Participants:
| Scene Title | Buying Out Ryazan |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The three women venture forth to dress Liz, talk about what's going on and spend some money. |
| Date | November 23, 2009 |
Russia: Ryazan City
Waking in a strange house is not doing a lot for Elisabeth's anxiety levels, though the sheer number of hours that she finally slept certainly helped. She looks less like a zombie as she moves to sit on the edge of the bed. Yesterday was pretty much a loss for her, what with jet lag and such. Today…. today's going to have to be about getting clothes. Getting gear. Figuring out what the hell to do next.
She glances toward the other side of the bed, where Abby slept without Liz even being aware that the pink-haired one climbed in. Whatever conversation Cat and Abby might have had over who got to crash with Liz and who got the twin bed, she totally missed it. It actually shocks her that she slept as hard as she did. Maybe just having the two women close by made her feel safe enough. "Abby?" she says softly, reaching out to touch the other girl. She's still wearing her clothes! She fell asleep in them yesterday and didn't bother waking to find something else.
Abby's awake. She was awake before Liz and was staring off at the ceiling in thought. Requisite hours, still off from the jet lag but she's awake. So when Liz touches her shoulder, she shifts, turns in bed to look over at the other woman. It had been easy to figure out who got to snooze beside Liz. Abby was probably the one more closer acquainted with the other woman. All in all, Abby'd rather be in the bed beside Teo being he's her roommate, but Katarina had other thoughts about that and the pink haired woman had been rebuffed.
"Hmm?"
"I feel like I've slept a long time," Elisabeth admits, shoving a hand through her hair. "I, uhm…. am I free to just take off into town, or has anyone said yet?" She grimaces a bit. "I really could use a shower and some clothes. Cat said she could help me get some stuff… since they didn't bother to bring even a change of undies with me."
"I have a pair of jogging pants and a sweater you can use," since they're both roughly the same size. "But you should be able to. Teo was, I don't see why you shouldn't. If you want, I can come with you." More cool air will be nice. She feels like a thoroughly pounded bean bag still. "I can't help you in the underwear department" That's just… yeah, she'd share everything else but that.
Elisabeth snerks. "Teo wasn't brought here in cuffs, Abby," she points out dryly. "That'd be great, though. The clothes and the company." She grins at the undies thing. "It's good. Even a shower and a pair of sweatpants is better than what I feel like right now. Gimme 20 minutes and we'll go?" She'll look a little silly heading into town in jogging pants and a sweater and dress shoes, but some things cannot be helped until arriving IN the town proper.
"You're out of the cuffs now," Abigail points out. "Take your time, going to take me that long to get up and moving. I'll leave a note for the others." She's been keeping her voice low so not to disturb Cat, though she's sliding out of her side of the bed. Flannel PJ's with white flowers on pink background. Classic Abby. Nothing skimpy or revealing.
It was an easy decision for Cat, taking the bed by herself. Her lingering issues aren't the same as the other two might have, not exactly. She didn't explain her reasoning unless it was necessary, but the simple truth is it wouldn't have been good at all for the presence of a warm female in such close proximity to cause a dream flashback with resultant physical actions.
So on the other side of the room is Cat lying in bed, seemingly asleep in sports bra and shorts. She doesn't seem to be one for lots of blankets and such, a simple sheet is good, and this is down to her waist. "I'm awake," she comments, without her eyes opening. "I was just watching a movie."
"Good… then you can come shopping too," Elisabeth says promptly. "I won't have to raid your wallet while you're sleeping." She heads for the shower, with every intention of getting the two women the hell OUT of the house with her so they can all talk.
Showers are taken, clothing is donn'd, everyone bundled up with liz in a borrowed parka till they can hustle down to some store and get her one. The premise of the trip. Thank the gods above that Cat woke up because if not, the two non-Russian linguists would have been… well, in a lot of trouble.
But out the door they've managed to get and into the town that they're currently residing in, stopped on a sidewalk. Blonde, brunette, cotton candy, preparing to do what most women love. Spend some money. At least one of them is.
She had also, after lunch and before finally sleeping, been busy in the Professor's study with his books. It was a very enlightening pursuit. Cat now has a detailed map of the city in her head. She knows all the streets and where the major businesses are. "This city has five hundred thousand people, approximately, it isn't New York or Moscow but it isn't small." She seems to have chosen the place they were told has an internet cafe as the start, and handled the taxi issues given her ability to communicate with drivers. And pay. As they pass a news vendor, she hands over some money and obtains what seems to be a major Russian paper and a local one. "There's a store down that way," she indicates with a nod of her head.
"I want to learn Russian," Elisabeth says as they walk, watching Cat with the money with a grimace. "I'll pay you back for all this if I'm not in jail when we get home," she adds as an aside. "But I want to be able to get along while we're here. And I want to be able to swear at Felix too." She grins a bit, slogging through a bit of slush in her very messed up dress flats. Following directions toward the store in question, Liz is actually pretty amazed at how popular things like jeans are here. She's never been to the Eastern Bloc countries before.
Abigail frankly was expecting people to be running around like little old Russian ladies. Not, like, normal, looking people. Liz professes a desire to learn Russian and Abigail's just going to rely on her English to Russian dictionary. She's not got the skills that Liz and Cat have for learning this sort of thing. She's still not got the hang of Italian yet.
"I don't think you'll be arrested when you get home, Liz" though it's the Company who seems to be playing a part in this so who knows, really. "Let's just get you some clothes okay, and some boots, before you freeze." She's been walking stiff, knees bugging her. Hopefully a day or two more and it won't be all that bad. "Before you're a Liz-sicle." The younger of the three is checking her phone, looking for voice-mail on her phone. None, and the disappointment is evident on her face.
Street and store signs will most likely confound Abby and her translating dictionary. While it's useful to look up Russian words for spoken communication, it probably doesn't much help with translating the written word. Most such books probably have the Russian transliterated into Western characters; what's seen on the street is all Cyrillic. Cat, however, seems to also have the transliteration thing whipped. She looks at signs from time to time and shares what they say.
As they walk along, she pulls out her iPhone and pulls up a text message sent the day before to show them both without a word.
Glancing at the text message, Elisabeth smiles faintly and slips a one-way silence bubble around the three — they can hear what's going on around them, but no one can hear us. "Called my dad and Cardinal …. somewhere in the wee hours of this morning," she tells Cat quietly. "He says that there are two other destinations… he's heading for South America somewhere, and Claire's supposed to go to Africa. Gillian, Eileen, and Magnes Varlane may also be headed one of those places. On the up side, with the encrypted phones, we may be able to stay in some kind of sporadic contact at least. Because Claire and Richard have two of the phones from our stores." The ones she asked Cat for.
Blue eyes travel over the letters on the phone, letter by letter before she glances up to the two. As with the day before, she's quiet on the subject, intent on listening and learning.
Once she's shared the communique she clears the screen and pockets the device. "They're nice people, but they're Company," Cat states. "They may be linked to the FSB as a result, and in any case I don't want to specifically say who we're communicating with even though they've put no restrictions on our movements. Even told us where to find an internet cafe." There's a pause then, as an idea occurs to her.
"Elisabeth, you can hear people's heartbeats, right? Amplify so you can hear them, but no one else does or somesuch?"
Elisabeth blinks and says, "Well…. yeah. Why?" She actually grins. "No one more than four feet from you can hear us even now," she offers.
So she should be very careful when using her own phone. She knew that already which was why she hadn't made any calls yet. "FSB?" She's not a girl who knows her acronyms. There's a gesture to the store that they want as the front doors are fast approaching. Cat's question about heartbeats brings about raised brows from Abigail.
"Good," Cat replies with a slight grin forming, "that means if they have, or put, an invisible person out to tail us you can spot it easily by hearing a beating heart where no one appears to be." Then she glances at Abigail. "FSB is the Russian Federal Security Service. Successor to the KGB. Most likely a lot of people in it used to be KGB." She spots a store nearby which sells musical equipment. "I'm going to buy a balalaika," she asserts.
Following Abby's gesture to the store, Elisabeth is grateful to note that the first stop appears to be clothing. Department stores are not the same here — small storefronts with clothes do not mean shoes to be found does not mean coats to be found, et cetera. So it'll take several stops for Elisabeth to actually fill her shopping needs with sturdy pants, shirts, a coat, undergarments, socks, and boots.
"Sure, I can keep tabs on that. They can trace the call I made to my father from Felix's phone, but I didn't tell him anything except that I was okay, to please let my partner know that I'm okay, and that I don't know when I'll be back." She hesitates. "I'm grateful that Dad knows, under lawyer/client privilege, what I've been doing up to this point. He understood why I couldn't tell him on the phone what was going on. And they could try to trace the call to Richard, I suppose, but …. it's a Wireless-encrypted phone, so I trusted that." She grins a little, a touch of color suffusing her cheeks briefly. "It was worth the risk, honestly," she says obscurely enough. Then she steps into the clothing store, because she needs warm stuff!
Oh. oh. Abigail's feeling thoroughly the fish out of water. "Felix's mother was KGB," she feels inclined to point out. Likely, she's got it wrong, Liz will correct her if she is. But it's something she does know. "I need to call Robert. I promised I'd call, let him know if we needed anything." And it seems for now that they don't. "We'll be in here when you're done buying your bala..something."
"It's like a Russian guitar," Cat explains as she enters the first store. There shall be obtaining of clothes, accomplished through several visits to different places, and finally the instrument Cat desires. She doesn't seem to have any shortage of rubles.
After that perhaps a stop at the internet cafe for this trio where Cat will research the city and Russia further to pull up maps so she can memorize the road system, including information on status of those travelways. Hell, maybe she'll even check out the possibility of buying a vehicle big enough for the group.