Cold Feet

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f_april_icon.gif silver_icon.gif

Scene Title Cold Feet
Synopsis April doesn't quite call Silver to tender all the explanations she owes.
Date July 12, 2010

On Either End of a Phone Line


The apartment that April Silver now calls home is a far cry from the residence her doppelganger once inhabited; it's small and plain, looking very much like a place whose owner came into it with nothing and is only beginning to accumulate the debris that comes with continuous residence. For all that it's evening by the sun and any given clock, it's her morning; working night shift turns things on end like that. Thus it's a woman still dressed in a nightgown that sits on her couch, half-empty mug of coffee parked on the table… beside a cellphone whose unremarkable gray appearance totally doesn't warrant the dread April's regarding it with.

As she's done every day — often more than once — for the past three, and intermittently before that, April picks up the phone and folds its cover to open. The LCD lights up cheerily, displaying such important information as the time, date, battery charge, and signal reception. She ignores all of these things, brushing her thumb across the keypad; but April doesn't enter any digits as she does this.

On this evening, James Silver has just finished typing a brief, packaged it for delivery to the courthouse and he glances at the clock that tells him that yet again, he's stayed way past working hours. The clock isn't the only thing that tells him that, as his stomach growls to him. He will have to stop for some Chinese food on the way home. It's take out. Every night. He's lucky he hasn't started packing on the pounds, but God appears to have graced him with a healthy metabolism.

Yet, he doesn't move from his chair. Not yet.

Silver is eyeing the computer that sits on his desk and he finds himself in another time and another place, lost to this timeline and in another. What he dreams of isn't all that important to anyone but himself, but it brings a smile to his face. Then realization brings a touch of sadness as he finally reaches over to close the lid of the laptop and moves to start packing his briefcase.

The pad of April's thumb hovers over one digit in particular; thought that doesn't quite cross over into consciousness triggers memory, and a phone number that she never, ever forgot — not in eleven years — takes form upon the screen. She stares at it for a long, long moment, biting her lower lip and reflexively blinking away the tears that want to form. She could… maybe she should

For the first time, April pauses over the clear button — and a treacherous finger stabs the dial key instead.

The phone rings exactly once.

Papers get shoved into the compartment made for such inside his briefcase, though the designer probably intended it to have some order. Nonetheless, he'll sort it out later. Silver glances around the office, knowing he's forgetting something. What is it? Picking up the keys on the desk, which is not what he's missing, he seems to be stuck.

Then the phone rings.

He's right there so he picks it up and answers. "James Silver." All the while, he's still trying to figure out what it was he was supposed to take with him and then he remembers, moving around the desk to pull his wallet from the top drawer.

Picking up the phone yields James only a dead line; it seems likely whomever was calling hung up even before he answered. Its display reads one missed call, along with the number that dialed, which confirms this suggestion.

What the hell was she thinking?

April stares at the phone in her hand, green eyes wide with the sudden adrenaline-rush of panic. Leaning forward, she slowly sets the cellphone back on the coffee table, a nudge of her fingers sending it sliding across to the far side where it isn't so easily in reach. Temptation, removed — far enough, anyway. Picking up the cooling cup of coffee instead, she scoots back into the cushions of the couch, bringing bare feet up onto the seat and leaning the backs of her hands against her knees.

Watching the lump of plastic and computer chips on the other side of the coffee table, April doesn't know whether to hope he calls back… or fear it. Though she's leaning more towards the latter.

"Hello? Anyone.." He glances at the phone, noticing a missed call. Silver stares at the phone for a moment, then shrugs. He shoves his wallet into his slacks pocket, his phone into his jacket pocket, thinking perhaps someone just realized they'd misdialed. He gets that now and then.

Without another thought of the phone call, James Silver steps out of his office, taking one last look inside before locking it behind him and heading off to dinner.

It's going to be a dull night after all.


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