Molly Toombs
Perhaps mid-afternoon is a bit early a
time to start at the bar. When Molly settled down at the pub she
typically visited with a group of friends on the weekend the day tender
(who recognized her from a few shifts he's picked up at nights) had a
comment ready for her: isn't it a bit early for you?
Molly's
comeback was a smile as she passed and settled into the seat of a pub
table not too far off from the bar itself: Bruce, are you trying to
drive my business away?
She ordered a pulled pork sandwich and
fries and a pint of something dark and heavy to drink, then took a
tablet from her bag and set it up against the stand that its case folded
into on the tabletop to start poking around at the screen. If someone
were to peer over her shoulder at what the tablet screen had to tell
them, they would find that it seemed Molly were planning a vacation.
She
was dressed in her 'street clothes' today, which is to say she wasn't
wearing scrubs. Instead she opted for a pair of simple light-washed
jeans and a black tank-top, with a gold chain necklace holding a gold
owl charm to break up the monotony of the outfit. Her hair was in a
loose bun at the back of her head, with chunks of hair that fell away
from it to frame her face at about chin-to-shoulder length instead. It
was dyed, clearly, a deep auburn color. Looking at the freckles that
splashed her face, as well as the fact that her eyebrows were penciled
to be darker than they naturally were, it was an easy guess that she had
red or strawberry-blonde hair by nature rather than the rich tones that
she carried in the present.
Body language was relaxed. Molly
Toombs wasn't on her guard at this time. Normally when a young single
working woman came into a bar alone she had to be guarded, or actively
persuing a man for the night. This was early enough in the day that
Molly didn't feel a need to worry about being approached, though. So
instead she sat in comfort, sipping at her beer and waiting for her
food, and planning her vacation/escape.
Nathan Marszalek
At least she isn't the only person drinking in the middle of the afternoon.
The
next solitary person to come through the door is dressed the way print
journalists have been dressing since before the invention of mass media.
His shoes are cheap leather slip-ons and his khakis are clean and
unwrinkled but haven't been starched or ironed. He wears a blue
button-down shirt tucked in and belted but his sleeves are rolled up to
his elbows for it's ungodly warm today and his tie looks like it's ready
to flip him the bird and go on about its business.
His hair looks
to be in a similar state. It's the sort of brown that's turned blond by
halfway through the summer and he needs a good barber and a comb. His
curls appear to do whatever they want.
He carries a leather
messenger bag over one shoulder. A small wire-bound notepad, golf pencil
stabbed through the spine, sits in the breast pocket of his dress
shirt. He moseys up to the bar and gets the same sort of grief from the
bartender as Molly received earlier.
"Drinking alone today?" the bartender asks.
"What'd you do, just finish your psychology degree?" the blond reporter asks.
This
strikes the bartender as mildly amusing. Nate looks away from him to
one of the muted televisions mounted in the corner and chews the corner
of his lip while he waits for the man to pour him a beer.
Molly Toombs
Molly's
attention was pulled away from a review of real estate costs in central
Spain and brought over to the bar instead. Clear blue eyes (nope, not
green) hopped away from her tablet and settled on the tall-ish man in
clothes that looked about as hot and tired as he did when he made his
way to the bar.
The comment that he delivered to the bartender
brought a grin to the young woman's lips, and she nodded her head upward
in Nathan's direction while she addressed him.
"He's just dodging
work. Day tenders already know their tips won't be that great, so fuck
it, right Bruce?" She danced her eyebrows at the bartender, this
Bruce, who was a shorter man somewhere in his mid-thirties with short
brown hair and a broad build. He gave Molly the finger, but with good
enough spirits behind it, and set himself to pouring the beer that
Nathan had requested and setting it on a small square napkin on the
counter in front of the reporter.
Molly lifted her glass when she
saw Nathan had his and edged the rim of the glass in his direction, a
'cheers' that went across the short distance between her seat at the pub
table and his at the bar.
"I'm Molly, stranger. If you're here for food, you should get their pulled pork or their nachoes."
Nathan Marszalek
And
with the lift of the young woman's head Nate looks away from the
television to catch her grinning and her tossing more light abuse in the
bartender's direction. Daytime bartenders are used to this. It's how
they make what tips they make, is weathering and shelling out
well-crafted barbs.
When Bruce flips off the other patron the
corner of Nate's mouth threatens to pull the whole thing into a smile
but it doesn't quite happen. He's charmed but something keeps him from
openly embracing the rest of humanity.
He's a reporter. That's reason enough.
Nate
lifts his beer in mirroring cheers and then he decides he'd better be
an adult and go talk to the gal his age who's trying to be sociable.
Once Bruce gives him his whiskey, up, he takes both glasses and goes to
join her. Parks his barware on the table and extends his hand. He wears a
watch on his right wrist and no ring on the left hand.
"Nate," he says. "Good to meet you. You their marketing associate?"
Molly Toombs
Molly
doesn't wear a watch, nor does she wear a ring on her left finger.
There's one on the right, though, some small thing placed for the sake
of decoration-- probably with no sentimental attachment to it. Nate's
offered hand was accepted, and Molly gave it a small squeeze and a quick
one-two shake before letting go and moving her hands to turn off her
tablet and stow it away in the tote bag that she had carried in with
her, now rested on the floor beside her chair legs.
"Me? No. I
just spend enough time here that I'm invested in whether they stay open
or not. And good to meet you too." She was cute enough, but definitely
a far cry from being a 'hot chick'. She looked like she would blend in
well at a college campus, pouring over homework with an ump-teenth cup
of coffee on the table in front of her. She had a bit of a no nonsense
air about her, but that didn't make her unapproachable-- at least not
when she was smiling and bantering.
"I was just here for dinner,
truth be told, but their porter is pretty good too." The tip of her
fingernail scratched at the tip of her nose for a second, and she curled
her left hand around her pint glass while the other hand settled to
rest on top of her thigh.
"What about you, Nate?," she asked while
raising her eyebrows and bringing her glass to her mouth. With lips
close to the edge of the glass, she added: "You look like a noir
detective-- all crumpled and at a bar in the middle of the afternoon."
Nathan Marszalek
"Do I?"
For
a moment the young man sounds impressed by this. Every boy-at-heart
goes through a phase where he thinks he would be great in some
gin-soaked narrative where nobody understands him but they let him do
what he wants to do because he's good at what he does. Truth is he's
passable at what he does, could be better if he keeps working as hard as
he's been working. Looks like the sort of guy who works too hard.
His
skin has very little to show for summer being mostly gone. He looks as
if he spends most of his time anywhere but in front of a glowing
computer screen under fluorescent lights.
But then he switches
gears and looks befuddled. It was all an act. Like acting slower than he
actually is is a valuable trait to have in his field.
"Wait a minute, crumpled?"
Molly Toombs
The
man got the woman to laugh, which could count as a tally on his
chalkboard scoreboard if anyone was counting. Bruce might be, he liked
to watch the affairs of regular patrons like that. It gave him
something to talk with them about, and helped him on the path of being
'that' bartender-- the one that people asked for advice. You know, like
they do on TV shows and such.
Molly nodded her head, took a drink
of the porter and set the glass back down. One of the waitress girls
that was working, some cute petite number with a septum piercing in her
nose and platinum pixie-cut hair, delivered Molly's sandwich and fries
to the table. Molly thanked her, but not by name (she didn't know the
girl well enough to have memorized her name yet), and took to pushing
her french fries to the side to make room for a puddle of ketchup that
she was pouring from the glass bottle on the table.
"Yeah. Your
tie looks like it's been trying to tag out of the fight for a few hours
now." She gestured toward his sternum and chest with the ketchup bottle
before she screwed the cap back onto it and put it back where it
belonged. A french fry was munched on. None were offered to Nate-- he
was a man she just barely met a few minutes ago, after all, and
regardless of whether she thought he was cute or not she wasn't going to
have strangers eating off her plate.
"So, if not a detective then.... a reporter?"
Nathan Marszalek
When the waitress asks him if he
wants anything he makes a joke about Molly pushing their pulled pork and
their nachos. Holds her up a good few seconds asking her for her
opinion and then decides to get the nachos just for the hell of it. She
calls him hon before she disappears again.
And Nate's
parents taught him enough manners that he doesn't help himself to her
food even though she initiated the conversation and hasn't told him to
get the hell away from her yet. He flicks his tie with the same
irritated nonchalance with which a draft animal flicks its tail at flies
and smiles at her hyperbole. Laughs a bit but it's hard to hear over
the jukebox.
"See," he says, "now I'm going to look like an amateur if I guess your powers of deduction mean you're
a detective." He casts his eyes towards the ceiling and waggles his
fingers a few times before he says: "I got nothin'. Kindergarten
teacher."
That must be retaliation for the crumpled comment. Or he thinks he's being clever. He takes a swallow of his beer.
Molly Toombs
The
waitress got Nate's order for nachos and left the table. Then Nate
confirmed that she guessed right by saying he would look like a
greenhorn if he failed to do the same with her. He'd flicked his tie,
so it flapped once before settling to rest on his chest once more,
looking precisely as disgruntled as it had earlier.
He guessed
'kindergarten teacher' for her profession in a tone that suggested he
was stabbing for something in the dark. The fact that her answering
laugh came from someplace in her gut (but mind you, it wasn't loud or
barking, just hearty is all) told him before words could precisely how
wrong he was.
"Well, it's not a terrible guess. If I was herding
five-year-olds all day I'd make a point of drinking the day away." She
gestured to her glass, then situated her hands around the pulled pork
sandwich so that she could flip it upside-down once she got it off the
plate. Someone once told her the top half of the bun was sturdier than
the bottom half, so inverting your burger or barbecue sandwich would
keep it from falling apart.
She bit into it, and some pulled pork
fell onto her plate anyways. She chewed, swallowed, set her sandwich
down, and pinched up the fallen pork with her fingertips to toss them
into her mouth as well before, finally, she offered her answer.
"Well, I am a public servant of sorts, so you're not too far off I guess. I'm a nurse at the St. Luke's Emergency Room."
Nathan Marszalek
"St. Luke's..."
If
he wrote fluff pieces or local color commentary or sports articles he
would just fess up right away to not knowing where in the hell that is.
But he doesn't have the fresh-faced doesn't-know-his-ass-from-his-elbow
look of the average young fellow getting his feet wet in the mutating
shit-show that is modern journalism.
"Oh, man, you're in the ER?
That's an even better reason to drink in the middle of the day than
wrangling other people's kids is. You guys don't even get summers off."
His
shot, untouched since he sat down, still exhales its smoky fumes into
the air. Hard to smell it over the tang of the pork sauce but Nate
forgot it was there until he decided to rearrange the barware on his
side of the narrow lacquered tabletop and jostled it. He sips it rather
than knocking it back and she can see him flinch with the burn of it.
"How long you been there?"
Molly Toombs
His
comment about how being a nurse in the E.R. is a better reason to drink
was met with a somewhat wry grin. She tapped her pinky finger against
her nose, as it was the cleanest, to indicate that he hit that nail on
the head, and took one more bite of her sandwich. After that, with her
immediate hunger quieted down with those two bites, she left the
sandwich alone on her plate. She would wait until her new friend, Nate,
had his plate in front of him before continuing.
...Okay, that was a lie. She nibbled a french fry here or there while waiting.
"Nah,
but I also don't need to wake up early in the morning." This was
followed by a shrug, and: "It's crazy, but fulfilling. I've always
been a front lines kind of girl myself. Could never abide by sitting at
a desk."
He'd asked how long she'd been there, though, and she
had to think about that for a second, finding the year she graduated
college in one part of her mind and locating her corresponding hire date
on the next.
"Almost three years. Not quite. I've been doing
the swing shift for fourteen months now, though. I didn't realize how
many people in Denver get shot until I started doing that." There was a
roll of her eyes, and she continued: "Especially in the last month for
some damn reason. It's like everyone put their panties in a twist and
got violent all at once. I can't remember being this busy, like, ever."
Nathan Marszalek
"Funny...
my friend down at the precinct said something similar to me the other
day. I mean, I get off pretty easy, all I have to do is read the reports
and make what happened sound not-stupid for the crime section. But I've
been putting in some long days lately."
That's putting it
lightly. But she can't tell from looking at him what being alive in this
city does to a person. Even he couldn't tell her with words what it
does because he doesn't know what's lurking in the dead space beyond
their peripheral vision.
"Maybe it's the weather. Entire states catching fire? That's got to have an impact on people's ability to not act insane."
Molly Toombs
"Maybe...,"
Molly mused, and took another sip of her beer. Nate had sipped his
shot and made a bit of a face when the fire of his liquor ran slow down
his throat. Sipping shots made your throat burn-- if you just threw
them back at least that fire would head straight to your belly and warm
you there. Or, at least, that's how Molly drank. She'd only sip a beer
or mixed drink. She wasn't so sophisticated.
"It would make
sense, to a point. I can get being freaked out that your state caught
fire and started turning the city into a potential tragedy."
She
mused over this for a moment, and nibbled a french fry thoughtfully.
She didn't have much more to say on the subject, but it had taken her
down a path in her own mind of tallying victims in the emergency room
and some flailing drunk with a bullet wound in him that she had to dig
out even after he'd landed a flailing punch to the side of her head
before being successfully re-restrained and sedated.
In the meantime, the same little platinum-haired waitress returned, this time with a plate of nachos and a wink for Nate. ('cause if you flirt with the fellas they tip better).
Kragen Kingsmith
It
was never a bad time to drink, be it the early morning as the sun
filtered its way into your bedroom to wake you like some alarm clock you
could never turn off. Or be it in those beautiful hours of the midday,
when really unless you have to work, there is often little better to do.
Regardless
of time of day, Kragen has found his way to this bar, with a swing of
the front door [perhaps the ring of a bell] the man enters the
establishment with a confident stride and a smile like a knife had
carved it onto his features amidst the growing stubble of a goatee. His
hair was a askew, all messy and wild in the way that most bed head
lovers dreamed of having, and his clothing, despite its apparently value
being made of fine silk, seemed lived in, perhaps slept in.
The
suit was a mild tan, and his shoes were brown wingtips that had seen
better days, but he could have been wearing pajama's and a moose mask
for all the man seems to care. He strode through the bar with a Zippo,
old and beaten through years of service in one hand, the man opening and
closing the lid of it with a rhythmic regularity.
His first act
was to stride up to the bar and lay an arm atop the wooden surface and
call. A singular finger gesturing towards the bottle of choice.
"Whiskey...straight up."
Nathan Marszalek
Without
driving the point into the ground Nate can see that Molly has turned
inward, the vibrations gone slightly nasty from dwelling on work when
they're supposed to be enjoying the freedom of youth and the lack of a
morning alarm awaiting them. Of all the things they could talk about
they turned towards the statistical significance of increased crime in
the midst of natural disaster.
Most men Nate's age want to talk
about where you went to school and are you seeing anyone and what are
you drinking. He already knows what she's drinking and he got her
recommendation on food and maybe the porter next time. He smiles a tired
friendly smile at the waitress when she drops off his food and thanks
her.
"Just to warn you," he says of the nachos, "soon as it cools
off, there's about a one-hundred-percent chance of it looking like a
piranha attack on this side of the table."
The door opens then but
Nate in his state of burnout does not even look over to see who it is.
It's daytime. Nothing bad has happened during business hours lately.
Kragen Kingsmith
Money
is exchanged, and booze is poured, a double in this case as Kragen
stands there idly. He turns about as he waits, those intense grey eyes
surveying the room for seating. There was plenty to be had of course, it
was midday after all and the real crowd wouldn't start showing up till
after the offices had closed and the business executives had made it
halfway home.
When he hears the pouring stop Kragen turned back
and offered. "Thank you my good man." Before he scooped up the drink and
started out across the floor, one hand swinging freely with that zippo
held loosely in its grasp as the other clutched the whiskey carefully.
His
confident swagger takes him towards Nathan and Molly, the intensity of
those eyes falling first on Nathan, and then the nacho's. Molly of all
things..comes last as he strides up to the high seated island table and
he asks.
"Tell me, is the food here actually worth it? I have
about as much luck with food in bars as a double arm amputee has with
opening a mason jar."
Molly Toombs
The
bar that Kragen walked into was virtually empty at this time of day,
floating somewhere between 4:30pm and 5:00pm. The establishment was
squeezed between two buildings with parking available in the back, but
not much of it. Inside the place was built deep, not wide, and the only
window was the one in front that was tinted to keep too much bright
light from pouring in.
The bar hugged the left side of the
building, if you were to look at it from the doorway. On the right
side, nearer to the door, were two pool tables. Beyond that were booths
against the right wall and some dark square pub-height tables. The
place wasn't very large and didn't offer a dance floor, although there
was a reception room in the back for parties or staff meetings. The
only people there were the bartender, the pair of cooks in the back, and
the two waitresses up front.
Oh, yeah, and Nate and Molly, whom Kragen found without much problem at all.
Molly
was chuckling at Nate when Kragen approached, brought back from
wherever she was wandering in her own brain by his comment about
pirhanna attacks. That chuckle fizzled out in her throat when Kragen
appeared near the side of the table. There were four chairs at the
table, and only the two that Molly and Nate (opposite sides from one
another) were using were occupied. The tote bag that Molly used instead
of a purse was on the floor.
He probably won't recognize her,
they'd only made one odd moment of eye contact before, and that night
Molly had been in a cocktail dress with her make-up and hair all dolled
up. Today her hair was in a mussed bun at the back of her head and she
wore a simple pair of jeans and a black tank-top. Her make-up was
minimal at best. The freckles were still there though.
She didn't
know why she recognized his face, but it did nag at her a little. She
felt she'd seen him before, maybe known? But probably just seen. She
couldn't put her finger on where, though, so she pretended for the time
being that nothing was amiss and answered the man's question.
"For
bar food, sure. They'll do burgers and chicken wings and they're
fairly middle of the road. What you're looking at here, though," and
she gestured between the pulled pork sandwich on her plate and the
nachos on Nate's, "are the best options."
Kragen Kingsmith
[Hows my memory today?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Nathan Marszalek
Sitting
idle and easy with a cute young woman his own age has made Nate seem
sedate if an effortless conversationalist. Then they're joined by
another person.
In the average city-dweller's experience a
complete stranger coming up and making conversation never ends well. The
person wants money or time or something physical to burn off a mood
imbalance. You're better off driving the person away fast as possible.
Panhandlers and junkies and histrionics teem and seethe in places like
this.
He is a poor judge of character for having little practice
at it so he cannot tell what manner of man this newcomer is or his
relation to Molly. He is not a poor liar but he takes no pains to hide
his uncertainty now. Brown eyes are unblinking as he watches the
exchange though they do not threaten to fall out of his head. His beer
isn't drinking itself and he forces himself to take a swallow so he does
not stare.
Colleagues, maybe. No point speaking up until he has an idea of what he would be interrupting. That swallow turns into a quaff.
Kragen Kingsmith
Maybe
its the freckles, or maybe its that curious moment of eye contact that
makes Kragen skim back through his dirty old copies of yesterdays news,
mentally fingering his way through to find some recollection of why this
woman was acting like this...and where he recognized that stalwart and
undeniable spark of fire in her eyes.
It took him a moment, but as
he listened to her speak on the varying options and their respective
qualities, a knowing element wove itself into that knifes edge smirk.
"You
and I." He said gesturing between himself and Molly. "We should have
met a few nights ago. At that Mall all the tourists go too. We
shared...a fleeting moment at the patio." He said with a subtle nod and a
slow rise of his chin as he pocketed his Zippo a hand extended towards
her.
"Kragen Kingsmith....a how do you do." Those eyes of his hold
on Molly before the slide towards Nathan, considering him in turn. "You
alright there son, you look a little...worried." One couldn't blame
Nathan for his uncertainty, Kragen truly was a stranger...and more so he
was well beyond their age bracket, somewhere in his early forties one
might suspect from the lines on his face, laugh lines though they may
be.
Molly Toombs
Kragen's smile shifted a little.
There was something knowing about it. She saw it change on his face--
the whirling of gears behind his pale eyes, the way they widened just
the tiniest bit when recognition settled in, and then how a certain
informed smugness touched on the corners of his mouth. When this
happened she'd glanced once toward Nate, eyebrow raised, as if checking
to see if her new friend had caught the same thing she had, but then
Kragen was speaking up again and his words caught her attention.
Mostly because they placed a moment and an identity to the tickling sense of 'I know that face' that was happening in her brain.
She'd
been in a pretty black cocktail dress, short on her legs, swooped low
in the back, but cut high to cover her chest well-- that outfit offered
no cleavage. She was walking away from a club her friends had invited
her out to but wasn't quite done drinking yet. She had been in a bit of
a mood because she'd gotten her ass not just grabbed, but jiggled while
she was trying to dance with someone, so she was being confrontational
with her body language and facial expressions when she thought someone
was staring at her for too long.
She'd done the same thing to
Kragen, the suit-wearing gentleman smoking on a bar patio, but what made
things different was that he didn't laugh at the challenge that came in
her gaze when they met eyes, nor did he pretend he hadn't been looking
at all. Rather, he accepted the challenge and told her blatently in
body language that the invitation was open and she should come on by.
Molly
had almost come on by. She walked into the bar, but got sidetracked or
distracted or something because by the time she left Kragen was no
longer on the patio so she had gone straight home instead.
"Yeah...,"
said Molly, brought back by the offered hand in front of her. She
accepted the gesture by placing her hand in his and giving it a gentle
bit of a shake. "Molly. Nice to meet you." No, she didn't share her
last name. People used that shit to stalk you on the internet.
Then
he was commenting on how Nate looked worried, and Molly's eyebrow
creased some but she didn't intervene. Nate was a grown ass man, she
wasn't going to defend him-- not at this point anyways. Besides, it was
good to observe how people handled themselves in stickly situations.
She picked her glass of porter back up and sipped slowly as she observed
the exchange between the older and younger man.
Nathan Marszalek
You look a little... worried.
Nate
shakes his head sharp like to rattle his brain enough to wake himself
up. Nothing like a distinguished gentleman with an air of something Off
about him calling a man out for acting like a basement dweller to wake
up said man.
He extends his hand to shake.
"Hi. Nathan. I see you've already met my daydreaming-about-nachos face."
Kragen Kingsmith
If
the man named Kragen had desired Molly's last name, he shows no concern
over her having left it out. Perhaps he wasn't even thinking about it,
or maybe he was scheming about a way to get ahold of her wallet just to
find out. He gaze off the air of a man who could do just about anything,
at just about any moment. He might be distinguished and congenial now,
but for some reason the idea of him standing atop the bar with a hastily
made molotov burning in one hand as he screamed at the fleeing staff
didn't seem all that much of a stretch.
However he shook Molly's
hand warmly, not trapping her for any longer then she desires to shake,
and then he took it back and..well look at that. Nathan offered a shake,
and the older man took it. Shaking with a firm callous hand.
"I
wouldn't worry, we all have that face for one reason or another." His
gaze slides back to Molly ever briefly as he says that. Before he
releases Nathan's hand and stands, yes stands with one hand in his pants
pocket, the other holding that glass of whiskey up rakishly as he
watched both of them.
"So tell me, just what brings the pair of
you to a place like this well before the established hour of libation
lubrication?" He asks casually as he brings the glass to his lips and
drinks down a quarter of the glass's contents.
Molly Toombs
The
greeting that her age-mate had to offer the older, curious man had
Molly smiling, just a little bit, behind the rim of her glass before she
set it down. Well played, she thought. She was fairly
certain that Nathan had shared Molly's initial hesitancy about being
approached by a stranger in a public-access venue. Usually they wanted
'just enough cash for the bus, man', or to 'bum a smoke'. The only
reason Molly hadn't shoo'd him away initially and instead answered his
question about the food was because she was still wrestling with her own
memory at the time, and because usually men in their late forties
wearing suits didn't cause the same problems that men and women in their
twenties wearing basketball shorts and greasy hair did.
Now,
though, he stood near the table with his glass of whiskey in hand,
comfortable on his own feet and easily making himself a part of their
conversation, as though this were a party they had all been invited to
and they were expected to mingle.
Molly met Nate's eyes for a
second, raised her eyebrows in question, then shrugged one shoulder in a
brief up-down bobbing motion before picking up a french fry and
swabbing it in ketchup. This was then wagged gently so that ketchup
wouldn't fly anywhere and used as a physical demonstration of what she
was saying.
"The food, mostly." The french fry was eaten, chewed,
swallowed, and she followed up with: "But that I can get a drink with
my sandwich here sealed the deal. My friend Nate, here--" she indicated
to the mussy-haired reporter across the table from her-- "just happened
to join me here. We were talking professions."
Nathan Marszalek
They
happen to glance across the table at each other at the same time.
Perhaps for different reasons. It has an air of conspiracy that hasn't
any place in their interactions for the fact that they just met. He
doesn't know if she's the sort of nurse who jacks Vicodin out of the
controlled substance cabinet just like she doesn't know if he gets off
looking at pictures of the corpses that litter the crime scenes he
visits in the line of duty.
Molly raises both of her eyebrows. Nate's eyes briefly widen in an I don't even know
expression and he almost smiles but for the fact that Kragen is still
standing there whiskey in hand like he hasn't got a care in the world
right now.
"That we were. My profession right now is: I would
offer you some of my bounty--" He indicates his nachos. "--but I skipped
breakfast and don't intend to share."
Kragen Kingsmith
Its
hard not to spot those looks, those silent conversations that usually
only pass between people who have known each other for ages. Such
subtleties are usually lost on those with whom you've just met, and
Kragen...Kragen seems to take this particular instance as the former of
the two examples.
They say they are talking about professions, and
enjoying food at random together, and Kragen's eyes slide between the
pair of them as he slowly downs that whiskey of his. Suddenly the glass
is upended, and the double becomes a single becomes a zero, the majority
of it drained in one quick gulp.
"Well, I'm not certain thats a
conversation I should be joining in such..." His eyes looking about at
the surrounding locale. "open quarters." He raised his empty glass to
the pair and set it down on the edge of the table.
"I shall leave
you too it, perhaps another time..." He said as a card with simply his
name and number is slid under the bottom of the glass. He turned on his
heel then, and started for the door.
Molly Toombs
Kragen
must have remembered a previous engagement, or he realized that he
perhaps should leave these two be (although that reasoning was doubtful,
otherwise he wouldn't have strolled up and lingered as long as he did
in the first place), or the talk of professions actually did drive him
away. Whatever the reason, he had finished his whiskey double in no
time flat, drinking it like it were an oversized shot, and smoothly
removed a card from his pocket to set it on their table, pinned by the
empty glass.
He said his farewell, and Molly blinked in some
surprise-- startled by how he'd downed his alcohol and taken aback by
his abrupt departure. "Uhm... Good evening," she bade him, and he spun
about and left.
Molly watched him go while taking two bites of
her sandwich, then wiped the barbecue sauce from her mouth with the
napkin her silverware had been wrapped up in. She looked at the empty
whiskey glass and card again, then returned to french-fry nibbling.
"Do you think he intended us to fight over it?"
Nathan Marszalek
No
sublimated tension with the stranger's departure but Nate does breathe
deep and visible for the first time since he sat down. Molly asks a
question and it may have been rhetorical but Nate glances down at the
card and considers her for one two three seconds before shooting his
hand out viper-like to scoop the glass and the card closer to him.
"Hah,"
he says. Flawless victory. Sets aside the whiskey glass and picks up
the card. "This is a hell of a business card. Really lets the consumer
know what she's in for."
Nate passes it across the table to Molly
now that her sandwich is obliterated. Leaves his hands free. He eats his
nachos from the bottom edges in so he'll be left with the congealed
cheese-soaked layer by the time his BAC really skyrockets.
"What do you think his angle is? My money's on drugs."
Molly Toombs
The
french fries were all that was left on Molly's plate, and she was
making quick work of those. She was quite close to finished with her
beer too. Both were gone by the time that Nate had observed the card
after snatching it (Molly grinned for him then), passed it back, and
given Molly enough time to look it over as well.
After clearing
her glass of beer, she took the last couple of stubby fries from her
plate, swabbed up the rest of the ketchup, and popped them in her
mouth. The card had already been read, but she was still holding it
with her elbow on the table, unsure of what she was supposed to be doing
with it. For some reason she didn't want to just leave it. The older
man was striking-- not in a way that made her want to climb into the
sack with him, not by any means, but he stood out in a crowd enough for
her to remember him even though that's really all he had been to her, a
face in the crowd.
"If it's drugs, I don't think he's using them,"
she said almost cautiously. "Might be a dealer." Not like someone's
'weed guy', but a legitimate dealer. The ones that had to be really
good at money movement to cover their tracks.
Molly would wait up
for Nate to finish his nachos before she stood from the table, and would
give him the opportunity to walk with her out the door. She didn't
have a car to go to, she would be walking home instead. If Nate had a
car and offered a ride she would politely decline it. "You're sweet,
Nate," she would tell him with a genuine smile, "but you're still pretty
stranger danger, and a girl has to keep safe.
"But I would like your number, if you're willing to share it."
If
he does, she plugs it into her phone. He'd get a text once she was out
of sight and around the block walking home, and it would simply read:
A number given is a number earned - Molly
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