Chapter Text
“You’re really freakin’ out over this girl, huh?” Raf asks, lingering in Luisa’s bedroom doorway.
She’s tearing through her closet looking for the perfect outfit. Surely nothing she had would be suitable for a night out of this magnitude, a night out with a woman, not to mention a pretty woman with money. She’d long since accepted being labelled a local square, one who wore roller skates at work and couldn’t keep up with the fashion trends. Not to mention the rumours that had started way back in high school that she was into skirts.…
Luisa sighs, looking up at him with messy hair and a sunken expression. “I have nothing to wear!”
Rafael chuckles, eyeing the dresses strewn across the bedroom floor. “No, nothing at all, I can tell.”
“Nothing that’s good enough for this!” Luisa exclaims. She isn’t sure how she and Raf are related; he is the opposite of square, he’s…. She doesn’t even know what the word is, she’s so far from it, and he is so… it . He always looked night out ready, with his mod blue sportcoat and his tight pants, his fedora, and that wide, laid back smile. He didn’t stress before he went dancing with pretty girls, and he went often .
He bends down carefully, picking through the piles of polyester as if they would pinch him. “You’ve also got those nice dresses in the closet,” he reminds her, “The ones that were Mom’s.”
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing those to do something Mom wouldn’t approve of,” Luisa says, her voice solemn.
“What, Mom wouldn’t approve of you making a friend and going dancing?” Raf questions. “Of course she would, she’d be glad to hear it.”
“You know just as well as I do that I don’t want to be just friends with Rose, even if that is all she wants from me.”
“I don’t think it is,” Raf says, cracking an ever-knowing grin.
“Mom would never approve of that.”
“You don’t know that,” Raf tries, sitting down on the bedroom floor, causing the hardwood to creak underneath him. “It’s you , Luisa, her only daughter. Her favourite child, if I may weigh in. I know Mom wasn’t a woman who bent her opinion at will, but she always would’ve for you.”
“You can’t be sure,” Luisa replies sternly, sitting down beside Raf in the sea of dresses. “And I wouldn’t ever want to find out. I didn’t even know if you would be okay with me.”
“Lu, of course I’m okay with it. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise, you know…”
Luisa backhands his bicep, a smile on her face. “I thought I was keeping it very lowkey!”
“You weren’t, not at all. I’d even be willing to bet Dad knows and doesn’t want to say anything. I’m sure some of our regulars know, too.”
Luisa groans between laughs, putting her head in her hands.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Raf laughs, rubbing a hand on her back. “I love you just the same. And I want you to have fun tonight, and not be late, so we have to get you dressed. C’mon. I’ll help you.”
-
It’s almost time for Luisa to leave; she and Rose are meeting at the diner and then headed downtown.
“You look fantastic,” Raf smiles. “I would totally take you out.”
“No, don’t say that, that’s weird.” Luisa crinkles her nose and toys with a front strand of her hair. (It tickled her chest, even in this high-necked dress. This shorter cut may be more fashionable, and definitely easier to manage, but she still misses her long hair.) Her face itches; she isn’t used to wearing this much makeup. She barely wears any at the diner because she’d just sweat it off. Her feet aren’t used to the heels instead of skates. Overall, she doesn’t feel like herself tonight at all.
But, hopefully she’ll be someone Rose liked.
~
“Look at you!” Rose exclaims. She’s already there when Luisa arrives, slipping her shoes back on, hoping Rose hasn’t noticed she’d taken them off. She got tired of them as soon as she’d gotten off her street and had done the rest of the short walk barefoot. Like a lady, darnit. “You look gorgeous. I love your dress.”
“Thank you, it has pockets!”
Rose can’t help but chuckle, while Luisa’s cheeks turn the same shade of red as her hair.
“Did you just embarrass yourself?” Rose asks, through laughter.
Luisa cups her hand over her cheeks, nodding. “Yeah, yeah I did. I don’t… do this, ever, my brother is pretty much my only friend and I’m way past feeling embarrassed around him, he knew me when I was a child and I was awkward and ugly…”
“You couldn’t possibly have been an ugly child,” Rose argues gently, reaching a hand out and touching one of Lu’s wrists, “and I find awkward incredibly endearing.”
“So what’s it like?” Luisa blurts out. “Being just so… confident, all the time. I can’t even imagine it, not being nervous around new people, new places, cute girls…”
Well, now you’ve really gone and done it, huh, you’ve outed yourself as not only awkward, but also very, very gay. Not to mention very, very gay for her, specifically.
Rose laughs, as if nothing’s gone wrong. Darn that confidence. She starts to lead Luisa over to her car–
Luisa doesn’t know much about cars, but she knows enough to recognize the cream-coloured, rounded car as a Volkswagen Beetle, a slug bug. “The trick is not to be afraid of how others see you, Luisa,” Rose says, as if it’s just that simple. “And just enjoy yourself.”
The car’s interior is nice and smells clean… too clean, if possible, the way the diner smelt at the end of the night, when Lu wiped all the tables with bleach and washed all the floors. There is a thin layer of plastic over the passenger seat, the way some people have over their couches. Maybe Rose is a germaphobe, Lu thinks, until she looks up from buckling her lap belt to see Rose brandishing a large, large knife.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Rose says, slightly under her breath, the metal reflecting the red of her hair, the green of her dress. On Lu’s side of the knife, a warped reflection of her own shocked face stares back at her.
“Why do you have it?” Luisa asks, her voice warbling. You don’t bring a knife when you go dancing, even I know that.
“We have a stop to make on our way to the dance hall, darling.” Rose reaches across Lu’s lap, popping the glove compartment and putting the knife away.
“Where are we going?” Luisa asks, her tone more assertive than Rose has ever heard it.
Rose purses her lips as she pulls the car into drive. “I suppose you don’t know much about me, do you? I know a few things about you; I know you’re a waitress at your brother’s diner, you’re green as a gourd, and you’re too sweet for your own good. And what can you say that you know about me, Luisa?”
Nothing, I know nothing at all. “Y-your name is Rose…”
“Is it, really?”
Oh, great. “A-And you like grilled cheese, and onion rings!”
“That is true.” Rose nods, still keeping her eyes firmly on the road, as they drive away from the busy part of town. “I like grilled cheese and onion rings, and I like having my own source of income, as I’m sure you do, too. So recently I’ve been picking up some extra work, some more sinister work.” She lets the silence sit between them, perhaps waiting for Luisa to come to her own conclusions, so she doesn’t have to speak the words.
“Burlesque?” Lu blurts out, causing Rose to huff.
“Yes, Luisa,” she replies sarcastically, “I need a large, shiny knife because I’m an exotic dancer, I’ll just keep it strapped to my thigh underneath my lace panties and hope I don’t take my own kneecap out.”
“I don’t know! Do you kill people for a living or something?!”
Rose doesn’t answer right away. “Or something,” she admits. “It’s very good money.”
“Oh my God, are you going to kill me ?! Are you bringing me out to a field where no one will ever be able to find my body once you cut me up–”
“No!” Rose says loudly. “I promise, I will bring you back home to your brother in one piece tonight. We just need to make a stop, then I’ll have the money to treat us to a nice meal and maybe even a show on our next date.”
“Our next date, okay,” Luisa chuckles.
Rose looks hurt by that, and Luisa suddenly wants to take it back. “I can bring you home, if you want. If this is a dealbreaker for you, we can end it right now.”
“It’s not a dealbreaker, ” Luisa finds herself saying, and she can’t even believe those words in that context have escaped her lips.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was,” Rose tells her. “That’s why I tend not to tell people. Men, especially, tend to feel emasculated by a working woman, much less one who does a dirty job. Much less one who has more power than they do– men aren’t used to that, you know, not the way we are. It scares them. Does it scare you, Luisa?”
Lu doesn’t know how to answer that truthfully. More than anything, Rose’s tone is what’s creeping her out… and how often she says her name. “Maybe a little,” she admits with a huff. This is slowly shaping up to be the strangest night of her narrow life.
“I appreciate your honesty,” Rose says, her eyes back to the road ahead of them as she presses the gas pedal just a little harder. “I promise, I’m worth it.”
-
“You have to stay in the car,” Rose announces once she parks, as if there is no argument to it.
“Absolutely not!” Luisa retorts, unbuckling her seatbelt, tucking her hair behind her ear. “You didn’t bring me all this way with you to leave me in your car! I’m not a cardigan you can take off when it becomes too hot. Let’s go, what do you need me to do?”
Rose sighs, considering her answer carefully as she reaches over to the glove compartment and carefully takes the knife. “If you’re going to come, you need to stand back and stay quiet. But really, I would rather you not.”
“Why?”
“It isn’t nice to traumatize someone on your first date with them!” Rose answers. “Watching the life drain out of someone is not fun and it does not easily leave you, I promise.”
Luisa knows that, of course she does. One of her earliest, and most formative, memories was the day that exact emptiness came over her mother: the light disappearing from her eyes, the pink from her cheeks. Unfortunately, seeing as she was just newly six years old when she lost her forever, she doesn’t have very many other memories of her mom to cover that one up with, so it is often at the forefront of her brain when the topics of moms, or death, or injustice, unfairness, unjust, came up. Shakespeare’s tragedies have nothing on the life and death of Mia Alver and the daughter she left behind.
And none of that stops her from wanting to witness what Rose is about to do.
“I will keep my mouth shut,” Luisa says. “I will keep my hands to myself. But I am coming with you.”
She says that, but when all is said and done and they’re standing by the fire the man’s just started up, and Rose is raising her voice and brandishing her knife, the man’s yelling back at her, putting his hands on her– Luisa shuts her eyes and turns back towards the Beetle, tucking herself into a hug as if it’ll shield her from this. She doesn’t cover her ears, though, and eventually she hears the man grow silent and then fall to the ground. She hears Rose’s heels rustle in the grass as she walks away, leaving the man to come back to her.
“Alright,” Rose answers. “Let’s carry on now.” She touches up her makeup, no worry in the world that they’ll be caught just a short distance from a dead body.
“Where’s the knife?” Luisa asks, noticing it hasn’t come back to the car with them.
“In his hand,” Rose answers. “ He threatened me with it, if anyone ever asks you.”
“Didn’t you kill him with it?” Luisa asks, unsure if she really wants the answer. “It was so quiet. I at least expected a squish or something.” The noise it makes when you cut chicken, at least.
“No, I strangled him,” she answers simply. “That’s why it was so quiet. He couldn’t make a sound.” Under her breath, she adds, “I’ll finally get a peaceful night’s rest now. Won’t hear him sounding like a freight train anymore.”
“Wait, you knew him?” Luisa asks. “I thought you were just doing someone a favour.”
“I was doing someone a favour– myself. And you. You no longer have it on your pretty little conscience that you’re courting a married woman.” Rose glances down at the ring adorning her left hand, the sizable diamond and shiny silver band, and shrugs, deciding to keep it on.
“He’s your husband?! ” Luisa asks, her voice raising a few octaves higher. “I thought your husband was in Vietnam!”
“Why would you think that? I never told you that. Don’t you know, Luisa, assumptions make an ass out of you and–”
“Yeah, yeah. But he was never around, and you seemed like he wasn’t a part of your everyday life–”
“Because he wasn’t. Because I don’t love him, and he didn’t love me. So what’s a woman to do, other than strangle him with the brassiere that he bought her for Christmas?”
“Did you make all that up before?” Luisa asks. “Have you ever actually killed anybody?”
“Yes,” Rose answers. Luisa isn’t sure which question she’s answering, but she doesn’t hesitate at all. That’s all she says on the matter, before shifting the car into drive and ripping up the gravel behind them, flying back towards town. “Now,” she purrs, “I owe you a nice night, while we celebrate my freedom. I know how to show a girl a good time.”
For the record, that is true. Luisa has never been on a date, this much is also true, but she imagines this is exactly how it’s supposed to feel (other than the murder). Rose is smooth, she keeps a smile on Luisa’s face– an actual smile, which is saying a lot. And they end the night of dancing by laughing back in the slug bug, Luisa laying across the front bench with her head in Rose’s lap. Rose rakes her long nails along Luisa’s scalp.
“I really enjoy spending time with you,” Rose says.
“The feeling is very mutual,” Luisa assures her. She’s relaxed, and she wants to close her eyes, but she isn’t done taking in the sight of Rose’s face yet, memorizing her features. Of course, from this angle, they’re a little warped… “Would you want to come back to my place?”
“Don’t you live with your brother?” Rose asks. “I’m sure he’d just be thrilled to know I spent the night in his little sister’s bed.”
“First of all, I’m older than him,” Luisa snorts, “and he wouldn’t notice. He thinks I haven’t noticed, but he has a secret skirt. She’s a real fox; tall, blonde, skinny, I’ve seen her hanging out around the house a few mornings. I don’t know why he keeps her a secret, not like he’s afraid people are going to yell at them in the streets for being queers, what do they have to worry about?”
Rose’s touch turns gentler, less nails, more fingertips. Luisa can see she’s pursing her red lips.
“Is that why you married a man?” Luisa asks abruptly.
“What, so I could hold his hand on the train? It isn’t that important. I would love to be able to love you out loud, of course, but I would rather kiss you behind closed doors than not get to at all.” But Rose sighs. “It was definitely easier, with James. But it will be more worth it with you. So yeah, let’s go back to your place, let’s not let this night end yet.”
-
In the morning, earlier than she’d usually rise, Luisa wakes up to the sound of chuckling coming from the doorway of her bedroom. She bolts up just as Raf’s trying to pad away, pretending he was never there.
“Rafael!” she exclaims in the loudest whisper she can, trying to not wake the sleeping beauty beside her.
After tying on her housecoat and slipping on slippers, she meets Raf in the kitchen, hair messy and arms crossed over her chest.
“Good morning,” Rafael chuckles, sipping his coffee.
Luisa grumbles, grabbing a banana from the bowl on the counter. She maintains eye contact with him as she peels it and takes a bit, waiting for him to crack and laugh at her.
“That’s not what you were doing last night,” he cracks, surely enough. He can’t help it; he laughs at his own joke. “I’m happy for you! I’m glad you had a good night. I’d rather she didn’t leave her lingerie on the kitchen floor, you know…”
“What’re you talking about?” Luisa asks abruptly.
Raf walks over to the kitchen table, picking up a pink bra thrown over one of the chairs as if it’s a biohazard.
“That isn’t Rose’s,” Luisa defends.
“Then whose is it?” Raf asks, a goofy grin on his face. “Not that I’m ever looking at yours… but this is too small to be yours.”
“About the right size to be yours, though. It isn’t Rose’s; she’s still wearing hers.”
Well, turns out hanging out with a liar made her one, too. But she can’t very well just tell Rafael where Rose’s bra rested… around the throat of a man, laying in the backyard of a farmhouse on the outskirts of town….
Raf doesn’t look too convinced, raising his eyebrows and putting the unfamiliar item back down. Before he can utter his next jab, the front of the duplex clicks back open.
“Hey, I think I forgot my–”
It’s the blonde dove again, the one Luisa knew was sleeping with her brother. As Raf picks the brassiere back up, she picks her jaw up off the floor. Luisa stands by, finishing off her banana with a twinkle of amusement in her eye.
“Y-you must be Luisa,” she acknowledges after a moment. “Petra,” she introduces herself, reaching out for a flimsy handshake with one hand and for her undergarment with the other. “I’ll be going now. You both have a lovely day!”
Another banana bite, as Raf’s cheeks boast a blushed tone. Luisa’s the one laughing now. “I’m happy for you, too!” she eventually tells him. “I’d also rather she didn’t leave her lingerie on the kitchen floor, but….
Raf shakes his head. “Go, go back to bed, go be with her. Go soak up the moment. The sneaking around makes those fleeting, trust me.”