and you gain the american dream
chino, california | august 2005
The silverware drawer was
clearly labelled with Sharpied-masking-tape like the rest of the drawers, with a second label reading, "NO KNIVES
NO SPATULAS!!!" -- but somebody must have put the spatula in it regardless, for Adam was having the hardest time jimmying it open, which, even when he wasn't in a hurry, was filling him with an unreasonable, bubbling rage. It didn't help that he had learned not to just use magic -- either he was too magically unrefined or
'Aberto' was a brute-strength spell; he'd snapped a handful of spatulas into pieces just forcing the drawer open.
There were a lot of tradeoffs with the house Adam and Regina had been renting for nearly a year now. It was big enough that they had breathing room -- elbow room, even, in the kitchen -- but at the cost of being too far from the city for a Muggle to commute. It was interesting and well-built -- with arches, round windows, nooks in the wall for their knickknacks and sundries -- but at the cost of being difficult to clean. It was inexpensive with roommates -- and had plenty of room for roommates -- but at the cost of having roommates. He and Regina had uncanny luck with roommates. Uncanny bad, that was -- nobody lasted more than three months in either of the other rooms they'd started renting out, and more importantly, nobody had respected Adam's goddamn kitchen drawer set-up.
Adam jerked the drawer sideways, then out, and at last it slid open. "Swear to God I'm going to start leaving passive-aggressive notes," he vowed, holding the spatula up for Regina's appreciation, like it was a trophy he'd plucked off the battlefield. He made this threat often, and had yet to do it, but, "I mean it this time. He has no respect for my --" in waving the spatula for emphasis, he caught a glimpse from the corner of one eye of Reuben's purring cat picking its way across the tiled counter, and hastened to gingerly pick it up and drop it back on the floor where it belonged (it let out a grumpy little 'Mrow' and stalked away). "Even his
cat doesn't have any respect for my kitchen! Next time we put out an ad, no more
cats. No animals of any sort."
He huffed out a sigh, then -- to signify that he had concluded this rant -- yanked out another drawer to restore the spatula to its proper home, and picked out a spoon for his cereal, pulled out his stool at the portion of their counter that served as their breakfast nook and cat playground, and climbed onto it, sitting with one black-socked foot pulled onto the seat with him, the other foot swinging disgruntledly until he hooked it around the stool's leg. "Whatchu got going today?" he said, to Regina. "You in a rush?"
@Regina Basciano
