(Untitled)

[morriganfearn]

Reflections on the New Year
Well, there's 2011 gone, and now we're starting on the end of the world. Time to take stock.

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[morriganfearn]

The Fourth Movement: (Dream On 'Verse)
Roderich frowned as he heard a false note on Feliks' viola. With his hands immersed in flour and delicate pastry dough waiting to be shaped, he could do little but let his soul grind away in pain with the strings on the small tuning stage at the front of his cafe. The overly tight string whined again, and there was a slight pause. Breathing out a sigh of relief, Roderich knew the poor instrument was being tuned. True enough to form when the bow retuned to the strings, the notes sounded clear.

Smiling, the chef turned back to his preparations for the night ahead of them. He had all of the bills printed, and posted, getting the grudging help of the Norwegian tattoo artist who spent his Thursday mornings in the recently opened shop. Roderich did not exactly liked the idea of a tattooed indigent young man looking like a regular, but as Elizavetta pointed out, regulars paid and brought their friends. She was a regular after all. And it had been her scheme-how had she talked him into this, a performance as though their little quartet was some band hired for the night? It was vulgar. He was only just out of college and he thought it vulgar.

The little bell above the shop rang, and Roderich wished he was not up to his elbows in dough. That was probably Elizavetta now. That Feliks should be the first one to see her in whatever she considered to be performance worthy clothes rubbed a little bit at Roderich. He shouldn't be irritated, really. Feliks and Elizavetta were best friends. They could practically finish each other's sentences.

“Hallo! Oh. Are you still at work?”

Roderich nearly jumped out of his skin as Ivan's large, smiling face popped around the door to the kitchen. Half of his cello case protruded with him. “You should get ready. Ms. Eliza will be here soon, and we still have to rehearse, yes? You should look your best, then, I think.”

Trying to quell his beating heart, Roderich reached for saran wrap to cover the bowl and leave it to be chilled over night. “Yes. Yes. Feliks is already practicing.”

“Yes. I saw him,” Ivan happened to have been blessed by a face more prone to smiles than frowns, but his voice rolled with that disquieting dislike that Feliks engendered. If they hadn't been the only two who had approached Roderich about his tentative fliers advertising his willingness to teach music (“spreading the desire for music between fellow amateur aficionados”-the wording on those things one of his most awkward compromises with Elizavetta to date) in the evening. Well. They were his string quartet. Nothing to do about that.

He began to wash up, listening to Ivan setting up his folding chair. The airy warble of Feliks' viola had stopped, and the shriller burble of is voice had begun, making Roderich wince. It reminded him of Mr. Beilschmidt's rude son, who at seventeen still had as much control over his voice as at thirteen. Hopefully the boy was not going to be there tonight-Although his father had promised to show up.

Regulars mean money, he reminded himself, drying his hands, and removing his apron. Health code said that he had to leave the kitchen to get rid of his chef's coat and hat, but unless an inspector was lurking by his garbage bins, Roderich was not going to change in the front of the shop, as he was wont to do after closing up. Even then, it would have taken a particularly persistent inspector to make Roderich strip in front of Feliks or Ivan.