Participants:
| Scene Title | Severely Frivolous |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Ina helps Bella out of a tight and snowy spot. |
| Date | April 30, 2010 |
Upper West Side and The Corinthian
No one who is not certifiably insane or insanely dedicated would brave the streets of New York today. The temperature rose /just/ enough this morning to allow it to sleet instead of snow, and then promptly dipped again, turning large sections of sidewalk into icy deathtraps. Those buildings lucky enough to have administrative staff who can afford to keep their doors open, in the interests of not having their tenants and employees either kill themselves or get hurt enough to ask for workman's comp have heavily salted and/or sanded in their areas, creating a mismatched and series of spaces with various safety levels.
The sleet also left a coating of ice on the snow drifts piled up by the few few valiant efforts to keep the streets clear, which coating is thin and brittle, and tends to crack when struck with any force. For the most part this brittle shell has remained undisturbed, but in one place there is a gap of considerable size, marking a spot where the snow has collapsed into itself. Nearby lies a lone crutch, lying rather pathetically on the sidewalk near a particularly devious and unsalted patch of ice.
One has to wonder, or at least Ina wonders, just what prompted her to do this. Go out of the place above Burlesque so that she can grab some things from her place at the Corinthian. In, out, bundled up against the cold and even then, it's horrendous. Is this what living in canada is like all the time?
A journey down the street to where her vehicle is parked, and the one bearing the two lindergoon assigned to watching her is parked - Look mah, not wearing ANY RED - Ina spots the crutch that looks so lonely by itself. There's no snow on it, evenly, and so there's raised brows behind bundled up scarf and the brunette makes her way over to pick it up and look around.
Approaching the crutch, Ina can hear a muffle voice calling out from the half-collapsed snow drift. The woman's footfalls coming into earshot are the precipitating event, and it's with no small vigor that a female voice emerges from a tangle of limbs and popuri of powered snow and shards of ice. "Oh thank god please help me!"
From the looks of it, someone had a bit of a pratfall.
"Got to watch where you're going these days. Spring hasn't quite sprung yet" Sturdy winter boots dig into snow adn ice as Ina puts the crutch down and fishes around in the collapsed drift for the fallen shrink. "Never know when a white knight will come along to fish you out of the drift, or another princess" Ina tosses around the joke, even as she closes her hand around Bella and helps pull her up.
Bella is pulled from the snow, not so much the worse for wear. She was very well bundled up, and snow is a great insulator, so she's not even shivering. Her nose and cheeks were exposed, though, and they are flushed red where they aren't pale from the crushed ice. "Thank you, /thank/ you," she stammers, trying to balance on her good foot. This proves to be a silly overestimation of her equilibrium, especially when she just returned to full standing position. She is forced to lean on Ina /very/ heavily to stop from keeling over again. "Oh god I'm so sorry!" she stammers, clinging to Ina for dear life, "My crutch!" she jerks her head in the prop's direction.
"Your crutch is fine. It didn't succumb to the snow like you did" Ina gives off an oofph when bella's a lot closer than most people end up and her arms wrap around Bella's upper body to right her and support her. "Just, take it easy, get your equalibrium back. Don't want you keeling over back into the snowbank. Who do I have the honor of rescuing and do you want to head over into the COrinthian to warm up? A coffee?"
Bella slowly, slooooowly, eases her weight off of Ina and back to her good leg. She still holds Ina's shoulder pretty damn tight, but it's no longer a sailor-trying-to-keep-from-going-overboard life or death grip. "Bella," she answers, a bit breathlessly, puffing up at her nose to warm it with her breath, "Isabella Sheridan. Again, thank you. And yes, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, coffee would be wonderful," she glances at her crutch, "I'm so sick of that damn thing, you know?"
"Isabella Sheridan, I'm Ina Anderson. Don't we make a matched pair in the name department huh. Hold tight" She leans down and away, snatching up the crutch so she can pass it over to the other woman. "I can get us a seat in the tea room. I know the host and it's not that busy right now. No broken bones, need to call an ambulance or anything Bella?" Since the woman used that name first. "Think you'll be good to let go of me or should I bellow for someone to come over and pick you up and make this a true rescue?"
"Please, I feel embarrassed enough," Bella says, laughing a little as she takes her crutch back under her arm and finally releases Ina, "I'm grateful, at least, that a woman rescued me. My feminist cred would be shot to hell if I had to rely on some would-be Lancelot…" She reached up with a mittened paw and tugs down the scarf that has been blocking her mouth. She's smiling, her expression still a bit dazed from the adrenal ride of falling, staying fallen, being saved, almost falling again and… tea? "You know the host? Is it shameful that I don't recognize your name, Ms. Anderson? It sounds like you've got friends in comfortable places."
"THat's because I'm a few months fresh to this cold corner of hell Bella. I wouldn't expect you to" There's a gesture with her own gloved hand in the direction of the Hotel. She can call the goons and tell them she'll be a bit. "Please, Call me Ina. When you've clung to someone like a starfish to a rock during high tide, then I think you have gotten the right to call me by my first name"
Ensuring that the woman is upright, able to maneuver on her own, towards the hotel again she returns. "I think your feminist reputation is still intact, even if it was a man who would have helped you up. I like to think, that it's only a deteriment, when you lean on a man when you have an option to do otherwise, not when you're face down in a snowbank and need help up. If you passed over being helped up because the person is a guy, that's not being a femminist, that's called letting your nose freeze off just to spite yourself"
"Noseless, I'd be less likely to be objectified," Bella replies, smartly. Her little misadventure hasn't dampened her mood, it would seem. "Ina, then. My Rock of Ages," she brushes some of the worst of the snow and ice from herself, then pulls the scarf up, covering her nose as well, "Lead the way. I obviously can't be trusted to choose a safe route."
"But some days, even the most lowly of woman needs to be objectified. They may scream and yell and rail that they don't like it, but secretly, it strokes ego, even if it's just for a minute" Ina counters, clearing the way for the red head back towards the hotel and to the front door. "So where were you going that you flopped into a snowbank and bleated like a harp seal on the ice" THe latter is teasing for the most part.
"I don't know," Bella says, "I think I'd rather just turns the tables, objectify men. I'll bet they'd have more fun with it. It'd be novel for them." She swings her way towards the hotel, taking her time rather than risk another collapse. She's learned her lesson. "I /was/ going to the only deli I know is still open with five blocks. Crazy, I know, but I have gone pastrami-less for too long! We may be in a second ice age, but that doesn't mean we have to give up on civilization /quite/ yet."
"I have a car, we can go there instead, drive to the Pastrami place. If you trust getting into a car with a strange woman" Ina points out. "If the place is still open that is. About two thirds of this place seems to be closed because of the snow" There's a glance bwards and a pause to see if bella opts to go forward, or for Pastrami.
Bella has her eyes to the future. Her reckless quest for pastrami brought her nothing but humiliation and snow in her boots, both terrible things. She nods in the direction of the hotel. "Every time I make the trip, I know that they're almost certainly gonna be closed, that my whole long trip will be for nothing. My luck today suggests this'll be that day. For the record: not interested," she smiles, "I'd like some tea."
"Maybe they'll have pastrami there. I know the chef too" Ina winks, and most surely, she is telling the truth. "So, Bella" There's a doorman who scurried out to fetch the portals open for the women and for any others who brave forth. Ina's last name uttered in greeting on his lips. "What line of work do you do, when not in snowbanks. Or did I ask that already?"
"First time you've asked," Bella says, nodding her thanks to the doorman as she escapes the horrific cold and enters the heated interior of the Corinthian. She'd be relieved if she were escaping into a Chuck E. Cheese, but she certainly /prefers/ a hotel! "I'm a psychiatrist. Private practice, mostly, though I do try and write a paper once and a while. Case studies, mostly," she arches her brow as she halts in the lobby, turning to face Ina, "How about you? I'm guessing you have a professional interest outside snowbank rescue yourself."
"Oh no, oh dear, a shrink. Please, stay out of my head" A hand up to Ina's forehead dramatically, then dropped so she can start peeling off her gloves. "I'm a floor manager here at the Corinthian, fresh import from the flagship hotel in Vegas. Hence…" She knows the cook and the host and everyone else in here. Coat check is open, take the burden of carrying around outerwear to a hanger and some place safe.
Bella chuckles, "Do you know how hard I have to work to get the barest peek at someone's brain?" she asks, "The only way I'm going to try to get inside your head is if you, or your insurance, meet my hourly rate." The shrink starts to unwind herself, her bulk reducing drastically as layers of warmth peel away.
"I'm fairly sure I'd meet your hourly rate easily enough, even without insurance. But I'm not in a position where I need to meet your hourly rate. Alas, this is one brain that will be denied to you in that fashion" The corners of Ina's mouth turn up and she gestures off towards the appropriate area of the hotel. "Have you ever been here before? The snow has kept some people away, but once spring actually comes, I'm sure that things will pick up. The chef's european, has a evolved sense, can pick the freshest ingredients and marry them so well. A prime example of productive and positive use of an ability harmonized with ones job"
"Just what I'm afraid of," Bella says, settling back onto her crutch now that she's in her bottom layer: a pair of slacks a bit snowy at the bottom, and a thin black turtleneck sweater. "I'm frightened to think what telepathic psychologists will do to the job market. I just hope the notion scares people too much. So many people already think we have," she waggles her brows, "Uncanny access." She rolls her shoulder, loosening it up, "This is my first visit. I make a point only to eat out somewhere this nice when someone else is paying-" she catches the implication of these words and adds, "Not that I'm expecting you to treat me. I mean a beaux or something. Sorry. Some ice slipped into my ear canal and has slowed down my brain."
"Telepath psychologist may THINK they have it easy, but I'd imagine that it's harder. On the patient instead of the psychologist. Part of the process of visiting a shrink is the process of discovering the things about yourself and arriving at the point where you want to be organically, instead of someone just pulling the answers from your head and laying them out. It's about self discovery and self healing with the aid of the shrink, yes?"
Ina's in much the same, crisp and clean, hair tumbling loose as they meander along the main lobby of the hotel. "Correct me if I'm wrong, please. But that's just my opinion. Not that I dislike evolveds, but sometimes, they provide a shortcut for certain things that makes the whole process of life pointless. you don't learn, it's handed to you. That and Ir un into quite a few who think that posessing that sixth sense of a sorts, gives them carte blanche over the rest of us or to cheat"
"Oh, it goes deeper than that," Bella says, keeping pace quite well, her bad leg occasionally taking a bit of her weight, an indication that it's on the mend. "While a lot about the Evolved manifestation process remains a mystery, what research has been done suggests a link between the pressing needs, wishes and underlying psychic mechanisms of an Evolved and the ability they end up having. It's quite literally a natural shortcut, a short circuit to address a personal problem," she gives a small, self-conscious laugh, "I'm sorry. Shop talk. I specialize in Evolved psychology, such as it is."
"well, no wonder you have settled in New York, now tell me. They say this cold, the weather, that it's the direct result of Evolved terrorism, what's your take on it? Why do you think someone is doing this?" The restaurant looms before them and Ina parts from Bella for a few moments, enough to converse with the host who heads off with a nod, like to see about that Pastrami, if there is any. "Table be a few moments, he's checking on something."
"If it's the result of any Evolved action," Bella says, tone carefully neutral, adopting no combative position, "It's just as likely to be the result of emotional disturbance as intentional malice. Which I'm not saying is any /less/ scary. One might argue the contrary, in fact." She runs a hand through her hair, a staticky mess after the removal of her black beret. "The best we can hope for is to allow enough room for level headed legislation to prevent Evolved citizens from feeling as if extra-legal actions aren't the only thing available to them."
"More legistation, clogging up the process, stalling other legislation that is much needed. Gets tiring at times. But, I apologize for bringing up such a heavy subject." The host comes back, leading the pair of them off to a table. "I am in need of meeting people outside work, you wouldn't by chance be interesting in oh, I don't know, weekly catch ups over wine, food, shopping for shoes or the like, while exploring a severely frivolous girlfriend experience?"
As a matter of fact, tragic death has conveniently cleared Bella's social calendar! The thought of this does give Bella momentary pause, which she covers up by taking her time settling into her chair, her bad leg a convenient excuse. This should be an easy 'yes', but something in her clouds what should be a very simple decision. "That sounds really great," she says, which isn't an answer per se, "Though I don't know if I'll be able to keep up with the velocity of your frivolity. I am however," and now comes an actual answer, "Very happy to try."
"The time schedule set forth is always negotiable. I'm on.. vacation right now. I have far too much spare time on my hands, so" Ina takes up a seat to, letting the host go through the mechanics of seating, passing over menu's and the like as she lifts her hands to either side a fraction as if to brush it all off, shoulders lifting. "Everything is always neogtiable, unless set in concrete. we're both busy business women"
"Too right," Bella laughs, "Since med school I've been busy so long I find free time tends to paralyze me. With so much freedom to choose, I freeze up." She takes up the menu, opening it, "So let's make it hard and fast. An afternoon out… to wherever the hell is left open in this city."
"Hear hear, besides. Feminists must stick together" Ina murmurs, fingers tracking down the menu. No pastrami alas, another day maybe.