ArchivedLogs:The Stale Scent of Despair

The Stale Scent of Despair
Dramatis Personae Jim, Lucien	2013-01-07 Jim and Lucien, just doing their jobs.
Location <NYC> Staten Island
Seriously? Who the hell goes to Staten Island? Few visions can be so flat and empty as an empty boardwalk beside a drab winter ocean. The sky is gray, middling somewhere past noon and before dusk, sunlight a noncommittal presence that eradicates shadows and color equally. Clumps of dirty snow and mostly ice hunker along the rail and nestled amongst the rocks above the water. A middleaged man, nomenclature Jim of tweed coat past its fashion but still managing shy of tatty, though possibly by virtue of timely circular patches to either elbow, is currently /using/ said elbow to shove snow /off/ the rail. To make a place to drape his forearms, a rather tall drink rested in the protected region between them. He wears a fedora, pulled down around his ear. Sip. Lucien does not add a great deal of colour to the grey landscape but he does, at least, manage not to be /drab/; his grey suit is well-tailored, veined thinly with pinstripes that are very faintly pink. His companion is less polished, at the moment; a lean man somewhat older than Lucien, with salt-and-pepper hair and a wiry-trim build beneath his black wool coat and khakis. The pair are exiting a motel by the boardwalk, run-down with its vacancy sign fizzled out in a few letters: "V CAN Y" it reads, in sputtering red. There is a pause, outside, leaning against a small blue Zipcar; a few words exchanged (the man leaning in to murmur them close to Lucien's ear, which prompts a quick flash of smile from the tall blonde), a kiss, something from Lucien that makes the other man laugh. Another kiss, longer, before the man pulls back with a laugh and a shake of his head, already picking his phone out of his pocket to slip his earpiece into his ear as he gets in the car. Lucien does not get in the car; as it drives away his smile fades to bland indifference, his slow breath exhaled in a plume of white. He slips a pack of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his jacket, slipping one into his lips but not lighting it. Just patting absently at his pocket, as he drifts away from the motel parking and down towards the boardwalk. "I got it," Jim murmurs from his anonymous slouch, though it's a slouch that's moving, turning, fishing into two pockets at once. From one, he withdraws a cheap gas station Grateful Dead lighter - from the other, a pack of his own cigarettes. Marlboro Reds, the pack dinged and dogeared. While lipping himself out a smoke, his eyes follow the departing car, "What's V-can-Y?" He does shift eyes back when he flicks the lighter for the younger man, for the general purpose of not lighting his hair on fire. Or his suit. "A warning," Lucien murmurs around his cigarette -- Dunhill, its box tidy-neat -- as he leans forward to light the smoke. "That you will find little inside but the stale scent of despair." He draws in a long pull, something easing in the previously-tense set of his shoulders as he sucks in smoke, blows it back out towards the sky. "Their maintenance could use work." He speaks quiet, and quietly accented, syllables tinged heavily with francophone flavour. "My thanks. I must have left mine inside. I suppose," he adds, looking around the bleak grey boardwalk, "that things are not much more cheery outside than in. Are you enjoying your day?" "Sounds like my last two marriages," Jim mutters, his cigarette bobbing in the lighter fire. He repockets the lighter, resting two fingers and a thumb around his smoke while inhaling, "You seen this place?" This exhales smoke with the words, through both mouth and nose, "don't think enjoyment was part'a the design plan." It's chill enough that once butt returns to lips, he stuffs hands back into pockets. Lucien snorts out a laugh, though whether at the first part of this or the second is not clear. "Third time is the charm. Or the strike-out." He brushes a hand against the railing, clearing a spot for himself to rest elbows against it as he searches the grey sky. "People find enjoyment in all sorts of places." He says this on a deep and /contented/ pull from his cigarette. "This is definitely where you go if you enjoy /misery/," Jim leans back against the rail, elbows hooking over it, cigarette angled skyward from his mouth, "Think I'm about done striking out for a while. That was Branden Fressner wasn't it?" The name of the man that has now long-since driven away, asked casual-bland with one eye squinting against a rising tendril of cigarette smoke. "I've been followin' him since yesterday noon." Lucien keeps his gaze tilted upward, through this question, his breath streaming out slow and deliberate. There is a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, which fades as he plucks the cigarette from his lips and taps ash from its butt. "Have you." His tone is dryer than it was, eye squinted up slightly as he examines the sky. Then examines Jim. "Not, I take it, because you are part of his moral majority fan club?" What there is to see, on study, is a man casual, graying, leaning more towards needing a shave than not, leaning back against a rail and narrowing his faded blue eyes towards the motel, "Try to stay out of politics, personally. Consider myself more a photography enthusiast. Got a darkroom an' everything. Real choice." He retrieves cigarette from mouth to flick away ash into a clump of snow to his far side, mouth opening on this same side to blow smoke in a direction away from the other man. "Y'know. They got this technique, for smudging a parts you don't need coming out clear. Backgrounds. Motion effects." Cigarette returns to mouth, "Faces." "Choice. Mmm. Sounds professional." This does not sound like /praise/. But then again, it does not sound particularly disparaging, either. Only bland, as Lucien's weight settles further onto his elbows. He flexes his fingers, slightly stiffer in the cold, and then tucks a hand away into his pocket. There is a moment when the look he gives Jim is harder, narrow-eyed, but this eases back a moment later in a quick twist of lips and another puff of smoke. "We all have jobs to do," is stated eventually, quieter. "Anonymity definitely helps me with mine." "You and me both, brother," Jim mutters, not exactly with apology, but there's no relish to it either. Semi-commiserating. From within a breast pocket, he's withdrawing a business card; printed on simple card stock and free of any logo, the inked Garamond fontface offers undecorated information. James Morgan. Private Investigating. A phone number. A fax. No email. No address. He's speaking, never having actually paused, "But we all gotta fuck someone. How long's this been a thing?" He jerks his head towards the motel, handing the card towards Lucien from the end of two fingertips. Lucien takes the card as it is given, between two fingertips and looks at it a long moment before pocketing it. His hand drops, cigarette held with thumb tapping light and fidgety at its butt, though after the first two taps there is little left to ash away. "Since last spring, once or twice, but regularly since the fall." His lips twitch, and though wry, his, "-- We all do. I just try to make people /like/ it," doesn't really sound like a criticism either. "Hey," Jim twitches the side of his mouth wryly, "Results are results, and you can't say people don't like mine, when I get 'em. Or well." He scratches at a flaky patch of skin to the back of his hand, "Maybe not always like. But some days, bad news is better than no news." Speaking of. "Spring might find your trips out to this miserable isle a little more rare. His wife's a real number. Think of a landmine with lipstick." "Sounds like you might have the worse client. And he is no peach, either. Perhaps they are well-suited." Lucien frowns down at the cigarette between his fingers, quietly burning itself to ash as he forgets it. "Aside from the homosexuality. -- I cannot say I will miss this place. Do people actually live here? Voluntarily?" "Can't say I ever asked 'em," Jim's been hitting his smokes hard, and it's mostly just filter with a glowing ember at the end - he pinches it with thumb and forefinger like a roach, enduring the smoke in his eyes with blase squinting, "Maybe I'm /wrong/ then, and not /everyone's/ gettin' fucked in this picture. It'd sure explain why the woman acts like she's compressing coal into fucking diamonds in that powdered ass of hers." He comes away from the rail, flicking cigarette with a great deal of /relish/ at the ocean. Then offers a large, dry hand to Lucien, "Jim." "Oh, everyone gets fucked. One way or other." Lucien takes a last long drag of his cigarette, stubbing its end with a careful-neat twist against the rails, absurdly precise in motion given that he follows it by simply flicking the butt away into the sea. He straightens, offering a hand out in return; for all the winter cold chilling his skin, with his firm handshake comes a faint trickle of -- something warmer. Contented. Considerably happier than the drab grey boardwalk. It's a subtle thing, unobtrusively insinuating itself into Jim's mind as Lucien offers in return, "Lucien. Have you been at this long?" He flicks cold-stiff fingers towards the motel, before clarifying. "Not Fressner. Just this job." Jim cocks on one corner of his mouth, a thoughtful formation of a grin, "Long enough. Only been around up here a short while. Boring story." His own grip is equally firm, honest, a good single pump and then releasing in no great hurry. "Listen, you need anything dug up, yourself, don't be a stranger, huh?" "Mmm. I've met a good deal of people in my --" Lucien gestures absently back towards the motel. "I don't think any of them have boring stories, when it comes down to it." His smile is a quick thing, small but warm. He rubs his hands briskly together as he straightens. "Have your card. I just might." His head tips in a nod, and he brushes stray snow from the sleeves of his jacket. "Enjoy the island," is given a good deal more wry in parting. "Yeah." Jim mutters, scrubbing his stubble with the back of a hand pensively, looking up at the sky. "Think I'll enjoy leaving it more." And he too is taking his leave - heading in the opposite direction with hands in pockets.