Participants:
| Scene Title | Bad News |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | There's a lot of it going on with the Renard-Lazzaros lately. |
| Date | July 22, 2010 |
Dinner had been a fairly uneventful and mundane affair. Weather, work - what of work that either could speak of - what was going on in Japan regarding their newly walled off area's. How was Secretary Praeger? Tasha was still living out at Gun Hill and furniture no longer consisted of just lawn furniture. The Orchid Lounge had been quiet, typically noisy when the younger generations came in for their martini's and sushi.
Out into the warm evening air, the two had been disgorged when the check had been paid and Joanna had said her goodbye's to those who she knew and had been present as well. It was, a typical night, even down to Vincent walking her to her vehicle less some hairbrained - or no-brained - individuals try to make a stupid move and liberate Joanna from her personal belongings. It had happened once in the past.
They were unahppy when they found out that the right favors did mean a lengthy term in prison. Go go District attorney's office. But tonight, there are few punks who might think to pull anything, but regardless, Joanna had asked that her ex-husband might do her the favor of a walk before she drove. The martini had long since filtered through her system and gone, but she still wanted to be sure.
"I spoke with Tasha earlier. I had lunch. I'm surprised that you haven't done anything, regarding her little… group" She doesn't want to say terrorists, but the implication is there.
Comfortable in his accessory silence and arguably long-since too sober to easily tolerate a turn of conversation in this direction, Vincent gives Joanna a brow-tilted look that rides the fine line between flat annoyance and more companionable displeasure. He walks with his hands tucked down into the pockets of his suit, fine fabric a warm, dusky shade of grey that — appropriately — blends against muggily lamp-lit streets like a haze of smoke. Darker than the stuff whisking off the end of his cigarette. And his breath.
"I suppose I could have her arrested," is his conversationally mild version of agreement, ash tapped off the side of the curb in a cab's breezy wake. "Unless, of course, you think there's anything I could say that would actually stop her."
"There's nothing that Either of us can say, that can deter her. She has decided that this is her course of life and where it has taken her and if we don't like it…" Joanna's hands go up, still dressed in grey skirt and white silk blouse, lightweight to deal with the weather. "Do you have any plan with regards to her, short of arresting her? Would arresting her even have any effect to the positive or would she … jsut go deeper. She kept insisting she was on the edges of this group. I tried to point out that usually it's those very people thrown to the wolves while the ones deeper in sit content and safe in their thrones"
"Well," says Vincent. It's a drawn out sort of well — a statement in itself, in a way. Well. "Statistically speaking, she has to be more intelligent than she's acting like she is. I mean," he gestures vaguely between his own side and Joanna's, humble as ever.
"At this point, the mistake's already been made. Whether or not she intends to learn from it is at her discretion."
Beyond that initial testy look and some tension bit subtly into his jaw beneath its carefully maintained bristle, he could be talking about any other neighborhood daughter getting her nose pierced. He doesn't even stop walking, though his pace has certainly slowed to keep decent time with current company. He could say, They're already using her, or I've been thinking of making arrangements with our press secretary but does not, for whatever Vincenty reason. Probably the less either of them talks about it the less he has to think about it, black eyes tracing absently after the broken hobble of the skyline.
If I don't acknowledge it, it will not exist. A line of thought, that sometimes works. If Tasha intends to learn from it. Joanna at the disadvantage in that she only has what their daughter has told her about. Vincent remains silent in the wake of his verbalized thoughts on the matter and so, perhaps it's dismissed, banished from the mind for now.
Likely is, because Joanna's hand is coming out to touch Vincent's arm gently. Not something commonly done between the pair and usually preceed's something that she wants his undivided attention. "The visions. That happened on the tenth of last month. Tell me truthfully, what are the odds of them coming true? Don't lie to me or evade. It was an evolved who.." Her hand waves in the air as if by that act alone it might dredge up the word that she's searching for. "Inflicted all this one us. I need to know vincent"
Cigarette poked laxly back into the corner of his mouth, Vincent is caught off guard enough to glance down after the hand at his arm as if he isn't sure who it belongs to. He doesn't look all that ruffled or otherwise cornered when he levels his attention back on her face, but there is tell-tale unease written warily into faint lines between his brows while he seeks out slightly sideways eye contact. "All firm evidence filed so far indicates the involvement of a verifiable precognitive evolved individual." That's the bad news. "Whether or not his or her vision of the future will occur in any exactness is literally impossible to predict. As a species we don't understand the way things work well enough." The slightly less bad news. There, Vincent hesitates, still searching, now almost suspiciously so.
"Personally, I believe New York's foreknowledge of events will alter them. …But I've never been a proponent of fate." Or faith, more accurately.
"I died Vincent. A man was coming into view, marking foreheads with red crosses, moving on. I die on November 8th of this year. The man marked me and held my hand as I died"
She doesn't know whether he saw something, Tasha saw something and from the sounds of it, perhaps Vincent did see something and told their daughter. "How can you alter something that you don't know where or how it happened?"
The first thing Vincent automatically draws in a breath and opens his mouth to say is blessedly (very blessedly) cut of when he closes it instead. Logic is cold comfort at best, especially in those terms, and seeing as there is genuine concern knit into his brow, he's wise to reconsider his words.
A baffled blink and a cautious, "…You're sure?" later, he shakes his head. Either to her or to himself in his distraction, it's hard to tell.
"You could stay home. Or. Anywhere, really, other than places that resemble whatever it is you saw. There will be factors beyond your control, but you still have control over your own actions."
"Pretty sure vincent that there was a Russian holding my hand after I begged him too and I was telling him to pass a message to Tasha that 'I love you bee bottom' and then.. dead. As to where this happened, I don't know. Could be parking at work, could have been parking near my condo" Could have been plenty other places. This whole city has parkades.
"Tasha said she'd pack us all up and take us to Disneyland, she wouldn't let it happen, let anything happen to yourself, myself, her girlfriend. I pointed out that disneyland still has parkades" One hand rubs up and down the other arm, as if that alone could will away the goosebumps. "I updated my will, just in case. Making sure that Tasha has all that she needs, god forbid that comes true"
"You told Natasha you think you're dying?" Differences in levels of family discretion: Reason #9187 for the divorce. The fact that Vincent is immediately, even irritably distracted from both of their looming demises by some perceived stupidity: Reason #9188. That he had to add, 'You think,' in there: #9189.
Exasperation tightens into the corners of his eyes while his cigarette slants forgotten between his fingers, paper still faintly aglow. He has to make an executive decision not to focus on it. "There are places in the world without parking garages, Jo. The worst thing you can do is buy into some kind of … voodoo inevitability."
"She has been badgering me Vincent, and there is a difference between seeing ones death and dying. Dying implies I have a terminal disease or that my midriff has already been perforated half a dozen times by something large instead of a few months from now. Updating a will is something that should be done if there's a change. It hasn't been updated since before we divorced so, it's a purely reasonable action to have taken"
'Besides, the parking garage was where all the dead and soon to be dead were taken" Which means that whatever got her into the state, it happened elsewhere and nearby. She reaches up, pulling the cigarette away, tossing it to the ground and putting it out with a twist of her heel. "You need to quite smoking. You need a smoke, you should just change. You think that would be enough"
"Then you should have lied better the first time around." Not all of the humor has inked itself out of Lazzaro's crude oil glare.
Only the good humor.
"As for the other thing — no. I agree. Updating your will after a precognitive prediction of your own death is a perfectly natural and healthy step to take." He's on his way to lifting his (his) cigarette for an overdue drag when she whips it from between his fingers and grinds it down, leaving his right hand splayed open with the exaggerated inconvenience of it all. Which only goes to place further emphasis on his reaching deliberately back into his pocket to procure another smoke.
"I'm actually a vapor," is helpfully conveyed alongside the spark of his lighter's striker under his thumb.
"You're an asshole is what you actually are"
She'd make a move for the second smoke, but that might actually really piss him off and she'll only push him so far. "I'll lie better the next time. Not all of us can be Vincent Lazzaro of the stone face. I'm better in a court room, you're better in an interrogation room" The butt on the ground is kicked over to the road instead of letting it languish on the sidewalk, opting to root around in her purse for her car keys.
"Maybe you can see fit to assure our daughter that I will not be perishing, and that we might all do with a dose of thinking happy thoughts hmm?" There it is, keys to the Lincoln parked not far away and it beeps it's awareness that she has turned off the security system. "Maybe I'll go get married. That way I can die a married woman on the 8th. Or find some young.. italian man, and take him on as my lover. Set him up in the condo"
Zing.
Brows hiked, equal parts accepting of her assessment and impressed with the speed with which it came, Vincent Lazzaro of the stone face kicks a furl of smoke out through his sinuses and straightens himself out into his full five feet eight inches. Given the casually pristine state of his posture, he doesn't have far to go.
"I'll have agents brought in from out of state. An escort for the entire week. You are not going to die on November the 8th." Without so much as a batted eye for the suggestion that he be the one to reassure their daughter of the same, he looks her up and down and smokes while she rummages and beeps and threatens him with the promise of promiscuity or self-fulfillment.
"Shouldn't be hard to find one younger than you." Clearly he has nothing but well wishes!
"Clearly, I didn't go young enough the first time, and that was my problem. Possibly in their 20's once again. There's this strapping clerk on our floor, ass you would swear was chiseled" Now she's just doing it to bug him and clearly, from the satisfied look on her face, he's done exactly what she figured that he would do. Divorced they may be, they have a relationship still. They're just better friends when not bound by a piece of paper or a ring and just a kid. She was expecting something along the lines of the escort.
'We'll see" To November 8th. "Beware the russians." She offers the tidbit in a low voice rife with conspiracy. "Damned reds will ruin everything"
"Tasha could probably introduce you to someone. You should ask her."
There's a hollow tang to the latter suggestion — nearly an echo — and in the course of watching her ready herself for departure, he's made a ghostly kind of golem of himself, profile still distinctly defined amidst sooty smog stirring off the set of his shoulders.
"Stay safe."
"Jesus Vincent, you know I hate it when you do that" Hands go up in the air, a displeased look on her face as she shakes her head in dismay.
"You as well, try not to get yourself killed. Give your boss my regards when you see him next" She smiles then, a wicked little look on her face and a smirk as she heads to her car.
"Maybe I'll hit up your boss"
"He's married," says Vincent, intentionally misunderstanding. Or not.
Also gay. Probably.
Being of darkness that he has become, it's hard to read much into a distractedly thoughtful twitch of his brows before he tips off a careless nod for her displeased look.
And vanishes.