[Stella] She’s not working today. Not because it’s the Lord’s day or anything, but because even those who exist on the fringes of society and don’t have much of a say in the way their lives work even if this is the exact same path they had been warned away from and have taken anyway, and it’s her goddamn day off. So she isn’t wearing the ankle-snapping platform heels or the ass-flashing vinyl skirt or the sparkly back-baring tank top; her hair isn’t allowed to push every which way in exploding corkscrews but is contained under a red bandanna. She’s wearing a skin-tight yellow baby doll t-shirt, short dark-washed denim shorts, and stark white canvas sneakers.
Over her shoulder is slung quite possibly the world’s largest handbag, dark brown leather and containing Christ knows how many pieces of clothing, how many books, how large of a wallet. It looks like it’s half her size. She’s 5’4″ in those thick-soled sneakers, 105 pounds soaking wet, and smoking a cigarette, strolling along with a cellphone pressed between her ear and her shoulder.
“Look, bray,” she says, her accent an acquired chicano staccato shot through with her native New York. She walks as though she knows this park well and has her cigarette lodged between her bare lips as she speaks. “He was s’posed to meet me here like an hour ago an I ain’t seen his ugly mug yet… yeah, he was s’posed to! He’s your friend, I don’t want nothing to do with his dumb ass… alright, whatever, I’ll talk to you later.”
Clapped shut, the girl throws her phone into the sea of her purse and plucks the cigarette from her lips, exhaling heavily.
[Maija] She worked today. She’d already put in her time, and even tried to get in a nap at the brotherhood. Unfortunately, that guy in room four decided that would be the PERFECT time to practice his drums, and all notion of sleep went out the window. Not that she’s getting much anyway – it’s been a long month, and she’s exhausted, teetering on that edge where if one. more. thing. goes. wrong… she’s going to topple over and crack into a million pieces.
It’s been THAT kind of a month.
It’s a random tree near a random path, away form random benches, but in plain view. This is where she’s chosen to sit, her threadbare jeans barely covering the ass that’s nestled between two roots, her back pressed against the bark, as if maybe the strenght of the tree will remind her of something mirrored deep within – or it would if she was the poetic sort. She ain’t. It’s just a comfortable spot to sit, unnoticed, and quick sketch people in the open journal on her lap. Her ankles are crossed, her feet encased in beat to hell boots, with a dingy, tattered, oft-washed tank top and ball cap completing the outfit. Leaning against her, a backpack, and a dingy gray sweatshirt stained with something the color of old blood. Because, you know, it is old blood.
The voice of the woman talking on the phone pulls dark eyes that direction, shadowed under the brim of her hat that’s pulled down low. She flips to a new page, and begins yet another quick sketch.
[Stella] There’s a scowl on this young woman’s pretty face as she hoists her bag higher up on one of the bony shelves of her shoulder, her head bobbing back and forth as the cadence of her own internal soundtrack works itself out and she finds the rhythm of her steps without an argument to push her along. Eventually she finds herself depositing her cigarette in one of the trash receptacles standing sentinel beside a couple-occupied bench, straying off the path, her sneakers brushing through the trimmed sprigs of grass.
No one is meeting her today, and when her phone starts to buzz in the cluttered belly of her purse she doesn’t so much ignore it as she does blindly reach inside, fish it out, and silence it without so much as a second glance. She hasn’t got one of those fancy cellular plans, doesn’t get free nights and weekends after signing away two years of her life to a company that is keeping records on her whereabouts, and she just lets the phone fall back into her bag as she walks.
Most of the trees around here have people parked under them about now. The sun is about ready to call it a day and turn the watch over to the moon but in the meantime people are trying to take advantage of what little sun there’s been today and are sprawled on blankets or sweatshirts with books and drawing pads and iPods, headphones drowning out the world. Underneath this particular tree is a young woman who isn’t quite so tuned out, working on a sketch or a laundry list or who knows what, and she looks harmless enough and she looks like she enthralled by whatever is going on in that world of hers, and so the twig-legged young woman who’d been so vocally arguing on the phone traipses over to the other side of the tree, drops her bag with a rumple, and parks her ass on the ground beneath.
She stretches out her legs, sighs, and turns her attention towards the girl trying to hide in plain view and asks, her voice unconcerned for the sanctity of others’ afternoons.
“You gonna blow me in if I light a J?” she asks. “Havin’ one of those days and my roommate’ll kill me if I smoke in the bathroom again.”
[Maija] The woman she’s currently sketching does a shift of direction, and gives Maija a clear view of her face as she walks toward her, messes with her cell, then parks her skinny ass right next to the equally if not more so due to a 2 inch height difference skinny ass of Maijas. It’s amazing hoe on 5’4, Stella looks like a skinny 110 pound girl, and on Maija’s 5’6″ frame, people would think she weighed more like 75 pounds, even if it’s the same. She looks sickly thin, and her exhaustion doesn’t help.
She doesn’t stop the sketch, even as Stella sits against the tree. She doesn’t seem to mind if the other woman notes she’s the subject of the drawing, which is – for all it’s simplicity of pen on paper – rather good. She’s captured the sharpness of her gaze, the bone structure of her face, the sweeping line of her neck.
There’s barely a pause of the scritch of pen to paper as the question is asked, and she glances over in Stella’s direction. It looks like she won’t answer a moment, until… “Depends. Ya sharin?”
Her accent gives nothing away, nothing to say where exactly she’s from. It’s a mixture of everywhere and nowhere, all wrapped up in a pretty grammatically incorrect bow.
[Maija] (ahem hoe=how. *LMAO*)
[Stella] If Stella is paying a lick of attention to what’s going on on the pad of paper on the disgustingly skinny white girl’s lap, she doesn’t say anything. Her eyes, wide and brown and inquisitive despite the weariness of her body and the poverty of her clothing, flick over to regard the girl next to her. They aren’t all that far apart in age but they both look older, and they both talk like they haven’t got much in the way of education under their belts.
Neither of them look like their self-esteem is anything to write home about if their choice in clothing is any indication, but they both have the attitude to make up for it. The kinky-haired woman crows out a laugh as the dishwater-blonde asks if she’s sharing, then reaches for her bag and hefts it onto her lap.
“As a matter of fact,” she says, smirking almost merrily, pulling a plastic baggie out and hiding it behind her purse with a flourish that is theatrical yet nevertheless clandestine, the snap! of emergence the only indication that anything has occurred, “I am!”
She sets herself to work rolling a joint, her knobby knees together while her ankles are far apart in a Lolita-esque pose that doesn’t fit her age.
“What’re you drawing?” is the next idle question. She hasn’t looked.
[Maija] “Then no.” a beat. “I ain’t turnin ya in.”
She REALLY needs to find her own connection in Chicago. She glances over at Stella again, and then back to the journal in her lap. She isn’t much for conversation on the best of days, or for making eye contact, and this is no different – but the look keep happening so as to make the sketch realistic, since the woman’s sitting right here, and all.
She asks, and there’s almost an imperceptible hesitation. Showing one’s sketchbook and facing rejection is hard enough, but when the subject happens to be the asker? Yeah. But she flips it around after a moment.
“You.”
[Stella] Focusing on what it is she’s doing, her fingers slim but not the most nimble and her attention divided once the girl on the other side of the tree decides that she wants to share what she’s working on. The nameless intruder looks up from her work and peers over at the surface of the journal.
It’s her.
The young woman regards the work for a long moment, her brow quirked with interest and the corner of her mouth kinked as though she’s regarding some puzzling work of art and not some starving girl’s interpretation of the world around her. She sniffs, allergies or something else acting up, then turns her attention back to her joint rolling and packs the thing tighter.
“Nobody’s ever drawn me before,” she says, half to herself, as she brings the rolling paper to her mouth and licks it closed. The hunt for her lighter begins in earnest. “Least if they have I ain’t ever caught ‘um.” A light “A ha!” as she retrieves the battered Zippo from the depths of her bag, and sends it over to the blonde to start. “You’re good though. What’s your name, girl?”
[Maija] “Ain’t all that.” Good, presumably. She sets the journal back on her lap once Stella’s done looking at it, and quickly adds another line here, another there, while Stella comments. She takes the joint and light, and goes about setting flame to the end of the paper wrapped weed, doing so with the ease of one well practiced at the art. She takes a quick hit to start it off, then a long slow one, and passes the lighter and J back around the tree.
Still holding, she gives a name that she may have been born with – but most likely wasn’t. It’s too easily given for one such as her to have any connection to the name at all, other than it being one chosen rather than branded. “Maija.”
Then she’s exhaling, long and slow, relaxing back against the tree in some tiny manner that likely would only be noticed by herself, not anyone else. Even now she reamins super aware of those walking by, keeping track of who is where and if they decide to come closer. None do. Yet.
[Stella] The young woman accepts the joint when it comes back her way, lit and started, and she takes a long first drag into her ready lungs, breathing in grateful and slow as the smoke fills her mouth. There’s a pause as she waits for the younger girl to have her fill of smoke and release a name into the atmosphere, a name that isn’t spelled the way it sounds.
Maija.
Without holding nearly as long as the blonde does, the shorter woman blows smoke out of her nostrils and regards the joint for a moment, allowing that first wave of euphoria and contentment to wash over her before she takes another drag and passes it back.
“I’m Stella,” she says, though she wasn’t asked, her voice choked with holding back smoke.
[Maija] She reaches for the J as it’s passed, and nods, slightly. “Pleasure.” Though it’s hard to tell if she really means it or not, as she seems to have little inflection in her voice, as if well used to not being heard, to hiding away, to not voicing her opinion on anything, lest it be the wrong thing to say.
She takes a hit, holds it, passes back as she lets her head fall back against the bark of the tree, her eyes half closing as she contemplates the contentment in her universe right this second, because it won’t last. It never does. On exhale, she murmurs idly. “Had this guy give me some payote while back- that was the shit… half a hit high, man. Lasted me forEVER…”
Course, it was awakened. But she can’t tell a stranger that, right?
[Stella] Now, Stella isn’t a psychologist or anything, but she’s dealt with people often enough and in enough situations to be able to tell that this girl has been put through the wringer. For someone who society looks at with equal parts disdain and pity, Stella seems to have enough of a command about herself and her space to choose who she will and will not share her time and her resources with, and for whatever reason she decided to park herself down next to this skinny white girl and smoke a joint with her.
It isn’t a matter of having someone around who’s worse off than she is, necessarily, but it is nice to not have her asking a dozen or so questions and thinking she’s going to be able to save her from herself just because Stella looks like the sort of girl who needs it.
People could say that about Maija, too.
Maija isn’t saying anything about saving or needing help or any of that. She is leaving her sketch be for now, and it rests face-up on her lap as she takes another hit and Stella blows hers out. A guy gave her peyote one time, and it lasted forever.
“Man, I need to meet your guy,” she says. “My girl keeps trying to get me to try C and I ain’t all about that. Shit’ll put holes in your brain, you know? Like ‘No thank you, I’ll stick with my mota.'”
[Maija] There’s a flicker of something across her face, amusement, maybe, as she lowers her head and tugs that ball cap down a little more firmly, as if just realizing the good look at her face she’d given just about anyone nearby. Mackenize says she ain’t have to hide no more, but some things are so ingrained, so beat into you, that ya just do what ya gotta do. Maybe someday she’ll figure it out, maybe some dayy she’ll figure out how to be happy, and show it.
Not today.
“That shit’s fucked. What’s worse is this legal shit – some herb? ya fuckin smoke it like this, and it gives ya all these fuckin hallucinations n’ shit. Perfectly legal, but fucks ya up hard. I’m content jus’ with good ole MJ, ya know?”
She don’t say anything about meeting her guy, because well, that’d be interesting to say the least. Her guy happens to be a wolf. And pop fur n fang, and be like one of only 2 or 3 that she feels comfortable with. The other’s are dead and/or gone. “Ain’t gotta steady connect round here yet. Jus’ bum it off strangers.”
There’s that flicker of amusement again, the barest lift at the corner of her lips, there and gone so fast that it’s very easily missed.
[Stella] And so it goes back and forth between them, a few words here and there about hallucinogenic drugs and shit that neither of them want anything to do with, the joint shared as though there is a camaraderie to be found amongst smokers.
She just has to bum it off strangers.
That makes Stella laugh a slow, lazy laugh, the THC apparently kicking in quickly for this young woman. Or else she hasn’t got the tolerance, or the stamina, or else this shit is just particularly good. It doesn’t have a biting stench as it turns to smoke and it drifts over their heads in lazy formation, pungent and sticky.
“I could give her your number,” she says. “She wouldn’t think it was too funny if I gave you hers but if I let her know you’re looking for someone she probably won’t flip too hard. I live with her, so if she does flip I can just threaten to kick her out.” The thought makes her laugh another lazy laugh.
[Maija] She has stamina, but not so much that she isn’t feeling the content fog of THC thrumming through her skinny ass frame. Her hand falls to rest lazily on her journal, but she doesn’t put pen to paper again just yet. She seems pretty content to just sit there in a pungent and sticky fog.
“That’d work, cept…” a pause, as she turns her head to watch someone walk along the path, then back to look at Stella. Her expression deadpan, though if one looks hard enough now, with her guard sufficiantly lowered by THC, there’s amusement hovering about the corner of her lips. “Ain’t got one. A number, that is.”
She shrugs, slightly. Can’t afford a cell, even a prepaid bit, and there’s none who’d wanna call her anyway, so it’s a pointless exercise in low self-esteem.
[Stella] “Seriously?”
Stella looks at her with a stunned expression kept in check by some sense of decency lurking inside of her. It isn’t so much sympathy that keeps her from continuing that line of questioning but a lack of really wanting to know any more. Her brow is furrowed for a moment, but it quickly dissipates.
“Well that’ll make shit tricky.”
[Maija] A shoulder lifts into the barest of shrugs as Stella’s shock washes over her. “Ain’t no need for one. I live right over where I work.” And since there are no questions, she doesn’t say anything further than that about her living conditions, her arrangements. After all, Stella could be related to some asshole who pops fur and claw and hates blonds. It happens.
“S’all good. I find loiterin under trees brings strangers bearin weed more often then ya’d think..” She lets loose a huff of breath that might, should it have permission to fully come to life, be amusement. It doesn’t have such permission, and it passes.
[Stella] “Now,” she prefaces her next statement, said around a lungful of smoke, “I ain’t usually this charitable–” Smoke is blown to the wind, carted over their heads. Nobody gives a shit that they’re smoking weed on the Lord’s day in this park. Hell, there’s a couple under a blanket a few yards away who look like they’re up to no good themselves; Stella isn’t paying them any mind, either. “–but if you want I can give you my number and when you need something you can like call from a pay phone or somethin’. Unless you’re happy waiting for people to come by your tree.”
[Maija] No one gives a shit, as there are plenty other folks in the park up to all kinds of no good – including that couple over there, the drunk bum across the way, and random strangers connecting in the bushes for a quick wham bam thank ya ma’am. Stella ain’t normally so charitable, and that brings a brief smirk across her lips – flitting past so quickly it’s hard to catch.
“That’d be cool. An if ya come by some morning at The Brotherhood, I’ll spot ya a plate of whatever ya want.” Tit for Tat, so to speak.
[Stella] That’d be cool.
“Alriiight,” she smiles, and passes what’s left of the joint to Maija as she reaches into that monstrosity of a bag and digs for a pad of Post-It notes and a pen. Both are found in record time with only a scarf, a few playing cards and a coffee mug being displaced. She scrawls out her name and number in loopy hand-writing, then eases the Post-It free and hands it to Maija as she climbs to her feet.
“I work from like eight o’clock at night until about four in the morning, so like, I ain’t gonna answer if you call before noon.” Dusting off the seat of her jeans and turning to face Maija straight on, she gives a lighthearted facial shrug and adds, “But I’ll take you up on that. Where’s this place?”
[Maija] She nods, and take the tail end of the Joint, while Stella writes down her number. Once she gets it, she places it in the journal under Stella’s sketch and closes the book. “I cover dishes from bout 7 to 3 or 4 or so… sometimes double shiftin it. If I ain’t in the kitchen, as the bartender an’ he’ll send someone to see if I’m around.”
Which she is, 9 times outa 10. “S’called the Brotherhood of Thieves. S’in the ‘Green. Serves all kindsa good food all day long – bound ta be somethin ya like.”
And if she finds it odd that Stella works graveyard shifts, she makes no mention of it. She’s done every odd job known to man herself, no matter what the hours entailed. Ya do what ya gotta do.
[Stella] “Alright girl,” she says, extending her right hand not to shake but to slap a high five, “good meeting you. I’ll stop by soon. Stay outta trouble!”
Giggling at that, she turns around, nearly trips over her own feet, and starts off in the direction she had been coming before stopping off under the tree, hefting that impossibly loaded bag up on her shoulder and singing to herself.
Her phone goes off again a moment later.
“Mother fucker…”
[Maija] She lifts that hand, and gets the high five from the girl as she moves on and tells her to stay outa trouble. “Yeah, alright.” She says – it’s her standard reply to most anything, fits in a lot of situations.
And she watches the small girl go, with the oversized bag, and cussing at her phone. All the more reason not to get one! After a bit, Maija makes sure that joint is out, saving the last bit for later, and starts her way back to the brothehood. Maybe Alex is done practiicing, now. One can only hope.
[Stella] [Wrap!]