rainbowfic | (no subject)

Story: Without Homeland

Colors: Teary-eyed #7: Burnt dinner

Word Count: 1598

Rating/Warning: T (alcohol; implied/referenced abuse)

Notes: Without Homeland takes places in New London, Connecticut in the 1910s and 1920s. More information and fics can be found at my journal. These fics are short vignettes and character studies and aren't necessarily meant to be read chronologically.

Alba propped the pot on her knee to free one of her hands; before her knuckles rapped on the door, though, her fist seemed to freeze in mid-air. She’d been to Karol’s apartment plenty of times, but she’d never actually visited on her own before. And she’d certainly never visited unannounced like she was now. What if he wasn’t home? What if she was interrupting something? She could always just leave the pot on the stoop and–

Alba hopped back as the door creaked open, revealing a face she didn’t recognize. It almost looked like Karol’s, just more stubbly and bloated…and much less friendly. The man jutted his chin out as if commanding Alba to explain her presence at his door.

“Hello,” Alba stammered before straightening her back and summoning her courage. Since she’d left the silk mill and started working at the Fairchilds’ house, and since all of Angelo’s friends had decided to ignore her following their breakup, she didn’t have many occasions to interact with men. Face to face with one now, she felt her old fears come rushing back to her on a wave of nausea.

She reminded herself that not every man was a threat to her. And if she wanted to have anything to do with the labor movement in New London, she’d eventually have to get comfortable interacting with men like the one currently glaring at her through the crack in the door: burly, boozy men who could–

She tightened her grip on the handles of the pot and forced the thought away. “Is Karol at home?” she finally managed to ask, hoping the man didn’t notice the slight tremor in her voice.

The thick folds of flesh around the man’s eyes pinched together as he inspected her, his gaze lingering on the mass of black hair spilling out from under her toque. “Italian girl,” he finally grumbled, absently rubbing the hairy expanse of his chest exposed by his unbuttoned shirt.

“I’m Karol’s friend,” Alba said, again balancing the pot on her knee to offer the man her hand. Maybe he’d think it was trembling because of the cold and not her nerves. “Alba.”

The man took her hand, pumped it twice, and all but threw it back to her. “Stanisław,” he grunted.

Alba’s eyes widened in recognition; why had it taken her so long to realize? “Karol’s cousin,” she said. “I’ve…heard a lot about you.”

Really, Alba hadn’t heard much about Stan. Karol got quiet when his cousin’s name came up, the same way Alba got quiet when Angelo’s name came up. That told her just about everything she needed to know.

Stan’s eyes narrowed again, but he seemed too tired or drunk to press her further. He rolled back inside, holding the door open with the back of his foot. Alba maneuvered past him into the apartment as Stan bellowed something in Polish.

A moment later, Karol emerged from the bedroom, bundled in a cap and scarf.

“Alba,” he said, his eyes darting between her and his cousin, who had snatched a bottle from the kitchen table and deposited himself on the windowsill beside the stove. “What are you doing here?”

“Is it a bad time?” she asked, her words piling on Karol’s. She told herself that the awkwardness they both seemed to be feeling had more to do with Stan’s presence than anything else–that she hadn’t crossed some invisible boundary, broken some unspoken rule, by showing up here like this, without warning, without the ulterior motive of working on a new set of translations for their paper. “You’re going out?”

Karol yanked his cap from his head; despite the strange tension of the moment, Alba couldn’t help but smile a little at his unruly mess of sandy hair. “It’s just a bit cold in the apartment,” Karol said, seemingly unsure of what to do with the cap now that he was holding it.

“Is it food?” Stan asked from his perch on the windowsill. He pointed the neck of his bottle to Alba’s pot. She’d forgotten she was holding it, that it was the whole reason–well, excuse–for the visit.

“Yes!” She set the pot on the table and removed the lid with a flourish. “Well–kind of. The roast I cooked for the Fairchilds turned out a little more…well-done than they would have liked,” she said in a confidential whisper to Karol as he peered at the blackened mass in the pot. “Mairead said I should bring it over here,” she told him. “I know you like to cook, but I thought you might like–”

“I’m sorry,” Karol interrupted, taking Alba's coat and hat. “I’m being a bad host. Let me get you some tea.” He hung her things by the door before bounding to the stove. Alba could see that his hand was shaking as much as hers had when she’d greeted Stan at the door.

Stan scoffed and pushed himself up from the windowsill. “Tea,” he grumbled, splashing some vodka into a cup on the table and handing it to Alba.

“Um…thank you,” she said, tipping the cup toward Stan, a gesture of wary gratitude. Karol eyed her with an expression she couldn’t read; she watched him hoist the kettle from the stove and pour a jittery trickle of hot water over a pile of reused tea leaves wadded up in the bottom of a cracked mug.

“I cut for us?” Stan asked, unearthing a knife from the clutter covering the kitchen table.

“Please,” Alba said as graciously as she could. She hadn’t expected to share the meal with Karol’s cousin of all people, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it now. She watched flakes of char flutter to the floor as Stan began carving the meat.

“Where you work?” Stan asked over the sound of glasses and plates rattling on the table.

“I’m a domestic,” Alba said, lowering herself into a chair. She felt the familiar wobbliness of the uneven legs; it was the chair she always sat in when she visited to work on translations. But Karol moved the empty chair next to her away from its usual spot. A moment later he was looking at her from across what felt like a vast expanse of tabletop.

“I used to work at Brainerd and Armstrong, though.” Alba wasn’t entirely sure why she felt the need to make that addition; she didn’t like that her first impulse around a man like Stan was to try to ingratiate herself to him. In her more generous moments, she could think of it as a kind of self-defense, but that didn’t make her feel any better about it.

“Him too,” Stan said, lobbing a hunk of meat onto a plate. He nodded toward Karol, who was staring into the plume of steam rising from his mug. “Real work.” He dropped another hunk of the roast onto a second plate before plopping into the chair at the head of the table. He pulled the cutting board toward himself and stabbed his fork at what was left of the meat he’d divided between the three of them.

Alba cleared her throat and balled up a fistful of her skirt under the table to keep her hands–and hopefully her voice–from shaking. “Well,” she began, watching Karol’s eyes rise to meet hers before dropping back to his mug. “Regardless of what kind of work we do, we’re all workers, aren’t we? We have more in common with each other than the men who own the businesses and the factories and the mansions.”

Alba suddenly felt aware of the effect that the vodka was having on her; the words were familiar to her–she’d heard and read and said and written countless versions of them–but they felt strange in her mouth, in her ears. Maybe because Karol didn’t seem to be listening to them.

“But they’d love for us to think of each other as enemies,” she went on, trying to will some conviction into her voice. “They know what would happen if we realized how strong we are together.”

Stan laughed and took a swig from his bottle. “My English isn’t so good,” he said, almost sheepishly. “But one day, I’m going to be boss. I tell Karol. Right, cousin?” He reached across the table and swatted Karol’s shoulder; some tea sloshed out of Karol’s mug and onto his plate. Alba resisted an impulse—surely a result of her time at the Fairchilds’—to get up and wipe it. She knew that it would only make the shame Karol seemed to be feeling around his cousin even worse.

Alba and Karol pecked at the food on their plates in silence while Stan wolfed down the rest of his helping. When he was done, he pushed himself to his feet, tottering a bit as he nodded in Alba’s direction. “Thank you,” he said with forced, self-conscious enunciation. “Best meal I eat in a long time.”

“You’re welcome.” Alba rose to shake Stan’s hand, unsure of what else to do, but he was already staggering away from the table, bottle in hand; a few moments later, Alba and Karol heard him collapse into his bed.

Alba broke the silence that followed with a loud sip of the last of her vodka. Had she really finished it already? She set down the empty cup and rested her chin in her palm. Karol still seemed to be avoiding her eyes, so she tilted her head in the direction of Stan’s empty plate.

“At least someone liked my roast,” she finally said with a weak laugh. But Karol wasn’t smiling.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You paint the scene so well here - and so much awkwardness! I was really feeling for both Alba and Karol here.

Thanks! I'm glad the awkwardness came across...I felt like I was juggling a lot of emotions in this scene and I wasn't sure what came through.

Oh man this is an uncomfortable scene. And her words piling on Karol’s is such a good way to describe talking over someone!