Salvage Talk

Participants:

evran_icon.gif ivan_icon.gif

Scene Title Salvage Talk
Synopsis Evran rubs elbows with his new employer when he shows up early for work.
Date September 22, 2020

Allende Salvage, Sheepshead Bay


It feels like the sun's barely risen when Evran Foster pulls open the door to the trailer stationed on Allende Salvage's fenced-in lot in Sheepshead Bay. He's by no means the first person here, but he needs the extra time before his scheduled shift to get coffee in him, to feel ready for the day.

As a result, the unexpected face lounging in the section of the trailer used as a breakroom gives him a start.

The owner of the company himself is sitting at the table, ankle of one foot resting on the opposite knee while he has the Safe Zone Siren open in front of him. Iván Allende is nonplussed by both his employee's presence or startle, eyes on the paper. He's dressed in jeans and a polo, his shoes not the steel-toed workboots many of his employees wear, but dress shoes that might be more expected of someone in his position.

"Uh, sorry—" Evran begins to say, at a loss for however the hell he's supposed to comport himself around a man he's only seen in pictures— in newspaper and magazine clippings framed and hung in the office space.

"Don't mind me," Iván is quick to reassure, looking up from his reading. He doesn't smile, but all the same, he manages to convey a relatively inviting presence. "I'm waiting for John," Evran's manager, "to get back in from the Chicago survey. He's not due in for a while yet, so I'm just catching up on some reading."

"… Right." Evran's not sure why he gets the explanation at all, but sure. Turns out the boss really is as personable as everyone said. "I'm just grabbing some coffee before heading out to do some scouting. Don't mind me, either."

The echo of the words back at him bring Iván to smile, tight but true. "I don't think we've met yet. I'm Iván."

"Evran," the younger introduces himself right back, his eyes on the pot he pours sideways into a styrofoam cup. "I've not been around here that long, that's probably why."

"Maybe so, but you're already proving yourself to be more motivated than a number of my other more tenured contractors…" Iván chuckles.

Evran allows himself a small, reserved smile at that. He pulls an apple from the pocket of his coat, tossing it to eye level and catching it as it falls, rotating it around his palm after to test for soft spots. He finds the chair on the end of the kitchenette counter, setting his coffee on the counter to cool some before taking a seat and leaving the table to Iván. He leans forward, elbows on knees while he stares at the wall ahead, gnawing into the side of the apple with a crunch.

"Do you follow the news much yourself, Evran?" Iván asks.

The young man shakes his head. "In fits and starts. Tend to focus on what's in front of my face." It's not exactly a lie, either. He just happens to hyperfocus on certain topics.

"The news this election cycle's particularly fascinating. Medina's gaining quite the momentum in the polls now that Harding's entered the race."

That gets Evran's attention, a look shifting to Iván. He hyperfocuses on certain topics such as those, and his ears perk up to hear it. "That so?" he asks, and his employer nods.

"If he keeps this up, he'll edge out Praeger in no time. That independent vote is going to be split, hard."

The phrasing of that puts Evran at ease somehow, and he looks forward again, taking another bite from the apple with more comfort in his surroundings than before. His shoulders settle, posture relaxing. It's nice to hear even the man at the top shares the opinions of the men who work below him. "That'll be interesting, won't it?" Evran supposes in the same overly-neutral register Iván had.

For a time, paper rustling with a page turn and the sound of his chewing are the only things heard over the din of the generator outside the doublewide. The door down the trailer opens when one of the drivers comes in, heading to punch in and grab his keys. It increases the overall noise level, helping to break the ice again in a way, because the topic of the latest article read in the paper comes up for comment after the door shuts again.

"You know, it's a shame what happened to those new runners down by the shore…" Iván remarks, massaging his jaw with one hand while he reads the paper with the other. "It's so hard to get started up these days. I really feel for that struggle."

Does he? Evran blinks, not having expected that. Unable to keep his silence on this topic either, he kicks his chin up as he looks across the break room at the boss, having the sense to mostly chew his apple before he speaks. "You see they were an Evo house?" he wonders idly. Casually, passively— or at least he tries to frame it that way.

With a languid blink, all Iván does is keep reading. "No, I did not." he replies mildly. His eyes start to narrow at the words on the paper now.

Silence lapses again in the time it takes Evran to swallow properly, washing the bite down with a swig of coffee at odds with the tart sweet of his breakfast. Twisting the wrist of the hand holding the apple, Evran wonders, "Besides, isn't it good for us? For this business?" His other hand lifts up in a gesture around the trailer, indicative of the scrap site in general. "If some other salvage company gets muscled out?"

In response to that, Iván finally looks up over the top of his paper to level Evran with a critical look.

"No," he answers sternly.

Evran's confidence and comfort feels like it's bit him. The hint of a smile he hadn't even been aware he was wearing slips away. He looks ahead again without doing more than offering up a neutral tone in reply, having the excuse of finishing the last of the apple.

Whatever, he thinks to himself. Even if Iván thinks it's a bad look for competition to be bullied… They deserved it anyway.


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