chaotic quixotic

ghosts, defined.

an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image; or

a faint trace of something; or

a faint secondary image produced by a fault in an optical system or on a cathode ray screen, e.g., by faulty television reception or internal reflection in a mirror or camera; or

a pulitzer coin from 2000 wrapped in a satin string hot glued around it hanging off the light fixture next to her bathroom sink; or

long burning tangerine and clove scented candles as she sprays off brand lysol to intermingle the smells while keeping her windows wide open to let the city stench in; or 

a rothko-inspired mezuzah tacked to the side of her apartment door; or

mom-and-pop shops that carry hyper specific items that she can get on amazon for half the price; 

throwing grain alcohol into her wounds to clean them before crashing into bed; or

old make up tutorials on youtube; or

looking into the mirror and seeing her mother, older, blonder, and blinking awake; or

legacy, defined. 

an amount of money or property left to someone in a will; or

an applicant to a particular college or university who is regarded preferentially because a parent or other relative attended the same institution; or

a worn out orange nike box, the coronados label almost washed off in it's age. it was from before— when nadia was a child and all she knew was her mother singing was a distraction and she smelt of oranges and disinfectant and her father was always gone until he was all she had and he left her in an office in austria with the orange nike coronados box in her hands and a blue passport on top of it; or

handwritten reference letters to magazine internship programs when she was barely a sophomore in high school to big name magazines, young-old men who check in and leer on her, sharing stories of her father who was this bigger than life photojournalist who washed his hands off of her but gave her a leg up; or

goals, defined.

the object of a person's ambition or effort; or

an aim or desired result; or

a destination of a journey; or

it’s not to be here for a long time, but to be here for a good time; or

that quaalude scene in wolf of wall street; or

trauma, defined.

a deeply distressing or disturbing experience; or

physical injury; or

being born of war and excising it from her person, told that she's finally safe in the new world and then immediately seeing it immediately be proven false; or

not neglect; or

beauty needs no résumé. nadia is many, many other things aside from beautiful, but she was beautiful... and growing up poor and orphaned and desperate to be accepted, beauty was a coin she didn't think would cause consequence; or

ezra: i’ll forgive the silence if you were roaming the streets with like

ezra: a b-list jewish actor or hans starke, a jew but i just can’t prove it

ezra: you know i saved you two

ezra: u up for bagel and chill later? but chill as in like …. sitting on a couch

[ replied 2 days after ezra replies ; marked read almost immediately though ]

nadia: i fckn wish 😩

nadia: barney's 🥰 tho ? i'm going full 👵 and needing smoked white fish in my  🥯 🥂

nadia: and ur the 1 person that wont judge me rawing nova with pickles

nadia: but like yeah duh i'm not chillin with u bub. i've known u pre-harvard when u snuck eating hotdogs 

nadia: we’ll just get brunch and u can hand me my hamantaschen 

nadia: psssssst.

nadia: i know its 2 weeks late and i haven't called but u know me

staggering home drunk isn't new when it comes to nadia — it's one of the few things that she has perfected in her long and quasi-eventful life. she keeps her metrocard and four fives in her bra just for this reason. she also carries a fucking beeper like it's 1992 and she's a park avenue princess studying at horace mann who gets drunk at van cortlandt park and fucks her much older, harvard-reject, fordham pre-law boyfriend in the back of his cherry red mitsubishi lancer.

she's crazy, but she's not a fucking idiot. besides, she would have killed it in the nineties. like yeah, sure, she did kill it in the 90s. she survived the fall of communism and like fifteen different civil wars 'cause like, yugoslavia and the entire eastern block was going through it, but new york city. in the nineties. that was an event in and of itself.

she rocks the heroin chic, slightly grunge, new york street like she's being paid to do it and she knows that wearing a thrifted benetton dad coat from the 80s was just calling for trouble ( its way too big and has too many pockets ) but she doesn't really care because one of the pockets can fit her nylon prada bag.

the nylon prada bag that's about to be— "you know that's a fake right?" nadia says as she pats her side, tugging her coat closed as she pulls out the neon yellow mini-bag and holds it in her grip tightly, before she lets out a laugh and opens her arms for a hug. "penny-baby!" she wraps her arms around the other girl, tucking her face against her neck as she sways. "please don't tell me you witnessed that bloody bomb at the comedy cellar tonight too."

"NYPD!" nadia slams the palm of her hand against the, what she feels is, steel door of zed's apartment that she knows he shares with his brother, or cousin, or whatever. ( cousin — he shares it with his cousin, lev, who has stepped into the family media dynasty that zed has vehemently pushed aside. he's got issues upon issues and may be involved in the shadiest things nadia could overhear. she doesn't mess with guys that mess with rikers inmate politics. she's crazy, but she's not that crazy. ) it's a goddamn shitty chinatown apartment for a couple of russian oligarch offspring. she lives in better housing than these two, and her soviet grandfather ran a liquor store in brighton beach after defecting mother russia in the height of american anti-commie sentiment.

if anyone should be living in a gentrified converted warehouse with a view, it's the russians with the secret bank accounts in cyprus and nevis— but she doesn't really care about that right now. what she does care about is that she's got a bundle of smack that she got for a benny and a half. it kinda looks like the same stain that gustav overdosed on so she's like, trying not to take any chances because she has a podcast deadline in four days and the whole song and dance with her getting narcan from the NYFD because she overdosed would take at least a week. minimum.

the last time she overdosed she got sent to rehab and that was six weeks of her life that she'll never get back. she also lost her job, but they also kinda paid for rehab, and then she got a book deal, so she doesn't really know what lesson she should learn from that but whatever! she wants zed to test these things out so she can like shut her brain up and swim.

"open up, i've got a warrant!" she yells as she continues to aggressively knock on the door, her rings on her fingers rattling against the surface and making her fingers bruise but she's lost all feeling on them after the second edible gummy packet she ate for lunch. "NYP— c'mon!" she whines, giving up on knocking and stomping her socks and birks clad feet against the floor. "zeeeeeeeeed, open u—"

and the door swings open, "zed!" nadia beams, clapping her hands together in excitement. "i knew you wouldn't— wait. you're not zed." she says as she realises it wasn't zed who opened the door. "who the fuck are you?"

🌋- Has your muse done something stupid and not regret it?

"have you met me?" nadia smirks as she stirs her bloody mary, the split on her lip reopening. she leans back on the chair, half forgetting that it didn't have a backrest so she almost tumbles back but manages to save herself by grabbing the bottom of the chair with her already cracked acrylic nails. she also manages to save her drink, which she brings close to her mouth to sip from the metal straw. "baby, everything i do is stupid."

🕹- What does your muse do to occupy themselves when bored? 📱- Is your muse the “oversharing” type? 🏝- Could your muse survive on an uninhabited island all by themselves?

"what wouldn't i do, is the question." nadia corrects his question, almost too belligerently as she mimes her joke. "i've got a book, a podcast, and a weekly column detailing everything 've done when i'm bored..." a beat, then she laughs. "so i guess that answers your second question. the third though, eh." she shrugs. "probably. what kind of island am i getting dropped in? is it like... arue or... ?"

📇- Is your muse a gossiper?

"why? do you know something?" nadia asks with a grin. "tell me everything."

Claire loved watching her prey unravel - the nervous ticks, the hesitation and second guessing clearly read in their eyes and body language. It happened often when someone sat across her in the studio, or when she’d teased a piece of information she wasn’t supposed to know, but it never got old. And god knew she needed a little entertainment during the weekends. She thought she’d stuck her heel so far down Nadia’s grave that the young girl would crumble under the weight of it, but when she leaned into her space with a defiant comeback, Claire smiles:

that’s more like it.

“Oh, Nadia dear, is that what you really think of me?” she says in a feigned tone of hurt. She wanted to see how many buttons she could press, how far she could push her, and maybe even see what the fuss is all about that everyone else seems to see about this writer after all.

-

“aw,” nadia coos, pouting as her teeth clink against the rim of the martini glass she was drinking out from. she places the glass down on the bar— half off the the square napkin that's meant to be a cozy and half on the polished mahogany. "that almost sounds real. i guess everything is fake on tv."

the pointed exhale of a chuckle makes the barb land softer, after all everything acceptable if it's phrased as a joke. she wipes her hand off the sleeve of her coat and crosses her arms, leaning further into the bar that makes her look like she's a cat lounging on two separate pieces of furniture. her cheek resting on her shoulder as she blinks her eyes slowly.

"but like, to answer your question earlier—" nadia tilts her head back, looking at the cluster of times reporters that are pointedly doing the looking but not looking maneuver every seasoned journalist has managed to perfect even if they didn't go to columbia j school. "i was with them."

she waves at the table, winking as she hides her smile against the hood of her jacket, and turns back to claire. "jonah wanted me to embed myself in his department for a bit. my nike ramble on vulture caught their eye, 'pparently i outscooped them?" she snorts innocently. "can ya believe that? that's like you doing scene reporting all over again."

Claire let out a low chuckle at the other’s response. It was sad, really, to see the girl in front of her now. In the older woman’s opinion, Nadia was known in the business for all the wrong reasons, with a portfolio as unstable (or what Claire could only assume) as her career. She even looked unstable, and definitely looked out of place in a place like this. Claire had already said her piece on the matter, though, on the screens of hundreds of thousands to see - quite harshly if she did say so herself - that she was honestly shocked that the other wasn’t too hostile towards her tonight, as many of the victims of her rating-hounding segments were.

Something in Claire’s subconscious immediately looks down upon writing that isn’t news. Academia and fiction aside, non-news writing was never serious writing. Magazine articles, blog posts and, god those godawful podcasts… Claire could roll her eyes into the next dimension at the thought of these people calling themselves writers with their whole chest. And something about Nadia mixing a cocktail of respectable and downright embarrassing writing ticked Claire off. And everyone knows what comes next whenever that happens.

But there was something about what Nadia said - dough, and buzz and wiggling your way to the top - that caught her attention, though she wouldn’t give the other the satisfaction of acknowledging that.

When Nadia goes off about her granddad and the Rosellini rant, Claire leans against the bar and simply swirls her wine in its wide glass to get a good whiff of it, savoring the flavor that was to follow. She literally could not care less  - and did she really think that’s the topic of conversation whenever she and Nick met? Amateur. “I’m afraid that the intricate politics involved with the New York subway system wasn’t on our agenda today, sorry.” Sounding condescending as always, taking a sip from her wine. “Working on anything at them moment?” She asked, leaning into her space a little more.

-

dumb. little. blonde. nadia can almost hear the click of claire's tongue with the upspoken judgement that's rolling off her in waves. she's wearing the rainbow northface shirt under a brown hemp jacket and she's got a vintage new yorker tote hanging off her shoulder with the extended bandana straps — she's belongs here just fine.

maybe she hasn't brushed her hair in three days, or maybe that she's chewing the stuffed olives so openly that she hardly bothered getting them off the tooth pick. the little twitch she sees in claire's eyes makes the judgement worth it. it's knowing exactly what the other woman thinks about her work and her medium that makes her grin wider.

"pshaw," she lolls her head in a way that implies a no, sliding her hand back to brush her hair away from her face and her fingers visibly being caught in a tangle. she uses her elbow to push her forward, invading claire's space the same way she did to her. "ya know well enough i hardly do watchdog stories. that's more your thing. you know, when you're not too busy being churnalist click bait."