Nathan Marszalek
Other than a seething sense of
injustice Nathan left nothing behind in his wake after leaving the
warmth of his bed to drive Molly across town so she wouldn't have to
call a cab in the rain. He hadn't even scuffed mud on her hardwood floor
or smoked a cigarette out the window. It was almost as if she had
teleported from the Sinclair station to her bed.
He is huddled in a
doorway smoking a cigarette and ignoring the wet when he calls Molly
around noon. That's an appropriate time to make sure someone's hungover
ass isn't paying alms to the porcelain god.
Molly Toombs
Molly
woke this morning at 9:23 am because Florence was whining and crying
and scratching at the door of her crate. She needed to go out to the
bathroom. Molly's head was spinning and her stomach was twisted and
sour, but the near whole glass of water that she drank immediately
before going to sleep had helped. She'd fallen asleep on top of the
comforter of her bed without washing her hair or face. Sometime before
passing out she'd hidden the business cards and matchbook. She would
rediscover them in back of her pantie drawer two days from now but that
would be another time.
She woke up and put a hat and hoodie on and
took Florence outside. Then she came back in and brewed very strong
coffee and showered. The coffee went in a thermos, and she took
Florence for a walk through the brisk wet cold of the day, hoping it
would slap the hangover right out of her. It didn't do the trick
entirely, but it did help. She was feeling far less queasy by the time
she'd gotten back to her apartment.
She didn't call Nate, though
around 11:00 am she did stare at her phone while sitting in her living
room half-watching the news. She was upset and uncertain of his
maneuver the night before. She wanted to trust him, but the night where
she was drunkenly vulnerable enough to start spilling information he
betrayed that trust by trying to steal it away for his own devices.
When he called around noon, the phone was answered with a surly: "Hello. I survived to see the light of day."
Nathan Marszalek
He
hears the surliness. That's his first clue that she not only retained
the fact that he'd tried to pocket her business cards but hadn't
forgiven him.
"So I see," he says. "You, uh..." Drag. "You pissed at me--" Exhale. "--or can we talk for a minute?"
Molly Toombs
"The two are not mutually exclusive."
She
paused to take a sip of her second cup of coffee, a little burnt from
being left in the pot on the burner but it still served its purpose.
She was sitting in her living room at this point with her legs curled up
on the couch. Florence was in the space created between her calves and
her hip and rear, snoozing with her chin on Molly's ankle.
"Are
we talking about the shenanigans you pulled? Or are you gonna tell me
that we don't get to on account of your being a pal and bailing my idiot
ass out last night?"
Nathan Marszalek
"Wow," he says.
So that's how this is going to go.
She
can hear him taking another longer drag and blowing it out and keeping
on sighing long after the smoke is gone from his lungs. Wind blows past
the microphone and he has to turn his back to keep the conversation
intelligible. Not like he said anything in that period of time but the
wind and the sighing stop after that.
"I figured I owed you an explanation. So, yeah. We're talking about the shenanigans."
Molly Toombs
"Awesome.
Let me start, 'cause I'm still kicking this headache and I thought
about it while I was walking Florence this morning anyways."
Yep. That's precisely how this was going to go. Sorry, Nate.
"I
don't know what you were planning to do with any of that information.
I'd say I don't want to know, but I care so I'll just suffice to say
that we'll get to that later. That's an entirely different thing.
Right now I'm just upset that you tried to take my shit."
Nathan Marszalek
Part
of the problem with arguing with Nate is his voice only really has two
settings. It's either a monotone or he's yelling. Molly hasn't ever
heard him yell. She has heard his words start to flow into each other as
he fought off a panic born of thinking he was going to turn into a
vampire having been bitten by one.
He sounds even more depressed on the phone than he does in person.
"Yeah. You should be upset. That was shitty of me."
Molly Toombs
"So then why the hell did you do it?"
He
sounds depressed and pitiful, but Molly doesn't relent. He was
resoundingly in the dog house, and as far as she was concerned he could
come back out when this was over. As was the case with many things for
her lately, she would only accept payment in the form of information.
In this case, an explanation was specifically what she wanted.
Nathan Marszalek
Oh
good. They're going to talk about feelings. That went so well the last
time she started haranguing him about something involving supernatural
phenomena. Last time he'd tried to haul her off towards the restrooms in
a King Soopers and everyone around them had thought they were about to
become witnesses to a domestic incident.
Nate isn't the one losing his temper this time.
"I
didn't want you calling any of them," he says. "Especially not after
you told me Kragen wanted to recruit you to be the medic for his little
terrorist operation."
Molly Toombs
"I'm keeping
that information on hand in case shit hits the fan, Nate. I've heard
that things are getting... tense, I suppose. Something's supposedly
brewing. I want to have these... contacts in place in case I need to
reach out to someone for some goddamn protection."
Nathan Marszalek
"I
guess I just don't understand what kind of protection you could need if
you aren't one of them. Y'know? The rest of the world doesn't walk
around hiring out bodyguards just in case war breaks out between the
Sharks and the Jets again. They don't even know they exist."
Molly Toombs
"Nate."
Her
tone is flat. Impatience that has been wrung dry and then chilled with
ice. She sipped her coffee again, then set the mug on the end table
beside her couch so she could reach down to scratch at Florence's floppy
ears.
"The reason I have all of those business cards is because
those folks have taken some interest in me in one way or another.
That's because they know that I know they exist, man. The reason the
entire fucking world doesn't know they exist is because they like to
keep that shit quiet.
"Do you think they're going to just let me fall off the radar?"
Nathan Marszalek
"Maybe if you'd stop talking to them, they would."
Molly Toombs
"Well
it's a little fucking late for that, isn't it? Why the hell do you
think I drank myself into a four hour headache and drunken
phone-a-friend last night? I know I brought this down on my head, but
now I'm here and I need to deal with that."
She just wasn't sure how yet.
Nathan Marszalek
"That's
what I was thinking at four o'clock this morning when I realized how
deep you'd gotten in and I didn't have an answer for you right that
second. I thought if I took those fucking cards with me--"
A distant voice. Nate mumbles something that sounds like heymanhowsitgoin and then clears his throat.
"Still
there?" Duh, Nate. "Look, I wasn't trying to..." Scoff. "I don't know
what I was trying to do. Keep you out of more trouble. You're my friend,
Molly, and I love you, and I don't wanna see something bad happen to
you. Especially with that Kragen guy. He's seriously... I can't believe
he gave you another card, what is his problem?"
Molly Toombs
The
use of 'I love you' served the purpose of softening Molly up,
apparently. She was quiet for a minute after he'd finished by asking
what Kragen's problem was, and when she finally spoke again there was a
heavy sigh that served as a preamble.
"I'm worried about what you
would have done with them. Like, that you would have gone and tried to
track some of these people down. Some of these people I know very
little about, Nate, and it scares me what they'd do to you, and how
easily they'd do it, when you went sniffing around after them. And then
they'd come after me because apparently they have these ways to figure
out who you know."
Flood had done so, after all. But she didn't need to say so. He knew that already.
"I
think that at some point one of these people is going to decide that
it's no longer safe to just let me wander around knowing the things that
I do, the names and faces and details and all of that. I think they're
going to do something about it, and at that point I'll need something
that can keep me safe from that. I'm pretty sure that another vampire's
pretty much the only thing that can keep me safe from one. That
or.... I don't know, a wizard or something maybe."
Nathan Marszalek
Nate
had told her he loved her as casual as he would have stated it was
raining outside. Nothing invested in it like she thought she saw in him
at the supermarket after he'd gotten out of the hospital but it sure
takes the wind out of her sails with a quickness.
"You know any wizards?" he asks.
Molly Toombs
"Well, I knew of one."
At
first she sounds optimistic, like this might be a cool or positive
thing to talk about instead. But the tone and content crash together in
a heap when she continues.
"But he's dead now. Plus he was
killing people and chopping them up to turn them into furniture and use
their blood for magic rites and--..." She cuts off here because of a
small, muffled and held back choking noise. It's hard to tell if she's
gagging at the visual memory of what she witnessed or suddenly
swallowing an unexpected sob that she'd tamped down with a quickness.
Nathan Marszalek
Whatever
Nate's face does in response to that revelation she cannot see it and
he does not give it voice. Just takes a killing drag off his cigarette
and blows the breath back out. Crushes the butt beneath his heel.
"I'm never bitching about ghosts again."
Molly Toombs
"I just don't get why all of it is so bad."
She
wasn't crying, and her voice wasn't husky with held back tears either.
But she did sound so utterly lost-- again, that word. Lost and
defeated.
"It's all blood magic and curses and sick bonds and just fucking bad. Where is all of the stuff that's supposed to balance it?"
Then,
as though realizing that she was asking questions without answers and
just making it worse for herself, plus dragging Nate down along with
her, she made a noise as though clearing her throat and muttered some
'ahgoddamnit' that was muffled by what sounded like the palm of her own
hand. She was probably scrubbing her face.
"Look. I'm sorry. I don't mean to dump on you, but before long these walls are gonna fall on me if I just keep up like this."
Nathan Marszalek
"So just walk away."
He's
not walking anywhere. It's windy and he wants to finish his
conversation before he goes back inside. A siren wails past in the
distance. His job consists of writing up the awful things that humans do
to each other. Reading police reports and attending autopsies and
attending trials where victims' widows break down sobbing during their
testimony.
Standing down here talking to his distraught friend is a better use of his time.
"Moll,
it doesn't sound like there are any plus sides to this shit. It's all
bad to me. Like a curse or something. Maybe that's the point. Otherwise
people would hear 'immortality' and 'superhuman strength' and 'getting
to stay up all night' and sign themselves up. You know? At least you're
not like Flood, or--" Shit, does she know about Lux? "--or Kragen, or
Doctor Whatever-His-Name-Is. You know? Once you're turned, or... bound,
or whatever you want to call it, that's it. I can't turn my shit off
either. If I could stop hearing dead people all the time, I would in a
heartbeat. It's bullshit. You have a choice, man. And if you want to
dump on me, I'm here for you. But I really think you should just walk
away."
Molly Toombs
"Nate, I'm not gonna just walk away."
She
sounded sad still, but this wasn't an upbeat conversation in any way at
all. Nate knew last night that he didn't have an answer to make this
all better. But it didn't stop him from hanging out downstairs,
probably outside of a work building or scene or something like that,
talking to her and checking in on her anyways.
"I can't just
pretend that it doesn't exist. I already know too much." She was
repeating that last night. It must be some kind of mantra. "I mean, I
don't wanna just divorce myself from everything. Then I'd have to walk
away from you, too. You're wrapped up in this about as deep as I am,
let's face it."
Beat.
"Besides, if I walk away I'll give Them my back. That's a good way to die."
Nathan Marszalek
"How am I as wrapped up in this as you are?"
Molly Toombs
"Well
you managed to place yourself resoundingly enough on Flood's shit list
that he felt the need to intimidate me about it that one time."
Pause.
"....But I guess I'm still probably in way deeper regardless."
Nathan Marszalek
"Yeah,
you know, sorry some lunatic attacked me and I started trying to figure
out who the hell it was so I could see if there was any sense trying to
involve the police. That wasn't my fucking fault."
Molly Toombs
"Jesus Christ, Nate, I'm not blaming you
for shit. I'm just saying how deep you're in. Deep enough to be on a
shit list. I mean, at least I'm managing to stay in good graces. Or,
at least I'm pretty sure I am."
Nathan Marszalek
"Yeah
and other than that incident, I haven't had any other problems with
those assholes. You told me to stop digging and I stopped digging. Now
all I have to worry about is dying in car crashes or getting torn up by
possessed people."
You know. Normal people problems.
"So
when I say maybe you should stop trying to make alliances or stay in the
good graces of other lunatics or whatever, maybe I know what I'm
talking about a little."
Molly Toombs
"Yeah.... Maybe...."
At
first it sounds like she's conceding. In truth, she's sitting with an
elbow on the arm of the couch so that she could support her head by
cupping her forehead in the curve of her hand between forefinger and
thumb. She was doing a damn fine job of keeping it out of her voice,
but tears were pricking her eyes and a well of helplessness felt like it
was trying to open in her chest. She had stopped petting Flo to hold
her phone to her ear with her free hands.
But then she followed up with a shake of her head and another sip of her coffee before continuing.
"But I need to find one more thing out, at least. And I think I need to talk to Flood about it."
God damnit, Molly.
Nathan Marszalek
He doesn't raise his voice. The opposite happens: his affect goes completely flat.
It's
almost like Flood is the same beast who attacked him in the park and
never suffered any repercussions and both Molly and Lux think he's such a
swell guy oh Nate don't be so melodramatic it was just a Kiss.
"What do you need to find out."
Molly Toombs
"Reflections.
Specifically, where they go when they go away." She swallowed a burnt
gulp of warm coffee, and when she spoke next there was a minor sense of
urgency to her voice. Her tone had shifted to suggest that she was
quickly becoming finished with this phone call. Perhaps closing up to
protect more secrets-- like that she was in deep enough to know that
Ghouls were a thing and how they became a thing, for example.
"I
need to find out for... a friend. I've read stuff about it being
related to your soul or spirit or some essence like that, but... Well,
it's all very vague. I need more of the facts."
Nathan Marszalek
He hears her closing off. She can hear the same thing happening now.
It
doesn't take much for Nate to decide he's done talking to a person.
Clamming up or withholding information from him is the quickest way to
do it. He's done it before and he doesn't have any qualms about doing it
again.
"And you can't ask me to help you with this why?"
Molly Toombs
"Have you ever lost your reflection?"
The question hangs on its own.
Nathan Marszalek
"Has--?"
Nope. He's done.
"Molly,"
he says, "you can ask me now, and I'll do everything I can to help. We
can figure this out together and without getting mixed up in whatever
your 'friend' got mixed up in. But if you tell me you'd rather go to
Flood I will hang up right now and not answer the phone the next time
you call me at three o'clock in the morning. This is bullshit."
Molly Toombs
"I'm not saying I'd rather--... It's just I'm pretty sure he'll actually know more, and..."
There's
a sound of frustration. She's not sure how she wound up under the hot
light when he was the one in trouble at the beginning of this phone
call.
"Fuck. Fine. Jesus, Nate, I'm just trying to--.
Ugh! Nevermind, Christ, I'll read a book about it and just fucking....
Go about my day. Or something."
She's not apologizing. She won't. He tried to steal her contacts, after all.
Nathan Marszalek
Well that escalated quickly.
She
can't hear him breathing heavy for how upset that exchange just made
him but she knows he does have to be breathing heavy. Silence descends
upon the conversation. In that silence she can hear him pulling himself
together. Composing his thoughts maybe.
After no more than five seconds he finally says:
"Thank you."
Molly Toombs
It
did escalate quickly. She didn't like being put up against a wall, and
that's how she felt figuratively speaking here. She still wanted to be
able to pull information from Flood because she knew how easy it was to
do-- a lot of what she knew came from him. He seemed to have developed
some kind of apathy toward the way things are supposed to be, and was
happy enough to tell her all she wanted to know and more. This was why
she was confident he would be a good source to ask about why his
reflection had gone away-- maybe she could glean something that she
could use to help poor Jacky, sad Jacky, sweet Jacky find his reflection
once again.
In that time of quiet Molly listened to Nate breathe
and waited for him to say something. She was just hoping harder than
she thought she would that he wouldn't simply hang up. She'd just
defaulted to him when put under the thumb to pick between him and Flood
after all.
"Yeah." Her answer was quiet, deflated. "Thank you too." Then: "I'll see you around, then."
Nathan Marszalek
For a few seconds it sounds as if he is going to hang up. But that thank you
of his held more pain in it than one would have thought it would
considering he was the one laying down ultimatums that came out of
nowhere.
He never talks about the people he's lost. Never talks
about whether he feels survivor's guilt. He came back from Afghanistan
and had to go to counseling because that's protocol these days but he
didn't have any symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Still doesn't.
He
doesn't relive the things that have fucked him up over there but it's
not the things that happened over there that fucked him up. He sat
paralyzed and drowning in his own blood with Shannon's dead body within
arm's reach of him for twenty minutes. Carole knows what's wrong with
his back but isn't talking to him right now because she thinks he's got
something wrong with his head too. Some sort of personality disorder or
maybe he's schizophrenic. Losing Molly wouldn't do him any favors right
now.
Selfish prick.
"Alright," he says. "Lay off the sauce."
Click.
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