Snippet #2768741

Izzie’s home was in the quiet waterfront neighborhood of Fells Point, nestled in between a row of quaint townhouses with slanted wood shingle roofs and, indeed, very little parking. Izzie’s Impala occupied a reserved space on the street in front of her house, looking—rather a lot like its owner—big and conspicuous in between the other, smaller cars lined up along the street. The Patapsco River was just a stone’s throw away, and from time to time you could hear bells ringing or the sound of a water taxi or a barge’s horn in the distance. All in all, a charming place.

But of course, Rick wasn’t there to take in the charms of the waterfront, and Izzie didn’t keep him waiting long. Just a couple of minutes after he fired off the text message letting her know he’d arrived, she emerged, shutting the door behind her without locking it. “Thanks for picking me up,” she grunted in Spanish as she slid into the passenger’s seat and buckled up.

The venue wasn't too long a drive from Izzie's place-- not that they were in any rush to get there. They had plenty of time and as far as Izzie was aware neither of them had any intention of grabbing a bite to eat at the place before the show anyway. And anyway, it was a cool jazz show-- wasn't being in a hurry to listen to cool jazz kind of like listening to Cephalotripsy to go to sleep at night?

Actually, that might be a bad analogy, Izzie amended. She was pretty sure Mini-Martinez did exactly that every night before bed.

Speaking of which...

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Valentina, for her part, didn’t live in quite so charming a part of town.

Nor, for that matter, did she live in quite so charming a house. Instead, when Ada arrived at Valentina’s address, she was met with an enormous, blandly grey tenement that resembled something right out of some third world post-Soviet republic. On the steps leading up to the entrance to this monument to brutalist architecture sat Mini-Martinez herself, decked out in a navy blue sweater and an ankle length skirt. Just the right attire for a night out on the town, if that night was in 1962.

But she was going, wasn’t she? She may not have seemed delighted at the prospect—the way she got up from her stoop when she saw Ada approach and walked over to her car implied she felt she was walking to her own funeral—but she was going. Presumably she’d decided that was concession enough without dressing the part, too.

If the familiarity of her clothing was any comfort, though, it didn’t show. If anything, she seemed nervous from the moment she wordlessly sat in Ada’s car, fingering the collar of her sweater and fidgeting in her seat.