ArchivedLogs:Vignette - Guilt Trip

Vignette - Guilt Trip
Dramatis Personae Trib	2013-10-09 '
Location <NYC> 311 {Trib} - Sunrise Apartments - Clinton
His fucking phone woke him up. His phone rarely rung, unless it was Cage or the pup, and he knew it wasn't either of them. Cage never called this late, and the pup...well, the warmth curled into his side told him where /he/ was. Which meant it was either a wrong number, or his dad. And his dad never called. Ever. He shifted away from Toru's somnolent form, unconcerned that he would wake the teenager. Hell, a bomb could go off in the apartment underneath them, and the pup would only roll over and make some complaining noise before slipping into another soft snore. Still, he was careful as he swung his feet around and reached for his jeans, searching for the smartphone in his front pocket. He stared blearily at the number on the screen, not recognizing it. Sliding his thumb over the screen, he opened the line. “Yeah?” “Retribution.” He knew the voice immediately. Not his dad, but his Aunt Sonia. His grandmother's sister. Her heavy accent always made him think of gypsy fortune-tellers when she said his name, drawing out each syllable like the words of a curse. Re-tree-byooo-shun. “Aunt Sonia? What the fu – what are you callin' me for?” “Always with the dirty mouth,” his aunt replied dryly, and he had to fight the urge to laugh at the intonation. Alvays viff ze dirty mouff. “This is not how you are supposed to be answering the phone. You do not even say hello to the person who is calling you?” He winced, and stood up, letting the sheets slide from his hips. “Sorry, Aunt Sonia. Hello, how are you?” He strode into the living room, pulling the bedroom door closed behind him. “Everything all right?” His aunt laughed into the phone, her smoker's rattle cut off by a hacked cough. “I am feeling as I am always feeling,” she said, and he could hear a noise through the phone that sounded like she was spitting into a tissue. “Which is to say nots so hots. Not that you are caring, so little I hear from you.” He grimaced, and ground his teeth together. “I've been busy. I'm sorry.” “Busy?” Scorn set the dry timber of his aunt's voice ablaze. “What are you so busy with that you are not finding two minutes to call and say how it is you are doing? Beating men up for money? How busy can this thing make you?” “Busy enough,” he said through clenched teeth, closing his eyes and counting to ten before reminding himself how expensive the phone in his hand actually was. “I ain't boxed in six months or more, anyway. I'm working for a detective agency, now.” “So now you are big-time detective? Like Magnum?” That /did/ get a laugh out of him, snorted into the dark of the living room. “I think I'm more like the guy with the helicopter, but yeah.” There was a pause that was long enough that he actually pulled the phone away from his head to verify the connection was still good. Then his aunt's gravelly voice returned. “This is better than being thug.” Hallelujah. He'd received the blessing. He rolled his eyes in the dark, and moved towards the window, pulling down a couple of slats in the blinds to peer down at the empty street below. “I'm glad you approve,” he said, in a mimic of her own dry tone. “But I ain't givin' up on boxin'. Just...whattayacallit. Regrouping.” “And while you are regrouping and playing detective, your father is sitting in a house which is damaged,” his aunt said flatly, and he could /hear/ the deep V her eyebrows must be making right at that moment. “This is a problem you are too busy to help with?” That drove any last vestiges of sleep from his brain, and he frowned. “What? What happened to Pa's house?” His aunt tched. “As you if you do not know. The tree fell on it.” The tree. The goddamned tree he'd told his dad to have trimmed last fucking summer. “God /damn/ it.” “Watch your mouth. You are not too big to fear Hell or your Aunt Sonia.” “Sorry. When did this happen? I ain't spoke to Pa in probably a month.” Which was true, and maybe intentional. It wasn't like his dad was burning down the phone lines to reach /him/. “In the storm last week. It has made a hole in the wall that needs repairing, and you are familiar with your father.” He pinched the fingers of his half-hand against his nose, and counted to ten again. And again. And another time. By the time he'd reached one hundred, he was pretty sure he'd squashed every curse word that threatened to spill from his lips. He /was/ familiar with his father. And how immersed in his work he would become. That hole would remain there for months, if his dad was working on a new book, leaving the house open to all sorts of intruders and things. He loved his dad, but his dad was about the stupidest fucking human being on the planet, sometimes. “So what the fuck am I supposed to do about it?” Oops. Guess there was one curse word that he missed. To be fair, he missed that one a lot. “Retribution!” “Sorry.” He totally wasn't. What the fuck /did/ she expect him to do about it? “You must come home, and make your father listen. Unless you are wanting your next phone call from me to be one in which I am saying to you the horrible way in which the robbers murdered him.” Holy shit. No one did guilt like Aunt Sonia. He hated her for it. “Okay,” he sighed into the phone, closing his eyes and sitting down in the beaten armchair that served as the majority of furniture in his living room. “I'll come out first thing in the morning. But I ain't stayin',” he amended, sitting up and leaning forward as if that might help the woman hear him better. “I'll come out an' talk to him, but I /ain't/ stayin' the night or none of that shit.” There was another long pause, and his fingers tightened on the phone in frustration. Goddamned prude of an old lady. Get over it. Then she coughed, once. “This is acceptable. You will come to my house first, and we will have a discussion about this.../glamorous/ new life of being a detective. I am wanting to hear more about it.” Wasn't /that/ something to look forward to. “We'll see,” he grunted, blinking and yawning a bit overloud. “I ain't goin' to have that glamorous life long, if you don't let me get back to sleep. My boss is a real fuckwad.” It was a lie, sure, but Cage would forgive him. His aunt made a strangled noise of disapproval. “This is not the way to be speaking to an old woman,” she said, and then the line went dead. Which amused him greatly, and he laughed into the dark. Until he remembered what he'd just agreed to, and he winced. He'd planned to spend the day with the pup, since it was his day off and Cage was amazingly understanding about these sorts of things. Now he was on the hook for going to Passaic and trying to convince his father to come out of his world of cowboys and deal with the everyday. He was sure that Toru would understand, or claim to. He hated to disappoint the teenager, but if the house needed seeing to, Sonia was right in that his dad would be murdered by looters before he did anything about it. She might be exaggerating the damage, but he wouldn't know that until he got out there. He sighed, and ground the knuckles of his half-hand into his eye, considering his other option. Maybe he could take the pup /with/ him. Although, there were more interesting places to take him than Passaic, and the Jones Spread. (Dear God – how could he ever explain the /name/ of the /house/?) And it wouldn't be the most engaging of meetings, based on what Sonia had said about his father being involved in his work. He rubbed at his face, pushing to his feet and moving back towards the bedroom. There was a right answer, here, but he wasn't seeing it. He had six hours to figure it out, though. Maybe something would come to him in his dreams. Or maybe Toru would have some suggestions. Either way, he knew one thing. He was going to Passaic in the morning.