Sleeping in until noon was a luxury that Christina got once a week, without fail, Sunday and the thick blinds muted the harsh sun, kept it from shining right into her eyes in the morning. Sure, it was still a hundred degrees in their rooms, but Mer was gone early, back to mummy and daddy for brunch and the place was quiet, quiet and hot and stifling.
Even the temperature didn't wake her up this Sunday, she slept for a blissful six hours, then at noon when the Connect panel started buzzing to wake her up, of course it didn't feel like enough. Sunday never felt long enough, especially when she spent most of it asleep.
Two rings, a pause, another ring, then repeated. "Okay, fuck-- what, who is it downstairs?" because that could only mean one thing, someone buzzing up to be let in, someone without an ID and access to the building and since Nick lived here, J lived across the street and had access, it couldn't be anyone she knew well. Into the com, "yeah, who is it?"
Vaguely familiar voice. "Christina?"
"Who's askin?"
"It's, Britney."
Fucking hell. "it's barely noon, what do you want?"
A sigh. "Can I come up?" Christina waited. "I brought some breakfast."
"Food?" and yeah, okay, so the kid was bribing her, but, "real food? proper honest-to-god food?"
"Swear. Can I come up?"
Christina buzzed her in.
~
"What happened to you?"
Christina blinked, glancing over at the mirror. both her eyes had black rings around them, her cheek was swollen and puffy, and her lip was bruised, still had crusted blood on it. "oh," and she licked her lip gently, "yeah, tough night. Whatever."
"Are you--"
"Yeah, fine," curtly, and, "drop it. What do you want?"
Britney, after a moment, came into the apartment more. She dropped the packages of food she was carrying on the counter, which Christina immediately tore into and started wolfing down. Britney said, "I need you to do me a favor. I need someone's address."
Christina was incredulous even as she was smelling the bread. "you want me to show you where J lives?"
Britney folded her arms across her chest, looked faintly annoyed. "You don't have to make it sound so accusatory."
"Well, from what I can tell," and all of this was said around a mouthful of fresh baked bread, none of the cold storage shit or hard tac that she was used to, "you're wanting me to help you spy on him. So, yeah, sorry, no."
"It's not like that, okay? It's like." Britney clucked her tongue. "I have to just, talk to him in private. It's not like I'm even trying to get him to come back home or anything, I just need his help."
"Why?" Christina asked bluntly, reaching for the jam. Oh, and jam. Bread and jam, and some fresh eggs, some milk. She hadn't had a breakfast this good in months. "you've got everything you could want, it looks like."
Britney eyed her, gaze hard and mouth thin. "I'm pregnant."
Christina spat out her mouthful. "it's J's?"
"It can't be anyone else's, no. Justin was the only boy I ever slept with."
"Serious? his name is Justin?"
"If we're done with the questions, would you please help me?"
Christina slathered some more jam on her fourth piece of white bread. "If you're pregnant, doncha want him to come home and like, take care of the brat or something?"
"As a matter of fact, no," Britney answered, mouth still thin and angry. "I simply need his approval to raise it myself. My family's promised to help me, and I'll be fine on my own. But since it is his baby, I need him to give it up."
"you think he will?" Christina said.
Britney stood, wiping dust off her skirt and pulling down her shirt. "He's going to have to, or come home. What do you think?"
Christina swallowed. "Okay, I'll take you."
~
She left Britney and Justin talking low, just in the door of his rooms, and went out for a jog along the docks. Justin, and it was weird, Justin not J, he had a name now and not just a letter. It made him a little closer to the high class brat he used to be, instead of the slum kid he was now.
The docks were busy, lines and lines of people setting up to load cargo to and from the big liners, and high overhead the well-money'ed passengers getting ready to board for their cruises. She'd heard people tell of going on cruises, Mer described a week at sea once with people catering to her every whim. Christina didn't and wouldn't ever have a high enough ID number, nevermind enough money, to take a cruise. The closest she'd ever get was loading and unloading, down at the surface level.
Her face was starting to hurt, too, the one eye swelling shut, so it was time to see someone about giving her anything to speed up the process.
The doctor, who worked in an empty warehouse down by the docks, could fix most any problem that was wrong with a body. Christina had had a lot of work done, he'd re-stitched her bones back together, healed her body and strengthened it. "Doc," as she pushed open the glass door to his office, "need something, if you're up for it."
"Oh, you again?" a bald man, glasses, slim. "You should be more careful."
"Yeah, yeah," she said, grinning. Sat on a stool, spun around a few times, and, "you know I'm good for it, can you just gimme something for my face? Have to look good again before tomorrow night."
"You always say that, Chris. I don't know why it's so important," he said as he fished out some patches and sealant for her.
She handed him her ID, to log the transaction, and then said, "come to the fights and find out."
"Not my thing, thanks," and as he handed back her wrist, logging the print. "See you next week."
Back out the doors, sealants tucked safely away in her inner jacket pocket and zipped inside. Straight down Dockside, through the rest of the warehouses and straight up 58th to her building, past the office towers and tenements. The street down here was lower, down to the eighteenth or nineteenth floor even, the streets sloping gently down to the dockside. Running up town was a lot more of a workout, and with cracked ribs it hurt like a bitch, but forty blocks and she'd be back at her place.
Forty blocks, and Christina, winded, had to pause outside a bakery to catch her breath. "Jesus," but, now would be as good a time as any to make sure she had some food in the house, so, in to buy a loaf of hardbread and enough time to recover.
In the mirror above the counter she could see the whole right side of her face purpling nicely. Fuck.
"Gonna need some water with that, Chris?" The baker, who used real flour and didn't charge her extra, was about fifty, a friend of her mother's back from when her mother ran a business too. "you look like you could use some real liquid."
"Yeah, all right, toss a few bottles this way," because the water reclamation faucet only gave you four litres a day and sometimes, like now, it felt better better to have water you knew didn't just come from the waste plant in the basement.
Jogging with groceries was always a little more difficult, but nothing really, just her bruised ribs screaming and finally finally, she was back at her building, card in the slot and up the elevator to home.
Christina barely tossed the water and bread in her fridge before shucking her clothes and collapsing onto the mattress. Gingerly applying sealant to the cuts on her face, her arms, legs, peering in a hand mirror to smother her lip in the blue goo. There was a huge gaping gash in her thigh, a little crusty and stinging. The sealant stung going on, then a cool numbness infected her skin. Worst of the damage taken care of, Christina fell back onto her pillows, pulling the sheet over herself to sleep the day away.
ALARM was closed Sunday nights, the only night of the week she had off from the ring and no work meant she could sleep the clock around, get up in the middle of the night and go to her early shift at the Courier Service Monday morning. Mer was gone until Monday night, and so, bright hot sunshine seeping through the slats in her blinds, she fell asleep.