|
The Altman Funeral Home hasn't gotten its new sign yet, but the sign has been ordered, and the contractors have been... well, contracted... to make a handful of other renovations to the house. Some of the stuff, however, is stuff that Sieghilde can do on her own: for example, replacing all of the door handles in the house with ADA-compliant handles which coincidentally can also be opened by the paws of canines.
Accessibility: it's good for everyone!
She's got a tool belt slung around her waist and a screwdriver in one hand, and has just finished screwing the last of the dark metal lever-style handles on the first floor. Stretching her arms up above her head, Sigi groans as her spine cracks and pop-pop-pops. She unbuckles the tool belt and starts cleaning up the trash from all the various packages for the door handles. "Fuck, I need a beer."
And 'lo, there is a beer deposited in her palm. A bottle. Uncapped. Of Weihenstaphaner Hefeweissbier. Naturally. Ludwig was the party responsible for delivering it, and has one of his own. And a cigarette. The latter dangles from the side of his mouth the way a child with a death wish hangs off the merry-go-round. Precarious to all but the one enjoying it.
"Just the one? Who are you and what have you done with Sigi." Ludwig squints down at her before nudging the door open to let his smoke out into the night air. He leans in the doorway, flicks some ash out into the wind, and sniffs at the outside air with a scowl. "This entire city smells like the Prater."
Sonja comes wandering in wearing her pajamas, which are white and covered with playing wolf puppies and text that says "AWOO!" She's carrying two giant mugs, one of which is steaming, and one isn't. "We're all apparently one step ahead of you," she says with a grin, as she holds up one of the mugs. "Tea for me, and a nice mug of Weihenstephaner for you. You're still working on these? I thought you'd be done by now." She pauses to look at Ludwig and says, with a soft laugh, "I thought that was just your cologne."
"See, the way this works," answers Sigi, closing her hand around the bottle, "Is I say 'Fuck, I need a beer,' and then my right hand puts a beer in my right hand, and my left hand puts a beer in my left hand, and I have two beers, which is the minimum number of beers that I should have at any time when I want beer." Her smile is brief, sharp, wolfish, and she tips her head back, taking a long, solid drink of said beer. One solid thump on her breastbone, and a belch.
The reference to the Wound across Vienna as the sort of smell that permeates Philly? "Yeah, I thought that was just your socks," Sigi agrees with Sonja, and as the blonde Serbian arrives? Her smile returns, but this time softer. Oh no, Ludwig, they're going to smooch.
"At least I wear socks," Ludwig complains under his breath in the wake of Sieghilde's comment. He glances back when Sonja arrives and makes a sneering expression at her joke, similarly. "Oh, good. Now she has someone to encourage her." He shakes his head in apparent dismay, flicks more ash out onto the stoop, and tilts back his beer for a lengthy swig. It's punctuated by a small burp. Almost dainty.
"The people here are garish and familiar. They call football soccer. A hangnail costs a year's salary. This country is awful. I hate it here." He looks back out the door at the street, seemingly satisfied. If Ludwig can complain about it, it's probably just fine. He's only happy when he's complaining, after all.
"You could get married, Ludwig. Then you would have someone to encourage you, too!" Sonja smooches Sigi, offers a nice (thankfully not steaming) coffee mug full of beer, and smiles at her wife. "We know you well by now. I can tell when you're going to start complaining about needing a beer. It comes about ten minutes after you start wiping a bit of sweat from your brow. Or ten minutes after you wake up." To Ludwig she complains, "and I haven't seen a single super hero! Comic books told me the United States was full of super heroes."
"I wear socks. Otherwise I get blisters, and I hate blisters." Sigi leans down to kiss Sonja hello: a chaste little kiss, out of consideration to her big brother. Three years of difference isn't much when you get to your late 40s, but, you know, who's counting?
"He was married once, remember?" And that ended, you know, super well! Just great! She takes the mug of beer, and takes a swallow from it, letting out a second burp. Ahhh, perfection. "Well, it's good to be known, even if it's a horrifying ordeal according to the internet." Her mouth screws to the side, and she listens to Ludwig complain, ending with: "So... there's plenty for you to complain about, therefore, you'll be fucking fine."
"Ah, yes. The Superhero. America's answer to not having a robust civil society or a public safety net. The reason we don't have them in Austria, Sonja, is because we have pensions and affordable dentistry." Ludwig flicks his butt out onto the sidewalk, then tugs the door shut with a heavy thunk, making sure it latches closed. He takes another swig from his bear and lopes on over to one of the comfier chairs into which he pours himself.
He doesn't speak on the topic of marrying. Either the first one or for a second time. He just shakes his head a bit and takes another sip from his beer to continue brooding broodily. Much malaise. Such angst. Wow.
"Excuse me," Sonja says with mock offense. "I was a superhero in Austria! Did I ever tell you about the time I got mugged outside the comic book store I went to?" She grins, because it's kind of an amusing story. At least to Irraka weirdos. The grin gets covered up briefly by a sip from her outlandishly large mug of tea, then she glances at Sigi and asks, "do you need help finished up that work?"
Sigi sort of... winces... when Ludwig mopes off about marriage, and finishes her mug of beer. "Don't antagonize him too much, or he'll do the Lune thing that he did on our last vacation," she mutters, wandering off to the kitchen to put the mug in the sink. "Wait. I don't think I remember that story," she adds, coming back out. "Tell it."
"Ehhh, nah, I'm good at the moment. I did all the ones down here, I can hit the upstairs ones tomorrow."
Ludwig flits his gaze between the two women, silently and sullenly drinking his beer. He doesn't register an opinion on the subject of hearing a story, save that he doesn't start speaking himself and hasn't gotten up to leave the room. Which probably means hearing the story is perfectly acceptable. He does reach into his rumpled suit jacket for his pack of smokes, though.
"Oh, story time!" Sonja grins at Sigi, finds a spot to lean against the wall, and sips at her tea. "This was back when I first started using comic books to learn German." Which she is much better at. She figured out how to speak German pretty well, and then they all moved to America and she had to start over. "I was at the store to buy some, and happened to be buying Wolverine comics. Then I left and ran into a mugger outside the shop, who tried to rob me. The clerk came out to try to help, which was brave but foolish and extraordinarily unnecessary, and it made the guy panic to be ganged up on, so he shot me." She taps her chest with a fingertip. "Right there, I think. I did caved his face in, like you do, and there's this clerk, staring at me slack-jawed." She flashes another wide smile. "I didn't really want to have to kill him, so I told him that I was part of a Serbian super soldier project. You know, like Wolverine. And he drove me to the hospital."
Carrying her beer, Sigi wanders over lazily to the chair where Ludwig is moping. Oh no. Ludwig. Sigi is here to claim the two minutes of positive attention which Ludwig will deign to grant to any living being on any day. She drops her tool belt next to the chair, sets her beer aside on an end table, and insinuates herself alongside Ludwig in the chair, as if she were, in fact, a tired four-year-old little sister snuggling up to her big brother and not a forty-eight-year-old werewolf. Her head plops down on his shoulder, and she turns her face toward Sonja to listen to the story.
"... that is... amazing," she laughs softly, reaching across Ludwig for her beer again. "I can actually picture this happening in my mind."(edited)
"Oh, I remember that story," Ludwig remarks once it's concluded. "Serbian Super Soldier. That's a good story, I like that story." Caved in face and all. "I forget if we sent that guy up the flue or not." Ludwig lights his cigarette, loops his arm around Sigi's shoulders, and tucks his l'il sis under his arm as though she needed protecting.
She does not.
"I will just say that my foray into learning Russian was a lot more alcoholic and involved a lot of men named Yuri cracking their knuckles in the background." He clicks his tongue and taps some ash, "Ah, the Russian mob."
"I think we did send him up the flue," Sonja admits, "but I could just be confusing him for the hunters who were staking out the funeral home. Or any of the other people that made us kill them over the years. They blur together after a while." She talks about killing people like it's nothing to her at this point, which is probably why she's such a terrifying PTA mom; it really is nothing to her at this point, except sometimes another on her list of errands. "You know, I bet there are Russian comic books too."
"Oh, yeah, I do, actually, now that you say 'Serbian Super Soldier.' That was... a long time ago," offers Sigi thoughtfully, tucked up comfortably against Ludwig's side. "Light me a cigarette, please, Ludwig." As all good big brothers should, right? Snuggle your little sister and light her a cigarette.
"Mmm. Is it bad if I can't remember whether we sent someone up the flue or not?" What a delightfully awful euphemism for 'shoving a dead body (which we made dead) into the crematorium'!
Her eyes slowly lid closed. "We should find Serbian comic books. I bet they have them. There's The Voice from everywhere." Shh. Sigi get sleepy.
|