Marcellus

Marcellus

In 2004, the renowned South African artist Thendo Rudzani was commisioned to create an art installation in the small square before the neo-classical City Library. Flanked by two towering office buildings of glittering steel and glass, the square's received direct sunlight during the early morning and late afternoon, and simply patterned white and black brick surface was but a means to cross from one building to the other, or exit onto Monius Avenue which lined the fourth side. A small square, innocuous, shadowed, a blank canvas on which the city commissioners hoped Rudzani would create something pleasing to the eye. Something that might draw a little national attention, and bring some distinction to Denver.

Rudzani was given complete artistic discretion. Seven months after she was awarded the space, she had it closed off on all sides, and her piece was installed in under a week. The curious looked down from the two office towers, and watched as bronze figures and strange little buildings were erected under Rudzani's direction. When the canvas walls screening the square off from the public were lowered, the installation was revealed.

A shanty town had been erected in the square. A square excision from a slum. Cast all in bronze, tents and cobbled shacks were intimated by rough walls and brutal minimalist insinuations. Worse, in the eyes of the commissioners, were the statues of starving people. Little more than elongated stick figures, their heads almost without features, their spines curved, their bodies huddled, they provoked a visceral understanding of what it must be like to live in such a space, and communicated, more than anything else, a sense of reluctant, horrified empathy.

Rudzani was coldly thanked, and the commissioners did all they could to deflect attention away from Starvation Square, as it came to be known. Futile protests were mounted by the office owners, but they went nowhere. In the end, the locals resigned themselves to selective blindness, ignoring the frozen figures, the crude shacks, and the paths that led between them to a central open space.

A few, however, were drawn to that center. For there a single tree grew, marvelous in its complexity, and in whose branches sat a multitude of impossible, fantastical birds. Five benches formed a pentagon around the tree, and to this space random strangers were drawn, for reasons all there own.

It is here that Kevin Saunders has invited Eva to meet. An informal tet-a-tet between the lawyer and the overnight copy editor of the Denver Post, one that takes place every month or so whenever either wish to simply catch up or ask for unofficial advice.

Kevin is already there when Eva arrives. Seated with one leg crossed over the other, immersed in his tablet, his circular face scrunched up with the fierce concentration that he approaches all tasks with. Balding, bespectacled, mustached and quick to smile or scowl, he's the terror of the younger reporters and a true asset to the newspaper.

Éva

And selective blindness is her means of navigation through the square. The dappled shadows beneath the spreading tree, the narrow pathways past the starving figures and bronzed tents, the suggestion of permanent impermenance in the corrugated bronze roof here, the suggestion of plywood-and-trash patchwork there, all ignored by now. Like most her her brethern, she has grown used to the figures and now pays them little mind.

She is ten minutes late, but she brings lunch for both of them and therefore expects to be forgiven. A high-collared and sleeveless dress in banded cream and navy ends an inch or two above her knees and no more than that. Over it, a three-quarter sleeved jacket, which remains on despite the prickling heat of midafternoon. Despite, as well, suggestion of sweat at her dampening her temples, the cool trickle down her spine. For an hour or so, she will welcome the transition from office-chill to baking summer streets, but when she returns to work, she will be again grateful for the air conditioning and the men in their fucking suits who insist on keeping the office thermostat set to arctic all summer long.

These are her concessions to summer: dark hair pulled back and twisted up; espadrille wedges in lieu of black pumps; and dark tortiseshell sunglasses concealing her eyes. There's little sign of the injuries she sustained in the accident on Saturday. Just a few extra layers of make-up - concealer and foundation and bronzer and powder - that seem more artificial in the sunlight than in the cool glaze of office fixtures.

"Kevin," the quiet pleasure of old acquaintance conveyed in her voice as her shadow darkens the walk beneath his feet and does not quite pull him up from work or play, whatever keeps him glued to the tablet. She gives him the spare edge of a half-smile, takes a seat, and drops both her handbag and the paper bag with their lunch between them. "It's been too long." This is what she always says.

"We should do this more often." And they never do.

"How's Anne, by the way? I don't know that I ever heard learned her final decision for the fall, Colorado or Cornell? Or was Georgetown still in the running?"

Marcellus

Genuine pleasure replaces the reluctance to tear his eyes away from the bright screen - she gets a sense of text, marked up with floating rectangles in which notes might be written - as he looks up at her and shifts his weight, moving aside though there's ample room on the bench. He turns off the tablet even as he reaches up to adjust his glasses, and smiles broadly at her.

"Neither. Complete collapse of all prior established options. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Last night she informed us that she wishes to take a year off before enrolling so as to travel the world." His smile is half rueful, half proud. "Starting with New Zealand, from where she plans to work her way up to Russia, where she'll cross to Europe via trans-Siberian railroad to fetch up on the shores of Albion."

He tries to restrain himself from peering at the paper bag, and fails. "Marion is beside herself, but I think she's merely acting the part. I, of course, am secretly thrilled."

He sweeps an arm over the back of the bench, and smiles. It's rare that he can slow down and take some time to simply be. To actually take a break from juggling the three dozen projects that he constantly has to manage.

"And you? How's Ellie? Has she begun to plan her year before college yet?"

Éva

It is a sign of their long acquaintance that he knows Ellie's name at all. There are no pictures of her children on Eva's desk or in her office or in her wallet. Few enough evidences that they exist in her car, and these are removed with regularity. Andris and Jozsef bear Andraj's last name as a matter of course, and some years ago Eva took the step of legally changing Ellie's last name to Markovic as well. One fewer way the children could be tied to her, if anything ever went awry, in her life or in her work. One extra, necessary, perhaps frustrating step to keep strangers from tracking them down.

Though she makes the usual sort of passing personal inquiries of her secretary and the mailroom clerk and the newstand owner and the barista at her favorite coffeehouse and the bartender at her favorite after-hours watering hole, Eva does not tender back incidentals about her own life to these near strangers. In the city, only her closest allies and acquaintances: Kevin Saunders, Judge Hagen, a handful of the partners with her firm, know their names. As if she could keep these worlds entirely and forever separate by the passing fiction that this is here and they are there.

"There's something to be said for anarchy. And the streak of stubborn independent it implies. I'm afraid my year abroad was just a summer, and then both funded by and at the insistence of my grandfather," all this as she unrolls and begins to unpack their lunch. " - no wonder you're thrilled."

A pastrami sandwich for him, on thick-cut whole-grain bread, slathered with mustard and wrapped in butcher-block paper. A salad for her, topped with chicken and black beans and pepitos and crumbled queso fresco.

"As for Ellie, I'm sure she has it all planned out already, but she still has nine years to change her mind and has yet to reveal those plans to me." A lift of her chin, the suggestion of her smile, the glimmering reflection of his broad, round face in the dark lenses of her sunglasses, "Lately she's been engaged in a well-laid siege to start horseback riding lessons. Which started when she attacked me with an actual cowboy at a barbecue, if you can believe it, extolling the virtues of actual cowboy boots."

Marcellus

He takes the pastrami sandwich with obvious pleasure, carefully getting his hands under it and around so that none of its contents are able to slide free, to escape. The paper crinkles as he holds it up to his nose, and with eyes closed he inhales, savoring the pungent aroma of the mustard, the fresh bread.

"One day," he says, cracking an eye open, "I'm going to ask you where you buy these. For now, not knowing is my only source of restraint."

He begins to peel the paper back with care, fingers nimble and sure, and when she relates Ellie's latest antic, he snorts. Companionable, at ease, there's is a friendship that asks little and gives much, a quiet moment for each of them outside their own worlds, their demanding routines, the many roles and facades that each has to play. For but a moment, each can lay down their arms and simply enjoy good food, light conversation, and a break from the ever spinning world that calls on them so.

"That Ellie. I don't know why you even try to resist--" He stops. His phone is vibrating in his jacket pocket. Carefully he slips one hand inside and fishes it forth, brow contracting as he stares at the screen. Eva can immediately tell he's not pleased, his easy jocularity sluicing away.

"Well shit." He pockets the phone, and glances toward the avenue, visible through the thin forset of shacks. His lips thin, and his eyes dart from side to side as he thinks. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then glances at his watch.

"Eva, I'm going to have to bail." His voice has deepened slightly, grown more formal. Already he's donning the guise of a senior editor. Perhaps behind her the ghosts of the other editors and journalists are already forming, an anticipated assemblage that he'll soon have to tackle.

"Problem is, I was going to meet a... a friend--," the hesitation is slight, a clear searching for the proper term, the right definition, "--here right after our lunch." He glances at his watch again, drops his wrist. "Can you do me a huge favor? I hate to ask, but he doesn't have a phone. Could you wait and let him know I had an emergency? He should be here in twenty minutes. His name's Marcellus."

Éva

Already a wry retort is forming in her mouth, on her tongue to the comment on her daughter's irresistability. What she might say is, a very quiet, I'm her mother. What she would not say is, I'm her mother, and she was either born a monster or born to live among them, and she must be resisted. She must know how to persevere in against any headwind. Except: his phone vibrates, that low hum, and she is unlidding her salad then, inspecting it to be sure that the dressing was indeed on the side and now poured over the lettuce until the whole thing is soaked in oil and sour cream.

The noon shadows crawl across the surface of her glasses. She has not yet removed them; beneath, the cut of her mouth lifts at just one corner as he informs her that he has to bail. No approbation there, just a hint of shrewd interest i the upward lift of her chin, the lilt of her hooked brows above the shape of those sunglasses.

"If it's something I'd be interested in," by which she means, of course, the source of his emergency. "let me know, won't you?" Another piece of their longstanding arrangement, and doubtless the reason she agrees to his next request.

"That's not a problem, Kevin. Gives me a chance to catch up on e-mails I've neglected this week. Maybe even return a few."

Marcellus

"Trust me," he says. "You wouldn't be interested in this one. I barely am, and there's the rub." He laughs, a bitter sound creeping into his voice, and then looks down at the sandwich. Turns it, what faint light that makes it down into the shadowed square causing subdued honeyed glints to slide along the intricate creases of the butcher paper.

"Here. Give this to Marcellus. Tell him it's my apology made manifest." He sets it down on the bench, and then straightens. "This life, I tell you. All right. Good luck with the emails. I'll call, yeah?"

And then he's gone, striding purposefully down a twisted lane between corrugated bronze siding, phone at his ear, shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow.

Fifteen minutes pass. The sun moves a fraction across the sky, its passage only discernible from how the angle of light at the far end of the square slants at a more oblique angle.

A man approaches. Hesitates, stops. Scans the small central space. He's homeless. His brown hair lightened by the sun and matted by dry sweat and an accumulation of natural oils. Shoulder length, wispy, like the moth eaten mane of a natural museum lion. Has face is broad, his features strong, striking almost, but his skin carved like exposed rock, worn by the elements, worn and grooved by a hard life. Ground down, but not broken; his expression is alert, sharp, his gaze clear and lucid. He stares at the bench on which Eva sits, examines her from ten yards away, and then reaches up to scratch at the stubble along his jaw with thick, blunt fingers.

Éva

Fifteen minutes later, she is as immersed in her own tablet as Saunders was when she arrived. Her salad is consumed, the remnants packed up into their biodegradable containers to be tossed into the first COMPOST bin she sees. The wrapped sandwich has been returned to the brown paper bag, and this is how they are arranged: Shadow Lord, with tablet and stylus in hand, legs crossed sitting one of the five benches around that spreading tree in the dappled heat of a summer noon, jacket on because beneath it she is armed, because she is always armed, this fine trickle of sweat sliding invisibly down her spine, another finer trickle tracing the frame of her face, just at her hairline. For all that, she does not appear to be uncomfortable.

So: Shadow Lord, then her dark leather handbag, large enough to hold a tablet, large enough to a nine millimeter. Other women carry other things, mysteries all, god knows. Wallets the size of a rolled up Sunday newspaper heavy and thick with inserts, hand sanitizer and sewing kits and glossy magazines and medication and miniature salons and full make-up kits and she: carries two weapons at almost all times. The leather is as fine and as privileged and as understated as anything else about her. And then: the paper bag. Her packed up recycling guards her other flank.

The faintest threading of her dark brows suggests her awareness of the homeless man a full twenty or thirty seconds before she looks definitively upwards, dark eyes still hidden behind dark lenses, which cast his reflection, doubled and convex, back at him.

"Marcellus?" One of those fine brows rises, an arch of inquiry above the tortoiseshell frame. There is only a fractional pause, enough for him to confirm the name, somehow, before she continues, "Kevin was called away. Asked me to convey his regrets to you personally."

The stylus she tucks neatly beside the tablet before shutting it back in its leather case. Her mouth curves in a neat, wry little smile. "Along with this pastrami on rye. I do hope you like mustard."

Marcellus

Marcellus processes this information quickly. A brief flare of his eyes as she addresses him, and she sees how striking they are, a cobalt base shot through with striations of china blue, edged darkly so that their borders match the pupils, their intensity made all the more stark by how porcelain white his sclera are.

"Mustard, you say?" His voice is gravelly, comes from the chest, a Tom Waits rasp that carries, and he smiles and shows yellowed ivories, all of them there, a flash of teeth before he steps forward. He moves to the bench besides hers, and sits on its very end, facing her from a distance of perhaps two yards.

He's decked out in worn olive cargo pants with sagging pockets, their knees smeared with stains, and a burnt sienna shirt that sports a few tears across the left side, as if it might have caught on a nail recently, and then caught again. His tennis shoes, though, are new: a bizarre amalgamation of neon hues and complex textures.

"I've no beef with mustard, seeing as how well they got together. It's not as high up on the list as sweet 'n sour, which takes second place to barbeque, but what can you do. Mustard 'll do just fine." He grins again, but his eyes are appraising her, his gaze shrewd, assessing.

Éva

"My compliments," her attention, defined by the convex curve of her dark sunglasses, follows him as he crosses the remaining few yards of the central square and takes up real estate at the other end of the bench. The steady is there, even so, and the flashes of the city behind him, moving through the bright sun and short dark shadows of noon. The copper gleam of the installation pieces, the movement of traffic beyond, the incessant buzz of street noise, the sharp, arresting whistle employed by some transplanted New Yorker trying to get a cab.

She is serene behind it all, aware of his choice to sit at the very end of the bench and appreciative of it, in her way, though that shows through only in the clear directness with which she regards him even after her promise has been fulfilled, message and apology and pastrami delivered.

He looks at her shrewdly, assessing her from his distance of two yards. Six feet. The height of a man. No one passing would assume that they were speaking to each other, except for the cant of her head. What he sees depends on what he looks for, of course.

"I've never met anyone with a such a well-defined hierachy of condiments. Where does horseradish fall?"

A beat, as the lingering edge of her smile fades and she, quite deliberately, removes her attention from him cuts a slow, steady survey of Starvation Square, that knot asserting itself again between her brows.

Marcellus

[Witnessed by niko as he examines her:

Marcellus @ 12:23PM

[Perception + Alertness] Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) VALID]

He takes the sandwich, his hands broad, strong, fingernails delineated by a fine line of dirt, each thick and blunt like gray shovels. They're the kind of hands a farmer might have, somebody used to working with shovels, picks, or pitchforks, the palms themselves thick skinned, not callused under the knuckles like somebody who daily lifts a barbell, but rather generally thickened by hard life.

The butcher paper is peeled back, and the sandwich raised and passed once, twice beneath his nose. He inhales, nods to himself, and then carefully wraps the sandwich back up and sets it aside. Clearly he intends to enjoy it alone, where he can devote his full attention to it.

"Horseradish? Now, that's a speciality item, novelty, that is. Wasabe. Fancy Japanese name for the same thing, and both equally good for clearing out the sinuses. As such, I reckon it's more for medicinal purposes than good eating, and don't quite qualify for my special rankings. Not quite."

His gaze, however, remains speculative. Does she look familiar? Something tugs at his memory. Has he seen her somewhere? Most likely not at a soup kitchen, nor a shelter, nor was she just a random lady who might have given him a fiver in the past. A friend of Kevin's. A reporter? No. She didn't have the nose wiggling energy that reporters shared with rabbits, always on the alert for some juicy bit of news. Too composed, too reserved. Business lady, most like. And then there's the marks. Marcellus has seen their like before. A cut 'n bruise over her left cheek, barely visible under the foundation and toner, a raised ridge under her lipstick that speaks to a vertical scab, another mark close to the hairline. He's seen pro's with the same markings, but this lady's got none of that harried, haunted look.

Then she mentions Broadway, and it clicks.

He casts a similar practiced glance around the square. Nobody close.

"Family, eh? Thought you looked familiar." His voice has lost its easy jocularity, that casual street patter, and grows at once more reserved and more mature. Still that rasp though, that speaks to endless nights in dive bars and smoke. He nods up to her. "Marcellus Williams, at yer service. Who might you be, then?"

There's no one around or at least no one close and when she is so satisfied, her attention returns to him, just as direct as before.

Éva

"Horseradish," the deliberation is clearly articulated in her voice, which is quiet and American and precise as her appearance suggests that it might be. " - was my grandmother's favorite. Followed closely by garlic cream, though," the faintest tip of her sleek dark head in his direction, "I never developed a taste for it, I confess, it was always on the family table.

"She even slipped it into her cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, if you can comprehend that heresy."

He is sharp enough to catch the carefully concealed marks on her face and more perhaps. The worst of them the suggestion of mottled, patchy bruising beneath still-more make-up on her neck, rising above the high collar of her ivory dress - solid impact at speed, leaning into the seatbelt the moment the restraint snaps too from the whipping motion of impact. Once he notices that, he may notice, too, the care with which she holds her head, particularly when lifting her eyes to give the square another survey as he makes his connections and searches his memory to filter all the faces that come into and out of his life.

No, not a reporter. No, not a woman who gave him five dollars once. Wealthy as she seems handouts do not seem to be her forté. Not unless they serve her purpose and then he might remember her for more than that. Broadway. Family.

She is not looking at him when he finally makes the connection, but lifts her chin in a small, regulated motion of acknowledgment or approval, then glances back at him when he introduces himself.

"Éva," she returns, her glance sidelong. Were they not so far apart she would extend her hand. There's a haloing motion of her right shoulder that is aborted a moment later. "Éva Illésházy. It's a pleasure, Mr. Williams."

Her cheek is curved with the suggestion of a smile that just crests but never breaks through the shape of her mouth.

"Were you in the city last year?"

"Marcellus. Do we perhaps have acquaintances in common? Somewhere on Broadway?"

Marcellus

"Last year?" He snorts, leans back, drapes one arm over the bench back and casts another instinctive glance around the square before smiling at her. "Miss Illyshezzy, I've been kicking around this city for more years than I care to remember. Shoot. When I rolled in Webb was still Mayor, though he was more out than in."

He pauses. There's a certain code to the streets, observed by those who have stuck around long enough to pick it up, to test it, to figure out its utility. To a degree, it possesses a passing semblance to the one in jail: don't ask questions. So he observes the mottled skin, faint and subtle though it may be. Notices that she doesn't remove the shades, and what that might imply. Knows she's seen her share of violence this past week. They're family though, so it could stem from any random source. Her mate. A fomori. A random assault. Hell, from that diagonal slash of bruising and the way it disappears in a smooth and continuous fashion down her neck, she might just as simply been banged up in a car accident, seat belt all lacerating into her neck.

He doesn't ask though. Ain't none of his business, and he's learned not to stick his nose where it ain't welcome.

Instead, he rubs at his chin, thick fingers scraping over the stubble. "Now lessee. You're dressed mighty fine, all composed, elegant like. So I'm ruling out my Tribe. Let's play to stereotypes. Name like Illyshazzy, I'm guessin' you're Eastern Europe. You ain't Illyshazopopulis, which rules out the Furies, though these days you never can tell. Still, you don't seem pissed at me for no reason, so I'll rule 'em out. Something tells me you ain't Fang neither--maybe it's just the plain fact that you almost offered me yer hand. You ain't a Walker though, 'cause despite your toy there you ain't checked it since we started talkin'. Could be a Gaian, but that's a cop out. I'm goin' with Shadow Lord." He grins at her again, something predatory in the smile, as if he's just played a winning hand at poker. "Am I right?"

Éva

"Webb, hmm," another flash of her attention, this one seems sharpened, somehow, although her cannot see the way her eyes cut back to him, narrowing every so slightly in consideration, he can hear the burr of thought in the back of her throat. Some new sense of assessment creeping in to her demeanor. This subtle shift of her posture, away from the square proper and towards him, the neat curl of her crossed legs in his direction. "Then I'd say you have rank on me."

Wry, the last, capstoned by a one-sided twist of her mouth, never mind the fairly minor injuries she is working to conceal. Then, as he begins to wax lyrical while puzzling out her ancestry, a certain sense of indulgence to her body language. The lift of her chin away, the deepening of the edges of her half-smile, some mild and irrepressible challenging lilting in the arch of her expressive brows.

He has her profile in view through it all. She nods just so with each clue he ticks off as if she were granting him some new and hard-won concession in a grand contractual obligation as he narrows down the options. Not a Gnawer. Not a Fury. Not a Fang. Not a Walker.

"You're correct, Mr. Williams. In every particular. Also," a pause, her smile deepens. If the cut on her mouth stings with this minute shifts of expression, she gives no sign. "I'm a lawyer, which should cement it, no? I do criminal defense work, primarily. Some appellate litigation, here and there.

"Do you know, I think that we could be helpful to each other."

Marcellus

"Rank, eh?" The concept amuses him; he crosses one ankle over the other knee, and waggles his foot briefly. The shoe is a New Balance, an unsubtle blend of gray with lime green and citrus yellow, meshed over with white. Striking, the kind of shoe a professional runner might buy for a couple of hundred dollars. With the pant leg of his olive cargo's hiked up, she can see a stretch of dirty ankle, the wiry black hairs, the lack of a sock.

"Well, you don't need to be callin' me rhya or nothin'," he says, that toothy smile returns. "Not that I wouldn't appreciate the sentiment, being older than the bones in the hills, but I'm a modest man, of modest means, and don't need to be puttin' on airs, if you catch my drift." His smile flares, book ending the sentence, and then subsides, foot waggling twice more as he listens on.

"Interestin'," he says, reaching up to smooth down his stubble as he pulls on his chin. There's an old scar across the back of his left hand. It's blanched milky white against his tanned and dirty skin, Y-shaped with the left upper fork half the length of the right. Thick, too. As if a long time ago somebody had cut his hand right open. "A lawyer, eh? That is indeed a useful connection. Not that I ever stray on the wrong side of the law, of course, being a law-abiding man of righteous principles and sound mind, but you never know, you never know."

He continue to smooth down his stubble. His eyes. Each iris a rich, penetrating blue, almost startling under his craggy brows. Sharp and lucid, he watches her for a moment, and then he nods. "And while I'm but a humble man, I do have friends. The absent Mr. Saunders being one such. Got my ear to the ground, and the ear of several folks who appreciate such a reliable and discrete source of information. As it were, if you know what I mean, as it were. Mayhaps we could be useful to each other."

Marcellus finally drops his hand from his chin. He pats the butcher-wrapped sandwich absently as if to check that it's still there, and then drops his hand in his lap.

Éva

There he is reflected in the curve of her glasses from six feet away and his only suggestion of her expression is the movement of her mouth or the lilt of her brows above the glasses. All the fine points of attention and detail that linger in the orbital muscles are lost beneath dark lenses. Once, her attention clearly drops from his features to his feet, and the edge of her smile hooks minutely wider.

"Nice shoes." Someone self-conscious and ever on the search for slights might read mockery into the question. The self-satisfied sort that accumulates in the soft pockets of wealth and privilege she so clearly inhabits with such evident ease. But her voice is even and low and steady and aside from brief flashes of humor or interest that could mean anything, her expression is as steady and clear as the surface of a still pond in some dark forest. "Do you run?"

He tells her she don't need to be callin' him rhya or nothin' and her response is a "Trust me," in a voice dry as the Kalahari. " - there are not many aspects of their culture that I feel the need to import into ours. Honorifics among them. You're a modest man. I'm a modest woman. We'll get on under those terms quite well, I think."

--

And then he is waxing lyrical about her potential uses to him; and his to her. Here and there she nods, like the chorus in a call-and-response, like the congregation in a charismatic church, affirming the declarations of the preacher. Mid-speech, she sets the sealed tablet on the bench beside her and starts unlacing her dark leather bag. Stows the tablet inside and pulls two cards from inside. The first is a standard business card. Her name and phone number and her firm's logo in the right upper corner. Their office address places them in the Cold Crescent building proper, a occupying two floors several storys down from the protected levels.

The second card is simply a number, without name or address on explanation.

"If you're ever arrested, Mr. Williams. If it seems serious, tell the police that you are represented, you want your attorney immediately, and give them my card.

"Now, if you ever have an emergency of another sort, have information for me, or a request to make, the second number is the one to use. If I do not answer, one of my assistants will. Both are kin.

"I'd also like to offer you a downpayment on our incipient arrangement that is somewhat more substantial than that sandwich," a lilting glance around the square, one more time, as careful as he with such talk. "Do you remember the Beloved Horror?"

Marcellus

"Do I run?" He says this with obvious delight. Sits up some, wiggles the flesh from under his sit bones, and then leans back, re-arranging his arm. "I assume you mean professionally, or at least, in some serious athletic capacity, like. The answer, to which, is being the most modest--though slightly flattered--of no's. I don't run. However." Here he taps the side of his nose. "If like I ever have to, it's good to have some fine runnin' wear with which to acquire traction." He looks down at his shoe, turns it from one side to the other, and then slips her sideways smile. "Not that I purchased these, you see. They were a present. Of sorts. Pretty smart, ain't they."

He takes the cards, his fingers thicker than hers, shorter, stubbier, wider. Scissors the first card between index and middle finger, then flicks it around to stare at it before taking the second. Examines that one as well, and then shifts around so he can draw out a slender wallet of his own, used and abused and scuffed so that the black leather shows gray fabric around the corners, into which he places both cards with scrupulous care. She's able to spot a number of other cards in there, some startling white and new.

"Thanks kindly. I've a friend in the force who I've called the few times I've got myself into a scrape, though I'm sure she'd be glad for to me to get official representation should I ever get in hot water. Only so much she can do after all."

A nod seals that statement, and then she mentions the Beloved Horror and his face darkens. "Sure I do. Excuse me." He hawks and spits, then rubs the back of his hand across his mouth. "Lost a good friend to them back in the day. Remember Panic Button? Now that was a bright eyed girl. Too young for what happened to her, and too good." He frowns, and lowers his chin to his chest. Eyes her. "I've heard talk that they're back. That they struck us good and hard a couple of days ago. One of our own gone missing." His voice low now, his Tom Waits rasp gone right down to the bottom of the stone quarry amongst the loose rocks and the gravel.

Éva

"Remarkably smart," she returns, with that easy equanimity, evidently admiring them, her bemusement contained by the frame of her features and the gleam of sunlight in the apex of the curve of her sunglasses.

He arranges and rearranges himself and by contrast, she sits there so remarkably still, one leg crossed over the other, the hem of her skirt smoothed down over her thighs. No movement more than necessary as she stows the tablet in the center of the expensive leather bag, zips it closed and secures its latch.

" - though I'll confess I prefer the 980s. More practical on a daily basis than espadrilles."

The moment of lightness fades, then. She watches him slip the cards into his worn wallet and something in the angle of her face tells him when her attention has returned directly to him, the moment after. He mentions Panic Button and she makes a quiet noise in the back of her throat. Not enough to suggest that she has connected the Garou name with the specific bright-eyed girl he knew, but enough to suggest a deep and genuine empathy behind the reserve. Perhaps empathy is too strong a word: the sharing of loss. The shearing nature of it. The precise degree of sacrifice this world demands of their children and sometimes, sometimes, how fucking angry that makes her.

"Three dead," she affirms quietly, her attention drifting back to the square. " - and one still alive when they took him, yes. They've started their installations again, too. Six humans in addition to our own in their reintroduction to Denver. My assistants identified them and tracked down what information we could about their disappearances. No real pattern.

"But of course they're not pattern-makers. Are they?

"Be careful Mr. Williams." Abruptly, she's standing. Smoothing out her skirt, gathering up her expensive bag, her bundle of trash for the compost and recycling bins. "And if you hear anything or see anything, let me know, would you?

"I'll do the same."

Marcellus

Marcellus listens as Eva succinctly lists the most recent atrocities. His craggy brows lower over his eyes, and he massages his jaw once more as she stands. For a moment he simply looks at nothing, and then, as if catching himself, clambers to his feet as well.

"I'll be careful, no worries there. Been on these streets now for longer than I can remember, and I plan to stick around a whiles yet. Still, thanks for the advice. And the information." He adjusts his jeans, running his finger between the belt-less upper edge and his stomach, and then pulls down his shirt and smooths the fabric over his relatively flat stomach with the palm of his hand.

"I'll ask around. See if any of my friends have heard of anythin' unusual. You never know. And if I do hear of somethin', well. You can count on my givin' you a ring and all."

He smiles then, and his yellowed ivories gleam in an almost predatory manner, making him look like an old, hoary wolf. "Pleasure making your official acquaintance, Miss Illyshazzy. If you speak to Kevin, let him know that I'll be looking out for him. He can catch me over at the Five Points Soup Kitchen as usual. You can catch me there too, if you've a mind. I volunteer most mornings till about ten." He pauses, considers, and then raises his hand and see-saws it from side to side. "'Volunteers' being loosely used, in this occasion, if you know what I mean. Still."

He gives her a mock military salute with two fingers. "Take care of yourself, yeah?"

Éva

That, at the last, draws out the leading edge of a genuine if private smile on her mouth. She tips her dark head forward to him in wry acknowledgment of his admonition and perhaps, of the edge to that hoary old grin on his weathered face.

"Like you, Mr. Williams," shouldering her leather bag, tucking it neat and firm and familiar beneath her left arm. "I always do."

And off she walks through the shadows of the square, between the bronzed shantytown structure and its wretched, starving denizens, composed and sleek and wealth, and paying them, all of them, no apparent mind.