Participants:
| Scene Title | Wasted |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | An unexpected visitor shows up at Odessa Price's apartment in the form of Calvin Rosen, on her first night back at home. |
| Date | December 9, 2010 |
The Octagon: Odessa's Apartment
The apartments of the Octagon are among some of the most prime pieces of rental real-estate in New York City. Bright, open, and clean, these apartments are all painted an eggshell white and feature floor-to-ceiling windows that offer a sweeping, unobstructed view of the East River and Manhattan skyline. The view isn't as impressive from the first floor, but it doesn't give someone with a fear of heights a sense of vertigo as it would on the upper levels. Hardwood floors spread from wall to wall and through the spacious bedrooms and private laundry rooms complete with washer/dryer utilities.
The small entry way leads into the open-concept kitchen with its stainless steel appliances, polished granite counter tops, cherry finished cabinets and ceramic floor tile with all the convenience of a modern kitchen. Around the corner of that tiny hallway for stowing shoes, and the recessed coat closet, there's the living room. The furniture is very modern with clear lines and brushed aluminium frames paired with red upholstery that contrasts with the deep, black shag carpet creating a dark pool in the centre of the room.
A coffee table sits in front of the couch, black legs and glass top surface gleaming in the cool white light overhead. A television has been mounted on the wall, large enough to suggest that the occupant is paid well, but small enough as to indicate that the television doesn't hold much interest. A modest, low entertainment cabinet sits beneath the set, equipped with a Blu-ray, DVD on the first shelf, a video cassette and Betamax player on the next. The Blu-ray player is new, if one judges by the lack of dust settled on it compared to the other components. Beneath that is a collection of films that can be played on any of the four. Mostly in the romance genre.
Nestled in the corner is a tall book shelf, with a step stool nudged out of the way nearby, presumably so the short woman who lives here can reach the top shelves. The reading material is widely varied. Medical journals and texts are present, but so are trashy romance novels, historical fiction, historical non-fiction, and several books on the French, Russian, German, and Japanese languages.
Of all things, a small harpsichord sits in front of the windows. It's more than second-hand, elaborately painted with a rich, but fading landscape across the inside of the lid. Lush trees with leaves turning their colours in autumn. It's been well-played, but also cared for.
The bathroom is adorned with accessories on the counter tops and porcelain pedestal sink, with towels in various shades of yellow from pale to sunny. The room is finished with classic subway wall tile and porcelain floor tiling. An elegantly designed, corner-set curved shower provides a more spacious shower area.
Spackle is drying on the ceiling, and bits of plaster dust are still in Odessa's hair, blending in to the stark white of it. She's carefully folding up an old sheet she'd been using as a tarp over her sofa and the very black shag carpeting beneath it. The actual supplies used to do the work were all put away hours ago. Chinese delivery arrived not to long ago, white containers sitting out on the kitchen counter, waiting to be dished onto plates or into bowls — or just eaten straight from the cartons.
Odessa sets the folded cloth in the utility closet the washer and dryer are housed in. It's her first night back in her own apartment since her home invasion, and accusing glares have been shot to the soot-stained vents more than once since her return. Fortunately, she has a wonderful anti-anxiety prescription, courtesy of Doctor Bella Sheridan. In the form of a hand-rolled, filter-less cigarette that smells distinctly too sweet to be a cigarette. The end is lit up. An inhale, followed by a cough. Totally worth it.
Black lipstick lingers on the end of the joint, which Odessa sets in an ash tray and waves her hand at, suspending it in time so it doesn't continue to smoke while she steps out of the room to change her clothes. A white tank top with a red lipstick kiss screened on it and a black miniskirt isn't the most appropriate attire, given the weather, but with central heating and work leaving her feeling warm, it's not bad for around the apartment. The black thigh high boots with their three inch platform heels are just for fun. Not something she gets to wear to work, after all. They may as well get some wear.
A black eye patch trimmed with silver sequins is plucked off the night stand and secured in place over the ugly scar of her ruined eye. Even though she keeps it hidden, she bothered to put her dark eyeshadow and liner on both eyes. The symmetry feels important. For whatever reason. Satisfied and feeling distinctly more human after a day's work, and then an evening's home improvement, Odessa returns to her dinner and her smoke.
Dressed more for the asstardedly frrreezing weather in a long black coat and gloves and a new charcoal ~scarf~ with a band of orange woven through it that looks delightfully handknitted — Calvin stands outside of Odessa's door with a fine mist of snow laced white across his shoulders and through the sickle slivers of his gingery dreads. And knocks. Once. With his shoulder. When he bumps unsteadily into the door.
Thump.
Plaster dust lifts light off the frame, and he stays slumped there, possibly trying to muster up the necessary focus to follow up with a rap of his knuckles.
He is intoxicated, the way people are when they show up somewhere unlikely and you've got to wonder how they managed to get anywhere at all, much less some place they've never been and probably shouldn't be. There is work tomorrow, but tomorrow is tomorrow and he has now to spend with his eyes bleary damp with disorientation and his cell phone silenced to emergency calls.
Odessa nearly jumps out of her skin at the unexpected thump at her door. She wasn't expecting anyone. But it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that she'd have a visitor. Apart from the fact that nobody buzzed the intercom to be let in, and she has no friends in the building.
But Samson Gray doesn't arrive through the front door.
Joint hanging between her lips, Odessa goes to peek through the little hole in the door, and is rewarded with a view of… orange? Well, not quite orange. Calvin's efforts are rewarded with the sound of the chain swinging free from where it latches to the frame of the door, and the dull thud of the dead bolt. If he's not prepared for it, he's liable to tumble onto her entry floor when Odessa swings open the door.
Hardly so notorious and with better(?) hair besides, Calvin is merely Calvin and does occasionally arrive through front doors for all that he has a tendency to prefer back ones.
In this case his 'arrival' is more of a topple. He lists in through the suddenly open door at a sideways stagger, overlarge feet cross-stepping more fleet and feline than he looks like he should be capable of doing much of anything in his current state. Past Odessa, into the entry at a sway that doesn't right itself until brain can catch up with efforts to retain balance and he regains himself, hands open away from his sides. Not quite poised but certainly dramatic.
Smells like Chinese in here. And paint.
He smells like a bar and a bit like a high school restroom stall, smoke and rum and ganja and a touch of piss while he squints hard enough to be sure that it's her. He doesn't have to squint all that hard, as it turns out. She's difficult to mistake for someone else. "Hullo," he says, once he's "found" her.
"I brought you a bahama mama, but then I downed it. And threw the glass at a policeman."
"Doc-" No, under the circumstances, calling him doctor (or any title - especially the correct one) doesn't seem appropriate. "Calvin?" Odessa shuts the door quickly, locking it up behind her visitor. "How did you know where I live?" The answer the woman assumes on her own incldues the words clearance and Registry, but she isn't about to supply it for him.
"You smell awful. What bar did you just pull yourself out of?" Odessa's nose wrinkles, but she reaches out a hand to steady the man, curling pale digits around his shoulder. "…And you didn't happen to lead that policeman here, by any chance, did you?" Not that that would cause too much trouble. She'd flash a badge and claim she's a responsible enough party to handle her inebriated co-worker.
There's a quiet sigh as Odessa manoeuvres herself around to Calvin's back, planting both hands on his shoulders and guiding him past the entry way, heedless of the snow and dirt he may track in, and to the kitchen island where her dinner sits. "Sit down. Have dinner with me."
"Agent Doctor Calvin," Calvin corrects at a toothy leer and slur, impressing upon her the full might of his…title…in the beat that follows the abrupt twist and lock of the door behind him. He looks very pleased with himself, in a could-be-more-subtle kind of way, smudg-ed eyeliner doing little to detract from the intelligent glitter he retains about his eyes when they flick muddled from door to ceiling to — that's probably the kitchen over there.
"Rosen." Brp. "I did the Google," re: how he found her is a very lazy lie, but he doesn't look like he cares overmuch. There are things to see and touch that he shouldn't and he's already looking for fresh trouble to veer into when her fingers close damp on the shoulder of his coat. And then the other one.
She's pushing and he's walking before he really realizes that they're going anywhere, left arm outstretched to feel along whatever is breakable that happens to be within reach as they make dubious progress kitchenwards.
"I don't think he's going anywhere," is a decidedly vague answer on the way.
"Oh my gosh, did you kill a cop?" Odessa asks in a long suffering sort of tone. One that does nothing to suggest horror of any sort at the notion. "Am I going to have to provide you with an alibi?" Because that's what co-workers are for, right? A stool is tugged away from the island and gestured toward. "Sit. And take off your coat. You're staying until morning." Because she can't send him home like that. And especially not after curfew, which i will undoubtedly be before he's remotely close to sobered up enough.
"My address isn't on Google," the woman insists gently, doubling back the way she came to right a framed print of Paris at night that Calvin managed to leave cock-eyed. A cough escapes Odessa's lips as she takes another calming drag from the joint she's been speaking around, then takes between the vee of two fingers. "What are you doing here, Agent Rosen?" Mistake corrected. She'll worry about feeling foolish later.
"Goodness no!" says Calvin, voice tripping a calculated, guttural octave to better emphasize his innocence in the style of 'melodrama' or someone being 'melodramatic.' "I'm not you."
The silly is silent.
And abrasive.
Still, he does collapse himself cooperatively down into a seat so that he can shrug floppily out've his coat, heavy sleeves shirked off with a sloppily maestroish swing of his arms, like a wealthy old indeterminately European gent might settle into a leopard's cage under the impression that the brute has enough respect for his stature in society not to bite through the back of his skull for being a cock.
The suit he's wearing underneath is fairly fine. Three pieced, light grey and utterly at odds with the avian crest of dreadlocks he's sporting. There's also a peek of black t-shirt just visible under the open flare of his dress shirt collar when he lolls his head back to keep track of her whilst she sees to the painting.
"I was hoping you might come over'n and sit in my lap, actually."
"Are you here to insult me, Agent?" Odessa whirls around, her lips pursed. "Just what do you think you know about me?" The fact that he had no qualms about suggesting that she would be more apt to murder a police officer, leaves her jaw set tight.
His request draws something of a look from Odessa that isn't quite disgusted, if only because it's far too incredulous for that. She's gathering his dampened coat all the same, rather than throwing him out on his ear for his gall.
She leaves her smoke in the ash tray now, rolling her eyes only once she's given Calvin her back on her way to hanging his coat up on a rack by the door. "Do many woman sit in your lap after you've thrown sharp words at them?" Odessa really must know if that technique's been working for him.
Whirls 'round and pursed lips and set jaws all bode ill for his odds whether she's nice enough to collect his coat anyway or not. Calvin sighs and closes his eyes.
Resigned to his own absence of charm after as many as he's had, but not so much an asshole that he can't at least attempt to be nice. Nicer.
Spine still at an arch away from the rest of his seat so that he can survey her upsidedown over the back of it should he opt to open his eyes again, he stretches. Hands, knees and toes within the shiny black confines of his only nice shoes. "I'm here because I'm fuckin' wasted and it's after curfew," is a slightly more genteel (if whiny) explanation for his presence in her kitchen. "Also no," his voice lifts after the sound of her receding footfalls, "but if an ulterior motive would be more apt to dampen your panties, I can surely try'n think've one."
Calvin doesn't hear the returning sound of Odessa's boots on the hardwood floors, but there she is, leaning over him with a brow quirked that looks a little out of place visible over a patch rather than an eye. "I like information," she purrs. It might be more impressive/properly seductive if her face weren't covered in scars as it is. One across her lips dimples a little awkwardly when she smirks. "There are plenty of other available women in our department." Whether she means within the Institute, or including those who work at the Suresh Center while being none the wiser is unspecified. "Why me?"
Odessa pulls a chair out next to Calvin and sits down to face him, and reclaim the joint she's neglecting. One leg crosses over the other with the quiet protest of patent leather. She's watching him expectantly. Dinner can wait. (And judging from her underweight figure, it often does.) This might be fun.
Being nice is difficult when you're unhappy and inebriated. Calvin has to stay himself and calculate, brow furrowed into a pinch while he thinks up things to say and decides it's probably best not to say them, knees angled wide apart and heels planted hard to the floor. This is turning out to be so much work. Next time dinner first and then unsavory attempts.
One eye slitted open a touch warily at the abrupt nearness of her voice, he has to think before he marks it as progress, especially given that it comes with a qualifier. "I think it's the eye patch," he says, at length. Not serious. And then slightly moreso:
"Why me? Why anyone? You're not seeing anyone, no one's….s…seeing me."
He stretches again, sloped low in his seat, one leg crossed long over the other to semi mirror her for all that his are kept straight out ahead of him next to hers. "You're making me tired."
"Mmnn." Is all Odessa offers at first, taking in smoke, but this time without the cough she's accustomed to by now. She begins gathering up her dinner, turning to relegate it to the fridge. "At least you didn't try to compliment my eyes," she utters sardonically around her cigarette. Rice and egg rolls are stowed away to be consumed later. Maybe for breakfast. Maybe for a midnight snack.
"I appreciate your honesty." Whether about why her, or his admission that she makes him tired. "I suppose I should catch up." A bottle of vodka and a shot glass are dragged out of a cupboard over the stove, set out on the counter in place of dinner.
"I like your hair," is said, seemingly random. "In general. Not as if to imply I think you've done something different with it." Odessa pours the first shot, and downs it smoothly. She pours the second immediately. "The make-up — what do they call it? Guyliner? — it suits you. You're so different from the rest of our co-workers, and you don't try to hide that." The second shot is held aloft for a moment. "That's why you."
"Well I appreciate you lettin' me in," says Calvin after a sobering pause that still leaves him sprawled out in a suit in a chair in an unfamiliar and very dangerous woman's kitchen. Beats pass, each longer and more awkward than the last while he watches her at a drowsy slant over the lift and fall of his own chest and no litany of return compliments is forthcoming.
Eventually, eventually it seems to occur to him that this might've been meant to be a two-person exercise and he twists his brows again, on the spot. "Oh. Ahm. You seem…nice."
Odessa laughs, putting out her joint in the ash tray finally and knocking back her second shot. "Tell you what. You may have a shot yet of gettin' up my skirt. But until then, you just humour me while I get wasted." An echo of his own words. "Ask me anything. — About me, that is. Don't ask me to explain Ockham's Razor or something because you think it's cute."
A pause. "For the record, I can explain Ockham's Razor." In case there was any doubt that Doctor Agent Price may not be as smart as Agent Doctor Rosen.
"Breast size," dictated clearly after still another pause isn't a question exactly. More've an implied question, Calvin's eyes heavy lidded over the magician grain of his goatee when he lifts a gloved hand to indicate the gozongas in question with an unsteady lift of index and middle fingers. "I'm thinking a respectable C."
Whose breasts has he been looking at? Maybe before the steady diet of morphine and skipped meals that followed her stint in Moab. Odessa darts a look down to her figure, and then back up at the man in her kitchen. Boy, he is drunk. "A B, I'm afraid." If she's stuffing her bra. Which she would never do, okay?
Shot three is poured and downed with number four right on its heels. She's going to need it. "Why d'ya think I'd kill a cop?" Odessa asks with a curious squint.
"Oohhh," says Calvin, "I donno. Intuition I reckon. Maybe all the rhinestones."
Fucked or not, it's difficult to discern whether he's serious in anything he says, but he is getting genuinely sleepy, breathing slowed to an easy push and pull just as she's started up vodka mountain. His chin dips once for his lapel, corrected at a reflexive swerve and a scratch at his chest that isn't quite enough to clear the film out've his eyes.
"A B? Really?" is an odd throwback at the end there — a veer back towards what he's just recalled he came here for. "Maybe you'd better let me feel them to be sure."
Odessa's visible eye lids heavily, and she suddenly smiles wide when she looks at him. "I think four is a great number," she informs him. Then she uncrosses her legs and hooks the heels of her boots through the rungs of her seat, setting her knees wide apart.
"Do you need to give me your professional opinion?" Odessa bites her lip, twisted into a grin. "I like you. You're funny." The grin disappears, and she presses one finger to her mouth, hushing herself. Then she she raises that finger in the air and assures, "I mean that in the best way possible."
"Mmm. Yeah," says Calvin (creatively) after a bracing couple've beats that culminate in him gripping at the arm of his chair so that he can lever himself out've it and. Y'know. More like. Into hers sort've on top of her and all've that, his chair's legs clacking down with an unwieldy clonk after his leaning departure. "I should definitely — have a closer look."
Unless she kicks him over onto the floor, in which case he will probably go ahead and go to sleep down there.
Odessa most assuredly doesn't kick Calvin to the floor, wrapping her fingers around the lapels of his sharp suit. "My last lover isn't picking up his phone. I think he may be dead." Which is kind of Vodka+Odessa for your timing couldn't have been more perfect. Rather than give him much time to think on that, she drags him in for a kiss.
Well that — bodes. Well. At least for his odds've not getting shanked by anything boyfriend-shaped. In her clutches, now, for all that the persistent involvement of the one chair he still has his right hand braced to the arm of makes positioning awkward, knee on the same side bent between her legs, Calvin is only too thrilled to push the kiss back into her once it's there and she's there and everything is moving. Forward.
Sleep can wait.
A few more minutes, at least.