2022-03-07 - Broadleaf BBQ

The Broadleaf is not a modern apartment complex by any stretch of the imagination. It was built in some earlier part of the 20th century, but it's clean and well-maintained. Four stories of brown brick and pale stone built into a squat rectangular structure. One won't find a fancy clubhouse here, though there is a community room. There is no pool, but the rents are gentle and low for the PNW. There aren't any washer-dryer hookups, but the laundry room on the first floor has been altered so that none of the machines require quarters. You just walk in and do your laundry, but you try to be considerate of others while you do it.

Out back there is also a porch area, a small one, darting out onto a little bit of green between the apartment and the Firefly Forest. It's here that Conner Hawthorne has set up a bbq pit and some picnic tables. The picnic tables are brand new.

The rumpled-looking gentle apartment manager lives with his residents. He has an apartment of his own, up on the fourth floor, and he manages the whole thing out of said apartment rather than opening up some sort of separate office. He is also the handyman and the groundskeeper. If someone's toilet clogs it's him they call at 3 in the morning. He's also pretty forgiving about late rent and partial paid rent as long as he knows what's going on. He's been known to drop rent down to something reasonable for residents on unemployment until they can get a job, for example.

The Broadleaf doesn't get much turnover in the way of residents as a result. There are usually only about 5 or so units available at any given time.

What he's grilling, at the moment, are hamburgers, Beyond burgers, hot dogs, and Beyond dogs. One of the picnic tables has been laid out with sodas, bottled waters, chips, dips, cookies, Dixie cups, hot dog and hamburger buns and fixings, and paper plates. Nothing fancy, just good solid fun picnic food that people can enjoy together. A pretty normal event.

Except of course for the fact that...not all the residents look precisely...alive.

There's the elderly couple who just came up to hug Conner at the BBQ, with faces so pale that they look like those painted ladies from the 1600s, the ones that used to put cyanide powder on their faces to look more delicate. There's the dude with his head under his arm, leaning against a tree and eating a hot dog. There's a woman who keeps walking through the table to get soda--she seems to really love it--that's dressed in clothes that are more apropos to the 1940s than to the modern era. And those are just a few examples.

Conner is...completely unalarmed by any of them.

Ravn Abildgaard does not live here, nor does he intend to. But he tipped one newcomer to town by name of Ariadne off about the place, and he figures that the least he can do is go and make introductions. And admittedly he's a little curious -- every fibre in his body insists this place is haunted as hell, and yet all he saw here earlier on was some apartment's memory of a poor girl with a broken heart sobbing into a tub of ice cream.

He breathes out almost in relief upon taking in the sights. Okay, spider sense is not malfunctioning. And after all, it's not like any of these apparitions look like the living people are the meat to be barbecued.

He strolls up, nodding to the bloke with the head under one arm and managing to not ask how it's hanging -- and then turns to the host, hands in pockets. "Nice turn-out. Some of these people have had to have been here a long time. I'm going to have to ask those Shakespearean ladies later on how they managed to get all the way to the west coast. Haunting furniture, is my guess."

Nor does Una Irving live here, but word tends to get around, and a party is a party. At least she's not the worst kind of the guest, the kind that shows up without anything to offer: she's brought a plate of snickerdoodles, which she surreptitiously adds to the rest of the food on the picnic table, so focused on this that it's only after that that she actually turns around and-- "Oh."

It's not that ghosts are that unexpected. This is Gray Harbor, after all. But.

"... oh, of course people can haunt furniture. I'd never thought," she says, being in fact close enough that she catches what Ravn's just said. The Dane gets a quick grin, and Connor, less familiar, a more hesitant one. Not a gatecrasher... ok, yes a gatecrasher. "Hi-- I'm Una."

Practically nobody can say no to a good hamburger. Someone included: Samwise the Windhound. As such, Ariadne has left her four-legged plate-snatcher back at the Murder Motel with a frozen puzzle toy after a long walk. He should be perfectly content and probably end up asleep upside-down with spindly legs bent up like a swatted cockroach. Sighthound bliss.

She arrives in her peacoat and a thin teal-colored turtleneck against the cold, everyday jeans with cuffs tucked into comfortable fleece-lined Wellingtons. The rainboots are patterned in an unapologetic cacophony of fruit colors against black: watermelon-pink, honeydew-green, blueberry-blue -- those pastel hues beloved by elementary school children. A lazy bun as usual for her deeply-auburn hair and let's be honest: Ravn isn't hard to spot at all with his height -- and there's Una as well. She lifts a hand to wave at them both while working her way over. Wait until she notices the snickerdoodle cookies.

And the barista can't see any of the others present. The ghostly others, rather, though she seems to be perhaps itchy in her skin with how she unconsciously rubs at one bicep through her coat as she approaches the gents and fellow redhead at the grill. "Ravn! Una, good to see you, peeps. This is a great set-up," she then tells the man minding the grill. Offering out a hand to shake, she adds, "I think I recognize you as Conner? Management? I've been doing some research on the place and I'm thinking to rent here. I'm Ariadne. You might have seen me in passing in the evening hours at Espresso Yourself if you drifted through there."

Conner flashes a warm smile at Ravn. When he speaks, he's soft-spoken, the voice as gentle as his overall mien. "Thanks," he says, and then he blinks at the Shakespearean ladies. "Oh, goodness, I don't even know," he admits. "I don't understand a word out of their mouths; maybe you'll have better luck."

He puts down his spatula to turn to Una next, offering a hand and smiling. "Hi Una, I'm Conner. Nice to meet you. Welcome. Thanks for coming."

He shakes Ariadne's hand next, and nods his head in agreement. "That's me," he says. "I am in Espresso Yourself quite often, I think I do recognize you. You're the one Ravn here showed 103 to, right? I apologize that I couldn't be there in person to do so, that day. I was feeling a little under the weather. Welcome."

Ravn eyes the women. His curiosity is piqued; but course it is, he's a historian and those ladies are living history -- err. Dead history. Whatever. Can he carry a conversation in Tudor English? Good question. He edges closer (manners? what are manners?) -- and then he drifts right back where he came from, because whatever that gibberish is, it's definitely not English. It has never been English. It once launched an Armada against the English.

Oh well. If it sounds too good to be true it usually is. The Dane slinks all the way back to the bag of Danish beer he brought just in case, and adds it to the treasure trove near the barbecue. "Well, showed 103 might be overstating it. I don't know the first thing about real estate. So we pretty much just looked around. You know this town, got to make sure there isn't a creepy axe murderer in the bathroom."

"Was there a creepy axe murderer in the bathroom?" Una wants to know. "Sorry-- nice to meet you, Conner, I'm sure your place has no creepy axe murderers, just plenty of ghosts, which is cool. No issues from me." She extends her hand in return for the man to shake, smiling brightly.

"Hi, Ariadne!"

"That's me, yes, and no worries at all, Conner. Under the weather is under the weather. No need to stress yourself out until you're mended. What I can report is that there was no axe murderer in the bathroom," Ariadne laughs, then shaking her head. "I liked it though, it had a nice layout. The immediate access to the yard out back is great. I have a dog, a sighthound, he's CGC-certified if you're concerned about him being a furry jerk. If it means putting down extra money on the deposit, I don't mind doing it. I respect the possibility of accidents happening, though I'll try my damnedest to not let them happen."

Still, Una's comment has the barista giving her a curious look and then Ravn a far more suspicious look. "So...the place has plenty of ghosts?" She looks around again and the sensation of needing to rub at her arm crops up once more. Oh. Oh. She'd been ignoring that little gut feeling. On second intuition's check, this place does feel a little...weird.

Conner gives a placid blink. "No, everyone's very harmless," he assures. "There was a gremlin that was giving me fits this December but we've come to an accord now. If anything dangerous shows up, ah, well, just run and then call me and I'll see to it that it doesn't bother you. But I don't think there's anything to worry about."

He furrows his brow thoughtfully, gaze sweeping over the dead residents to make sure none of them have axes. The guy with the head has claimed a hotdog and is feeding it to his head, but that's the most disturbing thing he sees. He shakes it off.

And then to Ariadne: "Oh, your pet would be fine even if he weren't CGC-certified. I like animals. I don't really even care how many you have as long as things don't start to smell..."

He trails off when she says it has plenty of ghosts. And turns to the elderly couple that she can't see. "Grandma, Grandpa, this is Ariadne, she's new."

And those who can see the ghosts?

"Pleased to meet you, dear."

"Eleanor, I don't think she can see us."

"Nonsense, Harold, she can see us just fine."

"She keeps rubbing her arms, that's what people do when they can't see us!"

"Can it, you old fogey. You don't have to know everything!"

Conner clears his throat and adds, "They only come to visit on BBQ days. Which is kind of true of several of them. Not all of them. They won't hurt you any, though. They just get lonely, same as the rest of us."

"No axe murderer," Ravn agrees and fiddles with his gloves. "There was a poor girl trying to drown her sorrows in a tub of ice cream, but I suspect she was not a genuine ghost -- most of them are just memories and imprints. These -- " He glances around and vows to never ask himself how exactly hot dogs and headless riders work " -- are obviously somewhat more real."

He nods at the old couple with a smile. "Good to meet you, Mister and Missus Hawthorne. Still keeping an eye on the lineage? You'd get along just fine with my grandmother, she does the same thing."

Una gives Ariadne a crooked smile and then a shrug: just run with it. "Good, axe murderers are to be avoided. Girls with ice cream, well, that's probably just fine."

"You... do this often, then?" she wonders of Conner. "Host people, and the ghosts come out too? I can't blame them, it's just-- novel, I suppose. All this--" She gestures around, though her smile is warm enough as she catches ghostly eyes.

Conner proceeds to mostly convince the barista that there are, in fact, ghosts around here -- and familial ghosts nonetheless! She blinks wide-eyed in the empty direction of the grandparents addressed and super awkwardly twiddles fingers in their direction, feeling like a complete fool in the process. Unable to see OR hear them, she replies, "Nice to meet you." Because what else to you attempt to say politely to things you can't see or hear?

Ravn doesn't help her nonbeliever case. There's not a hint of joking in his expression when he addresses a 'Mister and Missus Hawthorne'. Una gets a look from Ariadne all but broadcasting HELP. "Yeah, ice cream is just fine," she agrees just a little airlessly. Now she wishes she'd brought Samwise along. He was an excellent barometer for Weird Instances in the first place. It does settle her to hear Conner explain of the visitation patterns of these ghosts -- she nods, her shoulders dropping a little in relief.

"Not as often as I probably should," Conner says sheepishly, to Una. Of hosting parties or hosting ghosts or both, probably. He sees Ariadne's look and he sort of smiles and pats the air and says, "There's ice cream sandwiches in the freezer inside, in the common room. I couldn't figure out how to bring them out here without them melting. Anybody want a burger or a hot dog or anything? They're ready!"

"Oh yes, very much so," Eleanor tells Ravn cheerfully. "Little Conner here gets into so many scrapes, we just have to."

Conner sighs. It's a long-suffering sigh. 'Little Conner.'

Do you point out to Granny Hawthorne, probably several decades dead, that Little Conner is at least a decade older than you are? Nah. Ravn chuckles politely and makes a note to gently rib the poor sod later, maybe next time he drops by HOPE at some strange hour to fix a pipe or oil a hinge. "Oh, I'm sure Little Conner is a busy one. You must have lots of stories."

He has mercy enough to slide away before the ghostly grans can indeed get started. "Why yes -- a hot dog sounds great. Though I am assuming, of course, that you'll be making inferior American ones?"

Maybe it's not so hard to guess after all why Della the Day Manager continues to make this guy miserable.

Una catches that expression on Ariadne's face and reaches for the other redhead's elbow. "Come on," she says. "Let's go get some ice cream then. Though--"

She glances back, because Ravn's said something, and it has her expression turn all quizzical. "Are there... Danish hotdogs? Wait, hold that thought. We need ice cream first."

Recognizing the gesture of mentioning ice cream for what it is, Conner gets a mildly-sheepish smile from Ariadne in turn. Taking a step back mentally from the current situation, she assesses and concludes: nothing bad has happened -- it's weird -- but still, nothing bad -- we roll with it.

"Hamburger for me, please," she chimes in, her stomach agreeing with an inaudible gurgle. Her breakfast had been light against her druthers; it's time for another run to Safeway to stock the teeny fridge in the motel room. "And give Ravn a lightly burnt hot dog if there's one, he really wants to sample true American cuisine, apparently." The Dane gets an eyebrowing and a smirk. She'll stand in for Della the Day Manager, don't worry. "Oh -- kidding, ice cream first," she amends, taking an unconscious step closer to Una in the process. "Be right back!"

"...What's inferior about an American hot dog? Inquiring minds want to know," Conner tells Ravn, genuine curiosity on his face. "I didn't even know there were hotdogs anywhere but America."

Well, that's just good old fashioned Exceptionalism right there, but he's at least innocent about it?

He waves to the two ladies with a smile. They will indeed find both classic and Neapolitan style ice cream sandwiches in the freezer in there!

Ravn grins slightly. "All right. First off, I'm going to need you to ignore historical fact and accept the Danish canon: We invented these things. We did not steal them from you. Got that? Now, you take a red wiener sausage in a bun, and you add remoulade, ketchup, mustard, raw onions, fried onions, pickles. And then you try to not spill any on your shirt. That's how it's done -- and if you ask for cutlery you lose."

Luckily, Una is not out of earshot to hear Ravn's description of a Danish hotdag, and the look she gives him over her shoulder? That's pure disbelief. Danish hotdog, pfft.

More importantly, however, there's an Ariadne, and there's ice cream. And: "Are you... okay?" It's lower voiced. "Because if you didn't mean that as a 'help me, Una, you're my only hope' glance, my barometer is way off."

Ravn gets a nearly identical look over her shoulder as well. Danish hotdog? Pfft indeed. Fetching ice cream spares the Dane an immediate sassy retort and Ariadne doesn't reply until she has one of the ice cream bars in-hand. It's cold and she knows it'll be delicious even if strawberry ice cream isn't her favorite.

"Nice pop culture reference," she lauds Una at first, giving her fellow redhead a grin. "Your barometer is spot-on. I'm...still getting used to the idea of ghosts being present. Like, really and truly present. I'm getting there, just...not there yet. It's nice to have others around who can forewarn me, in a way." She walks back towards the outside and the grill-fest of food as she talks, peeling ice cream bar wrapper as she goes. "It's not that I don't believe in them. I was telling Ravn recently that I've seen ghosts before myself, but just the shadow figures -- and feeling them. I can feel them sometimes, but seeing them is not in my skill set, apparently. Plus, like...Conner's grandparents. How...weird would that be? I liked my grandparents, don't get me wrong, but at the same time, they're...dead, y'know? I grieved. It feels like my grief would be invalidated? I guess? I dunno," the barista then demures. "I'm being a wet blanket, don't mind me. We have to go razz Ravn about Danish hotdogs because that's about the most bullshit thing I've heard lately." She grins like a fiend. Time to razz indeed.

Ravn has a hot dog. What does he care? Granted, it's a sad American rip-off but you make do. He nibbles on it -- because when does this man ever actually just eat something without slowly dissecting it and reducing it to its molecular components. He's opened one of those Carlsberg beers and seems to have fallen into a quite pleasant chat with Mrs Hawthorne -- or the empty air, depending on whose eyes you're borrowing.

And why not? The man is a historian. He's got the best damn access to the source material a man can get when it comes to Gray Harbor in the period following World War Two.

"I try," is light and merry, though Una's also thinking more seriously about Ariadne's explanation, falling into step alongside the other woman. "I'm grateful not to have met my grandmother," she agrees. "I think that would be weird. It's bad enough having the asshole haunt my house, and we can't see him at all, though we know he's there and can feel what he does. I think I get you on the grief. And I can imagine this would all be extra weird, if you really can't actually see them at all. But--"

She breaks off, partway through peeling the wrapping off of her ice cream. "Yes. Let's ignore the ghostly weirdness, and focus on making sure he understand exactly how ridiculous that statement was. Danish hotdogs, whoever heard of anything that ridiculous."

Beat. Hey, they're back in earshot. "Isn't that right, Ravn?"

"Gingers unite," Ariadne murmurs under her breath, attempting to remain arm-in-arm with her comrade on their approach to the grill once more. More loudly, she sounds the supportive battle call by adding to Una's question: "It can't be, I must have heard him wrong. I thought I heard him say that the Danish invented hot dogs and everyone on the planet knows that isn't right."

Drifting up into conversational range, and out of the smoke-blow off of the grills, she gives Ravn an absolutely (fiendish) innocent smile. "How's your absolutely exemplary example of American cuisine, Ravn? Don't choke on it when it mangles up with your pride in your throat and becomes too much to swallow." She then bites off a bit of her ice cream and chews, eyebrows lifted, still smiling benevolently as she can manage.

While laughing like a freakin' hyena internally. It shows in her warmly-hazel eyes.

"Oh, it's tolerable," Ravn returns, with all the aloofness he can muster -- and that is quite a surprising amount. "You know what they say. When in Rome."

He looks at the hot dog down his nose as if it was an objet d'art that does not quite manage to meet his standards. And then he bursts into quiet laughter. "If you think this is bad? Imagine how I feel about your so-called 'apple slices' -- and those we did invent."

Una, by contrast, is not that quick-witted and clever, but that doesn't mean she's not laughing intensely, too busy doing so to actually eat any of her ice cream.

(Did she or did she not comment on maybe they were ribbing Ravn too much, literally just a day or so ago? Forgotten.)

"Wait, what? Apple slices?"

Ariadne beams. Make Una laugh: check. Ravn's retort and his laughter: worth it.

Smart-ass that she is, she notes," We're not in Rome." However, Una's right. The barista has no idea what Ravn's talking about in regards to apple slices. "Yes, tell us more about these apple slices you claim to have invented." She sounds honestly interested if still impishly so. More ice cream is nibbled while the deliciously-scented grill-smoke wafts about. Man, those hamburgers are looking more and more delicious by the second.

And then, something important occurs to her as she's watching the Dane's face. He'd very recently ducked into one of her training punches. It had been not a day or two ago. There was a bag of frozen peas -- and now his face is...fine? She frowns. "Um, wait, hold that thought on apple slices. Dude. Your eye. What -- how -- look, I might be a biology major, but you're not a super-soldier. How did -- ?" She glances over at Una, flabbergasted. "So, he had a black eye the last time I saw him."

Ravn absentmindedly reaches up to touch his eye (and miraculously manages to not poke it out with half a wiener). "This? Oh. Right. My room mate, Aidan? He does this healing thing. I cheated and asked him to help because it bloody well hurt. Tylenol is my friend and all, but it feels silly to keep a great, big swelling just because you feel silly about how you got it."

He glances at Una. "Protip: Don't walk into somebody's boxing glove while they're still wearing it."

Dryly: "I'll take that under advisement. " Una can't help but wince, though: ouch.

"I'd've done the same. The healing, I mean. What's the point in wandering around looking like half a racoon, and being in pain, if you can avoid both of them altogether. I can appreciate the weirdness, though, of seeing it one day and it being gone the next." For the second time of the afternoon, Una gives Ariadne a sympathetic glance.

"Did you at least get in a good hit or two first, Ravn?"

"Dude."

That's about all Ariadne can muster in the explanation and then confirmation to follow of healing powers. The idea absolutely bamboozles her. The potential is off the charts. The implications! All of these things fritz through her attention quickly and she blinks, coming back to herself in time to hear Una's question.

"I think I'll let Ravn explain how it went," she says, regaining her own version of a crooked smile. "There's promise yet."

"Yes. I beat the snot out of the lawn with my knees." Ravn nods solemnly. "In other words, no. I fell on my arse and then walked into a punch that wasn't even meant to connect. Have I mentioned I am bad at these things?"

He hitches a shoulder. "I have landed a punch on a bloke exactly twice in my life. But considered that both times I did in fact land them on blokes who are very good at this stuff, I intend to treasure those moments for the rest of my life. And take my subsequent beatings like a man."

Again, Una can't help but laugh. "I won't say 'I wish I'd seen that'," she says, despite more or less actually saying it, "but I'm sure you can imagine I'm at least partly thinking it. Sorry, Ravn. I'm sure, however, I would be just as bad, if not worse-- let's hope we never need these skills, right?"

She takes another bite of her ice cream, and then seems to remember: "Now. Ravn. Apple slices?"

"Hey, that's what practice is for. It makes perfect -- or at least better. That saying isn't around for nothing." Ariadne seems to know to let it go at this point, given more lessons will no doubt be planned in the future with varying results, and makes a note to text Una next time as well. If she won't join, then maybe she'll bring sympathy pastries. Ulterior motives, ahoy.

However, apple slices indeed. The barista, now having eaten her ice cream bar down to the point of the strawberry ice cream, begins dissecting the chocolate cookie outer layer away from the pink innards with delicate care of lips and teeth. She admits intrigue as to the claim.

"Think pastry puffs. Fried doughballs. Bit of cardamom." Ravn gestures with his half-eaten hot dog. "They're quite good but they are not a big deal. There isn't even any apple involved -- the original, medieval recipe requires an apple slice inserted into the pastry puff, hence the name. But there are a couple of communities here in the US who are all nuts about them, like they were some kind of very big, special, Danish thing. It's freaking doughballs. Fried."

Ravn squints. "Vyv Vydal and I have talked about making them sometime -- for fun, you know? We haven't gotten around to it. Probably in part because I actually think it's kind of embarrassing. He's this fancy pātissier, and we're talking about. Fried. Dough. Balls."

Una, cookie-baker that she is, squints at Ravn in disbelief. "That's... it? That's..." Lost for words, she lets ice cream drip all over her fingers without seeming to notice it, until the moment she does and has to hastily course-correct and resolve the issue (the best possible way: with her mouth). "I'll stick with snickerdoodles, I think. And good old burgers, with... plastic American cheese, I think."

"Look, why are they called 'apple slices' if there aren't any apples? I'm with Ravn on this one, it seems ridiculous to get all worked up about them." Ariadne can't help but laugh at the idea of glorified fried dough balls named for one thing, but sans the very thing they're named for. "It's like a bad prank. Here, try this chocolate, it's great. Oh, forgot to tell you, it's not chocolate, it's plain cocao nibs with ghost peppers mixed into it, sucks to be you. Dick move."

The strawberry ice cream is left to its melted demise inside the wrapper as Ariadne then tosses it and grabs up a napkin off of the table. "Time for a hamburger without plastic American cheese. Ugh. Noooooooo," she drawls the world out. "Mustard and mayo and some dark leafy greens for texture. Mmm. Dibs on a sesame seed bun!" Gesturing for the other two to see about either getting a plate or maybe getting seconds, they step off to one side to allow better access to the grill. Food for all!