Los Angeles, California, 1994. Thursday Afternoon [03/25 FT].

As Astrid approached the coffee shop, the agreed-upon location for this meeting, just a few blocks away from a portalocity office she was sure would cease to exist once she was finished with it, she couldn't help but notice the dark green Jaguar sedan parked out front, and she knew that had to be hers. And then she stepped inside, and she saw the explosion of black curls, her bright red lipstick, and she recognized her from the news. She wore a white-trimmed navy blue Chanel suit that might even have been real. She was sitting at one of the tables by the window, writing a check, writing something off, Astrid wasn't sure, but she was sure she'd find out.

She stood and held out her hand to Astrid, short red nails garish against her white skin. She was shorter than Astrid, which wasn't hard, but still a surprise. She wore a good, green-scented perfume, a hint of citrus, almost like a man’s aftershave. She had on a gold necklace thick as a bike chain, with a square-cut emerald embedded in it. Her teeth were unnaturally white.

“Susan D. Valeris.”

Her voice was higher than you’d think, girlish for a lawyer’s.

( 'Astrid, when young people are so cynical, it makes me despair for the future of this country.' | CW for talk of murder and suicide. )

Susan slowly smiled in her red lipstick, pushing her black curls back from her face with one hand, her lashes very black against her white face. As if a bit ashamed of herself, but also somewhat relieved that she did not have to sell Astrid as hard as she thought she might.

“Let’s go for a drive,” she said.


[[ Part I of II. taken and slightly edited from Chapter 29 of "White Oleander" by Janet Fitch, wherein I officially get the timeline of the latter chapters all mixed up, but OHWELL. NFB for distance, NFI for now. ]]

Outside of LA, California, 1994; Thursday Afternoon [03/25].

Behind the tinted windows of Susan's Jaguar, Astrid nestled into the smell of leather and money. It wrapped around her like fur. There was a jazz station on the radio, a free-form piece with a flute and an electric guitar. Gulls bobbed on the blue-green water. In the sealed world of the Jaguar, it was a perfect sixty-eight degrees. Such a pleasure to be in a rich woman’s car. Now a new song filled the rarified atmosphere, Astrid immediately recognized it. Oliver Nelson, “Stolen Moments.”

She closed her eyes and imagined a scene she'd clung onto quietly ever since it came up once, in a simulation, when she was about to teach Nina how to drive. In a convertable, at the wheel, with Mae at her side and not her mother's lawyer. Barely tall enough sitting there to even peek over at the Pacific Ocean passing them by, the wind ruffling the fur on her cat face that wasn't really there. That precious moment. All the more so for being unreal, gone in an instant, something to savor like perfume on the wind, piano played in a passing house in the afternoon. Astrid hung on to it as Susan parked on the far side of a lake, where we could see the blue-green water, dotted with white, the picturesque hillside beyond. She turned the music down, but she could still hear Nelson’s trumpet.

( 'Captain America would not have approved of the emotion that filled Astrid just then, its sweetness was irresistible.' | CW for more murder talk with a side of mommy issues and gaslighting this time! )

"Okay," Astrid said. "Set it up."

Susan took a last drag of her cigarette, threw it out the window, then raised the glass. Now she was all business. “Anything you want in the meantime, some spending money?”

Astrid hated this woman. What she'd been through the last four years meant nothing to her. Astrid was simply one more brick in the structure she was erecting, she had just slipped into place. She didn’t believe Ingrid was innocent. She only cared that there would be cameras on the courthouse steps. And her name, Susan D. Valeris, under her moving red lips. The publicity would be worth plenty.

“I’ll take a couple hundred,” Astrid said.


[[ continued from here! Taken and modified slightly from Chapter 29 of "White Oleander" by Janet Fitch. NFB for distance, but can be open if anyone wants to get in touch ]]