The Beautiful Ones

AN: I have discovered I am addicted to buying new ring tones. Strange me.

“So really, all you have to do is let me saw you in half. It’s a classic!” Criss’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

“I like the way you say that’s all I have to do. Like it happens every day or something like that.” Cassandra rolled her eyes and popped a grape into her mouth.

“Well, in my business it does.”

“Well, where I’m from we don’t make it a habit to chop people in half. It’s really frowned upon.” Criss laughed at her matter of fact tone as he paid the bill.

“There’s really nothing to it, Cass. Honestly. I’ve done it a million times.”

“So tell me just why you needed a new assistant, again?” Cassandra raised an eyebrow. Criss laughed again as they climbed into his car. She looked mournfully out the window.

“I miss my car.”

“I imagine you do. Bit like losing a home too, isn’t it?” she threw him a dirty look and sighed.

“You’re right though, it is. Criss, where I am going to live? I can’t keep sleeping on your couch. I have to have a place of my own.”

“We could always rent you an RV. It’d be a step up, wouldn’t it?” he shot her a grin. She returned the favor with yet another death glare. Criss found himself thinking how cute it was, her thinking she was intimidating when she did that.

If push came to shove, she was short enough that he could put his hand on top of her head and keep her at arms’ length.

“I just really liked knowing that I could put all my stuff in my car and drive away whenever I needed to, you know?” he goes quiet before nodding once.

“I think I do understand. You liked the freedom.”

“Right,” she sat back and looked out the windshield. “Where are we going?”

“Oh, my mom has some weeding she needs done in the garden, and then we’re going to a rehearsal, and then you’re getting fitted for makeup and costume, and then we’ve got some filing to do.” He flicked on the turn signal.

“We? Criss, the whole time I’ve worked for you, I don’t thing I’ve seen you lift one file.”

“That’s what I hired you for, isn’t it?” she rolled her eyes and shook her head as they turned once again onto the street where Dimitra lived.

**

“You found her living in her CAR?” his mother’s jaw dropped. Criss nodded, looking miserable.

“Mom, if I had had any idea that was where she was staying---.”

“I know,” she cut him off and sighed as she poured tea into a mug. “That poor girl. What did she say about her family?”

“Only that they weren’t important because they didn’t care about her. She didn’t much want to go into the subject.” Criss reached for a cookie and began to munch idly.

“That poor girl.” Dimitra sat down and began to peel potatoes. Wordlessly, her son reached over and took the peeler and potatoes from her. She smiled lovingly.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like to be from a family like that.”

“I can’t believe her parents don’t love her… I mean, well, I can believe it’s possible, I guess just can’t believe that it really happens.”

“Mmm,” Dimitra patted her son on the head as she walked by. “Not everyone was a fortunate as we were, Christopher. Not everyone had a family like we did. Like we still do.”

“Right,” he put a naked potato in the pot. “Mom, what am I going to do with her?”

“I’m surprised you even have to ask me that, Christopher.” She glared at him as she put a pot on the stove.

“Yeah,” he frowned at the peeler in his hand. Just then, Cassandra came in, cheeks pinked from the sun, with a tiny smear of dirt on the end of her nose. She was pulling off heavy canvas gloves, and Dimitra smiled at the way she was smiling.

“Finished! I even piled them all in the burn pit.” Her eyes scanned the room, and her smile slipped off her face.
“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Criss muttered, more to the food he was preparing than to his assistant.

“Why do you look so upset? What’s the matter?” she appealed to Dimitra.

“Nothing at all,” she put her arm around the girl’s shoulders and swiped her face clean with a dishcloth.
“Now go and wash your hands for lunch.”