Participants:
| Scene Title | Big Ifs |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Tracking a junkie in New York City is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, but Ingrid prevails. |
| Date | July 22, 2011 |
Harlem — Derelict Shelter
Ingrid doesn't belong outside after curfew, but if she gets picked up by the police she'll argue that she wasn't outside at all, and from a technical standpoint, she'd even be telling the truth. The brownstone is derelict and half-collapsed with a sagging roof, stairs that wouldn't hold the weight of someone much heavier than she is, and so many rats nesting in the walls that she can smell them. She can't see them, not the dark — they shy away from the beam of her flashlight, squeezing under floorboards and into cracks, stealing away with the same kind of expertise possessed by the man whose name she's been calling out every few minutes.
It's not the kind of shelter she would choose, but Ingrid isn't Astor, and in the time they come from this block is overgrown with creeping ivy that blooms white when the conditions allow for it. There are no broken beer bottles, the graffiti on the walls have been painted over with brightly-coloured murals, and the stairs leading to the second and third floors disintegrated long ago. She is tempted to brave them and see what there is to see above her head, something that she has longed to do since she was small and the prospect of such things still held a strange kind of wonder, but braving something requires courage, and courage is something she's rather short on except when it comes to trespassing on abandoned property after dark in search of someone who is difficult to find unless he wants you to.
She turns over a piece of rubble with the toe of her shoe in a display of quiet frustration. She would kick it, except Ingrid doesn't kick anything. She sits down on the bottommost step, clicks off her flashlight, and with a resigned sigh rests her arms on her knees, and then her head on her arms. "This is pathetic," she says to no one.
Feet appear in her peripheral. Men's shoes. Secondhand, maybe third, but sturdy, brown leather and thick soles, an investment in time and durability. Astor's voice the next moment, snatched at by the warmth of the summer breeze:
"If you go home on the next street over there, you'll be killed."
This tidbit of information was brought to you by the letters that spell Refrain, and the color yellow, which Astor is rather uncharacteristically wearing tonight. The T-shirt hangs off him: he's thin, if not the thinnest she's ever seen him, and his hair hangs ropey and thick over his eyes, curly black bangs. His beard is dense on his jaw, but his teeth flash white, perfect, vanity that's mintily out of place.
It takes him a moment or three to blink, and then another to say, "It is. That's why I found a nicer place, myself. Don't tell anyone. I pretended I liked it here."
Ingrid starts at the sound of Astor's voice, and would drop her flashlight if it wasn't cradled in her lap. She sits up abruptly, back snapped straight and fingers clutching at the flashlight's handle in case she has to swing it at anyone. It would be wise of her to carry a gun so she can avoid fates like the one that awaits her on the 'next street over there', but only if she learned how to point and shoot it — just the thought of holding one makes her squeamish.
When she recognizes him, her eyes grow a little wider, a little whiter, and although her grip of the flashlight relaxes she doesn't seem much more at ease than she was a few moments ago, and her expression is plainly distraught as she takes in his appearance. "Oh," she says. Oh. He's very tall from where she's sitting, and she decides that staying on the stairs is smarter than springing fawn-like to her feet, all gangly legs and shaking. "I meant me, actually, I— I don't think there's anything wrong with— with—" She gestures to the room around them with her hand, forgets that she's still holding the flashlight and cringes in embarrassment when it connects with the banister with a mighty thunk.
The initial awkward silence is so awkward that even Astor finds himself compelled to answer, "Well I know what you meant. I'm not very good with people, but even I. I was just trying to."
The silence that falls afterward is even more awkward, he thinks, and he really isn't that good with people— so it's something that he notices. His fingers curl at his side and he scratches his leg through his trousers, shifting just enough to win a faint creak out of the floorboards beneath. He looks at her face for a moment, then around the room that she was indicating with her hands and flying flashlight, looking over the murals for the first time, really. About half a minute later, he goes to retrieve her light.
His movements are slightly stiff, but nothing to worry about. No recent seizures to throw anything out of joint, bang up his limbs or bruise his limbs. "There are a lot of things wrong with this place. But you'd never talk about them," he explains finally, holding out the little light at her. "Here."
"Thank you," Ingrid responds meekly, taking back the flashlight. She doesn't tell him to sit, but makes room on the step in case he decides to, and this is very easy because Ingrid doesn't take up much space to begin with, and when she scooches against the stairwell wall she vacates enough that there would still be at least a few inches between them.
"I don't think you're bad with people," she feels compelled to add after another one of those long silences. "They just aren't right for you. Most of them. You get along with Walter, and—" She's about to say Benji but hesitates. She thought she was so sure about Calvin and what lines he would not cross. There isn't much she can be sure about anymore. "Your parents," she decides instead. "Back before."
There's a twist to Astor's mouth that probably means, to him, that he doesn't see what Walter has to do with 'getting along' in the typical 'swimmingly' sense. To anyone else he looks a bit like he just sucked on a lemon. He turns in place like a cat, his shoes scratching and puffing in the dust, and then he folds carefully backward, seating himself with a rickety, sinewy grace beside her, like a puppet pulled with impossible realism.
"I was a kid," he answers. "With hair that strange older men would tell me was very 'touchable.' I'm also not sure my parents count. They weren't." He doesn't finish that sentence either, perhaps thinking, the way precogs do, that he already had. Instead, his fingers interlace on his lap. He didn't maximize the number of inches between them. He thinks about Benji for a few seconds. About why she didn't end up saying Benji.
"Are you trying to choose a side?" he asks, instead. Maybe she'd rather talk about work.
Ingrid looks down at her hands, which are easier to study than Astor's face, and picks at the peeling polish on her nails. It's pink like floral pattern on her blouse under her corduroy jacket is pink, but at night, in the dark, her nails, her clothes and everything else only come in muted shades of blue and gray limned with silver where the moonlight touches it. Inside, there is very little moonlight at all, and Ingrid's face appears tired, sunken.
That isn't an illusion. "That's the mistake everybody makes, you know. Thinking that there are sides when all everybody wants is the same thing."
Her clothes look nice. Out of place here but you know, Astor's wearing. Butter-lemon yellow, so. He looks down at his hands too, which is perhaps strange as well; normally he doesn't care whether someone's trying to make eye-contact or avoiding eye-contact or the elaborate games of proximity. Generally, he stares or looks at whatever he wants. Generally, he doesn't look at murals.
Or a girl's clothes. "You can't say there's no difference at all," he says, neutrally, to the semi-darkness in front of him. "Even if everyone wants the same thing in the end, the means matter. That's enough to mean 'sides' for some people." A beat. He draws a breath, tastes dust, rubs his fingers along the inside of his arm absently. "You didn't come here to ask me who was going to win."
"No," says Ingrid. "It's unfair enough to know what you know. Worse if all the people around you expect you to share it, whether you're good with them or not." A flake of polish comes off under the press of her thumbnail. She blows on it to send it on its way. "I don't have to choose. Won't. I didn't come back because I thought we could help— I mean, I did think we could help, but that's not why I was down on my knees and begging them to let me go."
She takes her thumbnail in her teeth and bites down hard, looking like she might continue to talk around it. Her hand drops again before she does. "I don't have a lot of friends, Astor. All of a sudden everybody I really knew was leaving and I got scared, and the only thing that made it go away was thinking that if maybe something bad happens then I could be there, and maybe I could do something. A little something, because I am. Little. I'm not a hero — that's Josh.
"I'm talking a lot. I'm sorry. I don't even know what I'm trying to say anymore."
Astor isn't sure what she's trying to say either. Too many threads. Too many ways this conversation could go, and some of them are distracting, as well as infuriatingly unlikely. He stares blankly into the shadows and thinks about Josh, unsure if it's because she just mentioned him, or because of the potential that lies ahead there, too. "I'm not a hero either," he answers, after awhile. "That's Walter or maybe next month. Maybe not the month after that.
"That word doesn't mean anything." He straightens slightly. It makes him much taller than her, but not in an imposing kind of way; he's much too self-contained for that, narrow, even his elbows tucked in at his sides, like his mother is holding her wings a rooftop away, outside. Collected. "What do you think the turning-point was? The one that would blank everything out and start again, if you went back to do it over?
"I know that was the objective of this operation, but that's not what I mean. I'm not talking about history. I'm talking about your life. I think that's the mistake people make more," he glances off at the hollow doorway off to their side, the endtable tipped derelict against the wall there. His profile is still lovely, dark, the dignity of unconfessed remorse. "I mean our people. Thinking our lives could only be measured in the history we could remake for all mankind. What kind of childhood—?"
He stops talking again. This time, like he'd cut himself off.
"But what was the first thing you did? To put you. Here."
Ingrid turns her head just enough to watch Astor in her peripheral vision with her chin tucked against her collarbone, the only way she knows how to look at someone and hide that she's doing it. "It was a parade of funerals, growing up," she says. "Not just for me. Hannah's dad. Josh's mom. Your parents. I remember the ones where I was big enough to remember, and I remember wondering why I was there, saying good bye to somebody I never knew. Most of the time I was sad because other people were sad, and when other people were crying I'd cry, but then one day my dad wasn't there anymore and my mom stopped being the same person so it was like she was gone, too."
She reaches up to rub at the outer corner of her eye and covertly use the pad of her thumb to wipe away some of the moisture gathering there. "I felt alone. I still feel alone, actually. The only time I don't is when I'm trying to make other people less alone, because nobody should have to go through that unless they want to. Being there for my mom in the way she needed me — that's what I would change. That's what I would do."
The next breath she pulls in is slow and deep, but remarkably steady except for one short hitch in the middle. "What's your do-over?"
"It's hard to think that way." Astor waves a long hand. His knuckles seem too big on it. Bony. "Like: backwards. I'm getting stronger I guess." That's a bit of a lie, but only a little. For a moment, he's not just not looking at her but avoiding it, before he tries to find his bearings again, what they were talking about— before. "I changed my mind about it a few times. Telling my parents more about my dreams could have changed something. I thought about running away from the monastery once too and I wonder if I should have.
"I thought about kissing with you when you were grieving for your dad too, around the funeral, but that seemed like the wrong time," he finishes, not loudly. 'Normal' voice. His hands haven't moved at all, are dry as paper. "Or the wrong thing to do at the right time, and I was the wrong person to do anything like that, considering. Everything. But I noticed you were all alone. But maybe if I'd. We'd. You know?"
Ingrid turns her head just enough to watch Astor in her peripheral vision with her chin tucked against her collarbone, the only way she knows how to look at someone and hide that she's doing it. "It was a parade of funerals, growing up," she says. "Not just for me. Hannah's dad. Josh's mom. Your parents. I remember the ones where I was big enough to remember, and I remember wondering why I was there, saying good bye to somebody I never knew. Most of the time I was sad because other people were sad, and when other people were crying I'd cry, but then one day my dad wasn't there anymore and my mom stopped being the same person so it was like she was gone, too."
She reaches up to rub at the outer corner of her eye and covertly use the pad of her thumb to wipe away some of the moisture gathering there. "I felt alone. I still feel alone, actually. The only time I don't is when I'm trying to make other people less alone, because nobody should have to go through that unless they want to. Being there for my mom in the way she needed me — that's what I would change. That's what I would do."
The next breath she pulls in is slow and deep, but remarkably steady except for one short hitch in the middle. "What's your do-over?"
"It's hard to think that way." Astor waves a long hand. His knuckles seem too big on it. Bony. "Like: backwards. I'm getting stronger I guess." That's a bit of a lie, but only a little. For a moment, he's not just not looking at her but avoiding it, before he tries to find his bearings again, what they were talking about— before. "I changed my mind about it a few times. Telling my parents more about my dreams could have changed something. I thought about running away from the monastery once too and I wonder if I should have.
"I thought about kissing with you when you were grieving for your dad too, around the funeral, but that seemed like the wrong time," he finishes, not loudly. 'Normal' voice. His hands haven't moved at all, are dry as paper. "Or the wrong thing to do at the right time, and I was the wrong person to do anything like that, considering. Everything. But I noticed you were all alone. But maybe if I'd. We'd. You know?"
Ingrid is quiet again, as Astor's mother usually was for the twelve years he knew her, but that is where the similarities between them end. Her heart is on her sleeve, and the muscles of her face aren't trained to stand up like a dam against her emotions. She doesn't know whether it's more appropriate to laugh or cry, so she meets both impulses halfway by curving her mouth into a smile at the same time the tears are streaking wet down her cheeks.
She smears them away with the heels of her hands, then wipes them off on her jeans. "Do you think about kissing with a lot of girls?" she asks, and she's looking at her shoes when she does. There's nothing accusatory about her tone — if it's anything, it's tentative and mousey. Her curiosity is genuine but so is her fear of the answer.
The boy grunts. Man. Grunts. The man grunts. "No," Astor answers as up-front as you like, moving his feet together on the floor. It occurs to him that if he really knew anything about situations like this he'dve asked Ingrid to go up on the roof, where there's a small garden, and more murals for her to shine her little light on, but instead they are sitting down here, breathing dust, and talking about the time he wanted to make out w kiss a six-year-old. Calvin would have something uncharitable to say. "Well I guess it depends on what you think 'a lot' is.
"Walter liked talking about it so sometimes thoughts were pretty unavoidable." His voice is ineffably dry. "I'm sure the other guys too, but they didn't like talking to me. Just him. But not really— not for me. I guess I'm kind of weird." Astor doesn't apologize. He blinks in the darkness, his eyelashes splashing like ink on his face.
"I haven't either," says Ingrid. There's a beat before she realizes it might be smart to clarify. "Kissed anybody. With an open mouth, anyway." The palms of her hands are still damp, and she rubs them against the insides of her thighs to remedy this, snuffling. "He sent you up there to keep you safe. Raith. The monastery. I heard him talking about it to Delia once. He was scared of what might happen if you stayed, like my mom was scared of what might happen if she didn't keep me closed up behind a locked door.
"But they don't know what that's like. They can't, because they're not the ones who are standing still while everything else is passing them by. That's why you— we're. You know."
It takes Astor a moment, but then he does know. It's odd to think: she knows too. She doesn't look the type, somehow, the big eyes and— her hair. Feet. Little hands. He's seen himself in the mirror, understands that he meets-or-exceeds certain standards of conventional beauty, but he's mean, too, which changes everything. Ingrid isn't anything like that. "Standing still," he says, at length. "I guess that's what I was trying to do, but my idea of forward is probably a little different."
He doesn't mean to make it sound harsh. His tone isn't. But it's unmistakable, the space gently eroded between them, and the moment he's said he isn't sure why he did, almost regrets it, if Astor's capable of regretting anything at all when he's like this. A pinched feeling at the base of his head argues: Yes.
So he tries, blankly: "It's that different when you don't open your mouth?"
"Yes," Ingrid says, with quiet conviction but none of the fierceness that might come from someone who's just been offended, either by his question or what came directly before it. "Yes." Again. "I'm sure it's different, otherwise people would just kiss with their mouths closed all the time instead of open." This is not the sort of topic she is comfortable talking about with a boy, but the way Astor's question is framed allows her to approach it from a safe distance. Impersonal but not unkind. She sounds thoroughly convinced by what she's saying.
"And they do," she adds. "Kiss all the time with their mouths closed, but that's when other people are watching. When they aren't watching, then it's different. Look and you'll see. My parents were like that. I bet yours were too.
"Is it okay if I touch your hand?"
Reflexively, Astor closes his hand then reopens it again. He is not sure what to do, so he looks ahead a few seconds, nervous in a stiff-legged irritated sort of way then says, "Mm." The next moment, he takes her hand.
Walter had told him something about this, see. Confidence. A couple times outside the monastery, too, he'd heard men boast about how to deal, and while he doesn't generally put much stock into anybody's idea of a good time, or anybody's concept of how anybody else feels, given people are generally self- and externally-ignorant assholes, he has had some peripherally-related personal experiences that amount to as much. Confidence makes a leader. Confidence makes—
—a good hand-holder. His fingers are warm, dry, palm bending its crease over the side of her hand. There are four or five things he could say. He goes with the one that will make her laugh around her eyes. "That question wasn't just theoretical was it?"
Ingrid's mouth purses to keep from laughing more than around the eyes and she shakes her head, no. It wasn't just theoretical. She gives his hand a squeeze, then turns it over so she can look at its underside and the lines that reach across it like roads and rivers on a map. "It's easier to talk to somebody when you're touching them," she says, and as far as she's concerned this is a fact too. "At least I think that's so.
"You have big hands." The edge of her thumb grazes along the most prominent line it can find. "Astor. If you had to pretend that you didn't know what was going to happen, what would you wish for?"
There's a line that goes straight across his palm, the middle of it. There are mythologies somewhere in the world that if you have hands like that and hit someone too hard over the face, you can kill them, instant. Other schools of thought hold that Astor is going to live forever. Considering his particular preternatural gifts, one might think his chances were better than average. Or profoundly worse.
"A win-win solution," Astor says, after awhile. "Instead of a win-lose situation." He is lying. He doesn't usually. But he thinks: she'd like believing that someone gets to win. She probably knows he's lying, he decides, but he doesn't look at it too closely, or doesn't try and see too far. "And maybe. You know."
Ingrid interlaces her fingers with Astor's. "No," she says. "I don't know." Blonde brows draw together, her mouth flattens out into a more contemplative shape, and he hears her exhale through her nose, a sigh. Her head tips to rest on his shoulder, and her other hand at his bicep, relaxed. His body is warm, familiar but at the same time alien in the way all bodies that aren't hers are; she has never had prolonged contact with him before, or been close enough to experience the smell of him on his clothes, feel pulse and breath. If she listens, she can hear his ribcage expanding.
Or imagine that she does. "But you can tell me when you want to."