Black's Bookshop [The Jack Saga]

mystery

Black's is one of those book shops in a strip mall you expect to be bought out by a drycleaners or a massage parlor at any moment. It's sign is faded and almost illegible, and the neon in its window is a faded dizzy pink. Maybe Molly calls in advance, just to see who's working. Maybe she just shows up and hopes for the best.

The counter is in the back of the shop, in a corner where whoever's sitting at the corner can spy on everything going on to the best of their ability, thanks to a few mirrors and a grainy security camera. The air smells of old glue and paper and leather, and the proprietor is in.

He's a mountainous man, obese to a fault, and very pale, as if he never got a chance to go outside, or even yet as if he were some species of underwater mammal. He dresses well, but his bulk is just: impressive, as is the watchmaker delicacy which even his tiniest gesture seems to finick over. She's probably exchanged words with him before, on prior occasions, there with Harald - or if she hasn't personally been there she's heard about him from Jacky. 

He's doing something on his tablet, a pair of frameless half-moon glasses perched on the very point of his long nose. 

--

[Okay, to kick off Day 2, let me know what Molly's work schedule is, then roll me her Stamina.]

Molly

The previous night at work had been long but not unbearable.  Molly slept hard when she came home, a mercilessly dreamless sleep due to the state of mental exhaustion.  Still, she'd set a 10:00am alarm for herself (despite getting home at 2:00am and falling asleep about an hour afterwards), because she had an agenda for the next day.

When the morning came about she bustled through her morning routine-- took Florence the Dog out for a somewhat abbreviated run, showered hastily and put on her make-up with only the most bare essentials required to cover the tired circles under her eyes and help her look more awake.  She didn't waste time prepping breakfast or coffee at home-- simply carried a water bottle and her list of locations from the fridge out the door with her and looped back to the small parking lot of covered stalls that her apartment building provided for residents.  Molly was typically fond of traveling by foot or bicycle in warm weather, but time was of the essence today as was energy conservation.  She took the car, went through a coffee shop drive-thru to grab a latte with an extra pair of espresso shots and a breakfast scone, and then set a route for Black's Bookshop.

Once she'd parked and stepped inside the faded-dusty shopping center space of a bookstore, Molly's eyes performed a cursory sweep for faces both familiar and not.  She knew some of the tricks of the Nosferatu, knew that they put on whatever faces they could muster themselves to craft to hide their beastliness from everyone else, and so expected that if Jacky were here by any off chance it would have to be with a face not like the homely one she'd grown so fond of (whether that was by genuine sentiment or something influenced by blood she couldn't know).  Paper beverage cup in hand, she roamed about through the small space to root out corners for people who may be lurking out of sight before ultimately rounding her way back to the front desk, to the massively obese man with the very precise motions that she'd seen one time before when visiting here with who she thought to be Harald.

"Excuse me," she said as politely as she could, trying not to sound so urgently in a rush or eager for information (and probably doing a fairly decent job of it too).  "I'm wondering if you've seen my friend Jacky around here?  He comes in here a lot.  His phone got turned off, so I can't just text him like I usually would."

--------------------------------

[[  Molly's work schedule for Day 2 will be much like Day 1.  She'll have to be in to work at 4:00pm, and will probably be there until about 2:00am or so this time around.  But at least she can go into it knowing that she doesn't have to work at all on Day 3 -- mid-week days off are the shit, yo.  Also, here's that Stamina roll! ]]

Molly @ 7:33PM

[Stamina 3]

Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

mystery

He purses his shell-pink delicate lips together thoughtfully, cheeks gone shiny with the gesture, and looks Molly over as if trying to put together whether or not she is telling the truth.

Eventually, he says, "I know Jacky. I have a book on hold for him which he was, hrm, supposed to pick up a month ago, but he still hasn't been in for it. Prepaid, so I can't resell it."

Molly

At first glance Molly probably seemed an easy person to trust.  There was something to having a rounder shape, in body and face both, that made her seem inherently warmer and more trustworthy.  The splash of freckles even sweetened the deal, like some Americana rural sweetheart (or a far cry back to some European Isles).  But even so, her eyes were a bit too sharp, her demeanor a bit too set in determination.  It set the whole thing into doubt.

It didn't help when she did things like consider the man's answer for a moment before asking:

"What was it?"

Probably None of her goddamn business, but she really just figured there wasn't much he could do beyond tell her 'no' if she asked anyways.

mystery

The man looks her over: a sluice of a look. In a thin man it would be a rake but in this grotesquely huge man it's a sluice it's like water trickling slowly down in a rush up and down leaving behind remnant of pressure. He touches the side of his mouth with his pink tongue and then say, "Hold on," and he forces himself up on his feet a sound popping in the ground like a spine like a groan and then he goes into the back.

If Molly is still there when he returns, he has a book covered in brown paper moth-drab don't-look-at-me paper. "Show me some ID and you can just take it. Jacky, hrm, he doesn't cause any trouble and I, hrm, I don't want to keep something I won't be able to sell later in good conscience." He sounds so virtuous but also as if he'd just really like to give that damned book away. 


Molly

Eyes climbing down Molly's figure and back up again weren't the most uncommon thing to happen to her.  She was a pretty woman, after all, with plenty of curve to fill the eye with-- this certainly wasn't the first time she'd gotten that kind of a once-over and it surely wouldn't be the last.  The red-haired woman tolerated it well, even put a small smile on closed lips to encourage cooperation while this man toyed with the idea of helping out with her request or not.  When the 'Hold on' was announced, Molly's smile spread a bit further on her face and she nodded, hitched an elbow on the counter, and waited.

When he returned with a square package wrapped in brown paper and requested ID, Molly nodded and slipped fingers into her back pocket.  "Thank you.  Maybe I can hold it ransom for him to finally call me back, huh?"  She grinned, the expression friendly and polite jest, then shuffled her driver's license free from the small stack she'd produced (the plastic of a credit or debit card along with the green of a couple of bills accompanied the ID card) and offered it over to him.

Molly L. Toombs
Colorado Resident
Class D License
Donor?:  Y
Hair: Red
Eyes: Blue
DoB: June (something-or-other), 1988

The picture showed a woman with a somewhat slimmer face but identical features otherwise, set unsmiling into the camera, with hair that was much shorter (about chin-length) and dyed black.  Her appearance had changed enough to warrant a double-take, but when it came down to it the features, the freckles, and the cool sort of watchful calculation in those blue eyes were precisely the same.

mystery

He squints at the id and he squints at her face as if trying to match them up. The changes are noted. This is no casual observance. This is ritual. This is rite. This is the way things are done! Once he has thoroughly ascertained to the best of his ability that Molly before him and Molly in the book are the same person, he hands the book over and makes a note in his ledger and smiles at her, pinkly unctuous. And then she is left with her book. Jack's book. Jacky's book. Harald's.

Should she be tempted to unwrap and look at it, she'll see that it is an old old thing, written in German or a related language, in a hand-blocked font difficult to translate until one has got the hang of it. More interesting to her, perhaps, would be the woodcuts -- they're few and far between, but eye-grabbing, dark night-winged creatures and ornate frames which could be mirrors or symbols or who knows what. Alchemy.