Logs:Out of the Frying Pan

Out of the Frying Pan
Dramatis Personae Polaris, Wendy
In Absentia	2022-05-11 "That seems -- complicated. Emotionally."
Location <NYC> Polaris, Wendy, and Winona's Apartment - Lower East Side
This tiny apartment is on the fifth storey of an aging and ill-maintained walk-up, its walls dingy and paper-thin. The living room immediately inside the entrance has space for a couch and a coffee table, but little else, though its windows offer a commanding view of the narrow side street below to anyone who cranes far enough to look past the rusting fire escape. The kitchen is tiny and has no windows at all, but being partly open to the living area is at least not completely claustrophobic. One bedroom is almost the size of the living room, which doesn't say much, and the other is much smaller -- really only intended as a study or home office -- to make room for the single closet-sized bathroom. Even with mostly cheap, second-hand furniture, the place has grown steadily more homey over the months. A creaky futon is flanked by an empty food service drum on one side and two stacked milk crates on the other. In place of a coffee table is a long, low bench with a flowery sarong as a tablecloth. Potted herbs line the windowsills, and whimsical metal sculptures line the walls and tables (or the items serving in place of them). A brightly colorful fused glass mezuzah is mounted in the doorway, while a set of matching candlesticks and goblet sit on a disintegrating radiator cabinet in the living room. Ryan Black's "Liftoff" is playing on a Bluetooth speaker puck in the apartment's little kitchen, where Polaris is chopping potatoes. She's wearing a cropped pink blouse with cap sleeves, the top two buttons undone, showing just a bit of midriff above the waistband of her rainbow pastel plaid skirt. "In your arms I'm safe and sound," she's belting along to the recording as she dumps the latest batch of potatoes into soup pot to join the sauteed leeks there, "flying's just falling and missing the ground." There's a thump and a jangle outside the door. Wendy is a little sweaty and a little droopy as she wrangles her bicycle back inside, hoisting it up to hang on a wall rack. She toes off her sandals and peels off the gauzy blouse she's been wearing, leaving her in a pink tank and long green-and-yellow skirt. She drifts over to the kitchen, sniffing at the soup pot and then going to wash her hands. "How small do you want these?" She's plucking some red bell peppers off the counter, rinsing them before she begins gutting their seeds. "Did you hear bitcoin crashed so hard that Adams's first paycheck was negative." "Heeey!" If Polaris had sounded bright and chipper singing just before, she sounds even more so now. "Uhh, just like. Loosely diced I guess? Thanks!" She takes the remainder of the potatoes and starts cutting them up, too. "Oh yeah, it's amazing. Over-under bets on how long it takes the disaffected cryptobros to form their own like. Fascist party?" She pauses, tapping her knife idly against the cutting board, frowning thoughtfully. "Or seize control of an existing one, I guess. The Libertarians weren't doing anything with theirs, were they?" "There's enough overlap there already it wouldn't take much." Wendy starts cutting up the peppers, slow and methodical. "You're very excited about this soup." "I know right? Well, at least they'll be broke fascists." Polaris looks up from her task--fortunately remembering to stop chopping, too--with a quicksilver smile. "I mean. My potato-leek soup is the bomb. Well, okay, and...you're probably gonna think I'm being crazy, but like..." She looks down and resumes chopping. "I'm in love again." Wendy's hand freezes mid-chop. Her eyes fix on the half-diced strips of pepper in front of her, then slowly lift to Polaris. "Please tell me you're not going to say with Hive." Polaris sighs, deflating just a little. "I'm guessing it doesn't make things any better if I say Hive and DJ?" She only looks up at Wendy after she says this, eyes just a little too wide. "Oh -- oh, Polaris --" There's something a little less than gruntled in Wendy's tone. She turns a deep frown down to her vegetables. "I mean, they're -- they're lovely people, just -- are you sure this isn't --" Her lips compress. "That seems -- complicated. Emotionally." Polaris winces slightly, biting down on her lower lip. "I know. I've known for a while, and I tried not to, Wendy, I really tried, and it isn't just--" She struggles for a moment, searching for words. "It's not because of Dawson, okay?" "No? Polaris, that's his doppelganger and Hive was -- was him, how can it not..." Wendy's hand tightens around the handle of her knife, her chopping getting more rapid and erratic. "Do they -- are you -- have you told them that..." She bites down on her lip. "What comes next?" Polaris gives a reluctant nod. "Okay, okay. I'm not saying Dawson had nothing to do with it." She dumps the rest of the potatoes into the pot and clicks the burner on beneath it. "They are both profoundly connected to Dawson, and some of the same things that drew me to him also draws me to them, but my point was I'm not trying to replace him." She washes the knife and pats it dry but holds on to it, fidgeting. "They reciprocate. And like, this isn't simple, for any of us but...we're talking about it, you know?" "Okay. Okay." Wendy still sounds exceedingly uncertain. "This just feels like it could go really badly for -- all of you. But if you're talking that's better than..." She trails off, looking up suddenly with wider eyes. "Does this mean you're going to join DJ's cult?" "It could, I know." Polaris adds another cup of water to the soup pot, then another, before settling the lid on it. "We all know, and maybe it is a bad idea, and anyway it's not a--" She makes a low, frustrated noise. "You know it's the fucking evangelicals who push that 'cult' bullshit, right? DJ's theology--our theology rejects the hatred that the Church peddles." She's pacing out into the dining area, hands tucked under opposing arms. "Cuz we want to try and do better by each other and the world. If you want to call that joining a cult, then yeah." Wendy's lips clamp shut tight. She finishes cutting the rest of the pepper and sets the knife down on the cutting board. "The hatred the Church peddles? You mean the Church you leaped to joined because you fell for Dawson? And now, what? New Dawson, new religion? Can you not see how this is --" She makes a small frustrated noise in the back of her throat. Polaris stops pacing, a flash of fury passing over her face. "Yeah, alright. Sorry. I found love and faith in ways I never thought possible and they both came attached to a fucked up institution." The pacing resumes, quicker, more frenetic. "But I never denied that, and I never stopped speaking up about it, and yeah. If DJ hadn't shown up? Maybe I couldn't have kept going when hardly a soul would fucking listen much less stand up for me." She shoves her hands beneath opposing arms, shoulders hunching. "And the fact that I really, really wanna say 'his testimony is strong' probably does not help my case here, but we are creating something extraordinary." Wendy's expression has just shuttered. She washes her knife off in silence and drops it into the drying rack. "Alright." It's a little terse, her shoulders tight. She skirts back out of the kitchen to get her blouse, pulling it back on over her tank top. "I'm glad you found love. I really do hope it works out for you." Polaris scrubs her face with both hands, pulling a breath in quick and letting it out slow. "Don't--do this, please I don't know how to--" Her shoulders drop down and her jaw tightens again. "I don't wanna push you farther away. I know this whole Mormon thing has been--" She rotates one hand vaguely in the air. "I just...thought you'd be relieved I was moving away from the Church." Wendy is going to get her bike back down off its rack, but stops short, turning back to face Polaris. "I would be relieved if you were moving away from the Church! Not -- not getting dragged further into -- whatever this is! DJ starting some fundamentalist compound with a gaggle of spouses, that definitely sounds like something that shouldn't worry me at all. It's your life and you can live it how you want but that doesn't mean I have to be comfortable with where you're going." Polaris doesn't reply at once, but the scrunch of her eyebrows is more thoughtful than frustrated now. "Okay, when you put it that way, I...yeah. But there are a lot of religious communes out there, this isn't like, Heaven's Gate.." She leans back against the end of the kitchen counter. "Will you at least consider coming with me to a meeting--a home one, not the chapel? I'm not," she adds solemnly, "trying to convert you it's just--it's not as crazy as it sounds, I swear." Wendy's brows scrunch in Mirror of Polaris's. She exhales a long, slow breath, toying with the end of her braid. "I could come to a meeting," she concedes reluctantly. "But if anyone tries converting me I'm getting right out."