2019-05-27 - I Got Five On It

It is dead. Literally, figuratively. Dead.

Frankie is sitting on a stool tucked behind the small counter towards the back with a book open in front of her. The shop is dim, but well lit enough that no one can get away with stealing any of the trinkets that are on display for sale without getting noticed. But it is definitely dimmer than most places usually keep themselves. There's very quiet music that is being played, something instrumental, soothing, probably very much designed to put the customer at ease, and in the right frame of mind to fork over lots of money for whatever drivel that Frankie sells them as their future.

It may be dead, but once Lilith is in the shop, it's not quiet and particularly soothing anymore. She comes in through the door and stops to shake her umbrella out of the door at the rest of the boardwalk before closing the door, making a pretty raucous showing of singing I Got Five on It like that's a hint of the kind of entertaining she's come to do. That and... well, she has something wrapped in a blue towel under one of her arms. Once she's shoved her umbrella into her shoulder back, she wanders through the shop to Frankie's stool with a nosy lookabout, then finally unwraps the thing she's brought in without much of a 'hello' or 'fuck you' because she's all kinds of proud about the unveiling and smashing back grin.

She does stop singing, though, pulling a spliff from behind one of her ears like punctuation once that 'thing' is on the counter and she's pulled the towel away to flick like she's done a magic trick. "As you know, I'm a purveyor of only the finest goods..." Honestly, that means she finds a lot of weird junk between people coming in and web sales and exchanges, and this is no disappointment.

It's a black taxidermy chicken and it looks feather sleek, black, and mean. It's a gallina negra variety with top comb pitch black as well and she's done something to the eyes-- she's installed little red glimmer stones to make it look like a demonic chicken.

The door opening is like a brea...no. It's just Lilith. Frankie smirks briefly at the choice of a song, "You going to wrap your lips around a forty, too?"

It's the first words out of her mouth before she leans back, snapping the book closed and making sure that it's out of the way when Lilith presents the gift. It could be so many things, and Frankie is waiting to see just what it is that is revealed.

And it's a stuffed chicken. "Oh, shit." Frankie reaches for it, picking it up with a laugh, "Shit, Lil, is this one of the chickens your dad was on about, or did you go out and get me my very own chicken?" She turns it carefully around, then leans in closer to peer at the red eyes, "That's amazing. Super amazing." She tugs it into her lap, carefully petting the feathers, grinning at Lilith, "He's amazing. I'm going to name him..." She pauses, pondering it for a second before she laughs, "Scratch. His name is going to be Scratch." Now that the new stuffed avian companion is named she pauses in the petting of it, then towards the door, then back to Lilith, "If it's raining, you can smoke it in here. I guess my millions of customers can wait."

"If you have a forty kicking around, I can channel my inner gangster a little more. But in the meantime, I'll channel my west coast white girl blaze with your generous permission." Lilith stops smothering her grin and lets it light her face. And really, it's clear she should have been homecoming queen or something else other than layers of black once upon a time, even without any real ounce of cosmetics beyond lip balm. Considering she's a girl from the trailer park with some dark carrying issues, though, self-esteem matters generally leave her as one of those girls with no real clue how much they can light up a room with the bright smile.

After getting the spliff lit, Lilith wanders around a little piecing through the shop inventory variety before looking back at Frankie with Scratch all kinds of proud, explaining, "There's a lot of trade sites between pawn shops and one specializes in exotic taxidermy. So when I was dealing with them to offload, I had them throw that in as part of the deal after browsing the site with the idea to get a damn prop chicken in your shop. Figured unless you wanted to twist the heads off and bleed the ones Hank is chasing for flair, this was the next best thing. And I fixed the eyes."

Once she's hit a couple of times and exhaled trailing smoke, she wonders, "You ever see shit on people in here during readings that's just... really screwy?"

"I would probably not actually twist the heads off...it'd be all..." Frankie pauses at that, then lifts her hands up in a very jazz-hands kind of way, "Smoke and mirrors." Which is not jazz. "I mean, I'd kill the shit out of one for food, or for something real, but the nonsense in here? Not real." She gives Scratch a very careful hug before she puts him down on the counter, leaning forward onto her forearms to watch Lilith move around the shop, "You ever run across anything that even could fake being occult linked, let me know. I'm always looking for new things to use around here."

Which, probably explains why it looks like a cross between a very hippie crystals shop, and something more chaotic with random occult things all over. Many probably hand made, judging by quality.

"See shit on people?" Frankie actually gives the question a bit of honest thought, "Sure. Despite it all, you know I do believe. I am a believer in things, I might just shovel bullshit for the tourists and the pay, but there is enough around here and in the world, I guess, that makes me totally believe in things, too." She lets her attention shift towards the door, expression fading towards something troubled for a split second before wondering, "Is there something specific, though, you've been seeing?"

"My shadows are longer here when I look in the mirror too long. It clouds what I see and feel when I fall into them. Which might make no sense, trying to explain, but it's a thing. Granted, that's... not new so much as something I need to readjust to in a better way this time around. No black wallowing and fear." Lilith tells Frankie a little candidly after a solid nod and huff of partial laughter because... of the joint? Maybe not that. She just seems kind of matter of fact about it, as if she's accepting instead of fighting and hiding from particular 'things' and ways of being around this town.

After taking another hit, she wanders over to exhale trailing smoke and pass the lit spliff over with offer Frankie's way, lashes squinted a little bit as she tacks on, "Saw a ghost for the first time in ages, but it was attached to someone else. Guy named Carver. You know him?"

"Oh, you saw Melissa?" Frankie nods a bit, "Yeah, I've met him. I'm pretty sure that he's a con artist, of some kind, maybe. Not sure. Something about him just..." She narrows her eyes for a moment, thinking, "Not sure, it's just bothering me, you know? But he's nice, in his own way. I think."

The matter of mirrors, though. She doesn't seem to have too much of an opinion on the matter for the moment, but the look on her face is a lot more focused than her general just sitting around and chit-chatting expression. "You've been gone a while, Lil, I bet there's plenty of the weird shit around here you were able to forget about. Now you're back, and it's going to be all crazies all the time. Just got to tuck in and roll with it. Can't really fight the current, right? That way is madness."

"Carver visited my shop, yes. Melissa was an accidental piece of cautionary tale coming up. He was very interested in me as a whole. Byron is triggered by that alone, 'cause I told him, but it's like you say too, weird and sketchy, but he doesn't feel... dangerous? Not on purpose, anyway." Lilith bats her lashes a few times fast as Frankie name drops Melissa and knocks her free hand back through her hair before finding a trash can with stepping to flick ashes into after tamping the joint off into palm of her hand while it smokes and burns down. After heaving out a huge breath that's not quite a sigh, she takes another hit and posts up in sit on the counter near where company sits on her stool with her new friend Scratch the demonic chicken. She gives the little taxidermy piece a twitch of smile for some reason, though it seems to be more in relation to a bidden thought than actually for the inanimate object.

"I suppose that's about the way of things." She pauses, "I got broken in again pretty solidly lately on a boat ride Tobin took out. It had a bright side, weirdly enough-- it brought him and Byron to me and opened a door for explanations that were long past due." Then the brunette takes a moment to really look at Frankie, like she's seeing around or into her, "You weren't like that before. I think it's why I didn't really hide from you in part. That and I never had dreams of ripping you apart like I did the boys."

"I don't think Carver is actually dangerous." Frankie hesitates a moment, but then adds, "To us." There is still a lot of hesitation in that decision, but she doesn't go back and change her statement, instead she forges ahead. "So By-By can cool his jets and not be worried about it. Althoooough..." She leans back from the counter, her hands catching on the edge of it as she studies Lilith from a bit more distance, "I doubt it's just because of some sketchy Brit tumbling through town.....I mean, I'm not sure. But I'm willing to put money down on it being something else." She releases the edge of the counter, reaching beneath it to start digging around inside it before she pulls out a small wooden box. The box she opens quickly, checking the contents before she reaches over to set it next to Lilith.

"Grind that into a powder, put it into his drink next time you see him." Frankie smiles brightly before she leans back on the counter, "Byron, not Carver. Don't give this to Carver, that'd be very, very bad. But give it to Byron, and he can't know you're doing it. Alright?" Once settled back in there is a bit of a shrug of her shoulders, "I wasn't, no. I don't think that I ever realized just how very real it was until then, though. But I appreciate not dreaming of ripping me apart, that'd be hard to explain."

After wetting her fingers and pinching the lit tip of the spliff to snuff so she can put the thing back behind her ear partially smoked, sizeable as it is, Lilith listens to Frankie, then looks at the little box and touches it with her fingers, confused and dubious, "... why? What is it? Is it something that will make me less likely to go weird and a little awkward every time I text him? He's... well. What he is now. And I'm still..." A little stoned and clearly emotional for a beat, the brunette digs a thumb into a distressed tear in her jeans indicatively, nevermind the distressing is supposed to be there for style. The point still gets across with the drop of her lashes there for that moment-- she still feels like the ratty trailer girl again, especially put up to all his posh after all that distance she made.

Then suddenly, with Frankie confirming she can see Melissa prior, she wonders, "And before I forget, have you ever seen Tobin's mom since she disappeared?" Long shot, but hey, Frankie sees things and she believes in what Frankie sees, it seems.

"Maybe, yeah." Frankie replies thoughtfully, glancing at the box for a moment, then she looks back up, "Just have faith, right?"

One hand reaches out, patting at Lilith's knee quickly before she easily shifts topics for a moment, "I haven't seen her. But I've not much looked, either. Which is sort of shitty of me, I guess....but..." She shrugs her shoulders, "Mom's vanish. It's what they do." Which speaks more to the fact that Frankie's own mom bailed on her than for mom's everywhere, who really don't need to be lumped in with her own dead beat of a mother. "We checking to see if we can find Tobin's mom? If so, I'm down to help out."

Frankie leans back again, hands settling in her lap as she switches back to the subject of Byron, "So is it just him being awkward when you text him? I mean...like what're you two talking about and stuff? Because, despite his stupid car and stupid money, under it all I bet he's just the same old Byron...he was always the one that was going to go some place in life, Lil. But he's still him, you know? It's just weird, running into people you've got history with, and things didn't end up in a great spot. Just, give it some time, dose him with that, and chill. It'll be good." She lifts a hand up, crossing the tip of her finger over her heart.

Lilith still looks a little confused and dubious, but she takes the box and puts it to drop in her shoulder bag with an owl on it she's using as a purse at the moment, leaning carefully to settle it with nestle at the bottom under the umbrella, "I think we should make some kind of mass effort to help Tobin, yeah. You know what his mom was for everyone and the way I gathered she disappeared... he's going to spend his entire life and maybe his death trying to sort that, if I had to guess. But I haven't gotten a chance to really talk to him about it, yet."

She draws in a breath and smiles some at the touch at her knee, admitting after a moment, "The texts are fine and generally either divulging or light and playful and me being my brand of blurt it out weird. He's not awkward, because he's frickin' master of composure Byron, but I just run off at the mouth until I feel that way. Too much wondering what he's interpreting it all as at the other end. The couple of times we've actually been in person and together, though, it's so... oddly comfortable. But I know he's on the other end of that phone, wondering what he should and shouldn't ask based on what I'm not saying. Because maybe he doesn't want to know and ruin what he still sees. Or I'm scared of ruining that. It's... I mean, it's not a huge deal."

Lilith shakes her head suddenly and half-laughs as she sits up straighter, a bit like a pup literally shaking something off, "It's silly. It's been so long and we're grown folk and I kicked the can over when I did and that's just that. It's going to do what it's going to do. The -more- important thing is that he's not furious with me because what I did... was hurtful and confusing. So yeah, it'll be good." Her attention swaps suddenly with the matter of 'good' things she might be a little excited about, hand snapping her fingers a few times, "And oh. Oh. Geoff's going to put us up a cover in the trees for our chairs in case of drizzle and the bonfire is so on when we can all swing it."

"I think it's not...like...in your head. But..." Frankie shrugs almost apologetically, smiling, "It's in your head. Seriously, just relax and be the wonderful person that you are, and he'll either love you for you or not. If not, then Gina and I can put a curse on him and make all his hair fall out and for him to get adult acne. It'll be great." It's clear that a part of her almost wants to do it. Just to do it. Maybe. "You're fantastic. You brought me a damn chicken, anyone who doesn't see that isn't worth the trouble."

The news about the cover, and the bonfire, that gets an excited laugh, "Good. Whenever. I'm not exactly swimming in customers right now. There's this new cop, and May...do you remember May?" She shakes her head, reaching for the chicken to pick him up, wiggling him at Lilith, "They want a reading, which will be fine. Just fine. Nothing to be worried about, right?" Scratch nods, because Frankie makes him nod. "So, you guys with the real jobs and schedules, you just tell me when and where."

Lilith cracks up laughing, suddenly, because if -anything- would piss Byron off and be the ultimate consequence? It'd be adult acne for him to see in the mirror when he's dressing in that perfectly tailored suit. Granted, she'd probably never actually ask for that, even if he was a huge dick, but it seems to amuse her all the same on general principle. Then she leans to scratch the chicken with a certain amount of preening pride, "It's a damn good chicken."

Then she squints while trying to remember the name "May" and hitches her shoulders up with a little dismissive nonchalance, "I don't know, maybe if I saw her. What's the new cop's name?" This last bit might be paranoia because she's high. Or because she's a crook on the sly because she has to be. Or both! Because she seems to sit up a little straighter again with the curious question. Then suddenly, she grins while wondering, "And if you've been stuck here this whole time, who have -you- been bangin'?"

"Michael O'Malley. Like the cat from that one movie, Aristocats." Frankie shakes her head a bit, "Just met him the once, him and May up at the Pourhouse." Frankie leans forward, carefully setting the chicken down on the counter, beaming with quiet pride for her new shop chicken.

"Who have I been banging?" Frankie shakes her head at the question, "Few people here and there....nothing really to talk about." She lifts a hand up, zipping her lips and throwing away the imaginary key. "I've been keeping myself busy, though. Sitting around here, fleecing the tourists for all their cash...offering tid bits about spooky curses and old men's limp dicks." She rolls her eyes a moment at the last part. "It's been a bundle of fun, well. That's a lie, the sarcasm is a lie. I really do love this work."

Lilith nods to the cop name, like she's stashing it to label for 'schmooze' or 'avoid' later, then works a hand back through her mass of hair to hold it and gradually release in tumble fall as she turns a sudden grin at Frankie's zip-lip gesture. The expression turns a bit slanted and sideways as she drops her hand to lean on and say, "Ugh, be perfectly respectable, why don't you. What am I supposed to do with that?"

But then she looks at Frankie with a hint of admiration softening the play out of her pot-hazed eyes and she confesses, "I'm glad you -like- it, though, and it's not just the thing you -have- to do. I was never actually all edges and confidence like you and Gina, being you for the sake of being you. I didn't want to know who I was and I couldn't feel what I actually wanted from life because everything else was too loud. Moving away changed the backdrop and made it quiet, but I'd gone deaf by then, in a sense, and I just flew on autopilot. I don't want to do that anymore. 'cause honestly, it's weird, getting back here re-learning people and realizing... I'm relearning myself, too."

"Got to be confident in this business, or the wolves will eat you. That's what Mom always said, at least." Frankie settles her elbows on the counter, curling her feet around the legs of her stool as she leans in, her voice lowering, "I'll let you know a secret, though. I'm not that respectable, but I'm not...really sure that I want the angry housewives of Gray Harbor coming after me for sleeping with their fat husbands." It's not a secret. And it's not serious. But it is spoken with a humorous tone as she winks, then rests her chin on her hands.

"You got to figure out yourself, though. Who is Lilith. You can't really ever get to know anyone else, I mean...like really know them, until you know who you are. You can fake being someone, sure. I do it, it's part of the job, the facade. But I know who I am underneath, and that means that I know that they are someone else underneath, too. And then you can dig for it, make those connections, right?" It's all a bunch of bullshit, really. But she sums it up with a truth. "You have to be comfortable and happy with you, though."

There's a smile that brings up one side of Lilith's mouth as she nods to Frankie's words, despite the vaguely contemplative expression. Then after a moment, she hops down with sliding legs at drop from the counter perch, speaking with a fair amount of certainty, regardless of who or what she may very well be, "Yeah. Fear is blinding. That's not happening where I can help it, this time. I'm too much of a wrecking ball to let that have reign again." She might be implicating the big shutdown that happened, but given how Frankie is now too... it might not be a stretch to figure she means it pretty literally as a root cause.

Then after hitching her shoulder bag and getting out her umbrella, she says, "I'm going to head to work a bit. Thanks for the talk. I... know enough to know I missed having them. Y'know. The kinds that matter. We'll sync up for the shindig at some point soon." After leaning to pop a noisy 'smack' kiss with emphasized 'mwah' noise on top of Frankie's auburn head with step around, she tacks on more seriously, and maybe it's more weed paranoia, because she's vague. But it's probably not, "... you get any weirdos outside of the regular weird in here, though, I'm a text-skip-jump away."

"I'll let you know...but most steer clear. They're all pretty sure that I can curse them." Which that might just be the regular weirdos. Not the weird-weirdos that she really should be worried about. "You need help with anything, even your dad, I'm just a smoke signal away, too. Or a thought. Think at me. I hear that works with the right people."

Which might be a hint. But then Frankie is collecting Scratch so that she can follow Lilith to the door, but only so that she can flip the sign to closed, turn off the ugly neons in the window, and throw the lock, "Come on my darling, handsome cock you. We're going to go find you the perfect place to scare the crap out of everyone. Yes we are."