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Post by Teja on May 3, 2019 19:22:46 GMT -5
Teja avoided her reflection in the fluorescent lighting of the bathroom, preferring to focus attention on her cheat sheets - the well-fingered newspaper clippings she'd gathered over the last week and a half, when Megan had first asked her to be her plus-one. Entrepreneurs, businessmen, politicians, philanthropists - the richest and most influential inhabitants of New York City had gathered here tonight to discuss their place in the future of New York City and indeed the nation and the world, living in the shadow of Manhattan. From quotes from a lot of them, they stressed the universal responsibility every person had in making the world a better place - in a way that seemed to obscure that, as the 1%, they had more control over that than the average person did. Teja didn't see how she, or Megan, or anyone else at the perfume shop she worked at, or really nearly anybody in New York at all, had a fraction of the social power most of these people had. But no one had asked her to weigh in on it, and besides, it wasn't as though she didn't think every person should work to make the world a better place - it just felt like a sleek, prettied-up lie for the wealthy to ooze about the responsibility of the common man.
"Sounds like a setup for an attempted assassination," Teja had joked when Megan invited her.
"We should be so lucky," Megan had groaned, and they'd laughed. That was why she got along so well with the girl, though they'd only just met. Equally devastated by New Years, they'd both fallen into poor taste dead baby comedy about it and the general state of the world, but they shared general political opinions, too. It hadn't taken very long to become friends.
Megan emerged from the stall and started washing her hands. As the only other woman in the bathroom left, Teja asked in a furtive voice, "Do you think my dress makes me look poor?", and moved to tuck away her newspaper clippings.
She lingered on the last one a moment longer. It was about one of the mayoral candidates, a Lukas Ashton - he'd be here tonight, it had been said. His platform was about responsibility in the wake of Manhattan's attack, too, but while charming and young, he had a bit of a radical, pointed edge to the way he talked about the rich, how much they had abandoned the rest of the world, but they weren't the ones paying for their own mistakes. It was an attractive position from a rather attractive candidate. Ethically, she meant. Ethically he was attractive.
She put the clippings away quickly.
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Post by Megan on May 3, 2019 19:30:22 GMT -5
Megan took a moment to look her over with a little frown.
"Oh no, not at all. You look like you've got taste. How about me, does mine make me look rich?"
She lifted her hands in a ta-da gesture, with zero change of expression to go with it, but quickly dropped them.
"Never mind, I don't want to know. Jesus, I feel like if I sneeze I'm going to pop out of it," she said as she started hefting the bodice up under her bosom for probably the seventh time that night. "You look good, though!"
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Post by Teja on May 3, 2019 19:32:31 GMT -5
She was wearing something vintage, or at least she hoped it was, that a friend had given her in college. But now she worried it just looked dated. Every woman she'd seen had been wearing an actual cocktail dress.
"Best to avoid any pepper," she said very seriously.
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Post by Megan on May 3, 2019 19:45:06 GMT -5
"I'm starting to get why Eva Peròn did the thing with the arms," Megan said dryly. "Keeps the girls secure in a ballgown and hides the armpit fat.”
She kicked the bathroom door open through her skirt and backed out with her arms held aloft in a sort of touchdown signal. “Don't cry for me, Argentina..."
Another woman gave her a bit of a glare as they passed on their way back to the ballroom, which made Megan replace her Evita arms with a half-hearted middle finger to the back of the woman's head.
"I do appreciate you coming, though," she admitted to Teja as they reached the doors. "It won't totally kill what they're already thinking about me and Adrian, but it will help."
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Post by Teja on May 3, 2019 19:49:09 GMT -5
Teja wasn't sure she believed Megan's denials about Adrian herself, but she kept that as much of a secret as Megan did 90% of her life. Presumably she'd tell her the truth when they knew each other better, if that day ever came.
Megan did not seem to have very many friends, except for a man named Dan and another person from Veidt Enterprises, a French kid who was younger than either of them. But Teja only knew of them from conversation; in the time she'd spent with Megan, she hadn't alluded to hanging out with either one of them. If she had, Teja knew, she'd have asked one of them to come in her place.
"Why? Are you hoping we come across like lesbians?" she said dubiously. "It's half true for me anyway, but I don't want to pretend to be your date."
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Post by Megan on May 3, 2019 19:54:51 GMT -5
"I don't think they're thinking that far ahead," Megan said. "But even if we just seem like friends, I won't come off like Adrian's arm candy."
She looked down at herself.
"Or arm cake, as the case might be."
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Post by Teja on May 3, 2019 20:03:37 GMT -5
"Stop," she said, starting to feel a little embarrassed. "I told you, you're too down on herself."
Then when Megan was feeling confident in her looks, she'd mention it in a way that made Teja feel like she was supposed to be the ugly one - the one who wasn't an hourglass or an Amazon or something. Better for Megan to not talk about her body at all.
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Post by Megan on May 3, 2019 20:12:13 GMT -5
"It's just an observation," she said. "Besides, nobody really notices that anyway. They're too busy wondering if it was a car accident or a knife fight."
She subtly pointed up at the deep pink scar on her left cheek.
"You look great though. I mean it. Maybe you'll get to go home with somebody tonight."
They were almost to their table now. Adrian Veidt sat there alone, looking at his phone with a frown. It was propped delicately in the silicone-gloved palm of his otherwise black and skeletal-looking prosthetic right hand, and he operated it with his left. As the girls approached, however, he set the phone aside and quickly used his good hand to push on the thumb and forefinger of the prosthesis in some kind of sequence that made it suddenly release its gesture and return to a neutral position.
"Hi, Adrian," said Megan. "This party sucks."
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Post by Adrian Veidt on May 3, 2019 20:14:05 GMT -5
"In-deed," said Veidt. "You don't have to stay for the whole thin- ah, yes."
Noticing Teja, he stood and extended his good hand toward her.
"Teja, was it?"
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Post by Teja on May 3, 2019 20:16:17 GMT -5
This was a distressingly good-looking man. Her opinion on whether or not Megan was dating him swiveled from 'you probably are' to 'if you aren't, why the hell not?' All her opinions of him flew momentarily at the door as she took his hand shyly.
"Yes," she said idiotically.
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Post by Adrian Veidt on May 3, 2019 20:21:46 GMT -5
"Adrian Veidt," he said, with a disarmingly pleasant smile despite how tired he looked. He gave her arm one lift and release and then sat down again, with Megan taking her seat beside him with much ruffling of skirt and concerned looking at her chest. Adrian noticed this and lightly tapped her wrist to make her look up, which made Megan roll her eyes as her mouth tightened in acknowledgment.
"Have a seat," he said, gesturing across at the next chair.
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Post by Teja on May 3, 2019 20:24:18 GMT -5
Teja seated herself as elegantly as possible, patting her hair to check that it hadn't fallen out of its little twist. Doing her hair wasn't her strong suit, and she hadn't thought to book a salon because it had never come up before.
Ninety percent of her usual conversation with Megan these days cycled around to how terrible rich people were, which made it impossible to think of something to say now that Veidt was around.
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Post by Megan on May 3, 2019 20:26:12 GMT -5
"We're not staying all night, are we?" Megan asked doubtfully.
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Post by Adrian Veidt on May 3, 2019 20:27:25 GMT -5
"Oh, heavens, no," said Veidt. "God, have a little more faith in me than that."
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Post by Megan on May 3, 2019 20:28:56 GMT -5
"I can't believe this is what rich people do all the time," Megan groused. "I'm worried I'm going to have an asthma attack from all the fake bronzer in the room."
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