Hunting Midnight • Ep 6 • Part 2: Zoo 🦞
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Part 6-2: Zoo
“Oh thank goodness you answered, Alena,” she sobbed. “I’ve been, it’s been, oh god.”
“Wha, hey, okay, it’s alright,” I said, attempting to process these strange and sudden feelings. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d shared a fierce embrace, but ‘decade’ certainly wasn’t off the table of estimates.
“I didn’t know where else to go, I hope, I hope it’s okay?” She pushed off me, holding my shoulders at arm’s length, her face trailing twin ruins of rock starlet mascara.
“It’s not not okay—what happened? C’mere, get your shit out of the hall.” I jostled past her to gather up her pink duffel bag and dragged her inside. Thankfully, the resident pets gave the strange, loud intruder some berth. I heard Lobster barking away still, but from the muffled confines of Deluxe’s room. Only the calico cat seemed unperturbed, munching away at dinner in the kitchen.
“Trent fucking broke up with me, and ditched me. Ditched me with forty bucks and took my god damn charger, it was in his suitcase, the mother-fucker,” she explained, collapsing onto a stool. I had a very serious internal debate between busting out wine or water, and opted for the less destructive of the liquids.
“Trent’s your… ex, now, I guess?” I ventured. I didn’t recognize the name, but that was nothing new.
“We were on a road trip, three days from being done, we fought last night and I woke up this morning with him, his shit and his car just gone.” She stared at the glass of water I plunked in front of her, nonplussed, evidently lost in her own version of what I’m sure she felt was a complete hellscape of a situation. My empathy struggled to fully activate, not only because of my own more pressing and literal hellscape problems but because I wanted to know where the sassy, eye-rolling, impatient chick on the TV feed had gone. Usually she knew better to try her emotional con game on me of all people, but it had been a while and we’d both been out of practice on the sibling sparring front.
According to Deluxe, I had about an hour to sort out what I could.
“So you bussed or hitched out here, and need a temporary home base,” I said.
She raised her palms up, smiled sadly and shook her head. “I know I can be a pain, man. I would’ve called, I swear. Is it okay?”
“I’m not going to turn you out onto the streets, Maive, christ. You can crash, but this isn’t technically actually my place, please keep that firmly in mind.”
“Right, shit, yeah, you said something about a roommate when you moved, uh…” She seemed to notice the interior of the condo for the first time, glancing about. “This place—well it smells kind of like a pet store, first, but second, it’s huge, Alena. Where are you working again?”
“I am unemployed. Looking into starting a restaurant.” This had been in my email to my family, along with the address, which was the only way she could’ve known where I was.
“So, like, sugar daddy?” she said, a twinkle of her signature mischief breaking through the sheen of distress. I found myself smirking, which sent a strange pang of homesickness through my chest. Maive was a pain. But it was also true that she could be a load of fun. Sometimes.
“My female roommate is well off, and supports our joint ventures, she was important in me getting through all that shit last year.” Ugly feelings wanted to lash out and wonder, for the millionth useless lap around my consciousness, where people like my sister had been during said times.
Maybe Maive had similar thoughts, or maybe she was just back to feeling sorry for herself because storm clouds re-entered her eyes, and her lip trembled. I allowed my special reserve of demon-induced anxiety to push aside my past-induced anxiety and tried to come up with something to lighten the situation.
“So more like, sugar momma,” I said, with an exaggerated wink. Maive snickered and her clouds faded a little, and I hoped Deluxe wasn’t eavesdropping.
There was a beat of awkward silence, now that all the most important stuff seemed out of the way. Luckily, a Lobster got curious and flew into the room and onto the counter, which nearly toppled my sister in surprise.
“Ah, yes, you mentioned the smell,” I said. “My roommate is also fond of pets. Lots and lots of pets. You’re not recently allergic to anything, hm?”
Maive blinked at the bird, who went about pecking surfaces for crumbs and occasionally eyeballing her. “I don’t think?” she said.
“Good, ‘cause if you’re gonna crash, you’re also going to be pet-sitting times twenty or so. They’re generally all well behaved, even the snakes.”
“Snakes.”
“Oh yeah. I’ve got about an hour, and then Deluxe—that’s the roomie—myself and her friend are off to an important restaurant business meeting. You cool with that? There’s wine.”
“Thank fuck for that. I guess I have no choice. Seriously, snakes?”
“She’ll cage ‘em up. There’s also like five more birds, one’s a parrot, two cats—a shy one and a friendly one, one pooch who you probably heard. Three iguanas, two snakes, a cuttlefish, some geckos, aquariums, a real lobster, uhm… probably missing a few.”
“Why wouldn’t it be a real lobster?” asked Maive, who was twisting slowly on her chair, scanning the kitchen, possibly for hidden reptiles, more likely for the aforementioned wine.
“Hm? Oh. I mean because, well, you see every single one of these animals is named Lobster.”
She cocked her head back at me, a single smooth eyebrow arched high, an early stage grin percolating at the corner of her lip. I stared back, deadpan, trying not to laugh. But she cracked up first, which got me going.
“I’m serious, I’m not bullshitting, I swear,” I said, snorting through giggles.
“I need to meet this roommate, like, pronto,” said Maive.
“Yeah, definitely, uh… soon. They’re busy?” It was true, and I let Maive’s perky expression of acknowledgment of my insinuation pass uncontested. Easier to sell the lie that way, I supposed.
She sighed, finally took a sip of the water, and said, “Well. I can feed a cat. Birds too I guess. I need to find a charger and figure out getting home eventually, but maybe we can, you know, catch up a bit more? Crime of opportunity, hm?”
“I’d like that,” I said, pleased to find that I was actually sincere. Knowing that it was probably not going to happen (this time because of my impending doom versus her typical flightiness) birthed a strange breed of frustration. It felt like I’d been ripped off in advance, like only being told of a sweet concert after it had already been sold out, or something like that.
“Rock ‘n’ roll,” she said. “You mentioned wine, yeah?”
I still had forty-five minutes. With some pinot noir and a quiet living room maybe I could carve out the coles notes version of a family reunion.
“That I did,” I said. “Let’s get a glass and I’ll tour you around my zoo.”
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Twould be fun to have roommate like this though 😂
Glad to see another episode after so long. Maive can house sit but I'm not sure how Alena and Deluxe can leave without clothes and other necessities. 🤔🤔🤔
Little sis got there just in time :) ... I hope she learns to like snakes! It still feels like the timing was too perfect, and something is up.
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