LuceThere are two ways to enter Slide. Down through a long, twisting, serpentine slide that takes you from street level sweeping down to the subterranean bar/lounge, or descending a set of exterior brick and iron-wrought stairs to a narrow little patio featuring an otherwise featureless green door bathed in the wash of amber light from a humming, half-lit neon sign. The S and L on the sign are burned out, perhaps deliberately, such that the bar seems to be called - IDE instead of SLIDE.
The small, barred window cut into the wood door - heavy planks these, huge and solid, all reminiscent of a speak-easy from Prohibition days - is still employed on slower weeknights for a bit of atmosphere. Weekends, though, the bouncer just stands, muscled arms crossed, outside the front door, watching the sweep of feet on the sidewalk above, checking IDs and accepting the cover charge from patrons drifting in and out on this cool San Francisco night. There are a few lounge pieces on the patio, but these are empty.
The drift of conversation and music - quiet, jazzy, chilled out - floats upwards toward the street every time the front door is open, with the clink of glasses and the scent of tobacco. Since there's no longer Prohibition to defy, the dive, the speak-easy defies instead the city's antismoking ordinances. The menu posted at street level boasts a menu of single-malt Scotches, craft-brewed gins, custom martinis and hand-made cigars and the crowd veers slightly older than The Union club further down the street. Men in business suits - professionals, salesmen, that sort - and women in heels and cocktail dresses. Hipsters, too, starting their night with a pricy gin and tonic or martini before hitting the streets in search of someplace pleasantly downscale.
Inside, the bar seems wrapped in acres of mahogany, gleaming in low-light. Brocades and wrapping bookshelves, supple bronze-and-leather fixtures, low-lounge seating and private little tables tucked here and there, swathed in smoke, and the clink of glasses. The place is crowded tonight, a buzz of shifting conversation in the air. Those little tables come at a premium tonight, as does the space at the bar, and the ambient noise level turns the hum of the torch singer at the piano near the center of the room into a pleasantly seductive background sound, sometimes rising above the crowd-noise, sometimes drifting below it.
One of the hirelings called him; spotted her exiting a taxi with a man on the corner of the block. Watched them walk to Slide, and descend those steps. Let them go and then nipped in after them, just to be sure, before calling the boss.
Never-mind how crowded the place was. Somehow she still got the table she wanted, a low, wrapping couch backed by more of the lounge's signature bookshelves, a callback to the days when the place could only be entered through a hidden door behind a set of bookshelves, by turning one of them to just the right page.
ZazhThe Mission's spastic relations with God and Luxury are well known to many an individual. It's thorough mixture of ethnic crowds and peoples, both upper, lower and mid-range classified, suggest a bounty of potential and possibility for enjoyment, penance or simple hideaway. Gentrification is responsible for places like Slide which covet the exclusivity of prohibited substance and elegant suggestion. You could just as easily find a small table at the back, sporting cuban cigars on the fingertips of Hipsters trying not to inhale. No need to ruin that air of sophisticated charm they seem so desperate to achieve.
The lounge act is a throwback to solemn Jazz, the only true fan of the artform that was and has gone out of style, playing to the spectators that chirp of ancient vocals belonging to legends their parents grew up with. A sign of archaic tastes, hinting at refinement. Or acceptability. Or popularity. Or all the above.
The tables are replete with the low conversations of the hangers out and the business casual. Tonight, the air wafts with more cigar smoke than cigarette, the slender thins that touch between lacquered nails on dainty hands and the compensating thickness of brown Venezuelan prime making chocolate out of every expression of a trim moustached face.
The bar houses stools with older gentleman, murmuring to one another or the passing Bartenders who shell out drinks between stories of Jazz ballads heard back in the seventies and blues bands that would rip out the eardrums of these foppish pansies at their tables.
Gerald, the Hired Help, is a man at the door, greeting Martin (3 years for Armed Robbery, at San. Penn, up county. The owners liked Martin's scars and bulk. It gave their club that seedy sensation without the grime to make it disgusting) with a familiar handshake and a chin-up grin. Gerald is down the stairs and eyeballing Luce for what could only be a few moments.
Then he's back up the stairwell, his hand on his cellphone, a nod passed to Martin with the ringer playing for the other side.
And somewhere across the City, a man's features pinch into a scowl and a slow method of breath has Gerald swallowing slightly on the other side. Waiting for orders.
"Stay put until I arrive. Then you and the rest of the boys take the night off. I've arranged for Fong's to supply any of you not looking for family tonight." Gerald's relief is almost palpable, his excitement a close second as he offers a
"Thanks Mr. Grimm."
Before, hanging up and dialing another number. A party to organize.
* * * * *
He descends the stairs ten minutes later, his jacket doffed and handed to a coat check girl, who receive little more than a glance and a strong tip. He is draped in the fine press of black and white, just shy of being a tuxedo of ancient fashion. His goatee is trimmed and his hair allowed to grow to half an inch. The tie is something thin, loose and unravelled to either side of his neck, the jacket unbuttoned. His hands move to his sleeves, to undo the cuffs, flare them out from thin wrists while hands flex through some tension.
His jaw misaligns, hand rising to grasp his chin and push off to one side, the crackle of vertebrae lost in the sounds of the lounge room. He approaches the bar, despite the crowd, flicking out a small sheet of paper pulled from Martin's own fingers, the promise of possible work in the future and a suggestion of 'leniency' doing much to grease Zazh's entry. Zazh's gaze traverses the lounge only a few moments, to localize the table Gerald had mentioned over the phone. Then, a slight snort off his nostrils, he leans into the bar; flicks two fingers at the Bartender-
"A deadman hung."
The Bartender blinks and leans forward slightly, an amused grin on his features.
"You mean a deadman hanged?"
To which the reply is a feral gaze and a flicker of a sneer.
"No. A Deadman hung. As in a shot of grey goose, a splash of gin, a swirl of grenadine and some tobasco sauce, you pretentious little university shit. Do it without the lip or comments at that. You'll earn tuition quicker."
The stool is ignored, Zazh turning off the bar, leaning against it to regard the singer with a deep breath and something like consternation about his features. Elbows on the rail, lower jaw thrust slightly forward, the bare of teeth dancing just slightly in view.
LuceSomehow, the light in the place conspires to find her. Something about her hair, the gleaming fineness of it. Or the sweep of bones beneath her skin; the wide set eyes, prominent cheekbones. The tapering jaw. Or just the way she holds herself, her chin ever so slightly lifted, her narrow little shoulders straight and as broad as she can make them, even as she allows her torso to sink back against the cushioned bench, in that vaguely broken down, hipslung posture, her spine a concave rather than convex curve. Emphasizing her boyish litheness rather than her modest feminine charms.
Dressed in a loose, mod, sixties-style mini-dress, high-necked and long-sleeved, the bold print ending neatly in bands of black at the cuffs and collar, with little rows of white buttons studding each. Over this, a sleek little leather jacket, lambskin, with an asymmetrical cut, fitted slim to her narrow frame. The dress is astonishingly short. Calf-high black boots, the leather fitted, supple, a near-match for the lambskin jacket. Her hair is loose, a bit windswept, and her make-up modest. Darker around the eyes, with nothing more than a pale pink gloss to enhance her lips.
The man with her is dressed in jeans and a sports coat over a Clash t-shirt. His hair is longer, loose, the sort of blond-beginning-to-gray that some men get in their thirties. He sits with an ankle on the opposite knee, while she sits with her long legs cross. Ever-so-precisely so, given the brevity of the dress, the dark leather of her boots grounding her in the space.
They're sitting casually close, chatting away. Drinks on the table in front of them. What looks like a gin and tonic for her, against a Scotch, neat, for him. When Zazh arrives, they are engaged in an animated conversation, sitting casually close. She is smoking, careful to lift her chin and face away from him every time she exhales, though she gestures with the cigarette as he protests - something.
He has eyes only for her; cannot seem to tear his gaze away from, except occasionally to spot-check the singer in the center of the room, when the woman's cuts through the animate buzz in the room. Luce, however, watches the lounge, the gleam of lights and drifting movement of its patrons, as much as she does him. More than she does him, settled back against the upholstered seat as if she were in some seat of power, and all this had quite been conjured up for her own enjoyment. She appears, by turns, bemused and doubtful and imperious.
That sense of bright animation goes still; is pulled back beneath her skin, subsumed underneath it all at once when she spots Zazh at the bar. Directly enough that she meets his gaze if he is watching her table, this alertness entering her body, enough that it pulls her spine forward from the embrace of the leather banquet, holding a lung full of smoke for the space of three extra heartbeats before she exhales, her now narrowed eyes astonishingly blue tonight, even at this distance.
The man next to her is mid-story; has slipped an arm around the spine of the seat behind her, though he is not quite touching her. She drops her gaze from Zazh and interrupts her companion with a question that has him pulling up the sleeve of his sportcoat to check a leather-banded watch wrapped around his left wrist. The gleam of a wedding ring on his left fourth finger catching the light with the gesture. Then she says something more pointed, stubbing out her cigarette in a half-full ashtray on the table in front of them.
He gives her this sharp look, caught between the want to be close and the substrate need to follow her direction. Sublimates it into a sort of vague anger that has him reaching out and draining that single-malt in a throat-peeling blur, then standing, tossing a question back at her that she answers with a neat little shrug and a pair of lifted brows, her pale eyes cutting from him, in the foreground, to Zazh, in the background, as he turns to go.
ZazhZazh is not a watcher.
What seems like years ago, he had commented to her about Observation. About her attention to scrutiny and detail, licking clean a person's hollows and rough bits until all that was left was the unerring truth. The gut-checked honesty of them. He had admired that then, probably even now and thus one of the reasons he seems intent on disregarding her table. Her company. Their conversation.
He does not watch them. Not this moment. Not the moment it takes for their conversation to turn and her demeanour to drift from acceptably masked to distinctly perturbed. The man climbs to his feet in a sharp huff, draining what's left of his drink in the process and Zazh-
-Regards the singer.
His features have lessened. Slackened some since his arrival, the tones of the woman by the ivory, drifting out to capture his attention. Each note he hears, and he must struggle at times for the crowd blitzes with it's laughter and it's nearby conversation. Every so often, there is the flare of something on his face as the calamity of something contained within, threatens. Burgeons. At once, a few times in the space of heartbeats, he is hissing for the garish couple to his right to
"Be. Silent."
Before returning his attention to the Singer and her talents. Her eyes are closed, bashfully so, leaning into the microphone as if for support, the swoon of her voice a drifting thing that reminds me...
...his features fall. Just slightly. A vague sadness that that is at once unreadable to those of the crowd but unmistakable under a glance of scrutiny. It haunts him and the air about him, fingers lifting to toy with the dangle of the neck tie's strip off his right shoulder.
"Sir?"
The drink arrives from the Bartender, who places it carefully upon the bar. If the Kid seems non-chalant it's because Zazh has been waiting for several minutes now. Perhaps a lesson to be taught, for the older man's earlier commentary. Zazh doesn't bother to turn, leaning slightly to one side to pluck up the cylindrical glass with it's reddened contents, a bill left on the bar and a pause for a phrase-
"-bring me back the change."
Though his eyes never leave the singer. Whatever anger had been there, drained clear with the first sip of the drink.
LuceHe is going home to his wife. Hands in the pockets of his jeans, fingers curled forward into not-quite-fists, the solid frame of a former college athlete going so slightly to seed beneath the sports coat and the carefully chosen Clash t-shirt. There are little tweed patches on the elbows of his jacket, which Zazh will not see, which Luce noticed earlier in the evening, when it began elsewhere, a hum of canapés and discussions of Aquavit and tenure track and publishing guidelines, whether someone might revive the Paris Review, the latest gossip straight from last month's MLA convention and the sort of parallels Justinian's struggles in the Balkans might have to -
- noticed them earlier, but not now, not even when the man's back to the front door has him cutting across her line of sight to Zazh. Whom she watches with a living directness that is unabashed, from across the room. There's a supple lilt of her little chin just once, a curious curve to her glossed mouth as she cuts a thoughtful glance across the crowd toward the singer, sharpening her senses to pick up the trace of the song through the murmurs of a half-hundred conversations, each of which is all the clearer with that broadening.
Then her gaze drifts back to Zazh, watching, considering, thoughtful - the spasm of anger, the aura of sadness haunting the space around him. Her legs are uncrossed, by now, both feet on the warm wooden floor. With a brief glance toward the door as her companion exits, she stands, smoothing the hem of the minidress carefully, retrieving gloves and bag from where they were tucked beneath the tables.
Luce cuts an easy, thoughtless path through the crowded lounge. Sinuous and sure, ever-aware of movement of bodies around her. Walking with the sort of purpose that has others giving her right of way, consciously or subconsciously. Turning just so to watch her for a heartbeat or three before someone or thing tugs them back into whatever they were doing before she drifted by. That is how easily she insinuates herself beside him, shunting aside the stool a middle-aged businessman abandoned in her favor without quite knowing why with a supple movement of her narrow hip. Leaning across the bar, quietly, to order another gin and tonic, pale eyes fast on his profile as he listens to the song.
Zazh"Vanessa Leblanc."
It is some half a minute of the crooning maiden on the stage, tickling piano keys before Zazh deigns to greet Luce and this is how he does it. With the name of a Jazz Singer from the sixties, did Luce know her musicology. His gaze remains on the singer, the lines of his features suddenly ageing him a decade deeper than he was a moment ago. A lifetime ago. His eyes follow her smallest of steps, gentlest of sways and he breathes with the most shallow of breaths. Like his greatest hope was never to interrupt her.
"A well-aged voice. You heard it each time as if it were brand new to your ears and yet each note was this familiar taste. This touch of ebony, in a white white room." His voice is soft. Husky with emotional content that hits the edge of his lips and evapourates there. His eyes are uncertain, darting and quick.
"She smiled-" A timorous thing, his lips curving upward just slightly "-and you felt the warmth of it from across rooms. Painted in the little niche of your mind you gladly carved out for just...just you and her voice. Turned audiences into a couple. Each person was just with her. Just the two of them, at a small booth, listening to heartache and smiling all wistful about it." He breathed in, deeply then. Through the nostrils, inflating his chest which pushes out slightly against the ivory buttons of his white shirt.
"Not a day went by I did not cherish every hint of her I received. Every little mention or word or suggestion of a story told, right up to her end." He 'hmmms' quietly, the sound lost in the thrum of the conversations.
"Jazz singers." He smiles. Large and genuine, leaning off the bar quite suddenly to applaud, loudly, the sound infectious enough to capture the audience with it, who join in with a shade more politeness and a shade less enthusiasm, as the girl on the stage winds down her song and smiles demurely at the crowd around her. The Piano man shuffles a few sheets around in turn for the next song.
"I told you not to make me look for you." Something hard there, though his face is softer still. Not as much as it was in that honest (and that is what it was, honest) moment ago, but still soft and beginning to dive back into the Zazh he always is. Leaning back against the bar once more, his drink plucked up from the counter.
LuceThe bartender brings her gin and tonic quickly; sets it quietly on the bar behind him. She has an elbow on the wood, her bag hanging loosely from her opposite shoulder, and her body is turned toward him; cheated toward him. When the drink arrives she uncurls her forearm just enough to enfold the tall glass, sparkling, laced with a slice of lime. Otherwise she is still, posture hipslung, pale eyes softening from watchful to something else, rapt, curious, nameless as he expounds on the voice of Vanessa Leblanc.
Just once, her eyes leave his profile; cut outward, steady, direct, to fix on the singer in the center of the room. The way she leans into that microphone stand as if it were an old lover; the way she croons, eyes closed as if there was just one other person in the room.
She says nothing; does not interrupt him, not even with one of her throat-caught murmurs of agreement. Just the steady rhythm of her breathing, quiet that, and the lingering gaze, so direct, so arrested by this unexpected soliloquy that the touch of her eyes - on his mouth as he smiles, dropping to his chest as he takes in that deep breath - feels near-physical.
When he applauds, she unwinds her arms from the bar and joins in. Adds a bravi as if this were the Paris opera, and not a fake speak-easy in a basement somewhere in the Mission. That's when she looks away from him at last, watching the singer as she gives that smile, demure, perhaps a touch surprised that the song won through the Friday evening crowd to earn more than the usual smattering of vague applause from those closest to the stage.
That's where she is the iron enters his voice, and she goes - oh, alert, still through the shoulders, this sharp, widening gesture that has her cutting a weaving glance back to him, breathing shallower now, a certain tautness clear in every line of her frame.
"You did." She breathes out, wary gaze affixed to his face, her narrow frame held apart from him. Something experimental about her voice; matched to the wariness in her eyes. "I was - " here, a pause, her eyes cutting away from him, back out to the crowd. Face a pale wash above the dark collar. "I was angry with you. I didn't - "
And a sharp glance back, as he leans back and picks up his drink. "Will you forgive me?"
Zazh"You being angry is hardly reason for disrespect."
His eyes finally find her. Not the shape of her or the dress or attire, but Luce. As if his gaze were plucking apart each mask and each facade she can quickly and hastily raise. The flicker of something along his lips is dangerous and a threat in the smallest of expressions, brows arched just slightly enough to give his gaze a directness to match her arrested own of a moment ago.
"You wish to be angry, you confront me. You stand your ground, you shape your will and you speak." A sharp clap of a command then, enough to gain the momentary attention of the bartender who had been lingering nearby. He seems almost ready to step in a moment and pay Luce the courtesy of a 'Is there a problem here?' before Zazh's gaze finds him. Expectant and defeating. His jaw is clenched. His gaze...unrivalled. It is a hint, threat and a suggestion. The Bartender defers back to a customer, who's looking for a beer.
"I'll abide many things but not a coward. Not a wretch, hiding in the shallows of the desperate for strength." It is obvious his words are for the man that left her a few minutes ago. He turns toward the stage once more, as if in search of something calming, hand rising to unbutton the first on his shirt. A haphazard thing, it takes a moment to undo, rough in the handling, breath a flash of heat that escapes his thinned lips, which press firmly together a moment later.
"Forgiveness."
He says it as if trying it on for the first time in...ages. Like an old pair of pants he had worn years ago, during a more innocent and naive age. He rolls his tongue around in the balloon of a cheek, before turning toward her again, head tilted to one side, gaze a scrutiny. A dissection.
"That would imply a level of regret on your part. Hardly something I would say is familiar in you. It would also demand a certain level of leniency in me and I-" A chuckle, mirthless and sardonic "-am generous but hardly a lenient creature, so..." A heartbeat, His eyes narrow, a fraction.
"I suppose that is a no. At least until you can offer me something more than some...moral regret that frankly, does not exist." He sups at his drink, eyeing her over the rim.
"Think hard. Take a moment if you need it. I'll decide whether I need Crosby to bring the car around or not, based on your answer."
LuceThere are a half-dozen masks or more she can raise in the space of a heartbeat. The vamp, the ingenue, the scholar, the harpy, the queen. Her eyes are still beneath them all, though ingenue is closest to the surface. Some shadow of the girl-she-once-was deeply cast over her tonight. The clothes, perhaps. The way her loose blond hair softens and frames the sharper sweep of her features; the softness of her make-up, the nude lips, the way the shadow intensifies, electrifies the saturated blue of her pale gaze.
The half-dissolved clots of memory of the man who blood bound her and ruled her through it for too many years.
There's a remoteness to her gaze, pricked and unsettled, as he continues, her attention cutting toward the bartender as he nearly intervenings, her fine little mouth pressed together, that sharp look winging back toward Zazh, his profile as he fixed the man with a threatening gaze that has him swallowing that instinct to intervene, busying himself with the necessaries of his work.
"Hiding in the shallows - " this she spits back at him, her own jaw set, her voice low, not venomous, but taut with offense that stiffens her frame through the spine. "You think I was hiding. If I was hiding, Zazh. You would never find me. The man in the museum. The man in the bookstore. Do you imagine I don't - "
The speech cuts off abruptly; she draws herself back, looks away from him, out toward the murmuring crowd, the moving currents in it, the background noise that has snatches of conversation drifting back to her, expansive and organic.
"I thought - " back to him now, her eyes, gaze darting over his features, dropping as he unbuttons his shirt roughly, rising back to his thinned mouth. Her own thins in response, almost reflexively. This time, she does not look away. Her voice is low, rapt with subsumed anger. "I thought you wanted to see me. To see me. I showed you something I show no one, and you spit it back at me, entirely altered.
"I thought - " Here, her voice drops a minor third. "You realize, in that moment, I was more yours than I ever was his." She draws a breath sharply inward, a shunting disappointment, shadowed, chasing its way across her eyes even as she hardens her mouth against it, looking away from him again, beyond his shoulder, her pale eyes narrowing with distance as her attention is captured by the light gleaming across the marching rows of top shelf liquor bottled on display behind the bar.
"I did not mean to make you chase me. I threw the phone away in a fit of anger." Here, she steps closer to him, rising so slightly on the balls of her feet, leaning forward so that her mouth finds his ear, her teeth still sharp behind her softly glossed lips. She braces herself against him, one hand on his flank, the other on the bar behind him as she curves upward and forward, insinuating herself into his space. "Do whatever it is you mean to do to me, Zazh. You're going to, anyway. Just tell me what mask you want me to wear, ahead of time. And I'll wear it so prettily, you'll never see the fucking seams."
Zazh(...On principle)
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )
ZazhAnger.
The sort of thing that crashes out of her with blistering honesty. The sort you wear when the white flag, the olive branch, the parlay dinner fall to pieces in your hand and you're left with little recourse. The blood rises in her throat and speech (Hah!) and crashes off her tongue with little venom and something like the seeds of disappointment and perhaps...
...Lesser men might crumple. Better men might finally catch sight of the white flag. The best of men might lay her knuckles in their hands and know regret for the first time in an age. They might gaze into her eyes and find something heart-felt and ceaseless. Something precious and momentarily yearning. They might feel a softening at the brief taste from someone who has been so very...sheltered and closed off and-
-and Luce. Is just that good.
Zazh does not turn his head to meet the pressure of her, almost ethereal in it's weight and yet arresting and demanding of no less than full attention with it's magnitude and message. He takes in each word she speaks with the same marbled expression, as if he had been carved that way and incapable of all else. He pins the air before him with that gaze, something heavy and vicious and withdrawn.
She occupies his space, a gesture as divisive of the crowd around them as the Singer's voice from minutes ago and at once his left hand rises from between where they are pressed together to touch knuckles just below her chin. A slight tap, for her attention.
"Go outside to the curb. Crosby will be there."
He lifts off the bar, disengaging himself from her presence, gaze falling on the singer at the Stage, who is singing boldly through some lyrics about love for the wrong man, the spotlight a low glare across her brow and the sweeping waves of her lush black hair. Zazh unbuttons one more down, gentler this time, moving through the crowd toward her stage without a backward glance.
* * * * *
Crosby is there.
Martin, the bouncer would generously offer a hand out toward Luce, a gruff smile on his features to assist her up the last of the stairs, whose concrete has been chewed and gnawed into crumbling divots that threaten many a figure, descending. Crosby is there, across the sidewalk, draped in a thick black coat, with false black fur at it's high collar and lowest hem, the cuffs decorated in similar fashion. Her hands house that same odd pair of knitted purple sleeves, tucked around thumbs and fingers and her feet, still those same dock martens, peeking out from below the coat's long length.
Her ears are decorated by brilliant dangling emeralds, cast in silver fitting. A filigree of abstract shape. Her hair is topped up in a simple, strayless bun, while her nose is decorated by a pair of thick framed glasses through which she would stare at Luce almost invitingly. Her smile is broad, vaguely amused and she stands infront of the Sedan with comfortable airs worthy of the relaxed and expectant.
"There you are, Toots." A beam of a smile. No teeth. "...You look nice. Love the dress."
LuceThere is a certain spasm in her cheek as he lifts her chin, that faint tap of his knuckles beneath the ridge of her tapered jawbone. Her mouth tightens, and she lifts her head with a certain spare, regal poise, her breathing sharp, her eyes like smoke.
She remains still at the bar for a moment longer as he disengaging himself and steps away, her attention dropping to her drink, untouched, not even the illusory impression of her gloss to mar the fineness of the crystal. When she leaves, she leaves behind a twenty dollar bill tucked beneath the glass, shooting another glance at the bartender, watching the way he watches her as she goes, pulling on her leather gloves, hand by hand, finger by precise finger as she crosses the bar to the front door.
Outside, she tugs the edges of her leather jacket togther, zips the asymmetrical collar half-way up while she climbs those crumbling steps to street levels, and reaches out to accept the last hand offered by Martin, the bouncer, returning his gruff smile with a hauntingly spare one of her own.
She has her bag tucked firmly against her body, and walks toward the sedan with a certain energy, a certain living purpose, as if she meant to pass it by entirely. But Crosby does not have to step out into her path; oh, no. Tonight she follows direction quite suitably, giving the driver a demure curve of her mouth that stands in for a smile. "Burberry. Fall 2012. Should be out in stores at the beginning of the summer, but if you're enamoured of it," waiting for the driver to open the door, to fold her tall frame into the interior, carefully given the brevity of the dress. " - well, tell me your size. Perhaps I can get you a preview."
Zazh"Nah. The comment was appreciative."
The door is indeed opened for Luce, Crosby, plucking it aside to allow the taller blonde entry without hesitation or suggestion of catty airs. Whatever is to be said about Crosby, she is nothing but honest. Straight-forward and genuine.
"Not envious."
The door would slip shut behind Luce, almost gently really, leaving the young blonde to stand outside, facing the club. Waiting, it would seem.
* * * * *
It would be a number of minutes. Luce would have the backseat to herself, plush as it ever has been, minted with the vague smell of tobacco, clinging to the walls and ceiling. At the front of the broad space, the back of the cab's seating is a small host of seamed cubbies. Should curiosity garner Luce's attention during that ten minute interval of waiting, she would find a pair of glasses in one, a single flattened decanter of well aged Cognac in another and in the third, the strangest looking cigars. A midnight black, dusty like ash, almost delicately wrapped like parchment. Slender and short, just barely a half inch longer than a pinky finger.
Should curiosity be curbed, so be it. Ten minutes would come and go with Crosby waiting outside patiently. Then a shadow would darken the window, Zazh's presence felt as much as heard, the murmuring conversation drifting through the glass, trickling through to her heightened hearing.
"Rough night?" From Crosby.
"Mmm, nostalgic." From Zazh. Hints of that earlier melancholy. Low. Distracted.
"Huh." From Crosby again.
"What?"
"Don't think I've seen you so wistful before."
"Do not get used to it."
"Funny."
The car door would swing open just then, caught by the sleeved hand of Crosby. Zazh would bend and tuck himself into the seat a moment later, pulling the tail of his long coat in with him as Crosby leaned in to close the door behind him. The Man is recollected, even calm as he settles into the interior of the car, allowing the softness behind to embrace him comfortably.
Crosby climbs into the Driver's seat a moment later, clipping the door shut. A glance into the rearview mirror and Zazh is motioning with the flick of gloved fingers. A second later and the divider screen slides up and clicks into place, separating the pair from the cab. A few seconds after that and the engine hums to life, the car peeling out into traffic a moment later.
His attention drifts out the window briefly, regarding the city passing by for a moment.
"There are a half dozen ways to hide."
A clarification on their conversation, it would seem.
"...Another half dozen that are so effective, we call them by other names. Yet still a few more that no one would ever consciously admit to, unless dragged to the grave and even then, the bravest would defy to the reaper's scythe and beyond and even then...I can tell you there are at least two more ways beyond even the Mortal knowing, to hide even further. At least."
He sighs, through his nostrils, a deflation of sorts that begs resignation over exhaustion. His shoulders do not slump and his attention does not drift. He remains in that window and the landscape that drifts by.
"You thought to show me a dozen things about yourself that I supposedly wanted. Which could have brought a thousand other things in turn. You presented me with a Collectible you that had been so many things, both...proud and fallen. Weak and elegant. Bold and defiant and eventually-" A chuckle "Yes even, eventually, victorious."
And finally his gaze turns around toward her, narrowed slightly, mouth thinned but curved upward.
"You even thought to tell me it could never be like that again."
Heartbeats stretch onward between them. She can hear his. Steady and strong in his chest. Transferred through the plush interior or simply on the edges of her enhanced hearing.
"...And yet each of these is from a creature, by a creature so used to being what she is...that she would measure every comfort and joy as some quiet little defiance to those times she endured before. Everything you do."
He leans forward, slowly and at ease, to pull open one of the cubby's, plucking out one of those short black cigars and slipping the cubby hole closed again. His fingers are delicate around the length, aware of it's fragility even as his other hand dips into the jacket to pluck free a polished zippo lighter.
"I do not want the remains of you. I do not want the fuck-doll that entertains herself in the shadow of the slave. I do not want the Queen or the wretch. I do not want the professional escape artist and I do not want the sweet little thing at the centre of it all, more memory than real." He lights the cigar with a quick tickling puff. The smoke...drifting off in an alarming and azure blue.
"Just as I do not want to own you like he never did. I want what is mine. What will be mine. A new creature that shall want for no other thing. You are a Chrysalis in waiting. When that happens, I will be there to collect." A pause, glancing back at her again through the ringlets of cerulean. "As impossible as a dream as that may be."
LuceThe weather is cooler tonight. Not cold. San Francisco never seems to get truly cold, but there's a chill, damp bite to the air that begins to bloom San Francisco's customary fog. Left to her own devices for ten minutes in the sedan's backseat, Luce does sort through the cubbies, the Cognac, the glasses. The small cigars, one of which she withdraws to hold beneath her nose and inhale the scent, an open breath, deep enough to taste the tobacco on the back of her tongue. This occupies her for no more than thirty, perhaps sixty seconds, and then she has tipped head head aslant, her temple against the cool glass, left leg moving sharply with a spare, liminal sort of energy. She stops it with the firm push of her own palm against her thigh, attention drifting outward, watching Crosby's vigil, the shift and swirl of the evening crowds with a distracted air of tension.
At the three minute mark, she unzips her bag and pulls out a small book, perhaps fifty pages and no larger than her palm, which she thumbs through restlessly. The interior light is watery, covered in patterned shadows shed by a trio of streetlights and security lights outside, sharply cut through by the darker immediacy of Crosby's shadow. Still, Luce pauses once, on page 27, reading a poem whose introduction is enough to arrest her (arrest her) attention, fix it on the page, but whose denouement has her shutting the book with that same restless energy and returning it to her bag, a certain sour note in her mouth.
Eight minutes.
Tension bleeds into the frame of her shoulders again, when she spots him emerging from the stairs leading down to Slide. Prickles along her spine, has her sitting forward, her head moving around her temple like a fulcrum, swinging. Then she straighens, sitting forward when his shadow joins the driver's against the dark frame of the comfortable sedan and she shifts her body as necessary to allow him room, moving with that sure and supple grace.
But - "Everyting I do - " - a note of incredulity has her sitting forward, erect, her spine arrow-straight after its boneless curve. The sound is bitten off near the end; swallowed with a huff that insinuates itself into her body.
"You're quite fond of definitions," she returns, her voice low and rich, her eyes remove again. The anger gone, stripped out of her voice. " - aren't you. I'm not. I don't see why I can't be all those things, at once. Both more and less. And you, you seemed to enjoy them all. Some more than others. A Chrysalis in waiting. I've already been reborn, Zazh. More times than you can count."
Her legs are crossed at the knee, the body language narrow and feminine. At some point - perhaps while reading - she tucked her hair behind her ear on the right, revealing a one of a pair of dangling silver earrings swinging with the movement of her head as she leans back at last, reasing the back of her skull in the embrace of the plush interior, allowing the vibration of his voice, the distinct, distant sensation of his heartbeat, close, to imprint itself on her senses.
In that moment, she closes her eyes. Allows herself to hear the beating of his heart inside her own body; the echo of it in her inner ears; the way it imposes a kind of immediate rhythm on the dead, formless silence of her frame, usually mediated only by the steady regularity of her breathing.
Then something catches her attention; has her tipping her head back against the headrest, her hair fine as silk against the leather. Watching him through her narrowed, just cracked gaze. "If you're not mortal," a sharp pause, her eyes narrowed against the blue smoke from those cigars. Which have her arrested, again, her attention rising to following a drifting ringlet - " - are you going to tell me what you are?"
LuceWillpower
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Zazh-More times than you can count.
"-Still hiding."
His gaze falls on her, body shifting in the plush leather, turning just slightly to forward his body in her direction, shifting so that he is not turned from her. The seat will not allow a full frontal perspective,but she has as much of him as he is able at this point. The cigar plucks again at his lips, a small puff as each before has been, as if whatever was within them were a heady thing, thick and throat-strong. Only enough for the smallest of bites.
Truth be told, Luce is picking up the strangest of...sensations. Her nostrils flare around the first hint of that smoke and at first, there is no scent simply...colours. Flashes of that azure blue, skate against her retina and haze Zazh's features with sudden infirmity of sight. Brief flashes of failing vision that cloud spots and crystalize others. The sharpness of her senses, gobbles at the air as if tastes could be-
The memory of chocolate, washes over her tongue. Smooth, dark and impermanent, that addictive departure to the swallow, forcing the tongue into the grooves of the teeth in search of more
-re-defined. Or remembered as clearly as her own heartbeat. It is a momentary thing, a quick blink dismissing the haze with sudden, even vicious alacrity. Her senses re-sharpen and the smell of the Tobacco, haunted by mint and chocolate and...something else. Darker, loamy. It fades slightly, to a more manageable hum. The interior begins to cloud slightly under the cigar's prominent and whorling exhaust. It also seems to be vanishing with startling speed, already at the half-way stub point, despite Zazh's conservative tokes.
"Mortal is a complicated term." He settles into place once more, sighing a stream of smoke out across her knees and thighs. "Something better left for people who recognize definition and it's values, methinks."
Another pause, another quarter inch of the cigar vanishing to a single light lipped puff, the ash flaking off the end and almost...evaporating before it strikes his pant legs. His lap is clean, even.
"That would be a No. Not you." A flicker of his free hand at her, eyes dancing briefly across the svelte frame. "Not her."
"-I will listen if you're ready to begin divulging your own little secrets, though." If he seems non-chalant about that offer, it's probably because he isn't expecting anything short of a usual quip. Something sultry, flirtatious and vaguely insulting. It's in the vague haunt of that smile of his. His gaze leaps out the window, as if expecting to see something.
LuceHe turns toward her; her gaze drops, following first the line of his undone tie, then the buttons down the front of his crisply white tuxedo shirt. Beginning to come undone. She follows suit so minutely it is nearly imperceptible, not so much turning towards him as she is drifting into his orbit. Like a stray comet flirting with a circuit around some forgotten star.
"Do you really want me to confess - " her voice is intent, precise, the volume low enough that her words are more physical than aural. Quickening near the end, her mouth curved just upward in a way that, too, imprints itself on physical sense of the words. Rounds them into a question that could almost be real.
Her eyes are hooded, though. Distant. They close once, and she inhales the smoke through both nose and mouth with this sharp sort of seeking breath, held at the end; and then another, sudden and deeper as the strange sensations enfold her senses. Then her mouth closes, she breathes out for the first time in five or ten of his heartbeats, dropping her chin and looking distinctly away from him as she exhales. Holding herself still as she both savors the sensations and strives to master her treacherous senses. And the blood that holds her sway to the rich, half-forgtten pleasures against her soft palette.
"And deprive you of the distinct pleasure of stripping them from me." That's low; her eyes on his profile as he glances out the window, watchful, expectant, are heavy-lidded, but the light behind them in razor fine. There's a still sort of insinuation in her tone, just as he expects, though it is otherwise nearly flat, quite as nonchalant as he. "Zazh, if you want me to stand naked before you, you have to take off my clothes with your own hand."
Zazh"If I want you at anything, you'll be it. Do it. Say it or scream it. Immediately or eventually." There is little sexual in that sentence, a grip that serves to crack only a single knuckle, flexing beside the window, his elbow resting in the slightly curved groove of the ledge within which the door's opening handle resides. His gaze does not find her again, remaining outside in the world as if it were somehow an easier management. A more capable fit. Or perhaps whatever has kept him busy in these last couple of weeks weighs upon him.
The cigar all but winks out of existence on the next puff, a bloom of azure smoke creeping from his nostrils and mouth, thrust into the cabin air with a sharp exhale. The window rolls down on Zazh's side and the visible vapour is sucked free of the interior in wafts and yawning clouds. A bit of the night's noise, creeps in through that crack while the man himself settles into the plush leather comfort of the seating.
The car peels onward, into San Francisco's night.
* * * * *
Their arrival is a sudden departure from a nominal speed limit. Crosby's driving is safe and cautious and the speeds with which she takes bad roads, poor drivers and sudden departures from hazardous situations a lulling prospect that can fool the body and the mind into ignoring their whereabouts. So when the car comes to a slow halt along the slanted curbside of Russian Hill, it jolts Zazh out of his rather distant reverie and pulls his head around to regard the housing units outside Luce's window.
His hand peels the door open and he steps out onto the street, tucking gloves into the pocket of his jacket, his tie snapped from around his neck and slipped into the same pocket a moment later. The door slips shut and he moves around the vehicle's front, leaning in to murmur quietly at Crosby just a few spare words.
Then, he is stepping past the sidewalk, onto the threshold between the concrete slabs of public property and the stone walkway leading up to a four story complex, that looks as if it was carved out for entrepeners, celebrants of architecture and a brief blitz in fashionable design. Nothing but White stucco, dark green railings and towering glass windows, covered in various shades of Chocolate, Arterial and Onyx drapes.
His keys are already dangling on his fingertips, as he awaits the slender Blonde's own exit from the vehicle proper.
"Follow me." Then he's turning and proceeding up the walkway toward the front security doors; a pair of glass plated dividers, the front opening easily under his grip, while the latter requires the flash of an electronic key over a simple gray mat jutting from the electronic keycode pedestal where the intercom hovers for visitors.
The door chimes open and he pulls the second barrier of entry, leading into a marble and white plaster lobby, open motioning for Luce to enter first before he steps in himself, pausing long enough to ensure the door is closed behind them. Their shoes would clip and clock sharply on the polished salt and pepper flooring, the four large support pillars of rustic umber, jutting up two to either side, acting as a funnel toward the pair of chrome elevator doors.
Zazh pauses long enough to press one of the buttons, a flare of red light erupting. A hand rises to begin the process of peeling each of the buttons on his shirt aside, the other hand slipping the keys into his pant pocket.
He's humming as they wait. Something low, in both volume and notes. A droning thing that could just as easily be the imperial march from Star Wars, as it could be the Funeral procession medley.
The elevator arrives with a hollow chime and opens into a deep red velvet lined interior, separated by bands of that same dull chrome metal, from which jut the simplest of railings. He again, waits for Luce to step inside before joining her and turns in place, just briefly to flick a finger into the button for the third floor. The doors chime once more and begin to roll closed on whispering ball bearings.
He regards her as the doors seal, the last button undone with a negligently flip of a hand. The white tank top below it all a simple tucked into his pants. He nods, chin up, toward the wall behind Luce.
"Put your hands there, legs slightly apart."
"
LuceHis response in the smoke-laced dark, (azure smoke, drifting to nothing. Ash that does not fall.) has her stiffening once more. She stares at him, this flat look, her glossed mouth still and flat, her jaw set, as he turns back to the street. Holding herself apart, her gaze darkened by the shadows of the interior stark on his profile.
Eventually, she pulls away. Finds her own reflection in the opposite window, a ghostly sketch superimposed over the moving lights of the night-bound city. There's fog creeping up from the bay, creating oily halos around the streetlamps, turning the cityscape into an impressionistic version of itself. She shifts further away from him, until the window, the cool glaze of glass, fogs with the faint heat of her breath. Obliterating the pale reflection of her nose and mouth. Making that ghost-self mute, no more than dark eyes set in a white wash of a translucent face.
When the car pulls up to the curb, she casts a glance back at him as he exits, then slips out her own door, her bag tucked nearly, narrowly beneath her left shoulder. Her jacket half-zipped, subconsciously pulling her own leather gloves more firmly onto her slender fingers even as he tucks his into the pocket of his jacket.
Her body language is tight, narrow. She shoots Crosby a brief, sharp look as Zazh dangles his keys, takes in this deep sort of breath that moves her shoulders and sends the loose lines of her mini dress dancing around her lean frame. Her boots make a lean, solid sound on the sidewalk, the heels low and chunky, no more than an inch or two in height. Low enough that the long sweep of her gait is uninhibited, and he does not wait long for her. Just long enough for her to take in the building's façade with this lifting gaze, not precisely wide-eyed but taut with a subdural tension clear in every line of her frame.
"You miss her." Somewhere between the front door, amidst the sharp sound of their footsteps on the marble flooring. Luce's voice is low; the French accent more prominent, though never overwhelming. This, as she follows him. "I could find you another. Like her. Someone you'd - "
A sharp cut-off, her breathing all the more shallow against his droning hum. She holds narrowly to the straps of her bag with both gloved hands, allowing her gaze to drift upward, all around the interior of the lobby before her eyes return to the elevator counter, watching as it descends. Shoulders drawn inward.
"There's a student at Berkeley. A cellist. You would think it too mannered, I suppose. But the way she plays - Zazh. There's nothing mannered about it. There's a wildness in her; she dissolves into the music. Intimate and open at once. Like she's one with everything. When she draws the bow, it's like your nerves are her strings and she's drawing it across your spine.
"I could - "
The elevator arrives, the chime cuts off her - plea? offer. Negotiation. She enters; walks all the way to the back, so that her back is against the opposite corner as the doors begin to close. His direction has her go immediately, starkly still. Not breathing, not moving, flicking a narrow glance over him as he undoes the last button on his shirt.
"What are you doing." The question is flat and level. "Zazh - please." Another sharp glance and she's turning, haphazardly, watching him over her left shoulder. The right hand on the velvet wall, higher, the left closer to her body, elbow tucked over the bag dangling from her shoulder. The faintest flush of her pale cheek over the high dark collar of the dress, hair curling loose around it. "I - "
Zazh"-am over-reacting."
He steps into place behind her, crouching low enough to clap both hands on either leg. The boots first, fingers gliding to touch each seam and edge, momentarily satisfied as each is inspected by a calm and orderly ([i]performed a thousand times[/i]) frisk that travels up either leg, past the hemline of the dress which bunches around her hips briefly, cutting dangerous proximity along her pelvis and hips.
The dress is flipped back down a moment later, fingers gliding easily across the small of her back up to her shoulders and down again.
"There was a time, years ago, where I accidentally allowed my libido and penchant for over-confidence, to take in a young thing with big doe eyes and a sense of sweetness. Voice like honey, you see-" His hands wrap around her waist, pressing and clutching for the hidden, rise to cup each breast, curve 'round in the minor crevices in search of bra straps or slender alcoves.
"-she brought with her a video recording device, attached to a very slender microphone. Something I didn't discover until we were well into the foreplay point-" He moves his hands up to clutch at her neck, slip behind either ear and through her hair with a firm, if swift, discrimination.
"-I suppose I was lucky. She was young and eager and had forgotten to excuse herself quickly enough. The wire she was using snagged on a cufflink." He chuckles at the memory, a brief think across her right shoulder. His hand turns her around, not roughly, over swiftly, but with insistence, gaze falling from her features to her bag with a nod.
"A Student, doing a project piece. Journalists." He snorts. "Chances like that aren't ones I take as often any longer and usually, not without some semblance of security, but every now and then, I expose someone like you to a part of my world that I rarely expose people to. A compromise, maybe- the Bag, Luce..." He holds out a hand between them, separated as they are by nothing more than a few scant inches close to those red velvet walls.
"...but an acceptable one,"
LuceShe breathes out; these two short, sharp breaths, propelled by a certain contraction of her diaphragm. They'd be laughter, rueful, were they voiced. Instead, they are closer to the release of tension, steam from a boiler with a turn of the valve. The reassurance is enough for her to drop her chin and allow her eyes to drift back toward the velvet, but does nothing to ease the tension in her body; all the long muscles of her legs - her quadriceps, her hamstrings, her abdominals and obliques, the paraspinals - are contracted with tension so tamped down she quite nearly shakes with each breath that she takes as he performs his inspection. The tension eases slowly; by narrow turns. She seems to be breathing it out of her body as his hands rise, each breath she takes is deeper, ever deeper. Not relaxing, precisely, but allowing her to settle back into her body. To ease herself back into the usually boneless lines of her lean frame.
There's nothing in the boots except her feet. Nothing over the dress except the lambskin jacket, the leather so supple and fine it melts like butter under his searching hands. So fitted that there's room for neither pockets nor hidden seams, nor anything out of the ordinary.
Nothing under the dress except lingerie. Black lace boyshorts hugging the narrow curve of her hips. No bra, no hidden wires. No strange straps or stays, none of those mysteries. No holsters or cameras tucked anywhere. Nothing more than the jewelry he can see - a chunky gold ring on her right hand, and a pair of swinging silver earrings dangling from either ear.
The narrow line of buttons at cuff and collar of the dress. When he arrives at her hair and pushes his rough fingers efficiently into her hair she makes a noise of protest. The only resistance he encounters there is the hidden fixative of some hair product and the brief, threatening hiss - "Careful! if you pull out the curl - " - which suggests she has almost entirely returned to herself.
Such that when he turns her 'round again, she is remarkably pliable in his hands, moving with a sinuous, almost animal ease.
"I only have one video camera, Zazh." Luce smooths the lines of her disturbed dress down over her thighs, pulls the hem so that the drape lies as it should over her narrow torso. Continues, the dry tone still spiked with that edge of slowly easing fear. "If you'll recall, you gave it to me. I have no more desire to be taped at anything than you have."
She presses her shoulders back against the velvet wall when she completes the turn, maintaining that inch or two of distance between them, as if they were opposing magnets. A moment's resistance, her long fingers tightening around the strap of the bag in a way that makes the leather gloves she wears tonight creak audibly, before she breathes the moment out and hands it over.
The bag is larger than her evening clutches, black leather to match the gloves and jacket and boots. Within he will find a rather wicked looking switchblade tucked into an elegant little chased silver handle decorated in fleur-di-lis, cosmetics - a compact, lip gloss, mascara and the like - her cigarettes and a lighter, an iPhone, a slender chapbook of poetry, and a small wallet.
ZazhThey arrive on the third floor just as she is handing her bag over, the doors chiming open and holding there.
His hand digs about within the confines of the bag, a brief moment, features clouding slightly in...concern? worry? More like scepticism as he plucks out the switchblade and turns it over before his own eyes. The inspection is cursory, followed aptly by a gentle snort that is more reflex than actual conscious gesture. He drops the piece back into her bag and then plucks out the iPhone which he turns over as well, This, he glances up at her for, regarding her features a moment, thumb hovering over the activation button that will light up the screen.
Only to place the piece back into the bag, gentle enough to avoid damaging. The doors of the Elevator suddenly begin to close again and he reaches out casually to brush the air between sensors, which sends them scuttling back open, with an almost regretful, maybe even annoyed second chime and the glare of a red light from off the button console.
"Yes. I miss her."
He answers her finally, stepping off the Elevator with his hand still held out, hovering up against one of the sliding metal portals until Luce has stepped off as well.
"She was a marvel beyond anything the youth of today or the nostalgic of yesterday could hope to match. She carried herself both on and off the stage with a presence that was blinding." He proceeds down the hallway, stark whites and greys, intermingled to suggest sterility, perhaps even androgyny. The doors are white, trimmed and far apart, each decorated with a pair of simple silver italicised numbers.
"Blinding enough that you did not notice the cramped shuffle of her steps when she walked, due to arthritis or the slight clap of her gums around loose dentures. You couldn't even fathom the seam of her dark red wig or the veins shooting up past whatever high collar she chose to wore that night." He pauses then at door number 6. The keys make another appearance, jangling sharply before they are cupped and clasped, silenced like the hanged man. He stares at the door, or through it to somewhere else for a moment.
"Didn't matter. At all." That same little frown, less impugning. Wistful perhaps.
"It was the voice." The key slips into the lock on the plain silver doorknob and he turns with a gradual click. The lock goes once, followed smoothly by a second and third tumbling out of synch, higher on the door itself. One simple key turn and the various connected security measures, are thrown aside. Zazh pushes, the door heavier than it would appear judging by the amount of force he puts into the handle itself.
"Not a day goes by I don't regret our last necessities together."
The interior is a darkened hallway, short and filled with enough space to house a half dozen guests looking to remove their shoves. A mat is laid down, black and fuzzy, to collect debris from the bottom of outsiders footwear, while the mirrored door of a closet suggests a place for coats to be hung. Zazh avoids both, pushing on into the interior.
The hallway broadens out into a vast open space, the walls stretching off to the left to meet up with the broad windows which make up the West and North walls themselves. Pure glass, covered in fine black and pepper gray Venusian blinds, turned enoguh to block out most of the world, but for slender daggers of diffuse light coming in from off the street, cutting the apartment's various furnishings to pieces of shadow and dark.
Zazh walks across the floor, a sunken thing of twenty or more feet, leading up to a triplet of stairs. The space is empty, hardwood floors and houses no furniture or accessory beyond an unusable alcove presumably where a fireplace might have gone had he opted for such in the apartment's construction. The stairs lead up to a higher level where upon the furnishings sit;
A set of couches, fresh from some furniture magazine, complete with throw pillows of green and darker green, sits in the far left corner, just beside the drapes, turned inward a settled hungrily around a minute coffee table of black marble and mahogany. Beyond that, in the furthest corner, where the two windowed walls meet, a Grand piano sits, purest black and freshly gleaming under the daggers of light cutting through the blinds.
Beyond that even, a simple arm-chair of curving elegance. Leather, tortured red and near as soft looking as Luce's own jacket, sits facing a plethora of pedestals and cubed stands. Each is white and simple and atop most of them, is nothing to show or display. The walls are much the same, where blank spots and sections exist that may well have been housing hold overs for paintings or hangings of some sort, are likewise, empty and garish for it.
The single door is along the right wall coming out of the front hallway, closed and blending white with the wall itself, nothing but the door knob, a simple long handle curling in toward the door's centre, the only outstanding remark. Beyond that door and up the triplet of long stairs, a kitchen tucked into an alcove, nearly out of sight.
No TV graces the wall, no stereo system haunts the corners. Beyond some strange and familiar looking little statue sitting on one of the border pedestals in that cluster between the Piano and the kitchen counter top, the apartment looks barely lived in.
Zazh stands, hovering by that closed door to the right, He is plucking off his jacket, the blazer beneath that and the shirt that has been unbuttoned, loosening all in a layered tumble, clutched in one hand, the undershirt a stripped down version revealing shoulders and arms to the world. Nothing impressively cut or trim, the vaguest hint of muscle more to do with his manic lifestyle than any true approach to fitness.
He turns to regard her, jaw hung open slightly, head flicking toward the apartment almost suggestively. Cluelessly.
"Make yourself at home."
And then he opens the door, behind which is darkness. Black and pitch and vanishes inside, the door swinging mostly shut behind him.
LuceShe is watching him with this still, hooded gaze, as he sorts through the belongings in her bag. Turns over the little switchblade in his hand. The look flicks away from him just once, as the elevator beeps its annoyance over their delayed exit, then returns, more direct, steady, pale brows lifted over her shadowed eyes as his thumb lingers over the iPhone's reflective screen. Breath held for that spare moment, until he returns the phone to the bag.
There's a coil of chasing query that narrows her brows, curves the corners of her little mouth downward in a faint frown of inquiry. This sort of reflective, wary surprise clear in her eyes, which dance from his own, to the phone, and back again. She slips out of the elevator as he holds the door open for her, casting that same - searching glance over his features - her mouth still tucked into that thoughtful moue.
Listening to his praise of the singer as if listening were some active thing. This time, she does not interrupt. Does not impose some new narrative on his story, does not offer him some schoolgirl cellist or obscure but promising torch singer - as apologia or bribe, or substitute. She just makes a quiet noise of acknowledgment where appropriate, some low note underscoring the tale, spare as her body language, the framed shoulders, the careful, and tonight impossibly graceful precision with which she propels her lean body through the space.
Her eyes are everywhere; the empty apartment echoes with the sound of their footsteps, her own more solid than her usual heels, and the supple rhythm of their breathing. Her own is so regular again it could be a metronome, and feels - deliberate, mediated somehow, as if she were measuring time by the pace of her breathing.
Make yourself at home, he tells her. She favors him with another searching look, that still, spare sense about her, as if she had been carved somehow apart from the still, quiet air, the lancing shadows. The white, empty promise of a gallery as yet unfilled.
She does not respond. Not verbally, though a moment later the distinctive metallic run of a zipper being undone from collar to base. The soft whisper of leather, of silk against skin as she stretches her long arms and pulls the fitted jacket off her shoulders. Tucking it smooth over the spine of one of those modern couches, dropping the bag, too, if he has returned it to her, carefully onto the seat of the couch. She glances back once as he disappears into the darkness behind that door, turning not just her head but through the spine and hips in a way that sends the dress dancing around her thighs.
Now that he's gone, she tugs off her leather gloves, finger by slim finger, and drops them atop jacket (and bag), and begins exploring. Drifts past the alcoves where paintings and tapestries were meant to be displayed, circles the grand piano, her fingertips pale against its lacquered ebony finish, feeling the smoothing of the wood as she walks slowly around it, ignoring the keys in favor of the silence. Broken only by her boots on the floor, or the echo of her own breathing, a sound more internal than external.
She meanders through those empty pedestals next, until she comes to being human. There she stops, pauses, lifts a hungry hand to trace the yearning lines of the small clay sculpture. A grasping hand, an open mouth, the evident jut of a shoulder and hip struggling from formlessness into being.
"You - " in the silent apartment, her voice sounds dampened at first. Hushed. Too quiet even to her own ears. She lifts the volume, though not the tone, when she continues. " - you needn't have spent so much on it, you know. Much as I wanted it, had you asked, I would have given it to you."
Zazh"It wasn't a gift."
He speaks in opposition. Does much in opposition, to her own presence.
Luce seems to wander the apartment, affected by it's emptiness and lack of presence or personality. As if the interior design (or lack thereof) and the waiting dress-up blankness of it's decor were a hallmark suggestion of her own mood. An anticipatory invisibility meant to blend into the background and the landscape. Another piece left waiting for some sort of fitting.
Zazh steps free of what must be the Bedroom, climbing into the apartment as the abstract. His attire is a long robe of deep green. A forest of comfortable cotton to ward off whatever chill might seep through those windows at one point or another. Uncinched and yet closed enough to obscure the bare chest and abdomen beneath, his pants are a pair of simple track suit elastic, the cuffs pulled up to near knee height, left to dangle and obscure all but the ankles and bare feet which thump dully against the hardwood. He flicks an errant switch along the wall in passing, sending the entire apartment into a low lit frenzy of overhead lamps, tilted to throw their illumination across the ceiling rather than down into the eyes.
"The piece was suggestive of something I found intriguing, even alluring. I found myself captivated when looking at it and bought it out on impulse. I dare say I don't regret the purchase and would have gladly paid triple. The eagerness of the Gallery twits who sold it to me was a haggling chip I felt pleased with."
He echoes when he speaks but those after-sounds are pale and distant next to the boom of his voice. It thrums the walls and hallways, threads the pedestals and blank spots and cages itself in the unused kitchen with it's still plastic wrapped appliances sitting quietly on the counters.
He strides across the wooden floor, hands fiddling with an object, which comes into the light as he climbs the steps into the presence of the various pedestals. The gun, silver polished and well maintainced. Zazh's hands fit the bullets into their respective chambers as he halts in place on the opposite side of the Podium Garden, a dozen feet from Luce's own place near being human.
"To accept it from you would have emphasized it's value in relation to you, whereas, purchased, it now emphasizes the value of itself."
The gun clicks as the chamber reel slips shut. Zazh stares at Luce a moment longer, then down at the pedestal before him, where he sets the gun delicately to rest.
"...What exactly should I do with you?" He marches around the left most curve of the Podium Garden, proceeding toward the wall that separates Piano and 'art gallery'. His hand reaches out to press at some seam, a cupboard popping open and an internal light flashing to life, revealing the presence of clouded glassware and decanters.
"Killing you would prove a waste of all the resources and time I've put into this. Fucking you would be much the same. You've proven incapable of providing what I desire, as yet-" A brief glance back at that, a soft huff of amusement "-and yet show little sign of capability, honesty or use beyond some pretty bait for errant business men so...what then?"
A drink is poured and Zazh glances over his shoulder again to regard Luce, brow slightly furrowed.
"Should I make an effort to find out who you are? What you are? Dig ourselves a nice big hole to be buried in? Should I leave it alone and let you on your merry? Perhaps I should simply tell you to get out of my city and don't come back? Hmmm?" He sips at the dark brown liquid in the cylindrical glass, lips smacking gently after it's lowered.
"What exactly do I do with you?"
Luce"Do you measure things like that?" her pale hand falls away from the sculpture when he emerges from the bedroom, and she lifts her chin, her golden hair sweeping back from the sculpted line of her jaw, stray strands clinging to the ridges in the dark silk turtleneck she wears beneath the dress. A note of query in her voice, still spare, as her eyes find him unerringly. Dark until the light flares as he hits the switch, then sharply pale as her pupils contract abruptly with the sudden illumination. The edge of a smile on her mouth, her breath withheld. "By their cost. By the contract. I say, the work is the work is the work. Nevermind how I aquired it. From whom. For how much.
"Whether I negotiated for it, or charmed my way into it. Or - "
Her gaze is wide but steady on him, at least until she sees the dull silver snout of the gun, some glint from the corner of her eyes, some weight in her peripheral vision. Then, as if the weapon had some specific gravity, her eyes drop to the weapon, linger there. This tightening in her mouth, glossed lips gleaming closed against her dull teeth, a flash of something darker in her eyes.
Her eyes do not leave the gun until he sets it aside on a pedestal.
And even then, they linger. This wary, calculating reserve over something deeper and sharper.
"I could fill your empty walls with pieces like it. Or better, from my personal collection. But by your accounting - you wouldn't see one of them. Would you? Just my hand over them."
He can feel the living weight of her gaze on his back as he walks toward the cabinet and pours himself a drink, but when he casts that glance back over her shoulder, she's looking away again. Down at being human, this time, this faint frown knitted between her brows.
Then away, over at the gun. The black collar beneath her dress clings to the lines of her neck and shoulder, moves like a soft dark shadow with every breath. Frames the spare grace of her tapered jaw the way black velvet frames a diamond. She is in profile, the loose, curling coils of her hair tucked back behind her hear, the earring dangling, swinging with every breath and catching the reflected line in its mod curves and angles as is moves. She works her jaw, some clear line of tension obvious in the fixed joint, then steps around the pedestal, the dress swinging in a sweep around her highs, higher, so slightly, with each breath, shoulders just forward, gaze pulling up from the weapon until they are fixed on him.
Darker than they were a few fractional heartbeats ago. Something about the way she moves, navigates between the pedestals unerringly without dropping her eyes from him - his eyes, if he is watching her, or the line of his shoulders, if he has turned back to the cabinet, with its glasses and decanters - suggests that something in her, in just that moment, is stalking him.
She does not speak to reply until she has cleared the curve of the scattering of podiums. Until she is a foot away from him, perhaps less, casting a narrow scattering of gray shadows over him and the cabinet.
"What do you want to do with me, Zazh."
Zazh"Always."
In answer to her question. The sculpture has captivated her, from various perspectives, dancing in and out of her thoughts much as his own thoughts drift from subject to subject of just what, where and who she could be. A half dozen possibilities of what all reserved for the slender young creature before him. He stands by the cupboard, regarding her, the slim gap of an opening in his robe falilng slightly wider as one hand, slips into the track pants pocket, the other taking steady sips from the glass of alcohol.
"The Cost of something is the only measure of how it can be applied. Of it's true purpose. The purchase and buy, the acquiring of such. The method by which it is obtained. Money is the only true neutrality. The only real unbiased opinion. Once you've purchased something, it is free. Free to be whatever it wants. Whatever it was originally meant to be. It needs no audiences, no perceptions, no obvious hallmarks of emotion or sentimentality. The object is an object again, purchased with objects of paper and metal. A fine irony, most mistake for capitalism."
He watches her regard the gun and he in turn, regards the gun, still and clutching the glass in his hand with all the familiarity of a man at home. A man in comfort. Her movements intertwine with the pedestals, drifting and dipping around their presence. Until she is through the Garden and into his space, a shadowed thing with the lights overhead, gleaming off her shoulders.
He meets those eyes as she steps to within feet, then inches and her question which does not seem to be a question, is treated to him taking another sip of his drink, a larger one this time which, when the rim leaves his lower lip has him exhaling with a hiss at the sharpness of the taste.
"We've been over this..."
His hand removes from the pocket, to settle along her outer thigh, rising to push the hem of the skirt with it. His gaze falls to admire the curve of her modest hip, thumb angling along the ridge of hidden bone there. He leap-frogs the touch from her hip to her mid-section, rising to brush his knuckles along the inside of her breasts until finally he halts along her chest, just slightly to the right.
He knocks. Once.
"You're frail. Calculating. Brittle. Like a razor. Given the proper momentum and angle, you've the ability to do the impressive but at any other viewpoint you'll shatter." He lifts his eyes up to meet hers again, jaw pushing off to one side in the process of regard.
"Doing with you what I want is simple. Defeatingly so. I'd be little more than the creature who conquered you and that is as far from desire as the sun." Something matter-of-fact. Distinctly resolved. She stalks and is in turn-
"No, you're very familiar with turning the game to others desires. Everytime I haunt close to your wishes, you play the libido. Or the courtesan. Or the fashionista. Or the diva. Or any number of other little masks you can flick into place with the brief curl of a lip-" His hand rises to pluck at her lower lip, releasing with a gentle tug "-or the suggestive narrow of an eye."
His gaze matches hers again and this time there is no bouncing skirt or drifting glance. It is something direct. Firm. Unflinching.
"I think you need to answer my question and not count on me to lead with a sin at your prompting."
LuceThe hem of that mod skirt falls over his hand like rain. Some silk-jersey knit, a hint of wool in the weave for warmth or texture, the hand-feel like running water. It rises when he catches it and pushes upward, bunching the fabric beneath his palm and reveals no more of than a handsbreadth of her skin. His handsbreadth, it should be said, the smooth line of her long leg, the jointure of thigh and torso. The curve of her modest hip framed by the low sweep of an inch and a half of patterned satin and black lace, remarkably dark her pale. Otherwise, the drape of the garment is so liquid it remains modest, showing little more than the edge of the hip he admires, the sweep of her thigh, the curve of her ass, and the suggestive line of her lingerie disappearing beneath the liquid drift of the short skirt.
Her attention drops from his eyes to his hand, when it slips from his pocket and settles against her thigh. Lingers there as he explores her frame with the spare appreciation of a man used to such indulgences. There is that air of temporary arrest about her, too, in that moment. It steals across her - the fixed gaze, the leavened stare, her mouth just parted. Something rapt about it, but withheld. Mesmerized as she is by the sheen of the fabric; the distorted lines its bold pattern. The warmth of his hand, and the rough, callused suggestion of his thumb against her hip.
The spell breaks with a sharply indrawn breath as his hand leaves her hip. She cuts a still look upward to meet his black eyes, and the look lingers, clear and still as a walled garden. There is this slipping movement across the surface of her eyes like the reflection of a cloud-cast sky in shallows of some forgotten sea. And that note of query, so faint, but knotted into her brow as he raises and dismisses the defeatingly simple option of merely conquering her.
Then -
"You're asking me." Unguarded surprise has her mouth open, has her breathing out this sharp breath or two after, which is quite nearly laughter, sudden and self-aware. It moves through her shoulders, has her lifting her chin, higher, sparks something bright in her eyes. Nearly disbelieving. "I thought the question was rhetorical. The litany of options. The choices you have to make. Meant to - " but she closes her mouth around the rest of it, biting it all off in a moment of sharp arrest as he continues.
As he dismisses all her masks once again, one by one by one and stares at her, his eyes an unyielding black. She draws in one breath, then another. He can see her try out that calculating skin. The faint narrowing of her gaze, the darting stillness of her eyes. And then at last step out of it, as easily as she might step out of the dress she wears. So in the end she meets his firm gaze, without raising another mask. Her eyes are softer than his own, but clarified and direct.
"What should you do with me?" the corners of her mouth curve upward, that private humor liminal in her eyes as she makes a noise, low in the back of her throat, "You shouldn't kill me. Let's start there." The surface wash of her fear is gone. "I intend to live a good long time."
Though tension lingers in her tall frame, it's changed. There's just this living expectancy left, caught up in the shoals of her rhythmic breathing, in and out. "Had you asked me an hour ago when you walked into Slide." The half-hooked smile deepens, as she lifts a brow. "Fifteen minutes ago, even, I would have told you that you should let me go on my merry way. Offered, even to repay your mercy with a half-dozen replacements, if that was the price of my freedom." This little slip of a smile edges the corners of her fine mouth wider.
"And do you know, I think that would have been a lie."
Her chin rises minutely, then, though her eyes never leave his. "One I would have regreted, in a day or a month or a year." Wry, " - or an hour. The truth is, I was glad to see you. In my way, I was hungry to see you. So. Two options down. What's left?"
She looks away just once, aslant from him, at the pattern of shadows falling over the dark lacquer of the grand piano. "I think you should pull off all my masks. I want you to uncover me. Zazh, I'll hide as long as I can. I want to feel your searching hands on my shadow. Spar with you over each morsel, and feel my heart in my throat when you come too close, or the hot curl of triumph when I shunt you off course. I suppose that's too dishonest for you, but everything about me is a lie." Here she glances up again, finds his eyes and continues, with a simple curve of her narrow shoulders. "And you've already had more truth from me than anyone living and most of the dead."
Now she edges closer, slips easily into his personal space, close enough that she could yearn into him with a twist of her spare shoulders, an arc of her spine, without ever quite touching him. Her arms have been loose at her sides, draws her shoulders inward, lifting her hands to slip them through the opening in his robe, so carefully, so precisely, that she barely disturbs the cotton garment.
"There are other things I want, that I won't say aloud. Other hungers. Sometimes they devour me."
Cool hands slip around his waist, thumbs forward just above the waistband of the track pants, fingers splayed open down his lower back. Then, some faint but deepening pressure from her thumbs, pushing upwards from his waist over his abdomen, the touch as fine, as sure, as deliberate as a potter's hand shaping clay on the wheel. Stopping only when she finds the sharp downslanting angle of his ribcage. When she can feel the rhythmic expansion and contraction of his diaphragm with each breath he takes.
"I think you should let me find you works to fill up this fucking sterile, empty space." A sudden flash of teeth, her glossed little smile. "Things you'll want. Things you'll love. Things you'll be taken with and buy with your own bloody money so they won't be attainted by my touch. So you can have them and they'll be free.
"Or let me find you another voice. Not like hers, but just as compelling. Someone who will turn your head." Her nails dig into the muscles flanking his spine. Four sharp little points of contact. "I want to see you when you're captivated."
"And I want," by now she has matched her breathing to his; inhales when he does, exhales to match, each of his breaths telegraphed by some supple movement of his ribcage beneath her hands. Her eyes linger on his, watchful still, and darker now. " - to see the face you wear underneath this skin." Another flex of her nails, this time matched by pressure from both her thumbs against the frame of his false ribs. "You should show yourself to me. I want to see."
ZazhHis gaze flips up to meet her own and she begins the effortless spiral:
It is a shape unique to nature, curling ever inward from some outlying garrison of words, too meaningless to pose anything but a cursory intrigue. The sort of intrigue that demands a 'what next' response. Casual at first and steadily growing more obsessive as the listener indulges, until finally dependency, excitement and assurance rivet them in place. A mortal mind and heart would find fascination at the spiral's inevitable end, anticipating the climax with fervent little sounds at the back of throats and purring off lips. Eventually, they would be oblivious to the sweetness of the voice offering. Oblivious to the touch or the taste or even the mere hint of ulterior motives.
That is Luce. A perfect siren when she wanted to be. To most others and quite possibly thousands who have simply laid eyes on her, the masks present a facade devoted purely to attraction in it's multi-hued formats.
Zazh meets her gaze and within the first few precious seconds he catches that hint of intrigue. He maintains contact, as her hands slip easily beneath the folds of his robe, the flaps pushed aside to make way for her presence as hands drift lazily from flanks to lower back. His hand with the glass in it, hovers just behind her, seemingly forgotten during her words which go uninterrupted. The list of options, cut away and left to drift like spare slivers of nonsense removed from an argument of logic.
He inhales deeper as her hands rise, nostrils flaring around some lingering scent on her skin and on the dress she wears, the touch goading him into shifting forward a few inches, crushing the space between their mid-sections. His free hand and arm rise, to brush a stray lock of hair, loosened from his earlier frisk, back across her shoulder.
Her grunts softly as her nails dig into flesh and inhales a little sharper for it, eyes narrowing a sliver past the edge of her listed 'Want'. Something in what she says, triggers a flicker of a response different from the last few moments. Something in his eyes flashes, gleaming (Emerald, in an eyeblink) before his gaze re-settles and his features crack into a familiar smile.
"They don't make creatures like you anymore, Dear Luce."
Like some lifting of regret, or cascade of relieving, the edge vanishes from off his tongue and lips and all at once, it is as if the tension of before and the moments they had shared prior to this, the long stone of silence hung in the car, had never even existed. That is Zazh. A mood to affect timelines and chronology. A spare smile not to lift spirits, but convince spirits that nothing ever fell to lift again. Composed.
His hand rises to cup her cheek, thumb beneath her chin to lift her lips forward where he places a kiss. Chaste, most would call it, barely a lingering brush. The sort one gives during a moment of tenderness...or celebration. His hand lingers even when the kiss ends and he matches her gaze once more.
"I do not wear masks." He drinks the last of the alcohol, a considerable gulp that forces his eyes closed against the sting for a moment "Cumbersome things that get between me and true Desire." His arm wraps snugly around her waist once more, turning out of her grasp until they are side by side and facing away from the Podium Garden.
"That beneath and this above are the same creature. Presentation has little to do with it. Merely a separation of ideals. What I want versus what is necessary and what is necessary is often exclusive from my Desires, which I-" He chuckles, pulling them forward somewhat, toward the Grand piano in the windowed corner.
"-seek to indulge at every turn and gesture and whim, as often as I can."
The empty glass is left to settle in the open cupboard once more, forgotten with the flick of a wrist and pinch of fingers.
"Alas, all the time would make them dull and stale and so necessity must beget and demand my attentions at times. Make no mistake, however..." He hugs her hip closer to him a brief moment. "You wish to stay where my Desire stays-" Slightly lower, almost conspiratorial "-for my Necessity is reserved for creatures who do not know any better than their own ends by whatever means, including the suffering of all I am and represent. Which is plentiful..."
They turn at the Grand Piano, making careful measured steps toward the long green couches sitting by the farthest window-to-wall corner.
"As for another voice" A hmmm sound, less thoughtful and more pensive "No, I think not. Such a thing is tied intrinsically to some very important memories and I've been responsible for...some most unpleasant necessity where true beauty is concerned." A wistful thing, vaguely mournful if fleeting. They reach the couch where he releases her, turning to push back into the corner of the furniture, where the L makes it's crook, arms spreading wide to settle on either side of the couch's back.
"I will entertain any other note of Inspiration you think I might like that. No voice, but..." A flickering grin. "I am fond of Dancers." Then his eyes cut toward the distant statue that left behind. "...And of true talent. It may help to have an eye available from someone more suited to gallery life and operatic elegance."
There is a calculation. Some formula or other running through Zazh's attentions for a moment, as if Luce had been turned over in his palm and a new perspective gained for the angle she now presented. His smile is slow but genuine and strong and he returns to her with an avid glimmer to those coal black eyes.
"Hungers, though...Other ones." Curiosity. Intrigue. Spirals. "...Masks, are easy, Dear Luce. They do not move the way mortality would. The way the truth might." A sudden intake of breath. "No, I do not mind your dishonesty. Truth be told, most people are unfamiliar with the reasons for lying. The true dedicated it takes to raise it from a facade into an artform...as it was always meant to be. When tricksters play with such things they ultimately, deliver it with puppet show antics." A smile, artfully bashful.
"Not to call you a puppet, of course. I simply mean to say that when you lie, it is a game we play. It is your honesty-" A pause. Correction. "Your truth, that tends to displease me. When you find out one of your pretty little lies has not worked and are forced to join me staring at the face you keep beneath. One of several yes, but you're quick to run. I dislike the coward in you, Dear but...I am patient."
"No-" He hmms, again "-the Hungers. I am...fascinated." Smile to a grin. "...And enjoy the possibility of provoking them to emerge. If you'll not talk of them, then perhaps I need to provide you with further stimulus. Beyond the slip of tongues..." A heartbeat. "Metaphorically speaking of course." The Grin returns.
LuceShe watches him as he reaches out to cup her cheek; his reflection pinpointed in her shadowed eyes as he bends to place that chaste kiss on her mouth. Her lip gloss tastes like champagne and strawberries. There's a hint of her preferred cigarettes beneath it, rich with spice. Beneath it, always, Chanel No. 5. Though tonight a half-dozen other scents and tobaccos have worked their way into the fabric of her dress. The story of her evening written in reverse; the smoke from the bar, the hint of some man's cologne. A touch of the ocean in her hair, or the intriguing note of some essential oil beneath. Perhaps all too subtle to be sensed.
He tells her that they do not make creatures like her anymore and she gives him the edge of her half-smile, turns her head aslant from his and watches him from that angle. "I am sure I was born, not made. More than once, perhaps, but I can assure you of that much." Otherwise, she curves into him when he presses close, and settles easily against his body as he turns out of her grasp and wraps his arm around her waist, matching his pace through the living room, her own to supple and sure she hardly seems to be walking. Gliding perhaps, this raw, seemingly native grace, so fundamental to her body tonight it seems embedded in her blood and bone and sinew.
When his voice turns pensive, she turns away; glances back over their shoulders toward the grand piano, pale eyes dropping to the complex shadows cast by their entwined frames. Then turns back, lifting her eyes to his profile. Watching him with that spare, remote sense of grace gleaming in the surface of her eyes.
"I've never loved dancers. Poets," a certain quickening of her mouth. He has pulled away from her, settled back into the crook of the couch. She follows, planting her right knee on the upholstered seat of the couch, and then pivoting gracefully as she moves to settle herself so very nearly within the crook of his arm, as if she belonged there, at this moment, and nowhere else. "Writers, I suppose, of letters or gospels or memoirs, or novels, histories or romances. Private correspondences or complex philosophies. But poets most of all.
"The art is so debased now, though. I think there are more poems written every year than read. Sometimes I find someone, though. Who has tapped some unseen well, and just needs - " a faint shrug, the sharp little curl of her left shoulder against his right ribs, where she has tucked herself close to him. " - the right sort of push. A certain perspective. Some loosening or tightening of the reins."
Then quiet again, her eyes on his face, her hand on his chest, the fingers spread lightly, feeling the vibrations of his voice through the cage of his ribs. I dislike the coward in you, he tells her, and her look sharpens, hand contracting minutely, this subtle catch in her breath, a sort of spasm of her diaphragm, barely registed as he continues, pronouncing himself a patient man.
Her breathing is shallow, her pale eyes dropping to her hand on his chest when he begins to consider the possibilities of her hungers. An edge to her smile, in that moment, though with her eyes lowered, the expression feels nearly demure. Chaste, rather, though the sort of chastity that men know never lasts long. Too indulgent. Too wrapped in the pleasure of being apart to stay that way forever.
"I have every faith in you, Zazh. Someday I may even turn them on you."
Zazh"Mmmm, it is the base nature of corruption that comes with conversation. Improper use of lying, compromises of the self, a lack of stable connection between the voice and thoughts. A host of other impurities that lend themselves to flaw an individual's delivery and enunciation. There are plenty of orators left in the world but few of them write their own words and truth be told, no poet is ever truly such unless his words are read in silence, rather than aloud. All others, are simply performers with two left feet, a tone deaf ear and stage fright."
His arm drapes closer to her shoulders, pressed neatly up against, enough that the fingers sprawl lazily down and along her bicep, touching at the crook of her elbow every so often, as if the nerve endings could not get fully used to the feel of her dress.
"Dancers on the other hand. Well...you can't lie about movement. You can feign, even hide and crush your joy down into the tiniest of steps and the smallest of gestures but a Dancer makes use of it all and does so without abandon. Frail though they are in reality, their lie is one they believe and that...that is what makes it an artform. The truth of their own diminishment, warped into this odd ballet. Tortured in training, they spill themselves out on stages, wreck themselves at 30 and grow nostalgic for the times they could bend themselves in half for a fuck or a fanfare, depending on the night." He's grinning by the end, fingers off his free hand, snapping sharply infront of them.
"That is what is so wonderful about Dancers. As easy to tears as they are to impress. Creatures of unabashed desire they fall to pieces at a breath." He glances at her finally, head tilting back slightly to put the entirety of her features in his view.
"Sheep playing at gazelles and succeeding."
Laughter, his head shakes and he returns his gaze across the broad apartment to regard being human from this distance, again. An odd draw of sight that he does not seem entirely conscious of.
"You'll do no such thing." On her Hungers. There is no air of menace or demand there, simply a confirmation of truth. A Fact he does not pull his eyes from the distance to reassure her of.
"I am not for sampling or for tasting beyond the occasional scent. Should such a fancy ever turn your head in consideration I would recommend you put it out of your mind immediately. There are realms to which we do not go and names we do not speak, afterall." A heartbeat, to turn, another deep inhale of her, taken at leisure.
"I know a dozen young and pretty things I would gladly march infront of your jaws. Feed whatever little beast or beasts you hide, at leisure..." Another peck upon her shoulder. "...and you will. Feed, I suspect, with great relish. No hunger can be ignored for long after all, especially with such a supply of tenderness I have at my disposal."
A pause his hip suddenly humming, the vibration of a phone that brings his attention round. He plucks it out, flipping the strangely simple and archaic piece (2002?) open to reveal a glowing screen and a text message that gains a glimpse and barely more, before the phone snaps shut and is returned to his pocket.
"...I'll remain apart, thank you. To watch." A smile at her. The cluck of his tongue.
"So what pieces exactly do you believe these bare walls need?" He glances around the sterile apartment. "Keeping in mind I spend perhaps a day or two out of every month here, at most these days."
Luce"I told you before, I like the impurities. The places where language elides; where meaning dissolves into the words themselves; where absence makes itself present. The lacunas. It's on the page that they work best, though. The tension between the passion and the strictures of the form or rhyme or meter. The places where those pieces break open. Where they must be broken open. Novelists grow and move; greatness accrues, I suppose, but poets last no longer than dancers. The good ones, anyway.
"How old was Lord Byron when he died. Or Keats. The rest just fade. Grow dull with age and satiation, which I suppose is not to be preferred to the dancers collapsing before you. The man you saw me with tonight," a brief twist of her mouth, considered. " - he wrote one of my favorite volumes handful of years ago. Couldn't take his eyes off mine, then. Now he stares at my breasts and laughs at his own jokes. Writes execreble odes to -
"Well. They give him awards now. I suppose that's the consolation prize for turning into an old man before the age of thirty-five. And doing so so very willingly."
--
"No?" her eyes are on his profile as he studies the sculpture across the room, the line of his jaw, the pattern of his goatee. When he turns back to her, to take that deep inhale, she's still lingering close, her glossed little mouth just open, that flash of teeth. "Maybe someday you'll rethink that. You make me hungrier than most, you know."
Then she turns to regard the walls as he invites her opinions on the decor. Her hair hills across his shoulder and arm, fine and soft as the silk-jersey dress, the coins of it gleaming with a half-dozen shades of gold in the indirect light.
"On the walls? Nothing modernist. It's too predictable. I think you want something lush. Baroque. Exquisite attention to detail, without devolving to the pastoral. Not Rembrandt's chubby-faced little angels for you, I think. Closer to Caravaggio, I think. He never forgot the violence inherent in the ordinary.
"Though I can't secure you a Caravaggio, there are a few other possibilities in the city. Unless I'm permitted to shop my private collection for your rare pleasure.
"And there's Llomo, of course. If he ever resurfaces. Give him studio space, marble, clay and there's more in him, if that piece is any indication. He reminds me not of Rodin, but of Camille Claudel, Rodin's lover. Have you seen any of her works?"
Zazh"Yes. You and your impurities."
He chuckles, the amusement flushing from him with a gust from his nostrils, hovering in the air with the scent of harsh whiskey, dirty and cheap. He pays her running fingers attention along the walls, the pedestals and the various bits and pieces she begins to point out, ticking off names and possibilities with the errant and precise leisure of an Arthouse critique. Effortless and spawning, she dabbles in flavours of her fancy and passion and for a few heartbeats long, right up until her seeking question, he indulges her.
"No." Comes the simple answer. "None of them, really. My circles run the gamut of pricing over Narcotics. Weapons manufacture. The effort it would take to populate, finance and distribute a small army at street level capable of distancing themselves from law enforcement long enough to establish a trench situation against which few legal or enforcement ramifications could hope to stand, let alone dig out." His jaw works around that last word.
"I can tell you the price of Angel Dust on the market in San Francisco, vs. the Cocaine trails leading up to the higher executive offices. I can even give you basic information concerning the crack addictions haunting the Tenderloin and a few of the houses that are distributing the vile stuff as well as the hang out of no less than six gang affiliated families within the lesser regions of several parts of this city."
"My tastes run the gamut of gambling debts and dens and I can turn a small fortune on a rather expensive piece of materialism that will never see daylight again. At least, not in this country." A pause, hmming once more to the tune of some odd melody he can't quite articulate properly.
"...But art is art. The fashion the flavour and the taste are as little to me as the stroke of a paintbrush on my fingertips-" He drums the length of her bicep, gently at that "-but I do...know what I like. What inspires me. What I appreciate the taste of, alas...most require a visual representation. Something to appease the eye and make flutter the heart or...some such nonsense." His hand pinwheels briefly in the air before him.
"I think hold off on your purchases. My wallet is by no means endless and I am by no means a habitable enough creature to live outside my means. Rather than concentrate on your decor, perhaps you might find me another piece similar in scope and breadth as the statue-" He nods toward being human. "Call it a test run of your tastes, if you like."
The subtle clip of a challenge there, coupled with a breezy quaff of scepticism and a blatant sliver of disregard for the entire thing. Mixed together, it ripples positive with a seditious air to her passions.