There was no music, but she could hear people talking down the hall. It was well lit, empty with the same cheap white tiles as every other hall in the complex, and there was a banner tucked away near the elevator door advertising some church service here that she hadn’t heard of before on a different day.
And at the very end of it all past the little laundry places and the bathrooms? A public gym that’s apparently closed at night, and the ‘small’ gathering she was looking for, which had grown large enough to take up the entire auditorium next to the gym, and sprawled out to annex the surrounding territories a little with tendrils of talking, walking people.
Social situations, you see, were never really Jeanne’s strong suite. Part of the reason why she went to such great lengths to preserve her anonymity as her work’s author even after getting published, outside of the obvious risk of being outed as a blatant potential homosexual in this country, was simply to avoid dealing with any sort of public scrutiny or gathering whenever possible.
It just wasn’t her thing, if it was a heated online forum post or a discord watch party or whatever? Sure, but a real party with real strangers and all? She’d be better off gracefully bow out now and pigging out in that cafe downstairs with okay katsu and fries instead of embarrassing herself around all of those people. These thoughts, and others like it were running through her head as she held the lift’s door open with her body, staring almost blankly ahead until she heard a man’s voice behind her say, “Um, miss?” loudly enough to snap her back into alertness with one-two steps outside of the now rapidly closing lift.
Twisting around in a blind panic as the door slammed shut behind her, Jeanne darted for the lift’s buttons, mashing the button just a little too slowly to keep it from heading down. She almost cursed out loud, but thankfully there was another just a few (dozen) floors above her, all she had to do was wait for a few moments and-She craned her head back, just to see if anyone was giving her weird looks for being the weird mess she was, only to stare right at her out of all people.
She was dressed in a neat navy blue blouse with white waistband pants, a more formal look than she was used to seeing her in to be sure, but it was a weekday, and she couldn’t mistake that bleached red hair and easy smile for anyone else’s. And long before the other lift had a chance to show itself, she could see Vera’s smile widen from across the room as she started waving at her, and with an awkward grimace, she turned around and mashed the button a few more times, as she heard a familiar voice calling her name draw closer and closer. Until she felt a firm palm smack against her shoulder that made her let out a loud yelp and almost jump in place.
“Hey!” Vera said, from close enough behind Jeanne to make turning around a little awkward.
“Uhhhh,” Jeanne replied with her best forced smile on her face, her shallow breaths taking in Vera’s… pearish scented perfume, as she is forced to contend with the woman from up close. “Hi?” she said, while staring at her face the normal amount.
“I didn’t think you’d come! You should have said something, I could have picked you up you know?”
“I wasn’t, I just got here actually, but uh, why would I need you to pick me up? We live on the same floor…”
“Well, you don’t like crowds right? I figured that you’d get scared off once the party gets started if you were by yourself, but if you had someone to introduce you to people it could still be fun?”
Jeanne shrugged, “I guess? I don’t know, I’m still wondering if I should just go home, it looks like the party’s full up anyway.”
“After coming all this way? Come on! At least stick around for a bit, say hi to our host, she’s great by the way, looks even better in person,” Vera winked as she said that last word obviously enough to cause her other eye to squint a little in turn. “And grab something to eat for dinner, you look like you haven’t eaten in days.”
“Just a day actually…” Jeanne mumbled under her breath.
“What?” Vera blurted out, giving Jeanne a slightly concerned look.
“Uh, nevermind,” Jeanne coughed, “How is the food?”
Vera takes a step back, looking thoughtful for a moment before she frowned, “The food is… oh you wouldn’t like it actually. It’s good but it’s ethnic, German or Dutch or something European like that, mostly meat pies.”
“I could go for pies right now,” Jeanne blurted out..
“Really? I thought you didn’t…” Vera’s expression brightened for a moment as she remembered something, “Oh right! KFC! Someone brought along a whole bucket of it with them earlier, should still be some around.”
Jeanne raised an eyebrow, “Original or crispy?”
“I don’t know, both? He didn’t bring any rice though,” Vera replied with a shrug.
Jeanne sighed, “I guess that’s fine? Is there anything else?”
Vera shook her head, “Nope, just pies, but they’re pretty filling, you should stay away from any that have a flag though.”
Jeanne raised an eyebrow, “Why? Are they that bad or…”
“No they’re…” Vera trailed off, before seemingly realising something as she exclaimed, “Actually wait, your last name is Simatupang right?”
“Uh, yeah?” Jeanne said in response, unsure of where she was going with this.
“Oh yeah of course your people wouldn’t, nevermind, I just assumed you would be… I mean it’s pork,” Vera said, not too deftly swapping between various topics with the assumption that Jeanne would understand,
“Yeah, I mean I guess that’s why she’s hosting this in a church right?” Jeanne said, as she glanced at the nearby sign.
“Oh right, I didn’t think about that, and she is european. Honestly I’d be surprised if she wasn’t christian actually.”
“Uh,” Jeanne thought about saying something about the decline of religiosity in the west, but thought better of it. “Yeah.”
“Anyway we should probably grab some before they run out, come on!” Vera said, before turning away and motioning for Jeanne to follow after her as she made her way through the crowd.
The lift doors behind Jeanne opened up at that moment, letting her spare a glance back at the four or so people milling about inside, before with a heavy heart and an empty stomach, she simply shook her head at no one in particular and followed after her apparent guide.
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The inside of the church seemed like it would be spacious under any other conditions, if everyone here was lined up into neat rows, and the long table Jeanne could catch fleeting glimpses of through the crowd wasn’t there, she was pretty confident that they could fit another dozen or so people inside and still leave plenty of space to walk through without the ocassional bump and grind. But then again it wouldn’t be much of a party if they did just that.
And it could be worse! While the whole room was crowded, she could spot a pocket out near where she assumes the pulpit is that’s absolutely teeming with the masses or however you’d really say that.
She wondered if a band was getting ready to play or something, before she heard Vera’s voice, note, “You know, usually it’s bad manners to start eating without meeting the host first, but I couldn’t bring you to her right now even if I wanted to.”
“Is she not around?” Jeanne asked, with a slight hint of disappointment in her tone of voice.
“No, but she’s crazy, I thought she’d only invite her new neighbours, you know, you, me, the cute couple that lives at the start of the hall, you’d think right? But she must have handed out invites to the whole block or something, because it looks like every guy in a mile radius is here tonight.”
Jeanne looked around, she hadn’t noticed it before but there did seem to be a lot more men around than women here, “I guess? Why can’t I meet her though?”
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Vera chuckled, “Just think about it Jeanne, a hot foreigner lady who can afford to rent out the entire auditorium for the night, and buy a truckload of fresh meat pies like it was nothing invites you to a ‘housewarming’ party? What guy in their right mind wouldn’t go after her?”
Jeanne blinked for a moment, before it dawned on her, “Oh, oh! That’d explain the-”
“The dozen or so guys buzzing around her like flies at any given moment, you can see them already right?” Vera noted, as Jeanne’s eyes catches a glimpse of the top of someone’s head, adorned with straight black hair jutting out from the middle of the crowd.
She frowned, “Yeah… Guess I’ll have to wade through all of that if I want to thank her…”
Vera shook her head, as she brushed past a man trying to take a seat, “Oh don’t worry you’ll get a chance to meet her soon I think,”
“Why?”
Vera gave Jeanne another blatantly conspiratorial wink as they closed in to the table, “Because she’s not interested, in any of them I mean, I think she’s just trying to be polite.”
Jeanne winced a little before she said, “How can you be so sure?”
“Because the party barely started an hour ago Jeanne, and most of the men she’s spoken to are outside, drinking,” Vera said, with the kind of smile that meant she expected her to connect the dots together.
“That doesn’t, mean anything?” Jeanne said, already too distracted by the scent of food all around her and the clattering of plates to read through the really obvious innuendo.
“Jeanne, she’s single, and she isn’t interested in any of the guys here, I’m not saying she definitely is but do I have to spell it out for you here?” Vera said, in a slow and easy to understand tone.
“I, Vera you know I’m n-,” she coughed, fidgeting slightly as she tried to figure out exactly why Vera was so sure that she’d be interested.
Vera gave Jeanne a weird look, before she blinked, looked around a little, and seemed to realise something, “Oh, oh! Yeah, of course you wouldn’t b-normal women wouldn’t, uh, maybe you should get some pie for now? I should probably get back to my friends.”
Jeanne grimaced a little, but she didn’t move to stop Vera, instead all she did was grab a spare plate from the table and try not to think too hard about anything other than the spread.
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Vera was right, cold meat pies really wasn’t her thing, despite her fancy foreign name Jeanne was an Indonesian through and through, anything she couldn’t drown in rice or the poor substitute that was noodles or fried potatoes might as well be a snack for how quickly it passed through her system. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and they all smelled great anyway.
She picked up a few slices of a slightly mushy looking pie she assumed was pork, and stared dejectedly at the overturned buckets that once contained fried chicken for a moment, but there were only two buckets for the whole party anyway, she couldn’t help but wonder if Vera was being a tad optimistic there.
With her bruner (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) secured, Jeanne took a cursory glance for anything that resembled a seat, or failing that an empty enough space would do, somewhere she could focus on eating above all else. And she found one, an empty seat in an easily accessible corner placed right beside a young woman dressed in a security guard uniform who seemed to be minding her own business with her tablet.
She sat herself down beside her wordlessly, figuring that she’d understand why the moment she saw the plate she held in one hand, and the metal fork she was hurriedly using to cut into the pie and stuff a piece of it right inside of her mouth.
The crust was soaked through with pork fat by this point and crumbled apart in her mouth near instantly which wasn’t a surprise, but the taste though? It was… sweet somehow, enough to give pause as she took her first bite and wondered if there was a mix up, yet bits of tender lukewarm pork also made their way to the forefront after just a moment of chewing.
“Is it any good?” a gruff voice asked to her right, the security guard she presumed.
“Uh, it’s pork,” she replied, after properly swallowing her first bite, turning her gaze slightly to the security guard, who seems busy with her tablet still.
“I know, but is it any good?” the guard asked without bothering to look up, tilted away as it was, Jeanne could only barely make out a few glimpses of something moving in colour on the screen, but what could she be watching that didn’t require sound she wondered?
She took another chunk out of one of her slices and bit into a softened piece of pear as she mulled it over, “Hm, it’s a bit too soft by now, and surprisingly sweet? A bit spiced, but not cinnamon, I'm not sure what it is... It’s not what you’d expect from a pork pie at all… But in a good way! I think I’d order something like this if I knew I could get it fresh,”
“Huh, interesting, most of the people I’ve talked to seem to hate them actually,” the security guard said, tilting her tablet just enough to show Jeanne a white number near the top of the screen, CCTV footage maybe?
“Oh really? That’s a shame, would be kind of a waste to have to throw all of these out…” Jeanne said in between bites, already straining to get as much of it down her throat as possible.
The security guard shrugged, “I suspect that it’s because the pies are a bit too-”
Immediately getting what she meant, Jeanne cuts her off with, “Ethnic for their tastes?”
The security guard nodded along, giving Jeanne a glimpse of her brown eyes as she fired out a, “Yeah! That! She should have just ordered some nasi padang or something, would have been a lot cheaper too, but you know, the host makes whatever she wants to make. It’s good to see that someone likes them though, if you eat enough, maybe I won’t have to eat pies for the rest of the month, yeah?”
“I-I don’t think these will keep tha-wait, makes? She made these?” Jeanne blurted out, a slightly horrified expression on her face as she glanced over at the table full of mostly intact pies.
“Do you know any bakeries around here that’d make pork, peach, and cardamom pies? Because I sure don’t,” the security guard said without missing a beat.
Jeanne shrugged and grimaced a little, “Well you can find just about anything online these days.”
The security guard shook her head, and the tablet too, it’s a little confusing, “Yeah but they’re unbranded though.”
Jeanne thinks back to the table for a moment, trying to recall absolutely anything about the pies themselves other than their pielike shape and scent, “Oh, yeah I guess they are, weird.”
There’s a slight smile on the security guard’s face as she said, “I know right? Who even has the time for that anymore.”
Jeanne blinks, as she downs another forkful of pie, “Helena apparently.”
The security guard nodded, as she simply let out a, “Yeah.”
There was a brief pause, before Jeanne offered up a topic of her own, emboldened by her stomach no longer eating itself, “So, do you actually work here or?”
“No, I thought this was a costume party, and I decided that I needed to look like I smelled faintly of piss,” she said, while tugging on the collar of her slightly off yellow security guard uniform shirt.
“Uh, sorry?”
“Why would you be? It’s not like you’re not my boss right… right?”
“N-no?”
“Good! Because you’d probably fire me if you were,” the security guard said in a flat, matter of fact tone, before immediately trying to laugh it off.
“Uh, why?” Jeanne asked, even as a bit of self awareness finally kicks in, and her gaze settles on the guard’s name tag that was obviously there this whole time. Her name was Sandi apparently, like the apartment complex they were in, funny coincidence that.
“Because I’m not supposed to be here, duh!” Sandi said, finally looking up from her tablet for a moment to look at Jeanne.
Jeanne raised an eyebrow at that “But aren’t you keeping watch here? Making sure they don’t damage or steal church equipment?”
Sandi blinked at Jeanne out of confusion, “What? The equipment they keep in marked boxes in an unlocked room with no cameras over the week? No one can pay me enough to care about that man, no I’m supposed to be on patrol right now.”
Playing with a chunk of her pie for a moment, Jeanne ventured to ask, “So… why aren’t you?”
Sandi shrugged, “I mean I am, sort of, I’m using this tablet to flick through CCTV screens just in case anything happens”
Jeanne coughed around her latest bite before she blurted out, “But you just told me that the church doesn’t have any CCTVs, wouldn’t that mean a lot of other places don’t have coverage?”
Sandi let out a quick, “Yeah.”
Continuing her offence, Jeanne asked, “So what if something goes missing or someone gets mugged or killed somewhere you can’t see?”
Sandi shrugged again with a placid expression on her face, “I mean I can’t be everywhere so, rough.“
Staring deep into Sandi’s face for a moment, Jeanne stammered out, “That’s, that’s not.”
Seemingly oblivious, Sandi continued with, “And what am I supposed to do with a mugger or murderer anyway? It’s not like I’m armed.”
Shooting Sandi an utterly confused look as she tucks away the last of her pie, Jeanne quickly asks, “Couldn’t you ask for help? I mean at least all of you have batons.”
Without blinking, Sandi simply utters, “Yeah, I do.”
Jeanne’s eyes start to widen as she realises that she is on the brink of discovering something truly horrible, “Wait, how many guards work the night shift in this apartment building again?”
Without a single hint of irony in her voice, Sandi states, “Including me? 1.”
Jeanne’s expression turns into one of disgust and horror as she follows through with,“And how many cases of theft or missing packages get reported here every month?”
Sandi blinks, and opines, “Ma’am, you don’t pay me enough to keep track of that shit.”
Jeanne quickly blurts out a, “No wait, I’m not your boss I’m just saying, don’t you think that’s a little messed up?”
Sandi stares deep into Jeanne’s eyes, and states, “That they’d hire one security guard for an apartment building and still pay her minimum wage? Yeah, definitely.”
There is another brief moment of silence, as Sandi turned her gaze back onto her tablet, and Jeanne awkwardly looks around the room, before the latter coughs, and says, “Uh, well good luck with that, I think I’m going to… get dessert, is there anything like that here?”
Sandi nods, and with a business-like smile says, “Yeah thanks ma’am, I think there’s still some ice cream in one of the beer coolers.”
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