Chapter Text
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part 1
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After ten years they dress her in sweatpants and a discolored white shirt because the clothes she arrived in don’t fit anymore, can’t fit, she’s filled out . They reunite her with the decade-old contents of her pockets and hand her gate money in the discretionary amount of two crisp twenty dollar bills with a bus ticket to who cares, please leave , and that’s all. The gates close behind her and the bus picks her up before noon.
The windows rattle the whole way, even when she tries to hold it down with her temple, and she’s left feeling bruised by the time they make their singular scheduled stop at a gas station. The bus driver eyes her warily when she pushes past him into the brisk day. She must be dangerous . He’s right.
It’s fall and she’s free.
There are four ten-year-old quarters in her pocket and she can’t remember why they were there when she was arrested, what she intended them for. It doesn’t matter anyhow, two of them disappear down the coin slot of a disgusting payphone.
“Parole, Officer Vasiliev.”
“Gas station, Parolee Astankova,” Villanelle mimics in a deep voice. It’s pretty close, he should be impressed.
Vasiliev lets out a long, groaning sigh, and she wonders just how her reputation has preceded her. “Did your bus come in?”
“No. They say we’re still two hours away.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“I’m lonely.”
Vasiliev hangs up on her and she considers just how valuable the last two quarters in her pocket are. She has nothing.
They call it freedom, but instead of locking you in, they lock you out.
____________________
Officer Vasiliev is waiting for her at the bus stop on the city limits, all old and cranky. “You said two hours,” he gripes, mouth flat, annoyed like the rest. His coat swallows him like he wants to disappear.
“I like to keep people waiting,” Villanelle shrugs. “It’s how you let people know you’re valuable.”
“Valuable?” Vasiliev laughs, grins, ticks his head to the side. “Is that so? What is in your pockets, your majesty? ”
Villanelle ignores him. “Where are you taking me?”
“My office to go over the terms of your parole. How to stay on my good side. Then I’ll leave you at the halfway house.”
Villanelle frowns and shakes her head. “Oh, no. I don’t want that. Take me to breakfast.”
“It’s almost dinner time,” he points out, full of so many astute observations.
“ Mr. Parole Officer, ” Villanelle gasps, affronted by the very notion. “Breakfast is when I’m eating breakfast food, haven’t you heard. I have been imprisoned for ten years. Do you think the clock is going to stop me from doing what I want? Do you think you are?”
“They’re paying me to.”
“You’re going to be needing a raise,” Villanelle advises in good spirits, grabbing his elbow and escorting him back to the car park. “I haven’t had real eggs in ten years, you know? It is the one thing I missed most. Take me to real eggs and you can say whatever boring things you want at me. I might even listen.”
____________________
He makes the mistake of handing over his badge when she pesters him for it. “Konstantin,” she over pronounces, shooting him a wide grin that sours his expression. “Where are you from in Russia?”
“Let’s not get familiar.”
When he reaches for his badge, she yanks it out of his reach, holding it up high and far from his grabbing hands. “We might even be family.”
“Oh, no. My family is much better than you,” he smiles thinly and does his best to devote his attention back to the road. “They are good people.”
Villanelle keeps his badge hostage and turns to press her palms against the clean windows, studying the way the parkway trees have begun to turn out of synch with no lack of wonder. The ones that have caught fire, burst into red and flushed with the coming season change hold her attention longest. She hurts her neck, pulls something when she tries to keep them in view as Konstantin speeds past.
“I haven’t seen a tree in ten years,” she says against the fogging glass.
Konstantin is quiet for long moments before he says, “Probably shouldn’t have murdered someone.”
Villanelle laughs abruptly and she can feel him staring at the back of her head. “Well. Probably shouldn’t have gotten caught ,” she corrects.
____________________
Konstantin parks in front of a split storefront between Sally’s Cuts and a restaurant with no apparent name other than “BREAKFAST”. That’s all it says, it’s an established, installed sign, they’ve chosen this.
“Is this where I get murdered?” Villanelle wonders, pushing away from her window to give Konstantin a dubious look. “What kind of restaurant is this?”
“Breakfast,” Konstantin sasses , the arsehole.
Villanelle purses her lips and considers throwing a fit about it. She’s thrown bigger fits for less, but she really wants eggs and the location is appropriately, maybe even tantalizingly labeled. Konstantin makes her decision for her - he’s already getting out of the car and heading for the entrance. She watches him go through the windshield, hands on her knees, cuff-length apart. When she doesn’t follow, he turns back and gives her a strange look. It takes an impatient gesture and a held open door for her to remember this is a thing she can do now.
It is far from trust, earned or otherwise, but it’s agency.
She has agency.
Villanelle climbs out of the car quickly and accepts the open door gesture with genuine, giddy delight. Even the grease-slick, thick air of the stuffy diner smells like the closest thing she’s ever had to freedom.
Oh, she can’t wait to make them pay for it.
“Counter or table?” Konstantin asks and it’s a very literal question. There is one counter. And there is one two-top table by the window. Two men hunch almost paternally over their shallow, chipped mugs of coffee on the far end of the counter saying nothing to each other. The cook standing over a flat top grill behind the counter flips a pancake and it somehow becomes the loudest thing in the diner.
Villanelle considers her options, because for once in her life, she is allowed. And she has them.
Her attention drifts quickly to a machine on the far wall, it’s plastic dome covered in years of unattended dust and airborne grime, but it’s magnetism undeniable. Konstantin makes an impatient noise where she leaves him to examine it, fingers pressed to the display as she drinks it in greedily. It asks her for fifty cents and it is destiny ten years in the making that she has only that in her pockets at this exact moment in time.
Konstantin joins her, grumbling under his breath.
“What is this?”
“A jukebox. It plays songs.”
Villanelle lights up. “What is the best American song ever written?”
“Why?”
Villanelle gives him an affronted look. “This is a special day! I’m certainly not going to play the worst American song ever written.”
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure when I took my citizenship test, the correct answer was ‘ Star Spangled Banner ’. Does that help?”
Villanelle clicks through the records and is sad to report, “it’s not on here.” Konstantin gives her a look like he thinks they’re both about to let this go or something, he has so much to learn about her. “Hey!” She shouts across the diner and one of the men turns to blink through red-rimmed eyes at her. “What is the greatest American song ever written?”
His head swings back down to his coffee cup heavily and his mouth purses thoughtfully. After a long minute, he shrugs. “J ust What I Needed .”
“No, just what I need,” Villanelle corrects. “Hurry up.”
“The Cars,” he scoffs, throwing a few bills on the counter and leaving like she was finished with him. “Millennials,” he mutters on his way out.
Villanelle turns back to the jukebox, clicking rapidly to watch the plastic covers flip by. As she’s mashing the button just to watch them blur together, she spots The Cars. And the song, ah, she is understanding now. Thank you kind stranger.
Her destiny quarters disappear into the coin slot and the machine groans to life. It’s all very satisfying, very worth her last worldly possessions. She’s not familiar with it, but she’s a real American now, she has the fresh, ten year order to lie flat under a judge’s thumb to prove it.
“How did he know that this was just what I needed?” She marvels, pulling a face that Konstantin is too serious and professional to return. He is so boring already.
They seat themselves at the counter and Konstantin stares at her from the corner of his eye while he thinks she’s looking at the single-page laminate menu, bobbing her head to the song. The novelty he finds in staring at a real, live felon in the flesh is remarkable for a parole officer.
Villanelle sets her menu down. “I want everything,” she declares.
Konstantin laughs at her, on her special day no less. “They give good gate money these days?”
“No. But you’re paying.”
“I am not,” he says. It’s so cute, he really believes it.
Villanelle raises her eyebrow and leans in all conspiratorial. “Well it’s going to be really awkward when I don’t either. Officer .”
He’s ready to rebuke her, but the frycook turns around and drops two stained mugs on saucers in front of them in a messy clatter and leans a hand down on the counter between them. “What do you want?” She asks.
“Everything,” Villanelle offers honestly.
Konstantin takes the menu from her hands to stack under his own and passes them across the counter. “Three eggs, bacon extra crispy, and a short stack of pancakes. She’ll have the same.”
“Right,” the woman says slowly. “How do you want your eggs?”
“Over-easy,” they say at the same time and Konstantin turns to give Villanelle a disingenuous smile.
“For your special day,” he adds.
The frycook looks between them, unimpressed. “Whatever,” she mutters by way of customer service, then turns back to her grill.
“You remembered,” Villanelle says, placing one delicate hand over her heart. “You do care.”
“Oh, I’m going to remember everything about you,” Konstantin assures her. “You’re going to hate me. You won’t even have dreams I don’t know about. You think parole is freedom?”
“I think breakfast is freedom,” Villanelle shrugs. “You’re ruining it. Can’t I just have this one special day before I remember how terrible everything is?”
“You can have one day,” Konstantin agrees. “But the special conditions of your parole aren’t flexible. And bright and early tomorrow morning, I’m going to deliver you personally to your morning community service. And you’ll do that every morning for years.”
Villanelle’s eyes widen. “Hey, I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“My job is to tell. After that, we find you a job, because you must be employed to stay in the halfway house. And you must live in the halfway house to have a permanent address. And you need a permanent address to stay out of prison. That is your only goal. You understand?”
“I understand?” Villanelle tries, face screwed up in thought. “Theoretically.”
“Try to understand literally.” He sips at his coffee and makes a face, before putting it back on the saucer and pushing it away from him. “We’re not keen on second chances here. It’s a bad system, Oksana. It’s going to exhaust you for no reason whatsoever. Sometimes you’ll think it’s worse than prison. You’re alone here, you understand? I’m being honest.”
“You’re being depressing. And they don’t call me that anymore. Call me Villanelle.”
“I will call you what I want to call you. I’ve tried being a cheerleader for my parolees. It only makes things worse. You want my advice?” And she doesn’t, but he has the look of a man who couldn’t care less. “Suffer the indignities. Keep your head down. Wait it out. Survive.”
“What do you think I have been doing for ten years?” She shakes her head at him, snickers at the perturbed look on his face. “Relax. I am good at suffering. It’s my specialty.”
“Your disciplinary file says otherwise.”
“That’s the thing about suffering,” Villanelle rolls her eyes at him. “It only really hurts if you know how to have fun in between.” She sticks her tongue out, twirls her finger in a sarcastic circle, but he’s so uptight, he doesn’t even smile. “You do know what fun is right?”
In record time, four drab plates slide across the counter with their food and the frycook has turned back to her grill without comment. Villanelle’s eyes go wide and she pushes up her sleeves, studying her meal with absolute devotion. This may, and she intends no exaggeration, be the best moment of her life.
Konstantin tries to ruin everything by saying, “I know they feed you in prison too.”
He knows nothing.
Villanelle crunches an entire piece of bacon down to her fingers, filling her mouth as she saws into a pancake with the blunt edge of her fork and shoves that in too. Her eyes close and she groans loud enough to fill the restaurant. Konstantin is probably staring again, but he’s so meaningless in the moment.
She hacks right through the middle of one of the eggs and pauses with her fork hovering above the plate. Instead of spilling out, the soft inside of the egg barely runs at all.
It’s ruined!
Everything is ruined!
“What the fuck is this?” Villanelle demands, whipping around in her seat and yes, Konstantin had been staring at her.
“What?” He asks and she already asked that, what is the point of him.
“I asked what ! What is this?” She picks up one of her plates and holds the egg under his nose. He opens his mouth, but she bowls him over. “This isn’t over-easy. This is over-my-dead-body.” Konstantin tries to speak again, but she’s done with him. “Hey! Frycook lady!”
“Oksana,” Konstantin tries to appease her, but she swats him away.
The cook turns slowly, mouth tight against her irritation, which is just rich because Villanelle is the one entitled to the irritation. “These were supposed to be over-easy,” Villanelle narrows her eyes and pushes her plate forward. “They’re over cooked.”
The frycook looks down at her plate, then back up into her eyes. If she’s expecting Villanelle to back down, she should probably know that Villanelle had very little to do for ten years besides stare people down and resort to violence over very, very trivial things. She’d hardly blink.
Wordlessly, the cook picks up her plate and turns back to the grill. She gives Konstantin a self-satisfied smile, but he seems less sure. “I don’t think this is going to go the way you think it will.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she grimaces, just for show. “That murder, aye. If I had known, right?”
“Don’t say the M-word in public, please,” he sighs. “We’re trying to rehabilitate you here.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I get paid to pretend I believe that.” He chews on his own bacon, shaking his head to himself.
The cook turns back around and drops Villanelle’s plate in front of her. There’s one blissful beat of anticipation, excitements, then-
“Oi!” Villanelle slaps her hands down on the countertop. She will not sit here and be insulted like this. These are not the specific indignities she expected to suffer.
Her eggs are perfectly, tragically scrambled.
The cook doesn’t turn around again.
____________________
After Konstantin drops her off at the halfway house, she’s handed a standard-issue stale bologna sandwich in welcome and two keys into the building. They leave her on the steps of 2E and tell her to introduce herself to her roommate, but Stacy Wayne is passed out on her bed, drooling off some high and catching flies between her rotting teeth. Villanelle takes the opportunity to rifle through the woman’s belongings, but even that proves boring. All she has to show for her evening is a $5 bill from Stacy’s sock drawer and a package of cinnamon gum.
The bed is just wider than the one in solitary, a full, luxurious single with sheets she hopes had been washed at some point, ever. Prison still clings to her skin, she can feel it like stains on her hands, but there’s some small, shameful part of her scared to wash it down the drain. If prison was nothing, then nothing was all she had.
Without it, she has less than nothing.
She pulls the sheets up to her nose and starfishes as wide as she can in the new expanse of her bed. In the dark, it doesn’t feel any different.
____________________
They dress her in secondhand clothes in the morning, buttoning her up in a too-big flannel that she has to stuff into borrowed, cuffed jeans. Suffer the indignities, Konstantin said.
She suffers them.
It’s either that or meet Konstantin out on the curb in front of the halfway house in nothing whatsoever. And if that is to be her future, she’s certainly not going to do it for free.
She has to sit on the curb for nearly a half an hour, chin in her hands and shoe heel bouncing impatiently, before Konstantin rolls up in his ugly Crown Victoria. He honks at her and leans out his window on one arm. “Nice clothes,” he grins. “Dumpster diving?”
“Yeah. Was that your wife I met while I was in there? She’s very ugly.”
Konstantin nods, still tickled. “Yes, but her cooking ,” he chortles, peeling away from the curb the second she’s climbed in. “I got you a gift, don’t look so sad.”
“I’m not sad, I’m dressed like a farmer. I’ll make it work, but these are trying times for me, please be respectful.”
“Oh, I won’t,” he assures her, twisting around to reach into the back seat.
While he swerves a bit, still digging even as they approach a busier, more frantic city road, Villanelle vaguely hopes they get sideswiped and die instantly. This feeling doesn’t go away when Konstantin emerges, crowing victoriously with a shiny orange safety vest, freshly emblazoned with “ASTANKOVA”. So that no matter what indignities she must suffer, it is certain that everyone will know about it.
He drops her off in a defunct municipal auto impound with the other felons, some in better shape than others. They’re queuing up at a clipboard to sign in just past the promise land gateway of a portable metal detector. Villanelle turns slowly to give Konstantin her best pleading look.
He’s near to bursting with glee when he leans across her lap and pushes her door open for her. “Play nice with the other kids, okay slugger?”
“Don’t make me do this.”
“Make new friends and good choices. I’ll pick you up at 1400 hours.”
____________________
She does not make new friends or good choices. Someone tries to take her granola bar that they’re issued halfway through the day and she nearly breaks his fingers. Luckily, they’re both on the same page and when their babysitter hollers and comes to ask what happened, they both toe the party line.
“Nothing,” they say in perfect unison.
She doesn’t even want the granola bar, really, it’s just principle. Have and have not are the only tenants Moses came down the mountain with. Or at least those are the only ones passed to them through prison bars.
They spend the day tidying up the median parkways near the medical district. The seasoned, trusted veterans get to trim shrubs and trees, but Villanelle is untested and otherwise untrusted with garden shears or anything sharp. She’s given a bag and a pair of gloves that smell like roadkill and the thrilling task of collecting litter.
It’s a long day.
____________________
Konstantin doesn’t actually pick her up at 1400 hours and she’s not sure why, but she is sure that being disappointed by the absence of her parole officer is a symptom of reaching what is commonly referred to as rock bottom. It coincides delightfully with the knowledge that she has no idea how to get home, but is certain it’s at least five miles.
Fall has bloomed perfectly around her, weather bowing gently, gradually, on-time, and harmonious to the axial tilt like they’d been practicing this year. Rare and dare we say serendipitous. Everything at peak color so even the ugly parts of the city glow.
Villanelle wishes she could see in color. Wishes she could afford it, but everything just looks…
grey.
She’s given vague directions by a disinterested officer and clambers back over unpaved express lanes, hopping guard rails and flipping off honking cars as she picks her way back toward her end of town. Everything’s about as bad as it can be until she spots nine glowing letters on the world’s ugliest storefront like scripture.
BREAKFAST.
It makes her feel something and that’s nothing to be ignored.
____________________
The door bounces loudly against the back wall when she throws it open and everyone inside turns around. Everyone except the frycook.
The frycook stares diligently down at the flattop as she flips a line of pancakes.
Villanelle stands in the entryway, having their showdown all by herself. If she must, she will.
The seat directly in front of the grill is open and don’t mind if she does. She folds her hands on the dirty counter and stares intently at the back of the cook’s head. So she’s one day out of prison, just thin, precarious ice between her feet and spending the rest of her best years behind bars, and she’s decided she’s going to stomp.
She’s going to ruin everything.
She’s going to physically fight a fry cook at a ten-head diner in the worst part of the city over almost nothing whatsoever.
These are the decisions that make us as people.
“Hey,” Villanelle calls across the counter. “Fry Cook lady.”
The cook calmly finishes stacking pancakes on several plates and clears the flat top with a long, practiced swipe of her spatula before thwacking it down in the grease trap. Without looking at Villanelle, she takes the plates down the counter to two men with hardhats dangling between their knees from the hooks under the counter. When, and only when, she’s finished, she comes back and stands square in front of Villanelle, leaning forward on her forearms to look her in the eye.
“Parolee lady,” she greets.
Villanelle’s mouth opens and it doesn’t figure out what to do from there. No part of her does. She came in there intending to kill someone over some overcooked eggs and a shit day, but instead finds herself blurting out, “What’s your name?”
The frycook considers her, so unimpressed it makes her want to impress her. “Why?”
Villanelle blinks at her and blurts out, “You’re beautiful.”
The cook laughs in her face.
Villanelle frowns, but the cook is already turning away. “Over-easy, right?”
“Yes, if you can manage this time.” Villanelle feels...thwarted. People were not meant to be kept in boxes. “They were shit last time.”
The cook gestures over her shoulder with her spatula as she cracks two eggs in one hand at the same time, the showoff. “So were you.”
“You remember me?” Villanelle asks, propping her cheeks in both fists as she watches the woman work. She has nothing at all in this world, but she’d be happy with just her name, she thinks. She needs it.
The cook drops a few slices of thick sliced bread in a vat of beaten eggs and throws them on the back of the grill with a handful of cinnamon and a few slices of bacon. “Not a lot of new faces around here.”
“And none so memorable as mine,” Villanelle decides proudly.
The cook laughs again and Villanelle must watch in horror while she snatches up a second spatula and mercilessly hacks into the eggs sitting innocently on the flat top, oh, they were so young. She thinks she yells something, but the trauma blocks it out.
A minute later, the cook turns around and drops two scrambled eggs and a plate of french toast and bacon in front of her with a wicked smile on her face. “For my favorite new customer,” she simpers. “Coffee?”
“You’ve ruined them,” Villanelle declares, aghast as she pushes away from the counter with both hands. “Why are you like this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Judas!” Villanelle declares, pushing the eggs away and spearing an entire triangle slice of french toast on her fork that promptly gets stuffed in her mouth. “Beautiful Judas. How do you know I’m on parole?” She redirects.
The cook taps over her own heart until Villanelle looks down and realizes she’s still wearing her orange safety vest, complete with her own, damning name. “I’m in construction,” she lies.
The cook shakes her head and grins. “No you’re not, Farmer Brown. That’ll be six bucks.”
“You didn’t even make my eggs right!”
“That’ll be ten bucks.”
Villanelle shunts the plate of eggs over the counter so the dish shatters behind the counter at the cook’s feet. “How much for that?”
The cook reaches out and pushes the plate of french toast and bacon into Villanelle’s lap with a sweet smile. “Free of charge.”
____________________
Konstantin finds her wandering around 5th Avenue sometime after dark with no clue where she’s supposed to be and ten dollars less than she started her day with. One spoiled breakfast later and all she’s got to show for it is syrup stains on her borrowed, baggy pants.
“What are you doing?” He asks, matching her crawling pace in his ugly car.
Villanelle won’t look at him. “Going back to the house.”
“You’re going the wrong way.”
Villanelle furrows her brows. “It’s more scenic.”
They pass a building with many, many penises drawn over it’s shuttered, abandoned windows and okay, okay, we are all very good at the irony. “Get in,” Konstantin demands.
And normally this would be a good time to stand on principle, but she has been wandering around for many hours. Defeated, she climbs into his car and turns away from him to stare at the window. She doesn’t want to talk about it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up. I told you to make friends.”
“I did.”
“I should have told you to make friends with vehicular transport.” When she says nothing, he lets out a long sigh. “I am sorry, okay? My daughter had some homework emergency. Then I couldn’t find you.”
Villanelle folds her arms across the ledge under the passenger window, pressing her forehead against it. “Whatever. I don’t care, okay?”
“I care,” he insists, lies so easily, like he was born doing it.
Villanelle blows out a sad huff of laughter that fogs up the glass. “I know. But not about me.”
____________________
She goes to bed bitter, in a borrowed shirt, with an empty stomach.
Stacy asks her if she has any extra money, she’s itching , but Villanelle makes it very clear that she’d be better off asking the Chief of Police for drug money for all the good it will do her.
Stacy storms out and doesn’t come back and finally, Villanelle is left alone to hate her life in peace. She thinks only of the frycook.
____________________
“I said I was sorry,” Konstantin tries again when he’s driving her to another day in abject torment. He’s wasting his breath - a cop’s sorry is worth as much as a pig’s. Perhaps less. “Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad,” Villanelle mumbles. “I don’t care.”
“That’s worse! I will pick you up today, I promise, okay? I’ll take you for lunch and we can talk about getting you a job. And maybe more reliable transportation.”
“I don’t want lunch,” Villanelle pouts. “I want breakfast.”
____________________
His name is Gabriel, the man so determined to steal her granola bar. They bond somehow when Villanelle gets angry at one of the other garbage pickers - fucking Jeff, the fucker - and mimes cutting his head off with garden sheers while he’s bent over picking up cigarrette butts. Gabriel laughs, because if murder isn’t funny anymore, then what is?
Gabriel gives her his granola bar during break and asks if she knows how he can go about getting into the business of running cocaine. She politely informs him that she’s without such connections, but recommends BREAKFAST if he finds himself feeling hungry. It is as much of a friend as she’s had in a while.
“Do you ever feel like this is worse than prison?” She asks offhand while they sit about in the parkway grass, waiting for Officer McNulty to start yelling again.
Gabriel takes a long drink from his water bottle, then spits at his feet. “In prison, I was a king.”
“Me too,” Villanelle agrees.
They’re on the same page.
“What’s that?” She asks, pointing at a collection of crosses tattooed on his forearm.
Gabriel looks down and flexes them against the coil of muscle in his enormous forearms. “Kills,” he says darkly.
Villanelle holds his eye for a long minute, then cracks into a teasing grin. “You are such a liar.”
Gabriel grins too and holds a finger to his lips.
____________________
Konstantin does pick her up at 1400 hours, but she was raised by the school of never forgive and never forget. You don’t graduate, you just get meaner.
“I brought classifieds,” he tempts, holding out a stack of newspapers.
Villanelle doesn’t take them from him, just turns her nose up and re-rolls her sleeves for the millionth time that day. She needs real clothes so very badly. “Okay, Grandpa.”
“All of the worst jobs are in the classifieds. And that’s what you’re going to get, you understand? You are qualified only for worst jobs,” he explains patiently, the arsehole. “This is what it means to be free.”
“Wow, this is garbage,” Villanelle chuckles. She snatches the stack of newspapers and puts them in her lap. In prison she rarely held down any one job for more than a week or two. She was in and out of various lockdowns and holding cells and disciplinary hearings and isn’t that just exemplary of the american judicial system, that here she is on early release anyhow?
The closest thing to a job Villanelle has ever had is fleecing the new inmates out of their personal belongings and commissary funds.
“I promised lunch. What do you want?” He sighs.
Her company is such a chore to him, like everyone else. “I don’t want lunch,” Villanelle repeats. “Take me to breakfast.”
“What’s with you and breakfast?” Villanelle remains stubbornly quiet and he relents. “Whatever. Anne’s is on the way.”
“No, no. I want BREAKFAST. I want the ugly restaurant from before.”
Konstantin laughs like he thinks she’s kidding, but it dies in his throat when he sees how deadly serious she is. “What? Why? Anne’s is much better.”
“No. I prefer BREAKFAST.”
“You haven’t even had the food at Anne’s and you hated the eggs at Breakfast.”
“You asked me where I want to go and where I want to go is BREAKFAST.”
Konstantin throws a hand up in the air. “How are you even speaking in capital letters? I can take you to five restaurants within two miles that have better food.”
Villanelle narrows her eyes and stares out the windshield. “It’s not about the food.”
____________________
Konstantin holds the door open for her again and seems surprised when Villanelle takes the best seat in the house, right behind where the cook is dual-wielding spatulas to flip an army of pancakes and bacon for a little congregation of landscapers at the single table in the window, spilling out over to the far end of the bartop counter. He gives her a weird look, but she won’t return it. She’s staring at the cook.
All she gets when the cook turns around and spots her is an, “Oh great.”
The inflection does not match the sentiment.
Villanelle watches like a hawk as she moves down the counter, plates lined along her arms and balanced on seemingly nothing until she’s able to slide them across to the waiting customers. Konstantin is still staring at her.
What? Like he’s never seen a lesbian before, honestly.
The cook comes back. “Over-easy,” she greets.
“Not typically. But for you? As easy as you’d like.”
Konstantin chokes on his coffee and it dribbles down his chin into the collar of his shirt. “Oksana,” he cautions, but it is much too late for all of that.
“You’re very confident for someone wearing their grandfather’s flannel. What do you want to eat?”
Villanelle raises her eyebrows. “Is that really a question you want to be asking me?”
“I’m sorry about her,” Konstantin butts in, curling an arm over the counter and angling his body toward Villanelle’s to give her a very stern look, very scary. “She’s forgotten she’s living in an actual society again.”
The cook laughs dryly. “Is she, though?”
“When are you going to tell me your name?” Villanelle demands, leaning forward as far as she can across the counter. “I want it.”
“First rule of parole? Get used to never getting what you want,” the cook advises with a sympathetic pout. “Usual, Konstantin?”
“Yes, please,” he says with a strained smile. But the second the cook turns back to her grill, it falls into a glare that he directs back at Oksana. “Stop getting into trouble.”
Oksana ignores him. “She knows you? You know her?”
“I know lots of people. I’m very likeable,” he says like he’s daring her to fight him on it. “You could stand some lessons on that. Now,” he slips the newspapers in front of her again and taps his finger against the first page of classifieds. “Homework, Astankova. We need to get you a job.” She’s still staring at the cook’s back when Konstantin starts snapping his fingers in front of her nose. “Down, girl.”
“That’s the goal,” Villanelle says absently.
“Look, would you? What do you want to do? You want to clean dishes? Do deliveries, what? There are options here,” Konstantin exasperates. “You want to know how people fail out of this the quickest? They run out of money.”
Villanelle sighs and looks down at the newspaper glumly. “The only thing I’m good at is being bad.”
“You’re going to have to try harder,” he lectures. And she is, she’s trying very hard, but life has given her a bike in lowest gear. She can pedal until her feet fall off and she’ll barely clear the block. It’s not about hard work, it’s what life hands you and you can either take it or you can get creative.
Villanelle leans around Konstantin to the group of landscapers picking over their pancakes. “Hey,” she calls out. A few of them turn toward her, blinking tiredly at her. “What do you do? I need a job.”
“Mow lawns. Pull weeds,” one of them shrugs.
Another elbows him. “We’re not hiring.”
Villanelle narrows her eyes, taps her chin and considers them. “Okay, I accept. I can work afternoons starting tomorrow. Also, I’m on parole. But don’t worry, it was only murder.”
A long moment passes in complete silence and Villanelle realizes even the grill has gone quiet. Konstantin lowers his face into his hands, but his prayers are wasted, she cannot be helped and if she could, god would probably choose not to.
One of the landscapers snorts and wipes his mouth with a paper napkin and it’s only then that Villanelle recognizes him. “Gabriel,” she calls. “Give me a job! You know you want to.”
His coworkers turn to stare at him and Gabriel shrugs like he has no control over the situation, laughing to himself. “You won’t like it,” he warns. “Come by the yard at 8th and Jackson tomorrow and I’ll prove it to you.”
“I don’t like anything,” she reminds him, then turns back to grin at Konstantin. “You make so much of nothing. See?” She folds up the newspaper and reaches out to tuck them into the inner breast pocket of Konstantin’s wool coat. When they’re stowed away, she pats at his chest. “Jobs are everywhere. Even for one so useless as I.”
“I think maybe you’re insane,” he says thoughtfully.
Villanelle smiles at him, lifting her hands so the cook can slide their food in front of them. “Oh, I am so much worse than that.” When she looks down and finds two perfectly hard-boiled eggs on her plate, she slams both fists onto the counter, making Konstantin jump.
“You arsehole !”
The frycook’s shoulders shake with unmistakable mirth.
____________________
She rides with Gabriel to her new job after they’ve finished painting over graffiti on a municipal office, because it was very sweet of him to tell her to meet him god knows where, miles from the city, but very literally impossible.
He drives an old, unfortunate looking Mercury and she wonders if anyone in the city drives anything that’s not ugly. Their neighborhood is like a gutter - everything that can’t find a way to cling to something better gets washed down like so much streetwater until they’re all left congealing at the lowest point. It’s like they live in an accident.
“You’re going to hate it,” Gabriel repeats, grinning to himself, bobbing his head along to a heavy beat lacquered over with Spanish.
Villanelle returns his smile sardonically. “You think things can get worse for me?”
“For people like us? Things can always get worse.”
____________________
She gets packed in the back of a pickup with two wide-shouldered men, practically smothered in her light jacket and work shorts. One offers her a beer probably just to see if she’ll take it and she figures, when in Rome?
Her dedication to the lifestyle tickles them and she gets several back slaps like clubs against her spine.
Their first job is outside a small Catholic school in the nicer parts of the city and it gives her brief pause as she’s handed a little hand trowel and pointed in the direction of plastic buckets full of new, shiny grasses and hardier ferns to last the cold weather. “They hire felons to do their yard work?” She wonders aloud.
Gabriel smiles, all teeth. “No. Only the upstandingest of citizens,” he pledges with his hand over his heart.
Villanelle nods. “Ah. You lie.”
“Listen, Astankova,” he schools her, one hand politely on her back while he gestures to the well-dressed children flocking from the doors to their parents’ nice cars, attentive mothers and fathers. “You don’t survive the system. The system must survive us.”
“That’s poetic, Gabriel.”
He shrugs and puts a pinkish prairie grass in her hands. “You get it, right? You can’t win the game if you don’t break the rules. Be smart and never, ever tell the truth.”
______________________
They make her plant things, because flowers and ferns are for girls or whatever. She wants to use the woodchipper, but Gabriel seems supremely, fairly suspicious of this. He warns the rest against it and he’s just no fun at all.
But by the end of the day, the school’s been cleared of rotting tulip stems and displaced bulbs. They’ve recycled the floral fashion of yesterday and replaced it with another temporary fix, mulched it over and called it done. It looks nice.
Landscaping sucks, though. Villanelle feels dirty and weary to her bones as she sits on a cooler and ignores the other men while they rib her about her thin arms and her vacant expression. If they think this will prevent her from coming back tomorrow, they have a lot to learn about her.
“I think they like you,” Gabriel mentions casually as they drive away in his groaning car.
Villanelle shoots him a dry look. “I want to use the wood chipper tomorrow.”
“Keep dreaming.”
“My dreams are much worse,” she promises.
Gabriel laughs darkly to himself and maybe he understands or maybe he’s stupid and doesn’t believe her, it’s hard to say. “Come on, I’ll get you dinner. What do you want?”
“I want breakfast,” Villanelle says automatically.
Gabriel raises an eyebrow at her. “Didn’t you just have that for lunch yesterday?”
“Don’t offer something if you don’t mean it.”
____________________
There’s nobody in the diner when they walk in and Villanelle almost finds herself wishing Gabriel would piss off too, but then he does a very good thing. He offers a nod to the frycook and says, “Whaddup, Eve?”
A slow, sinister smile spreads across Villanelle’s face.
Gotcha.
Eve. Eve, Eve, Eve.
Eve.
“Hey,” she says. Eve says. Because that is her name and she is saying it.
“Eve,” Villanelle points out - she’s unable to think of much else.
Surprisingly, Eve cracks a smile when she sees Villanelle standing there in her dirty boots, a size too big and blistering badly, she can already feel it. “Overeasy,” she greets. Is that her? Do they have a thing now? Oh, she’d give anything.
When they sit at the counter, Eve gives them more attention than she ever has. There’s nothing waiting for her attention on the grill and nobody to pull her away. Villanelle knows she’s staring, but what’s a girl to do?
“Rough day?” Eve asks, stifling another smile behind her hand.
Villanelle frowns and watches the way Eve’s eyes track over her face with amusement. It dawns on her then and she snatches up a spoon from inside the folded paper napkin in front of her and holds it up to study her reflection in the back of it as best she can. There’s dirt streaked messily across both cheeks, even her forehead all the way up into her hair. Damnit.
She scrubs at her face quickly, but wonders how much good it’s even done for her. Eve leans over the counter again in that way she does where her forearms press flat into the counter and they’re eye to eye. Villanelle stares back. “Your name is Eve,” she says again.
“Hm,” Eve nods thoughtfully. “That explains why everyone keeps calling me that.” Villanelle thinks she probably shouldn’t lean across the counter and try to kiss her, but only just. “The usual?” Eve asks the two of them.
“My usual being disappointment,” Villanelle clarifies.
Eve shrugs. “Mine too. Similar tastes.” When she turns back to the grill, Gabriel is grinning widely at her and she rolls her eyes.
He mouths at her, “You’re blowing it.”
Villanelle smiles thinly. “Blow me,” she mouths back.
The grill sizzles while Eve sets it up and then she has a moment to turn back around, prop her hip on the counter and give them her attention for a moment. “How was your first day?” She asks.
“Like a dream,” Villanelle returns, twirling her fork deftly between her fingers. She’s keeping a very close eye on the two eggs on the flat top. “One I hope I never wake up from. I’m actually hoping to pass peacefully in my sleep.”
Eve snorts grossly into the plastic water cup she’d brought to her lips and it feels like victory. She drags the back of her sleeve across her nose and mouth while Villanelle leans forward to watch, cheeks propped on both hands. “Weirdo,” Eve mutters, but she’s still smiling, so who has won, really?
Eve keeps staring at her and maybe that is just the effect she has on women.
“I’m sorry, I can’t look at you without laughing,” Eve finally says, leaning in against the counter and reaching out with her sleeve. Villanelle flinches back and Eve stops, one hand halfway across the counter and the other held up near her side like she’s about to capture a wild animal.
She is!
She has no idea, poor Eve.
Villanelle stays very still and Eve closes the gap between them and rubs her sleeve across Villanelle’s cheek a few times until she’s satisfied. “Did you leave any dirt for the flowers?” Eve wonders.
“Why would I do that?”
Eve shakes her head and turns back to the grill and then Villanelle is forced to confront the way Gabriel is repeatedly, frantically waggling his eyebrows at her.
“I will murder you,” Villanelle says under her breath.
“I think she likes you,” he whispers so, so loud, the oaf.
Eve gestures over her shoulder with her spatula. “I don’t,” she assures them both.
Liar, liar, shorts aflame.
A wad of cash slides across the counter under her nose and Villanelle looks down to watch Gabriel withdraw his hand. “That’s your cut,” he explains, tapping a finger against it. “We can take you on part-time. I’ll let you know after community service when we could use an extra hand, yeah?”
“Oh,” Villanelle breathes, reaching out and spreading the money across her place setting. “It is so good to see you,” she addresses the cash. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
She’s so used to not having money, that her brain goes blank on what she’s going to buy first. Money even smells better than she remembers it.
“Do you need a moment alone?” Eve asks, standing there with both plates hovering above their place settings.
Quickly, Villanelle shuffles the bills into a stack and stores them inside her jacket, spreading her hands wide to bracket her place setting while she eagerly awaits her plate. Eve sets down Gabriel’s plate first without much care, but then meticulously centers Villanelle’s plate under her nose, adjusting it just so until she’s satisfied.
Villanelle stares down at the perfectly poached eggs wobbling at the edge of her plate and...it’s a gentler stake to the heart. It’s not right, but it’s closer than they usually get. Eve’s still standing in front of her plate, so Villanelle looks up and gets blindsided with a genuine smile.
“Congrats on the job, Astankova,” she says and that is a much less gentle stake to the heart. “Say hi to the family, Gabriel.” Then Eve turns back behind the counter and sidles her way back to the swinging office door at the end, disappearing behind it.
“Is she single?” Villanelle asks blankly.
Gabriel laughs with his mouth full, chewing loudly and knocking his elbow against hers. “She’ll eat you alive.”
“I should be so lucky.”
____________________