ArchivedLogs:In Memory of Chinatown

In Memory of Chinatown
Don't ask about Chinatown.
Dramatis Personae Murphy, Jim	2013-02-17 It was a stormy night, like any other, and two men have a thing to do.
Location
Chinatown. 'Nuff said. Some folks go to a bar looking for trouble--not this one. This is where trouble lives. If you come here, you ain't *looking* for trouble; you already *know* the dude. This is where you go when you say 'fuck it' and decide you're gonna buy trouble a goddamn drink. Murphy enters the bar and takes a seat at the far end. He doesn't say a thing to the bartender; he doesn't have to. A bottle of overpriced piss-warm beer is sat in front of him, along with a nice big bowl of peanuts. Murphy picks at them. It's all part of an ancient ritual--one which the bartender, by this point, knows by heart. There's only a few other layabouts in here--a recently fired business-man in a suit, mumbling into his drink. A couple who look like they might be runaways, whispering to each other in a booth, holding each other's hands. A twitchy-eyed hobo in the far back, occasionally looking at Murphy and jabbering nonsense as he picks at his filthy fingernails. Murphy wrinkles his nose, looks at the clock, then looks at the bartender. The bartender shrugs. Guy's *always* late. Jim enters with his lips pinched around a toothpick, wearing about four different kinds of wet city grit and leaving a trail of slush and rainwater from the door. He mounts the stool beside Murphy with his jaw fisted forward, jerking a chin at the bartender and receiving a bottle of ginger ale for the effort. With eyes facing forward, he pulls the toothpick from his teeth, "You're early." Which is as close as he'll get to excusing his lateness. "Weather's shit." Murphy's response is to crack one of the peanut shells with a rigid twist--and lift the payload inside up to his mouth, tossing both in with a crunch. After two chews, he responds to Jim's presence and non-apology with little more than a grunt. Then, in response to the statement about the weather: "Yeah. You still a tree?" "You still a dick?" Jim volleys back, hovering over the open mouth of his ginger ale to make each word sound like a prayer issued into its contents to add their own bitter zest. "Yep. Your old man says hey, by the way." Finally, he moves to open the bottle--he's got an opener on his key-chain. It makes a loud, nasty little *KRPTSssh*. "Wanted to know if you could pick up a pack of condoms for him on your way back. We wore the last set out." He tilts the beer back--for some reason, Murphy has an affinity for *terrible* beer. It's the only kind he ever drinks. Some nonsense about good beer always tasting the same, but the nasty shit always surprises him with *how* nasty it is. As the bottle lowers, he adds: "You hear anything about kids in the sewers?" "Yeah, well, your ma's a tiger." When the peanuts are undefended, Jim makes his play for a prisoner, breaching defenses to obtain a little entertainment he can sink his nails into. Or at least one nail, at the end of his thumb, ripping into the shell. It's only once he's ground down two liberated soldiers and chased them down with a dispassioned swig that he navigates a few grunted words. "Heard about more than just /kids/ down there." His head moves, a bare eighth of a rotation in Murphy's favor. "You believe in monsters, Murphy?" Murphy makes no move to stop Jim's little peanut jailbreak. Fuck it, for all Murphy knows, Jim might consider these things to be family. Once he's liberated a few of his siblings, Murphy plucks one up for his own purposes--cracking it with a twist between his thumb, popping one out and chomping. His eyebrows knit together at that question--grinding like two cogs in some enormous machine. He's heard *that* question before. And Murphy doesn't like repetition--particularly not when it happens where it's not supposed to. "No. But I've met a few anyway," he says. Then: "Last time I went there, I ended up losin' a coat and a flashlight. Dame made out of shadow gave me an earful about monsters and dragons. Figured she was puttin' on a show, just didn't want me rilin' up the kids down there. You sayin' there's something more to it?" "I'm sayin' a lot of people are saying that." If he's related to his victims, Jim is a man of few mercies with his kin. He's already begun a pile of husk shreds, which he shakes his fingers over to rid them of debris. The evidence ever piles up between them. The young couple in the corner lean close, putting their foreheads together, and Jim watches them like they're leaving a bad taste in his mouth. Or maybe it's just his present company. "You already set on goin' back down?" As far as Murphy's concerned, being related's just one more reason to be an asshole. So if Jim's a little extra vicious with his kin, Murphy can certainly relate. Rather than go for more peanuts, though--or a second sip of that nasty fucking swill--he reaches into his pocket for one of his cigarettes. The brass lighter with the Marine Corps emblem makes its familiar appearance, producing a tell-tale *CLINK*. Murphy doesn't pay attention to the young couple himself. With him, it's always the same story: See it once, see it a thousand times again. It's a dumb fucking story with the same goddamn ending every time. The cigarette lighter casts his face in an eerie, metallic orange glow: "Yep. Reckon the dame won't like that," he adds, although Murphy don't sound mighty torn up about it. "Yeah, well, our line of work, if they /like/ what you're doing, you're probably doing it wrong." Jim says it so rote he either seems to expect Murphy to say it along with him. In mind if not mouth. He's pulled out his own pack of smokes - Marlboro Reds, between Murphy's beer and Jim's cigarettes, they won't be winning any ribbons in classiness tonight. He leans over to borrow a pull off the other man's light; his Rite Aid Bic has run down to sputters and sparks. "Let's go it tomorrow, then." The number of people who, upon reaching for Murphy's lighter, would not immediately draw back a fractured wrist--along with three or four broken fingers just for the hell of it--can be safely counted on one hand. Jim makes the shortlist. Because they both come from a little town called 'Circumstances'... that, and because Murphy is pretty sure that if he *did* break Jim's hand, it'd just pop off and strangle him while Jim grew another one. The light stays steady. He grunts at the offer, roughly accepting. Smoke spills out of his nostrils. "No guns." "Hey, it's a lady's house ain't it?" With his smoke clamped in the side of his teeth like a branch, Jim lifts up his houndstooth fedora - a thriftstore number if ever you've seen one - and shoves back his shaggy hair, scratching behind an ear, "Who d'you think I am." He closes one eye against the rise of cigarette smoke raveling into his face silent for a long moment. His hands fold around his ginger ale. "I'ma ask you t'do something for me." He drops it bluntly between them, like a cinderblock tired to either of their legs. "Of course you are," Murphy says, and then he laughs--it's a withered, dead sound. Like someone's sliced it open and drained all the joy out of it. Murphy never laughs any other way. The cigarette finds its perch between his lips; he sucks in a good, long, harsh pull. "I ain't gonna fuck your ma," he tells Jim. "She ain't half the looker your old man is. Otherwise? Ask away." "Not what she's been saying," Jim grits through his teeth - or maybe it's a grin. If expressions had a texture, his would be sandpaper, but only if sandpaper could carry an electrical charge. Run a brick between the two of their eye contacts and it would come out the other end polished slick. "She says you're a 'lights on' kinda guy." It falls off a second later, and all that's left beneath is city pavement and faded denim-blue eyes. "There's a project in the pipes. Some clinic getting built, mutie friendly." He's dropped his voice low, plucking cigarette from his teeth for long enough to shove a cloud of dragon smoke through his nostrils, "Run by some bleeding-heart doctor named Iolaus Saavedro -- he's an alright guy, except for the death wish. Met him in a morgue, he dug a bullet outta my gut a few weeks back. I got an interest in this project of his. You hear chatter that sounds like maybe someone's got other plans to cause it some speedbumps, suppose I got to hear about it, huh? You got my cell." He told him once. But that's all Murphy really needs, isn't it. "Yeah, I got it." Thick fingers prod at the edge of his cigarette. Again, those eyebrows crunch--calculating. Mutie-friendly clinic. That's a new one. Murphy hasn't heard anything about that. Not that he's been looking. "In this city? Poor fucker's already dead." Then: "Yeah, I can keep an eye out. Can do one or two better, if you need it." The cigarette tip suddenly burns. "Freaky lookin' ones ain't got no place to go but the sewers. I don't *like* that." "Heh," Jim snorts out this laugh-sound, his mouth actually frowning for it. He shoves the ashtray at his elbow into the space between them, making his first deposit into its bowl with a flick of his thumb, "That the sound of you growin' a /heart/, Murph? Ease up, I'm gonna get teary eyed." He shakes his head, "I don't like it either. It's ugly work. And it's gonna get /uglier/, the way things're going around here." He exhales slowly, eyes narrowed at his bottle label. "Yeah," he decides eventually. "Alright. Do me one better, then, if if comes up. I'll owe you one." It's a tall order, to write up a blank check to another man; Jim generally guards his favors like a junkyard dog - but there's a night between them not so unlike this one, full of the smell of lo mein and gutter dirt. It makes tall orders the name of the game. "What're you lookin' for down in the city basement, anyway." Murphy snorts. "Heart? *Me*? Fuck no. I'm a strict Kantian Asshole, Jim. Assholery for its own sake. Turns out the world's already shit, so I ain't got no where left to go but up. These days I gotta think creatively to piss people off. And nothing pisses people off more than helping the freaky looking ones out." The cigarette tip burns. Murphy sucks in a good lungful of rat poison--savors it--then exhales. He reaches into his coat pocket, pulling out a picture. Creased, worn, a little battered. Green kid--14. Scales. Spikes in his hair. Don't look too happy about having his photograph taken. "Lookin' for a runaway. Victor Borkowski. Pretty sure the shadow dame is playing den mother to him and a host of others. Ain't lookin' to take him anywhere he don't wanna go; just out to give him a letter from his folks. And a Christmas present." He grins; the expression looks more like skin pulling back from the face of a cadaver than an expression of joy. "Figure I'll piss off a few folks on the way to my paycheck, maybe." Jim tucks his cigarette back into the corner of his mouth, freeing up both hands to momentarily take the photograph, straightening out a creased corner for a better view. "Always know I can count on you t'have a noble cause," he grunts without looking up, the cig bobbling with his words, then hands the picture back pinched between a fore and middle finger. Murphy takes the cigarette back. A little look toward Jim, slow and steady--like he's trying to grind away at the guy's skull with a whetstone. But whatever he's looking for, he doesn't find it. Bark's thicker than bone. "Mmmn. Tomorrow, then," he says, before slipping up to his feet--a twenty laid out on the bar. But before he turns to leave--the last piece of the ritual. He grabs the bottle of shitty beer--lifts it up--and nods to Jim. Then: "Chinatown." He takes a final swig and grimaces, before slamming the swill back on the bar. As he's studied, Jim studies back; it may as well be a showdown betwixt the two, his hand open, palm pressing subtly down harder on the bartop like he's getting ready to /improvise/. What comes instead is a retrieval of his own bottle, which he holds up to equal elevation with a wintry smile, "Chinatown." One word can say a lot. He completes the ritual along with the last of his ginger ale and sets about wrapping his scarf around his neck. "Hey," he says, interim. The couple have shifted--before, they sat across from each other, temple-to-temple. Now, they're both squeezed into the same seat, clutching each other in the dark, whispering just out of ear's reach. The business-man is still tugging at his loosened tie, dark circles under his eyes. The hobo is fast asleep, head against the table, a puddle of drool forming underneath his mouth. Murphy stops, half-way to the door. He turns, peering at Jim, those eyebrows still knotted together--forming that familiar *clench* in his forehead. The way he looks when he's trying to figure something out. He doesn't respond; he just waits. Buttoning up his jacket, Jim is regarding Murphy through the corner of his eye. There could be a number of things considered, possible things to say. Or maybe he's not thinking about anything at all. All he says is, "Tell your ma to slip into something /slinky/ after she gets the roast on for me, huh?" Murphy laughs. Bitter. Miserable. Braying. The sort of sound you'd expect a dying hyena to make. He exits without another word, still laughing even as he steps out into the sleet and rain.