The air conditioning was most likely equal in age with that of the building. As it came down through the vents, it creaked and moaned as if it was a ship being dragged down a metal ramp, by the keel to sea. But the air blew straight into the kitchen and, that kept it from heating up the rest of the building with its great stoves. She had finished drying off the residual water from off the last plate, and now she was ready to find some lunch. She had told the brothers’ that if they let the dishes soak over night she wouldn’t mind doing them up in the morning. Well, with all the studying she had to do, when she barely managed to keep that promise, it was midmorning. She had cleaned out the sinks with cleanser and had rinsed them thoroughly so that they could be ready for the preparation of vegetables for the evening meal. Looking around in the refrigerator, she noticed a large bags of potatoes, carrots, several eggplants and some tomato pasta sauce.
“Hmm, Mexican eggplant for dinner tonight,” she thought, “We had that last week, oh well, it’s not bad.”
Searching thoroughly, though, she was not able to unearth much more variety in the food. There was some milk and some apples.
“That would be ok, I guess,” she thought further, “if I can’t find anything else.”
Next she turned packages sideways on the overhead shelves to see what was available. Mostly cereals, some dried fruits, cocoa and odds and ends. Even at her height, the shelves were a bit taller than she was. As she tried to slide one of the boxes back up onto the shelf, it fell backward. The only thing that prevented it from adding granular texture on top of the floor was the large hand that stabilized it with a push.
“So,” A masculine voice sounded over her head.
Tilting her eyes back she found the smiling face in the short, blunt, shaggy, dark hair, head of Klaus hanging over the top of her. Dressed in his gray meditation sweats he smelled vaguely of the sesame seed oil that she rubbed into his shoulder the night before. Klaus suffered from a nagging pinched muscle in his neck and she did her best to rub it into submission once a week.
Among the brothers her hands were considered golden, as she had used them to help quite a few of them. Her sweetness and prattle added to the delight of the massages she gave. One evening, a visiting sidhe, with whom she had championed in a game of chess, after dinner, too requested a massage. He was a formula one racecar driver and he complained that his arms always had some tension in them. Bernard, who was sitting at the table, suggested that the woman who had so handily beat him could render an effective massage. So, she followed him up to the quarters that had been set aside for him. After he removed his shirt and laid it across the back of the chair. Then he sat down on the bed. Kneeling behind his back she drove the heel of her hand into round joint of his shoulder.
In a circular motion she pushed gently into it, imagining the rotation of the moving muscle group. When the muscles felt lax under her pressure, she got off of the bed and went over to stand in front of him. she slid her palms deeply over his arms. Then she used her fingers to locate individual fiber trunks and pinch them into relaxation. He asked her if she had ever kneaded bread. Amused with him she had glanced up from her work and affirmed that she had. From where her hand was placed on his arm, he encircled her wrist. He raised up her hand and stared into her fingers as if he was searching for something within them. Then he asked her if she would knead his back.
The curve of her lips said she agreed to, she did so willingly and she rambled him to sleep with one of her stories about something that had happened to her once in a foreign country. She specifically chose a story that had happened to her in one of the countries that he had raced in. He did not even care if it was true, he loved the sound of her voice and soon he drifted off to sleep. She covered him with a blanket and slipped quietly out of the room. As she walked down the hall to the stairway it seemed to her that she had championed the champion again. It made her giggle.
