fandomtownies | MCA Lobby; Friday [ 08/14 ].

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MCA Lobby; Friday [ 08/14 ].

It seemed to sort of defeat the point of being glad that it's Friday when one had been spending most of the week resting from what Rachel was going to breathily claim was a bit of a "faint spell" thanks to her so fair and so sensitive skin and migraines. But there was an awful lot of work waiting for her to do on that Friday, enough to almost make her feel like she had been working all week, so it was definitely a Thank Goodness It's Friday day, all the same.

And another apartment looking to clear up meant that she might have to go and see if there was anything to be done to prepare it for the next occupant. And hope that the next occupant wasn't a whale like the last one. Or, well, someone had to check it, which was why there was a clear sign out in the window as there was last week: Mauvaise Chance Apartments is currently looking to employ a Tenant Services Representative. Please inquire within, with references.

[[ open! MCA Info! ~~One current vacancy~~ ]]

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She's not nearly as busy as she tries to make herself look or has deluded herself into believe she is, really.

"Hello," girl!Jack said as she ~~waltzed~~ walked up to the desk of the MCA. "I'm in need of an apartment."

Rachel looked up from her paperwork and immediately fell into staring, while abandoning all hope that she'd ever be renting any of her apartments to anything normal. It was one thing when all the corpses and zombies stuck to background noise at the bar, but when they actually wanted to move into her building, what was the world coming to, jeez oh man.

Unfortunately, the call of rent money wasn't strong enough to hold her back from asking, "What? All the graveyard plots already full?"

If things started falling off of the walking corpse, that was it. This conversation was over. She'll leave all the dead things to her sick morbid sister, thanks.

"I didn't think it would be very comfortable for other citizens of Fandom when I rose for the day if I did," Jack replied, the sarcasm going right over his head.

But, apparently, just staying dead had been too much ask...

Rachel drew in a breath, letting it out in a very put-upon sort of sigh, as she reminded herself that, hey, half the population of Kilanga practically had been the living dead. She could handle renting to a corpse. Really. She could. Heck, all three of her sisters were practically corpses at this point, and her mother was utterly lifeless to boot.

"Maybe the wouldn't even notice?" Rachel suggested. "But, you know, having blood pumping through me on a regular stasis, I wouldn't know how that is. It does seem to lack the convenience of just going in and out of your own apartment ever day."

"If it's going to be a problem," Jack said, sounding worried, "I can rent from someone else..."

Rachel made a point of reminding herself that she rented to a spotted alien and a human blob, just to name the notably weird ones; why not add a corpse to the list? Maybe she'd just stay in the room and...rot, or something.

She was definitely going to hire some help soon, because she was not cleaning that up.

"Oh, no, of course it's not a problem!" she gushed, emphatically. "I just wasn't sure if it was what you'd like best. Why settle, right? But I wouldn't know; I've never been a corpse before."

"Normally I'm not a corpse," Jack replied, as if such knowledge would be helpful. "Every other day I'm a skeleton- a male one, at that! It's just that today I woke up and looked like this."

Really. Because that would help.

...well, it certainly did take care of Rachel's concerns about rotting. And some of the women she knew in Johannesburg were skinny enough that they practically were skeletons, but that didn't excuse the fact that everything that came out of the woman's mouth right now was completely and totally insane.

She shouldn't have to deal with these things being 'normal' parts of conversations!

"...Right," Rachel said. There were lines that were drawn with her in situations like this, and that just about drew it right there. So she was pulling out the lease paperwork. Sooner done, the sooner she'd have to deal with corpse skeleton he-she's. "Well, we just had an opening in Unit #4, if you're interested. It's just ~~handwavey amount~~ per month, with utilities and full use of the lobby, and this right here's the lease paperwork..."

Jack gleefully signed everything. "Oh, fantastic!" he cried out, spinning at the desk and beaming at Rachel. "Now I don't have to worry about this. I'll move in this evening, after I've closed my store for the night. -And where are my manners! I'm Jack Skellington, as you can plainly see on my paperwork. You are...?"

A skeleton. Names Skellington. Who twirled, and was a corpse at the moment, although, it was okay!, he wasn't usually a corpse, right?

It was a good thing he didn't seem to think of much of Rachel's staring so far, because she was just going to keep doing it.

"Rachel Price," she answered, "proprietress."

Obviously, Rachel.

"Welcome to the neighborhood."

And there it goes, too.

Reese swung by home, taking a break from the station. The phone's have been ringing off the hook, she needed some peace and quiet.

Rachel figured she should really engage her tenants in conversation, especially the normal ones, so, spotting Reese, and gave her a light, sympathetic sort of smile. "You look like you've been having a rough day," she noted, conversationally.

Reese paused and relaxed when she realized it was only Rachel and not some male turned female person.

"It's not everyday you learn sex change is possible just by bein' on this island," she answered, wryly. "The worse thing is, its not that that's causing the headache, it's the phone calls complaining about it."

They'd set up an automated message thing for the phones but the phones won't stop ringing!

Leave it Rachel Price to deftly avoid hearing anything at all in there about any weirdness going on around her and somehow wrangle everything Reese had said into something that allowed her to talk about herself and ignore the fact that this place was bizarre beyond belief.

"Oh, believe you me," she gushed. "I can completely synthesize with your headache plight. I have been suffering just the worst migraines imaginable all week; maybe it's something in the air? Or the sun, my skin is just so fair that it makes me incredibly sustainable to the sun. I usually find that a nice rest and some aspirin just takes care of it right away; would you like some? Usually, I'd say a martini, too, but it's a bit early of that, of course."

Of course. She'd take one in a heartbeat if it were offered, actually.

Reese blinked and wondered how and why Rachel could possibly synthesize with her headache. But didn't ask. Asking leads to something that might make her brain leak.

She looked a little uncomfortable with the offer and the mention of martini.

"I don't use any pharmaceutical drugs," Reese said after a beat. "But thanks for the offer."

Rachel arched an eyebrow at that one and wondered, then, if Reese would one day enjoy her malaria, but, then again, this was coming from someone who still popped quinine out of habit, because she didn't care if she was finally out of BFE Africa, malaria was not pretty.

So she just shrugged. "Shame," she said, "cures it right up! I guess that just leaves a nice glass of water and some R&R."

"That and coffee," Reese added, "lots and lots of coffee."

There was a reason it was a cop cure all.

Rachel nodded in knowledgable agreement. "That's true," she said. "I heard that the caffeine in coffee helps open up the caterpillars in your brain to help give them more oxygen."

Or something like that.

"Would you like me to go put some on? Now that you mention it, a cup of coffee doesn't sound to bad."

And, no, Rachel wasn't offering to be particularly nice, but simply because she knew a good hostess asked and, if anything, having some coffee in the lobby might encourage people to come and hang out and talk, and a good hostess always had people hanging around and talking.

Caterpillars where? Reese resisted the urge to check her head.

"Uh, sure, if you have it, I take my coffee black with lots of sugar."

"Oh, sure!" Rachel said, nodding with a smile as she got up from the desk and moved over to start brewing some up. "And, you know, these modern coffee machines just make it so easy that it hardly even seems fair! I'll tell you what, I don't know how I managed without a Mr. Coffee before; it's fantastic!"

"They are pretty awesome," Reese agreed, "one of the best inventions since sliced bread."

"You know," Rachel said, tilting her head and looking very ponderous, "I've never quite got that expression. I mean, sure, sliced bread is pretty darn amazing and convenient if you ask me, and I'm mighty glad to have it, but I think if I had to choose between sliced bread and, say, indoor plumbing, I'd pick indoor plumbing in a heartbeat."

And, yes, she thought she was being very deep and profound here.

"I really don't think about it that much," she answered politely. Rachel was starting to sound like Reese's partner. Just what she needed for the day. Reese massaged the bridge of her nose. It was going to be a long day.

"The greatest thing since indoor plumbing," Rachel said, testing it out, before giving an approving nod and being completely oblivious to any misery on Reese's part of having to be the recipient of her brilliancy. "Much more appliable. Especially if you've ever been without indoor plumbing, jeez oh man. Highly not recommended."

Didn't she come here for some peace and quiet? Maybe she should have gone to the park or maybe the shooting range.

Reese cannot snap at her because Rachel was a citizen and her landlady but did she really have to talk about indoor plumbing before she served coffee? Dead bodies in grisly detail she could take. Indoor plumbing? No.

"Right," Reese said, hoping to cut this short. "Indoor plumbing, best ever. I think the coffee's done."

No, it wasn't.

Rachel took a moment to look back at the coffee maker, and it's dripping going steadily into a mostly empty pot. She looked back at Reese and arched an eyebrow.

"Maybe," she said politely, "we should just let it run a bit more just to be sure."

"Maybe, yeah," Reese said just shy of a grumble.

"But it'll still be ready in no time!" Rachel added, trying to add a little enthusiasm to trump Reese's grumble. "Nothing like having to wait forever for coffee, let me tell you. And so nice to be able to just whip it right up, not even grind up the beans if you don't want to. Innovation and capitalism, two things I'll always love about the good old U.S. of A."

And Reese's smile has frozen now, set to: 'God save me from people and their talking'. Dammit, this is why she had a partner. He does this social thing better.

Usually she can be laconic about this but 'usually' never used to include male co-workers turning into women. Also, there was that headache.

She raised a fist, "Yay?"

And that was where Reese had taking a horrible, horrible turn. Because Rachel Price loved the sound of her own voice, and would potentially never stop talking if it meant that she could prevail over silence.

She snorted. "To put it lightly!" she said, laughing. "I mean, have you ever had to go without the basic human rights of necessity? I have, and believe you me, never again! It wasn't as bad in Johannesburg but even there, you still had spiders in the bananas and malaria and servants stealing the coffee, and this was back in 1964, too, mind you. There's been so many advances since then that I'm just tickled by how much more convenient everything is."

She shouldn't have taken-up the offer for coffee. Reese watched the coffee driiiiiip slowly.

"Right." Monosyllabic now, sooner or later she'll be reduced to facial expressions. Really, it's more of her default setting.

And that was another wrong turn, because the quieter Reese was, the more Rachel would just talk and talk and talk. Although, really, she was kind of pulling an Adah thing right now, but, whatever. She was so used to people starting to tune her out and it never stopped her before.

"I usually don't take to all that weird stuff," she said, "but the time travel thing I don't mind one bit."

This would have been better if she was cruising in a car, she could tune her out if she were driving around.

"I met Jesus's best friend," Reese blurted out, maybe that could stun Rachel into silence?

It did cause her to at least pause enough to quirk her eyebrow, at least.

"Jesus' best friend?" Rachel asked. "Well, I came from someone who claimed to be God's Numbero Uno Best Buddy in the Whole World, so, believe you me, that doesn't hold a lot of water with me, but good for him? And you?"

"Not for me," Reese said miserably, "I'm a cop, cops shouldn't be forced to handle time travelers, friends of God or men turning into women."

She eyed the slowly dripping coffee. "I don't suppose you've ever heard of instant coffee."

"Yeah," Rachel made a face, "and it's about as tasty as dried milk, too."

"But it's fast," she pointed out.

Because it's there to be used. Not dirty.

There should be a clever thing to put here.

Instead, there shall just be a lot of clinging.

*clings*

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MCA Lobby; Friday [ 08/14 ].

Talk to Rachel -- 08/14.

Re: Talk to Rachel -- 08/14.

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Use the Lobby for Whatever Else -- 08/14.

OOC -- 08/14.