anemone knows a great many peculiar people in This City, and some of them are quite famous in their own circles for having interesting qualities or abilities.  i am not at liberty to reveal much, except that anemone arranged for me to recover some of my strength at a local Institute run by her friend, a Mistress Dulbywax.  Mistress Dulbywax is a very kind and caring individual who is in charge of the Institute of Spiritually Assisted Recovery.  She is a medium, like most of the people Anemone seems to run with, and while I was not sober enough to recall my entering the Institute, I sobered up quickly when I saw ghosts dutifully marching up and down the hallways with their charges!  (At this point, you may not believe I was sober indeed.  Truly, it is a very strange situation)

Through her ghostly intervention practices (of which I am honor-bound not to reveal), I have been able to indulge in alcohol socially, rather than exclusively.  This is a great relief to all (and to our household finances, for I was running up an enormous tab at the Broken Umbrella for their home-brewed absinthe) and also explains why I haven’t been posting recently.  Kiki has other reasons for her absence, but I will allow her to tell her own story in her own time.  Tonight we are celebrating my return home with coconut scallops, shrimp in lobster sauce, and all the spring rolls we can eat!  (and plum wine, of course.  i can drink socially!)

last weekend, persephone dosed tiberius mitten & dubravko malley with DELK and had a three way with them!  apparently, they have often found her of interest, and they drunkenly began hooting out their post-modern poetry at her tearoom window last friday night.    she was secretly taken by the following, bellowed out (amidst belching) by tiberius:

“i expect you, fallen like the night–
the air is like a butterfly.
is there anybody there?
there’s one that i once loved so much—
there were three in the meadow by the brook.”

(pepper says persephone is so vain that she scribbed this poem down as T.M. shouted it, then made ‘word art’ out of it on her computer and hung it up in the tea room above a particularly revolting bunch of mauve cabbage roses)

she invited them in and slipped them DELK in their tea!  then. . . . she had her way with them, thinking this would drive nigel over the edge.  (perhaps over the edge of nausea. . .)  who knows what kind of monsters the DELK will unleash in those two morons?  pepper says that so far, they seem to be now completely in her thrall.  perhaps she wanted 2 idiotic manservants?  but DELK is so unstable. . .  this could backfire most dangerously!

 other tidbits she has gleaned that we must be alert about:

• she has overheard lady p. on the telephone with whalebone and blatherskite!  they were giving her a very stern talking to, which resulted in lady p. turning on the waterworks and wailing!  pepper’s not sure what they said to get this reaction, for as soon as she hung up the phone, she grinned as if nothing happened and said brightly, “oh yes, where was i?” and picked up the conversational thread neatly where she dropped it before her phone rang.  weird! 
• lady p. is obsessed with destroying anemone’s relationship with linus.  she has been snooping around the kama kafe (where linus works, lives, and studies, apparently) in hopes of detecting him and getting a wedge in somehow.  pepper reports very disturbing doodles drawn by lady p. that show anemone weeping over linus’s broken body!
•  lady p. has made photographic transfers of nigel’s face onto muslin squares which she embroiders upon her knickers.
• even rich sauces has little use for her, and avoids her company! she plaintively calls him, and most of the time, he hangs up on her immediately.
• she is definitely responsible for chenpin’s “accident” those years ago which sent him to his wheeled cart permanently paralyzed.  CHENPIN!  she has often bragged about snapping his spine like a green twig.  if she is capable of such evil . . . .
• pepper reports that lady p. is now enraged with jinx and phoebe (she feels they humilated her when we beat her ass at the boarding-house) and has been talking to some unsavory characters about “teaching them a lesson”.  this worries kiki and i greatly!  anemone has been apprised of this and is keeping a sharp eye on them while we’re at work, and has inscribed some arcane symbols in their doorframe for added protection.  even nigel’s hand has been at work in protecting them– a small owl-pellet was found nailed above their door, which grosses everyone out, but nobody wants to touch it to take it down, either.

i’ve got to go to work now.  pepper is coming over for dinner some night this weekend and we will learn more about what’s happening, i hope!

~nina~ (taking jinx & phoebe with me to work, and allowing them to play around with the computers and print out “eel boy” stills since i’m the only one there today)

poppet and pepper met for lunch at the foul, unnameable tearoom yesterday, and when pepper realized the purpose of lunch, she told poppet that she’s been doing undercover work! and apparently, she sent us a secret message to meet with her so we’d know what she was up to, but nina and i just missed it. don’t tell nigel! he’ll be disappointed in our lack of detective skills. on the other hand, since he’s started snorting owl pellets, he may not even notice.

but it totally worked out, because pepper’s been doing undercover work specifically on persephone! how random is that?

so right around the time that nina was brutally attacked by assailants unknown, persephone approached pepper with some ill-disguised questions about p, sol, nigel, nina, me, and anenome! she wanted to know if pepper had heard anything about us starting a “club,” or “society” of some sort. pepper thought that was very weird (since she didn’t even know persephone), but played her cards close to her chest and asked sol and p what they thought. they didn’t tell her a lot, OF COURSE, but did ask pepper to go undercover for a little while.

as we now know, that “little while” ended up lasting for months! pepper took that time to curry persephone’s favor, though she doesn’t know if it really worked. persephone is very suspicious, and also weirdly jealous where nigel is concerned. pepper didn’t see any evidence that persephone had close friends, so she may have scored some accidental points. and even though pepper knew nina was in the hospital, and it was totally hard for her to keep away, p and sol strongly recommended that pepper not visit. they didn’t say why, but pepper wonders if persephone herself was the reason for nina’s coma!

persephone, for her part, is clearly too stupid to understand how normal human friendships work, because she never seemed to think it strange that pepper just stopped hanging out with us overnight, and didn’t seem to care that a friend was hurt. persephone didn’t talk about me or nina much at all, except to call us “nigel’s new little friends,” with a sickening simper and a calculating look at pepper to see how she took it. pepper usually just made a noncommital grunt and continued to write her restaurant reviews. and this is how genius pepper is! she actually wrote real reviews and took notes at the same time! no one would have ever been able to guess! pepper modestly says this is a technique she developed in high school to screw around while pretending to take notes.

so here’s what pepper discovered over the last few months:

persephone used to hang out with p and nigel and various other people many years ago.

she says she’s been engaged to nigel for several years, but they are star-crossed lovers and have been unable to legalize their love.

she is obsessed with the idea that p, sol, and etc. might be starting up a secret group, and has asked pepper to try to get invited to join it. she told her to pretend to be friends with nina and me again to get an invitation. again, with a calculating look. i don’t know that persephone totally buys pepper not liking us anymore.

she has been developing what she calls a “delivery method” that she says will be most helpful to the “secret group” and that pepper should try to work that into conversation at home with her brother.

she also has told pepper all about the medusa amulet, but interestingly enough, has left out a great deal of information that is true according to nigel, and has substituted a lot of stuff that seems to be made up.

she has an entire closet full of her revolting “gothic lolita little bo peep” dresses. pepper says she gets them custom made. persephone has approached poppet for these custom services, and also hit on poppet pretty vigorously at the same time. poppet reports she had to run to the bathroom to rinse gag juice out of her throat.

pepper, doing her journalist thing, has also discovered that persephone has a secret benefactor who contributed all the start-up costs for the tearoom. and who might that benefactor be? none other than the disgusting whalebone! oh ho! what’s all this, then? (i’m pretending to be nigel when he’s drunk. which seems to be ALL THE TIME these days.)

okay, that’s all we could get, because pepper is STILL working undercover. sol seems to think there’s more information that pep could get us, though p seems to be getting concerned and wants pepper to call it quits. seems weird that p is more worried than pepper’s own brother, eh?

did i miss anything? let me know!

xoxoxoxox, kiki!!!!!

one mystery solved– though not a really good one.  the weird guy that was hanging around outside our door was in fact looking for anemone!!!!  talk about a surprise.  i thought she only had those old fogies from the society visiting her.  apparently, it’s a long distance boyfriend!  he’s latvian or german or something.  wears a big scarf around his neck!  you know the type. i haven’t seen him myself, but phoebe & jinx gave a rather unflattering portrait of him.  anyway, he thought that jinx & phoebe’s room was anemone’s— poor man was trying to shove a love letter under their door when they practically pounced on him!  i heard that jinx waved a switchblade around under his nose, but phoebe very emphatically claims it was merely a switchblade comb.  they sent the shaken fellow downstairs to anemone– she is the one that rather pointedly revealed the switchblade story after he told it to her in his halting english.  that anemone’s  such a mother hen!  sweet, too:  it turns out she has been taking the girls to the japanese grocery store and teaching them the basics of sushi making. 

but i digress!  we shall soon know why pepper & sol are angry with us.  poppy hasn’t heard a thing, but she’s been knee deep in relationship woes as of late, so that’s not wholly unexpected.

more later!  i keep hearing a lot of what sounds like meowing and i’m going to see if there is a cat somewhere in the boardinghouse. ~nina~

1. she never came to the hospital once to see nina 
2. we didn’t even know junie was missing until a few days ago!
3. when we called her to tell her we were glad junie was back safe and sound, she was really weird — she said something like, “i don’t think you meant it to have far-reaching consequences, but you did a lot of damage! stay away from my little sister from now on! and be glad i don’t call social services about the two impressionable young minds that you are currently controlling!”
4. what the hell???

so then i went and banged on nigel’s door for awhile, but he never answered. so then i went back to the apartment and called him, and he answered immediately. he told me he’d heard me knocking on the door, but that he’d been “unavoidably detained in a trap of his own devising, and therefore was unable to let me in.” nigel is getting weirder and weirder, if you ask me.

so i have taken it upon myself to find out what’s going on with pepper! i can’t call junie, because they have caller i.d., and pepper probably won’t let junie talk to me on the phone. jinx and phoebe have junie’s email address, so i sent her an email asking if she could explain why pepper is so mad at us! we love pepper! she’s one of our favorite people in the whole world, and i’m so upset!

THEN, nigel called me back and said that he was now free to talk, but that i should expect him to hang up the phone at any time. then he started blathering on about some group he and anenome and p and rich sauces (gross!) used to all be in together, and i couldn’t understand about half of what he was saying. finally, i asked him if he was drunk — i mean, it was like two in the afternoon, but he has been known to drink wine. he spluttered a little, then suddenly, he said in this really, scarily, calm voice, “that would explain everything, wouldn’t it?” then he told me that one of his “informants” had seen that stupid persephone woman lurking around outside the building, and that i had to promise to tell him if i saw her or heard anything about her. then he suddenly hung up.

nigel, despite acting like a paranoid cokehead, has given me an idea, though. because jinx told me that junie told her that she’d heard pepper talking on the phone to persephone, which was strange, because pepper doesn’t like her very much, either. i don’t know that pepper’s ever really hung out with persephone, but i know that nina and i told pepper about how terrible persephone was to us, and pepper didn’t like that one bit! she may have reviewed that teashop, though, i can’t remember.

pepper! so i don’t have a plan, and unfortunately, nigel’s acting so weird i can’t rely on him to go ask persephone for information. i don’t want to ask anenome to do surveillance work for us, because that seems like a pretty big thing to ask someone we’re not really, really good friends with. i know! i’ll ask poppy if she’ll take pepper out to lunch at the tearoom, and then get as much information as possible! and this will work out very well, because poppy has broken up with her latest girlfriend, so there will be no jealous sniping in the background.

excellent!

wish me luck!

love, kiki!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i got a new job!  i’m soon to be an official employee of the fastflashfoto corporation ™!!!!!  yes, it’s a dirty job, making photos from digital cameras for the techno-impaired, but somebody has to do it!

pros:  benefits!  no early mornings!  close to home!  steady paycheck!

cons:   not working with kiki.  have to wear a polo shirt if in view of customers.  these things make it very hard to choke down the job!

in the meantime, anemone has very graciously passed my name on to the society that she works for.  she says they need photos taken of their “relics and artifacts” for insurance purposes and for future publications.   can’t get enough of that freelance action.

just wanted to pass along that quick update, more later!

PS:  moscrop screamed at me when i came in this afternoon from my interview that some freak was hanging out around our door and that she had scared him off with a broom.  ?????  she claimed it was some punk rocker.  we can only hope! (swooning!)

~nina~

reading p’s comments made me curious.  why do he and sol think we should avoid nigel at all costs?  if only they would give us more information.  kiki and i haven’t seen much of nigel since then…..except for this morning.  and it was weird.

i had a wee headache when i woke up early this morning, and kiki was at the door, her ear pressed to it in earnest.

“whatcha doing?”  i whispered groggily.

“listening to some domestic squabble out there,” she said excitedly.    i jumped up and joined her.  “to hell with this, i’m going out there to listen!” she said, and we tumbled into the hall as she yanked the door open.

jinx and phoebe were squatting in the hallway, a bowl of popcorn between them, apparently transfixed by the audible soap opera going on downstairs and on the landing.  i grabbed a handful of their stale popcorn and munched away while listening.

“nigel!  you get out here and face me for a change!” said a shrill voice.  “i’m done inventing ruses and ploys to get your attention.  what i have to say can’t wait!”

kiki and i looked at each other.  “sounds like that bitch perse-phony!” i whispered.   

“whoever is listening upstairs, i hope you listen up at this– nigel is a cheap, lying, worthless stalker who won’t believe that what we had is over!  and when we had it, it was shit!”  persephone howled.

jinx ran to the staircase.  “get your ass out of here!  eelboy is on in 22 minutes and you better have shut up by then!”  she and phoebe nodded emphatically at each other.

 ”f*ck stupid eelboy!  f*ck all of you idiots!  especially YOU, nigel!  i’m tired of you trying to come between me and serious!  stay out of our lives!  we want nothing to do with you or the trash you hang out with!”

the rest of her diatribe was hard to hear over jinx and phoebe’s howls of anger over the besmirching of their hero eelboy.  then persephone charged up the stairs!

“all you bitches better stay away from me & serious!  and tell nigel to back off or else serious will do something DRASTIC!” she intoned darkly, and rather over dramatically.  (what isn’t overdramatic where persephone is concerned?)

“you better watch who you call bitch and get out of here,” kiki said.  “tell him yourself.  we’re not secretaries!”

“no, secretaries have more class.  and look GOOD,” persephone said.  

“that’s it!” i cried, and the rest is a little blurry, but the two of us tumbled down the stairs like in a cartoon where there is a cloud with a fist or foot emerging every now and then.  jinx threw the popcorn on persephone, and kiki yanked her off me by grabbing persephone’s disgusting yellow curls.  phoebe opened up the door to the street, and kiki threw her out like a bag of trash!

“get f*cked,” kiki said, slamming the door.  at the sound of the door, nigel popped his head out of the hall closet.  he was wearing an outfit much like i imagine sherlock holmes wearing, even had a little pipe clenched between his teeth.  god!

“she’s gone, chickensh*t,” said phoebe, totally unimpressed with him. 

“yes. . . well. . . .” he said awkwardly.  i was busy wiping the blood off my teeth, and kiki was furiously trying to remove all the hair from between her fingers.

“so you’re stalking that freak?” jinx said derisively.  “even you can do better!”

“persephone has an inflated view of herself,” nigel said, adjusting the deerstalker hat over his head as he spoke. “our paths cross occasionally while i am conducting research, and she is determined to think that it means i’m interested in her,” he said, letting out a long sigh.

jinx and phoebe ran upstairs then, in case the noise roused mrs. moscrop (it didn’t, oddly enough.  she must have been at the store!) 

nigel continued, “the truth is— once, years ago, i had a crush on persephone.  the kind you have on someone that you know nothing about.  little did i know that she was romancing p at the same time.  when p found a book of poems i had written for her from afar. . . . let’s just say we haven’t been close since.  and on the strength of that book of poems, persephone has deluded herself into thinking i have a passionate love for her!  but nothing could be further from the truth!” he finished angrily, looking at us with indignation.  he then retreated into the hall closet and slammed the door behind him.

“come out of the closet!” kiki said with annoyance.  “i’m so sick of you hiding anytime anything personal ever happens around here.  grow up!”

i went over to the closet and tried to yank the door open, but the knob just came off in my hand.  after futzing around with it, kiki and i finally opened it– but the closet was empty!  how does he do this sh*t!!!!!  we were too annoyed to track him down to his lair to find out.

anemone is coming over later with some healthy salad and spring rolls, convinced that kiki and i eat nothing but junk.  she’s also bringing her guitar. . . .to play acoustic joy division songs.  i might need another bottle of plum wine to deal with that!  i must go to the liquor store immediately.

~nina~

acting on our hot tip about nigel’s possible whereabouts, nina & i dressed up to the nines and went to the la strand building penthouse suite, which is a top-of-the-city-view-type jazz bar. we weren’t sure what we were looking for, but in keeping with our elegant attire, we made sure to drink cocktails. we also tried to make them match our outfits, but it’s hard to find pink and/or purple cocktails that aren’t full of grenadine, so we gave up on that by the end of the night. neither of us felt comfortable asking the cocktail waiter for exclusively-pink drinks, and although sol helped us out for awhile, my cell phone battery ran out, and nina’s cell was at home.

so we were there for hours, getting hit on by young, fat, drunken men, all of whom looked like they made pretty good money and voted conservative. they need that paycheck, if they do this often, because the drinks were expensive!!! nina, though she’d forgotten her cell phone, had managed to smuggle in a flask of vodka, so we were able to cut down on the costs of the evening. on the other hand, why is nina carrying flasks of vodka to bars?? must remember to ask her. nina was also heavily pursued by a terrible woman named lucy, who didn’t look like she was interested in drinks or jazz. not sure what she was doing there.

so around 1.00 a.m., we were ready to give up, and then nigel plops himself down at our table!

“what are you two doing here?” he asked us.

we goggled at him unattractively, then both started asking where he’d been, saying that we’d been worried that something had happened to him, etc.

he blinked at us, then said, “nothing happened to me. why would you think that?”

nina said, “uh, because something’s always happening to someone? and because you’re mixed up in all these crazy schemes with all these shady characters? didn’t we just flush out secret comrades for you recently?”

nigel took a sip of his drink, and said, “yes, you did flush out secret comrades for me. thank you.”

“AND,” i said, “nina’s been in the hospital in a coma for weeks! we’re obviously getting close to something!” we then proceeded to outline the entire episode to nigel, waiting for his gasps of astonishment and disbelief.

now, we all know nigel. he is the first one to see conspiracies and weirdos and spies and etc. i mean, he collects owl pellets. that may not be related, but come on! and this was his stupid response:

“nina, i’m very sorry to hear that you were in the hospital. are you sure you should be drinking? and i don’t think anyone would have attacked you, unless you have personal stalkers. the two of you aren’t close enough to anything for someone to want to hurt you.”

nina and i were both infuriated! and what is up with this new laid-back attitude? nina and i have drunkenly discussed this, and decided that he’s on opium. actually, i’m pretty sure we had the drunken discussion in front of nigel. too bad. he deserved it.

nigel hung out with us for the rest of the night, and then we all lurched home together, though nigel appears to be able to hold his liquor better than us. of course, we had hours of drinking before he even showed up, so that doesn’t really count.

nina’s been in bed all day today, and i stayed in bed until it was time for my night shift at the bean. must get a better-paying job!

love, kiki!!!