Participants:
| Scene Title | We Cantaloupe |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The next Saturday is scheduled when this Saturday brings about reunion. |
| Date | October 2, 2010 |
If you head too south down Central Park, you'll eventually hit the part that's still taped off with yellow tape and barricades that gleam danger orange. Up this end, however, you'd never know, for virtue of being unable to see the forest for all the trees — save for the distinct absence of a familiar New York City skyline ingrained into global knowledge through postcards and movies pre-2006. Pre-2001, even. Terrorism aside, it's a nice noon, with fall season light falling crisply on leaves going rich orange and gold on naked tree limbs, and a comfortable cool in the air.
Sitting on the edge of park bench is Logan, looking reasonably ordinary in the setting of daylit Central Park. A grey sweater of plain if expensive make is obscured by brown suede, jeans and leather boots, tinted sunglasses that balance on the end of his nose which could stand some pushing up. There's a dogleash curled like a waiting snake on the wooden slats beside him, and his hands are occupied with a small plastic tub of fruit pieces, and a white fork. Lunch. As much as he prefers to cultivate the image that he doesn't need any sustenance apart from cigarettes and hatred.
Glancing up at the shape of a very wolfish dog— wolfish to the point of dubious legality, even— trotting up closer with some expectation in her eyes, Logan's shoulders slump a little. It's a common routine. Walk the dog. Let the dog loose. Hope she runs away and finds a family. But no. Always, the click of her nails against concrete as she returns, muscular tail at a cautious wag.
Dressed in her running apparel, Delia's taken her cabin fever out for a walk. In the light of the noonday sun, she's hopeful that she won't be stopped for a spot inspection of anything of the sort where they'll look at her fake registration card too closely. Unlike other joggers in the park, she doesn't have a fancy track suit or an ipod, she's got the most basic of bare essentials: A pair of jersey shorts, socks, runners, a t-shirt, and a ballcap to complete her ensemble.
Dogs are the natural enemy of runners and Delia is no exception to the rule, so when she sees the giant one up ahead, she slows down to a walk. It only takes her a few chews of fruit to get close enough to spot Mister Logan, the man regarded as a personal Robin Hood. "Uhm… hi," she offers as she pauses near him and the horse sized creature next to him. It's regarded with somewhat of a wary eye but she focuses her smile on the man. "I'm sorry for the way I acted at the party… I was scared, no excuse, I know… I just didn't think. It's kind of a problem I have, not thinking, that is." Not thinking and verbal diarrhea, apparently.
Mister Logan, who has a real registration card and everything, provided no one looks too close on what his power is listed as. Currently, the only person inspecting anything of his would be the wolfhound pointing her long nose towards the container of fruit, which by now has a scattering of anemically pale rock melon slices at the bottom because seriously, rock melon. That reason alone has Logan showing a glimmer of charity as he picks out a wedge shaped piece and offering it to Cheza to sniff and maybe eat, wincing a little when the graze of long teeth nudges against his knuckles.
For this reason it takes him a moment to register the woman's approach and tentative greeting, looking up at her midway her words. Shaped eyebrows rise up in surprise at a familiar face, before he's dragging his glasses off with curling his pinkie along the silver arm, blinking up at her as she talks.
"Believe me — at that party, you were least offensive part. Think nothing of it," is said after some hesitation, as if assessing a potential trap.
A long breath of relief is let off from the young redhead as her uncertain smile turns to a genuine grin as her apology is seemingly accepted. "This is your dog?" The quiet question of ownership has Delia kneeling down on one knee as she extends a hand toward the dog, hoping that it'll just sniff and not take the thing off. "She's pretty, and huge!" Though Delia is fairly tall, even her height while on the ground only has her meeting the giant down perhaps an inch or two above its muzzle.
"I sure hope you don't live in an apartment, I couldn't imagine trying to fit her into mine." Not that hers is tiny, one of the rarer two bedrooms in her building. Resting her other elbow on one knee, she smiles up at Logan, looking him directly in the eye. "But that party… it… uhm… Your date seemed really nice. I saw her just the other day, Tess? We shared a ride." To someone outside of her mind, that little statement could be taken in oh so many ways.
"She is. Apparently." Last four syllables muttered beneath a breath, Logan leaning back to hook an arm back over the wooden back of the bench, teeth setting down on the plastic and silver arm of his glasses in a fidget as he watches dog and girl interact, the former of the two seemingly a gentle giant despite her lineage. Fur is coarse and thick around her ruff, eyes a distinct pale green that aren't so dissimilar to Logan's, and grey smattering around the fur of her face which make just be markings, more likely age.
If he's going to own a dog, it may as well be an illegal one. He raises an eyebrow at Delia as the young woman turns a look to him, casually crossing one leg over the other knee. "A coworker gave her to me, same one who spawned my 'date', who wasn't a date, for the record. Her name's Cheza." Pronounced chey-za, which probably took him a while to work out. "The dog, not the girl.
"Sorry to hear about the cop, by the way," he adds, flipping the glasses so as to tuck them to hang at the V of his sweater's collar. "You look distinctly out of trouble, though."
"Chey-zah.. You're a pretty girl, aren't you? Yush you are!" Like she's talking to a baby, Delia's lips pucker and she shakes her head slightly as she chatters rather animatedly at the dog. Both of her pale hands come up to scratch under its chin and behind one of its ears. As her physical attention is given to the man's pet, she turns toward Logan to gaze into his pale green eyes again raise her eyebrows. "I might be getting a kitten from a lady I used to work for…" she offers, like it's some sort of connection between the two of them. She breaks eye contact and allows her eyes to drift downward, focusing on his lips instead. It's a mechanism the shamed use when they can't look someone in the eye.
"Yeah, out of trouble, heh…" Her agreement isn't honest, having seen her try to lie before Logan might recognize that she's doing it again. "So you read the news, I'm sort of glad they used a good picture." Skipping on the fringe of the topic is a new one she's picked up. A wonderful way to avoid the subject while still talking about it. Giving the dog a final pat and scratch, she pushes herself up off the ground and points to the bench. "May I?"
"Please do." Though already near the end, Logan scoots over an extra inch in token gesture, leaning down to set fruit cup down on the ground for Cheza's benefit. What follows in that department is the plastic scraping along the pavement under the force of the wolfhound's lapping tongue and nudging muzzle, and Cheza wandering after it several feet. Those brackety lines at the corners of his mouth Logan developed in amused response to pet connections don't fade immediately.
They deepen in a quick smile by the time she's settled, before Logan is casting a look elsewhere, posture slouchy but chin up. "I don't do it a lot. Reading, I mean. But it did catch my eye."
Flopping down onto the bench a comfortable distance away from Logan, Delia stretches her long legs out in front of her. She's not as proper as him, even while slouching, he's a much neater package than she is. "Must have been the picture, it's what caught my dad's." She's amazingly flippant about her arrest, just in word though, the edge to her voice definitely caters toward shame.
The redhead eyes the dog for a while as it tries to collect the last of the fruit, the easy smile playing on her lips as it meanders around behind the cup. "I mean, besides the phone call that got him out of bed to get me out and stuff… At least now I can claim to be a hardened criminal, right?" Her silver lining in all of it, not that anyone would want to be a hardened criminal. The extent of her jail time consisted of sitting on a chair in an office.
Well some people might like to be a hardened criminal, says a musical fidget of his long fingers fanning out, curling back up against his palm again. His right hand has white scars drawn over the backs of knuckles, with strange and unobvious beginnings. "Better than being a softened one, certainly," is Logan's input, settling on the bench to better take out an elegant silver cigarette case from an inner pocket, likely the same he fidgeted with during their first meet, with its own scars of mysterious origin.
His thumbnail ticks at the catch as opposed to right away opening it, and doesn't seem phased by his dog's slow wander away. She'll back. Or not. "So what's your most terrible ability, anyway? Or do you not know."
"Uhm… I can walk through people's dreams," Delia replies bluntly, almost shyly. Chewing on her lower lip, she hangs her head a little and slides her eyes to glance at him out of the corner. Her chin angles toward him as she catches the pale scars over his knuckles that cause a slight twitch of her eyebrows.
"Where did you get those from?" She uses her left hand to indicate the scars, not daring to touch them at all. It's about then that her neck twists to allow the redhead to look up at him. If she were sitting straight they'd be about the same height, but she's slumped down in a comfortable position that does nothing for posture. She feels almost like putty after her long run.
Logan wasn't quite expecting her answer — or rather, he wasn't quite expecting her answer to mean anything to him. His mouth parts a fraction like he's about to speak, but it never does happen, the pale discs of irises reduced to pallid slivers in a squint at her through gathered eyelashes, pupils like dice pips. She does deflect quite effectively, it seems, the former pimp hesitating in an uncertain glance towards his hand. If it was his left, he might have said Madison Avenue on behalf of his watch.
Those fingers stretch again. "They got broken," he answers, after that stilted pause, settling his hands in his lap as he skims a thumb over the oldish white scars. "Bone went through the skin, messy, didn't get all fixed up quick enough I suppose. One of those 'had it coming' scenarios."
Her eyebrows furrow together a little more, giving her an expression of worry or sympathy. "I don't like to think anyone 'has it coming', maybe a couple of people but you really don't fit into their category." Delia wavers a little as she stares up at his pale eyes, hers squinting a little to try to see more of them. Only for a moment though, then her expression softens and she takes a deep breath inward, puffing up her chest before letting it it sink back down again.
A little stitch at the side of her mouth tugs the corner upward and she delivers the Englishman a crooked smile. "If you ever need to get stitched up again, I'm a wiz at sewing people." Her hands find their way into her pockets and close into nervous fists.
"Really? How talented of you. Fortunately, however, my line of work affords me truly fantastic healthcare."
Working for the most world's famous healer does have its perks that way, and as if to emphasise such a blaise attitude towards injury and sickness, that's about when Logan is snagging the orange filter of his cigarette between his teeth, absently tasting the adhesive with the tip of his tongue as he sets about lighting up in practiced motions. Which is about when the clackclackclick sound of Cheza trotting back over sounds out, the wolfish dog lapping at her own nose.
A nose that she pushes insistently between Delia's knees for headscratches, the animal getting a glance from Logan and a subtle lip curl of disdain. "You mentioned school. You a nurse or something?" His accent puts a hard twist on that last consonant, making it more of a k than a g.
Catching the dog's face between her hands, it doesn't have to beg for attention as Delia scratches under its chin and around its ears. Mostly it's to keep its long nose out from where it'd been heading. "I was just… you know, if you needed someone." The redhead's lame attempt at qualifying her offer into a more flippant gesture is distracted by the dog between her legs.
She bends forward, scootching her lower half against the back of the bench in an effort to curb the over enthusiastic beast. "School… Yeah, I did go." That little word, did, is a strong indication of where her life went after she first met Mister Logan. "I had to quit, so I'm nothing official, not until I can take my board exams. Unofficially… I'm a nurse. I wanted to be a doctor, but.. situations change frequently. Right?"
"I wanted to be a football player. Soccer," is possibly an unnecessary addition, considering accent and his own slight-ish frame, but you never can tell with Americans. "That was met with sharp derailment, so I believe it." Some might say that the shift from doctor to nurse is more subtle than soccer player to strip club manager. (Maybe not doctors.)
Cigarette wedged into the corner of his mouth, Logan flows to his feet, picking up the leash that was coiled on the bench between them and reaching to clip Cheza's leash appropriately.
Delia's fingers curl into Cheza's fur as the leash is locked on, potentially to spare Logan the physical contact of fingers. Swinging her knees to the side, she crosses her legs at the ankle and whisks them underneath the seat and out of his way. Blinking as she looks up at him, a small smile makes its way onto her lips and she nods, "I can see you as a football player, soccer. What team did you want to play on? Or did you have a favorite?"
Delia stands too, looking instantly more comfortable when she's at a relative height rather than having the hawkish man looming over her. She does as well with intimidation as she does with lying. Taking a deep breath she gives him an easy smile and glances out into one of the fields, "Maybe someday if you're up for it… and I'm not… uhm.. Maybe someday we can have a one on one."
"A one on one," is repeated, with a wider smile, curling leash around a wrist. "Athletic little thing like you would cane me in my old age. Let's see." Plucking his cigarette out from his mouth between two fingers, Logan ashes it as he thinks. "There was the Unicorn Athletic Juniors club, I seem to recall, vaguely, when I was as tall as my dog, round abouts. Then I played for Brixton for a short while. Failed to get into the under 21s, and the rest is more or less history."
There's a tug at his dog, whom growls in response but that's about it for protest — still, it's a fair rev, but one he seems used to by now, with grey dog hairs clinging to denim and sweater cotton. "You'd want to do it on the fields, anyway — in my dreams, I'm loads better."
"So you have the advantage of experience, I've never played in my life." She volleys back at him, leaving the ball in his court again. One of her hands finds its way blindly to the top of the dog's head to quash its complaints with another few scratches behind the ear. The dog's coarse fur is scruffled through with a scritch of short nails before Delia smiles down at the pet.
"I played softball," she explains further, "Up until my first year of college, that is, I didn't make the freshman team. So I guess we have that in common." Meaning that she didn't make the under 21s either. Lifting her blue eyes to meet his again, she shrugs one shoulder and then turns her gaze toward the field. "I won't push, but it might be fun."
He exhales smoke, thick and white, through nostrils and mouth both. In the warmth of noon light, Logan seems a lot friendlier — and conversation outside of favours and business exchange probably lends itself to that, but there's always that continued distance in cattish stare. Still; "I'll grant you that it might be. Weather and political climate permitting, not a single six-month storm cloud or impending riot in sight, perhaps we'll make a Sat'dee of it."
Cigarette back between his teeth, it frees up Logan's hand enough to procure his cellphone out from his pocket, flicking it back for screen and keypad both, having not quite had the time or inclination to get used to touch screens. "'ere, give us your number. So I can find you for a change." The device is offered out.
Reaching for the phone, Delia's practiced fingers fly over the keypad with all the speed of a teenager in the middle of math class. In less than ten seconds she's done and pressing it back into his palm. "I lost your phone number," she explains, she doesn't even bother to hide the regret in her voice. "Things got a little hairy."
When she's certain that he's got the phone safe in hand, the young woman places her hands back in her pockets again. "So, I should be getting a call sometime next week then?" The catlike from on her features is something learned from her mentor, sly and full of mischief. "I'll even bring the ball." Another quick eye to the field before Delia meets his eyes again and she presses her lips together. "I just need to blow off some steam, I feel like I've been cooped up for a year."
"Burlesque is in the pages, in a pinch," Logan points out, pocketing phone into satin-lined pocket and setting both hands around chain leash. "But yeah, keep an ear out, and we'll see what we can't do about that." And with that— and a wink, the kind of half-smile accompanying it that seems to come from somewhere insufferably younger than he is now, only charming in fitting circumstances like discussion over football in the park on a given Saturday— he's moving back, turning on a heel with his dog in tow.
It's an easy goodbye, about as abrupt as the long-limbed redhead's appearance could claim to be, Cheza giving a whine when she's separated from the proximity of a girl that smells nice, but conforming to a lazy strut at her master's heels.