DARLING FABULIST,
date & time : january 23rd, 7:00pm location : purgatory, the kitchens status : with @robyn-kane
Cairo was never the sort of woman to do things indelicately.
Even now, standing before the mouth of Purgatory’s massive kitchen sink, the bubbles that foamed there made a delicate cushion around the dirty dishes and silverware. Any other kitchen hand would have made the soap monstrous, lathered into a mountain, threatening to drip from every edge (it’s how her blonde, pig-mouthed supervisor had shown her how). But even this was art she’d learned. The bubbles glinted in the dim light, layered atop each other, shouldered their round cousins to either side; eventually, she had a wet chrysanthemum staring back at her. Cairo pulled a bowl from her pile of filth and worked a sponge around the rim. Grey sludge softened and fell, plopped into the water, spun down the drain.
If she was anywhere else, Cairo thought she might have been humming to herself. Even singing. She knew if she made a sound here, though, it could have been too nostalgic to bear. It would have conjured up a dangerous illusion of hope.
So she washed her dishes — hair pinned tight against her skull, sleeves rolled high above her elbows — and tried very hard not to imagine herself in the Concord. It wasn’t long ago she’d been afforded this privilege, of privacy. At first, she thought she’d like it. You got accustomed to the endless energy of Purgatory — to everything loud, in constant motion and color even at night when nobody really slept. Not really. Perhaps a break from that would be a breath of air. Maybe she’d be able to really think. She hadn’t taken into account that this would be the first time in months she’d be alone.
There were no devils in her ear now, no scraping plates or chatter; just the sound of her sink, filling and draining, filling and draining, her heartbeat, and her breath catching in her throat. But that was stupid! This wasn’t a time for mourning, for that raw feeling like a gutted fish.
She hadn’t lost yet.
Right?
Cairo’s grip tightened on the sink’s metal lip. She brought an arm up to her brimming eyes and left a streak of soap there.
The door opened and Cairo reached instinctively for a grimy spoon. What she was going to do with it was beyond her, but she turned swiftly to face her intruder, eyes aflame, spoon drawn. But when she saw Robyn, mop in hand — Robyn who had always offered her crooked smiles and tall tales but never any harm — Cairo let herself breathe and lowered the spoon. She slumped against the sink and sniffled.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I bet you’re getting really tired of me doing that... There’s a blue bucket by the wall over there. You can sit on it and tell me one of your stories. Tell me again, was it Ailea’s moon you visited? Or Brora’s?”
