Participants:
| Scene Title | More And More Pieces |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Cat finds more bits of her personal puzzle. |
| Date | June 12, 2009 |
Village Renaissance Building, Cat's Penthouse
Arriving by any of four elevators, visitors will find they open into three foot corridors facing wide double doors made from sturdy southern pine which swing outward and have the strongest locks available. The stairs lead to single doors, also outward opening, at the end of three foot corridors. Entry requires both a key and a keycard; other security measures are a video camera and voice communication terminal at all doors. The 4th Street side has floor to ceiling windows interrupted only by the access points. Cream colored curtains are normally kept closed.
This level has enough space for sixteen apartments. There is an office space with reception area, conference room, and executive office; a room for archery practice and other forms of physical exercise; a very well appointed kitchen and dining area; a music zone with an array of instruments, electronics, and amplifiers; an entertainment area with an HD set covering an entire stretch of wall from floor to ceiling; a locked room where security footage for the building is recorded and can be monitored; a laundry room; a staircase for roof access; central air and heating; the main bedroom and a few smaller guest rooms; plush deep wine carpet everywhere except the kitchen, laundry room and bathrooms; and track lighting everywhere overhead. The light levels can be lowered or raised in the entire place, or selectively by segments. The overall decor suggests the occupant is a woman.
Helena and Sal have gone now, to handle business elsewhere, doing things they do. Cat is thus left alone in the company of Delilah with the wide open and immense penthouse to be explored. Not many of her questions have been answered as yet, perhaps including why Midtown is such a colossal disaster mess and why there are people out there enforcing a curfew, but Cat has chosen not to let herself be concerned by those. Yet.
With her left arm splinted, the cuts to her body having been cleaned up and glass fragments removed, she's shed that torn purple dress worn when she was located in favor of shorts and a vintage Ramones t-shirt. And she's wandering with her eyes wide and a somewhat delighted expression to her features. "So, Delilah," she asks the slightly taller redhead, "this is Helena's place?" The question is asked just before she steps into the room where instruments are kept and she spots that red Fender Stratocaster on its stand.
"My guitar! It didn't get burnt up in the fire!"
Being around a mentally younger Cat has been interesting thusfar, and when Helena and Sal depart the penthouse and leave Delilah there with her, she is expecting things to stay that way. After helping get the injuries cleaned up, Delilah has been following Cat around the penthouse to make sure there are no sudden surprises. She is still dressed in that zippered hoodie over her short sleeved shirt-dress, and her hands are still sometimes finding time to play with that zipper.
When they get to the room with the guitar, Delilah stays to lean against the wall just inside. "That's cause this isn't Helena's place- it's yours. You live here." Remember, you forgot things? Apparently not. "All your things are here too." IE, guitar.
She stares longingly at the guitar, a frown forming for a few moments because she wants to play it, but with her arm injured she can't. Cat knows this, but the dismay is short-lived. What she's told about the ownership of this place causes her to turn toward the younger one with an awed expression forming. "Really?" she asks, turning to step out of the music room and just let her eyes wander while she makes a decision what to explore next.
It turns out to be a short process, this decision. The open door to a bathroom isn't far away, and Cat heads for it with a brisk pace. "That license says I'm twenty-six, Helena too," she comments, "but I have to see this for myself, y'know?" On goes the light, she faces the mirror over the sink, and stares at her own face. Then she's poking at it gently with a fingertip as if to make sure it's real, the expression astonished. "Holy shit," she breathes, "I am older. But still hot."
"Really really. You run this whole building." Lilah still feels the need to trail after Cat in her explorations, and so she does, though hovers at the bathroom door when the other woman stops to look at herself. The redhead gives her a slight smile when the facepoking starts, breaking into a grin at the last part.
"Hah. Yeah. You are." Oh, wait. "Err. Older, I mean. And of course you still look good, it's not like your twenties are your fifties." Scoff, scoff.
"I know," Cat breathes out, "but it's kind of like that story, the classic Rip Van Winkle. He gets drunk, lies down, and wakes up years later. It feels like that. There's all these bits and pieces, the clear stuff all says I'm nineteen still, and here I am in New York with my own penthouse, after some ancient guy sets my family home on fire and tries to kill me. What the hell did Father do to piss him off anyway? Maybe it was a corporate merger and the guy got the short end?" She looks puzzled, troubled.
But there's more exploring to do, now that she's done with the mirror. Out of the bathroom she comes, taking time to just look around and figure out where to go next before sighting the kitchen about a ninety second walk away. Feet move toward it. "I'm starving," she announces. "You hungry, Delilah?"
"I understand that whoever it was that attacked you also stole your memories. I suppose that when you were nineteen, you manifested that…whatever your brain did. You had the ability to remember everything." Dee knows that there is a term, but it escapes her. She links her hands behind her back and wanders with Cat to the kitchen. "And I guess because you remembered everything because of it, when that guy took it, he also took those years away. That's why you feel like Rip van Winkle." It's becoming hard for Delilah to keep Cat completely in the dark, so there's at least an honest reason she is trying to explain.
"Not really, no, but if you want some help to make something…?"
"That's just weird too," Cat remarks on the way to the kitchen. "All this talk of abilities people aren't supposed to have, and how this guy just made all my memory go away, but… it does make sense. I think I'm nineteen, but my face and my ID says I'm twenty-six, it's just weird. Remembering everything? Wow." She goes silent for a few beats at the entrance to the kitchen, not speaking until fingers on her right hand wrap around the refrigerator door handle and open it.
"That kinda makes sense too, I mean, in my head it's October '02, I'm a Yale sophomore trying to study music and make Father happy by doing pre-law too, and I… I'm gonna fail. I can't handle the load."
And oh, what treasures the fridge holds. Spaghetti, half a pizza, a few sandwiches in Piccoli's takeout boxes, Pepsi, orange juice, and… beer! Guinness stout. A bottle of that is extracted, along with one of the Piccoli's items, as she asks "Are they good?"
"Piccoli's? Yeah. You and Helena like their food quite a bit, I think." She had that food during that lunch meeting with the two of them- but really she is not particular about an opinion there. "He threw you out the window without touching you, right? He musta stolen telekinesis from someone." Possibly some literal firepower too. "There's a lot of weird shit you don't know about anymore." Dee can't help but chuckle nervously.
"About that load. You handled it. The Cat I know went through Law School. Possibly because anything you read you remembered." Hahaha. That'll do it.
"So," she muses as she sets the Piccoli's item on the table, "I remember it being October '02, so… that must've been when that memory started? If it was taken from me, that makes sense?" Cat's face and eyes are questioning, even as she nods back to the still open storage device. "Get yourself something, Delilah," she offers. "Even a beer if you want." She flashes a grin. "This is going to be fun. It feels like getting away with something."
"Pff. It's not like I don't drink anyway." And just for that, she does grab one before shutting the fridge and sitting down at the table. "It must have started back then, yeah. I don't know if you've ever actually told me the circumstance. Mine was just kind of- random. Big crowd, stressful day, being surprised, and splurt- dude gets toaded. Yours was probably some big final exam, and you might have been too stressed. Hm."
The bottle is opened with a tool searched for and grabbed from a drawer, Cat still standing, and she lifts the mouth to her lips, intending to drink, but it never quite gets there. Eyes swing toward the redhead sharply, confused surprise on her face, that bottle poised to drink from. "Toaded?" she asks. Her head shakes a few times.
She sinks heavily into a chair and finally does drink from that bottle, long and deeply. "This is all too weird. It's like being brought to a museum and seeing exhibits, except they're all my life, and don't really feel like mine." Silence again, a stunned expression settling in.
Forget bottle openers, Dee just uses her hand to unscrew the top. Pop! "Toaded." Is all the affirmation that comes for now. "I'm sure we'll try to find a way to get your memories back… if we can't, well- then I am sure we will help you anyway. You may not remember us, but we remember you. We're your friends." Cat has some good ones, evidently.
"Thanks," she murmurs softly. Cat doesn't say more, opting instead to eat the food and drink her beer in a speculative silence. It takes a measure of time, her eyes wandering around the interior as she does so. When she's done eating and the first beer is finished, she gets another. "Piccoli's is good," the woman quietly declares. Then a pull from the second bottle, the kitchen being studied. Wine, beer, good food, appliances. "I live well, but… I'm twenty-six. Trust fund's under my control now."
Her eyes widen a bit as that path of thought is pursued. "Delilah," she pleads, "tell me I haven't let Father talk me into working as a lawyer in some stuffy, sterile corporate office."
"Your father hasn't talked you into working as a lawyer in some stuffy, sterile corporate office." To be honest, Dee isn't entirely certain of Cat's job title, but it is not that. "You rent out the bottom floors of this building, and there is a bar in the basement area. Live music sort of place. So I guess you do a lot of things! But I'm sure that none of it has to do with corporate offices."
"Thank God," she whispers as the kitchen is exited and the interior explored a bit more, Cat not speaking so much as she had been at first. She just goes from place to place, slowly drinking from the stout in hand. Bathrooms are found and counted, the entertainment area with the very huge screen. The guest rooms, the bedroom she uses and the closet there. This she decides must be hers because it has clothes and the others don't. The room where security cameras are kept and footage occasionally watched is locked, she seems curious about this, but doesn't linger. Something to investigate later, perhaps. Then there's the archery and exercise room, looked at briefly, and finally the reception area/office/conference room combo.
"Maybe I work here," she muses somberly, looking and sounding disappointed. "I was hoping to learn I was a budding rock star, though. I miss my band, had to give it up last year, Father said he'd cut me off if I didn't take on academics instead of music." A hint of grin is shown then. "So I'm trying to do both, but there are sacrifices. So busy all the time. Barely have time to sleep." And then…
Cat finds the computer on the executive office desk.
Delilah only gets up to find and follow Cat when she finishes that bottle, putting it into the recycling and feeling generally more pleasant than she had been. "You still play, in some places. Little places." When she finds Cat, the other woman is in the office, apparently having just located her computer desk. For once in ever, Dee keeps her mouth shut, though waits in the door if Rip van Chesterfield has any immediate questions. The computer probably has a lot of stuff on it- so there's zero move to offer a suggestion, Lilah simply waiting to see if younger Cat is brave enough to investigate it.
She just stares at the screen for several long moments, thinking, racking her brains, for the key to what comes up when she moves the mouse and the monitor turns on. It's an EnergyStar device. Cat's eyes light up and she types a phrase that seems to have sixteen positions, the password is accepted and she starts to explore. Microsoft Office's latest version, Windows Vista 64 bit version… Programs could be launched, but she chooses instead to open up Windows Explorer and look at file names. The ones named Operations and Intelligence, which seem attached to Excel, catch her attention most, and are opened. Cat begins to read.
Delilah tucks her hands into the front pockets of her jacket now, watching Cat seemingly get into the computer without a hitch. Maybe something came back? Who knows? The redhead wanders further into the room, waiting on the other side of the desk, eyes on Cat. "Is there something?" Something important, something valuable, something offering an explanation?
There's a lot in those files. Names, activities, operations, photos, places, exhibits. Some of them are password protected, these Cat is unable to access, but what's in front of her is the Catabase and she's reading it slowly. Her features have become more somber, even distressed as she does so. "What the hell is all this?" she asks, looking back at the redhaired one over a shoulder. "Who have I become? What kind of person are you, Helena, and Sal?"
"You've become one of the few people that stand up for themselves and everyone else like us. We're- well, certainly not terrorists, even if the government calls us that. In the eyes of the beholder." Delilah glances to the door, then Cat, and then her fingers wrap around the cellphone in her pocket. Should she call Helena about this?
"People like us- people with special abilities… we're the new target for people wanting to take away our rights. There was something I was told about while I've been with you guys- Moab. Is it on there? They locked up people just for being different, shipped'em off to the desert, and put them in a prison camp. If I were to register like they tell us, I'd be taken in my sleep too." And by the look on her face, that is one thing that she does fear happening.
She doesn't reply with words, Cat's eyes remaining on Delilah as she gives that explanation, then they return to the screen. Files not protected by passwords are looked over one by one, with no obstruction provided for Delilah looking over her shoulder and reading along with her. Her features remain troubled, and commentary is rare. Drinks from her bottle of stout are taken on occasion.
Some time later, when she's looked through the last of the files, she slides back from the desk slightly and closes her eyes. "It makes us seem heroic enough," the woman remarks. "Fuck. How did the world get this bad?" This seems to trouble her most of all, but she doesn't wait for an answer. Instead she gets to her feet and makes for the door. "I want another stout, or four. Not ready to sleep yet. Got to ask Helena about all this when she comes back, and…"
She decides to not think about all that anymore right now. "That screen is amazing, Delilah. Want to just chill, watch shows and movies, and drink beer all night? Or until we fall asleep?"
Delilah is perfectly fine with peeking a little bit. This is likely a good time to see what else she can find out offhand. Not knowing who some people were on the ride to Hartford was a little awkward. When Cat finally seems to be done looking, Delilah moves aside to let her through before eyeing the monitor a moment, then following Cat out.
"That screen is amazing." Yes, perhaps it is time to rest the mind. And the point of Dee staying here with Cat was to make the shock of amnesia far easier. Is it working? Hopefully. "Hah, I never thought you would be the kind to ask me something like that. Sure."
It's to the entertainment area she goes, and that huge HD set, after grabbing another bottle of stout. Cat settles herself into a recliner and tries to put all she's seen, what's happened, out of mind until gone over later with Helena. There are movies on DVD and a full range of cable options, she and Delilah don't lack for entertainment value. And there will be more stout as time goes on, until sleep has claimed Cat where she sits. Possibly Delilah too.