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The “A” Shelves

Feb16

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of

📻
The tension in the store was thick and uncomfortable. Jordan was unhappy, and Mrs. Gent was getting back-straight and glowering, like our neighbor down the street that liked to count heads as we left and frown at the number of people who lived in our three-bedroom house.

I didn’t know what to do about it, either. Jordan was in charge of smoothing situations over. I was pretty good at putting my foot in it, but that was about it. Making it better generally involved lots of apologies. I didn’t think I had anything to apologize for, but it was worth a try, wasn’t it?

“I’m sor-”

The floor shook, the items on the shelves rattling. “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Gent frowned. “This is not a very good time.” She turned towards me and Jordan with a careful smile. “If you two could take your lemonade and go into the aisle labelled ‘A,’ please? I think that would be the safest place.”

“Safest?” Jordan snapped, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue anymore. I picked up my tea.

“A is which way?” I asked, talking over whatever Jordan was going to say next.

“That way, thank you,” Mrs. Gent gestured. “Past the radios and behind the coffee makers.”

“Thanks,” I said, laying it on maybe a little thick. “Come on, Jordan, you heard the lady.” Past the radios, that was easy, and we turned left, following her gesture, to find another row of shelves at a right angle to the first set. Candelabras, squiggle-circle-dot-squiggle (looked like fancier, smaller candelabras), 15849(23-09) (looked like long pieces of steel in various shapes and sizes)… there were coffee makers, although they were labelled in French. Close enough!

We headed “behind” that shelf, which meant around, and there indeed was another aisle labelled “A,” appearing to be at right angles to le cafe makier shelf.

“A” seemed to start with a stack of abaci, from bright children’s beaded toys – we should get one of those, I thought, for the beansprout at home – to ancient-looking counting racks with characters painted on the beads. Then were adzes, many of them looking practically stone-age, hung on a rack with their sharp edges dangling free.

The building shook again there, and, as all those cutting edges swayed near us, I wondered a bit at Mrs. Gent’s definition of “safe.” We had, after all, gotten her sort of annoyed.

Jordan seemed barely fazed, staring at a single acorn, packaged as if it were something really expensive, nestled in azure silk in a maple-bole box and placed between stacks of katana. “What is this place?”

“It’s Mr. Ting’s,” I answered helpfully. It wasn’t the altimeters that were getting me, it was the collection of vases labelled “ἀγγείον.” “And they figure the alphabet differently here.”

“They figure lots of alphabets, I’d guess,” she murmured, picking a narrow box off the shelf. It was rusted on the corners, but a pin-up painting of something with more tentacles than body was still clear and bright on its cover. “And… lots of different clients, too.”

📻

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Differences of Opinion

Feb10

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of

🔖

Mrs. Gent was either very easy to flatter, or she simply liked to play the game. She giggled happily at me. “You’re too sweet, dear. Thank you so much.”

“Thank you,” Jordan tried, and, after another moment sipping lemonade, “I don’t see prices on anything?”

“Oh, Mr. Ting sets all the prices when he sees the customer,” she chuckled, as if Jordan had said something silly. “You can’t just write prices on a shelf and expect them to be right all the time. As it is, sometimes we have to change our labels.”

“The labels, really?” That startled me, and Jordan was still stewing over the price thing. “I see some of them aren’t in English.”

“But some of them are,” she snapped. I’d hit an invisible nerve. “And what you need will be labeled for you, and priced for you, by Mr. Ting.”

“He sounds like a very hands-on guy.” So now Jordan was pissed, and Mrs. Gent was pissed, and I was feeling under fire for no good reason, which, yes, I’ll admit it, made me feel kinda pissed off too.

“He is,” Mrs. Gent answered coolly. “He prefers to handle each of his customers with the individual attention they deserve, whatever language they speak.”

“So, wait.” The language thing had clearly tweaked her, but I really didn’t understand why. “You’re saying that the signs are in the languages of the people who might need them? Ma’am.” I didn’t want to get kicked out before we’d had a chance to ask Mr. Ting for an air conditioner. I really, really didn’t want to go home without one.

“Yes, exactly. How else would you do it?”

“Uh…” Jordan frowned. “Generally, stores that we go into around here – that is, in this city – have signs in the language of the neighborhood, or just in English, or both. And the price is the same for everyone.” That part was added sharply. None of this “pricing for the customer.” I think it stunk of prejudice for Jordan; I know it smelled a little bit like that for me.

“What a strange way to do business,” Mrs. Gent complained. “But then, if you don’t read English, or whatever this language of the neighborhood is, then how do you shop?”

“With practice?” I spent a lot of time shopping in Asian food markets; I knew how this worked. “Or buy pointing and gesturing.”

“It seems very inefficient. And the prices?”

“The same for everyone,” Jordan repeated.

“So for you two and, for example, a … what is the word… fat-cat businessman, the same price for a radio?”

“The same.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” she frowned. “When Mr. Ting returns, perhaps I shall go looking at these stores. But in the meantime,” she said firmly, “you are in our store, and our store does not work that way.”

“I see.” Jordan looked with a frown at the lemonade. “We are.” We exchanged a short glance: we were, more or less, stuck with this. We needed that air conditioner.
🔖

Next is The “A” Shelves!

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Mrs. Gent’s Lemonade

Feb6

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of

🍋

“Lemonade sounds nice, thanks,” Jordan said, and stepped out of my way, finally letting me see the shop. Shop? This place was a space-time warp. This place was unbelievable. This place was…

Okay. Imagine the estate sale of the most obsessive hoarder you can picture. Then imagine this being curated by the most OCD guy you know. There was everything on those shelves, shelves filling up all but the center of the store, and every single thing was labeled. Everything.

There were labels in English, labels in foreign languages, labels in foreign ALPHABETS, labels in bar-code and a few in what I think was binary. There were labels over totally ordinary things – crock pot, circa 1970. Boom Boox, Magnivox, 1980. There were labels over things that belonged in a museum, and over things I’d never heard of or seen before. And, in the center of this archive of… junk. Stuff, we’ll say, because most of it looked useful. In the center of this stuff, there was a table with a ruffled tablecloth, four chairs, and an icy pitcher of lemonade.

“Lemonade sounds great,” I agreed, with feeling. It looked like the best stuff in the world right about then, even with the strange dress-up dance.

“Then come in, sit down, and enjoy some while you wait,” she encouraged us. “I’m Mrs. Gent, by the way, pleased to meet you.”

“I’m Jordan, and this is J.J.,” Jordan took charge again. “Pleased to meet you as well, Mrs. Gent.” I trailed along behind them, reading the labels, looking at the things on the shelf, trying not to be rude but wow, this place was a treasure trove.

Canned SPAM, 1937-1997, about a cubic foot of the stuff, in at least seven languages that I could see, and, yes, one of them looked like the original can (don’t ask me how I know, okay? I have some weird hobbies).

Radios, small was right next to Radios, tiny but three shelves above Radios, large (no mediums). The small ones looked mostly like antiques, although I’m not sure a 1991 Sony Walkman should count. (I had one of those, damnit. Nothing I owned as a kid should count as an antique yet!) On the other hand, the “tiny” category, I might have needed a magnifying glass to really see properly.

“Here, you sit here, and you, dear, sit here.” That set us with our backs to the door, Jordan facing – I checked – Teapots, unusual, which included one shaped like a rooster and another one I would have pegged as a bong, and me facing документы, which appeared to be stacks and stacks of ledger books. Mrs. Gent, in turn, sat facing the front door and poured us lemonade as if it was a high Japanese tea.

“This seems like a very interesting store,” I tried, yes, after saying thank you, I’m not a total jerk.

“Oh, Mr. Ting handles all of the business,” she pooh-poohed. “I just watch the store while he’s out. And make the lemonade.”

That was a hint even I could pick up. “It’s very good lemonade, thanks. It’s just what we needed.”

🍋

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Katydid’s Camp, a story of The Fairy Town for the Giraffe CAll

Feb3

For kelkyag‘s prompt

After Loaves (LJ)

It had started with Katydid’s Kitchen. That was ambitious enough, strange enough. They’d already started calling her the Loaves-and-Fishes girl, and, Jorge had to admit, it certainly looked miraculous. Since Katydid wasn’t telling her methods, too, people just assumed magic.

In this City, Jorge pondered, everyone was magic-mad.

The crazy thing was, however she was doing it, the girl was pulling out miracles. She was feeding people who’d been starving, weaving blankets, mending tents; this little suburban kid was taking care of an entire Hooverville, and doing so with a level of tact that the social workers just couldn’t hack.

But that wasn’t enough for the girl. She’d done something, he didn’t know what, but she’d shown up one day with a stack of paperwork, and, bam, next thing he knew, she’d moved Katydid’s Kitchen two blocks north. To the factory district. To the old shoe factory, a monument to the days when industry used to be here.

And then, then, like somehow she made sense, she’d rounded up about ten of the most stable of the Hoover-villians, and put them to work. “Go get this,” she’d tell one, “go ask for that,” she’d tell another one. Pallets. Remnant fabric. Dumpstered wood, and dumpstered food. The stuff the Salvation Army threw out. Stuff off the curbs.

“Katlyn-didn’t,” Jorge asked her, when he could get a moment of her time without being sent running like an errand boy, “what in hell are you playing at?”

She looked at him, which was a plus. She hadn’t done that in a few weeks. But the look was odd, like he hadn’t gotten the memo everyone else had.

“I’m building us a house, Jorge,” she told him. “The deep cold is coming. People die out there.”

He shook his head, not understanding, but in awe anyway. When she got like this, he was learning, there was only one thing to say.

“How can I help?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/256719.html. You can comment here or there.

In Mr. Ting’s

Feb1

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of Burning Summer Quest (LJ); Part 1 of ?

“Mr. Ting knows what you need.”

I’m not sure what I was expecting. Okay, no, I know what I was expecting – Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid, or Egg Shen from Big Trouble in Little China, or Lu-Tze from Thief of Time. In short, I expected a sterotype.

I know better. But it was really, really hot, and my brain was frying like an egg.

So into Mr. Ting’s we went, feeling a little jittery, a lot sweaty, and a tiny bit hopeful. If he didn’t have what we needed (despite the sign), well, we were down to leaving the fridge open or buying ice in giant bags. Or dousing everyone in water every four minutes. I didn’t think the cats would like that.

The store windows had been covered over with paper, so walking in, we were going in blind, accompanied by the sound of loudly jangling windchimes hitting the back of the door. Jordan headed in first; I took up the rear, nervously-if-ridiculously checking to see if we were observed. We weren’t; nobody else was dumb enough to be out in weather like this.

So at first, all I could see of the store was Jordan’s paused, tense shoulderblades sticking to the thinnest T-shirt possible. I wondered if we were going to have to make a hasty escape, and grabbed the door handle in preparation. I wondered if someone was going to shoot at us. Like I said, my brain was fried and I was feeling rather silly.

Then I noticed that the store was comfortable. Not freezing, like a lot of stores, but a nice pleasant temperature, just cool enough that we weren’t dying. And Jordan still wasn’t moving. We were getting to the shoving stage.

“Come in, come in, kiddos, let me pour you some lemonade. Take a load off your feet.” That was, I presumed, not Mr. Ting. For one, the accent was local. For another, the voice was female, or, at the very least, in a traditionally female register.

“What…” Jordan finally managed, and stumbled forward one step. Not enough for me to do much except look at the floor, which was blue-and-white tiled and prettier than anything else in the neighborhood except, possibly, one of our roommates. But Taylor was a special case. “What…” again. Broken record time; I gave a little shove.

“It’s all right, kids, I know, it’s hotter than hell outside and you’re got to be dehydrated. Here, have a skirt, dear, and here’s a vest for your friend, and there you go.” She bustled around Jordan, and then me, playing dress-up like we were dolls, and I finally got a look at her.

She was maybe late-fifties or a very nicely preserved late-sixties, her hair dyed improbably red, her eyes almost black. She had a lean figure not in keeping with that mother-of-the-world voice, and a lipstick smile the same unbelievable color as her hair. She caught me looking, and winked.

“Mr. Ting is out for a moment, so you two just have a seat, have some lemonade, and wait,” she insisted.

Continued: Mrs. Gent’s Lemonade (LJ)

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Re-blessing the Church

Jan28

For flofx“‘s prompt, with information from this site.

Very likely in the “Fairy Town” setting of many of today’s stories.

Possibly proof that I should stop writing before 11:30

🐑

They were building a new church, which caused quite a bit of consternation in the City.

Not for the faith, which was as welcome as any other. Not for the construction, not in itself. Buildings were sometimes built, even in the legacy parts of town.

The problem was, they were doing it, as the saying goes, right, and thus they were doing it in such a way as to worry just about everyone.

They had torn down the existing building, or what was left of it, and in tearing down the lawyer’s office (they never lasted long, in the City), they had found that a church had once stood there, a church and a churchyard. And they had then found, in excavating, the cornerstones of the church in the foundation of the lawyer’s office, and, in digging further, two things they hadn’t wanted to find: the skeleton of a lamb, under what had once been the front step of the church, and a tome describing the blessing of the land.

There had been plans to turn the land into a museum, into a small shopping center, into a library. But the land had been blessed as long as there are feet walking on this ground, and there were still feet, so the land must remain holy.

The church-yard, the cemetery, had been moved when the church had burnt down, the skeletal remains and their stones heading down to Sacred Heart several blocks down. The human remains had been moved, but the kirkevarer, the church-warning, had not. A sensitive was hired to come find it and awaken it, while stone-masons and architects built the church.

“It must be holy,” they said, one person to the next, and so all the psychic energy of a city rich with power was pressed into the work of making the building holy, making it worthy of the blessed land, making up for the decades of lawyers and hair dressers. “It must be holy” and every person who had ever called themselves Christian in the city came to the first Sunday service, dressed in their best and focused on the purest thoughts they knew.

“It must be holy,” and the city, the whole city, murmured prayers over the building, over the new stone where the old kirkevarer was re-buried. And the corpse-lamb, the warning spirit, glowed over the whole block, shining brightly with their blessings.

🐑

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City Holiday, a story of the Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call @EllenMillion

Jan28

For [profile] ellenmillion‘s prompt

I think this is in the same setting as Loaves (LJ), which, then, I think is in the same setting as Strange Neighbors (LJ) and the Fairy Road (here on LJ) and thus The Beggars (LJ).

This, ah, wasn’t *supposed* to be creepy… eep. Sorry?

In June, every June, for a week (the same week every year, whatever Sunday-through-Saturday had the 21st in it), the City went on vacation. The whole city. Everything shut down. The busses didn’t run. Trash wasn’t picked up. The radio stations played “best of.” The libraries and parks were on skeleton staff, getting time-and-a-half. Even the police and firemen were down to minimum numbers, but that was okay. Crime didn’t happen during The Holiday. If it did, the goblins dealt with it.

It was hard to get used to, for new people. People who had lived there a couple years knew to plan for it, knew to leave their garbage in and not expect the bus to pick them up, took the extra week of paid vacation and ran with it. But every year, there’d be some new guy in the neighborhood, some poor lost family that didn’t understand.

Judy and Mark got in the habit of wandering the neighborhoods, especially once their kids were grown, looking for the lost people with their cans on the curb, waiting for the pick-up, not understanding. They were third-generation themselves, born and raised in the City and, to hear Mark tell it, with a bit of goblin blood on his side, and some fairy wandering around in her bloodstream. They’d knock on the doors, carrying a casserole dish, a nice retiree couple, and when the family let them in, they’d explain the way things were.

The city shut down for a week every June. Everything shut down. Even crime. If you didn’t respect that, the goblins and the fairies got you.

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The Beggars… a story of the Fairy Road for the Giraffe Call

Jan28

For [personal profile] skjam‘s prompt

I think this is in the same setting as Loaves (LJ), which, then, I think is in the same setting as Strange Neighbors (LJ) and the Fairy Road (here on LJ)

“I’ve just realized…I haven’t seen any homeless people or beggars on the street for at least a month. Where did they all go?”

The words where hardly out of Andrew’s mouth when he regretted them. His partner, Cary, was eying him strangely.

“What do you mean, Andy?” he asked, cautiously, Andrew thought. Like there was a secret he wasn’t supposed to know. There were a lot of those in the City Police Force. Too many.

“Well, there used to be the blonde lady down on Castor Street, the one that you could see the spark in? Like ‘man, this woman must have been hot in her heyday?’ I haven’t seen her in… since the day I got the promotion,” he realized, and then, more to his chagrin, realized he was still talking. Verbal diarrhea. It had cost him comfortable promotions and raises before, before he and June moves to the City. Was it going to lose him another one?

Cary was certainly still looking at him oddly. “I know her,” he answered slowly. “And the old black man down on West Indes Street…”

“..the one who would sing with the sweetest voice, every time you dropped a dollar in his cup?” Andy nodded eagerly, half hoping that this was going somewhere positive and half not caring, because these things needed to be said. “I remember him! The day after I got the promotion, I bought him a sandwich, and he sang for me for twenty minutes.”

Cary’s look was changing. “This city has a lot of beggars.”

“Had, it looks like. Man, is something happening?” He was always the last to know. “Bussing, or a serial killer no-one wants to tell me about, or something?”

“Something’s happening all right,” Cary answered slowly. “Get your coat. We’re taking a walk.”

Wishing that didn’t sound so much like “wandering into a back alley,” Andy slipped his coat on. “You knew something was going on?”

“You’re new, you see. No-one knew if they could trust you, so they gave you to me. But if you’ve heard Old Tyler sing, that means you passed.”

“I passed?”

“You passed. And now, Andy… well, there’s more to our City than meets the naked eye. Come on, and I’ll show you.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/247353.html. You can comment here or there.

Burning Summer Quest, a story for the Giraffe Call

Jan26

For moon_fox‘s prompt

Probably goes with Strange Neighbors (LJ) [After the Fairy Road (here on LJ)]

It was the hottest summer on record. It may have been the hottest summer ever. The sidewalk was melting. The roads were sticky. Even the devout were wearing bikinis, and you don’t want to know what the sinners were wearing. Fry an egg? You could cook a roast on the hood of the car.

And our air conditioner was on the fritz. We had six so-called adults, two cats, three rats (the domestic sort), and one small child in a four-bedroom house, we had eaten all the popsicles, and our air conditioner was spitting out lukewarm air.

So Jordan and I went on a quest.

We went to Wal-mart: sold out. K-Mart: sold out. Target? Mobbed AND sold out. Ames, the corner store, the grocery store, the overpriced appliance store behind the carpet place. We drove around the city in shrinking concentric circles (at least the AC in my old Ford still worked), stopping at every place that might, possibly, in some universe, sell us an AC unit. I cried at the Rent-a-Center guy (he was unimpressed). Jordan threatened the pawn shop guy (likewise unimpressed); we offered to buy one off an old lady with three sticking out of her windows (in our defense, she was at least holding a garage sale).

And then, as we were heading home in defeat, wondering how we were going to tell the roomies (never mind the toddler, the cats, and the rats) that we had failed – Failed! on our epic quest! – Jordan slammed on the brakes.

There, right there in the heart of the third-worst neighborhood in town, in a place I swear was a braid joint just yesterday, was a small store with a smaller sign: “Mr. Ting knows what you need.”

“Well,” Jordan shrugged, “at this point, anything is worth a shot, right?”

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Loaves, a story for the Giraffe Call @Rix_Scaedu

Jan26

For Rix_scaedu‘s prompt

“What we need,” Katydid declared, “is a place to eat.”

Jorge looked over at her dubiously. “Like a dining room table? ‘did, I’m sure you’ve noticed, but this is a shanty.”

“No, no.” Her gesture took in the small jury-rigged building. “This is a place to sleep and not freeze. We need a place to eat.”

“Okay, you’re repeating yourself. Have you gone to the clinic recently?”

“No,” she frowned. “They make my brain buzz. This place, Jorge, this shanty-town, Hoover-ville, cardboard city – we need a place to eat.”

“We’re all starving, yeah, Katydid. I know that. We ALL know that, ‘did.”

She bit her lip. “Why don’t you ever listen?”

“Because you never make sense! You come down here like you belong with us, but you don’t, and then you say things like you’re making fun of us. Why don’t you go home?”

“I don’t have a home.” Her knees went up to her chest, and her hair covered her face. Jorge expelled air loudly.

“Whatever happened, there in the ‘burbs, it can’t be worse than starving.”

“We’re not going to starve.” She stood abruptly and hurried out of the hut, leaving Jorge to stare in her wake.

When he didn’t see her for several days, he thought she’d gone back to the ‘burbs, drama or not. Not that he KNEW that was where she came from, but good, clean shoes, sturdy clothes that were nevertheless the latest fashion, and hair that had been cut in the last month, plus teeth so straight and even as to look fake, did not look like city-poverty to him, much less shanty-town poor. He wished her luck, said a prayer for her, and moved a warmer girl into his shanty.

It was the girl, Annie, who told him what Katydid had done. “There’s a kitchen. They’re giving out food”

“A what?”

“In the middle of the ‘Ville. Follow the smoke.”

So follow the smoke he did, ’cause his stomach was trying to eat itself, and there, in the squarest shanty he’d ever seen built, with three banners for a tarp, Katydid had laid out tables, and over an oil-barrel stove, complete with chimney, she was dishing out soup and dumplings.

“Where…?” Jorge started, but the wildness was running high in the girl’s eyes, and he fell quiet.

“Jesus had fish,” was all she’d say.

Hooverville, non-Wiki Hoovervilles, shanty-town

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