Angels and Demons

4/5/2005

07:59 PM
Logfile from GarouMUSH.

Currently in Saint Claire, it is raining lightly. The temperature is 51 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from the west at 3 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 30.16 and rising, and the relative humidity is 83 percent. The dewpoint is 46 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius.)
It is currently 19:35 Pacific Time on Tue Apr 5 2005.
Currently the moon is in the waning Crescent Moon phase (22% full).

Apt. 15(#2604RAJLh)
The apartment is muted in color, sporting cool blue Christmas lights that blink against the walls occassionally. Most of the mess that was within these walls is cleared to an extent of fair cleanliness. Furniture, it seems, is decidedly lacking save for lumpy beanbags and a puke-colored green Lay-Z-Boy gotten from the Goodwill store. There is a table, but it is a compilation of boxes, a couple of empty metal kegs and a sturdy plank of wood. The entire collection sprawls in a half-circle facing the small color TV and built in VCR, which perches against the wall atop a large metal keg. Its antenna sport aluminum wrapping, curled in some places for better reception. Below that, a Sega Dreamcast and its controllers sit neatly in a small box with games partitioned within it. The other side of the apartment contains boxes, some empty and some not. Set atop them is an old radio. Somehow, the emptiness of the apartment is still set off by little decorations and Stuff set strategically around and on the fuzzy brown carpet that sports a few cuts and scars. Amidst it all, a stamped-on smileyface rug greets the occupants and offers them to Have a Nice Day. (+view for rooms)
Contents:
Joey
Olga(#4061PJceq)
Christine
TigerCharm(#3238h)
Obvious exits:
Out  

The Gnawer ragabash's apartment is down the walkway of a very dinghy one-floor tenement complex, but it sports a relatively solid looking door. The scent of Chinese food being cooked wafts through the flat, as the ragabash prepares some dinner for the two of them and then some. Every so often, she checks on the cub, making sure that she hasn't gone and snuck out.

Christine has, somehow, coordinated an outfit from the various thrift store goods Yi offered her, an outfit whose look hovers somewhere between vintage and plain old pauper. Her hair is wet, as it has been for most of the day, considering that whenever she's gotten bored of watching the news for as-yet nonexistant news about herself, she's taken another bath or shower. She's on a beanbag. Her head is held in her hands, the white towel working down the length of her hair while she watches the TV from behind a part in it.

The door creaks open slowly, and Joey peeks in very quickly as if not wanting to let a kitten escape. A nod is given, and then she enters. Behind her is Olga, shuffle-waddling in with her bag and a creased brow upon her face. It seems like it is all business tonight, at least for now.

Yi must have a sixth sense or something, as the door opens, she turns around from the kitchen and goes to look into the common room. Spotting the two other Gnawer cliaths, she waves them in with a "Come in come in," indicates Christine, and turns back to the kitchen. Dinner smells real good.

Olga's shoes scuff against the floor, trailing the dust and dried mud of the sidewalk inside. With a heave and a sense of collapse she dumps her bag just inside the door, and hits the floor with a plastic pneumatic oof. She doesn't go any further in though than that, the woman stands in the threshold, looking around, sniffing around, soaking the place in with eyes and nose. She may have never been here before or she may simply be re-acquainting herself; at any rate she seems to be very intentionally avoiding letting her gaze fall on the girl in the beanbag chair. It does though, it must, it's inevitable, as she turns her eyes to hers she leans against the wall, precariously, like Pisa's tower. Yi gets a quick glance when she arrives and ushers them in, and a quicker smirking grin awkward and devoid of joy, and then, again, she's watching Christine.

At the sound of the door, Christine goes so still she could be another of the house's not-quite-fixed fixtures. Her eyes find Joey and Olga there in the doorway, and just now, she looks like Samara come again, at least infofar as she's got the 'baleful stare from behind the hair' look down. Very deliberately, she moves to close the part in her hair, and wrings at it with the towel.

Joey looks in at Christine first, her face a blank slate. Then she moves towards Yi, "Need any help with the food stuffs?" And upon getting closer, whispers something to her.

Joey whispers "She still real bad?"

Yi doesn't pause in her stirfrying and other bits of cooking, managing a good number of pots and pans aside from those on the electric stove. The ragabash glances to her fellow newmoon, then looks back behind her. "She has not said much all day," the CantoGnawer replies, shuffling a plate out of a stack to put the stirfried noodles into.

Olga only slowly pulls herself off the wall, straightens herself up, and pulls her headkerchief down into her hand to reveal hair no less sopping than Christine's, though its shortness and stringiness makes it less of a nuisance, it never obscures her eyes. She continues to watch her, her face changing somewhat in the harsh electric light of the main room, it makes her face plain and almost boring, here inside entirely different from the darkness and brightness of city streets at night and noon. Finally she straightens up and her voice when she speaks his dry and raspy, like she hasn't used it in a long time, or is uncertain and nervous. "How much've you told 'er?" she calls into the kitchen while proceeding forward with more hesitant feet now, approaching the cub like a small animal likely to scare, dragging her bag behind her. It scrapes against the linoleum.

Christine relaxes somewhat when the door is closed, and it's only Joey and Olga. If they're evils, at very least they're familiar ones. In one quick movement, she twists all of her hair into the towel and flips it up onto the top of her head in a makeshift turban. She gets a bit of a skittish look in her eyes at Olga's approach, mixing in there with the caution and the resentment and a couple other things, none of them pleasant.

Yi bids Joey, "Please take some of the plates out from the cupboard there. We can eat dinner here. I made enough for all." Taking the plate of heaped noodles out of kitchen, she sets it down on the makeshift table. "I felt best to wait until we have gathered together, before telling her much more than some basics. We are Garou, and she is one of us. And... all of it is real."

Joey nods to the elder Ragabash and starts getting dinnerware out. Four plates, and four sets of silverware wrapped up into napkins and set each on a plate. Her eyes drift to Christine once again and she lets out a sigh.

Olga stops on the smiley-face rug, dirty shoes without intention draw gashes across its cheeks, paint filth across its forehead. She sits down, right on the floor, still looking at Christine though there's been a definite shift of perspective as Olga is now the lower of the two; there's a nervousness to her face now though that was hidden by distance when she'd first arrived. Her bag is dumped near and, finally tearing her eyes away from the girl, she looks to it. The top is gingerly opened as if it were something sacred, an ark; and reaching inside she takes from the top a small shoddily-bound book, dog-eared and yellow-paged, with a sense about it of grimy and abusive use. The bookmark in it is a simple scrap of paper ripped at its edges. Olga looks up again, she hands the book to Christine; her words are mumbled and rough, like she doesn't want to hear them herself. "Here," the Gnawer says, taking darting glances at the girl. "Thought this'd help you through." She looks away then, immediately, afraid of whatever expression Christine might show, and she looks at Joey now as she sets out places. "Smells good, guys," she tells her with strained boisterousness, suddenly loud and showy. "Wha's for dinner?"

"Thank you. I brought my own," says Christine. Something indignant breaks over her schooled neutrality, but Christine isn't about to snub the good book. She accepts it and looks around for something--her own bag, stowed protectively under the beanbag, its strap broken and not even along the seams. She slides the Gideon's in with a more gently worn and much post-it noted King James. She stuffs the handbag back under the beanbag, and looks towards the table.

Yi answers the Gnawer elder with a small smile, "We will start with some fried noodles that I used to make for all the cubs back at my home sept." She adds the foreign name to it to the mix, even though she's fairly sure none of them quite know what she could be meaning by that. "For drinks, I have some Coke, water, tea, milk... or beer..." A pause. "Then, for dessert, I hope you don't mind, I am not so good with dessert, so it will be store bought ice cream." Where Yi managed to score cash for this feast, however, is an entirely Other story to ask after. Turning to Christine, the ragabash gestures, "Well, I believe you have heard of Olga. And she is our elder. In this case, the leader who Joey and I will answer to." A smile is passed back to the elder theurge. "Please. Eat. My teacher would tell me that we could not learn anything on an empty stomach."

Joey sets the plates down and looks between everyone. A heavy sigh escapes her throat, "I'm gonna go." She looks down then, horribly uncomfortable.

Olga's arm snaps out like a cobara's sudden strike, moving faster than one might think it could, heavy as it is and well-laden in the armour of her heavy coat. It tries to snatch the bible back from Christine's hand when the girl dismisses it and moves to set it aside, hide it in her bag; she pulls it from her and with a sense of urgency and importance, her face suddenly knitted together, she squeezes it open to where the bookmark's marked it and presses the pages apart, turning it again to Christine, text displayed right in her face. "No," she specifies as a finger digs a section of text out and holds it out to her. "_That_." Then with a heavy awkwardness she rises, one arm against the floor and the other steadying herself as she heaves up, looking over at Joey and Yi. "A'right, Jo," she says, as she moves towards Yi. "I'll see you tomorrow, eh?" Yi she doesn't answer except with a yellow-toothed smile, grateful but displaying her nervousness more plainly than she had to Christine.

Yi slowly nods at Joey, her attention diverted briefly with the second's strike from the Gnawer theurge. "Are you sure you don't want something to take with you, Joey?" she asks nevertheless.

Joey shrugs her shoulders up, "Nah, it's ok, not really hungry right now. Save me something, I'll get it later." She looks between them all, giving Olga a nod. "Come find me later okay? I'll be with the pups."

Christine flinches in surprise as Olga's hand moves out. Then she looks at the number of the psalm, not nodding--the moves her head only right and left to keep the tower of terrycloth and hair from toppling. She stares at it with dull puzzlement, and then looks away, refraining from touching it as though it might retain something of Olga's snakish energy. "Thank you," she repeats, and turns her eyes on Joey.

At Joey's refusal of food, as much as her mood, Olga's eyebrows bristle and bunch forward like two angry caterpillars, and concern is etched into the tight lines of her face. She moves clunkily around Yi, big coat still unshed, and she presses on towards the departing girl. "Yeah, a'right, Jo," she says slowly, quietly, extending her arms as she approaches, wide, looming. "Gimme a hug, though, first, eh?" she asks, voice getting slightly strained; "And I'll see you later, yeah, definitely," she adds with apology in her tone, as she squeezes the girl before leaving. She waits until Joey turns before she looks away from her, glancing back at Christine, giving her a dull "Y're welcome," touched by resentment and rounded by disappointment. "C'm'on and eat, now, Chris. S'good food, Yi went to a lot of trouble on it." She claps her arm over the woman's shoulder to show that she, at least, appreciates it, and then looks for a place to sit.

Yi falters a bit under the weight of Olga's arm, though holds up well enough. "First Share," she notes in thought to Olga before sitting herself down on a beanbag. Only a passing flicker of pain hides itself as the ragabash slides down. Looking up before Joey leaves, she gives the other newmoon a nod. "Maybe I will be able to stop by later as well." Then, turning back to Christine, she bids the girl to come forward and join them. "I promise, I will die before my cooking tastes bad."

Joey receives the hug warmly and gives one back to the elder theurge, perhaps a tighter squeeze than she had meanto to give. She pulls back then and gives her curly head a quick scratch. "Night guys, night Christine." Then the door is once more, carefully, opened and the young girl escapes into the hall.

Christine tugs her hair out of the turban and leaves the towel folded beside the Gideon's before approaching the plank of wood where the noodles are. Well, this is a hell of a mad tea party, complete with Alice, Hatter, and Hare--though now minus one Dormouse. She eyes Yi, eyes Olga, and pulls up a seat.

Olga just dumps herself onto the ground, the floor rattles beneath her as she falls. Finally her coat comes peeling off, she pries herself from it like a snake sloughing its skin, and it's left to unceremoniously fall behind her. Eschewing a chair in favour of rough-worn knees she presses herself into the table, and though she does dismiss Yi's statement of "First share," with a particularly energetic "Pff!" she doesn't offer to serve herself, waiting for the cook to dish things out. Her arms she stretches rudely across the table, letting them hang there like speed-bumps on this plywood ramp. "So uh, I guess this's time for proper introductions, eh?" she asks, glancing over at Yi, question in her eyes, like she's waiting for confirmation or approval. Stained teeth come down against her full lips, as she looks back to Christine, staring at her unnervingly but without intent. "My name's Olga Sergeevna Borodin. My people, by which I mean `us`," she explains, and a flick of her hands extends to show that she includes the cub in this `us`, "they call me Fat-Ripper, and Pigeon-Feeder, and the Grand Duchess. I'm a Theurge, that means I work with spirits, and I'm a Bone Gnawer, which makes me your kin, 'cause you are too."

Yi glances back behind her momentarily as a kettle starts to whistle, nodding with a small 'excuse me' to tend to it. When she does return, it is with three mugs of fragrant smelling herbal teas, a couple cans of Coke, and a plastic pitcher of cold water somehow balanced in all this. The drinks she sets down, and glances to the other two before deciding to do the serving. "And I am called Three-Blades, a ragabash of the Bone Gnawers. Which means, I was born on a night when the moon was it its new, completely dark phase."

Christine hears out Olga's introduction, mostly while staring at the table's unassuming noodle centerpiece. "Am I being kidnapped to be your kid? Is this like "The Face on the Milk Carton"?" She frowns. "Because I have parents and I don't even look like you." She lowers her eyes, not with any particular effort at non-confrontation, but to murmur a thanksgiving, keeping her volume privately low.

Olga does her best, now that she's sitting down and has food in front of her, to keep up a slightly more jovial mood. She takes her plate from Yi, and pauses a couple seconds over it awkwardly, like she's saying her own grace and is rather unaccustomed to the process, and when she thinks she's done she reaches a long arm out to grab a Coke, snapping it open. "Believe me," she says with a twisted smirk of a grin, like someone had grabbed her by the edge of the lips and just turned and turned, "the last thing I need's one more mouth to feed." She lets the joke, if that's what it is, settle over the table, she waits to see if it had thrown up any dust, and then she continues on. "No no," she assures the girl as she finally sets fork to noodles, twirling a slippery brown comb around it. "You're bein' kidnapped 'cause you needed to be. It's just fate, kid. Just the way things are. You believe in fate, eh?"

Christine looks towards Yi. "May I have some water, ma'am?" And to Olga: "If you don't need anybody else to feed, why don't you just ransom me?" Some of her surliness pride is breaking down in her face long enough to let her plead. "Maybe it's your fate to be locked up for twenty years." Oops, there's that surliness again.

Noodles slither into Olga's mouth like they're wriggling of their own accord, but she's very careful to make sure that none dangle out the side of her lips. It all finds its way into her cavernous mouth and she barely chews before it's all being choked down. The offence at the edges of her face is well hidden, she disperses it, chases it away with an easy fake smile and a tilt of her head. "If money's what I cared about, Chris, I wouldn' be wearing clothing pulled out of a dumpster," she says with more sharpness than intended but with less than it would if she weren't minding her temper. "You mind if I call you Chris? So maybe that is my fate. If so, so. The important thing isn't to fight what's happening, it's to work with in it. But, that doesn' matter." With a stretch of her arm and another scoop of noodles the woman prepares to move on to another topic. "You shown her any, ah, `proof`, yet, Three-Blades?" she asks with a quick and steady twist of her head over towards the other woman.

Yi lifts the pitcher, only to realize she doesn't have a cup to pour water into. "I'll be right back with another cup," she notes, standing and making her way back to the kitchen quickly. It's not more than a moment or two before she returns, sits, and pours out. "She changed on her own yesterday, after Joey showed her. I am a little curious," she says whilst finishing the pour, "about your reaction to that."

Christine says testily, "It's not Chris--it's Christine, and if Joey's been spying on me this whole time, you should probably know that." Christine, on the other hand, isn't minding her temper at all. As little used to /having/ a temper as she is, that isn't something that's going to come naturally. She digs her fork into her noodles and flushes faintly.

Olga watches Christine, while she listens to Yi; she sits there stock-still for some seconds before takes another sloppy forkful of noodles, and deposits them gingerly into her mouth. "Christine, then," she concedes, voice not quieting for the apology, so that it seems offhanded and thoughtless, "sorry, didn't mean any offence." For a couple seconds more Olga just sits on her knees watching Christine, studying her, there's a roundish and mushy kind of understanding in her eyes, until it dries and shrivels up into a strange twist of the mouth that plays across her lips, half-grimace, half-grin. "Crinos?" she asks Yi, quieting now. "Prob'ly doesn't want to talk about it."

Yi uses a fork as well, even though she seems to be a natural at chopsticks were there any. The ragabash nods once at Olga, looking back to Christine. "We aren't always spying on you. We weren't. However, we did occassionally check on you to see where you might be, because the last thing we wanted to happen to you was you to change because of an unfortunate wrong word said... and then you end up doing something horrible... to your friends." The ragabash clears her throat slightly, inserting another mouthful of noodles.

Christine takes a polite mouthful of noodles to her mouth and chews, mouth closed tight, while she watches the exchange between Yi and Olga. She swallows. "You did something to me," she says. It's ninety percent accusation, but there's a wavering uncertainty at the end that caps it with a question mark.

Olga answers her quickly, almost jumping the gun and stumbling over the girl's words in her hurry to refute the accusation, understanding well its importance: "We _saw_ somethin' in you," she specifies tightly, looking at her again, harder-eyed now, stubborn and watching. "What you are you were since you were born. It's always been there, it's always been you."

Yi shakes her head. "We did nothing. We only watched as you assumed the true form that was hidden inside." Cryptic, perhaps. "Joey and I told you before. You are a Garou. And perhaps somewhere in your blood-family, there is a Garou in there, or a few kinfolk. Maybe even one of your parents is one, and you do not know."

"Well, now it's gone," Christine protests, stabbing at her noodles, her mouth opening wide to choke out the last word. "So you can let me go, and you can't just kidnap everyone you think you "see" something in." And oh man, Olga's hard-eyed stare is going to set her off; she's getting all teary and trembly. "Something's wrong with you," she says, changing tacks. "You have disease, don't you? You're infecting people because you can't bear to go to the hospital and just deal with it."

Olga continues to watch Christine, eyes unchanged, face still as granite, still as a mask. Sensing, though, the change coming over the girl, the fear and anger welling up, she drops it suddenly onto the table, watching her still but now from below, the movement strange and limp. The cool wood against her hot cheek though seems to banish at least some of the spirits from her gaze and her face softens: "Remember what you jus' read, Chris," she says, forgetting or ignoring the girl's request to use her full name. Olga's voice, though, has grown soft and limp as the gesture which had dropped her head, she tries to soothe her and though the homeless woman's voice isn't used to it the attempt is earnest and intent. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil, for you are with me. You got nothin' to fear from us, hon."

Yi tries not to take offense, though something of what the girl says makes the ragabash tense. In consequence, she reaches over and pries open a can of Coke, drinking the liquid fast and furious with the carbonation burning down her throat lining. About half a can later, she sets it down with a swallow. "We are not sick," she says quietly afterwards. "Only that we are trying to show you, that whatever God you believe in, has done /more/ than just create the humans and animals on this land." She looks back over to the cub.

Christine is steadfast in her refusal to be soothed. But at very least, she's quieted some; the quaver in her chin and voice traded for sterner stuff. She's not exactly consistent in her attacks, but she's lot letting up either. "Did you steal that Bible? Do you even believe?" she nettles, taking her time with her words, imbuing each one with her own brand of prickliness, and as much power to wound as she can give them. "And if you like psalms, this one was in my dream. It was psalm fifty-nine, and they return at evening and howl like a dog and go round the city. But /He/ will have all the nations in derision. I'm done with my food." Her plate is half emptied of content.

Olga's face rigidifies as Christine makes assault after assault, like concrete hardening, until it looks like it's affixed to the table. Her palm goes down against the table but it isn't slapped, it makes no sound as fingertips touch wood and press and flex, pushing the woman up until she's sitting again, never once drawing her eyes away from the girl. They are fixed on her lions on meat. "I did steal that book," she says, voice quiet and thin, reedy, laced with arsenic and fearsome anger, only slightly less hidden than poison in a glass of clear water. "I thought you might need it. And I don't believe, no, not anymore; but I did once." She leans forward then, her eyes wide like saucers, and clear as glass, almost dead, a doll's empty dark soulless eyes, reflecting the light of the room but with none of their own. "Christine," she says with a voice as fragile and frigid as ice, "do not _ever_ call me a dog, don't even fucking insinuate it. We are wolves, Christine, everyone sitting here at this table."

Yi tilts back the soda can to her lips, drinking the remaining half of the soda with Alarming speed. She doesn't even burp at the end, as one might expect. But something turned her sour as well, and that can be heard with the hard crunch of the can in her tightened grip. Roughly getting up to her feet, she takes the can and her emptied plate with her towards the kitchen in a sudden and dark silence. When she returns a minute or so of running water after, the newmoon seems to have gained a better control on herself. "And what would you say, Christine, if we tell you that we are here to wage war? Because there /is/ a Devil. He is very real, and he has his demons and monsters lurking in the shadows. Just on the other side of a mirror. He waits, and chews at the Wheel of Ages, planning to stop its turning and leave this world in its sickened state." She does not sit yet, looking down at the girl. "We are not those demons, Christine. We are the so-called angels, called upon to be warriors, and to fight and protect this world."

Christine's hands tightening around the edge of the dish. She listens to each rebuttal in turn, growing alternately chastened and agitated and chastened and...when Yi's finished, it looks like she's landed on an agitated note. "I would say," she replies, drawing a breath for strength, "That Matthew would call you false prophets who come in the clothes of sheep, but in inside are ravening..." She glances at Olga, and it's unclear whether the word that comes next is an accession or an attack, or both: "Wolves. I know that the Devil exists, but if you're talking about the End, that won't be his doing."

Whatever its intention the word draws from Olga a smile equally ambiguous, amused and angry, smug and sour. She leans back into her chair, relieving some of the pressure, and her face sinks, but in so doing it loses the tightness and rapacity it had had before. Her hand comes up and her fingers drum against the wooden table like she wants to put four hard little holes in it. "Matthew's be more right than wrong, on that one," she finally bitterly admits, the words tossed out like stale mouldy breadcrumbs from her hand, with most unconcern than distaste. "But it's us, Christine. Not we," she says, stopping the drumming to jab a thick thumb between her and Yi, "but us," she clarifies further, again that thumb jerks accusingly out like it's firing bullets, this time including Christine in its spread. "You too. We're none of us angels, Christine, and there's some of us who're devils. But just like everybody else we do our fuckin' best to do more good than harm."

Yi sighs outwardly, with a look back to Olga. Some kind of understanding and agreement passes through the ragabash, as she moves to sit back down upon a beanbag. "Either way, Christine. You are what we are. If you don't believe me, you should prove it to yourself. You say you're not one, but you changed right before my eyes yesterday. The bag you held, the clothes you had, all those - they were not some thing we did to you. If you do not believe us, then you should be seeking out the truth behind everything you have seen, and everything you have heard. Instead of relying on the words in God's book. Help yourself, and he in turn helps you, is that not the way it is said?"
Olga's final words cut right past agitation, right past superficial chastening, to that little cyst of insecurities in her, the mundane ones and the supernatural all inextricably rolled up together. "No, it isn't," she says. It's obvious she's being worn down by the sheer force of the wills pitted against her. She can't think through a refutation more profound than that, and anyways, she isn't quite so eloquent when she doesn't have somebody to quote? "That is not in the Bible. May I please be excused?" She looks to Yi for this one.

Yi shrugs a shoulder up, sighing again. "Sure, but I would like you to think about what happened last night. And what we have said," she answers with a glance to the Gnawer elder once more. "I'll clean up here." Once more she is getting up to her feet, lifting and putting the beanbag aside. "Are you staying here for awhile longer, Olga? Or will you be going to see Joey?"

Olga glances down at Christine, like she's wondering whether she can trust her to stay out of too much trouble without her around, like she's wondering how much freedom she has to depart. Her eyes now are more tired than anything though at their edges, where the whites are furrowed by bright red veins, the vestiges of anger still spread like snakes. "Yeah," she answers though, slowly stretching herself up to her feet. "I should. She sounded like she needed somebody to talk to, eh?" The statement arcs up at the end, the woman in need of a little affirmation, though she doesn't wait for it. Instead she peels herself away from the table, and moves gather her bag and coat back up in her arms.

Christine picks up her plate. "Do you want me to scrape the rest of this back into the bowl?" she asks, tapping the edge of her half-filled plate with her fork. She's scrupulously civil now, when there's no faith bound up in the question. She almost physically shrugs away from Olga's gaze.

Yi looks over, and then shakes her head. "It's ok. I will clean up," the ragabash notes this time with a considerable match of civility. "Before you go, Olga, I'll give you some of this so you can take it to Joey and the others." She takes the plate from Christine gently, and the rest of the table settings save for a couple of drinks and the water pitcher.

Olga stands herself up straight as she threads her arms clumsily into her jacket. The weather outside is warm and the faux-fur trimmed coat looks stifling but as the woman squeezes herself into it she looks oddly complete, and when she ties her tattered floral bandana again around her short hair there's a sense of a soldier's completing his uniform. "Yeah, sure," she answers Yi's offer, trying to summon a smile to her face and not getting very far, just ending in twitches at the corners of her lips like the spasms of an electrified frog's leg. "It was good, Yi. Thanks." That much, at least, is genuine. The woman leans again against a wall and closes her eyes, fumbling a cigarette out of an inside pocket and placing it gingerly between her lips like it's scared; the very presence of it there seems to relax her, to ease the tension from the edges of her face. "Might as well let 'er help if she wants to, s'good for her, and you don' gotta do as much," she says casually, in mild suggestion. "I'll call Duffy and see if he can come by. A car'd be nice, eh? I think it's time to git."

Yi returns with a couple of heavy styrofoam boxes packed with food, these being slipped into a brown grocery bag with nifty handles saved from the grocery store. "Here," she offers over to Olga with a warmer smile. "Tell Joey not to be too down," she says quietly. And to Christine, she nods. "If you'd like to help, I have a cloth in the kitchen to wipe the table with."

Christine gives the dish up to Yi and walks over to the sink to rinse her hands off. She flicks the water from her hands directly into the sink, and then stands there in wait for her task, relieved when one finally comes. She disappears into the bathroom promptly and comes back with the cloth.

As soon as the food has been stuffed in Olga's ever-present garbage bag it's flung over one shoulder and she's moving off towards the front door, though not before stopping to offer Yi a squeeze on the shoulder, and a quick smirking "I'll try." Before her feet kick against the door she does call out into the kitchen, "G'bye, Christine. Take care, and try not to run Yi too ragged." Then there's a squeak and a creak and then Olga is taking her quick foot-scuffing way down the hallway, and out into the night.

"Good bye, ma'am," says Christine, her voice scrubbed of any tone. She does a thorough job of the table, and goes to the sink to dump the crumbs caught in the cloth. She doesn't watch Olga at her departure.

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