Barcelona, La Promesa, & Chapter 15
Hello, my alien lovers!
Barcelona was FABULOUS. I ate the best tortilla of my life. Stuff you never forget!
I started watching a local (to Spain, that is) telenovela called La Promesa. So far, and although there are zero queer characters, it's super entertaining and a great crash course in learning español. The heroine, Jana (who's pretending to be a servant to avenge her mother's death at the hands of a "noble" family filled with secrets and greed), is a badass. An Adele Betterave is in the making, for sure!
I'm also working on my publishing schedule for 25/26, which is a bit wild to say when it's just me in my sweats writing alien smut, but yeah! A few exciting projects hopefully soon.
Enjoy the first part of a two-parter with the one and only Mrs. Parviére. Their banter was a blast to write. 💫
If you're new to the story, start with Chapter 1
If you missed the last chapter, Previously on Perilous Love Stars
Maple had promised herself a long time ago that she would never reveal to anyone that Mrs. Parvière inspired the return of the Betterave Family’s historically most dangerous enemy, Tamara Ratata.
Tamara was introduced in Season 34 during a bank robbery and the show’s first musical episode. She had stuck until Season 59, where she’d disappeared after the satanic ritual the vegan-cannibalistic cult she was leading failed (coincidentally, also a musical episode with hit songs like “I Kill Humans, Not Goats” and “Not All Blood Taste The Same”). One of Maple’s first big moves as showrunner had been to reintroduce Tamara Rattata, Betterave Town’s most infamous doctor who’d gone to jail three times for falsifying autopsies and seven times for murdering all sorts of people. Although the original actress playing Tamara had passed away years prior, Maple had taken the risk of recasting the beloved character with someone new. It had paid off. During the show’s 70th season, the audience loved to see Tamara’s comeback as she moved next door to Evelyn’s to wreak havoc on her life.
The idea to re-introduce Tamara had come to Maple after one of her regular bickering with Mrs. Parvière. For as long as Maple could remember, Mrs. Parvière had been the grumpy lady leaving a few doors down, smoking cigars on her front porch and yelling at joyful kids like Maple. Growing up in Sobriquet Lake, everyone knew of the always-complaining, never-happy, children and joy-hating Mrs. Parvière.
Three years ago, the old lady had petitioned against Maple, Brooklyn, and Storm moving into the house next to hers, claiming the three women were “disruptors of high calibre, dangers to the peace and quiet of our dear and fragile neighbourhood.” Maple’s roommates hadn't held a grudge against the octogenarian, but she had difficulty letting go of her long-time grievance with the old lady. Drawing inspiration from her neighbour to build Tamara’s character was Maple's healthiest way to channel her emotions regarding the French Grinch.
So, spending time with her trying out cakes wasn’t Maple’s ideal afternoon. But here she was, pressing the buzzer, holding a pile of boxes filled with nearly forty samples of various delicacies. Maple wondered why someone as unpopular and grumpy as Mrs. Parvière would need to try that many sweets.
“Who is it?” squeaked the old lady’s accented English from behind the door. No doubt, her eye was stuck to the peephole right now. She could see who it was.
“It’s Maple.”
“Who?”
Maple suppressed a grunt. “You know who I am. I was born and grew up in this town, and I’ve been your next-door neighbour for the past three years.” She paused, gathering the little patience she had left. “I just called to say I was on my way.”
Silence.
“For the cake testing? Brooklyn sent me.”
There was some movement behind the door. “You just said you were my neighbour.”
Maple reminded herself of the breathing technique Rosalie taught her in high school when her bully targeted her inner peace. That was all she could do to avoid throwing all the boxes on the ground and leaving. Maple needed Daphne’s address. She really fucking did, and nothing—not even Mrs. Parvière’s unhinged behaviour—would stop her from getting it. Too much was at stake.
She inhaled.
Deeply.
She exhaled and said, “Chantal, please open the door.”
A longer silence.
The door opened to reveal a fuming Mrs. Chantal Patricia Hélène Parvière. “Never. Use. My. First. Name.”
The fakest of smiles finds its way on Maple’s face. She was glad she’d used Brooklyn’s only rule—“Her full name is on the delivery slip. Do not call her by her first name, no matter what. I did that once, and it did not go well.”—to her advantage, but not enough to conjure a genuine smile. Annoying the French Grinch was fun, but Maple was still stuck with her for the next hour.
“Mrs. Parvière, what a pleasure it is to see you. Looking as ragged as ever.”
“At least I don’t resemble a pale suppository.”
It took a beat for Maple to swallow the roar that steamed from the back of her throat. “Wonderful. Should we do this?”
Mrs. Parvière wrinkled her nose in response and retreated to her living room. It was the closest thing to an invite from the French Grinch. Maple followed.
She’d never been inside the house. The wallpapers were old and printed with long green leaf patterns. The furniture was all made of wood, the ceiling was low, and the well-anchored smell of smoke made her gag. Where Maple’s house was big and bright, this place was narrow and murky. A lair more than a house.
Parvière sat on the couch, a beige atrocity from the previous century. “Why couldn’t Brooklyn be here? I like her. She’s not as abrasive as you.”
Maple was glad the boxes she carried offered a distraction. She set them on the coffee table.
Brooklyn had instructed her to put the boxes in the kitchen, get some plates, and make a big show of bringing each sample separately, but this wouldn’t cut it because Maple had vastly underestimated her capacity to be around Chantal.
Instead, she crammed all the boxes on the small coffee table and ran to the kitchen to get a fork and a knife. She returned to the living room, used the knife to open the boxes, and gave Mrs. Parvière the fork before sitting beside her on the surprisingly comfortable couch.
“Nice couch,” Maple said.
“I know it looks like shit, but it’s still plenty plump where it counts. Just like me.”
Maple looked everywhere but at Mrs. Parvière. “What are you tasting cakes for?”
“My funeral.”
The fork crashed into a lemon-avocado millefeuille.
Maple didn’t force herself to fill in the silence this time. She let it stretch as long as God would allow it. Listening to Mrs. Parvière chewing was preferable to having a conversation with her.
“I don’t care if you think I’m bizarre—pass me the red one, please? What’s that?”
Maple looked at the berry-basil-banana mousse and handed it to her. “Red velvet. And I didn’t say you were weird.”
“No, but you were thinking it… also that’s absolutely not red velvet. Does this have banane in it? I specifically asked for pas de banane!”
“There’s no banana in this. It’s vanilla. Also, I didn’t think you were weird.”
“Don’t lie to me!” The fork crashed into Maple’s thigh. “Petite ingrate.”
It didn’t really hurt. The old lady’s frail strength wasn’t enough to puncture her skin. But, as the saying goes, “It’s the gesture that counts,” and that one had been unhinged. Maple screamed.
“You’re insane!” She grabbed her leg, making sure the damages to her $300 leggings were minimal. “That’s assault. You literally assaulted me.”
Mrs. Parvière rolled her eyes and tried a chocolate-broccoli tart uncontaminated by banane. “You were going to let me poison myself. I see how you lie to everyone around you. I’m not a fool.”
Maple’s eyes grew wild at the truthful accusation. Salvatore wasn’t the only one seeing through her lies after all. “So, what? You physically assault me?”
The tart didn’t convince Mrs. Parvière. She set her eyes on a box containing macarons of various shades. Her fingers picked a pale yellow citrus-parmesan-sesame delight. “Your generation is so fragile. That was nothing, barely a peck.”
Maple caught herself eyeing for too long the knife she’d used to open the boxes, thinking about how Mrs. Parvière would make a perfect first murder victim. By the time the old woman’s body would be discovered amongst the dozens of untouched cake samples, Maple would be long gone. Sure, she’d have to deal with the police, but there was another murderer on her tail already. The SUV had trailed her to Mrs. Parvière’s house. Maybe she’d get lucky, and whoever was in the tainted window car would take care of her before she’d ever see the inside of an actual jail cell. (She’d often locked herself in the fake jail cell on set to write.)
Although Maple didn’t trust Sobriquet Lake’s police (or any type of repressive colonial forces, really), she was itching to give them a call just in case it was an actual killer tailing her and not an overzealous journalist.
Widely loud chewing from Mrs. Parvière brought Maple to the idea of murder. Deciding it was wiser to put some distance between her and her potential first murder victim, she stood up and walked the room.
A framed picture on a wall caught her attention. It was, Maple noticed, the only picture in the entire living room. Looking closely, she immediately recognized one of the two women on it. Daphne Dutrignon, forty years ago, by the look of her X0’s perm and the velvet tube dress she wore. A gorgeous younger woman’s head rested on the star’s shoulder, shining a bright grin at the camera. Both had cigarettes and champagne flutes in their hands. If Maple had to guess, this was from 1XX6, the year Daphne had committed to a 100% velvet wardrobe while she promoted her new fashion line, Velvet & Velour, forcing the Betteraves & Betrayals producers to introduce Eleda, Adele Betterave’s evil twin who only dressed in velvet. Adele spent most of that season being lost at sea in a locked barrel before being rescued by a sexy pirate who cut into his curtains to design her a velvet bikini she wore during the second half of the season as they scurried the seas back to Betterave Town to stop Eleda from becoming the town’s new mayor.
Maple turned to watch Mrs. Parvière, all wrinkled and grey from the consequential amount of smoke she inhaled daily. It was almost impossible to see traces of the gorgeous woman in her. But she remembered seeing Mrs. Parvière smile once. It had been a bright day, and Maple was dancing in the street on her way to school, singing out loud. She’d tripped right on Mrs. Parvière’s front porch. The smile she’d seen on the woman’s face that day was the same in the picture. It was her. It was Mrs. Parvière, decades ago, cozying it up to Daphne Dutrignon.
“You knew Daphne Dutrignon?”
Mrs. Parvière raised her head and grimaced before searching for her cigarette case. Placing one between her lips, she grabbed a lighter and lit it.
“Oui,” she said, drawing in. “She was my biggest love.”
“Oh, were you a fan too? Do you still watch the show?” Maybe Maple could use their shared adoration for the star as a way to bond, or at least not kill each other.
“Non, it reminds me too much of her,” the grumpy French lady retorted. “And you misunderstood me. I’m not a naive fan girl like you. I used to be Daphne’s lover.”