Participants:
| Scene Title | Friday in the Park |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | It's not quite a Chicago song, but close. The girls drive a young man to drink — or at least to serve drinks, all while looking good while doing it. |
| Date | May 22, 2009 |
It's Friday afternoon! Everyone rejoice! Central Park is the best place to be when the sun is out; so that's where Cook is. In a few hours, his shift starts back at the pub, but right now he's enjoying some time out. He speeds down the walk on his skateboard, dodging people left and right and getting a series of very hectic and angry calls. He doesn't care. Wheeeeeee! In his hand is an ice cream. Well. It was an ice cream. Now it's just the stick, and he's eating that, too.
Faith glances at her watch. She and Hope had made plans to meet here for a post-work walk and people-watching marathon, but so far it's just her. She sits on a bench, and pulls out her camera — Central Park's always a good spot to get "wild art" for the newspaper — those photographs that run with no accompanying story, just to take up some space and appeal to "human interest" and all. Her lens finds Cook and she snaps a few shots of the skateboarder, nose wrinkling a bit as she realizes he's actually eating the little wooden stick his ice cream came on. "Gross," she mutters to herself.
"What's that face for?" asks Hope as she walks down the sidewalk from the opposite direction that her sister is looking. It's at an angle, so she can see that cute scrunched up face that they both use when they find something disgusting. She sits down next to her and watches where she's aiming her contract. "Got anything? A big fat nothing for me today." Hope glances at the skateboarder as he zooms around.
FLASH. Or just snap. Whatever. Cook notices. He glances over at the camera and spots Faith, and then Hope when the other girl walk up to her sister. Oooh. Twins. "Choice." He flips his skateboard and starts heading over, grinning and popping the rest of his ice cream stick in his mouth. Yum.
"Not really," Faith says with a shrug. "Just wild art. Nothing too exciting. And he's eating his stick," she says, pulling the camera down and sliding it into her red backpack. "Other than that… boring day. I took pictures of a mosaic tile mural some kids made in the Bronx and some old lady getting some award at the Kiwanis meeting. Snoozefest." She flips a blond wave out of her eyes, and then pulls her sunglasses down so she can watch Cook approach them less obviously.
As Faith tugs down her glasses, as does Hope, almost mirroring the action of her sister. They do dress differently, but otherwise, they are seemingly identical. "Snoozefest is right. Funds are starting to run low. Might have to call in a few favors if we can't generate some new income." She stops talking the closer Cook gets to their position as she glances up at the lad. "This ought to be good." she mutters under her breath to her sister.
"If you was figurin' a pi'ture'd last longer, you'd be wrong," Cook tells Faith as he approaches them. Okay, so he may be exaggerating, but. He gives them both a shit-eating grin and kicks his skateboard up to his hands, catching it deftly.
Faith nods to Hope. "I think Meghan Vanderkempt might still have a few dollars to spare, don't you?" she says, speaking of one of their former schoolmates. "After all, I still have those photos of her and Andrea's father somewhere…" Her eyebrows rise, visible above the sunglasses that cover her eyes. "Don't flatter yourself. I'm a photographer for the News." Well, that might be a stretch of a title, but it's close enough. "What's your name?" she asks, pulling out her slim reporter's notebook — she's not the reporter, but she still has to get the information for her captions.
Hope has no clue what sort of news this could possibly be, but getting a name to match a face isn't necessarily a bad thing. Hope doesn't bother pulling out a notepad, as she's certain this dude isn't very newsworthy. "Aren't you a little old to be skateboarding? I thought that was for teens who had nothing better to do?" She grins to the cocky bartender.
"I ne'er flatter m'self. Always the truth, s'me." He grins at them with a tip of his head. "Name's Cook. An' skateboardings fun. If I stopped doin' everythin' fun when I stopped bein' a teenager I'd look like…" He looks over his shoulder, spots a random yuppie on his handless, wireless, shitless cellphone and points. "Him. How 'bout you, lassies? Names? Phone numbers?" Grin.
"Cook your first name or last? I need both. And an age, and a city of residence," Faith says, tapping a pen on her notepad. "Either that or you get to just be an anonymous skateboarder in the cutline… er, the caption." She doesn't give her name but pushes her sunglasses up onto her head with her free hand to look up at the skateboarder. "Don't mind my sister. She's the serious one," she adds with a little bit of a smirk, bracing for the hit that may or may not come from Hope.
Hope doesn't hit Faith. She doesn't even look like she's upset. "Am I do serious, sister?" she grins over to her. "If I'm so serious, then I wouldn't be about to play a little game with our new friend 'Cook.'" With that, Hope turns her gaze back to the slightly younger man. "If you can guess both of our names, and our ages with a single guess and no hints, you can have our phone numbers." She knows the girls haven't addressed each other by name as of yet in front of him. It's an impossible guess, but you never know. He could get lucky. Doubtful, but there's a slight chance.
"Aw hell, when pretty young girls have faith in me, it give a lad hope, y'know? Fraid it's a catch-22. Ain't ever gonna guess." Did he just..? Cook shrugs and doesn't look too dejected. Instead, he looks at Faith and says, "James Cook, 21, New York."
Faith blinks, but doesn't say anything as she scribbles his name down on the notepad, leaving it to her sister to decipher his message, and decide if he won the little bet or not. She notices a little kid playing on the nearby Hans Christian Andersen statue and pulls out her camera. "Cliche shot, but photo ed's a sap and cliche himself," she mutters, zooming in to snap a few of the little kid.
Well, he did say he'd never guess, so. She shrugs. "Sorry, Charlie." His name wasn't Charlie? Oh well. She follows her sister as she snaps a photo of the kid. "Aren't you at your limit with cliche shots already?" Hope teases Faith. "So, what do you do, James Cook, 21, New York?" Security guard? Video Game Store clerk? Vagrant?
Now that's just not fair. Don't people believe in fate anymore?! Cook snorts. "Bartender at a pub. How's 'bout you, babe?" Hell, she didn't give him his name, he's not going to ask again yet. He'll just call her whatever comes to mind.
give him her*
Faith chuckles. "Are you even old enough to drink?" she asks, looking doubtful, as if she's one to talk. She puts the camera away and moves to go ask the parents the little girl's age and name, giving her card so she doesn't seem like a crazy child stalker, then returns to the conversation.
As Faith gets up and walks over to speak to the child's parent, Hope turns back to Cook. "You can call us both Kelly." She looks completely serious as she says this. "Parents were lazy and unimaginative. Go figure. "But, I'm Kelly Number 1, she's number 2." she thumbs towards her sister who's out of ear-range. "Bartender, huh?" Well, that doesn't sound like it pays much. Oh well.
"I just said I was twenty-one, di'n't I?" Cook gives Faith a smirk when she comes back. He glances at Hope and for a moment looks like he's going to say something ornery. Instead, he just grins. "Ri't then: Number 1. And you," he turns to Faith. "Are Number 2." He nods at Hope's question. "Bartender. Whut, you girls don't drink?"
Faith sits on a bench and pulls out a laptop and a cord to upload the pictures on her phone. "I'm not second in anything but out of my mother's who-ha," Faith says with a flip of those tawny waves. "So you call me Number Two again, and that's the last time you call me anything." She smiles sweetly as she types without looking up, swift strokes of her fingertips showing she knows her way around a laptop and a keyboard.
"You can be number one in anything that doesn't involve me. I'll let you." Hope glances at her sister, then leans against to to see what she's doing on the laptop. "Oh, I drink on occasion. So does she, though she doesn't hold her liquor all that well." Now, this is where it gets kind of interesting as one time Hope will say Faith in the lightweight, then the next time it'll be reversed. They just love to mess with everyone. "Though if you get her drunk enough, she'll probably sleep with you."
"Might'ave t'try tha', then." Cook glances at Faith and smiles. "Ain't got nothin' else t'call you, luv. Less you gimme your name, you're gonna've t'deal with Number 2." The look he gives her is quite upset. He would love to call her something else, but his hands are /tied/!
"How sweet," Faith says to Hope with a roll of her eyes. She shuts her laptop and sets it back in the red bag. "There. Done for the weekend. Can you believe in the old days they actually had to go back to a darkroom and develop that shit?" she says with a shake of her head as she stands once more. "What pub do you work at? Maybe some day we'll come in and you can test out her theory."
Hope can't help but to tease her sister. Plus, she knows she's going to get it back, sooner rather than later, and probably two-fold, if she knows her sister. And she does. She stands at the exact same time her sister does as she looks to Cook to see if he'll tell them where he works. Of course, she'll have to talk to her sister later about him. Having a bartender in your pocket might be good for business.
Cook looks dumb. But he isn't. He noticed he still hasn't gotten their names. He doesn't push the issue. Instead, he just grins at them and drops his skateboard to the ground. "Balor's Pissin' Eye, in Brooklyn. If you come with short skirts you get your first pint f'free." He sounds serious, too. PIG! But that's one hell of a large grin, innit?
Faith and Hope are all about free things. And they have the legs for short skirts. "Sounds like a deal, even if that's a horrific name for a bar," Faith says, and her nose wrinkles again at the imagery inspired by the name. "Check the weekend issue of the News — I can't promise you'll make it in, but you might. Most likely on page 3 of Local, if anywhere." She smiles. If he does indeed end up in the paper, he'll at least know her name — and even if he doesn't, a skim through the past week's issues will come up with two Kellys — Hope on some stories, and Faith on some photos.
Hope grabs her sister by the arm and begins to tug her down the sidewalk. "We may stop in at some point. But if it smells anything like its name, we are outta there." she winks to the man as walks away with her sister in tow, laughing.
Cook puts a foot on his skateboard and watches the two girls walk away. He sniffs a bit, and waves his hand at them, rolling the skate back and forth a little, before he gets on it and pushes off in the other direction. He smashes someone's cellphone on the way. "HEY! MY PHONE!" Crunch.