[riverfront]
(eva)
"Bell, Bandling & Whittgenstein. How may I direct your call?"
Even late into the evening, even weekends, the firm had a receptionist on duty, a live, cultured voice to answer the phone, someone to reassure those requiring such reassurance that their concerns were important, that their case would not - would never be lost in the constant shuffle. Weekdays, there were four or more of these women, but weekends, only one.
Then: "Hold, please." Even the holding experience is soothing. Fine, graded baroque music, something subtly familiar to almost any callers: Handel's Water Music, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a Bach cantata. The darker pieces, the requiems and the masses, the oratorios of the birth or passion of Christ, these are assiduously avoided. "Ms. Illésházy is not in the office, but I can connect you." The brief intrustion. "Hold please." And then another reassurance of the musical coda to the quiet, professional exchange. There is something satisfying about such moments.
"Mr. Tretiak." Eva's voice does not compare favorably with the receptionist's voice. It is less calibrated to please, without the sweet low suggestion the receptionist cultivates, but no less calculated: distant, iron, steel, just malleable. "I know that Mr. Cavanaugh is eager to have the contracts in hand." - streetsounds in the background, the quiet, dusky roar of a working, moving, breathing city - " - if you are going out, perhaps you could drop them at my home. If not, I can pick them up tonight, or send a runner over on Monday."
(danya)
"I see no harm in delivering them to you after my shift concludes." His own voice carries distinct references to the lulling music catering to his attention at interim. Little more than a murmuring sigh, so agreeable to the choices she offers: nearly sedated. Surely, it must have been a long day in the laboratory. "If you would provide directions....."
Given he, himself, logs corporate hours on the weekend instead of enjoying them as the majority of laborers - it is no wonder he so eagerly returns the contracts to Mr. Cavanaugh's hands and usher the process of his resignation.
Several hours later, headlights slice through the darkness as scheduled through the efficiency of her directions. A degree of night returns when the engine purrs to silence curbside to the block of rowhouses. Following the muted slam of door, lagoon green eyes pause to reign in the scene before him.... though the sudden silence quickly ebbs to steady cadence of bootsteps.
Ominous, such heavy sounds bouncing off window's guardian bars.
A hand falls away from where digits inspired ringing bell. Weight shifts, pitching hip against iron railing that encases entryway stoop. Patiently. Silently. Danya waits.
(eva)
The lower windows seep light at the corners: around or through the bottoms of blinds, or some similar covering. The upper stories are dark, blinded eyes staring blankly at the street. And it's a quiet street, so little movement: sidestreet, nothing special, with little more than rows of rowhouses on either side, and rows of cars parked in front of them. Ordinary.
Several moments after hearing the ringing bell, Eva swings the heavy front door open. Even Danya, with his human senses, can catch the scent of the fast-drying all weather paint on the startlingly new front door. The newest coat of paint is no longer tacky, however, and the kinfolk who opens the door, who uses the door - yes, somewhat - as a shield, leans her weight forward and against it as she opens it.
"Mr. Tretiak." Her voice is more formal than her appearance, or the sliver of it visible from behind the door. Jeans, an old t-shirt spotted with paint, dark hair scraped back into a ponytail. The door swings open a hint wider, and Eva emerges - just a bit - from behind it. Her eyes flicker briefly over Danya's features, reserved in their inspection, betraying little of the nervous twist in her stomach, an apprehension she finds mutely disturbing. "Mr. Cavanaugh will be quite pleased."
And nothing about the rest of it. Them. What is she to say? Such conversations sound far too strange in normal surroundings.
(danya)
She uses heavy wood as veritable sheild between them. The acknowledgement of such things causes breif amusement to flicker at the edge of his mouth. It must be the neighborhood, for I cannot be what you fear.... Practically defenseless in this particular portrait, it isn't enough to cause him to move just yet. The composition of streetlamps and what creeps around the armory door paints striking juxtaposition of shadows across his tall frame.
Blades of highlights draping across plain black pants far more suitable for the deflecting chemicals in the compound than commenting upon the latest fashions. Shortsleeved labshirt hangs freely unbuttoned, official nametag skewed to dangle from a pocket glares stark white against black wifebeater beneath. Rough fibers of industrial uniform fabric snagging on the smooth lines of pitch clinging to torso and waist. Tiny points glitter on strands of spiked hair with each tilt of his head.
In the time it took her to answer, boots had crossed comfortably at the ankle.
It forces the chemist to lean forward, facilitating the production of one enveloped contract from where it rest beneath an arm. "Good."
(eva)
The door swings further open, and Eva curves her hip, sliding her body around until the door is no longer a shield in front, but a wall behind.
"Thank you," her reply is cool, a coolness at odds with her casual clothing, and at odds with the quiet street, and, finally, startlingly at odds with whatever self inhabits these quarters, as opposed to others. The self she lodges in courtrooms and skyscrapers, the self who laughs at inane, macho jokes and brings the whole discussion smoothly back to the matter at hand, the self who does not question her own choices or wisdom: that other person people see. The papers rustle as she tucks the file folder against her body, much the way she tucked her body against the door. Some musing moment passes as she studies his face and glances out, toward the rough oranged sky beyond. Then: "Would you like to come in?"
Her voice is reserved, but she is still mildly surprised by the question.
(shame)
Heart still hammering in his chest, Shame made his way down the street. His left hand clutched the canary yellow paper bag from which the odors of hot meat and grease arose, a small pack of food, processed and packaged and sold sold sold. It'd taken him weeks of watching. Weeks of simply sitting outside in the parking lot of the McDonalds to figure it out.
The staff had watched him nervously through the windows of the joint for the first few days, too nervous to order him off, and not quite knowing if his sitting on the curb warranted calling the cops. But then they'd gotten used to him, and ignored him as best they could. The first time he'd tried it, he nearly frenzied: adrenaline coursing through his veins, the air conditioning strange on his skin, the chemical smells and myriad scents of food suffusing his nostrils at once repelling him and making his mouth salivate so that he had to swallow and swallow again. Others had stood at an uncomfortable distance from him, and those in the line before him had sort of melted to the sides so that he'd walked, head ducked low, right up to the female behind the desk.
She's said something. He'd blinked, and then pointed at one of the large pictures of meat and bread. She'd said something again, and he'd shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking at the floor, the counter, the boiling pools of grease and yellow slivers of vegetables. Everybody staring at him, making him want to run, to bolt, to roar and cow them - and then she'd repeated those noises, and confused, not knowing why she'd not given him the food, he'd simply turned and fled.
He'd not been back for a week, but that chicken he'd eaten at Eva's had whetted his appetite for flesh. So he'd gone back, and watched like a hawk, watched and observed and finally noticed that something was being given in exchange for the food. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a wad of bills that people had just given him as he'd sat on the streets, given with pitiful looks at his deformities. It had been exhilirating from then on - he'd walked in, handed the paper, pointed, received, walked out.
So simple. You just need paper for food.
And now he would share. Moving quickly, wanting to howl, to celebrate as if he'd killed, he moves down the streets, and only slows his pace at the sight of the strange man talking to her through the door.
(danya)
If the question were wholly unexpected, no trace of surprise betrays the male kin's calm thesad.
There is little more acknowledgement than the silence that stretches like long shadow back across the sidewalk, making him seem so much more gauntly heighted than the solid six-foot-four genomes controlled. Eventually, the ghostly smile widens to signal acceptance.
"I wouldn't mind the company." Muscles flex and skeleton reacts, pivoting about points of reference so that lean expands to rise. Unlike Eva, his demeanor is not at odds with the reserved confidence she had come to know.
(eva)
Strange, really, how her face relaxes, her fine reserve shifting into something much more natural and innate as her eyes trace a course across Danya's shoulder. Her eyes slip back across his face, however, and her mouth tightens almost imperceptibly: a wary fringe of a glance that skitters across his profile, and then falls away.
"Of course," she says. The words feel false and frangible. She doesn't like saying them, but she steps back, pushing the door wider to admit him into the long hall, which is dark but for ellipses of light spilling from each of the rooms: front parlor, dining room, somewhere distant a kitchen. "I'm afraid there's not much here yet -" she continues, watching him with a certain calculated wariness that may come to mark all their interactions. "I'm renovating, and doing some of the work myself. With my schedule - " her shoulders twitch is a half-born shrug. It doesn't bear further mention, really.
(shame)
Slows his pace, and then stops, perhaps six or seven yards cast off to the left of her stoop. His body feels huge, a vacuum, a mass of potentialities, and he simply stands there, not knowing what to do. A friend, of course, a friend. Fingers flex on the scrolled end of the bag that's clamped in his fist, and then tighten once more. The smell of the meat still made him salivate, and for a moment he considers simply calling her name out, but - but he wasn't sure he'd get it right, and that man might laugh, might make a joke and then she might laugh to and then he'd simply have to - well -
No, instead he stands helplessly in the shadows, feeling utterly disarmed. Of course she had companions, other packmates. But he'd thought of her as isolated, a woman on an empty street who sat on the stoop and did nothing but wait for him to swing by. Fool. Fool. No, of course not. It's not her fault, though he feels a burgeoning sense of betrayal rising within him. Fool. Stepping back, against the wall and into the shadows, he presses his fist against his thigh and watches.
(danya)
The words false and fragile.
The woman skittish and wary.
He is only a man, not a predator.... isn't he?
"I rented mine mostly furnished." There is no shrug to support her own excuse, little more than the murmured evolution of phrase. "I knew I wouldn't have the time for personal effects given the position I was entering. At least not for awhile." A look cast back across his shoulder: a smile that twists breifly dark. Playful and sinister. Honest yet colored with the careful enigma of intent. "Seems Mr. Cavanaugh changed all that, didn't he."
How easy it would be to believe he were only turning the statements of a game, now that they were both released from the confines of office.
But then why would she be so wary of his entering her den.
(eva)
"I'm not surprised, Mr. Tretiak." She may have invited him in: companionship, another voice on rainy night, kinship, tribe, or even the vestige of hospitality, some human urge toward community, but she does not dispense with formal titles. It's an odd detail that seem affected in a woman of her age and generation - were she thirty or forty years older, were she leaning against a walker, savoring her golden years, perhaps such formality would be excuseable as a matter of generation. "You don't strike me as a person who would have much time for personal effects under most circumstances."
She studies him from just beneath the fringe of dark lashes framing her eyes, and his cast-back glance receives the placid attention and a twist of an acknowledging smile: politeness. "I have iced tea, or water if you would prefer." It's a Saturday evening, too, and she has an open bottle of wine in the fridge, but she doesn't offer him that sort of drink. Her eyes fall away from his back as she steps forward to let the front door swing closed, but she blocks its progress with her hip long enough to offer Shame a brief wave of greeting before stepping back and following Danya inside.
The front parlor has little to offer the eye: a comfortable armchair, a spare pool of light, a couch covered with a drop-cloth. The rowhouse may well be magnificent when restored, if she ever restores it, but at the moment, it is still so damaged that the mind may boggle. Holes in the plaster walls, water stains on the roof, deep gouges and softspots in the floor. The ceilings are half-covered in dropped ceilings, and in places the elaborate plasterwork has the crumbling texture of chalk or dried out toothpaste.
"As I said," she continues, lifting her voice a bare minor third, "It isn't much at the moment. There's a good bit of work to be done."
(shame)
She looks out, sees him, waves. For that one moment he feels his veins freeze, feels his muscles contract, his jaws grind in panic. His skin crawls and he feels as if his lungs were so full they'd bouy him up to his tiptoes. But then - but then she - she simply turns and walks in with the other guy, and allows the door to close, and he blinks and turns and walks across the street and well he can't just doesn't know what to think of course - it's natural and well - she has every right and she did just see him recently and - well.
Cross the road, up the pavement and to the abandoned house. Food almost forgotten in his hand. Stop this. This is ridiculous. Foolish. Fool. Pushing open the door. Pushing open the door and remembering the first time he'd entered. Pack. Entering the darkness, food clenched in his hand, mind numb, trying not to think, to conclude. She'd been nice, was all. But nice only went so far. She wouldn't invite him in when she had other friends over. Of course not. Ha! To think. Think. Of course not. She'd waved though. That was nice.
A sneer crosses his face, and with a whip of his arm, he dashes the bag of food against the wall, fries spilling out over the floor. Gritting his teeth, he passes a hand over his eyes and leans a shoulder against the stair railing. Nice.
(danya)
Perhaps given the reputation of their Tribe, expectations would arise at the quality of living arrangements even a kin would maintain. Though.... perhaps that is also the very reason he does not seem bothered by the trivialties incurred by renovation and progress. A hand waves absently to brush her excuses away, or disregard his own nuances. "It's the end result that counts, isn't it?" For it is the ends that warrant accumulation and delegation of means.
The next sound that enters between them is the cadence of bootsteps on the floor. Even muted and bounced on the uneven acoustics constructed by disheveled walls and floors, the sound is far louder than his own voice. "Tea, please."
It is not until she returns that he chooses to speak again. "Were you expecting someone?" Black brow lifted towards the crown of spikey locks - he noticed something caught her attention outside before she secured them within this domicile.
(eva)
"Mmmhph," a half-articulated sound, one of those sounds of desultory agreement lacks the precision of a yes, but serves well as a placeholder. What she really means is more complicated, less cocksure, but - here she casts a glance over her shoulder as she disappears through the warped double doors from the front parlor to the dining room, eventually to the kitchen beyond. "Most would agree with you, I think. Others might offer a different observation - " the refridgerator, the freeze, the clink of glass against tile as she prepares the promised drinks. " - either way, one gets there."
Her own footsteps are silent, or close to it: sneakers on the hardwood, match to the worn jeans and hooded sweatshirt. Only the quick swish of movement and the lengthening shadow that spills into the front parlor announces her return.
"No," her reply, quiet negation as she lifts her chin in the direction of the door. She holds back a breath, briefly considering the other Shadow Lord's closed, still face, and subtle calculation. "I- I'm not expecting anyone. I saw a neighbor out for a walk."
(danya)
"Interesting neighborhood for a late-night walk. Thank you."
The primary comment seems so blithe.
Subtle. Calculating.
Intent covered as hospitality's glass raises. Just a sip. Enough to occupy his mouth and quench thirst built by day's full hours in the maze of chemical labs. Light attention the polite measure which awaits her answer.
It's the weight of his eyes that's granite.
(eva)
"People are strange, Mr. Tretiak," Eva responds with a quicksilver smile of her own. It glances through her eyes and falls away, dissipating, dissolving like ice in a pan of boiling water. "There's nothing else for it. It sounds cliché, and it is. The man on the corner only walks his hairless Mexican something-or-other at night in the summertime, to keep the sun from burning the dog's skin.
"So, tell me - " she has her own glass, grasped casually, resting on the faint curve of her forearm, which is in turn folded across her torso. She doesn't take a seat, however, but remains standing in what is close to the center of the room, " - are you looking forward to your new position?"
(shame)
Slowly, it eases. The pressure within. The thrumming of blood in his veins. Slowly, it eases, and he steps back in the darkness, taking deep breaths, as if he'd just swum half a mile underwater and breached the surface. Placing his hands on his knees, he closes his eyes, forces his body to calm, to subsume and become fully human once more. The world of groaning floorboards and insect clicks and the smells of mold and rot came back, and with a sigh, he straightened.
Put it out of your mind, and stop acting like a cub. He felt tired. Lethargic. Wanting to find a corner and sleep. Instead, he sniffed the air, picking up on the scent of meat and onions. Might as well not waste his hard earned food. Dropping to his knees, he crawled across to where the remains of the McDonald meal lay. Reaching out, he felt something crawling over the patty, and flicked it off. And then, too tired to shift, he simply lowered his face to the boards and began to eat.
(danya)
His response is a collection of miniature phrases tucked into a singular thought:
Coyly tilted smile deepens. Brows float to skim higher above his features. Head tilts to a minor degree.
Well done. You have balls outside the office, after all.
"Greatly." Punctuation comes in the form of another sip. Longer this time, as he casually moves to circuit the room after long day spent cramped within office cage. It may refer he has no ulterior motives for staying beyond the fact he does not wish to be confined within the cabin of his car for any longer just yet. May. "It's a definite step towards career goals."
Better hours. Substantial increase in pay. Exquisitely tailored benefits package. Not to mention the prestige and power inherant to the leadership position.
What Shadow Lord would complain?
(eva)
"Is there a particular career track you're more interested in?" Eva replies, her mouth quirking faintly. Her fingers skim the glass, making faint indentations, bare impressions upon the condensation forming upon the surface. "Are you planning to go into management eventually, or were you hoping to continue in research?"
Her brows lilt upward and remain there: a meditative cast to her features, the faint smile of polite inquiry quirking her mouth.
(danya)
A slight negating frown. A meager shake of his head. Another smoothly dismissive wave of capable hand.
"I plan to remain in research and development..... I find the hands-on approach more rewarding, though prefer the leadership position as compared to staff slavery." The smirk borders on self-depreciative; a relization of what channels he's had to perform for on the journey towards what - to him - are better suited occupations for both industry and familial goals. The means towards the ends, of course. There are times even those of conqueror's blood must fight in the ranks and dirty their hands in the process of battle's victory. "Luckily, Mr. Cavanaugh seems to agree. And you?"
Quid pro quo.
Smooth segue to refocus the splotlight upon Eva.
(eva)
"Luckily," Eva replies, dryly, for she has such conversations at work - I want this. I want that. When I win the Danvers case I'll be a shoo-in for partner. I'm on the way up. - and engages in them, essentially, herself, and hates them and almost everything they mean. "I'm glad that you and Mr. Cavanaugh were able to come to an understanding," she continues the phrase, meditatively, stalling for time. For the most part, such conversations are meant to show off, to display ones peculiarly bright features, rather than to assess the bright feathers of another.
"Personally, I'm in an assessment phase when it comes to my career. The cases can be challenging, but - " a faint shrug, dismissive. She may offer partial truths, but she will not gild them in direct, improvident ways. " - I'm not yet certain that I prefer corporate practice to criminal defense. There are some interesting stories to be gleaned from the latter, while the former, well, there are the routines."
Eva can feel the layers of self, as she watches Danya and responds to him, settled against each other like layers of mica.
(danya)
"Hoops we must jump through." Added to a breif smirk when attention strafes back towards her from its perusal of the parlor. He could just as easily be indulging decorative ideals his own lifestyle does not afford, or ascertaining the efficiency or productivity of her efforts. There is little hope to figure what lays beneath reserved exterior, even in the guise of casual conversation.
How many layers do they both have.
"I'm little more than a boy delighted to play with his kitchen test-tube set." What wonderful weapons he can concoct to desively peel each layer away. "Dedicating my proverbial value -" To the world. To the Nation. "- in whatever accomplishments an education can buy when funded with a capable team."
Arrogance so smoothly blended with tempered confidence. Humility's martyrship tempered with powerlust's ambition.
It is these contradictions which make what should be an obedient kinfolk so unpredictable.
(eva)
"I suspect you're a bit more than that," Eva replied, rounding on the subject with a twitching half-smile. "But I suspect that of most people." She pauses, thoughtless, wordless for a moment, considering him still from her distance.
Her silence could be meditative, but is more likely awkward. The shadows ring out from the lamp, her own moves against the wall. Her eyes flicker to his shadow - easy, we are shadows, she likes the change of perspective - before shifting back to him, even as she mirrors his pacing. The floor creaks and groans as protest against almost every step in this room, which only serves to accentuate the silence.
And then: "I don't believe you have many friends, do you, Mr. Tretiak?" From some unexpected corner, a curl of feeling in the back of her throat, some urge to honesty that might surface only outside of the courtroom. She pauses at a makeshift table - a wide raw board cast across a pair of sawhorses and uncurls an arm to tap lightly at the edge of a large file box. "I don't think you need them."
(danya)
The smile is sedately cheshire. "I never claimed to be a boy unaware of his own capabilities, Miss Illeshazy." That he has used her given name without quarter in other situations shows that now he merely plays along with her game of formal titles in a setting as informal of her own home. A measure of respect. A note of conservation's mockery. Either notion effortlessly dismissed as are, pobably, a great many things that have ever come to his razor attention. "I've just witnessed enough confidence inflate to fatal arrogance to know better than to overstep or brag. Useful, I believe, in both our professions and familial positions to keep a lower profile than deemed necessary."
Employees easily replaced. Kinfolk are dispensable beneath their cousin's greater cause.
The trick is assuring another takes the fall.
The dropcloth covered back of couch serves as resting point for his hip. Most would look away during the moment of introspection inspired by her deep-reaching question. The deep lagoon pools of green eyes, however, rest quite purposefully on her own features. Thumb smears trail through dripping condensation.
"Unfortunate as many would see it." A smile glimmers behind his eyes, a curve flushes his lips before tea lightly stains them. "Your beliefs are correct."
(eva)
Eva's regard deepends. Danya has not glanced away, and neither does she: she has the backbone, at the least, to return his unwavering glance at this moment, and she does not shy from meeting his eyes.
"I think I'm one of the majority on that question." Tap-tap-tap. Her fingernails rattle against the glass, and her voice has a certain hushed quality, suitable to the essential gloom of a house in transition.
(danya)
"Oh?" This word softer than the others. Impossibly. Breathlessly. Hushed sigh escaping the part of lips. Reverence to the qualities inherant to her ambient tones, justified comparison to the emptiness coveted by a house torturously waiting for a life to warm it.
There is no surprise in the way a single brow skirts upwards.
Intrigue.
"Why."
(eva)
"You'll think this weakness," Eva cautions, by way of introduction. You'll think this weakness, the phrase echoes in the back of her mind again. She rounds upon it, considering the whole. Her fingers continue their meaningless dance across the edge of the file box, blunt nails against the rough corrugated cardboard. At last, she pauses to pick some thread of paperpulp from the whole, pulling it away meditatively. "You will - " her chin rises, there is an arrogant center beneath the shiftless self-doubts, a core of pride chilled by her present circumstances, her recent past. " - think whatever I say weakness, I suspect."
Her shoulders curve forward, then, faint acknowledgment of his attention. "And you would be correct on some level. Any reply I would make would be somehow deficient. But if - " another shrug, at last she lifts her hand from the edge of the file box and slides tucks her hand beneath her opposite forearm. " - like me, you are one of the majority, you wouldn't need to ask that question, Mr. Tretiak. The answer would be obvious, wordless, pervasive."
(danya)
Careful consideration to the depths available to her words. Calculating. Scientific observation applying value towards the composite whole of what lays beneath such statements. Time purchased to drain the last of the tea from where it hides behind cubes of melting ice.
"The weakness I.... find...." Pause edited by addition of a soft noise representing laugther's formation at the back of his throat. These are not, by far, his thoughts. ".... is that you doubt your reasoning enough to provide a direct answer to my question. Instead airing philosophical hypothesis of abstract ideas when it is so painfully obvious I am not one of the majority that would understand such things without concrete supportive fact."
"I am, after all, a scientist." Chide dances among his tones. Ice clinks emptily against the chilled glass as gravity's pull draws it to hip. Bootsteps so steadily - even carelessly - inflicted on the floorboards before are controlled, now, to muted echo as the tall kinsman crosses the room. The glass settles soundlessly onto the make-shift board-table, and Danya stands before her as if to present himself unsparingly for her dissection. "Try again."
Indulge me.
His expression shadows far beyond cheshire's coy mystery.
Inviting. Challenging. Strangely playful.
How predatory that could be if he wanted to make it so.
(eva)
Eva watches. So often: Eva watches. Her eyes are wide in the relative shadow, but just lashed. Her chin rises as he approaches - a vague, physical awareness of his presence translates into something other. Unconsciously, she shifts from her faint lean to a standing position as if she were answering the challenge of his height with some valiant volley.
Still, she must look up, and she looks up through her lashes. Her head is cast just forward, her cheek curved toward him in an inquisitive manner. Her mouth presses together, a flat and solid line, before one corner slips into a self-mocking twist.
"Some things are inexplicable. Our language is too - " a faint pause, a frustrated sigh flares out through her nostrils. " - is too literal and our age too steeped in irony to allow any answer to sit and mean something important, and mean only what it means. And, as you say, it is not something you can understand. Perhaps we should accept it as one of life's mysteries."
"However," - her speculative tone changes. The long speech was mild, discursive, musing, in contrast to her straight-backed posture. "I would say that friends are important because the rest of it is not enough. As much as ambition sharpens us, it makes us brittle as well. In the end, what will you have?"
(danya)
"Nothing more than an impressive resume."
Even if he slouched, she would be forced to look up to him. Yet he is not regarding her down the length of strongly lined nose; his chin has fallen in neat tuck towards larynx. The gesture affording some recollection of equality through matched - and held - gaze. What glimmers in darkly shadowed depths of luxurious green is not the bitter glare of mockery.
"You were correct -" Affirmation. "- that I maintain few relations that deepen to the level of friendship. I do not need the companionship others desire to affirm what purpose I find in life. However -" Insurrection. "- I find an alternative explanation exists to say that those I do choose to keep as friends, I select wisely. I am not so steeped in laboric cave that I've removed myself completely from understanding innate human nature to crave interaction with others."
Friendly banter remains, bringing tones of warmth to lips faintly curved so close to her own, rather than setting a firm line of which only audial evisceration could cross. So close, even their human senses can pluck scents of soap, shampoo, and faintest cologne from the paint fumes still lacing the air. Were they blessed with the further capabilities of their shifting cousins, surely they could differentiate the rhythms between confidant and trepidatious heart. "I hope you do not view me as such a monstrous automoton quiet yet." The verbal sparring has been but a pleasant game.
"I appreciate your hospitality, Eva." Formalities trashed at game's conclusion. "Do let me know if Mr. Cavanaugh finds anything amiss in the contract?" There is nothing which will fall short of expectation. They both know it.
Farewell writes itself in the shifted expression of his ghosting smile.
Posted by danya at May 01, 2004 12:00 AM