horrible cheap shot! Why do you insist on trying to kill me?"
"Why do you insist on tormenting my writing skills?" she retorted, and she flicked several crumbs at him with the side of her hand, a bone in her wrist popping noticeably. She switched her gaze to the offended joint and lifted it, wobbling her hand slightly and surveying in fascination the lack of change in its movement. "I thought for sure I'd snapped something."
"I wish you had," she heard him mutter in jest, and she shoved his shoulder by way of nonverbal reply. "Oh, crap!" he cried, and then he grabbed on to the bar with a crushing grip, legs splaying awkwardly as the stool tipped in generous warning and he nearly toppled over the neighboring stool beside him. "I don't want to die," he wheezed, hooking his leg under her stool and using it to lever back into a sitting position.
"Oh, darn," she sighed with mock-regret, snapping her fingers as she shook her head sorrowfully, "my evil plan failed." She stared with a great deal of obvious sadness as he retrieved his foot from under her stool, his hand reaching down to massage the slightly pained stretch of shining material to nurse his poor wounded foot. "Bowling shoes," she noted flatly, raising in slow disdain her glimmering red eyebrow.
"What?" he asked defensively, all but clutching his shoe to him in a protective embrace as she began to smile nastily at him. "So I wear bowling shoes on a daily basis, it's not against the law or anything, unless you live in Washington, DC, or something," and he lowered his foot, a haughty look gracing his face. "Besides," stated Ulan in an airy, better than you think I am tone, "they give me better grippability."
Natalie eyed him with something bordering incredulity. "'Grippability,'" she started slowly, "isn't a word, Ulan. It's never been a word, it will never be a word, and I'm sorry if I broke your brain when I pushed you earlier." She paused. "I think I'm sorry, anyway."
He ignored skillfully her last tidbit of speech and, instead, lifted one finger in scientific triumph, his lips curling in a you sad, sad thing smile of condescension. "Observe the grippability of bowling shoes," he said simplistically, maneuvering out of his stool and standing perfectly motionless on the glazed floor. Slowly, carefully, he raised his leg, bending it at the knee, and managed to balance the middle arch of his shoe on the edge of the bar before sliding the bottom slip of the shoe onto the bar itself. Holding it firmly there, he smirked at her. "Oops!" he said loudly, and on the other end of the bar, where The Sandman had occupied himself with working the open bar grill, a golden head was raised in a quietly predatory manner.
Trying to figure out what, exactly, Ulan was attempting to accomplish with sticking his shoe on the counter, threatening his general safety in the most basic of male ways, Natalie spotted a look akin to murderous rampages slowly transforming the elegant face of The Sandman into a brewing storm. "Well," she said cheerfully, noting the darkly calm way the tall man was setting his various cooking utensils down and the manner of which he was beginning to screw his curled eyebrow toward the long bangs covering his left eye, "I guess it was more or less pleasant knowing you."
"Wait for it," he answered, lifting his finger a second time, then lowering it peacefully as The Sandman swung aside the one hinged door leading from back area to the front of the restaurant. "Wait for it," he continued as the taller man stalked forward, his spine curving slightly as he moved like an exceptionally angry feline between the gradually hushing press of teenagers. "Here we go," he acknowledged with a dip of his head.
"You bastard!" the man she had not yet actually met said in a voice most conventional when issuing large amounts of physical pain. He slammed a foot into the bar, directing his anger temporarily into it, and she clapped politely for both Ulan, whose shoe had not slipped, and The Sandman, who looked fit to kill in a gruesome way. "Get your shoe the hell off my bar!"
With lightning speed she did not expect, Ulan complied, and suddenly she found herself being used as a human shield, the fractionally taller tan boy crouching behind her and holding his hands on her shoulders. "Protect me," he saw fit to instruct her, and she dug her feet into the floor as best she could.
"What the heck are you doing?" she
demanded, trying to reach back with her arms and smack him squarely on the
face. "You jerk!" she said as
realization dawned with cruel timing, and she struggled, attempting to twist about
and pop him across the face. "I'm not
the one he's mad at!"
"Asshole!" The Sandman concurred,
before inclining his head gracefully to Natalie. "My sincerest apologies, my lovely lady," he spoke, plucking the
cigarette from his mouth and folding one arm over his chest smoothly. "I truly do not wish to disturb you, but I'm
afraid I must eviscerate your companion."
He looked up, sheaths of golden hair falling away from his glittering
blue right eye, and he asked in a peculiar voice, "Your boyfriend, perhaps?"
"Not quite," she replied, and she gave up trying to poke her friend's eyes out without actually having him in her sights. "Ulan, what are you doing?"
"Well," he said breezily, leaning over her shoulder to stare her in the corner of her eye, "I think, at this current moment? I think I'm avoiding a painful death. Yup. Avoiding death, I'm pretty sure." He ducked an extremely well aimed jab from the still fuming cook and Natalie jumped at the proximity of the fist, stumbling clumsily to the side and falling gracelessly to the floor. "Shit, Nat," Ulan swore, bending down immediately as the cook mirrored him, both staring anxiously at her while she blinked at the ceiling and lifted her head.
"I'll consider that payback," she joked without much of a bright smile, and she accepted both hands offered to her, pulling herself to her feet with their help. Brushing her hands down over her skirt, her jacket tugged down her arms by the unexpected tumble, she thumbed the belt away from the mildly off-kilter positioning it had adopted and smoothed out a thin wrinkle in the fabric of her dress. Long hands swept lightly and very briefly over her shoulders as Ulan apologized two or five times, and she flipped three of her fingers up at him in tired humor, index, middle, and ring held up for display. "If you read between the lines," she spoke wearily, "I'll forgive you."
"Ah, just a bit of dirt right here," the idle tenor of the cook murmured and she looked away from Ulan's sheepish grin to see the much taller man picking free a tiny clump of lint or dirt or something else unpleasant. "I'm very sorry, my lovely lady," he professed, and she heard Ulan snickering, disguising it with a remarkably pathetic cough. "It was my fault, really."
"No," she said slowly, a little uncomfortable, "it was also partly his fault." She turned slightly, jabbing her thumb carelessly at her friend, who gave her a disbelieving look, saying with his face, however could you blame me? "But thanks anyway," she hurried to add, tilting her head back just so to look the pale man straight in the face, or as well as she could, what with his hair misting over one of his eyes.
He reacted as if stung, for some reason, taking an uncertain step back and jamming his hand into the pocket of his dark jeans as he slipped the cigarette back into his mouth. "You have gorgeous eyes," he said almost breathlessly and she edged away a bit, unsure of what to make of him. "Eh, stupid me!" he recovered quickly, smacking his palm into the curled eyebrow over his visible eye and grinning in a way that was far different from Ulan's.
"No problem," she replied and he nodded, standing in the same spot as if rooted while she twirled and socked Ulan playfully in the arm.
"Ow," he whined grievously, reclaiming his stool as she did so as well, clasping the injured muscle in his hand and doing his damnedest to appear immeasurably saddened. "The only other time I've ever been so wounded was when the doctor told me I had an evil twin brother."
"Liar," she replied conversationally, edging onto her own stool and giving him a particularly dark scowl. He smiled unashamedly and resumed their adopted habit of picking apart the delightfully noisy wrappers and devouring the crunchy insides with great relish and snapping of jaws. "I'm not going to forgive you for that, by the way," she told him sweetly, thieving one of his crackers and breaking it into uneven fourths, sticking one on her tongue and pinning it to the roof of her mouth. Waiting for it to soften, she grinned a grimacing smile at him.
"Mmmm, I love repetitive food," he sighed gustily, cramming the remaining cracker into his cheek and chewing with loud thought. "It's sort of like the school food, only I haven't seen anyone's kidneys explode due to horrible, horrible mutations in the genetic structure of the food." He sighed a second time, this time with massive sadness and an idle crossing of his chest in remembrance, bowing his head for what was meant to be a swift prayer. "Poor Bill Marks," he informed her, "he was such an obnoxious idiot, too. The Saturday detention group hasn't been the same without his ever-putrid presence there to foul the oxygen into toxic proportions of noxious fumes." He paused, swallowing the cracker as a thought appeared to strike him with swift fluidity. "Actually, I don't think they've ever been so happy before." He shrugged and took the last wrapper from the now emptied basket, holding it from her as she lunged for it, his tongue sticking briefly out at her.
"Jerk," she scowled. He merely replied with a noisy crunch as he daintily shoved both crackers into his mouth at once and bit down in agonizing slowness, his lips splitting into a malicious grin as she stuck her fingers into her ears and pretended not to hear his cruel bites.
As such, she noticed very quickly the professional menu that slid onto the counter in front of her, the laminated paper sliding with ease over the relatively clean surface to her. She studied it, pulling her fingertips from her ears without paying much attention to his attempts at tormenting her, and glanced up and up and up she thought to herself. The tall cook, The Sandman if she remembered the absurd name correctly, appeared somewhat more collected than he had just five minutes before, his lips curved into a small smile. "Your menu, my lovely lady," he said, and he winked his right eye in a style that was quite different than the winks she had seen from various others over the course of the past two days. At least, she mused silently as he walked hastily away in loping steps to the open bar grill where a warning trickle of smoke was beginning to hazard into the air, I think he winked. For all I know, he just blinked unusually hard and the hair over his other eye made it so I couldn't tell.
"What make me his lovely lady?" she questioned suspiciously, and Ulan switched his face's direction slightly to grant her some fraction of his attention. "I don't even know him, do I?" Natalie absently handed one of the empty, balled wrappers to her companion.
Easily shooting the wrapper into the trashcan, he scooped another one into his palm, patted it shortly, and tossed into an arching tumble straight through to the center of the small receptacle for garbage. "This is The Sandman we're referring to," he told her. A third wrapper was launched with little difficulty squarely into the trashcan. "I mean, the guy thinks every girl he meets is lovely, for the most part. Besides, you're single and available, which makes it even better." He shoved two wrappers together, balling and twisting them into one large, uneven lump, and with a feinted air of disinterest, turned his head to the side, flicking his wrist and sending it in a loose spiral. "For him," he added in retrospect, turning to stare clinically at the trashcan and nodding curtly once to himself with satisfaction.
"Me shoot good basket," he explained.
"Indeed," she raised her eyebrow in sincere reply, flipping a page of the menu and running her finger down the slicked page. "Sheesh, expensive, much?" she muttered, rolling her eyes as she grimaced, her frugal side peeking its head up and clamping tightly around her wallet. The next page was viewed as being no gentler on her allotted money spending, and she eyed the menu distrustfully.
"This is your problem," Ulan interrupted her one-sided glare and pried it from her hands, holding it up to the light. "See? Everything you see on these two pages involves something in a different language. French, Spanish, something that I think I saw a monkey read once, and other assorted languages most people don't know. Most people being anyone who isn't God, of course," he nodded sagely. "Never buy anything with weird words in it unless the word are a la carte. Then you buy five of them, pretend you're cultured, and throw away the cheapo box before someone notices."
"Experienced, are we?" she replied breezily, filching the menu back and closing it, picking open the back flap. "Oh, look!" she cried in mock-surprise, even going so far as to purse her lips in shock and placing her fingertip cutely to her lower lip. "Cheeseburgers! Wowee, golly-gee-willikers, that must be such a trendy delicacy."
"Don't buy! Don't buy!" he waved his hands in frantic dissuasion. At her skeptic look and the way she tucked her strawberry hair behind her curved ear, he found need to define in a lofty tone, "While the seafood at Baratie's is of high enough quality to put such generic places as Red Lobster in their appropriate places, they can't make a cheeseburger worth crap. It's kinda like Britney Spears music, actually, when I think about it: there's no human way to gouge one's vital organs out fast enough." He paused to shudder as if recalling some distant, horrid memory, closing his hand around one of the few remaining wrappers and absentmindedly chucking it in the vague direction of the trashcan; she stuck her tongue out when it neatly fell into the filling container. "Britney Spears is the wife of Satan," he said seriously, running a hand through the few curls lining his forehead, peeking from the folded hem of his checkered bandana.
"Did you just realize this?" she asked lightly, slipping her jacket off and casting it over the counter in a lumpy line, the ends dangling over the edge. "Hell, I've known that since she released that first really annoying song. What was it?" She frowned, trying to remember, and rolled her eyes up, eyelashes curled in smooth twists, plaguing the ceiling for answers.
"I liked that one," admitted he forlornly, and then he loudly proclaimed, "'Hit Me, Baby, One More Time!'" Upon the decisively questioning look Natalie gave him, complete with her leaning slightly away from him, he stuck his elongated nose in the air and spoke huffily, "That's what it was called, you know."
"Of course," she replied kindly. "I'm just horrifically mortified that you said it so loudly when looking at me."
--
Chamomile smiled when he returned, cigarette hanging, nearly forgotten, from where he held it clutched betwixt a pair of knuckles, fingers curved slightly inward as if to protect the warm end. He looked admittedly angry, the sort meant for no one but the person sharing the expression, and he studied with a sour twist of his lips the thickly charred whatever-it-was on the grill. Still maintaining that intimidating look, he turned and bent his knees, grasping one of the many trashcans lining the back of the bar and standing with an aloof air. He lifted his free hand and slipped the cigarette back through his lips, tightening his jaw around it.
"How did it go?" she asked meekly, almost pulling back from the slowly burning aura he was radiating. Joel beside her poured with a barely shaking hand another glass of whiskey for himself, his eyes just a bit blearier than earlier.
"Before or after I made a complete jackass of myself?" He scraped away the burnt remnants of what might have been shrimp with the blunted side of the spatula he gripped, shepherding the distastefully crispy seafood into the trashcan he held firmly in his other hand. The ringing thumps that emanated from where the lumped food fell into the plastic abyss were tangible, and he had a gradually smoldering expression on his face, a tic forming in the corner of his jaw as he clenched his teeth dangerously over the cigarette. "Shit," he swore narrowly, dropping the trashcan and kicking it with admirable restraint so it slid over the boards to rest along the wall. "I could've done any number of things to impress her, and I say she has nice eyes like some tongue-tied loser? Jesus Christ!" He glowered with obvious self-hatred.
Chamomile said in a hesitant, soothing voice, "It's really not that bad, you know. As something of a girl myself, I know we like having our eyes complimented. So long as you didn't sound like you were shocked, though, I'm sure it isn't half as bad as you might think it is." She sighed and allowed Joel a brief kiss on her cheek, wrinkling her nose slightly at the smell of sour whiskey hefted on his breath. The Sandman's response was to pass the spatula's edge over the heated grill, forcing away the blackened scraps clinging to the rough surface. A thoughtless fingertip patted the ashen butt of the cigarette, sending an abrupt stream of fine grey ash tumbling from tube to shot-glass as her husky boyfriend reached for it without paying decent attention to the situation. "Joel," she started in futile warning, covering her face with one hand as he obliviously tilted the contents of the shot-glass, whiskey and all, into his mouth. "Oh, dear," she kept her hand clasped over her eyes, fingers curving in imperceptibly to grip the thin hairs of her eyebrows.
An expression of dawning comprehension, both disgusted and blanching, blossomed on his wide face and he miraculously forced it down his throat before he sputtered, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. He grabbed a napkin and spat into it, throwing his darkest sneer at the man behind the bar, as she averted her eyes and tried to ignore it. Curled eyebrow tilting as a threat, he only appeared fractionally more irritated than he had previously, this time with his aggravation directed outwards instead of internalized at himself. Taking the shot-glass, he stepped back and took in a breath of the scented smoke as Joel lunged, prepared to break the thinner man's nose. Moving to the side and sloshing a decent amount of the half-emptied bottle into the stained crystal, a flow of dark liquid through the oval mouth, The Sandman shared an unpleasant glare with the football player. "You bastard," growled Joel as unfriendly commentary.
The shot-glass was all but slammed into the bar, a spray of the fermented drink washing over one side as the whiskey lapsed into a momentary tide, and a particular nasty expression took hold of his fine european features, the tic in his jaw leaping in time with his pulse. "My evening," he said in a voice heavily lace with sinister promise, "is going to hell, I am at least three years your elder, and if you don't shut up," his caliber grew louder, edging into a furious snarl, the cigarette bobbing with inanimate agreement as his lips moved, "I will break my foot off in your goddamn ass!" He was roaring now, teeth gritted and bared as the cigarette quivered, an unholy extension of his inexplicable rage, and Joel made as if to surge up, fist clenched and elbow cocked at the ready.
"Oh, my God!" Chamomile interjected hastily, wrapping both of her arms around his to stall his motions and pointing with an urgency she did not feel to one of the shadowed corners. Several other members of the football team were obscured by the darkness cast at the feet of a string of dim lights occasionally flickering, hovering in a sickly yellow poise at the edge of electrical death as they vainly sought to expose the young men's raucous exploits. "Sweetie," she melted her violet eyes into a soft puddle that fairly gleamed loving innocence, "I think the guys are having a drinking contest without you. That's not fair, is it?"
The response was without error, a quick launch of Joel by his own part to join the unannounced alcohol chug with much hooting, slapping of backs, and the popping of tabs on generic brand beer cans. "I'll be driving," Chamomile said to the skinny cook with a long-suffering tap of fingernails over the stained counter.
"That might be wise," concurred her blonde counterpart with a thoughtful dip of his head, slips of gold hair brushing across the pale shell of his ear, his hands busy with carefully smoothing away the spilt drink via a relatively clean rag.
"Go flirt," she smiled, lifting her warming milkshake and picking the straw out of the gaping top. Gingerly testing the lukewarm vanilla, creamy texture fading into slimy liquid, she pursed her lips into a disgruntled bow before sipping at the inch or so left, swirling, in the bottom.
--
Tapping the crumbs fouling the counter with their miniscule presence, Natalie flipped them away with her fingernail, eyeing with great seriousness her aim as she managed to miss every single spot she was targeting. The only thing saving her dignity was the fact that her friend had no idea she was trying to do anything other than simply waste time awaiting the return of The Sandman, and so she continued attempting to hit at least one of the wine bottles poised elegantly in their racks. "I'm bored," she announced, missing the next crumb altogether and simply sliding the pad of her finger over the slick counter. "Say something weird so I can mock you."
"Pass the fried beans and the naked monkey, please?" suggested Ulan, leaning over and smacking with his palm three of the crumbs; they struck a bottle with soundless power, and she summoned a glower to hold momentarily on her features. "That reminds me somehow," he said as if the thought had just struck him, pulling his hand back when she pretended to slap it with her jacket, the cloth enveloped in her hands, "you know those animal rights activists? The ones that go around proclaiming how animals have every right that humans have and so on?" She nodded after a moment, settling her jacket in her lap and tucking the limp black sleeves in with the glistening leather, and he had a grave look on his face, round eyes serious and mouth pulled into a severe line. "Has any one of them ever noted how obscene it is for an animal to walk around naked? I mean, my God, if someone like Missus Walston, my sincerest apologies to her I mean no disrespect, walked around naked, can you imagine the levels of ritualistic suicide in town?" He snorted in amazement, resting his elbow on the counter and his chin, in turn, on his loose fist. "Those poor horses, no clothes or anything. It's downright shameful!"
She stared at him, one eyebrow slowly, steadily, making its way up in a lean angle toward her hairline. "I can't even make fun of that, it's so weird," she informed him affectionately, patting his shoulder in a manner that cried you poor dear, one day they'll get you help.
"I feel so alone," he whimpered, balling his eyebrows together and giving her a pitiful look.
"Don't worry," she spoke condescendingly. "There's a nice place with white ceilings and padded walls, and they have these pleasant little jackets. You won't have to be alone there."
His mood switched from mockingly depressed to mockingly reproving, and he replied, his tone fairly reeking been there, done that, "Nope. The fruit cocktails are semi-rancid. Rancid is nasty-icky-icky-gross." He made a face to illustrate his standpoint in the current topic, pulling away from his fist and uncurling his fingers to wiggle them in disgust, elbow still stiffly held on the glazed counter for balance and lack of remembering it was there.
"You said icky twice," she pointed out, placing her hand over the crumbs remaining and gently scooping them toward the inner side of the bar, pushing the fall of tiny bread off. "That's overkill."
"So is three movies starring Susan Sarandon in one year, but you don't hear anybody complaining about that," he responded intellectually, his index finger wagging as he spoke as if to further his opinion. "Well, nobody other than my mom and maybe that weirdo at the deli," he conceded after a moment, absently tucking his finger back to himself. "He freaks me out. Did you know," he changed subjects twice in the same breath of air, his words flipping from one topic back to the first, "she was also in that Children of Dune special on SciFi? She played a bitch, suitably enough."
"I like Susan Sarandon," Natalie defended, flicking away the line of crumbs that had devoutly stuck to the winding side of her palm and wrist. "She's a pretty good actress, you know. Besides, I stay away from miniseries' based on books, because they inevitably butcher the storyline."
"Eh," he shrugged, nudging his bandana back a bit with his thumb, the checkered cloth stark against his dark honey skin and the black curls, "it was decent. I think the ending was a little overly dramatized and all, but it was better than it might have been. Just imagine: Steve Kloves adapting the books by Frank Herbert. My life would be ruined."
She stared blankly at him, missing the cultural joke as he waited expectantly for commiseration, and she decided against ad-libbing her own dislike of the man, instead opting to question vaguely, "Steve Kloves?"
"He adapted the first Harry Potter movie," prodded Ulan and she brightened.
"He's the dumbass that messed up the book?" she gasped in angry realization, narrowing her eyes as he nodded in grim accompaniment. "Aren't there laws demanding he be shot publicly for such a deed?"
"Should be," he sighed, turning his head slightly to glance over the menu she had pinned under her forearm, the corner peeking away from her flared scarlet sleeve. "Here he comes," he added, and she straightened fractionally, picking the menu from beneath her arm and shaking it gently to dissuade the scant dusting of crumbs from clinging to it.
Before the tall, slender man with perfectly combed gold hair could say anything, she stabbed her hand out, fingers arched back just a bit in peaceful offering, and he stared at it, the cigarette in his mouth trailing soft apple-breathing smoke whispered into a lacing river by the air conditioning. He had paused in his introspective motions of folding his hand in the white apron pinned over his blue shirt and black jeans, using the clothed hand to wipe the upturned palm of its partner. "I got the feeling you were kind of upset when you left earlier," she said with her brightest smile as Ulan looked at her, his face clearly saying he thought she had just killed her brain and disposed of the evidence somewhere random, "so I wanted to apologize." The startling blue eye under the corkscrew eyebrow streamed over to stare at her in a form that was both unnerving and calming, and a wide grin, too delighted to be similar to Ulan's toothier one, swirled over his thin lips.
"No need to apologize," he caught her hand up anyway, fingers plying about her wrist and twisting her hand so the smooth back was facing him, "as it was my fault." He dipped his head, pressing his lips to her knuckles in a whisper of skin and mildly chapped lips, and she opened her mouth, snapping it shut as she tried to decide what possible way she could react. Pulling her hand back when he released it, a brilliant smile peaking slyly at the corner of his mouth, the faintest sliver of teeth visible between the barely split lips, he winked quickly again. "Now, what would you like to eat?"
She blinked and flipped open the menu, thankful for the distraction from her off-put mixture of annoyance and delight, streaking her finger down the listed foods in the back until she paused at one of the titles marked as an appetizer. "The dough thingie on page seven," she said, turning the menu around and sliding her pointer to angle down at it as he leaned his length over, two fingers landing on either side of his cigarette as he scanned the blurb for it. "Whatever it is," and she gave up trying to describe it, much to Ulan's slightly sadistic amusement. "Shut up," she ordered him, and he proceeded to mime cackling, holding his hand over his mouth sneakily.
"Ah!" cried The Sandman, standing straight with his forefinger and thumb in the pocket of his jeans, the apron pushed aside a little, fingers still framing his cigarette. Remembering to lower his hand, he said cheerfully, "A fun choice, that. If you will come down to the open grill, I can show you how to make it." He had a sneakily hopeful look on his face, one that seemed to be honest and somehow calculated in an emotional style, and she looked at Ulan for assistance.
He was currently engrossed in rethreading his hair-tie, the inside of his wrist turned up to face the ceiling, and was thusly no help at all.
"That sounds nice," she smiled, and she stared at the cook's back as he receded to the swinging floor-to-ceiling door that led directly to the kitchen. "He kissed my hand," she reaffirmed herself as she thought, wondering if this was something she could utilize to her advantage.
"I could've done that," Ulan replied sulkily, having decided his hair-tie was a mindlessly lost cause and useless, trying to pull his thumb from the knot it had gotten entangled with. "Crap," he groaned under his breath, slipping the hair-tie off and ripping the appendage free. He sheepishly tucked the hair-tie back over his hand, adjusting it over his wrist and keeping his nails safely away from the strings.
Natalie simply stared at him with a sympathetically saddened expression.
"I could have, but that's not to say I would have," he furthered, sliding off the stool and nudging aside several curls where they had fallen across his shoulder. "I could also very well be a transvestite at some point, but I won't."
"That's much better," she nodded, abandoning her stool as well, and she tucked her arm over her jacket, bunching the leather together and pinning it to her hip. "I suppose it's better, in any case. Transvestite?"
"First word that popped into my head," he answered, closing his eyes briefly and sniffing in an injured fashion. "No need to ridicule my absurd mental dictionary slash thesaurus."
She laughed, grabbing his arm and pulling him down the rows of stools filled with teenagers in various states of socializing, and she quickened her pace so as to reach the grill sooner. "Silly, crazy Ulan Harris," she clucked, shaking her head sadly while he crossed his eyes at her in an ill attempt at an odd glare. "So sad, so bad, oh well. At least the funny doctors in the white coats will treat him with respect and large doses of euphoric medication."
Ulan merely offered her a friendly obscene hand gesture and she gasped in mock-offense, slugging his shoulder playfully and taking the middle stool in front of the grill without looking about her. He rubbed his upper arm with a trembling lower lip and adopted the seat to her right, thumbing his nose and sharing a nasty glare with The Sandman. The slender blonde missed it completely, being consumed with his task of bringing out various materials from an unseen cabinet of unknown proportions: flour, bags of something or other, a few unlabeled boxes of what they assumed were spices.
"Um, hi," Chamomile said shyly from Natalie's left, and the duo nearly pulled muscles in their individual necks they turned so quickly. She winced and felt her smile falter just a bit at the completely frozen look on Ulan's face, finding the stubborn reserve inside to burst her smile brighter, and she looked him squarely in the face as if challenging him. "How are you both doing?" she asked firmly, and Natalie's lips slowly curved into a fractionally quelling glimpse of something.
"Perfectly fine," she said in a voice that was coated in sugar, swiveling her head around to face Ulan, who looked right back at her with a blank expression. "Aren't we, Ulan?" as she dug her elbow sharply into his arm.
"Urk?" he articulated.
Before Natalie could kill him on basic principle of male stupidity, the sound of wax paper being torn with fine expertise interrupted and she turned to see a long sheet of the waxy paper falling into place over the cooled grill. "Sorry if Pinocchio was answering an important question," he smiled disarmingly, and Ulan, checking to see if anyone could see, flipped his middle finger up, shielding it from sight of the girls. Smoothing his pale hands over the paper, forcing it to lie flatly on the metallic grill, he lifted a small ring of masking tape and quickly tore off three lengths of it. "Hey," he scowled at the one boy in the three, "set these on evenly along your side of the grill."
Pulling a notably rude face and giving it straight to The Sandman, he proceeded to do so with jerking motions; The Sandman made no attempt to hide his own single-finger salute, joining it with a sharp bite of his lower lip and a lowering of his visible eyebrow. "Done," Ulan all but sneered, resting his arms on the thin stretch of counter before the grill took completely over the side. "Peachy?"
A particularly dirty word followed that caused Chamomile to slap her hands over her ears and Natalie to pinch her nose as if commenting it was odorous.
"Right back up yours," replied Ulan congenially, folding his hands together, fingers weaving over one another. "And then some, just for the hell of it."
The flour was dumped over the waxen paper, a mentally measured cascade of the clumpy ivory that was cut off with a careful jerk of the bag up, leaving a small hill of it resting plainly on the paper. He folded the bag up quickly, ripping away a strip of the masking tape and attaching it to hold the heavy bag closed, and shifted it to the side, on the shelf under the counter. "Switch seats with the lady," he demanded of Ulan. "If something should spill, I would prefer it land on you instead of the lovely Natalie."
"Oh, isn't that sweet?" Natalie said brightly, smiling prettily at the cook and twisting about to share it with Ulan. He was nowhere near as welcoming of it as The Sandman had been, and he, disgruntled, jumped from his stool, shoes squeaking audibly on the floor as he exchanged positions with her. "Thank-you so much," she continued in her sugary voice. "After all, this is my sister's dress, and I could never live with myself if anything got on it."
"So selfless!" commented the cook, a twitching grin on his lips, and he scattered some of the spices over the flour, a steady sprinkling of red and dark browns that mingled with the white when he worked his hands into it. The dry mixture was spread out a bit, and he did concede to keeping it from flickering over even Ulan, tucking the blend of delicate spices and bland flour back into a lump in the center of the paper. Shaking his powdered hands, he turned his head to the side and, gingerly grasping the tubing of his cigarette between two fingernails, dumped his cigarette into the trashcan he had kicked back over, letting it fall into the container by his foot.
"What's he doing?" Natalie leaned forward to peer into Chamomile's face; the other girl bent forward, her elbow brushing against Ulan's lower arm, and he moved hastily back to grant them easier access to one another. The Sandman, muttering something under his breath, twisted on his heel and scooped up a waiting measuring cup, filling it with steaming, clear water from the metal storage system marking where the wine rack began. He turned, holding it carefully with his other hand forming a curved base under it, and strode in his long movements back to the covered grill.
"It's basically edible clay," explained Chamomile, and she returned to her normal stance to allow Ulan room to move back. "Like Play-Do, only it tastes good."
"No burning of tongue?" asked Natalie idly.
"Of course not," The Sandman spoke indignantly, cautiously threading the water in the clenched measuring cup into the stacked blend of dry powders. Satisfied with the dampness seeping through the entirety of the miniaturized mountain, he plunged his bare hands straight into it without flinching at what surely must have been an uncomfortably heated feel by Natalie's estimations. "What kind of cook would ever serve anything so distasteful?" He scoffed, molding the mixture together as he evened out the texture and thickness, lumping it around and over in folds as it began to adopt the same overall feel to it. "I could never do such a thing," he continued with a sense of finality, bringing his side-turned palms together, squeezing up a brief fountain of the swiftly developing dough.
"That's a relief," Natalie smiled, and he looked up at her, that same tilted smile coloring his own lips. "How do you know when it's done?"
His response was to pick free a small amount of the lightly reddened dough and hand it to her, motioning with his sticky hand for her to taste it. Hesitating, she stared dubiously at it, until Ulan poked her with his finger and she, rolling her eyes, popped it unceremoniously onto her tongue, closing her mouth. The flavor was an odd quilt of sheer chewy texture and chocolate-tinted spiciness, and she worked it under her molars for a few seconds before swallowing and waiting to see if it triggered any instantaneous negative body reaction. "Is there cocoa mix in this?" she asked, feeling what little was left in her mouth and wondering slightly at it.
"Yes," he looked pleased, and she gave him a thumbs-up. "Ah, good then. Take a bit more, then, each of you. Even you," and he glared icily at Ulan, who replied with a customary flash of his tongue. "That was real mature," The Sandman snorted and the other boy shrugged, reaching up and pulling a sizable chunk of the dough free. Chamomile mirrored his actions, though her motions were a bit gentler and she took a much smaller portion of the lumped mixture as Natalie stole some.
"Not trying to be," answered Ulan, working his fingers into the dough he had stolen, shaping it distantly into a few simple shapes. "Besides, maturity is far too overrated."
"So is bachelorhood," Natalie murmured to him, winking her eye almost too quickly to be caught, and he frowned a tiny downward twitch of his pouty lips. "This is actually pretty tasty," she admitted to The Sandman in a louder voice, straightening away from her friend and looking the blue-eyed man directly in his face, her smile charming. "How much is it?"
"For someone as beautiful as you?" he sighed. "Free."
She made a show of squealing happily and nibbling at the dough, the very image of flattered femininity complete with fluttering eyelashes and peeking smile. Damn, she grinned inside.
Ulan picked distractedly at his dough, just as awkwardly as Chamomile was holding hers without showing any signs of movement. Sparing a glance at the girl he had decided was flawless and wholly perfect, in his vision, and therefore it must be a fact, he made his mind up and quickly began molding the dough. A lopsided head somewhat similar to that of a crocodile emerged, and he stuck his thumbs decisively into it for eyes, pinching his fingers and pulling down in the subtly gaping jaw for crooked teeth. Then, holding it up as he might a sacrifice, he nodded and yelled, "Holy freakin' shit, it's attacking me!"
Natalie stared, overwhelmed by the urge to either smack herself in the face, him in the face, or both and quietly exit. What she did not expect was, as he pretended his goopy creation was devouring his jugular and The Sandman said the kind of things usually not heard in polite conversation, Chamomile to start giggling.
"Maybe there is hope for you after all," she said to the back of his head as he began a relatively normal conversation with the wide-eyed girl. She bit into the dough she held in her hand, picking at the thread of it wandering down the inside of her wrist and dangerously close to her sleeve.
--
Notes: Not as much Sanji as I was going to have, but…such it is. I decided that a few conversations of admirable length I had planned on putting in at this point will be postponed for later parts and shifted around so they make more sense. Is that okay, all?
Names: No new ones that I'm aware of. (But I did have one in part two that you'll learn of later.)
Pop Culture References: Britney Spears, Susan Sarandon, SciFi, Frank Herbert and all that entails, and Harry Potter. Apparently, all were used in insults…*sweatdrops* Other than Britney Spears and a bit of Susan Sarandon's work, I personally have nothing against any. ;] Oh, yeah! And Play-Do! 0o;
Disclaimer: *sighs*
Feedback: I feel the love.
Written: April 9-12, 2003.
Revised: April 14, 2003. (One spelling mistake and a reference. Mwahahaha! I'm getting better at this. I think.)
Thanks: Ooo! Reviews! *huggles self with cuddly joy* I feel so flattered! :] SaturnOolaa, who made me feel really good about my writing (I've been trying to keep everyone characterized reasonably well and whatnot, and that helped oodles). Kaze no beru, whose reviews are fun all around (and both Zoro and Luffy will appear, but not for a while yet; I did make some very sneaky references to what they'll be in part-the-third…). And Nik! Who reviewed four times! I nearly died from sheer happiness (I loved your Tashigi introspection piece), and I apologize for not having half as much Sanji'n'Nami interaction as I wanted in this part… I think, though, everyone likes Usopp (which is excellent, as he is my favoritest OP character *winks*). :] Reading all the reviews made me feel so happy!
Next: The nightmare (really!), a trip to NYC (finally!), and some honest-to-goodness, one-on-one interaction between Sanji and Nami. Really – I swear! ;|)