Chapter 2

Matthias pulled his work shirt from the rickety drier, his mind miles away. His thoughts floated in a land of mysterious readers bending skeptically over his work, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues. They muttered to one another. "This won't do." "Not what I'm looking for." "Simply terrible."

"You look lost."

Matthias jumped and spun, smacking a knee into the open door of the drier with a resounding 'clang'. An old women stood in the doorway to the laundry room, a small basket braced on one hip and her eyes lost in the wrinkles of her smile. She was possibly the shortest woman Matthias had ever seen, but that didn't diminish her at all as she marched into the room and prodded a squat footstool from a corner with her free hand so she could load the washer.

Matthias rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Yeah, I was daydreaming I guess."

"You looked angry." The woman observed as she upended her laundry into the drier. Matthias tried to ignore the flower print underwear that tumbled in beside the skirts and sweaters.

"I... I guess maybe I was feeling a little annoyed." Matthias tugged the stubborn drier door back open and finished scooping his clothing out. "I'm Matthias, by the way. Matt." He turned and held out a hand. His hand entirely enveloped hers, which was warm and soft and somehow different from a child's hand, even if it didn't seem much larger than one. He had half expected her to have that 'old person' smell, but she didn't. Unless a faint whiff of hairspray counted. Instead Matthias scented chicken soup and his stomach gave a sad little twinge. It had been two days since mysterious Trav had paid him a visit with those sandwiches and it had been ramen and eggs ever since. Matthias sometimes heard his e=neighbor on the other side of his door from time to time, but hadn't had the nerve to knock and ask him to come over.

"People around here call me Mrs Penny." The woman"s smile once again buried her eyes in wrinkles. "Or just Penny if you like. Have you met everyone in the building yet, Matt?"

"Not yet," Matthias shrugged. He held his laundry, ready to go, but couldn't seem to leave. He'd never lived without a roommate or family before and while he kept assuring himself that writers were loner introverts, it was getting harder and harder to keep up that mantra.

"Musician?" Penny asked, gesturing at him from atop her stool.

"Pardon?" He blinked.

"Are you a musician?"

"Er, no, I'm a writer."

"Ah." Penny nodded sagely. "I knew you were an artist, you have that look. Hungry. Unfulfilled."

A sharp laughed escaped Matthias before he could catch himself. He clamped his mouth shut and gave Penny an apologetic look. She chuckled and waved off his concern. "I know because I was an artist for a long time too until my hands got too stiff." She looked him up and down and Matthias felt a bit like his own grandmother had returned from the grave and was about to proclaim him 'too skinny' as she had done through his childhood. "Come on, Matt, why don't you accompany me back up to my place and I'll fix us some lunch? You can drop off your laundry on the way." Penny stepped lightly down from her stool.

"But, your clothes?" Matthias cut a glance at the washing machine, which had rattled to life and was sloshing anemically into the wash cycle.

"No one is going to steal my clothes," she winked playfully at him and headed for the door, clearly expecting him to follow.

"I-" Matthias started, then closed his mouth again. He pictured his barren refrigerator and his stomach growled. He hitched his basket onto his bony hip and trailed after the woman. He could hear his sister April's voice in his head. 'Mattie, it's a good thing you're a guy because you'd follow a a creepy man back to his kidnap van if he asked you' He wished he could tell imaginary April that he wasn't so easy to boss around, but he didn't have a leg to stand on as he followed a stranger upstairs on the promise of soup.

He had to admire Penny's dogged determination as she marched up the stairs, planting both feet firmly on each step before continuing. She barely even used the railing and didn't break a sweat. "So, Matt, what do you do besides the art?"

Matthias snorted. Oh how he would have loved to tell her that he was making money with his writing, but of course she knew better. "Overnight security guard."

"Hmmm, stimulating." Penny's cut him a sideways look and her smile was playful.

"Yeah. The only nice thing about it is that I come up with a lot of ideas while I'm sitting there watching a parking lot." Matthias paused and winced, "not that I have the time to write any of those ideas."

"If that's not life I don't know what is," Penny chortled. Then stopped at Matthias' landing so he could lean into his doorway and drop his laundry basket just inside. Stepping back onto the landing he nearly collided with Penny. He had expected her to keep going up the stairs. Instead she had stopped in front of Trav's door, her brow furrowed as a field.

"What's wrong?" Matthias locked his door and crossed to stand beside Penny. He thought he could just catch the sound of a TV, or maybe a youtube video seeing as Trav's TV was broken, playing beyond the thin wood.

"That kid... I don't know." Penny shook her head. She glanced up and must have caught Matthias' furrowed brow. "He's a good boy, he's just... he runs into trouble from time to time and this time-"

"He broke his leg and lost his job," Matthias filled in sympathetically.

"Right," Penny agreed, though her tone made Matthias think he'd been wrong about what she was going to say. "He's in a bad spot. Needs friends."

He thought of telling her that Trav had paid him an uninvited visit the other day, but it felt like he was reporting to a grandmother that he had played with the unpopular kid on the playground and was looking for some kind of reward for being nice. Instead he clasped his hands behind him to follow Penny up the stairs to the third floor. As he turned from Trav's door a little huff of air, as cold as the wind outside, tickled his cheek. He hesitated, eyes drawn to the crack between door and frame, but he didn't see anything so he walked on.

"Here we are. Make yourself at home." Penny ushered him into her apartment.

It was laid out similarly to Matthias' but where his was a barren expanse of dusty hardwood and open surfaces, here he immediately had to check his long-legged stride or knock into a side table cluttered with porcelain dogs. He inched artfully around the table and looked up, nose already filling with the homey odor of chicken soup and potpourri. He couldn't decide if he would describe the space as cluttered or more like a museum-- full, but everything in its place. He often described sights to himself as though he were writing on a page, but Penny's home was unclassifiable. Every surface was covered; the floors with patterned rugs, the furniture with colorful throws, the surfaces with a wild and disparate collection of knickknacks from floral teapots to stacks of books. He rounded her small TV, treading carefully past an overstuffed ottoman, scanning book titles as he went. Mostly classics, but his brows went up when he recognized a modern erotica title mingled with the Dickens and Bronte.

He achieved the couch and sat down. It was short, and his knees buckled up close to his chest. He'd always been long legged, but now he felt like a gangly spider.

Penny trundled to the stove, past her own kitchen island, every inch of which was covered in bottles and spices and stacks of canned food. Turned on the stove where a pot of soup already sat, awaiting heat and pulled out a step-stool to reach down some three bowls from a cupboard. Matthias wondered if he should help, but he felt like he was in the way just by being in her apartment so he kept his overlong limbs to himself.

"Hi."

Matthias turned and blinked into the deep brown eyes of little Amber from the stairs. She was once again attired in a frilly princess dress, this time over the top of a black and neon purple sweater. She plopped a coloring book and fistful of crayons on the couch beside him and knelt on the floor using the couch as a table. She couldn't use the coffee table behind her because it was covered in a full fan of beautiful tarot cards. Matthias leaned down to take in the intricate art on the cards, all of which were soft edged with use and age. Then he sat back, looking abruptly at Amber. "You were up here all alone while Mrs Penny was doing her laundry?"

"Yeah." Amber tossed open her book and selected a picture of Princess Aurora singing to a bird.

"She's fine." Penny waved a hand over the steaming pot of soup.

"I'm fine." Amber parroted authoritatively. "I'm a hindepenant woman."

"Right you are!" Penny affirmed.

"A What?" Matthias was beginning to feel as though he had wandered into an alternate fantasy world like wonderland.

"She's an independent woman." Penny translated. She stirred the soup and the smell of meaty broth and simmering veggies assailed Matthias nose and his mouth watered.

"What kind of art did you make, Penny?" Matthias asked, to distract himself from the aroma.

"I made these." She gestured with the hand that wasn't stirring, indicating several thick tapestries hanging around the room, keeping in the heat and hiding the ugly wallpaper.

"Holy shit!" Matthias slapped his hand over his mouth and gave Amber and apologetic look. The little girl just laughed at him, chortling fit to bust. "Don't tattle on me for swearing?" he asked her earnestly.

She stopped laughing to give him a serious look. She solemnly handed him a green crayon and went back to her coloring. Penny chuckled. "She likes you."

"That's good..." Matthias looked at his crayon gift laying on his palm and smiled faintly.

Penny ladled out three bowls of soup. "Trust me, this girl can handle herself better than most adults."

Matthias glanced at Amber, who had her head down, scribbling enthusiastically at the page with only marginal concern for the lines. Matthias' mother would have an aneurysm if she heard of a child Amber's age being left unattended for more than a minute, but she seemed fine.

"She had a fever this morning so she stayed home from Daycare." Penny settled a deep bowl of soup in Matthias' hands.

"'M better now." Amber scooted her coloring to the side so Penny could set her soup bowl on the couch.

"You er...read tarot." Matthias blew on his first spoonful, noting that no one disturbed the spread on the coffee table.

Penny settled herself in an armchair. "I do. I'm an over the phone psychic. I don't get out much and my retirement sure doesn't pay for my lavish lifestyle, so I make a little money on the side helping insecure people in their twenties feel better about their lives."

Matthias cocked an eyebrow at her. She was so soft spoken and grandmotherly he hadn't expected the sass.

"I'm serious." She spooned a hefty portion into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "Most people feel comforted by their reading, even if it's bad. Do you want me to do one for you?"

"N-no thanks." Matthias wasn't sure if he believed in that sort of thing, but a sizable part of him didn't want to chance it. What if the cards told him he was doomed and his dreams would never come true? He looked from the little girl sipping messily and splotching the couch with oily droplets of broth, to the tiny old woman smiling warmly over her soup at him. He felt like a kid himself, even if he was markedly too big for her couch. He fought back the urge to unburden all his mounting fears of failure on Penny. Instead he chased a particularly large hunk of carrot around his bowl for a while before muttering, "I can't stay too long. Work tonight."

"That's fine, Matt," Penny said. "I'm glad you decided to visit."

"I'm glad you invited me. Now I've almost met everyone in the building."

"You haven't met mom and daddy." Amber pointed out, taking another slurp of her soup. "They're at work."

"Right you are." Penny agreed with the girl.

"Right I am!" Penny flourished her spoon and splattered Matthias' pants with broth. He didn't mind. She was as vibrant as a butterfly here in Penny's cluttered home.

He had a thought as he finished a few more bites. "Penny, how do you keep everything so well balanced with a cat in the house? I've had cats and no surface was safe."

"I do a lot of tidying." Penny shook her head ruefully. "Though if I'm honest, Cheese only spends about half his time with me, and then it's usually to nap." She gestured to a worn cat bed on a chair, perched atop a small stack of books with titles like A Mystic's Guide to Dreams and Practical Witchcraft for the Home.

"He has come to visit me more than a few times," Matthias admitted, smiling thinly. "I don't mind the company and he doesn't seem to have peed on anything so-"

"Oh yes, he's a very polite cat. Very intuitive too. He knows good people when he sees them and he knows trouble when he sees it too. Why once I brought home a date-"

Matthias choked on a noodle and tried to contain himself.

Penny ignored his outburst. "Cheese took a dislike to this fellow right away. He started yowling and hissing and carrying on. So I turned my date right around and marched him back out the door."

"Cheese is smart." Amber agreed.

Matthias thought of Cheese waking him up, perched on his chest and yelling in his face like a fluffy banshee. He glanced at Penny through his dark lashes so she wouldn't notice and wondered if he should bring it up. Still, once he had woken the cat had stopped his yowling and left through the window like Batman. He chewed reflectively on a hunk of chicken and tried to remember what he had been dreaming before Cheese had arrived. Something about a tunnel, maybe chanting? Matthias was prone to vivid dreams so that didn't seem particularly unusual.

Matthias quietly ate the rest of his meal, surreptitiously peering around the room to take in the juxtaposition of porcelain shepherdesses and black candles. Of a taxidermy crow and several kitten plushies in a pile. "How long have you lived here, Penny?" Matthias pushed to his feet like an awkward giant as he collected everyone's empty bowls.

"Oh, long enough." Penny waved a dismissive hand. "Long enough to remember when this was a decent building. It used to belong to a friend of mine, but she sold it when she moved into a nursing home, so now we've got a new landlord."

Matthias ran the bowls under water, appreciating a faucet with decent flow. "At least he seems like an ok guy. Knows what the apartments here are worth."

"I used to pay less." Penny shrugged. "My friend gave me a good deal. This guy charged me more for having Cheese here even though at this point all the cat would ruin is my stuff." She shrugged. "I'm too settled to move and I don't know where I'd go anyway. Can you imagine me lugging all this nonsense to an assisted living home?"

Matthias cocked his chin in her direction. "You sure don't seem ready to move to assisted living, if you don't mind my saying."

"I surely don't." Penny's sparkling eyes vanished in folds of wrinkles. "though sometimes it would sure be easier. Keeping track of my meds for starters. Ben and Cassidy keep an eye on me in exchange for me watching the little one."

"I'm not little! I'm a princess!" Amber had retained her spoon and was dancing around the room, tapping various objects as though she held a magic wand.

Matthias recalled a childhood of motherly supervision and always having a sibling to play with, though he and April had been closest. He watched sweep to and fro, her dress poofing as she tapped piles of books and artfully placed knickknacks. "Do you have any brothers or sisters, Amber?"

She cocked her head at him and wrinkled her nose. "No." Her voice was disgusted, as though he had suggested she walk through a mud puddle wearing her favorite, light-up shoes. "Princess don't have brothers and sisters."

Matthias opened his mouth to protest, but in the moment he couldn't think of any Disney princesses with siblings. He settled for nodding with understanding as he set the bowls in the dishwasher. "I should probably get going. Thanks so much for the soup." Matthias said, wiping his hands absently on his pants. As welcome as he felt in Penny's place, he was still an invader. Maybe it was his general feeling of shabbiness in the pretense of this life obviously well and fully lived. Or maybe he was just a skinny wraith that didn't quite belong around all this warmth and color.

"Of course," Penny slid down from her chair before he could stop her and accompanied him to the door. She took his hand in both of hers, warm and soft. "I'll be sure to invite you again, you need some meat on your bones."

Matthias blinked as unexpected water reached his eyes. Somewhere in these first days alone in his apartment he'd gotten homesick and he hadn't even realized it until Penny was inviting him back and a lump spontaneously sprang into his throat. He stifled the rising desire to kneel and give her a big hug and settled for nodding.

"Bye bye Mattisis!" Amber called, waving with both hands.

Matthias swallowed and stiffened his shoulders to regroup. "Bye bye Princess Amber."

The little girl squealed with delight and began a spinning dance that was in serious danger of knocking multiple stacks and tables askew. "Oh dear," Penny said, turning back to the spinning girl. "I had better deal with the dancing princess before things get messy. Goodbye Matt."

The door shut before Matthias could say goodbye again. He blinked at a hanging sign in the shape of a cat's face that read 'wipe your paws' and smiled before shaking his head and walking down the stairs with his hands jammed in his pockets.

Matthias was unlocking his apartment when the door behind him opened. He pivoted on his heel and met a pair of sad, blue eyes. He was leaning on his single crutch and wearing a grey sweater and what looked to be the same pants as the last time Matthias had seen him.

"H-hi, Trav."

"Hey," Travis rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes flicking away from Matthias' towards the floor. "I uh... Sorry I haven't been back to collect my Playstation. I realized you worked nights and then I felt really shitty for bothering you during the day when you first came and then I wanted to apologize, but I didn't want to invade your house again. The guy before you, his name was Evan, used to let me just wander in whenever and I don't know why I assume that because I'm jobless everyone is jobless and-" he stopped himself, no doubt taking in Matthias' raised brows. "Sorry. I don't know why I'm babbling. Anyway, I can take back my system now if you want."

Matthias blinked in the silence that followed. Even as he thought it might be better if the strange man removed his possession and went back to his own life, the realization from upstairs came flooding into Matthias mind. Home invader though he was, Mathias had missed having someone around to talk to. He had to force the words to the surface but they came. "No, uhm... why don't you hang out while I get ready for work and uh... feel free to stop in whenever, like we talked about before."

Trav's face lit up like a thousand Christmas trees and Matthias took an involuntary step backward. "I told Ruby you didn't mind me coming over, but she said it was rude and I should apologize."