2019-06-16 - Nice Guys Like Dead Bodies

The rain beats on the roof with a steady tempo, robbing the outside air of the spring warmth. The Pourhouse is rather full this evening - the usual crowd came in just after work, and decided to hang around waiting for the rain to stop. Which it has declined to do. Instead, people just kept trickling in. Most of the current patrons are the professional drinking sorts, so the bar is relatively quiet despite every table almost having someone at it, and most being full up. Filled with men and women staring into their beers, hoping that this last drink will either drive the rain away, or make it so that they no longer care.

Alexander has claimed his own table, near the bar. It's unusual for a table to be claimed by someone alone on a night like this, but it's probably because he's got a couple of files stacked up before him, along with a beer, and the pictures that peek out from some of those files are enough to turn the stomach of even hardened drinkers. Alexander drinks and scribbles in his notebook. Drink. Write. Drink. Write.

Lilith is dressed up like she's on the damn prowl, but it's not really because she's taken the time to come to the bar alone. It might seem that way initially, but the way she goes to post up and immediately order a glass of Gray Goose double straight on ice with no accoutrements or mixers might say otherwise. She doesn't take the time to get the lay of the patronage or the bar itself like a normal person does when they come in with rhyme or reason for social constructs. No, she's here to drink. And she's priming herself to take the edge off of whatever's edging her.

She's lost some of her arranged hair curl to the rain outside and after taking an absent moment to fiddle and arrange it while drinking, she notices Alexander at his solo table with his accessories. Picking up her drink, she comes out of bar lean and approaches in her leather leggings, heels, silver sleeveless drape top and red lipstick, a bit of a far cry from the dry and casual dress and demeanor she had in the shop, "Hi. Can I be nosy?"

Alexander is not, for once, twitching and staring at everyone who comes through the door of whatever room he's in. The patrons of the Pourhouse are mostly ignoring him, and he is returning the favor, one hand running through his hair as he takes a moment to mutter to himself, as a break from the writing and the drinking. So he jumps noticeably when Lilith says hi, looking up at her with wide, dark eyes filled with surprise. He takes in the outfit, and stands up. "Miss Winslow. Hello." He stares at her for a while, not particularly politely - although it looks more like bewilderment than leering. "Yes. Of course." Another few moments of staring, before he realizes that an invitation should probably be issued. "Would you like to sit down?"

The cleavage is nice, if unexpected, but probably not worth a rise to feet, and Lilith seems a little thrown and likewise amused by it when Alexander pops up. After a glance down at herself and realizing what it looks like to now be in a bar alone dressed for club exploits, she supposes, "Yes, thank you. If I sat at the bar like this too long solostyle, I was going to just end up bothered and annoyed and floating in free drinks. Which isn't a bad thing, the free part, but then again, very little in life is actually free, so..."

There's a moment where Lilith pushes her hair back away from her face to hold while leaning over a particular file folder on the way down to sit with offering, lashing one leg over the other in cross to let heeled shoe dangle from the line of her toes, "Are you researching a particular case that's current or are you doing that hobbyist notation thing for your epic collective crime saga?"

"I see." Alexander frowns, just slightly, but nods. "Makes sense." He waits until she sits down before he retakes his seat again. His attention turns back to his work. Whatever the hell it is. "Particular case. Yes. Current? No. Not really. Old. Maybe very old." He reaches into one of the files, taking out a picture and sliding it over to her. He really should probably warn her, because the printout of a photo from the sixties shows the Boardwalk strewn with crumpled human bodies. Small, torn human bodies. There's a child's head roughly where the Fried Fish place is, now.

"You're more interesting than anything at the bar, at that." Lilith lays onto Alexander as a backhanded compliment before she leans in a bit and drinks from her glass with clatter of ice accompanying the tip up. She's foregone a straw because that'd girly that hard double drink up just far too much and she seems to be hitting it hard and fast for unrelated matters. But that said, the drink before she's shown what she's shown and anything she's had as leadup before this picture, it helps with what her eyes realize they're seeing-- she squints through mascara darkened lashes, sits up and away to make sure she's seeing what she's seeing, then she leans back down to look more closely at the gruesome sight for logical details that -made- the little broken bodies... and head.

Given it's the Boardwalk and she's at least familiar with that, she wonders, "... ferris wheel accident or... something else?"

Interesting might be a compliment she's regretting now as she pushes the picture away now that she's noticed the head isn't connected to anything else broken. But she balms it with another quick drink.

Alexander gives Lilith an approving look. Not at the compliment - that appears to sail over his head, unnoticed and unremarked upon. It's the identification of the origin of the photo that draws his brief nod and the faintest of smiles. When she pushes the photo back, he picks it up and neatly slides it back into the file it came from. "The original Ferris Wheel at the Boardwalk fell. Over twenty children died, more were injured. It was a tragedy." A fascinating tragedy, says the gleam in his eyes, if not the dull tone of his voice.

He takes a sip of his beer, and studies her. "Courage or forgetfulness?" he asks, with a nod at the strong drink.

"Probably both. Kind of a rough day and I'm working on being a big girl and not raging or whining about it. But it was fine enough considering how certain days go around here. I didn't die to the ferris wheel, for instance." Lilith's hand flits to the file where the photograph was stashed away to mercifully not be table view anymore with dead kids abounds as viewing pleasure. "But mostly I'm drinking like this to forget I'm mad at myself. And now you're helping with that. So maybe I'll need less. Or I'll be drunk soon and you'll be subjected. Of course, on the -plus- side, if I get drunk and snatched by a murderer going home, I know you're -so- on top of finding who did it, so hey. Win win."

"What... was the first case that -really- got you revved and into this kind of stuff?" The brunette settles back and bounces her crossed over leg some, shoe dangling with movement from hang at the line of her toes. She takes to looking at Alexander directly across the table like she's trying to piece a bit of him out instead of the pictures and files, now.

"You did not die on the Ferris Wheel," Alexander agrees, solemnly. "You're the wrong age, and I'm sure you would have remembered." There's not even a hint of sarcasm or amusement there. He continues to study her, expression blank, his stare dark and intent, as if she were a photograph in one of the files. But, at least, probably an interesting one, because rather than returning to scribbling in his notebook, he sits back, and considers her. "I will see you home. If you are too drunk. Did you bring a car?"

Her question draws a frown, despite the reluctantly chivalrous offer. His gaze falls to her dangling shoe. "I don't know how to answer that, Miss Winslow. When I was...seven, I think, I knew that a girl in my class was being hurt by her mother. I heard her crying in my head at night. I tried to tell people, but no one would believe me. So I tried to gather evidence. One day, after church, her mother cracked open her skull. It was ruled an accident - she was climbing a ladder she shouldn't have been climbing, and fell off, they said. It was a lie, the evidence didn't support it. But the parents were well-regarded, and people preferred it to be an accident."

"I brought a car, it's parked outside." If Lilith was going to quip or say anything else about that, it visibly dies on her when Alexander's eyes drop to her shoe during the answering of her question. Her features harden a few degrees, the fine made up lines of her delicate profile and features turning out to look distantly at the bar during part of the explanation. And in that moment, despite the make and mien of her usually downplayed lovely features, she looks a little piece of statuesque rage there for a spell while looking away. She's clearly lost in a related moment that makes the story more unpleasant than it already is, in some form. But whatever or whoever she's thinking of doesn't come up.

With a tiny shake of her head, she looks back at Alexander and she nods one single time, as if that is the thing that makes all the sense in the world to put him right where he's sitting with these files now. After drawing in a breath, she drains her drink and orders another with lifted gesture at the bar, waiting for it to arrive through a sigh, "People prefer lies a fair bit, whether they admit it or not. There's a point where the lines blur and it's not even about honesty anymore, it's about what we're capable of making ourselves accept and believe. You did the right thing, though, little bitty you, speaking up and trying to find a way to make people listen when none of them were brave enough to face the reality of what it was and preferred to be blind."

Lilith smiles some at Alexander and considers him a spell, but then reaches to exchange her drink for the full one with interrupting moment.

"I can drive," Alexander says, although he apparently walks everywhere, rain, shine, or snow. The recitation hasn't seemed to have bothered him, but he stares with open and impolite curiosity at her reaction, his head tilting slightly to one side, like a dog who's just heard a high-pitched noise that it can't quite place the origin of. When she speaks again, though, his head straightens, and he offers a brief nod. "Sometimes the truth doesn't make much sense. It doesn't agree with other people's truths, and usually the truth that more people agree with ends up becoming the real truth. And believing in not-real truths make you crazy. I'm not sure that's the right thing, to be crazy. But knowing more about why and how people hurt each other, makes it easier to find ways to make your truth conform to the truth that other people know is real. That's useful."

His eyes follow her exchange of the drink. "Why are you upset, Miss Winslow? Not just the story. You were upset before."

"It is useful. But it's hard to separate when emotions are all twisted up with truths and lies, unfortunately. But that's just part of the human condition, isn't it?" Lilith comments as she plucks the straw from her drink to discard on the tabletop and turns it up to drink from. There's ruddy color in her cheeks with the creep of inebriation and the way she's philosophizing to certain degrees might be another indicator that the drink has her good and warm and opening right the hell up with whatever was bothering her having run of the back yard instead of the front of her brain. So when he asks, she hitches her bare shoulders in tiny roll at Alexander, "Do I seem upset?"

Oh, it's a dismissal at first, but then she looks at Alexander and gestures at him with her glass, relenting to a degree, as if the very way he sees and deals with truth and blunt honesty himself deserves some kind of answer, "I had a small meeting that reminded me where -exactly- I stand in regards to... heh. So much." She pauses, "I hold a lot in. Catches up with me sometimes. I'm not a drunk, but sometimes it's just easier to blotto until it all goes away. Then I won't accidentally break something."

Suddenly she's interested in her straw as her lashes drop and she rolls it back and forth across the tabletop, "Anyway. I feel pretty whatever about it all now, though, thanks vodka." She shakes her glass to hear the rattle and flits her eyes up to consider Alexander, "You can call me Lilith, you know. Unless you'd rather just not."

"It's irritating when people lie. Not all untruths are lies - some people don't know when they're speaking something that isn't true. Sometimes because they don't want to know. But sometimes they just aren't allowed to know. But when they do, and they lie anyway, it can be...vexing." Yes, Alexander uses the word 'vexing', and apparently with all seriousness. His eyes never waver from her, and perhaps it's an intentional reply, because when she has that first, dismissive response, he doesn't say anything, or try to change the subject.

He just stares at her, his face a blank wall. Until she continues. Then, he listens to the end. Only when she's finished, and she makes the offer to use her first name, does his gaze drop to the table. He reaches for his beer, finishing off the dregs in the bottom of the mug. "Sometimes, Miss Winslow, 'small meetings' are meant to make you feel a certain way about where you stand. But it is a deliberate construct, not a truth. Psychological warfare." His eyes flick up to her face again. "I'm sorry. That someone made you feel that way."

"People are irritating and... vexing in general. Except the ones that aren't, I guess." Lilith tells Alexander after making a noise in her throat at the spoken sentiment, her glossed lips slanting with smile that's just drunken loose enough to be helplessly pretty instead of dry and witty. It's a bit like a filter has fallen off of her that she tends to keep in place to downplay exactly what she looks like physically, compensating with a certain 'way' about her. And maybe it's a little obvious why she tends to keep that filter on like an old defensive habit instead of bubbling over with the darling that slips out of her here and there.

Hand waving, she clarifies for company, drinking with brisk swallow somewhere there between, "Oh, honey. It's a mean game, and I know the game. But it works when you're conditioned for it. You know my dad's the town drunk, don't you? I grew up in trailers and honestly? I have no idea how I'm a functioning person with Hank as my only adult influence during certain formative years. It's real hard to get the 'rise above' feeling as an adult when you come from that. Part of you always tells you that you're trash and fringes. You're the small fish. Even the ones that end up ahead have to overcompensate for everything to feel like -enough-."

Maybe she should slow down on the booze. But she's not really distressed saying it, she's being an exasperated brand of self-examplifying, hand knocking back through her hair when she's finished.

Alexander is nowhere near the level of intoxicated that she is, and he doesn't seem inclined to order another beer now that the one he was working on is finished. He gives just the barest hint of upward turns of his mouth, in response to that too-open smile of hers, and it widens with something like amusement when she calls him 'honey', but he doesn't interrupt while she speaks.

And when she's done, Alexander doesn't offer reassurance or pep talks, or anything like that. He nods, once and briefly, to confirm that he's aware of Hank's dubious status in the town social web - but, let's face it, Alexander is in no position to throw stones, there. Instead, he bundles up his files, stacking them neatly at the edge of the table, then stands. "Let me take you home, Miss Winslow." It could be a question, but in his flat voice, it's hard to say that he means it like that.

"Ooo, someone wants to drive my car. Honestly, it's a rental SUV. Nissan. Pretty nice. With like... the backup camera thing?" Lilith tilts her head some at Alexander gathering up his files and drains the rest of her drink. After knocking a few ice cubes into her mouth to pocket in a cheek for speaking around, she starts to rise herself for a balance check in her heels. She's at least sober enough to know that mentally okay doesn't mean bodily okay and her drinks have been straight doubles. "I have no idea what kind of car I should own and it felt very permanent to buy one. I think I wanted to be sure about something. Not walled into picking immediately. Felt like bullshit to deal with. I guess I should fix that. Or just keep this one because it grew on me. Unless you ram us into a tree worse than I might at-- oh hey look..."

Lilith beams a sudden smile of unreserved sunshine that only the closest generally get when it comes to her, right at Alexander, because she's balancing on one heeled foot with her arms out suddenly, "Hot damn, I'm a vodka machine." She quits showing off, though with a foot drop to byline next, inebriated mind apparently going everywhere now that she's up and moving as a distraction, "You're nice, you know. I like that you just say whatever whenever."

Alexander watches her rise to her feet. He rather clearly has to brace himself, complete with deep breath and the squaring of shoulders, but he offers her his arm for help with balance, if she should need it. His other hand scoops up his files and holds them carefully. "SUVs are safety hazards," he murmurs, although there's no real expectation in his voice that this is going to matter at all to her. "But I don't plan to ram us into a tree. It would seem to defeat the purpose of being the one to drive. Do you still live in the trailer park, at your shop, or elsewhere?"

Her sudden smile does stop him, for a moment. He blinks a couple of times, as if confused by such an expression being directed at him. When she goes on to pose, he actually laughs, soft and rusty. "You're drunk, Miss Winslow. Your character judgements are not to be trusted." Then he clears his throat. "The keys?"

"This whole town is a safety hazard, makes the damn thing just another brick in the wall of doom for me. I think that's fitting. But also I was eyeballing a Hyundai because supposedly they're the new Nissan with Korean competitive advances and step-ups made for comfort and design and performance... or something." Lilith sounds like she's quoting an ad she read there for a moment before she gives up trying to sound like she knows what she's talking about, as next she gets to the real decider, "One of them had really nice red paint that was dark like a wine, but had neat gold fleck? Anyway. Listen..."

She takes to leaning shoulder against Alexander's braced and offered arm while trying to wiggle her keys out of the skin tight leather club pants pocket to pass over. Then she mindlessly takes his arm with both hands and kind of makes a game of ambling out with heel-toe walking line to test her balance limits all plied with vodka.

"Drunk character judgement might be an issue when it comes to losing the pants, but when it comes to -compliments- think of the odds instead-- seven times out of ten it's going to be something someone thinks about you but never actually -says- while sober. So you're allowed to trust the sentiment there... with a grain of salt. Also did you ask me something el-- oh! Loft. Shop loft. Back parking gets me in without shopwalks."

They draw stares. And even a few whispers from townies, who clearly cannot believe that a woman who looks like Lilith, and is dressed like Lilith, can POSSIBLY be drunk enough to apparently hand her keys over to Alexander Clayton. Somewhere, bets about her likelihood of being found dismembered in a ditch are being hastily constructed. For his part, Alexander has settled into tolerant indulgence of her holding forth on the merits of Hyundais, and even adds, "Dark red with gold flecks seems quite attractive. I can see why it would appeal." The keys are solemnly taken.

He supports her as best he can, trying to anticipate some of her ambling movements and steer her gently towards the door. He bumps gently against her several times, when he doesn't guess right about which way she was going to go, but he seems to committed to not screaming or freaking out about the physical contact - either the prolonged on his arm, or the incidental. There's another, more natural, laugh at her opinion on drunk judgement. "Well, then. I'm glad you think that I'm nice, Miss Winslow, at least in the moment."

If people are trying to ward her away from being strewn in bits somewhere via their pleading hazy drunk gazes there in the bar, welp, Lilith isn't quite picking up what they're throwing down because she's busy playing that heel-toe on point walking game with her shoes. And she's doing pretty okay, especially with the balance help, and if she's triggering anything autistic-ish or otherwise hanging on Alexander's arm, she's not noticing that either. Especially with him being a champ about it all. Which means he's probably going to kill her.

Actually, no, something in Lilith actually looks back for a moment there when they're going out of the door and she does pick up on a certain amount of watching eyes. And she seems to need to rub in the idea that she thinks he's a nice guy for everyone else to see too, so there's a flutter nuzzle of nose tip and kiss of gratitude at his shoulder that's sheerly innocuous, but stareworthy for the morbid minds or gossips to go speculating with. It's an odd way of throwing middle finger to the room on his behalf, but vodka Lilith is jab on point about making it go down that way.

Besides, serial killers tend to hoard their murder photos, not have them filed on tabletops in public, so it's probably fine. When they're outside, she points over at an SUV so they can settle up out of the rain and into it. With... Alexander Clayton behind the wheel.

Alexander blinks a couple of times at the nuzzle and kiss on his shoulder, missing a beat on his own walking, and nearly ramming them into the doorway. He recovers before they end up falling into something, though, and grabs the door to hold open for her. He doesn't comment on the gesture, or look back at the patrons, despite the gossip reaching higher levels.

Instead, he conducts her carefully to the SUV, helps her up into the passenger's side, makes sure she's buckled in, and goes around to the driver's side. He drives carefully and a little tentatively - an unfamiliar SUV in the rain is not the /greatest/ experience, but no trees are wrapped around. Instead, he parks them at the back parking lot, and makes sure she gets into her loft, with her keys in her hand with a solemn, "Good evening, and sleep well, Miss Winslow," before letting himself back out and walking home in the rain.