They don't make jukeboxes like they used to...

[rememory]

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To reach the unreachable staaaaaaaaaar....

From the kitchen that she'd designated as the focal point for de and reconstruction, Sabine barked, "Mimi!" and then choked out a laugh that was half a sob. Man of La Mancha had always been one of Byron's favorite musicals.

"What? You can't build without music and you don't have a boombox!"

"No one has a boombox anymore. Don't make me regret manifesting you." She shook a finger at the showgirl ghost who was lounging on the back of the couch like it was a baby grand.

Unrepentant, Mimi went on singing,

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star.

"I love that line, don't you?" Mimi teased not just Sabine but Scott, even though he was out of earshot.

"Zip it, or it's Tsura's turn," Sabine snapped, cringing at the reference to their chaste, but far less than pure love.

"What was that?" Scott emerged from the next-door apartment through the hole he'd put between them to make testing the walls for support beams easier. There were two more like it in the filthy foursquare they'd chosen to turn into a community area -- for the time being.

"Nothing. Mimi was just asking your favorite musical so she could sing for you. Isn't that right, Mimi?" Mind-to-ghost she sent #Don't even contradict me.# Forbidding it with power was the simplest of her abilities, but Sabine didn't abridge her free will.

Mimi just laughed and laughed, sticking to Impossible Dream until the next person joined them Then she started in on songs from Annie:

It's a hard knock life for us!
It's a hard knock life for us!

Sighing, Sabine shot Scott and the newcomer an apologetic look then shrugged helplessly. "It's not like she's wrong."

[ooc: Gathering post! Sabine and Scott are clearing out a group of four apartments to start with to make a communal kitchen, dining, sitting area on level D. Mimi is audible and vaguely visible as a holographic figure of a showgirl with an indistinct face. She won't interact unless you ping me and ask for her. Will, Molly, Marie, Jack, Sebastian, Nick, Porthos, Maggie, all got a message inviting them for potluck and construction. Anyone else can have heard from them or have seen the 'excuse our dust' sign and stop by. Feel free; all are welcome. Tag Sabine with a note in the subject line; all other tags are top levels.]

Comments

[lee_fallon]

"Usually my job is supplying and pouring the wine," Lee told her with a warm smile and a soft laugh. It was nice to chat with someone like this, to remember his life before, comforting to talk about who he still is, even being now twice displaced.

He found a small plate and a fork then, cutting off a small bit of one of the enchiladas and putting that on the plate and then going for some of the salad as well. He took a bite of the salad first and was pleasantly surprised to find it had a nice bite to it. "This is good," he told her, his tone delighted. "It's got some good heat to it, wow."

[rememory]

"If only we had a decent wine to pour. Or even a bad one," she lamented, somewhat playful but with a genuine wistfulness behind it. She did miss some of the luxuries she'd never really gotten used to but enjoyed anyway.

Tipping her head in acknowledgment, she smiled with pleasure at the compliment. "Although a crisp light pear cider might go better with that. I'm glad it turned out all right. I'm better with Chinese, French, and Creole, but I was inspired."

[lee_fallon]

"Preaching to the choir," Lee replied, sighing softly at the memory of the cellar he'd left behind in Louisiana, stocked to the brim with so many good wines he'd never get the chance to taste now.

"I never really diverged into ciders," he told her, taking another bite of the food on his plate and humming softly at the pleasantness of the taste. "But I feel like I could trust you as far as pairings are concerned. This food is really good," he went on.

"I grew up in the south, and my mother's family was French," he said as he chewed another bite. "If you can make a gâteau basque, I'll be your new best friend."

[rememory]

"Think the lightest sparkling wine you can remember and add a touch of the sweetness of pear to it, and you'll have the basic flavor of it. Really, it's a fruit thing with Southwestern flavors. Beer with lime, or an apricot ale, a sangria made from a wine that's not too sweet--" She smiled, warming to her theme and the praise. "With all the cheese, it benefits from the brightness."

Then she winked at him and asked, "Vanilla cream, almond cream or tart cherry in your gateau? It may take a while for me to perfect it with what we have available, but grandmere was French and cousine grew up in New Orleans 'til I took her in."

[lee_fallon]

Lee smiled, and shook his head in delighted surprise. "You're the second person I've met here from New Orleans," he said. "If it isn't obvious, that's where I was born too," he added quickly. "My mother was first generation American, and it was my grand-père that immigrated from France, mom's father. He had a vineyard there, and he loved wine. So I came to my obsession with it genetically," he said with a wink.

"Mom did her basque cake with vanilla cream, but I wouldn't turn down any of that," Lee told Sabine with a soft laugh. "Which reminds me, have you met Nick?" he asked. "The two of us bonded over beignets when we first met."

[rememory]

"I have," Sabine confirmed with matching delight. "And beignets I can do, even without much fuss. They're surprisingly simple. And Great-Aunt Marie-Ange had a wonderful recipe." Of course, she'd been years dead when she shared it with Sabine, but that mattered not at all in this context.

"Again, it seems the beverages that lag behind." The coffee on the station was better than Moira's, but that didn't say much. Mog's Cafe though... She tipped her head thoughtfully. "I wager Maggie can manage something close on chicory. Mog's Cafe. You've been?"

[lee_fallon]

"I haven't," Lee replied, the idea of even something that resembled chicory coffee making Lee's mouth water.

"You know, if this Maggie sold your beignets, we could have our own Café du Monde," he said with a grin. "Café de l'Univers," he amended, his grin widening. He was kidding, of course, not trying to suggest career ideas or anything. At least not for Sabine.

"Do you think you could teach me to make beignets myself?" he asked, already knowing his talents as a sommelier weren't going to get him far here, most (if not all) the wine here coming from the replicators.

[rememory]

"And the gateau, if you want." Sabine smiled at him, true pleasure in her eyes and her tone. "Actually, anything I can cook that you want to learn. I like sharing the kitchen, and it will help me miss Em, ma cousine, less." Moreso if they spoke sometimes in French, but she wouldn't impose.

"Then you can sell beignets to Maggie." She winked conspiratorially, and urged him to eat with gestures. "And I can come and read in Café de l'Univers."

[lee_fallon]

"I would like that a lot, actually," Lee replied, feeling a genuine sense of purpose and motivation starting to make itself known in the back of his mind. "My mother tried to teach me to make the gâteau, but I sabotaged the efforts intentionally," he admitted, reaching to take another piece of food from one of the plates at hand. "I knew she liked making it for me, and I wanted her to think I couldn't do it so she wouldn't stop."

He took a moment to think about his mother, about the last time he'd seen her, what she'd looked like then. In his mind's eye she was always the woman who had raised him on her own for so many years before she'd remarried, a stalwart and strong thirty year old mom of a son who didn't always make it easy on her. But they'd always been close, and she'd been nothing but loving and accepting as he navigated his life, choosing a similar career to her father, coming out as gay and letting his lifestyle steer him the wrong way from time to time. He hadn't told her he was sick, hadn't told anyone in his family, and if he'd stayed in New Orleans he'd be gone by now, taken by the cancer. Instead he was just gone, vanished from her life, and he wasn't sure which was better, in the long run.

"Anyway, you have yourself a deal," he said with a smile, turning his attention back to Sabine. "Et peut-être que nous pouvons parler en français parfois, ouais?"

[rememory]

"Mais oui!" Sabine brightened even more at the suggestion and clapped her hands together. "My grandmother used to write letters to me in French, and my mother sometimes spoke it at home. Marie-Ange, my cousin, and I always speak French when we're cooking," she replied in French. "I'd like that very much." It would be a way to honor that connection and not count it as lost.

"Do you have a friend here or family?" That was gentle, as when she spoke to spirits with loved ones they couldn't quite fight.