Participants:
| Scene Title | Drafted |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | On moving day, Audrey approaches Ziadie about a trip. A trip that will most likely end up giving him a headache. |
| Date | June 8, 2011 |
People having been coming and going with stuff, Ziadie's stuff, and while Audrey hasn't been home to see most of it, she's been home long enough to see people bringing stuff in then leaving empty handed. She's not much of a peeping tom, not much of a person to get to know her neighbours, but when she has to walk past the now no longer empty apartment with her box of pizza, bag of dog food and half gallon of milk, it's pretty hard to not look in as one is going by.
Pretty hard to not notice how familiar some of the things are, or the old black man who's taken up shop in the newly occupied apartment next to hers in the Rivage. The man she was going to call up and propose something to that wasn't' marriage. "Nocturne?" The pinch faced blonde calls out, hoping to garner his attention, standing in the hall and looking in.
There are boxes, there's the old couch and the coffee table and a coat tree, there's a freestanding bookshelf bolted to the wall of the small one-bedroom apartment that probably came from a yardsale. The bed's been put in, the single guest bed, and there's a box of various bedding. Most of the belongings Ziadie has, aside from the few things that they were able to retrieve from his truck in the impound yard, are things that had been in Felix's apartment. The dishware, the few books, though the books Ziadie will be putting back in the other apartment when he's done with them. He looks up, the door open from the movers carrying the last of the boxes in. "Come in," he calls. There's a faint tone of resignation in his voice, as if he's given up on attempting to get her to call him by his last name.
"Actually, if you want, could you come over to my place? We share a wall. I had some things that I wanted to ask you. Work wise." In other words, not in front of the random non-cleared moving people. Not that Ziadie was cleared as well. "I got pizza."
Ziadie nods. "So we do," he observes, jacket picked up from the chair it's draped on and arms pushed through the sleeves. The leather jacket is habit, really, one the old man's never likely to change. "Alright. Let me get my cane, I'll be right there." And possibly the gun that's sitting on the bookshelf, rather than leave it out of his sight for even a little while. "I won' say no to food, you know. Surest way to an old man's heart." It's perhaps a minor falsehood, false cheer to cover that moving still is hard, that Ziadie still misses Felix and Elisabeth and the life he'd been starting to build for himself.
People come and go, and in truth, Felix and Elisabeth are really not that far away. Just that there's more a social and legal barrier between all. Audrey nods, pointing in the direction that Ziadie should go before she's disappearing out of sight. She's enough of a neatnik that she won't be embarrassed about her apartment, but she'll want to get the dogs chomping on food in lieu of chomping on the old man, and so she disappears into her place with a jingle of keys and the door left open a crack so that Ziadie can just come right on in.
It takes another five or so minutes, and then the former officer walks in, carefully shutting the door behind him and with a nod to Audrey. "Thanks," he adds, almost but not quite an afterthought, moving towards where he sees available seating rather than waiting for her to indicate where he should sit. "What sort of pizza?" Not that he'll say no to any of it, but.
"Pepperoni, I like it simple. Nothing fancy" There's seats, stools in the kitchen that one can eat off of the counter that is half the island in her kitchen. Her gun already hanging up, her milk put away and dogs happily chomping away on the floor.
"Are you okay to travel? For that matter, if I were to hire you for a few days as a consultant, would you be willing to stay mum on what you may or may not hear? Sign a NDR for me even. I might have need of you and your ability. An outside eye so to speak."
Cane leans against the island, and after a moment of thought, the gun comes off, set carefully away on the counter, but within reach should there be some sort of dire emergency. Then Ziadie nods, watching Audrey. "Yes, can do that." And by the lack of hesitation, and the lack of feedback from his ability on his own words, it's not a lie. "Travel's doable, though I don' do stairs and such as well as I used to, but that don' make travel impossible." That, and the old man can move much more quickly than he does most of the time, in the event that he needs to.
"Plane to DC, there will be elevators wherever it is that we're going. But I have need of a lie detector. And I only know of one." Him. She fishes out some paper plates, furnishing them with pizza and passing them over to Ziadie to take his pick from whichever one it is that he wants. "I'll bring by the papers tomorrow, I'll see how good a stipend I can get you for your few days, might not be 'til the weekend that we go but I'll give you enough warning."
She takes the leftover piece, coming around the counter still in her suit and and takes a seat. "Sylar, the midtown man, is still alive." She looks over, waiting to see his reaction.
One slice of pizza, at least to start, for the moment. And while this information is new to Ziadie, it's greeted with a raised eyebrow and not a particular amount of surprise. "Washington, sounds nice. At least it's not th' middle of winter or anything like that." There's a nod, and he pauses to take a few bites of pizza. "I'm going to the substation tomorrow morning an' filing de rest of change of address, but other than that I'll be here." Benefit of being retired and older, that the pension and human resources office, small and underfunded as they may be now, is always willing to help him with paperwork when it comes up.
And others willing to pick up the slack that Russians left behind when they defected to the "bad guys". "I can pay you under the table, if you think it might interfere with your social security. If you need to make grocery runs, you can always leave me a note and a list, or I can take you when I'm off work. If you want the help." If. People have their pride. "I can leave you a key as well, in case you want to come over, or need some company" or audrey needs him to feed her dogs. "Agent Cooper is a floor up." She rattles off his number. "He's my partner."
Head tilts to the side in a manner of conveying that Ziadie is considering. "You know, I'll ask if it would mess wit', but I think it … is okay. I have done occasional work, I get my pension regardless of that." The accent that comes out only rarely is showing in the old man's voice, a lilt betraying that though he's lived in New York all of his adult life, he did not grow up there.
"Thank you. Th' grocery delivery, they moved th' service to th' one that serves this neighbourhood. But." There's always the chance he'll want other things, or the company. Company's always good, even just the companionable silence as they eat pizza and talk at least some business. There's a pause, and then a shrug.
She can do companionable silence, while consuming pizza of which there is more. It's not like it's very noisy in Audrey's home anyways. "Guest room is off limits, door is locked, bathroom is down the hall." It's laid out roughly like Ziadie's, a comfortable sized apartment for a lone woman and her two small dogs. She picks a piece of pepperoni and drops it down to the waiting maw of the dark colored dog, Felix if the murmured name is any indication, but otherwise, business is taken care of, Ziadie's services secured and plans to start putting into place to go to Washington to pay a visit to one Agent Epstein.