[JB Cavanagh] There's something called a soft opening. No advertising, no promotions, no publicity. No press releases. A few months ago, the coffee shop that closed six months ago thanks to the soft economy or Starbucks' dominance or divorce or loss of its lease or something shifting in the world has butcher block paper up in the windows to conceal the interior renovations and a "coming soon" sign handwritten in the front windows. Last week, a new sign went up to cover the old "Union Coffee" sign on the Marquee.
This one says, café Lulu in a whimsical, low-key font still clear enough to be read from the sidewalk.
In the interim, someone's been back through, repaired the siding and the trim on the picture windows, replaced the half-barrel planters on the sidewalk that flank the entrance. There's an empty green space in the lot alongside, empty now except for a single picnic table with a single market umbrella in fine, bright yellow fitted through the center planks. This is an odd street, close to the high-rise condominiums, but dotted with rather more low-key residential buildings - rowhouses and single family homes, siding or brick.
Slated for redevelopment until the economic collapse, the street is dotted by smaller shops built out from the homes, and the sort of haphazard development of duplexes and triplexes that accompanies that slow shift from residential to commerical. Somehow, in spite of the chic little Fair Trade boutique on the corner, or Strings 'n Things, the city's finest purveyor of dulcimers, autoharps, and other folksy instruments in the white clapboard house fronted by a newer brick storefront half-way down, the neighborhood is still called transitional by real estate agents.
The opening is so soft that there are not yet hours posted on the front door. Just an open sign in the window, and the butcher block paper peeled away to reveal an interior done up in warm colors, with bright artwork trending toward hip/primitive on the walls. Where art has been mounted, anyway. The interior still feels undone, work in progress, even from the exterior. There are, visible, a handful of tables filled, and a couple sitting at a long, old-fashioned diner counter. And an eight year old girl, sitting on a warm brown couch in an arrangement of furniture that is a clear hold-over from the building's history as a neighborhood coffee shop, dark head bowed over a book open in her lap.
[Imogen] There are reasons that she chose this restaurant on this night. It does not happen in a vacuum, though later the coincidence will make her grimace. A convolution of events that bring her here.
These do not matter, as none here - not the young girl on the couch, the couple at the bar nor those occupying the tables know nor care why Imogen Slaughter chose this restaurant tonight.
But she did.
She steps through the door, which opens silently, letting it swing shut gently behind her before she approaches the maitre d' stand, one hand reaching up to adjust the strap of her purse over her shoulder. She carries with her a brief case, and her attire is that of a woman just recently from work though it's just gone nine o'clock.
She asks for a table for one, and if there are booths she asks for one, a subtle lift of her chin indicating one slightly separated from the others. Whether she is given it or not is not incredibly important except for position.
Her heels click softly against the warm hardwood floor and her gaze moves briefly among the artwork, barely noticing the child as if she were merely furniture as well.
She takes her seat smoothing a hand over the back of her thighs as she does to preserve her slacks as best she can. The suit she wears is white, a blue camisole beneath, a bit of a gold chain glinting at her throat. Her hair is up, tendrils coming down in places, only to be brushed aside as she opens her menu.
[JB Cavanagh] The place is casual but warm. There's a display rack for pastries and other baked goods beside the cash register, and it's there that the hostess stands, pulling double - no, triple duty - as hostess, cashier, bakery attendant and (quadruple duty) Imogen's waitress for the evening. The menus are not yet printed, Imogen is informed as she is ushered to her chosen booth, a warm wooden high-backed thing both wide and deep near the kitchen pass-through, close to the narrow little hallway leading toward the restrooms and the back. It is still light outside, the sort of watery twilight that comes in after a storm, and that light cuts in through the large picture windows.
With official menus as-yet unprinted, she's given list of dishes printed on printer paper, like six cheese mac'n cheese and ratatouille and cheese grits or six mushroom pizza or reuben with all house-made ingredients and local swiss cheese or lulu's chopped salad feauring roasted beets, avocado, celery, red onion and house-made bleu cheese dressing. At the bottom of the menu is a statement about the chef's commitment to locally grown, locally made, locally produced seasonal cooking, with another addendum noting that they have not yet received a license to serve beer and wine, but hope to have it before the grand opening slotted fo early September.
The music is an eclectic mix - 60s favorites (The Byrds) to contemporary indie stuff (Arcade Fire) to torch songs, everything from Ella to She & Him. It's only when the bumper comes on, quiet interruptions of news and weather, that it becomes clear that the music is from a local public radio station, the indie one, low on the dial, with live acoustic sets on the weekends.
Service is a bit slow and a bit sloppy. The waitress forgets the special, and has to run back to the kitchen to consult. Still, except for those hiccups, she's friendly and attentive without hovering. There aren't many people in the restaurant, just a casual vibe with the soft opening, and Imogen's food is prepared a la minute and arrives quickly. As the other tables begin to finish their meals and ask for their checks, the chef comes out from the kitchen and makes the rounds, stopping at each table to chat with the patrons, to get their requests, opinions, ideas. No checks arrive. The cash register goes untouched, everything's comped as they work out the menu and get the opinion of actual diners in the neighborhood.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, the girl relocated from the couch to a stool at the counter where she was served her dinner, joined by the chef once all the meals were out to the patrons. He lingers close to her, talking, teasing - her laughter, his deep voice counterpoint to the music - until the first of his tables asks for the check, then he starts the personal visits, that moving circuit around the mostly empty dining room.
Imogen, last in, last to eat, is last on his circuit. She has an impression of both height from a distance, and his complex, organic tattoo encompassing his right arm, visible where the sleeves of his white chef's jacket has been rolled up. Closer, though, he has the sort of vague familiarity - the sort that's hard to place. When they met, years ago, he was much younger, thinner, leaner, still growing. He has filled out since then, grown another 2-3 inches, and a more-than-five o'clock shadow.
That he recognizes her is clear even from distance. For a moment, the tall, broad man in the tattoos, chef's jacket, and beaten up jeans looks as if he has had a visit from the ghost of christmas past. He recovers quickly, " - you're not Imogen Slaughter, are you?"
[Imogen] Imogen orders the special and an Earl Grey tea after confirming it would be made with tea leaves rather than a pre-filled bag. She places her brief case on the table at an angle, flicking open the latches to retrieve a book from atop file folders.
She sips her tea slowly, laced with milk and turns the pages in her book. When the food arrives, she sets it down, picking up her wrapped utensils. She lays her serviette on her lap and eats with studied care, slicing each piece into bite-sized morsels.
She does not complete her meal. She never ate much.
The cook is at the peripheral of her vision. At some point she's returned to her book, reading it one handed while she eats her meal. When she catches his movement toward her out of the corner of her eye, she turns her head slightly. Familiarity is barely there, hardly a glitch, not until he's closer and she can see his bones.
She does not immediately answer his question, regarding him instead with a perfectly modulated expression. In the end, she does not reply at all, as her own question implies the answer. "James, wasn't it?"
She hadn't liked the acronym of his name. That's letters, she'd said. Not a name at all.
[JB Cavanagh] James, wasn't it? she says, and he, never shy with his expressions, barks out a laugh. Thinks something like, there' one for the ego though he doesn't say it, under the circumstances. It's the second night of his soft open, and he's already fired one of the kitchen staff who misrepresented his skills as a sous chef. Knife skills of a one-eyed monkey, he'd muttered to Lucy, afterwards, just to see her face open up with laughter.
He's standing with his left hand braced on the high finial at the edge of the both frame, between the seats. A different tattoo on his left forearm, blackwork mostly, with the edge of something more colorul disappearing underneath his rolled up sleeve.
"John," he corrects, sobering laughter livening his voice. "John Brendan. JB. James was my brother. I'm impressed with your memory, though. Shit," he continues, quietly but with feeling. "It's been a while."
[Imogen] He laughs and Imogen quirks an eyebrow, her reaction so subtle by comparison, his seems to be a tidal wave. "Ah," the word is strangely tight for not being a word at all, barely a syllable, "yes, your brother. My apologies."
She sits back, setting her book face down, allowing him only to see the back which is unrevealing and blank, one hand extending to pick up her tea. A faint nod acknowledges his comment.
She is unnerved by this, subtle though the reaction might be. It is in her excessive formality, her carefully chosen words.
"I don't recall you goin' to school t'be a -" a lift of her chin to indicate his chef's jacket, "chef, is it?"
[Imogen] He laughs and Imogen quirks an eyebrow, her reaction so subtle by comparison, his seems to be a tidal wave. "Ah," the word is strangely tight for not being a word at all, barely a syllable, "yes, your brother. My apologies."
She sits back, setting her book face down, allowing him only to see the back which is unrevealing and blank, one hand extending to pick up her tea. A faint nod acknowledges his comment.
She is unnerved by this, subtle though the reaction might be. It is in her excessive formality, her carefully chosen words.
"I don't recall you goin' to school t'be a -" a lift of her chin to indicate his chef's jacket, "chef, is it?"
[John Brendan Cavanagh] He glances down at the chef's coat. It is crisp and white, fitted and snapped diagonally across his chest, the last three left undone. His name is embroidered on the left, just the last name - Cavanagh - and there are a paired set of pen and pencil in the right front pocket. Underneath, he has a handful of necklaces - one leather, one gun metal chain, and another popcorn chain with a pair of dog tags on it. The hint of a tattoo surfaces at the collar, disappears below. There's a huge blue watch on his right wrist, the face against the inside, and a handful of silly bandz bracelets he wears because Lucy told him that he would wear them if he really loved her.
They are bright against his tanned skin. Neon, twisted around one of those silicone message bracelets. LiveStrong. or CoExist. or OrganicNow. And so on.
When he looks up, his expression is strange - he's laughing somewhere in it, but that part of his past, painful, messy, distant - sparks a sharper light in his dark brown eyes. "Believe it or not," he says, and this answer feels familiar, almost like a ritual. " - there's not much market for someoe with a 2.something GPA and an undergraduate degree in philosophy with a minor in happy hour." His nostrils fare briefly. Then, "I don't suppose you've made a similar swerve. Given up medicine to become a performance artist or a disc jocket, have you?"
[Imogen] Her mouth twists faintly. "No," she says, "nothing quite as obvious as that."
She picks up her tea and sips it, though what she wants is a cigarette.
"The food is very good," she says as if it were small talk or filling the void, lowering her mug to lift her chin to indicate her half finished plate before her.
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Every chef's nightmare," replies John, with a good natured grin and a glance at her half-finished plate. " - you eat like a sparrow. I bet you never order dessert." The hostess/cashier/waitress makes a play for his attention here, calling out across the interior, Want me to get the door?. It's code for lock up, since he's shut down the gril and there are just a handful of tables left, and he's not even open yet. JB shakes his dark no and gives her gesture telling her she can clean up and go. It's all wordless, easy, as he turns away from the booth toward the little girl sitting at the counter, drinking milk and reading a book she has smoothed open on the dark wood.
"Hey Luce, c'mere. Someone I want you to meet." The girl looks up, an impression of bright eyes in a pale face, surrounded by short brown hair. Then she slides down from the stool with a careful sort of grace. As she does so, JB turns back to Imogen, the surprise still written all over his face, beneath the natural engagement that comes to him as easy as breathing. "Seriously, though. I'm glad you enjoyed. Everyone's meals tonight are on the house, you know. In exchange for a bit of word of mouth advertising. We should go live the first weekend in September. Hope to have a beer and wine license by then, too."
[Bridget Geroux] (Open?)
to Imogen, John Brendan Cavanagh
[Imogen] Her breath exhales sharply, something like amusement. "I can't imagine why it's a problem," she says, "I pay the same as anyone else."
It is a natural segue to his comment the meal being on the house and why. Imogen's mouth twists faintly, even as her eyes move to the dark haired girl making her way across the room toward them.. "Perhaps you should have me pay then. I'm not much fer praisin' the meal I had before.
"No matter what the quality.
"Your daughter?" the question is evenly poised as the girl makes her way across the room.
[John Brendan Cavanagh] It's open, yeah. Though they're a bit out of the way, in a restaurant in the midst of a soft open. Lights on and people inside, but the sign in the window says, opening soon. If you've got a way in, you are more than welcome! I'll find my setting post and pop it to you via PMs so you can get a feel for the place if you want to join. Cool?
to Bridget Geroux, Imogen
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Yeah yeah, but then you take the left overs home, have lunch the next day, never order the upsells like appetizers. Once I get the bakery up and running, I'll be able to temp you regularly with good tea and house-made scones," he says, with a lift of his chin toward her tea. He'd heard the specificity of her order, and laughed when the waitress told him the lady from New Zealand had been very specific about it. "Though it'll take you three days to finish a scone, I think."
Then Imogen asks, so evenly, if the girl slipping between the dark wooden chairs is his daughter. The smile that steals across his rugged features is softer than any other he ever wears. Unbidden. "Yeah," he confirms, opening his arm to the girl as she draws abrest of the table, dropping his big, callused hand on her gleaming brunette hair, brushing a few strands of hair out of her round, pale face. " - my daughter, Lucy. This is Dr. Slaughter. Say hi, Luce."
The girl's quicksilver features go all solemn, her eyes rounded, her mouth twitching-still. "Hi Luce," she says, with this sly glance up at her father, all faux-seriously, her eyes gleaming with barely withheld laughter.
"You got me," JB says, and whatever else he might've said is chased away by the girl's laughter. "I always get you," she crows, then looks brightly back to Imogen. "Are you a real doctor? Or a fake one like Dr. Phil?"
[John Brendan Cavanagh] Setting post!
There's something called a soft opening. No advertising, no promotions, no publicity. No press releases. A few months ago, the coffee shop that closed six months ago thanks to the soft economy or Starbucks' dominance or divorce or loss of its lease or something shifting in the world has butcher block paper up in the windows to conceal the interior renovations and a "coming soon" sign handwritten in the front windows. Last week, a new sign went up to cover the old "Union Coffee" sign on the Marquee.
This one says, café Lulu in a whimsical, low-key font still clear enough to be read from the sidewalk.
In the interim, someone's been back through, repaired the siding and the trim on the picture windows, replaced the half-barrel planters on the sidewalk that flank the entrance. There's an empty green space in the lot alongside, empty now except for a single picnic table with a single market umbrella in fine, bright yellow fitted through the center planks. This is an odd street, close to the high-rise condominiums, but dotted with rather more low-key residential buildings - rowhouses and single family homes, siding or brick.
Slated for redevelopment until the economic collapse, the street is dotted by smaller shops built out from the homes, and the sort of haphazard development of duplexes and triplexes that accompanies that slow shift from residential to commerical. Somehow, in spite of the chic little Fair Trade boutique on the corner, or Strings 'n Things, the city's finest purveyor of dulcimers, autoharps, and other folksy instruments in the white clapboard house fronted by a newer brick storefront half-way down, the neighborhood is still called transitional by real estate agents.
The opening is so soft that there are not yet hours posted on the front door. Just an open sign in the window, and the butcher block paper peeled away to reveal an interior done up in warm colors, with bright artwork trending toward hip/primitive on the walls. Where art has been mounted, anyway. The interior still feels undone, work in progress, even from the exterior. There are, visible, a handful of tables filled, and a couple sitting at a long, old-fashioned diner counter. And an eight year old girl, sitting on a warm brown couch in an arrangement of furniture that is a clear hold-over from the building's history as a neighborhood coffee shop, dark head bowed over a book open in her lap.
to Bridget Geroux
[Imogen] She is marginally leaner than she was before. Not that she's ever been heavy or even soft, but her skin is closer to the bones, tighter, the sinew and muscle that much nearer to the alabaster veneer of her flesh. Her body is toned, her expression carefully suppressed as she leans forward to lean a forearm against the edge of the table, setting her tea cup down.
"Four days," she corrects. "Provided I fast first."
Lucy now, her glee with her father, and Imogen's gaze moving between them both as they interact as if it were a language foreign to her.
"Hello, Lucy," she says, her accent musical to the ear, imprecise and rarely identified for exactly what it is.
"I'm a real doctor," she says. "I've even got a diploma t'prove it."
Her eyebrow arches. "You don't watch a lot of Dr. Phil, I hope."
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "I'm going to be a real doctor too," Lucy confides in Imogen, her eyes still quickened with glee oer her (usual) joke. "Or maybe an airplane pilot." There's no disguising the faint grimace that courses across the chef's face, except that Imogen's eyes are likely on the girl, who speaks as if she were born to do it.
Then, back to doctor Phil, with barely a bat of her eye. "My old sitter Mrs. Rosen watched him all the time." She's puffed up a bit, having got one over on the old man, and meets Imogen's eyes with a child's directness, this sort of underlying animal confidence that is expressed in a both the stance of her small frame, and her rapidfire patter about real doctors, Dr. Phil, et al.
"Him and Judge Sendecky. Judge Sendecky was stupid and always yelled and I wasn't supposed to watch either. He was on at four o'clock and seven on channel 17, which was like a repeat but sometimes Mrs. Rosen liked to watch him twice. Then Mr. Rosen would get home and we could watch baseball.
"All they have here are Cubs games, though. I wish we could get cable. Do you have cable?"
John's hand stills on her head, callouses catching on the fine strands of the child's hair. She looks up at him as if this complaint couched in a wish were something else. He shakes his head, clearly about to send her back to the counter, the book open on it. Her milk and her late dinner.
[Imogen] Imogen may catch the grimace; her attention is broadened, and not solely focused on the child. Still, if she catches it, she does not do much more than glance at it.
At the question, Imogen cannot help but smirk, slightly. "I," she says, her voice low and carefully modulated, "do not even own a television set."
Imogen does not quite look at the girl's eyes. She does not touch the girl or smile at her. She responds appropriately and politely. It is as far as she goes.
"Imagine that."
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Nu-uh." says Lucy, low-voiced and clearly amazed at this startling development. She's been stopped clear in her tracks. "I thought all doctors were rich! Maybe you could start your own TV show and then you could buy a television. You're prettier than Dr. Phil. He's fat. And even if he weren't fat, he's ugly."
"Now Luce, " cautions John, stroking the child's gleaming head again. " those aren't nice things to ask. And I think you could live without television, too, you know."
"But Dad," Lucy returns, a hint of grievance entering her voice. The sort that turns his title from one syllable to two. Da-aaad. Other than that, she finishes her argument with a perfect sort of practicality. " - how would I watch the Phillies?"
"Touché," he returns, quietly mussing her hair. "Now go finish your dinner, kiddo. And see if you can find the score on the 'net for your old Dad."
[Imogen] "I'll keep that in mind." How she might get a television after starting her own TV show.
The dark haired girl is dismissed to her dinner, to find the sports score on the 'Net. Imogen turns back, picking up her tea cup and draining it before reaching for her tea pot, which still contains about a cupful of warm and steeped tea.
She pours it, first, then her milk, then picks it up before speaking. "Congratulations," she says.
[John Brendan Cavanagh] While Lucy slips back over the dark wood floors to the counter and what remains of her dinner, JB watches her. Imogen is spiking her finishing the remains of her tea, pouring the remaining cup out into her brightly colored tea cup, some contemporary counterpoint to the fine old Wedgewood tea services of the old country - brightly colored stoneware that has an artisanal feel, but is formed into a traditional cup and saucer rather than a giant American-style mug for the brew.
"Thanks," he says, turning back to her, resting one of his big hands on that hewn finial topping the generously sized booth. He's at a loss, though, some measure of his easy, even thoughtless affability deserting him in the absence of the girl and the presence of the woman.
So there's a moment where he's watching her drink her tea, and she's drinking her tea, and the guests at the table he schmoozed and comped before he approached hers are pushing their chairs back, that groaning scrape of rubber against wood. "You should come back after we've opened," he says at last, pushing away from the finial and pulling his white jacket straight on his tall frame. "We'll have good local beers on tap. I'll buy you one."
He doesn't think she'll take him up on it. And that is plain as everything else on his face.
[Simon Zahradnik] Nothing to kill, nothing to fight, nothing to... Do...
This was the plight of the Full Moon, and this was his curse. He was born to kill, he lived to kill, he was a living weapon bred for just that purpose. The smartest choice would have been to lock the young man away and not let him out until he was needed. Hell if he were asked to do just that he might even agree. Sadly this wasn't the way of things. He was supposed to go out and do stuff... He was supposed to mingle and make friends or something.
Yet the scurried from him, they tried to keep their distance, they went out of their way to avoid him because they knew somewhere inside that he was not one of them. They fled from him like prey and that fact reminded him constantly of his superiority.
The things they found important were frivolous and meaningless to him. What mattered to him was so much more meaningful and important. Touch, and sights, and even the scents of humans passing him by. He could smell them... How long it had been since they showered. He could smell their arousal, and he could smell their fear... The filthy musk that humanity tried to wash away and pretend their bodies did not emit. Past the choking chemicals, past the soaps and creams there lie the true humanity. Filthy, dirty, hairless fucking monkeys. Frightened, and timid... They fled from his presence out of an innate fear for what he was and what he represented.
There was beauty in honesty, and truth in things that were real. The cold kiss of the glass that his fingers glided along. He paused a moment and felt a smile lifting as he shifted his hand slowly over it. It was firm, and yet so very very smooth, and it was cool, that cold calm surface opened to him... It did not hide, it did not flee... It opened itself and it revealed everything to him. It was beautiful in its honesty. It simply was, and it was for that reason he found himself pausing, fingers caressing gently over the surface. The people on the other side found themselves uncomfortable in his presence, but he wasn't looking at them they were meaningless in his mind. More filthy monkeys... More problems... No right now all that registered in his mind was the smoothness of the glass before him. The innocence and purity... A pleasant little notion that twisted a bitter smile to his lips.
"You're not a fuckin' poet Simon... You're a murderer..."He tells himself in a somewhat cynical tone, before shifting his eyes towards the people looking through the glass. His middle finger is lifted and presented before he moves on.
How could a man hold so much disdain for his own species? Simple... They weren't his species.
[Imogen] Imogen is briefly quiet, longer after the offer. Which she neither accepts nor refuses.
"Is she like us?" she enquires instead, her voice low, the distance allowing them privacy from a girl's precocious hearing.
"Or like your brother?"
[John Brendan Cavanagh] He breathes out, nostrils flaring, briefly an unaccountably angry. His hand forms a fist against his jeans, against his thigh. The knuckles are large, split. He's been in a few bar brawls, once upon a time.
"Like my brother," he says at last, when the spasm of tension departs, leaving behind - whatever remains after. This sort of livid ambivalence. " - so they say." There's another pause, which is quiet, uneasy, but not still, because he still has more to say. Because Lucy declared her most current desire to be an airplane pilot. Because last week she intended to become an archaeologist, searching out dinosaur bones, after their visit to the Natural History museum.
"They can fuck that up, though. Nothing's set in stone."
[Imogen] Her eyes are fixed on his sudden flare of anger. She watches him dispassionately, though intently, as if each reaction was catalogued.
When he speaks, a line narrows between her eyebrows, then smooths, a reaction both subtle and quick. She looks away, picking up her tea cup again.
"Have a seat," she says, suddenly, gesturing. "S'bad enough I look up at everyone day in and day out wi'out someone standin' while I'm sittin'."
[John Brendan Cavanagh] He's surprised by her invitation. That's plain as anything else. JB has one of those faces, open, clear and expressive that seems to reveal his every thought. His dark brows peak, and his eyes catch the light, warm and brown, open. The suprise is replaced by a crinkle of laughter that settles around his eyes.
"Yeah, sure," he says, his mouth twisting into a half-grin that goes half-way toward chasing away the tension the topic writes into his body. "Never had that problem myself," he cannot help but offer the jibe as he folds his 6'3" frame into the booth opposite the doctor.
[Imogen] The invitation had been nearly gruff, though her voice had been too modulated for that. Too controlled. It had, at worst, been abrupt.
Imogen's eyebrow arches slightly at his quip, the humour not quite erasing his irritation.
"No," she answers, "I would imagine you would have the opposite problem. Forward," she says, with a vague indicative hand motion, "Rather than back."
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Those are the two sides," he allows, his chin rising as he looks acros the empty restaurant, toward the child, perched now, ignoring what remains of her meal in favor of the open she has opened on the counter, " - of that particular coin." That shifting substrate of emotions returns, though he sets his jaw against it.
After a moment, he glances back at her. "James is dead, you know." he tells her. If that was ever a raw wound, it's an old one now. Covered over by more recent blows. "Eight years now, or more. Before she was born, anyway."
Sometimes, before and after start to flow together.
[Imogen] James is dead, you know.
Some might stutter and apology for accidentally calling him by the name of a dead sibling. Imogen regards him a moment, chin slightly lifted. She rests her elbows on her side of the table and picks up her mug. "I did not," she says.
"I'm sorry for your loss." Her gaze moves briefly to his daughter then back.
A brief pause, half hidden by the lift of her tea mug to her lips, a swallow of lukewarm liquid.
"Do you know of the nation 'ere?" she says, before pausing, then adding, "Do you care?"
[Imogen] (I have lost AIM!)
to John Brendan Cavanagh
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "It was a long time ago," he returns, directly. It's not a platitude; it's clear he means it. That was a long time ago. It never comes up. Sometimes, he doesn't remember his near-twin's name. The kid who stuck stars up on the ceiling when they were seven and eight, and then tore them down, with the plaster behind, in a raging fit when he was twelve, raining lathe and insulation down over the bunk beds in the attic.
Then, it is his turn to glance over at his daughter. Imogen asks if he knows of the nation, here. He shakes his head. "I haven't gotten that far," he returns, before he glances back. A ghost of a old, wild sort of grin slipping across his mouth. " - and I'm not sure I care, though I don't think I can afford not to care."
There's a good, old-fashioned logic problem in that answer.
[John Brendan Cavanagh] eek! I'll open gmail!
to Imogen
[Imogen] Imogen's mouth quirks, ever so slightly.
"Should I tell you, then, or leave you in ignorance a while longer?"
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "I don't suppose," and this is cagier; or rather, it's accompanied by a twist of his mouth that is more than a shadow of his old self, whoever that was, whoever that is now. The guy in torn jeans and a chef's jacket, with a complex tribal tat encompassing all of one arm, and a row of chef's knives, four of them, in marching order in blackwork on the other forearm, visible now where his cuff has pulled back. "I could convince you to come back in a few weeks after opening, and pass on what you have then, eh? Let me get my sealegs before a horde of hungry seventeen year olds turn up on my back stoop, expecting a free meal?"
That's not what he begrudges them. It's easy to smile through the suggestion. To find those sealegs: even keel.
[Imogen] Imogen's eyebrow flicks upward. "I suggested I tell you about them," she notes mildly, "Not tell them about you."
She reaches into her purse and pulls out a business card, sliding it across the table toward him before setting her empty tea cup down. She is finished her tea, her meal is gone entirely cold, and she had been full in either case.
"Look me up when yeh want to know," she says, starting to slide out of the booth, getting to her feet. "I'll tell you then."
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Thanks," he says, unfolding his tall frame from the bench seat as she starts to slide out, as she climbs to her feet. He leaves off her name, because he doesn't know what to call her. How familiar they are. Whether titles are necessary. Because tonight he has ghosts in his head.
He towers over her, a foot or more, rangey - but solid underneath. There's no one else in the store now, except for Lucy, who has slipped off to play on the internet while her father is distracted by his company. Just the background music of the public radio station, The National playing in the background, one of those mournful songs about middle age and mid-life, broad and aching. The lead singer's baritone is a low counterpoint to their quiet conversation.
Standing, he snags the card and tucks it into his front pocket, behind the pen and pencil now slightly askew as he straightens, sliding it neatly away. "You know where to find me." He returns, when they're both standing. Though he amends it, " - if you need a good meal or a decent cup of tea. Or a scone, to sustain you for the better part of a workweek. C'mon. I'll walk you to the door."
He has to lock up, after all.
[Imogen] She is slight, slender and diminutive beside him. Over a foot of height in difference - though her heels do swallow some of that. Pale skinned, red haired, and fine boned, she could be broken by most - at least physically. At least so it seems.
"I'll keep that in mind," she says. That she knows where to find him, should she need food or tea, a scone. The way she says it indicates she has no intention of following that up, that Chez Lulu's will not be added to her list of restaurants which she frequents.
But perhaps she will surprise herself.
At the doorway, she reaches out to push it open, pausing briefly to glance at a man with whom she'd once had a passing familiarity; when neither of them had known the other at all. They're strangers now, and the formality and distance even greater than when they had first met.
"Good night, John," she says, before stepping out the door and into the night, her brief case in one hand, a bronze cigarette case in the other.
[John Brendan Cavanagh] He holds the door open for her after she pushes it open, his large palm against the glass. His fingerprints leave smears behind on the tinted glass, though he pays that little mind. The ropey strength in his arms is evident then, and more of the intricately worked tribal obvious. It looks Maori rather than Fianna, really - this complex concatation of lines and circles and dots, though the odd triskelle reveals itself on closer viewing.
This is just a passing moment, though. So: tribal, something more exotic that the traditional knotwork on first glance.
"'Night," he returns at last, as she steps away and lights up the cigarette she was waiting to spark. "Imogen."
The door closes behind her. He locks it, after, pulls the blinds closed, turns the sign down, and heads back toward the office to chase Lucy off the internet, upstairs for a bath before bed.
This one says, café Lulu in a whimsical, low-key font still clear enough to be read from the sidewalk.
In the interim, someone's been back through, repaired the siding and the trim on the picture windows, replaced the half-barrel planters on the sidewalk that flank the entrance. There's an empty green space in the lot alongside, empty now except for a single picnic table with a single market umbrella in fine, bright yellow fitted through the center planks. This is an odd street, close to the high-rise condominiums, but dotted with rather more low-key residential buildings - rowhouses and single family homes, siding or brick.
Slated for redevelopment until the economic collapse, the street is dotted by smaller shops built out from the homes, and the sort of haphazard development of duplexes and triplexes that accompanies that slow shift from residential to commerical. Somehow, in spite of the chic little Fair Trade boutique on the corner, or Strings 'n Things, the city's finest purveyor of dulcimers, autoharps, and other folksy instruments in the white clapboard house fronted by a newer brick storefront half-way down, the neighborhood is still called transitional by real estate agents.
The opening is so soft that there are not yet hours posted on the front door. Just an open sign in the window, and the butcher block paper peeled away to reveal an interior done up in warm colors, with bright artwork trending toward hip/primitive on the walls. Where art has been mounted, anyway. The interior still feels undone, work in progress, even from the exterior. There are, visible, a handful of tables filled, and a couple sitting at a long, old-fashioned diner counter. And an eight year old girl, sitting on a warm brown couch in an arrangement of furniture that is a clear hold-over from the building's history as a neighborhood coffee shop, dark head bowed over a book open in her lap.
[Imogen] There are reasons that she chose this restaurant on this night. It does not happen in a vacuum, though later the coincidence will make her grimace. A convolution of events that bring her here.
These do not matter, as none here - not the young girl on the couch, the couple at the bar nor those occupying the tables know nor care why Imogen Slaughter chose this restaurant tonight.
But she did.
She steps through the door, which opens silently, letting it swing shut gently behind her before she approaches the maitre d' stand, one hand reaching up to adjust the strap of her purse over her shoulder. She carries with her a brief case, and her attire is that of a woman just recently from work though it's just gone nine o'clock.
She asks for a table for one, and if there are booths she asks for one, a subtle lift of her chin indicating one slightly separated from the others. Whether she is given it or not is not incredibly important except for position.
Her heels click softly against the warm hardwood floor and her gaze moves briefly among the artwork, barely noticing the child as if she were merely furniture as well.
She takes her seat smoothing a hand over the back of her thighs as she does to preserve her slacks as best she can. The suit she wears is white, a blue camisole beneath, a bit of a gold chain glinting at her throat. Her hair is up, tendrils coming down in places, only to be brushed aside as she opens her menu.
[JB Cavanagh] The place is casual but warm. There's a display rack for pastries and other baked goods beside the cash register, and it's there that the hostess stands, pulling double - no, triple duty - as hostess, cashier, bakery attendant and (quadruple duty) Imogen's waitress for the evening. The menus are not yet printed, Imogen is informed as she is ushered to her chosen booth, a warm wooden high-backed thing both wide and deep near the kitchen pass-through, close to the narrow little hallway leading toward the restrooms and the back. It is still light outside, the sort of watery twilight that comes in after a storm, and that light cuts in through the large picture windows.
With official menus as-yet unprinted, she's given list of dishes printed on printer paper, like six cheese mac'n cheese and ratatouille and cheese grits or six mushroom pizza or reuben with all house-made ingredients and local swiss cheese or lulu's chopped salad feauring roasted beets, avocado, celery, red onion and house-made bleu cheese dressing. At the bottom of the menu is a statement about the chef's commitment to locally grown, locally made, locally produced seasonal cooking, with another addendum noting that they have not yet received a license to serve beer and wine, but hope to have it before the grand opening slotted fo early September.
The music is an eclectic mix - 60s favorites (The Byrds) to contemporary indie stuff (Arcade Fire) to torch songs, everything from Ella to She & Him. It's only when the bumper comes on, quiet interruptions of news and weather, that it becomes clear that the music is from a local public radio station, the indie one, low on the dial, with live acoustic sets on the weekends.
Service is a bit slow and a bit sloppy. The waitress forgets the special, and has to run back to the kitchen to consult. Still, except for those hiccups, she's friendly and attentive without hovering. There aren't many people in the restaurant, just a casual vibe with the soft opening, and Imogen's food is prepared a la minute and arrives quickly. As the other tables begin to finish their meals and ask for their checks, the chef comes out from the kitchen and makes the rounds, stopping at each table to chat with the patrons, to get their requests, opinions, ideas. No checks arrive. The cash register goes untouched, everything's comped as they work out the menu and get the opinion of actual diners in the neighborhood.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, the girl relocated from the couch to a stool at the counter where she was served her dinner, joined by the chef once all the meals were out to the patrons. He lingers close to her, talking, teasing - her laughter, his deep voice counterpoint to the music - until the first of his tables asks for the check, then he starts the personal visits, that moving circuit around the mostly empty dining room.
Imogen, last in, last to eat, is last on his circuit. She has an impression of both height from a distance, and his complex, organic tattoo encompassing his right arm, visible where the sleeves of his white chef's jacket has been rolled up. Closer, though, he has the sort of vague familiarity - the sort that's hard to place. When they met, years ago, he was much younger, thinner, leaner, still growing. He has filled out since then, grown another 2-3 inches, and a more-than-five o'clock shadow.
That he recognizes her is clear even from distance. For a moment, the tall, broad man in the tattoos, chef's jacket, and beaten up jeans looks as if he has had a visit from the ghost of christmas past. He recovers quickly, " - you're not Imogen Slaughter, are you?"
[Imogen] Imogen orders the special and an Earl Grey tea after confirming it would be made with tea leaves rather than a pre-filled bag. She places her brief case on the table at an angle, flicking open the latches to retrieve a book from atop file folders.
She sips her tea slowly, laced with milk and turns the pages in her book. When the food arrives, she sets it down, picking up her wrapped utensils. She lays her serviette on her lap and eats with studied care, slicing each piece into bite-sized morsels.
She does not complete her meal. She never ate much.
The cook is at the peripheral of her vision. At some point she's returned to her book, reading it one handed while she eats her meal. When she catches his movement toward her out of the corner of her eye, she turns her head slightly. Familiarity is barely there, hardly a glitch, not until he's closer and she can see his bones.
She does not immediately answer his question, regarding him instead with a perfectly modulated expression. In the end, she does not reply at all, as her own question implies the answer. "James, wasn't it?"
She hadn't liked the acronym of his name. That's letters, she'd said. Not a name at all.
[JB Cavanagh] James, wasn't it? she says, and he, never shy with his expressions, barks out a laugh. Thinks something like, there' one for the ego though he doesn't say it, under the circumstances. It's the second night of his soft open, and he's already fired one of the kitchen staff who misrepresented his skills as a sous chef. Knife skills of a one-eyed monkey, he'd muttered to Lucy, afterwards, just to see her face open up with laughter.
He's standing with his left hand braced on the high finial at the edge of the both frame, between the seats. A different tattoo on his left forearm, blackwork mostly, with the edge of something more colorul disappearing underneath his rolled up sleeve.
"John," he corrects, sobering laughter livening his voice. "John Brendan. JB. James was my brother. I'm impressed with your memory, though. Shit," he continues, quietly but with feeling. "It's been a while."
[Imogen] He laughs and Imogen quirks an eyebrow, her reaction so subtle by comparison, his seems to be a tidal wave. "Ah," the word is strangely tight for not being a word at all, barely a syllable, "yes, your brother. My apologies."
She sits back, setting her book face down, allowing him only to see the back which is unrevealing and blank, one hand extending to pick up her tea. A faint nod acknowledges his comment.
She is unnerved by this, subtle though the reaction might be. It is in her excessive formality, her carefully chosen words.
"I don't recall you goin' to school t'be a -" a lift of her chin to indicate his chef's jacket, "chef, is it?"
[Imogen] He laughs and Imogen quirks an eyebrow, her reaction so subtle by comparison, his seems to be a tidal wave. "Ah," the word is strangely tight for not being a word at all, barely a syllable, "yes, your brother. My apologies."
She sits back, setting her book face down, allowing him only to see the back which is unrevealing and blank, one hand extending to pick up her tea. A faint nod acknowledges his comment.
She is unnerved by this, subtle though the reaction might be. It is in her excessive formality, her carefully chosen words.
"I don't recall you goin' to school t'be a -" a lift of her chin to indicate his chef's jacket, "chef, is it?"
[John Brendan Cavanagh] He glances down at the chef's coat. It is crisp and white, fitted and snapped diagonally across his chest, the last three left undone. His name is embroidered on the left, just the last name - Cavanagh - and there are a paired set of pen and pencil in the right front pocket. Underneath, he has a handful of necklaces - one leather, one gun metal chain, and another popcorn chain with a pair of dog tags on it. The hint of a tattoo surfaces at the collar, disappears below. There's a huge blue watch on his right wrist, the face against the inside, and a handful of silly bandz bracelets he wears because Lucy told him that he would wear them if he really loved her.
They are bright against his tanned skin. Neon, twisted around one of those silicone message bracelets. LiveStrong. or CoExist. or OrganicNow. And so on.
When he looks up, his expression is strange - he's laughing somewhere in it, but that part of his past, painful, messy, distant - sparks a sharper light in his dark brown eyes. "Believe it or not," he says, and this answer feels familiar, almost like a ritual. " - there's not much market for someoe with a 2.something GPA and an undergraduate degree in philosophy with a minor in happy hour." His nostrils fare briefly. Then, "I don't suppose you've made a similar swerve. Given up medicine to become a performance artist or a disc jocket, have you?"
[Imogen] Her mouth twists faintly. "No," she says, "nothing quite as obvious as that."
She picks up her tea and sips it, though what she wants is a cigarette.
"The food is very good," she says as if it were small talk or filling the void, lowering her mug to lift her chin to indicate her half finished plate before her.
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Every chef's nightmare," replies John, with a good natured grin and a glance at her half-finished plate. " - you eat like a sparrow. I bet you never order dessert." The hostess/cashier/waitress makes a play for his attention here, calling out across the interior, Want me to get the door?. It's code for lock up, since he's shut down the gril and there are just a handful of tables left, and he's not even open yet. JB shakes his dark no and gives her gesture telling her she can clean up and go. It's all wordless, easy, as he turns away from the booth toward the little girl sitting at the counter, drinking milk and reading a book she has smoothed open on the dark wood.
"Hey Luce, c'mere. Someone I want you to meet." The girl looks up, an impression of bright eyes in a pale face, surrounded by short brown hair. Then she slides down from the stool with a careful sort of grace. As she does so, JB turns back to Imogen, the surprise still written all over his face, beneath the natural engagement that comes to him as easy as breathing. "Seriously, though. I'm glad you enjoyed. Everyone's meals tonight are on the house, you know. In exchange for a bit of word of mouth advertising. We should go live the first weekend in September. Hope to have a beer and wine license by then, too."
[Bridget Geroux] (Open?)
to Imogen, John Brendan Cavanagh
[Imogen] Her breath exhales sharply, something like amusement. "I can't imagine why it's a problem," she says, "I pay the same as anyone else."
It is a natural segue to his comment the meal being on the house and why. Imogen's mouth twists faintly, even as her eyes move to the dark haired girl making her way across the room toward them.. "Perhaps you should have me pay then. I'm not much fer praisin' the meal I had before.
"No matter what the quality.
"Your daughter?" the question is evenly poised as the girl makes her way across the room.
[John Brendan Cavanagh] It's open, yeah. Though they're a bit out of the way, in a restaurant in the midst of a soft open. Lights on and people inside, but the sign in the window says, opening soon. If you've got a way in, you are more than welcome! I'll find my setting post and pop it to you via PMs so you can get a feel for the place if you want to join. Cool?
to Bridget Geroux, Imogen
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Yeah yeah, but then you take the left overs home, have lunch the next day, never order the upsells like appetizers. Once I get the bakery up and running, I'll be able to temp you regularly with good tea and house-made scones," he says, with a lift of his chin toward her tea. He'd heard the specificity of her order, and laughed when the waitress told him the lady from New Zealand had been very specific about it. "Though it'll take you three days to finish a scone, I think."
Then Imogen asks, so evenly, if the girl slipping between the dark wooden chairs is his daughter. The smile that steals across his rugged features is softer than any other he ever wears. Unbidden. "Yeah," he confirms, opening his arm to the girl as she draws abrest of the table, dropping his big, callused hand on her gleaming brunette hair, brushing a few strands of hair out of her round, pale face. " - my daughter, Lucy. This is Dr. Slaughter. Say hi, Luce."
The girl's quicksilver features go all solemn, her eyes rounded, her mouth twitching-still. "Hi Luce," she says, with this sly glance up at her father, all faux-seriously, her eyes gleaming with barely withheld laughter.
"You got me," JB says, and whatever else he might've said is chased away by the girl's laughter. "I always get you," she crows, then looks brightly back to Imogen. "Are you a real doctor? Or a fake one like Dr. Phil?"
[John Brendan Cavanagh] Setting post!
There's something called a soft opening. No advertising, no promotions, no publicity. No press releases. A few months ago, the coffee shop that closed six months ago thanks to the soft economy or Starbucks' dominance or divorce or loss of its lease or something shifting in the world has butcher block paper up in the windows to conceal the interior renovations and a "coming soon" sign handwritten in the front windows. Last week, a new sign went up to cover the old "Union Coffee" sign on the Marquee.
This one says, café Lulu in a whimsical, low-key font still clear enough to be read from the sidewalk.
In the interim, someone's been back through, repaired the siding and the trim on the picture windows, replaced the half-barrel planters on the sidewalk that flank the entrance. There's an empty green space in the lot alongside, empty now except for a single picnic table with a single market umbrella in fine, bright yellow fitted through the center planks. This is an odd street, close to the high-rise condominiums, but dotted with rather more low-key residential buildings - rowhouses and single family homes, siding or brick.
Slated for redevelopment until the economic collapse, the street is dotted by smaller shops built out from the homes, and the sort of haphazard development of duplexes and triplexes that accompanies that slow shift from residential to commerical. Somehow, in spite of the chic little Fair Trade boutique on the corner, or Strings 'n Things, the city's finest purveyor of dulcimers, autoharps, and other folksy instruments in the white clapboard house fronted by a newer brick storefront half-way down, the neighborhood is still called transitional by real estate agents.
The opening is so soft that there are not yet hours posted on the front door. Just an open sign in the window, and the butcher block paper peeled away to reveal an interior done up in warm colors, with bright artwork trending toward hip/primitive on the walls. Where art has been mounted, anyway. The interior still feels undone, work in progress, even from the exterior. There are, visible, a handful of tables filled, and a couple sitting at a long, old-fashioned diner counter. And an eight year old girl, sitting on a warm brown couch in an arrangement of furniture that is a clear hold-over from the building's history as a neighborhood coffee shop, dark head bowed over a book open in her lap.
to Bridget Geroux
[Imogen] She is marginally leaner than she was before. Not that she's ever been heavy or even soft, but her skin is closer to the bones, tighter, the sinew and muscle that much nearer to the alabaster veneer of her flesh. Her body is toned, her expression carefully suppressed as she leans forward to lean a forearm against the edge of the table, setting her tea cup down.
"Four days," she corrects. "Provided I fast first."
Lucy now, her glee with her father, and Imogen's gaze moving between them both as they interact as if it were a language foreign to her.
"Hello, Lucy," she says, her accent musical to the ear, imprecise and rarely identified for exactly what it is.
"I'm a real doctor," she says. "I've even got a diploma t'prove it."
Her eyebrow arches. "You don't watch a lot of Dr. Phil, I hope."
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "I'm going to be a real doctor too," Lucy confides in Imogen, her eyes still quickened with glee oer her (usual) joke. "Or maybe an airplane pilot." There's no disguising the faint grimace that courses across the chef's face, except that Imogen's eyes are likely on the girl, who speaks as if she were born to do it.
Then, back to doctor Phil, with barely a bat of her eye. "My old sitter Mrs. Rosen watched him all the time." She's puffed up a bit, having got one over on the old man, and meets Imogen's eyes with a child's directness, this sort of underlying animal confidence that is expressed in a both the stance of her small frame, and her rapidfire patter about real doctors, Dr. Phil, et al.
"Him and Judge Sendecky. Judge Sendecky was stupid and always yelled and I wasn't supposed to watch either. He was on at four o'clock and seven on channel 17, which was like a repeat but sometimes Mrs. Rosen liked to watch him twice. Then Mr. Rosen would get home and we could watch baseball.
"All they have here are Cubs games, though. I wish we could get cable. Do you have cable?"
John's hand stills on her head, callouses catching on the fine strands of the child's hair. She looks up at him as if this complaint couched in a wish were something else. He shakes his head, clearly about to send her back to the counter, the book open on it. Her milk and her late dinner.
[Imogen] Imogen may catch the grimace; her attention is broadened, and not solely focused on the child. Still, if she catches it, she does not do much more than glance at it.
At the question, Imogen cannot help but smirk, slightly. "I," she says, her voice low and carefully modulated, "do not even own a television set."
Imogen does not quite look at the girl's eyes. She does not touch the girl or smile at her. She responds appropriately and politely. It is as far as she goes.
"Imagine that."
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Nu-uh." says Lucy, low-voiced and clearly amazed at this startling development. She's been stopped clear in her tracks. "I thought all doctors were rich! Maybe you could start your own TV show and then you could buy a television. You're prettier than Dr. Phil. He's fat. And even if he weren't fat, he's ugly."
"Now Luce, " cautions John, stroking the child's gleaming head again. " those aren't nice things to ask. And I think you could live without television, too, you know."
"But Dad," Lucy returns, a hint of grievance entering her voice. The sort that turns his title from one syllable to two. Da-aaad. Other than that, she finishes her argument with a perfect sort of practicality. " - how would I watch the Phillies?"
"Touché," he returns, quietly mussing her hair. "Now go finish your dinner, kiddo. And see if you can find the score on the 'net for your old Dad."
[Imogen] "I'll keep that in mind." How she might get a television after starting her own TV show.
The dark haired girl is dismissed to her dinner, to find the sports score on the 'Net. Imogen turns back, picking up her tea cup and draining it before reaching for her tea pot, which still contains about a cupful of warm and steeped tea.
She pours it, first, then her milk, then picks it up before speaking. "Congratulations," she says.
[John Brendan Cavanagh] While Lucy slips back over the dark wood floors to the counter and what remains of her dinner, JB watches her. Imogen is spiking her finishing the remains of her tea, pouring the remaining cup out into her brightly colored tea cup, some contemporary counterpoint to the fine old Wedgewood tea services of the old country - brightly colored stoneware that has an artisanal feel, but is formed into a traditional cup and saucer rather than a giant American-style mug for the brew.
"Thanks," he says, turning back to her, resting one of his big hands on that hewn finial topping the generously sized booth. He's at a loss, though, some measure of his easy, even thoughtless affability deserting him in the absence of the girl and the presence of the woman.
So there's a moment where he's watching her drink her tea, and she's drinking her tea, and the guests at the table he schmoozed and comped before he approached hers are pushing their chairs back, that groaning scrape of rubber against wood. "You should come back after we've opened," he says at last, pushing away from the finial and pulling his white jacket straight on his tall frame. "We'll have good local beers on tap. I'll buy you one."
He doesn't think she'll take him up on it. And that is plain as everything else on his face.
[Simon Zahradnik] Nothing to kill, nothing to fight, nothing to... Do...
This was the plight of the Full Moon, and this was his curse. He was born to kill, he lived to kill, he was a living weapon bred for just that purpose. The smartest choice would have been to lock the young man away and not let him out until he was needed. Hell if he were asked to do just that he might even agree. Sadly this wasn't the way of things. He was supposed to go out and do stuff... He was supposed to mingle and make friends or something.
Yet the scurried from him, they tried to keep their distance, they went out of their way to avoid him because they knew somewhere inside that he was not one of them. They fled from him like prey and that fact reminded him constantly of his superiority.
The things they found important were frivolous and meaningless to him. What mattered to him was so much more meaningful and important. Touch, and sights, and even the scents of humans passing him by. He could smell them... How long it had been since they showered. He could smell their arousal, and he could smell their fear... The filthy musk that humanity tried to wash away and pretend their bodies did not emit. Past the choking chemicals, past the soaps and creams there lie the true humanity. Filthy, dirty, hairless fucking monkeys. Frightened, and timid... They fled from his presence out of an innate fear for what he was and what he represented.
There was beauty in honesty, and truth in things that were real. The cold kiss of the glass that his fingers glided along. He paused a moment and felt a smile lifting as he shifted his hand slowly over it. It was firm, and yet so very very smooth, and it was cool, that cold calm surface opened to him... It did not hide, it did not flee... It opened itself and it revealed everything to him. It was beautiful in its honesty. It simply was, and it was for that reason he found himself pausing, fingers caressing gently over the surface. The people on the other side found themselves uncomfortable in his presence, but he wasn't looking at them they were meaningless in his mind. More filthy monkeys... More problems... No right now all that registered in his mind was the smoothness of the glass before him. The innocence and purity... A pleasant little notion that twisted a bitter smile to his lips.
"You're not a fuckin' poet Simon... You're a murderer..."He tells himself in a somewhat cynical tone, before shifting his eyes towards the people looking through the glass. His middle finger is lifted and presented before he moves on.
How could a man hold so much disdain for his own species? Simple... They weren't his species.
[Imogen] Imogen is briefly quiet, longer after the offer. Which she neither accepts nor refuses.
"Is she like us?" she enquires instead, her voice low, the distance allowing them privacy from a girl's precocious hearing.
"Or like your brother?"
[John Brendan Cavanagh] He breathes out, nostrils flaring, briefly an unaccountably angry. His hand forms a fist against his jeans, against his thigh. The knuckles are large, split. He's been in a few bar brawls, once upon a time.
"Like my brother," he says at last, when the spasm of tension departs, leaving behind - whatever remains after. This sort of livid ambivalence. " - so they say." There's another pause, which is quiet, uneasy, but not still, because he still has more to say. Because Lucy declared her most current desire to be an airplane pilot. Because last week she intended to become an archaeologist, searching out dinosaur bones, after their visit to the Natural History museum.
"They can fuck that up, though. Nothing's set in stone."
[Imogen] Her eyes are fixed on his sudden flare of anger. She watches him dispassionately, though intently, as if each reaction was catalogued.
When he speaks, a line narrows between her eyebrows, then smooths, a reaction both subtle and quick. She looks away, picking up her tea cup again.
"Have a seat," she says, suddenly, gesturing. "S'bad enough I look up at everyone day in and day out wi'out someone standin' while I'm sittin'."
[John Brendan Cavanagh] He's surprised by her invitation. That's plain as anything else. JB has one of those faces, open, clear and expressive that seems to reveal his every thought. His dark brows peak, and his eyes catch the light, warm and brown, open. The suprise is replaced by a crinkle of laughter that settles around his eyes.
"Yeah, sure," he says, his mouth twisting into a half-grin that goes half-way toward chasing away the tension the topic writes into his body. "Never had that problem myself," he cannot help but offer the jibe as he folds his 6'3" frame into the booth opposite the doctor.
[Imogen] The invitation had been nearly gruff, though her voice had been too modulated for that. Too controlled. It had, at worst, been abrupt.
Imogen's eyebrow arches slightly at his quip, the humour not quite erasing his irritation.
"No," she answers, "I would imagine you would have the opposite problem. Forward," she says, with a vague indicative hand motion, "Rather than back."
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Those are the two sides," he allows, his chin rising as he looks acros the empty restaurant, toward the child, perched now, ignoring what remains of her meal in favor of the open she has opened on the counter, " - of that particular coin." That shifting substrate of emotions returns, though he sets his jaw against it.
After a moment, he glances back at her. "James is dead, you know." he tells her. If that was ever a raw wound, it's an old one now. Covered over by more recent blows. "Eight years now, or more. Before she was born, anyway."
Sometimes, before and after start to flow together.
[Imogen] James is dead, you know.
Some might stutter and apology for accidentally calling him by the name of a dead sibling. Imogen regards him a moment, chin slightly lifted. She rests her elbows on her side of the table and picks up her mug. "I did not," she says.
"I'm sorry for your loss." Her gaze moves briefly to his daughter then back.
A brief pause, half hidden by the lift of her tea mug to her lips, a swallow of lukewarm liquid.
"Do you know of the nation 'ere?" she says, before pausing, then adding, "Do you care?"
[Imogen] (I have lost AIM!)
to John Brendan Cavanagh
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "It was a long time ago," he returns, directly. It's not a platitude; it's clear he means it. That was a long time ago. It never comes up. Sometimes, he doesn't remember his near-twin's name. The kid who stuck stars up on the ceiling when they were seven and eight, and then tore them down, with the plaster behind, in a raging fit when he was twelve, raining lathe and insulation down over the bunk beds in the attic.
Then, it is his turn to glance over at his daughter. Imogen asks if he knows of the nation, here. He shakes his head. "I haven't gotten that far," he returns, before he glances back. A ghost of a old, wild sort of grin slipping across his mouth. " - and I'm not sure I care, though I don't think I can afford not to care."
There's a good, old-fashioned logic problem in that answer.
[John Brendan Cavanagh] eek! I'll open gmail!
to Imogen
[Imogen] Imogen's mouth quirks, ever so slightly.
"Should I tell you, then, or leave you in ignorance a while longer?"
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "I don't suppose," and this is cagier; or rather, it's accompanied by a twist of his mouth that is more than a shadow of his old self, whoever that was, whoever that is now. The guy in torn jeans and a chef's jacket, with a complex tribal tat encompassing all of one arm, and a row of chef's knives, four of them, in marching order in blackwork on the other forearm, visible now where his cuff has pulled back. "I could convince you to come back in a few weeks after opening, and pass on what you have then, eh? Let me get my sealegs before a horde of hungry seventeen year olds turn up on my back stoop, expecting a free meal?"
That's not what he begrudges them. It's easy to smile through the suggestion. To find those sealegs: even keel.
[Imogen] Imogen's eyebrow flicks upward. "I suggested I tell you about them," she notes mildly, "Not tell them about you."
She reaches into her purse and pulls out a business card, sliding it across the table toward him before setting her empty tea cup down. She is finished her tea, her meal is gone entirely cold, and she had been full in either case.
"Look me up when yeh want to know," she says, starting to slide out of the booth, getting to her feet. "I'll tell you then."
[John Brendan Cavanagh] "Thanks," he says, unfolding his tall frame from the bench seat as she starts to slide out, as she climbs to her feet. He leaves off her name, because he doesn't know what to call her. How familiar they are. Whether titles are necessary. Because tonight he has ghosts in his head.
He towers over her, a foot or more, rangey - but solid underneath. There's no one else in the store now, except for Lucy, who has slipped off to play on the internet while her father is distracted by his company. Just the background music of the public radio station, The National playing in the background, one of those mournful songs about middle age and mid-life, broad and aching. The lead singer's baritone is a low counterpoint to their quiet conversation.
Standing, he snags the card and tucks it into his front pocket, behind the pen and pencil now slightly askew as he straightens, sliding it neatly away. "You know where to find me." He returns, when they're both standing. Though he amends it, " - if you need a good meal or a decent cup of tea. Or a scone, to sustain you for the better part of a workweek. C'mon. I'll walk you to the door."
He has to lock up, after all.
[Imogen] She is slight, slender and diminutive beside him. Over a foot of height in difference - though her heels do swallow some of that. Pale skinned, red haired, and fine boned, she could be broken by most - at least physically. At least so it seems.
"I'll keep that in mind," she says. That she knows where to find him, should she need food or tea, a scone. The way she says it indicates she has no intention of following that up, that Chez Lulu's will not be added to her list of restaurants which she frequents.
But perhaps she will surprise herself.
At the doorway, she reaches out to push it open, pausing briefly to glance at a man with whom she'd once had a passing familiarity; when neither of them had known the other at all. They're strangers now, and the formality and distance even greater than when they had first met.
"Good night, John," she says, before stepping out the door and into the night, her brief case in one hand, a bronze cigarette case in the other.
[John Brendan Cavanagh] He holds the door open for her after she pushes it open, his large palm against the glass. His fingerprints leave smears behind on the tinted glass, though he pays that little mind. The ropey strength in his arms is evident then, and more of the intricately worked tribal obvious. It looks Maori rather than Fianna, really - this complex concatation of lines and circles and dots, though the odd triskelle reveals itself on closer viewing.
This is just a passing moment, though. So: tribal, something more exotic that the traditional knotwork on first glance.
"'Night," he returns at last, as she steps away and lights up the cigarette she was waiting to spark. "Imogen."
The door closes behind her. He locks it, after, pulls the blinds closed, turns the sign down, and heads back toward the office to chase Lucy off the internet, upstairs for a bath before bed.
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