Inside The House

II

I woke up a little after five o'clock in the morning. Not that I set my alarm clock that early. New place usually means poor sleep. Apart from that, so much had happened yesterday that due to my emotions I slept badly anyway. Maybe it is better that I woke up so early. I can arrange everything in my head.

First, outside the house, which turned out to be a grand old though largely renovated villa, the welcoming committee was noteworthy. The building is staffed by several people, the first of course being Buck, who is the Van Rostovs' chauffeur. After a while I realized that in his spare time, besides worzing the domestics here and there, he is busy flirting with Gregory's sister. This black-as-night she-wolf named Luna at first glance seems to be very withdrawn from the life of the family home... at second glance she is too. Clad in a red satin costume, she parades around the building all the time with a slim cigarette. Greeting, cigarette. Tour of the mansion, cigarette. Lunch, cigarette. Afternoon conversation, cigarette. Dinner, cigarette. Surprisingly, she seemed to like my mother. They found each other perfectly on the topics of fashion, interior decorating and the use of natural cosmetics. As for me, as I had pretty much expected, she just threw in that I was extremely similar to my mom. Which of course was true.

Another character was the cook Ezekiel. The Van Rostovs seem to have forced him to wear a white chef's hat and white apron...or maybe he wanted to? He is an old otter who, in his glory years, supposedly cooked for the celebrities and politicians of this country. But time moves on and old recipes are not reflected in new cuisines. This could be felt especially during the dinner, where one of the prepared dishes was asparagus in Hollandaise sauce, potatoes served on „kefir" with a hint of chives, or whitefish in blueberry sauce. Although the food was tasty, today
I can't imagine that I would be able to eat meals from several eras ago. I don't want to sound crazy, I'm just not used to such sophisticated cuisine.

Ezekiel, on the other hand, is the favorite of Mrs. Grandmother, a black-haired she-wolf as old as the building I live in. Her name is Apolonia, and although officially the mansion belongs to Gregory, I think she is the one who makes the most important decisions concerning the family. As soon as we passed the threshold of the building and entered the sizable hall, Lady Grandmother, surrounded by servants and family, sat proudly in a chair. When she shook my hand, I must have made a mistake, because I shook it when I think she was expecting me to kiss her hand. She made this known with a subtle, almost imperceptible grimace on her face when
I made this affectation. She had said very little all day, but whenever she opened her mouth, whether to say something or just to lick her old cracked lips, everyone immediately fell silent. It seems that grandmother of Gregory and Luna, holds all the household members by the balls.

The most natural-behaving person in the manor was a sixteen-year-old, also black-haired she-wolf named Aurelia. She is Luna's daughter, but unlike her, she looked like she just got out of bed. This was evident from her oversized, crumpled sweatshirt with the logo of some boxing team on it and her short shorts, also crumpled. In fact, I'm not sure she didn't get drunk last night. She politely but casually said hello to her mom and only said "hi" to me. She was not with us when Luna and Gregory showed us around the house. She didn't show up at snack time either. Instead, she came to dinner dressed in the same clothes she came to greet us in. She didn't even say a word the whole evening. She sat on a chair staring at the phone screen, sometimes smiling at it and sometimes wrinkling her nose. This one definitely didn't like me, because why should she? We don't know each other, and I don't think our attitudes towards this bizarre situation differ much. She only spoke up once when the subject of Kevin's enigmatic figure came up at dinner. She asked when he was coming. At this point I noticed that although she seemed uninterested in the adult conversation, she listened intently to everything. Eventually she picked up the name "Kevin" and immediately joined the conversation. It may have been for a brief moment, but it was enough for me to already know that she and Kevin had a strong bond, which only duplicated my feelings of uncertainty and desire to escape. Eventually, once my mother has imbibed this company (and all indications are that she craves nothing more than this), I can be relegated to the first floor and destroyed. Wonderful.