Pound the Table
Sidestory | Magneto the Mint Chip Bandit
April, 1984
"Stupid tradition," I murmured to myself as I exited the subway at the 23rd street station. "Oh, congratulations on your first solo case, go get drunk with the boss in the middle of the workday,
please tell me who thought of that…"
It wasn't exactly
normal for me to not be in the office at noon on a workday. Especially not on the day after I'd finished the last remaining damages paperwork on a solo court victory. But there was a good reason for it, oh was there. And it was because I'd rather just have the day off normally than take part in the sheer
idiocy that was Schmoel Lieberman's 'tradition'.
Normally, when one of the attorneys under him finished off their first solo case, he took them to split a bottle of
very expensive wine with him over a long lunch before returning to the office. Only, I hadn't known that's what was happening, not exactly. It was something he only told me about after I'd finished off my first solo case, so I had to assume it was the same for everyone else.
But see, if I had
known this was the plan, I would have managed to avoid pissing off my boss. Or at least had an attempt to. Because if I'd known, I could have told him that there was no way someone as small as I was would be able to split an entire bottle of wine with him without
both of us being drunk. Which kind of ruined the point of going back into the office afterwards.
So instead, Lieberman got pissed, told me I had the rest of the day off, and shooed me away.
With how annoyed I was, I went for my favorite comfort food: Chinese. It was a small hole-in-the-wall off 9th and West 24th, and it was probably the only Chinese place in the city that actually made the food properly
spicy when I asked for it. And not 'white person' spicy, but
actually, properly spicy.
A block and a half of walking later, I picked up my Sichuan beef (dinner tonight) and spicy garlic chicken and broccoli (lunch now). I paid, tipped, walked out… and stopped. I'd been coming to this Chinese place for the past two years.
Which begged the question of how I'd managed to miss the
old-timey ice cream parlor across the street.
Well, it wasn't like I had anything to do, and Chinese food microwaved well. I walked into the ice cream parlor, intent on doing nothing more than sampling a few flavors, or maybe getting a small cone.
I wound up leaving with a full quart container of ice cream. Oops.
… what? The mint chip tasted like actual
mint and not crappy peppermints!
October, 1987
I groaned to myself as my pager went off. Two flights of stairs from my condo, and I was getting bugged by work? I was already in the office for
twelve hours today! I didn't take a lunch break! And it was eight p.m. on a
Friday! What could they possibly need me for
right now!?
No. No, no. I was not going to answer the pager, and if anybody asked, its battery died and I hadn't had a chance to change it.
I ascended the last flight of steps to my condo, key at the ready… and paused.
Was… was that a
magnet on my door? Why was there a magnet on the door?
… wait. Was it…?
I slid the key into the lock and opened the door, kicking off my shoes (and spotting a second set, leather men's dress shoes) before setting foot any further inside.
The front door to my condo opened into a small foyer, with a coat closet and powder room (and laundry!) on the left, a doorway to the kitchen area on the right, and extended a little forward into a fairly sizable living room. To the far right of the living room, a hallway went back towards the two bedrooms, one of which I'd converted into a home office for when the weather meant it was just
not safe to go into the office.
I closed the door behind me, set my briefcase down beside my purse on a small side table I kept by the door, and walked into my living room.
"How do you know where I live?" I asked as my erstwhile visitor came into view.
"I have tracked down dozens of war criminals in the past few decades." Erik Lehnsherr didn't even bother looking away from my TV, which currently had an early season hockey game on it. Rangers versus… I couldn't tell from here. "People who were actively covering their tracks. Finding one woman whose name, profession, and home city I already know? Child's play, my dear."
"Uh-huh. And to
what, exactly, do I owe the pleasure of your company?" I crossed my arms, not caring that he wasn't looking at me.
"Well, given the nature of what was discovered in Oregon, I assumed you would appreciate an update?"
I let the silence stretch. Not too long, but enough that Erik turned to look at me.
"Give me a minute," I said. "I need to change and get my contacts out."
"Why anyone would suffer through those instead of simply wearing glasses, I do not know," Erik murmured, and I could practically
hear the scowl of distaste that probably sat on his face.
"Oh, that's easy." I paused in the hallway out of the living room. "I do prefer glasses myself, yes, but the look is clearly not professional enough on me. The one day I wore glasses over contacts, I was immediately treated like a secretary. Make of that what you will."
And with that, I retreated to the back, and closed the door to my bedroom. My skirt suit came off and went into the dry cleaning bag. The bra came off (blessed relief!), and I instead wore a tank under a sweater, and paired that with one of three pairs of sweatpants I'd managed to get a tail hole into. My glamour came down, and then into the bathroom I went, and cleaned off my makeup before getting my contacts out.
For those who've never worn contact lenses: to get them off (or at least, to get soft contacts off), you need to pull down your bottom eyelid with one finger, then essentially 'pinch' the lens off the surface of your eye with two others. It is an incredibly disconcerting thing to do the first several times, but you
do grow accustomed to it. It does weaken your blink reflex a little bit, though, just fair warning.
Now that I was comfortable, I exited the back and went back out into the living room, ready to discuss whatever updates Erik had on that HYDRA notebook. Because to be honest, I'd been
incredibly curious.
"Alright!" I flounced down into a somewhat overstuffed armchair just to the side of the coffee table, and checked the TV (Rangers vs. Blackhawks – okay fine, I'll root for them, let's go Rangers!) before turning to Erik. "So, regarding—"
My eyes fell upon what Erik held in his hands. It was
not the notebook I'd found in a hidden drawer. It was
not papers, notes, or anything else that I would've thought relevant to the discussion he wanted to have.
No. It was a bowl and a spoon from the dairy side of my kitchen, and
in that bowl and
on that spoon was something ever so slightly
green.
"Erik?" I asked sweetly. "Where
exactly did you get that ice cream from?"
Erik blinked, but did not answer. I stood up from my armchair, grabbed the bowl and spoon from him with a dirty look, and went into the kitchen.
Except that when I passed the threshold, the spoon, still laden with mint chip ice cream, flew into the air and back to Erik's open mouth, depositing its cargo before flying to the sink.
Whose faucet started all on its own.
"You get a pass this
one time!" I yelled back into the living room. "One time! Do you understand me, Erik Lehnsherr!?"
"Crystal clear," Erik said.
Somehow, I didn't believe him.
July, 1988
Misery.
Utter, abject misery. That was what this day had been. I lost a contact, my heel broke (thank goodness for a backup pair of flats), I sneezed so hard my glamour broke (in my closed, locked office at least, but still)... and oh yeah, the bottle of Midol I kept in my desk had
run out.
And all of this was
before getting to just how
obnoxious the client I'd had to deal with today was.
Uuugh.
All I wanted was to get home, take a nice hot bath, curl up on the sofa with a bowl of mint chip and my heated blanket, and fall asleep early.
I unlocked my front door, took off my flats, set my briefcase down, and went to the kitchen to get the ice cream warmed up enough that I could get a bowl without issue. But when I opened the freezer and reached to pick up the quart of ice cream… it was light. Far,
far too light.
I took the box out, opened it up… and saw a ziploc bag inside where there should have been ice cream. Inside the ziploc was a twenty dollar bill… and a small red-with-black-tips u-shaped magnet.
I threw the empty carton against the wall. Then I stalked to my living room, pounded a number into the phone, and started speaking the moment I heard the line pick up.
"I am going to take a nice hot bath after a very long, very miserable day," I said, more calmly than I ever had before. "I know you have a key to my condo, and the means to get things places in a very short amount of time. You have thirty minutes to get a fresh quart of ice cream into my condo before I'm out of the bath. If I do not have my mint chip by the time I'm out of the bath, I
will tell Pietro where you keep hiding the coffee and hard candies. Do you understand me, Erik Lehnsherr?."
The line clicked dead. I slammed the phone down onto the receiver and wrote out a small note to leave on my kitchen counter, along with a thing of genuinely high-quality coffee beans I'd intended to give as a Secret Santa… only to learn it was a White Elephant instead when I actually stopped to read the card. Then I stalked back to my bedroom, and unwound in a bath that was as hot as I could comfortably stand.
After I dried off, got the heated blanket plugged in, and turned the TV on, I checked the kitchen.
Sure enough, where before there had been a bag of coffee beans and a sheet of notebook paper, there was a quart of mint chip ice cream and a sticky note.
I owe you one
Pietro
I could only smirk as I scooped myself a big bowl of ice cream. Sure, it probably wouldn't stop Erik from helping himself every time he happened to be in Manhattan.
But at least he now knew the consequences.
This sidestory brought to you by
Ko-fi.
