Chapter 4 - Getting in the Groove
Joey spent the weekend doing laundry, unpacking and setting up the apartment. Before she left she had set up her room and unpacked her clothes and toiletries, and getting the living room situated. Now she had a dining area near the kitchen, she had her desk and file cabinets set up near the window in the back of the apartment.
The piece de resistance, a room most people wouldn't even see, was her work room. She had the cutting table set in front of the window, her L shaped desk set in one corner with her sewing machine and serger set up. She had racks of thread hung on the all above. Cork boards and white boards placed around the room. Her dressmakers dummies were standing together over in another corner. There were bins of fabric in the closet and under the cutting table.
It was so nice to have a whole room to spread out in. She thought about before and how she was set up wherever she could find the space. How many times her projects had to be packed up and moved into the bedroom to keep the front of the house tidy for visitors. Thinking about it reminded her of Will and she sighed heavily.
She ran into Penny on the stairs when she came home from the hardware store and Penny said she could come up and help make sure the pictures were level.
Penny laughed when she showed her the box of picture frames. "Are you planning to see any wall at all?"
"Pictures are all I have left of some people," Joey said sadly.
"Oh honey I'm so sorry. I've never even asked. Woah!" Penny wooshed as she saw the first photo out of the box. It was a wedding portrait, Joey smiling brightly in a white gown. "I didn't know you were married!" Penny exclaimed, looking up at Joey, whose face was grim.
"I was. Will died a few years ago. That's when I moved to San Bernardino. I had to get away from that death trap." Joey very nearly spit the last few words. She collapsed onto the couch. "Everyone I love dies," she wailed.
"Oh honey, everyone dies, it's not because they knew you!" Penny cried, trying to reassure her, flailing for something to say.
"No you don't understand at all Penny!" Joey choked out, "My mom died when I was born. My grandparents died when I was little. My dad died when I was in high school and my best friend died right when we finally were becoming a family again." Joey's emotions were running very high and she was wild eyed, tears cascading down her face.
Penny felt so bad for even bringing it up. Both her parents were still alive. No one she was close to had ever died.
Finally Joey pulled herself together, sniffling she stood up. "I'm sorry Penny. I thought I was doing ok, but I guess all the stress of the last few weeks has really beaten me down."
Penny smiled, "Honey you've been running steady since I met you I'm not surprised it's crashing on you. Now about your pictures. Should we lay them all out in a timeline or just groups..." She trailed off, but it was what they needed to get started again. They pulled out all the pics, with Joey telling stories about the people in them, laughing sometimes and sniffling at others. In the end they all made it on the wall, Penny was amazed that they all made the trip with no broken glass and said so.
"You gotta have good packers and movers silly. Marines don't mess around." Joey laughed, "They can tetris like you wouldn't believe too."
"Were you in the military?" Penny asked quietly.
"Oh no, not me, I'd be dreadful. I like sleep and food far too much. But I love my Marines. Wills fathers is a Marine and Will joined up right after we graduated so I've been smack in the middle of all of it for years now. Will's folks, Mama Tess and Papa Ricky, took me in when my dad died, so that I could finish high school without moving.
Evie would have been happy to have me, but Gwen and Zach were little and I wanted to be with my friends." Joey smiled a little here, "I shared a room with his little sister Sam until we graduated, then he went away to boot camp and I moved up to Lubbock to go to Texas Tech. We got married the next year, but we almost never saw each other, between school and deployments. Until I finished my Bachelors and he was stationed in Twentynine Palms, that's when we finally lived together as a married couple. We didn't even have a year before he died."
"Wow," Penny muttered, "I swear I'm surrounded..." she trailed off sadly.
"What do you mean Penny?" Joey asked.
"Leonard, Sheldon and Raj are doctors. Not like medical doctors but still. And Howard like works on the space ships and stuff. Shoot Sheldon said he'd have to drop like a hundred IQ points just to be a genius." Penny railed, "I'm just a waitress, I dropped out of community college. I'm as dumb as a bag of bricks."
Joey was shocked by this statement. "Look Penny, not everyone goes to college, but that doesn't make you dumb. That makes you uneducated. That's fixable if you wanted to. You can't fix stupid," she laughed.
Penny smiled. "You are so right. I could go to school. But I want to act. That's why I moved here. It's killing me that I've been here this long and all I've done is one night in Rent, which the boys would rather lie to me about having to go to an intervention than see and The Diary of Anne Frank, above a bowling alley." Penny cried out, frustrated, "Every audition I go to all I hear is 'you're too midwestern, not blonde enough,your eyes are the wrong color'... I mean what the heck does that even mean? I can change my hair, I could even use contacts for my eyes, and it's called 'acting'," she finger quoted, "I can be whatever I need to be!"
"Do you ever model?" Joey asked Penny, cocking her head to the side, "Cause I could maybe find you work doing that. I've worked with a lot of costumers here in Southern California and they've always got an eye out for people to do photoshoots of their work. Maybe even do booth work."
"What kind of costumes do you make Joey?" Penny asked, "I've never modeled but I'm sure I could learn. I mean what do they do anyway. Wear clothes and pose, right? How hard is that? I wear clothes and look damn good all the time."
Joey chuckled, "Yeah mostly wearing the clothes is the point, but if you look like a dead fish in them no one will hire you! I make costumes for cosplayers mostly. Some halloween costumes for people willing to spend the kind of money to get a pro to design and make you a showstopper. I also do simple costumes for my small business online. That's my bread and butter. Just simple stuff, like dress up stuff for little kids. It's easy to churn out, it's simple to do and takes very little fabric."
She waved her hand towards the hall, "Do you want to see some of my work? I can show you what I'm building right now. I have to farm out the armor and other plastic stuff, but I have a friend to handle that." She winked and led Penny to the work room.
Penny's jaw dropped when she entered the work room, "Is that a female version of the Joker?", she gasped.
"Yeah. I love the gender swaps the best. I love helping a client figure out how to transfer the key concepts to another body type. I'm particularly fond of the swap I did of Ariel once. This client was built like Sheldon, maybe a little bulkier in arms and legs, he wanted to have the tail look but still be able to walk. It turned out freaking brilliant." Joey pointed out a picture on one of the corkboards.
"Oh my," Penny all but cooed. "That's hot." She fanned her face with her hand. "You know I think the boys do this kind of stuff. At like comic things. I dunno what it's called. They dressed up as all sorts of weird stuff for my Halloween party last year too."
"Oh good, perhaps I can rope them in for characters I am unfamiliar with. Having brains to pick for stuff like this is so important. Cause I'm just not into every sci-fi/fantasy/anime/video game that exists. I'd never have time for important things. Like sewing and skating! Sleep, pfft..." Joey giggled, "But seriously who has time for that!?"
"Oh the boys are into all kinds of nerdy stuff. Star Trek or Wars or whatever and comic books..." Penny explained, "Sheldon and Leonard's place has dolls and stuff and Howard has those laser swords or whatever mounted over his bed."
"Wait that weasel got you in his bedroom?" Joey's jaw dropped, "Seriously, with the creepy lines and the leer?!"
Penny back peddled heavily, "OMG no, no, no! They built this robot and he was creeping on me and I had a rough day and I let him have it over his stupid comments... so he bailed on them and their robot got it's butt kicked and I had to go convince him to rejoin the team. I mean he seriously wouldn't leave his room. Then he tried to kiss me when I apologized for being a 'b' and I straight punched his lights out."
By the end of this tale Joey was doubled over laughing hysterically with tears running down her face, gasping for air. "What I wouldn't give to have been a fly on the wall." She said between gasps, "I wanted to sock him a few times when he was helping us move."
Penny grinned, "Yeah he's super gross and icky. I don't know why he thinks that crap is okay at all."
"Well he'd better watch his mouth around me." Joey growled, "I don't take that kind of crap from anyone. My husband made sure I knew how to handle men who don't understand that I am a person and not a thing for their amusement."