Chapter Text
It’s a sweltering midsummer’s morning at the rue du Confins du Monde. Some time around the tail end of her respite from washing dishes for La Rosarie, a bistro built into the base of a warren about five stories high, dark and crumbly and left to rot by the city’s planners. From the safety of her room, damp, arid and devoid of furnishings, Suletta stirs awake to the succession of the morning’s quarrels. It’s midsummer, so she’s left her bedside window ajar over in the hopes that her room, three stories above La Rosarie , would cool off with a breeze. It’s a Sunday, so she presumes that Madame Panlunch, Chuchu, is having a row with La Rosarie’s grower over their never-timely shipments of fresh produce their establishment needs for every week.
“Do you really think we’ll be able to make anything remotely palatable with this!?” Chuchu screams, listing off every article of abuse she can put together with her words. “Fait Chier! You can slither off until you have something of actual worth for us! Casse-toi!”
Suletta isn’t any stranger to the morning quarrels that have served as her alarm for the past two years she’s resided in the rue du Confins du Monde, another one of the many winding slums stuffed and abounded with penniless expats, mostly Asticassians, Pyrenaens, and Mauretanian Colonials. She’s also no stranger to the swelteringly oppressive stretches of midsummer heat, already expecting to wake up every morning in a pool of her own sweat. It’s just that the taste of bile on her tongue, vile and tart, isn’t exactly pleasant to wake up to. Nor is her head spinning exactly welcome, or how heavy and clammy she feels, each breath she takes echoing the taste of fresh fruits… peaches and grapes. Wine.
By reflex she gags, stricken with a nausea that has her stomach churning, and her hands fumbling about, reaching for the nearest bin. Instead she gropes the flesh of another. A woman with hair as silver as snow, idled with sleep and with nary a single shred of clothing on her; wearing only a line of purple splotches and welts that trails up from her breasts all around her neck.
Suletta isn’t wearing anything on her either.
She screams. Loudly. “aaaaaaAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!” Pushes the woman off the bed and balling up beneath her sheets as if hiding from her would make any difference. She’s gone and wasted her first time on a drunken lay she won’t ever, doesn’t wish to remember.
“ Stai zitto, not so loud…” The woman tears the bedsheet off of her, forcing her out of her shell while she’s still caught in hysterics. Terribly self-conscious regarding her own body, she cradles her knees to her chest in a feeble effort to conserve whatever modesty there’s left to protect.
There’s too many questions and answers she needs to ask and confirm regarding last night. Suletta’s already stuttering and weeping, trying to voice out a single one of them to start of with. “W-w-w-why are y-you… d-d-did w-we…”
The girl (Miorine, she remembers her name is Miorine) is endowed with a thick Asticassian accent and regards her with a scowl that has Suletta sorely missing the bedsheets to hide underneath. “It’s too early for this.... I’m still hungover.”
“I’m s-s-s-sorry…”
“Stop stuttering . ” Miorine groans, clambering back up on the bed to reclaim her half. Cradles herself through her hangover beneath the bedsheets she’s absconded, leaving Suletta very exposed. “It’s Domenica, uh, Dimanche, yes? That means I’ll only have a couple of hours to myself until I’m expected at… cazzo, merda, never mind. I’m going back to sleep.”
“M-m-m-m-Miorine?”
The Asticassian girl who’s name she presumes is Miorine answers with a groan.
“I’m s-s-sorry b-but… I n-needed to k-know… if we… last night… if we did… a-anything…”
“If we spent the night with one another.” She shrugs. “You were quite beautiful last night. Beneath me if I remember correctly. What of it?”
That Miorine is being so candid with her over the topic doesn’t assuage her anxieties one bit. She whimpers again, this time into her pillow, marred open with bite marks and other such traumas, presumed to be from last night. That Suletta doesn’t remember any of it only has her whimpering louder.
“Cazzo, you’re so loud…”
“W-why did we… d-did I… w-with you…” She’s never taken to wine as fondly as her fellows at La Rosarie would have it. Sipping on whatever peasant wine Chuchu would have to offer for the rest of the kitchen would suffice for her on most workdays, always when the physical exhaustion of eight hours of dishwashing would be exacting it’s toll from her body. And she has colleagues; it’s not as if Chuchu and Madame Nanaura haven’t dragged her off after-hours to share a more refined bottle of wine between the three of them before. Suletta’s just always awkward, watching the two women be so brazen with affection with one another two drinks in while she’d be left idled, swirling around the wine in her glass to try and make her presence feel more natural.
It’s why the news that she’s gone and thrown aside her very special first time overnight on drunken revelry she’ll hardly remember months from now is stupefying her into a stuttering mess, close to bawling outright. That the girl she’s wasted her very first on isn’t at all receptive towards her despairing only exacerbates it further.
“Do I really have to remember everything for you…”
Though Suletta sorely misses the comfort of hiding her nudity beneath her own bedsheets, the alternative to her current state of exposure would be sharing the sheets with Miorine.
Potent with her hangover, Miorine mulls and drawls out her words, recounting last night in explicit detail for the girl who can hardly remember any of it.
She’s halfway drunk and out of work, nursing a bottle of brandy she’d filched from the Brasserie she’d been thrown out of, on account of ‘mouthing off’ on a patron who’d approached her on her fifteen minutes off from waitressing in the middle of her shift. Listless and out of a job, she’d spotted La Rosarie in the corner of her eye, settling on making it her objective to sample each and every offering the idle establishment would have for her.
“Everything I had was terrible.” Miorine spits out. “I wouldn’t have fed any of the leftovers to my garden in Pantelope.”
“So harsh…” Suletta sighs.
Nearing the end of her shift, Suletta had sipped on enough of Chuchu’s cheap Sauvignon to get her to slip up and spill an entire bottle of Champagne all over the table and their guest; Miorine had thusly demanded that Suletta ‘take responsibility.’ With Miorine thoroughly sloshed and just about ready to spill her story towards anyone who might lend her an ear, ‘responsibility’ had entailed Suletta helping Miorine finish the bottle of Asticassian Chianti she’d also filched from her former employers.
An impromptu date, as Chuchu and Nika had relentlessly teased her over.
The rest of it Miorine doesn’t recall, taking into account that Suletta might pass out from embarrassment even if she skims it over. Suletta can only bring herself to remember just how clingy they were, fumbling with her keys and clambering into her room hauling up a bag of… something, lost in the excitement of it all and very much wanting to get to know one another more intimately.
“I’ll… I’ll t-take responsibility…” It occurs to her she’d made a very inconvenient promise to Miorine, right before they’d absconded for a night on the town.
A promise she can just ignore, since Miorine doesn’t appear to remember. “...What?”
Suletta can’t bring herself to lie to her.” “I’ll take responsibility!” She squeaks out. Her hangover is nowhere nearly as severe as Miorine’s, but she still manages to ring her ears with how shrill her voice is. “I’ll t-talk to Madam C-Chuchu a-and ask her if I c-can l-let you stay here!”
Miorine gives her a blank look until she rolls her eyes and groans. “Can’t you keep quiet for a moment…” She grumbles, burying her head beneath her one pillow. “Women are so complicated…”
“I’m s-sorry!”
Miorine rolls over. Regards Suletta with a glower that would have her shirking back, were she not already backed up against her open window. “Are you crying?”
“I… am?” It’s almost impossible, discerning between sweat and tears. She rubs at her eyes, finding them to be raw. “I am.”
“Out with it then. You’ve already kept me up for this long…”
“I’m s-sorry… I d-didn’t…” Suletta hasn’t any clue, regarding how to address such a private matter. Such matters should be addressed only between two persons in love; is Miorine really expecting her to treat it as if it’s any other topic of discussion? “It was my first time last night!”
There’s hardly any reaction to her words, if there is one at all. “That’s all? You wouldn’t stop prattling on about it last night. I’m going back to sleep now.”
“Ah. R-right.”
Another sigh from Miorine. “And what is it now?”
Suletta can feel her throat choking up, in an effort to be truthful towards her, having to swallow down her own spit in order to spit it out. “It was important to me that my first time would be special, and now… now I can’t remember any of it.”
“That’s it?” Miorine scoffs. “From how you’re making it sound, you’re making it out to be that I took something of actual worth from you.”
“It was important to me!” Suletta protests, scowling at her lover for once. “When I left Mercure for Illumis, I made a list of firsts I wanted to share with a lover.” It’s intimately embarrassing parting that last detail with Miorine, as if they hadn’t spent the last night intimately entangled with one another. “G-going on dates… holding hands on long walks… k-kissing… m-maybe even f-faire l’am-mour…”
“You sound like you have far too much free time to yourself with your nose buried in women’s magazines. And we spent last night together, didn’t we?”
“I… s-suppose, b-but I can’t… remember any of it.” Miorine’s words are biting, but she doesn’t appear unsympathetic with her mentions. Nevertheless, Suletta still sighs, just about ready to call it a morning and cradle herself through her hangover until the vertigo afflicting her is at a more manageable state. It’s why she squeaks when Miorine grabs her by the wrist.
“If you’re taking responsibility, I might as well too. How about this? As long as I’m allowed to stay here, I’ll take you out on dates, once every other week. Does that sound acceptable?”
It’s an absolutely scandalous proposition she’s putting forward, enough to have Suletta blushing to her ears. “D-d-dates!?”
“Yes, dates. I need somewhere to live, you’re sex-crazed. What else is there to get worked up over?”
“T-t-t-that m-makes it s-sound like I’m j-just paying you to spend time with me!”
Miorine threads, weaves her fingers through her hair. Looks her in her eyes before darting away, as if embarrassed for once this morning. “I wouldn’t just sleep around with anyone you know. Even if they were providing me with room and board without charge.”
Parsing out whatever intentions she has towards her is quickly proven impossible. “But that m-means… you… and me… will-!” As if to cull off such a line of thought, her stomach grumbles and humiliates her before she can complete such a line of thought.
“You’re so annoying.” The bedsheet is thrown off, Miorine presumably giving up on her chances at sleep with Suletta continuing to prattle on beside her. She’s about to apologize, but screams in horror as her would-be maybe lover squawks and crumples across the floor with the first step she takes.
“A-are you alright? Do you need help?” Suletta’s already extended a hand out to her, and panics when she sees exactly what it is Miorine’s stumbled upon; emptied bottles of wines and liqueurs, and a very lurid assortment of harnesses, phallic toys and condoms both fresh and used, a bag Suletta presumes belongs to Miorine at the epicentre of it all.
“ Porca Miseria, why is your apartment such a mess…?”
Suletta whines, having resorted to hiding beneath her sheets again. “N-none of that’s mine! It’s all yours!”
“Eh? Ah. Right. I’ll pick up after myself later. You’re hungry aren’t you? I’ll make us something. You have a kitchen, no?”
“A-aren’t you still hungover? A-and I don’t!”
“Yes, but my stomach will kill me faster than my head will. And you are the dishwasher, no? Which means you’ll have the keys for the kitchen downstairs.”
“W-well yes, but M-Madame Panlunch is down there right now, starting prep work for the lunch service, and she won’t be happy with me if I let someone I don’t know use the service kitchen-!”
She ends up flicked across the forehead for her fretting. “We’re not strangers, understand? You’re my Ragazza. My uhm, how do you say it? Ma copine? (girlfriend)?”
“C-c-c-copine!?”
Tossed over her way is a skirt that isn’t Suletta’s. “I’m famished.” Miorine grumbles, slipping on a pair of trousers that also isn’t Suletta’s. “I also… need a shirt.”
In spite of Suletta’s protests, Miorine pushes and forces her way into La Rosarie’s kitchen down below, past the loud and vocal of La Rosarie’s head chef, who’s already visibly staggered with the effects of alcohol hours before service is to open. Necessitating that Suletta accompany her as damage control, as useless as she sounds whimpering behind her impromptu Copine while the head chef threatens violence towards the two of them and prompting Miorine to threaten violence back.
Miorine moves about the kitchen with practiced movements and scours through the kitchen with familiar ease. Requisitions a tin of anchovies, jars of capers and black olives, a head of garlic, a halfway to rotten bundle of parsley, and half a box of year-old dried spaghetti for her use.
“I need…” She yawns, commandeering an idled kitchen stove and a stockpot for water, setting the latter across the stovetop to bring to a roiling boil. “ Pepe (pepper) . And if you have any, peperoncino (chili peppers) for spice, since I doubt you keep the fresh sort around. Some sale (salt) for the water , some Oilo d’oliva (Olive Oil). Extravergine (Extra virgin). Now. ”
“Yes m’am…” She’s already resigned herself to another lecture from Chuchu, scrambling about the kitchen and trying to avoid the head chef’s ire for whatever tools and ingredients she’ll need.
Even while she’s nursing a hangover, Miorine proves herself more than capable wielding a chef’s knife, cutting up vegetables with startling machine-like efficiency, mincing up the garlic into a paste-like consistency in seconds.
“Suletta. The oil?”
“R-right! Uhm, we didn’t have any…”
Miorine is seemingly aghast, hearing her admit to this. “What in god’s name was in the tomato sauce you served me last night?”
“Uhm… I think tomatoes, butter, onions, lemons…”
She looks away from the cutting board, if only for a few seconds, to grimace at her as if she’d been personally offended. “Merda, that’s disgusting. No wonder my stomach disagrees with me so much this morning. From my bag. There’s a bottle of olive oil I keep with me for ah… private use. I need it.”
“Are those… tomatoes?” Suletta asks, the unmarked bottle of olive oil resting up against a jar of peeled tomatoes swimming in tomato passata (sauce), carefully tinned and without a single blemish of mold on them.
“Yes. I’ll need them as well.” With one hand, she’s browning the garlic, the capers, and the anchovies in the olive oil until the kitchen is absolutely fragrant with briny, tangy pungence, the anchovies dissolving into the oil until there’s nary any fish left in the man. With her other hand, she crushes the fruits out into a bowl she’s set aside, each fruit delicately ripe to the touch, breaking apart as she crushes it into pulp and passata to be joined with the infused oil and olives and cooked down into a fragrant sauce . All while the spaghetti noodles are cooking off in the stockpot; all of this she watches over, while looking the head chef in the eye and scorning him as a Puttana.
“They’re a strain my mamma worked hard to cultivate. She used to grow them from her gardens out in Partenope. I had as much as I could of them jarred and tinned before I had to leave, partially as a keepsake for her memory, following my padre’s demise.”
“You don’t… have your maman or your papa with you anymore…? I’m sorry.”
Miorine sighs. “I’m over it. And my padre was a brute of a Mafioso who had it coming. Not to mention a louse and an a failure as il padre .”
“So harsh…”
Even while she’s busy, shimmying the now cooked-through spaghetti noodles over to the sauce, she still has the time to give Suletta a dirty look. “You would never know him like I did.”
Inevitably, she’d stepped on a sore subject like the clumsy oaf she was. Suletta does her best to hide her pain. “R-right. I’m sorry.”
Elegantly, the noodles end up tossed together and finishing in the sauce. The dish smells absolutely fragrant; sweet and tart, briny yet infused with pungent, garlicky notes so very forward smelling. “It’s how I ended up here, in Illumise. I needed somewhere I could hide and have a fresh start for myself, and the city of lights promised me exactly that.” She sighs. “As it turns out, most establishments haven’t been willing to hire me on, since being the daughter of a Mafioso doesn’t exactly come with skills I’m able to embellish for any position beyond service work.”
Suletta’s offered a forkful of pasta, the flame beneath the saucepan tapered down to a bare simmer. “Try it. Taste to see if the pasta’s done.”
“R-right!” Suletta takes to the offering, hardly able to conceal her delight. The taste matches exactly how it smells; the end result is a sauce that’s equal parts savory yet sweet. Briny yet pungent. Balanced, yet so brazenly forward. Perhaps that Suletta is getting to eat for free and doesn’t have to make the dish herself sweetens her taste palette just a bit but she doesn’t care; for the past two years she’s subsisted along with Chuchu and Nika on a diet of stale bread and margarine, the three of them scouring down on items in the pantry past their prime (and not appearing suspect with mold) whenever their budget permits them to.
“It’s really good!” She’s almost certain that her eyes are glowing with how delightful the pasta tastes. “Though it is a bit heavy for a morning meal…”
“It was all I could make with what your pantry had to offer that wouldn’t take too long. And I wanted to make you something nice, since you’ll be letting me stay here.”
It’s much too late for her to realize the possibility that she’s likely fallen into a guilt trap, now that she’s already eaten Miorine’s food and owes her for the meal. Not that it matters. Chuchu’s already bellowing out her name, likely having been egged on by the head chef, prompting the dishwasher to cower behind the girl responsible for all her kitchen-related woes and hoping she’ll explain.
“Oi! Asticassian girl! You better be here to pay off the tab you left us with last night!” Accompanying her is Nika, who reassures her with a tempered smile, hopefully here to minimize whatever confrontation might occur between two brazenly abrasive personalities.
“I’m only here to serve myself food.” Miorine says it nonchalantly, as if she isn’t the one intruding on the kitchen grounds. “It was your dishwasher who let me in.”
Chuchu acknowledges Suletta’s presence with a glare that the latter flinches from with a shriek.
“I d-d-didn’t! She let herself in!”
“All seventy-eight francs of the tab you owe us.” Madame Chuchu growls, brandishing a kitchen knife. “I’ll deal with you later, after I’m finished with ta petite amie.” She grumbles towards Suletta, who aptly responds with a feeble whimper.
“I’m not paying two weeks worth of wages for fertilizer. So I have a better proposition. Fire your head chef and hire me on to replace him. However skilled you believe is, I guarantee you I can surpass him.”
“Hah!? You drank your way into a tab, and you want us to pay you for it?” Chuchu sputters off into obscene laughter, and concludes it with telling Miorine to kindly fuck off.
“For the first year, I’ll work entirely without pay. And I have three years of experience, as a line cook for Venere back in my home in Partenope. My studies encompass the management strategy track from the University of Porto Nuovo. I have the experience. And the skills necessary to lift your ailing establishment up from its woes. All I need is for you to hire me on, and get rid of that tasteless Putanna you have for a head chef. Take his place and have me under you or replace your head chef with me, I’ll be fine with either.”
“Merde, you really are serious, aren’t you?”
“Chuchu, she has a point you know…” Nika voices, eying up the head chef who’s already indulgent and intoxicated on alcohol this early before service, utterly oblivious to Miorine’s bid to replace him now that he’s presumed that she’s being dealt with. “At the rate we’re going, we won’t have the funds to last through the coming winter. We need a change in course.”
“Why are you saying that in front of her?” Chuchu groans. “You’re only emboldening the would-be freeloader!”
“The food I sampled last night was awful. Foot traffic last night was about half as you could have tabled, and yet front-of-house is still understaffed and overworked. Your pantry appears to be chronically understocked, owing to either poor sourcing, inadequate storage, mismanagement, or perhaps all three. Hire me on, and I’ll resolve all these issues within the first week. Stay your course and suffer bankruptcy. It’s your choice.”
“And you made all these observations last night while you were drunk?” Chuchu scoffs.
Nika slips by her to sample the bowl of pasta Miorine’s quite possibly prepared as a showcase, and not as a labor of love; Suletta can’t help but feel used, watching idly by while Nika slurps up the spaghetti purportedly meant for her. Nika’s eyes brighten, as if she’s been captivated by the taste. “Ah Chuchu, this is good!”
Chuchu swipes the fork from her and snaps up a bite of her own. Rolling her eyes while slurping the rest of the dish down. “Yes. It's good. But kitchen service is more than just producing one dish that tastes good. It’s about serving up at minimum, seventy-five of twenty or thirty dishes all on the same night, hot and perfect, facing down a dinner rush with orders flooding in while you can’t do your job because our dummy of a prep cook can’t handle the onions anymore without his eyes burning.”
Miorine doesn’t hesitate. “I’m used to it.”
Chuchu and Nika share a look with one another, and though the meaning is reserved for only the two of them, Suletta’s come to understand it as a sign they’ve reached some sort of an agreement without having to resort to words. “Fine, fine. We’ll be closing up for the rest of the week either way since we won’t have anything to cook with owing to a supposed infestation that’s afflicted all of our grower’s produce overnight. You’ll be staying on with ta petite amie (girlfriend),” she glares at Suletta, “until we’ve made our decision whether to have you on. Prove yourself Asticassian, and we’ll hire you on as our head chef. I’ll be your sous-chef while you’re in the kitchen, but you’ll always answer to me and Nika and even Suletta when it comes to managing the business, understood?”
“Understood.”
“Good. We’ll start trying out your mettle tonight. See if you really are who you say you are. Show up sometime after dark and feel free to bother ta petite amie into showing you around if you can’t find us. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Good, good.” With that, Chuchu lets out an unseemly yawn, stretching out her back. “I’m still famished after that pasta.”
Prompting Nika to approach Miorine. “Ah. Madam…?”
“Rembran. Miorine Rembran.”
“Madam Rembran? We were actually considering treating ourselves to some bread and coffee over at one of the nicer Boulangeries (bakeries) some two blocks south, closer to the city centre. Would you like to join?”
As if betrayed, Chuchu makes a stupified sound of indignation. “What!?”
Nika pacifies her Chuchu with a smile, its meaning not entirely lost on Suletta. Chuchu lets up with a groan.
“Fine, fine.” Chuchu grumbles. “Suletta.”
Her irritated tone of voice has Suletta standing up straight. “Y-yes!?”
“Feel free to join us as always.” She smirks, gesturing towards her neck. “If you're feeling confident enough about... you know. Your marks and bruises of love."
"Eh?" Suletta looks to Miorine, who produces for her a compact mirror from her bag. There's hardly a patch of her tan complexion that isn't mottled with purple welts and splotches blooming across her neckline, her jaw, even her cheeks. They hardly match; if Suletta's left behind a trail of blemishes across her pale complexion, Miorine's collared her outright with how brutal the mouthwork is.
Suletta screams. Loudly. Ringing her ears with how embarrassed she is.
"We should ah, let you two lovebirds be." Nika says, already gesturing Chuchu out the door.
"W-why didn't you warn me about them..." Suletta whimpers, certain she's blushing up to her ears.
Miorine's smile, however radiant it is, does little to help matters. She laughs, and though Suletta's well aware she's only mirthful for being giving a chance at heading a bistro, she can't help but feel as if she's laughing at her. "I can't believe it actually worked out!"
"You used me? Y-y-you, I w-was just your m-meal ticket all along, wasn't I...?"
Miorine sighs. Threads her fingers through her hair again, her body language suddenly coy towards her. "I meant it when I said I don't just sleep around with anyone. And this won't just be benefiting me if they hire me on you know."
Suletta's lost, trying to figure out any possible reasons as to how this could possibly be of any benefit to her. "Eh?"
"If I'm hired, I want you working with me. By my side in the kitchen as my Saucier."
"But... I'm... a dishwasher..."
"A very talented dishwasher. Don't you remember the stew you cooked up for me last night? After closing hours, when we were both famished and needed something we could enjoy together? You offered to cook for me one of your mother's old recipes, a stew of vegetables, mussels, and branzino, if I remember correctly. It was the only thing last night I remember tasting that was remotely palatable. Other than you.”
It all comes close to overwhelming her mind, overworked with one-too-many revelations this morning so far. "I... did." Her memory is a splotchy patchwork that precludes the fact she'd cleaned and gutted out a fish with nary a scrape on her, all while utterly and completely intoxicated under the effects of alcohol.
"You chose to prepare for me something labor-intensive. All while you were absolutely sloshed. And somehow, it turned out perfect. It reminded me of my mother's old seafood stews from when I was younger."
"Thank you." Suletta murmurs, her voice incredibly small.
"Don't be humble." Miorine sighs. "Once I'm properly hired on and brought aboard, I'll have you training under me as my Saucier. They say cooking while intoxicated on brandy and wine is a sign of Haute Cuisine, after all."
Suletta can't even bring herself to whimper.