Participants:
| Scene Title | Ratchet |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The snowball from last scene keeps rolling. |
| Date | February 25, 2011 |
Curfew hasn't come down close enough for the streets to be completely empty — in fact, on a Friday night, they're scattered with more cars than usual with people trying to have a normal night out on the town as well as not get arrested for being out later than they should. A filmy sort of rain is falling, making the lights wobble through water-spattered glass, making everything shiny shinier, the matte asphalt like black glass in the chilly fall of evening. A siren cries out. Not long ago, so had these ones.
Three uniformed vehicles aren't making that noise anymore as they head away from Powerhouse, and the one in the middle contains a young man who is more high and dazed than he ever planned to be on this bright New York evening. To him, it feels like the bass beats are still thrumming through his head, the sedatives he'd been given by bodyguards— are they allowed to do that— making the world fragment and split before his eyes but slowly dying off. Expensive shirt hung open over cotton, and both items sticky with blood from his nose and mouth both.
He'd snapped one pair of handcuffs before they'd negated him. Splintered pieces of metal on the ground. The pinch of the needle.
A light turns to red as the cars trundle by the street corner, the station maybe a handful of blocks away. It's upper west side, moderately respectable, no streetwalkers in the rain, a scattered amount of homeless who know they have to move on soon.
Graeme is out, and he watches as the cars approach with a small amount of curiosity, skateboard in hand. Just because his roommate's asked him to be home more, doesn't mean that he's home early.
All too often, Graeme pushes curfew as closely as he dares, tonight being no true exception save for the fact that he's tired for once, save for the fact that if he didn't want to be home tonight, he could easily have stayed at the area of Queens where he worked in the evening and worked into the night. But he didn't. Instead, his eyes notice the entourage of cars, and his grip on his skateboard tightens as he takes his next few steps. Nothing to see, but his grip tightens anyway.
She can't even remember the kind of SUV she drives. If pressed to answer, Kristen would say "a black one?" Russo called it Mustang Sally once, it sort of stuck. The tinted windows and slick form of the 4x4 as it purrs a half block behind the police vehicles. She's not worried about curfew in the least, not right now, she's more angry than anything.
Security disobeyed her and called the cops. Some people are going to be receiving pink slips in the morning. No severence packages either. The guys who were hurt? The producer doesn't even want to think of the workcomp pileup of paperwork that she's going to have to have Dirk deal with.
It was a good dance though.
Would have been a great episode.
Too bad Jersey girl had to wreck it.
She's driving slow through the streets, just fast enough to keep up but not enough to get caught with only running lights on. The producer stops at a light one block behind the caravan and waits for theirs to turn green before proceeding. She won't get there before the cops, she'll arrive just after if the watch on her wrist is keeping correct time.
Wearing his zipped up black leather AC/DC jacket with matching Chucks and a pair of blue jeans, Amadeus is walking down the street with a simple blue sling on his left arm, a black Yankees bat bag on his back, smoking a simple wooden pipe. No doubt that there's pot in the pipe, but he figures the cops would be less prone to stopping someone as distinguished as a pipe smoker. "Cheerios and all that, yo." he mutters before puffing a smoke ring.
Out for a nice night on the town, Calvin's harder to make out than usual behind the foggy windscreen of a stolen silver Prius. Stolen because he was in a hurry. A Prius because — he was in a hurry.
The owner is in the back seat wound up in duct tape because he happened to have some handy. Also because it's convenient to know for certain whether or not someone's in a position to report you to the police when you have driving left to do.
He's kind enough to observe all traffic and safety laws anyway, for his convenience as much as hers — the phone at his ear pulled away, silenced and pocketed after a terse, "I see them."
"Mmmmfff—!!" says the lady in back when he swerves left to choke off traffic coming his way, as ladies in back falling awkwardly to the floorboard with duct tape on their clammy faces do. Brakes let off just in time escape the danger of hydroplaning, there's a squeal to accompany the lash of his headlights across wet concrete and paint before he slams to a halt something like dead center of the intersection. Tires screech all around; the street jams both ways and he's up out of the driver's side into white headlights and drizzle, all wild orange hair and coat unfurling black with the gun he'd slung into the passenger seat just after him.
Reaction time is minimal, even with the gleam of his gun there to light a fire under porcine bottoms: his left hand splays out and the lead cop car is gone out of the mist in the time it takes stomachs to sink.
It lands a couple of seconds later, upsidedown in an explosion of safety glass and wrenched metal scarcely a few feet before Kristen's front bumper at the next intersection.
What is with that … prius? Abigail was busy stalking her husband and then a handful of individuals who caught her out after curfew like them, but with far more nefarious intentions upon her person that required a lot of running, ducking and hiding meant that she was out really late. It's not so much however the car that gets her attention so much as the person getting out of the car that brings her jogging to a halt, peering where it came from, in case there might be cops.
But there aren't, no, there are cops however coming towards it and that brings the former blonde to a halt and wide eye'd when Calvins actions make it one less cop. "What are you doing?" She doesn't have his name, but she knows who he is. There's wide eye'd EMT, jaw dropped not far from him and his borrowed hybrid, astounded at what's happening, worried about what will happen to those behind it.
The first car's come down in shattered glass and creaking metal, a shrill whine of a siren that dies as soon as it starts. Undersides exposed, front wheels still spinning like a cockroach turned over. The other two got off lightly, considering, with the van swerving to a sharp halt, the car behind it jerking to one as well. Somewhere, a bumper to tail collision sounds out like a gunshot.
Somewhere out there, Joshua thinks he hears the sound of destruction, perking him up like the smell of cookies would others. Unfocused eyes sharpen, veer for the front of the van as the echoes of the policemen he's with filter in above the scratch and whine of radio. "— 84th and Columbus, one of our cars has been— " And the policeman's voice wavers with uncertainty. Even in this age of superheroes, sometimes it's tough to put into words What Just Happened. "— rolled." Sounds about good enough.
The unruined car has both cops filing out, hands on their pistols kept holstered. "Get on the ground!" roars uselessly through the noise of the city. The van's engine already gunning up, with the intent to withdraw.
Graeme winces. The sound of the collision is really the last thing that he needs to hear at the moment, a sound that's more of a shock than anything else. In fact, the sound of the collision has startled him more than the car that's gone through the air.
His immediate reaction is to take several steps back, further onto the sidewalk. His next reaction is drawing the coil of chain, with a padlock on the end, that lives in the pocket of his jacket, pulling it through a hole in the tail end of the skateboard, a hole designed to make it possible to lock the skateboard to something. Hopefully, he'll remember where it is later, but for now it's locked to a railing outside a business, and Graeme takes a tentative step towards the street, automatically looking to assess the damage. His eyes linger on Abby, and then on Calvin, and then on the overturned police car, and for once, he wishes that he carried a gun.
Cranking her wheel to the side, Kristen skids to a stop by slamming her passenger side against the rolled vehicle. There's cursing, loud cursing, as the SUV is shifted into 4 wheel and the scream of metal on metal gets her off the crunched car. "Jesus titty fucking mother of christ!" It's a good thing that all the windows aren't broken, someone out there could have heard the wannabe yankie make NYC proud.
Smoke peels out from under her tires as they squeal and she jumps over the curb and zooms down the sidewalk. She doesn't care who might be pedestrianing at the moment, they're mostly hobos and usually those people are a dime a dozen. What it seems like, though, is the dreadhead (ginger with dreads) is causing a commotion. It might be that the guy she's very much interested in has guards who are a little more anxious about this, than guarding him.
Amadeus watches everything unfold with a rather docile look on his face, the crunch of the police car suddenly jerking him back to reality. There are police! Forget that there's a guy and a gun doing things to them, he immediately grabs his pipe and tosses it down a drain near the intersection.
Looking up again, he squins his eyes at Calvin. "Hey, I know that guy…" Then Abby's voice grabs his attention, and he looks up at her with a raised eyebrow. "Fuck, you're hot. When they shoot this guy, wanna go get a drink or somethin'?" Her hair color has possibly disguised her entire appearance to him, as he shows no recollection of having any idea who she is.
Inbetween now and their last meeting, he's had two acid tabs and fought a robot after sniffing cocain as an emergency aid.
"Fuck you, it's all fff— " Calvin shouts back across his half of intersection, velvet voice the kind to carry despite chaos when he takes hold of the van to squeegee it in an unlikely, rubber smoldering sideways direction to scrape one cop down to concrete like a fancily uniformed red booger, "— ucking wet."
One down, the van still rocking heavy on its shocks to the tune of Kristen's engine gunning down the walk with hobos tarring up the grill, he fires twice at the other. More fuck off shooting than aiming to kill unless he like, wants to make an issue of it and press on. For now, gent Doctor Calvin Rosen seems confident that he won't — he swivels his focus back to the van, in glacial tandem with its metal siding splitting wide open and raggedy as a ruptured aluminum can.
Bystanders are by far the last to draw his backlit eye, and once they do, it's Abigail that he locks onto at a distance. The same way genteel dogs bred for hunting look at fluffy rabbits. Hoping they'll run.
For the entertainment value. Not like. Out've mercy.
"Those are cops" SHe bellows back, Amadeus recognized, dismissed for the stoner that she knows him to be, already whipping off her backpack as Calvin is without a care (so it seems) shooting and wiping the street with the officers that had the misfortune to what? Be driving down the road? Heading for some donuts? Something. He may be a friend of Nora and Benji's, but he's killing cops, and while she may be on their more wanted list, she doesn't like cops killed. In the least. And so her backpack is swung towards calvin, loaded down with extra clothing, incidentals and the like, bottles of water, aimed for his upper chest and hopefully distract him. Maybe if she knew what he was trying to do, she'd be helping.
But she's not Kaylee.
"LADY!" the remaining cop out on the street bellow towards Abby, even as he tries to find cover. Squints through the rain at the shape she makes, Amadeus beside her. "GET BACK!" It's the only warning she gets, because he's opening fire, after seeing the capability of destruction, bullets on a narrow trajectory for Calvin's chest.
The sound of tearing metal fills Joshua's ears as the van around him is peeled back like fruit being broken apart with immense invisible hands. The cop in the passenger seat is out of there, with the intent to back up his friend out in the rain — the other is more concerned with the other cop killer prisoner handcuffed in the back, with the rooftop splitting up over him, letting in the rain. When the prisoner moves, he does too.
Joshua isn't staying around to see what happens. Sober enough to get on his feet, set a foot against the edge of tortured steel, and stumble out into the rainy road, taking a knee hard, arms locked behind him and oblivious— or uncaring— about the cop clambering after him.
Graeme's moment to get out of Kristen's way lands him climbing a service ladder, shoulder hooked through the rung next to him, and for the moment, it seems like a good vantage point. Better, it's shielded from the rain, and if there's a lingering bad habit that the man has from the time he did fieldwork in sociology for his degree, it's taking pictures of things. His cell phone comes out, and a rain-blurred photo of Calvin is captured, one of the rent asunder van, none of Abby, one of Kristen on the sidewalk as she passes him.
The few photos that he does manage to get, with one press of a button on his phone, are emailed to himself, soon to be secure in the digital cloud, somewhere out there. He'll figure out what to do with them later. Tomorrow. The next day.
His phone is shoved back into his pocket, sooner yet to be useless, because while he may be shielded from the rain, Graeme's phone wasn't in very good shape to start with. The gunfire, not in the slightest long after he's pushed his phone back into his pocket, startles him into dropping back down to the ground, the thud of impact, while not precisely something that registers as pain yet, though his ankle will thank him later, jarring enough that he leans, back pressed up against the wall, and watches things unfold.
What is it that Dirk says? Oh yeah. Eye on the prize, eye on the prize… There stumbling around on the road is her prize with a cop on his tail. Son of a sea biscuit. Oh well, this is what good lawyers are for. "I don't know what happened officer, I was driving and then all of a sudden something took over my car. I don't know what happened officer, I was driving and then all of a sudden something took over my car. I don't know what happened officer, I was driving and then all of a sudden something took over my car…" Like a mantra it's repeated over and over while the SUV veers closer to 'the prize' and the guy after him.
"What kind of car do you drive, Miss Reynolds?" She asks herself as she yanks the wheel to the side again and gives the officer the same treatment that the first police vehicle gave her SUV. We'll call it a love tap, a hard one. Poor guy might have to go to the hospital… or the morgue. Whichever one, she's not sticking around to find out. "It's a black one?"
Throwing Mustang Sally into park, she scrambles for the door and kicks it for the cuffed guy. "Get in!! We're not far from the station, they'll be more." She can't mask the Tennessee accent in such a hurry.
Calvin dodges.
Abigail's backpack — not bullets. A fleet sidestep aside, a drop into a three-point crouch
An unspoken You //bitch—!
Calvin doesn't have a chance to turn the sentiment narrowing his eyes and rankling the bridge of his nose into speech on account've a gun being raised and aim being taken and a trigger being pulled. At him. Repeatedly.
It's all he can do to roll the Prius up onto its side and around as a barrier once he's back-hand-spung upright as an ape might, sparks arcing cold orange into the wet away from sheet metal and chrome. There's probably still a lady flopping around damply inside.
One that likely doesn't cross his mind when he snatches Abigail's near wrist behind the car's cover and wrenches it behind her back to cuff her clack-clack too tight to the heat-wavery undercarriage. And holds her there and himself against her, too close and too warm in his acrid miasma of hot iron while he watches the exchange of Messrs Reynolds, Springsteen and Deckard over the vehicle's upper edge.
Cop says back off, Cop is… being 'tapped' by a car and the red head dreaded guy manages to get his hand around her wrist and -
Did he just?
Abigail stares at the handcuff attached to some underpart of the car in growing horror. Sure, helping stop a guy from smacking around and oblitering cops, she's for that. Staying around afterward was not in the plan and the moment that Calvins pressing himself against her and making one Abigail/Calvin/Prius sandwhich, she is stomping her feet, digging her heels as much as possible into Calvin's instep, maybe even manage a knee to a groin. Maybe, all the while screeching up a storm.
"Heyyy lady."
It's like God drove up in a black SUV with the answer to all his problems, on the assumption that God's a chick. Well. Not all his problems, necessarily, Joshua woozy, hands cuffed, mouth hurting, but it could be worse. He could, by now, be in lock up, and not getting to his feet, ignorant to squashed cop and Amadeus wailing on the tail lights nearby as rain patters down on shaven skull, soaks in his shirt, runs the new dye of it— handwash only— and the blood in the weave.
He moves for the SUV on the assumption that this is according to plan, and tips himself inwards with a graceless throwing of his weight into the warm interior of the car — legs out the door, face more or less in Kristen's lap. My bad. Joshua manages to elbow his way into decorum.
"See the— the ginger motherfucker tearin' up shit? He coul' use a ride right aboud now."
Gunfire still peppers the side of the Prius, a "Shit!" sounding out from the cop. There's a second one remaining from the van, cut off as he is from the SUV. "He's got a hostage!" In the distance, there's the sound of sirens, threatening to add more colour and chaos to Graeme's snapped, blurry images.
For the second time in far too short a time period, Graeme's wishing for a weapon. What he'll have to make due with is the utility knife from his boot, retrieved in a moment of wondering how badly he'd hurt his ankle, flipped open in his hand, before he's taken off at a bit of a run down the sidewalk, putting himself closer to the SUV which now has Joshua in it, yet still on the edges of things.
And then Graeme's ducked behind a parked car that'd remained generally untouched by Kristen's reckless driving, waiting. What he's waiting for, he's not sure. Possibly to get back to where he'd locked his skateboard, to find out that it luckily survived the SUV barging down the sidewalk. Possibly to attempt to get closer to the SUV. One or the other. Or both.
"God, gingers creep me out~" Kristen sing songs to distract herself as she leans over to pull the rest of Joshua in and slam the door closed behind him. Thanks to Amadeus breaking her tail lights, the cops won't have much to follow on the side streets of New York City. Straightening up in her seat she glances over to the young man and raises a solitary eyebrow while throwing the truck into reverse, "I'd tell you to put your seatbelt on, young man, but it would be sort of a moot point." Because he's all beat up and stuff already.
After spinning a 90 degree angle on two wheels in reverse (maybe not aiming for the douche whacking his bat against her paint job), the gears are shifted and four wheel drive becomes two again. "I think something's got control of my truck, seriously. I haven't been in control for three blocks." Her high heel presses down on the gas and the rear wheels skid on the slick pavement before she lets loose the brake and they launch toward the Prius.
Automatic windows on the rear driver's side for the ginger motherfucker needing a ride. The door's are unlocked, but it's not very Dixie to use them when there's a perfectly good window. Kristen's eyes flicker over the road and spotting Abby handcuffed to the underside of the car she bites down hard on her lower lip. Yay for tinted windows. "You yell for him, I got the drivin' for now." Again the Smokey Mountain accent isn't masked very well.
Amadeus starts running away when the vehicle backs up in reverse, trying to get right the hell out of there. But hey, there's a chick in distress, handcuffed to a car! So he's suddenly running after Kristen's van, by virtue of running in Abby's direction. "Hey! Applejack! I'm gonna break your cuffs with my bat if that crazy chick doesn't hit you first!"
"It's typically important," says Calvin's voice quiet at Abby's ear, accent loftier than the queerly reasonable level to his address, "to recall your place when you're already on the run," a stiff shift of his posture quashes any efforts her knees might be making for his groin, wet jacket scuffing coarse between them, "Mizz Caliban." The cuffs tick tick two notches tighter 'round her wrist on their own, pinching nerves and blocking off circulation.
"Maybe if you could be bothered to give more than the most literal kind of 'fuck' — "
…Did Amadeus just call him 'Applejack'?
Lines twitch in between Calvin's brows and he settles back a significant inch or so, breath fogged at an uneven furl. Flustered.
His steely stink lessons with a loss of proximity. Slightly.
"At least I have aspirations higher than learning to lick my own sack," comes off snippier than he'd probably like under dramatic terroristic circumstances, meanwhile. But he is taking a step back into the earliest stages of retreat, bro in safe(?) hands and policemen mostly dead or wishing they were. "She's all yours."
Maybe it's better than calvin is backing up and then a little bit more, Abigail bristling at the words spoken into her ear then riling up even further with the panic inducing click, click that those cuffs and the increased lack of circulation brings with it. Those two clicks bring with it a near visible heat, Abigail starting to steam as she yanks on her secured hand, other hand trying to manipulate her hand so that it can squeeze through the cuffs.
But they won't, skin white where metal bites into skin. Calvins taking off, she's not got much time till a cop, any cop shows up. Would they ask questions before unlocking her from the vehicle? Is it worth turning into flame to get out. no, there's gas in the car and she swears she saw a person inside.
"HELP!" She screams out, trying to throw a parting kick to Calvin.
"'Kay." As far as plans go, yell at someone isn't a difficult part of it. Joshua is generally a self-rescuing princess but he's not exactly shy about others helping get his ass out of the fire when appropriate. As the black SUV goes careening nearby, Calvin can hear the familiar, raw-throated bellow of his comrade: "CALVIN! YO! GET IN THE CAR, LET'S BOUNCE! AROOOO!" Suddenly in good spirits, frat boy howl splits up into husky laughter—
That turns into coughs, throat thick with the blood that had run backwards from a broken nose. Snhnit is muttered, some reality and sobriety both slamming back into place as Joshua fills his lungs in a big inhale, streaming it out again, head heavy on his neck. "Fuckin— negation fuckin'— bullshit." The toe of his boot hits against car panel in a spark of abrupt rage, but for the benefit of not getting kicked out of his getaway car, he forces himself to calm.
The Man is closing in, meanwhile, Kristen's options limiting as the shape of a military truck is rumbling to block off the exit of at least one of the four options out of there, all black and green, light slicing through its thick headlights, growling and belching steam and smoke.
Lady screaming. Graeme approaches Abby as Calvin gets farther away, one hand forcing her shoulder down, forcing her to stay still, for a moment. "Shut the fuck up a minute," he says, a drawl that isn't quite Southern tinging his voice, but words clipped in frustration. Then, as soon as she's still, he's bent down, half-under the car and cursing a little from the annoyance of the heat she's exuding. "I'm going to help."
The knife is taken to the handcuffs, jiggled, and the one that clicks open first is the one around her wrist. Luck and having done it before saves Graeme from cutting Abby with the sharp implement at all, but a shallow cut does run across one hand. Like the ankle, it's largely not on his awareness, not enough to stop him from getting up, helping her up, and with any luck, dragging her in the direction he was going of away. "Come on."
"Easy there Tiger Woods, resale value's already gone down thanks to the van bouncin' off the side." Maybe the police officer too. The producer seems agitated, rightly so, as she eyes the dreadheaded man in the mirrors. "C'mon c'mon, come on… I am not getting any younger here." Not that she's about to reveal her age, she's already hit cougartown. At least there was only the one twentysomething guy and she can't exactly remember if he was paid or not. Mostly likely was.
Calvin is waited for only as long as it takes for him to get in and not necessarily close the door. Before the pedal is pressed all the way to the floor and the SUV screams off for the edge of Harlem.
"Hey, where the fuck do you think you're goin' with Applejack!" Amadeus runs after Graeme, sliding his bat back into its bag so he can have his hand free. There's only one to work with after all. "I ain't gonna let you put the moves on a chick I was totally gonna have crazy speed sex with! I mean, not fast sex, but sex while on speed, it's fuckin' awesome if you do it like once every six months! I saw a guy get all fuckin' carried away and he had a heart attack. Died with a boner! That's how I wanna go." He yells all of this while running after the two.
Oh. Is — is it still directed at him then? …No?
Indignantly baffled by all the name calling but too distracted by his imminent escape to make much of it, Calvin scuffs his sleeve up over his face, exhaustion creeping in quickly after fading adrenaline.
Not enough to stop him from grinning knife-like when he levers himself into the upholstery at the back of Kristen's ride, door slammed shut hands free after him. Locked the same way.
He spends a few long beats regaining his breath, slouched sideways across enough space for two people while they roar bump-b-bomp away from the government noose tightening slick around the intersection at their six. Then he says, (vacantly) to a rearview mirror he doesn't actually bother looking at: "Hi."
Not good, not good, yanking on her hand and handcuff, metal cutting shallow into her wrist but only enough to smear around her wrist, Abigail's frantic in her need to get away, evidenced by the heat. Kristen pulls up, knight in shining armor for Calvin and tinted windows mean that she can't see who all is in there other than howling frat man.
And here comes Graeme, in the midst of her own southern hollering and his use of fuck gets her to shut up, followed by a promise of help has her doing what he wants. That and when she cranes her neck, the appearance of the military vehicle. Not good, not good, and there's more heat. Then click, the springing free of her wrist, blood rushing in to where it was denied entry and exit. "My bag" Her pack, she can't loose it. Can't loose the contents within like her ID's, her phone, clothes, money, necessary items when one is on the run. She pulls back on him enough to snatch it up then follow, feet slipping and sliding in the confusion.
It's Amadeus's jibbering that has her snarling, her grasp on Graeme holding up enough so that when the former feline telepathist gets close enough, it's a kick to between the legs and a "Bugger off Amadeus" followed by swinging of her bag to his head with the hopes that it will hit then off again, letting graeme drag her. Somewhere else, is better than here even as her eyes are on the verge of going orange, the tell tale warning that she's about to blow. They'll get away, god willing, before she can blow or accidentally burn Graeme.
The cop cars aren't following because— considering the damage of at least two vehicles, a policeman reduced to a smear— it's no longer a wise move until back up can arrive. It hasn't.
And so they're clear.
Joshua slumps into his seat, eyes hooded shut, mouth parted just enough to show sliver of blood-slick teeth as breath drags in and out of them for all that his part in this wasn't strictly tiring, per se. Each inhale straining at the seams along his shoulders, the stretch of bloodied cotton on his chest, the glimmer of silver from some trinket that seemed cool. He casts a bleary, hazel glance at the fraction of Calvin he can see in the mirror. "Hey."
And then a more suspicious look towards Kristen's profile, to who he doesn't say anything just yet as the adrenaline and drug both wear off around the same time. "Yo, look alive," is to the man in the back, the grinding sound of cuffs as he tips forward some, "and get these fuckin' things offa me." Thanks, also.
Amadeus backs up pretty quickly to avoid a kick to the crotch, which causes his head to slam right into the bag and him to fall directly on to his ass. "Man, what the fuck! Fine, you go bang that loser! Wait… she knew my name…" He raises his hand to rub his forehead, eyes wide. "She must be… from the future…"
Graeme doesn't pay Amadeus much heed. Abby's reaction to the young man reenforces the fact, and he's turned back around after he's freed his poor skateboard, grasping it with his hand, cold metal of the trucks. "Fuck. Off." It's a pretty damn simple statement, bordering on command, and then he's off, gone. Police statements are the last thing he wants, and so if he can get farther away, and with her with him? All the better.
Kristen's driving turns less reckless the further they get from the scene. The lights of the SUV are off, even the running lights as she relies on the street lamps to navigate. Once she judges them a safe enough distance from the carnage, circles back toward the Harlem end of Central Park where she finds a parking space. Sliding into it, she sits there stunned for a brief moment before turning toward her passenger, while eying the one in the rearview.
"This is my stop, I dunno where you boys are headed but I got a load to clean up before yoga time." It's only then that the Southern accent melts away for a more generic one. Leaning over, she opens the armrest and removes her wallet and a pair of sunglasses. "You're Robyn's friend, right? I heard her yelling down to you at the party. Keep in touch, I might have an offer for you." After all, Bradley Russo did resign.
In standard suit-and-tie fair with the usual long black coat, eyeliner and coarse mane to offset the totality of his slouch, Calvin shifts. Rustles. And again. Sitting up a touch straighter so the gun at his side doesn't poke through his vest at his ribs. Joshua's cuffs pop one at a time.
He doesn't eye Kristen back until he feels himself being eyed, halcyon glare with its bold outline turned cold from the tinted window to measure her instead. Means to an end. He is too worn thin to make himself look friendly.
But not too tired to pop the locks on the doors again so that he can see about disembarking. This particularly lady friend best left to Joshua's brand of charm.
Joshua shows teeth as his form of relief when cuffs come undone, doing Kristen the courtesy of taking them with— and not even because he wants them this time— so that she doesn't have too much to explain away should anyone be asking hard questions. No objection to this point of dropping off, either — he wants out, hand pushing open the wing of the door and slinging a leg out before looking back at her, confusion written into the planes of his face. An offer. He swallows.
"'Kay," isn't exactly promise. Acknowledgment. She'll have to trust on the snagging curiousity that stops Joshua roping himself out of the car immediately. He glances wary for the back window and makes a decision. "Well it's been real."
The door slams gunshot-like behind him, cuffs jangling from a back pocket, heavy footsteps thumping in Calvin's wake.
