Logs:Table Eti-cat

Table Eti-cat
Dramatis Personae Kitty, Marinov
In Absentia Lucien, Carmen	2024-08-27 "If you fake die, and are secret alive, you better goddamn text me with some cryptic shit."
Location <PRV> Kitty and Marinov's Apartment {Cathaus} - Lower East Side
This high ceiling, fourth floor apartment is on its way to being well lived in. The walls are a light cream colour, the spotless hardwood floors stained a rich red-brown. The door opens into the living room, always bright with natural light coming in the windows or the glow of the twin pink rock salt lamps nestled on the one of the sills. Small succulents and other resilient, cat-safe houseplants dot the windowsills and nearby surfaces – one on the low coffee table between the faux-leather couch and the television mounted on the wall, another on a brushed-metal ladder bookshelf squeezed into a corner. There are no rugs, nothing that can collect fur, but the couch and floor are both covered in pillows. In a corner, wedged between the wall and the bookshelf, is a stack of protest signs, the majority gathered from the long year of Jackson Holland's imprisonment. On the wall opposite the television, there is a framed poster of the Cat’s Eye Nebula from an astrophysics conference. To the left of this space is a small kitchen, just large enough to fit two people in it, if one of them can walk through other people. To the right is a small hallway, leading to the washroom and two bedrooms. The nearer bedroom door has a small blue mezuzah on the doorframe, newly fastened to the wood, and a ceramic hamsa attached to the center of the door. The scent of fresh steamed rice cooling and fresher fish thawing fills the apartment — a worrisome combination in the humid city heat, maybe, but the duo working at the dining table don’t seem overly concerned about their catch. Kitty is in a baby blue striped linen short sleeve button down and cuffed jean shorts, kneeling forward from the seat of her chair as she focuses on slicing the piece of raw tuna in front of her just so with the sharp knife in her hand. "There’s a class I took when I was on exchange," Kitty is telling her companion as she sets one gorgeous (but tiny) piece of sashimi in on the plate in front of them, "that had a whole, like, unit on sushi etiquette. And tea etiquette. And a lot of cultural etiquette that, uh, I have forgotten." Is it correct to start stacking slices of fish in front of your roommate in a row? Kitty is just going for it anyway, setting aside every fourth piece or so next to a bowl of rice at her side. The more feline of the pair sniffs lightly at the air, seeming satisfied by the odour. They wear a loosely fitting grey canvas outfit, with a belt to cinch and a symmetric plunging neckline. There are several pockets down the pants, though they do not seem particularly functional, only there for the sake of a silhouette. "Do you remember any of it at least? I'd hate to think that I am theoretically being rude-- Oh shit, I've eaten sushi with Lucien, do you think he'd know? Ugh, of course he would, he probably knows all the etiquettes." They shake their head defeatedly and then make their own slice, taking great care. "Well. At least I don't eat it like some kind of feral creature, that should count for something, right?" "I think it counts," Kitty says, genuinely and brightly if not with complete confidence. "It does to me, anyway, and I’m sure it counts to your friends." She sets the knife down and wipes her hands on a damp towel, wets her hands from a bowl of water and sets to forming little rice pillows for her stack of fish. "I don’t know how much Japanese people care, anyway, they definitely said that mixing wasabi and soy sauce was rude but my friends in Tokyo did that all the time." For a moment her focus is just on nigiri-crafting, then, a little cautiously — "Have you eaten with Lucien, like, recently?" "Recently? No, I think that he's been sorta busy. With the. Disappearing? Dying? Abductions? I don't even know. I've been trying to only contact him about things that feel important." They point their knife past Kitty, as if gesturing to someone behind her. "These motherfuckers just can't stop with the dying and secretly being alive, though. Do they think I can't keep a secret? I'm plenty secretive, I'm not even on Twitter anymore. If you fake die, and are secret alive, you better goddamn text me with some cryptic shit from a burner at least." "Mmm." Kitty is looking resolutely at her piece of sushi, laying the fish on top of the rice with an abundance of care. Shifts it slightly, unsatisfied. "It seems like. A lot. For the whole family, really, like, they just got their mom back, right, and —" Wherever this was going, Kitty is not following that train of thought any further. "I’ll text you," she says after crafting another piece of nigiri, with an odd sudden seriousness. "If I — you know. Poof. What should I say?" She looks up, eyes wide. "So you know it’s me. I guess 'Hey it’s Kitty I’ve been kidnapped again' is pretty straightforward but 'Hey roomie I’m not dead' might seem more like a bad joke." Marinov is also carrying their preparation out carefully, though with less rice involved. But the presentation is important! "I can't really keep up with it, to be honest. It's a lot of family stuff to keep up with. One of them needs to write a book or something." They shakes their head and glance up towards Kitty, "I mean, I was joking. But like, you do get up to enough nonsense, that... well. Something cryptic would be aesthetically pleasing to my theoretically mourning self. Like." They pause for a few moments, expression inscrutable. "'The tiger's sure foot has caught the twisted twine.' Then maybe make a second line, I'm sure you can figure out something appropriate that rhymes with 'twine' on the fly, right?" "I don't know if I'll have time for all that in all situations," Kitty is hedging, but she's mouthing the phrase seriously under her breath. "-- 'I'm the victim of a disappearing crime'? No, that's too..." Artless? Unpoetic? Unserving of the aesthetic future!Marinov is trying to cultivate? "...it doesn't rhyme right," Kitty settles on. "I'll workshop it." She's smiling but is no less serious. "... How long do you think is normal to not hear from someone? Like. If someone went missing in your life. When do you think you'd notice." "I think it'd depend on who it was..." says Marinov. They shake their head and seem to focus more on the fish rather than looking towards Kitty. "I have a strong sense of smell, yeah? And... like, after Taylor died. Every time I'd go to Evolve, it'd smell less and less like. Him. Now, not even that is left..." They look up slowly and shake their head. "Uh. What I mean is, that's a place I go a lot, yeah? And some part of me notices when someone seems to have been missing longer than normal. So anyone who I cross paths with a lot, really, it'd be pretty quick." Kitty looks back down at her fish, plucking up one particularly perfectly even piece and putting it on Marinov's plate. Then another. She doesn't say anything for a long moment. "Guess your nose always knows," she says, breathy but not lightly. "I think... my gauge for what's normal is pretty whacked out. And I worry, like -- I've gotten so used to long absences, I don't know if I'd necessarily clock when to worry. I think I would, if it was like, you, or someone like that, but, it took me too long to realize Dad was gone-gone, you know?" Her hand presses too hard on the rice -- this piece of sushi comes out a bit lopsided. "Does that make sense?" "I feel like reality has just knocked the normality gauge right off the table. Not sure there is any kind of normal left," says Marinov, shaking their head, as they carefully squish a small pile of rice. "Your dad," they venture carefully, "I never got the impression that you kept a lot of tabs on him, yeah? He was kind of being..." Their tongue passes over their teeth. "Not keep tabsable. Some people are just easier to keep track of." "I didn't need to when he was just -- everywhere. You know? And then he wasn't and I was with my mom and busy and I just didn't, like, think." Kitty is dipping her hands into the water again (maybe a bit too much in, should she be able to get past her wrists into that bowl?) and trying again. This sushi is coming out more like a rice pancake than a rice pillow. "I don't know. I don't want to lose track of any more of my people." Kitty glances up, smiles just a touch at Marinov's efforts. "You'd send me cryptic texts, right?" Marinov shakes their head, raising their hands above the only slightly misshapen rice. They still seem to be evaluating it, when they answer, "Nah. I'd send a Drake meme, with 'Cryptic Text' as the top part and, 'Mysterious Meme' as the bottom part. Or if I didn't have time, I would send MM, which stands for Mysterious Meme, and you can make your own meme." They look up, ears perked up, "Like damn, if I'm all disappeared, you could do me a solid and save me some effort." Kitty laughs, bright and sudden and fond. "Alright, noted. I'll send you back a bespoke meme right before coming to rescue you." She sets the last piece of fish aside. "...Maybe not bespoke," she corrects, "that's more your thing. The point is..." A brief frown flits across her face, is all too soon gone again. "...is we should eat before this fish gets too warm! Itadakimasu!"