2019-06-29 - How the Mind Interprets

Summer has brought a higher than usual number of non-rainy days for the area, which means that on a day like today, when the weather is warm and muggy, but not /actually filled with water/, the Park is a lively place filled with people. And a lot of kids, who are running around like small, excited animals. Kids swarm the carousel, which gives off merry music. A few musicians have staked out parts of the road, playing for pocket change. Picnickers have laid out blankets. Summer in Gray Harbor is brief, and people try to wring all the enjoyment they can out of it.

Alexander is over by the road that leads towards the hospital. Hospital staff have taken advantage of the weather and crowds to do an outreach event, and have a large booth introducing people to CPR and bystander response. There are dummies to practice on, informational cards to take, videos to watch, and (of course) free swag to entice people to sign up for CPR certification classes. Alexander doesn't fit in with the other visitors to the booth; he's older than the average single person, and lacks the children and partner of the other visitors about his age. And he's studying the videos with a frowning sort of intensity rather than the casual air of most of the others.

"You know, they say if you do the chest compressions to the beat of the song 'Staying Alive', it's the right tempo." Bennie comments casually as an aside to Alexander as she slips into the crowd near the tent and the screen showing one of the CPR videos.

She's dressed in at least the bottom half of her EMT uniform, a white t-shirt bloused and tucked into the pants. The button down shirt is slung over the giant hobo bag she carries, that's more suitcase than purse due to its size. "Alexander, right?"

Alexander twitch-jumps as he's addressed, tensing up and going defensive. Then, he recognizes the woman, and relaxes, gradually, back into his more normally tense posture. Her quip draws a raised eyebrow. "I assume that if you start dancing, however, you've gone too far?" His voice is soft, pitched not to carry very far past them - he really didn't need to bother, since happily screaming kids drown out most everything else.

He gives her a once over, thoughtfully. "Yes. And you are Ms. Oakes. Paramedic. You put an oxygen mask on my head one time. And you serve coffee. You live in the trailer park. You're dating Easton." God bless small towns and their ability to make incidental stalking easy and fun! He tilts his head to the side, glancing at the bag. "Are you on shift, or going walkabout?"

Bennie's hand immediately goes to touch the man's shoulder in apology, but she's touchy feelie like that, and has no sense of a personal bubble so she have expects him to jerk away from that too. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you." Even if she's successful, the touch doesn't linger long, the hand going up to swipe hair behind her ear a bit sheepishly.

"All very astute observations...more or less." Though she doesn't clarify where Alexander went off the rails. Lacking the normal sunny smile he'd normally be greeted with at the diner or even the ambulance, her shoulder lifts and falls with the second question as she starts digging in her bag, "Between shifts. Licorice whip?" She asks, holding up the package to share.

Alexander makes one neat side step out of reach. It doesn't, at all, look subtle or natural in avoiding the touch, but neither does he snap or freak about the attempt. He does, however, keep a wary gaze on her hands, like they might suddenly lunge at him. "It's fine," he says, tonelessly. "I'm easily startled. That's not your fault." He studies her. "You seem less happy than usual, Miss Oakes." But, opposite of touchy-feely or not, he's not one to turn down free candy, so he takes one of the whips when it's offered.

Bennie waits until he's pulled one of the confections from the package before she digs in for her own, polite enough not to comment on the evasion of her touch. Putting one end of the cherry rope into her mouth, she starts chewing on it like it's a piece of hay or a toothpick, to be worried by her teeth instead of just straight up consuming. "It's been a rough week or so. I'll be fine. Sweet of you to notice, though." Even if it wasn't done out of compassion.

Alexander plays with the long, stringy sweet rather than immediately taking a bite out of it, making a nervous little ring out of it as he watches her. His stare is open and intense enough to impolite. "People usually feel better in the summer. You don't. What happened?" He ignores the 'sweet' remark, but continues to study her like he might pry the information he's interested in out of her skull. Then his gaze skips aside, back to the booth, where a young man pretends to feel up the training dummy, to the snickers of his equally young friends.

Bennie tilts her head slightly at the intense stare, but for some reason it doesn't seem to make her uncomfortable or cause judgement in her eyes, it only elicits a small, "Hmm." Of thought from the Blonde while she macerates the candy between her back teeth. She finally takes a full bite, and then gestures with the remaining end. "Maybe I'm threatened by the sunshine for taking my schtick. You know, the more I talk to you, Alexander, the more I find you completely fascinating."

Alexander eventually has the licorice in a ring braided around itself. He contemplates it, turning it over and pinching the ends so that they blend into the general roundness of it all. "The sun would burn to ash anyone who got close. You don't seem to." It's a toneless observation. Only once that's done does he take a bite - which promptly ruins the whole thing, of course. He frowns down at it, then gives her a startled, curious look. "In what sense, Miss Oakes?" A sudden hint of a smile. "Are you planning to take up psychiatry?"

"Ha! As if I have the time. You're just unique. Like a snowflake!" Bennie chirps, "And you can call me Bennie, you know. If you're comfortable with that. No pressure, just Miss Oakes sounds so formal for standing in the park. Unless we're recreating Sense and Sensibility or something." She takes a deep breath, then grinds the heel of her hand into one eye socket. "Anyway, you might be wrong about the whole burning thing." She forces a smile onto her lips, though it's tired and ragged around the edges.

"Bennie sounds like a nickname," Alexander says with clear disdain. "Nicknames are not real names." He falls silent as she grinds her hand into her eye. "You haven't been sleeping." He frowns. "Come with me." He turns on his heel and walks away. Assuming she does follow, he doesn't go far, but just over to a small kiosk selling cold bottles of soda. He purchases two with some ragged bills from his wallet.

"Might sound like it, but it's on my birth certificate and everything." Bennie trails after him out of pure curiosity, though the short distance seems more like a slog. "Apparently my mother was highly influenced by music during both of her pregnancies. My brother's name is...was...Judd." Uncomfortable silence doesn't really exist with Bennie around, because nature abhors a vacuum, so she's happy to tiredly chatter while she waits to figure out what Alexander is up to.

"Really?" There's a thoughtful noise. "Fine. I can call you Bennie. If you like." A long pause as he stares at the drinks in his hands. "I heard about your brother. I'm sorry." He turns, and thrusts one of the bottles at her. "Here. It's cold, and there's caffeine. If you have another shift coming up." A pause. "Are you well, Mis---Bennie? You don't seem well."

"You are a wise, wise, gracious man. Thank you." Bennie swings around her bag to redistribute the weight, then reaches out to take the bottle of soda, this time careful not to touch him when their fingers both have a grip on it. She cracks it open and pockets the cap before poking in the remaining stick of candy and using its hollow core as a straw. "Now who's a budding psychiatrist. Unless that's actually what you do. You know, that's horrible of me, I never thought to ask."

"You're welcome." Alexander twists open his own bottle, and alternates sips with bites of the licorice. He scans the park until he sees a bench that has not currently been taken over by other occupants. "Sit down. I don't have to be a doctor to recognize sleep deprivation." He walks in that direction, apparently assuming she'll follow. He even keeps talking. "I investigate things. Things other people won't, or don't want to. And I track down fugitives, occasionally."

"Alexander, the bounty hunter." Bennie says as she once again follows after him like a puppy wagging its tail. At the bench, she slides the bag off her shoulder with a heavy plop on the ground and then slips onto one end of the seat to fully occupy it with a curl of her body canted towards Alexander. She rests the soda on the meat of one thigh before curling her other arm on the back of the bench and pillowing her head on it. "You seem to have a knack for keeping track of facts, sounds like that job is a good fit for you. What's the craziest thing you've ever investigated?"

"I'm not a bounty hunter," Alexander says, quietly. He takes the other end of the bench, sitting very precisely, although canted enough towards her that it's not like he's trying to shut her out. "Just location and confirmation. I don't apprehend. It doesn't pay as much as if I did, but I don't want to hurt people." He finishes off the licorice, and nurses the soda while he studies her. "I don't think any of its crazy. Some of it isn't something that anyone else agrees with, or experienced, but that doesn't make it crazy." A thoughtful pause. "The man who thought the Illuminati was stealing his songs through his penis was a statistical outlier, though." He smiles, faintly. "And you? Paramedics are called to some unusual scenes."

That example draws a little wisp of laughter out of Bennie, "Because of course, if the Illuminati are going to suck something out of your body, that'd be the prime outlet." She takes a sip of her soda, biting off a nibble of her straw in the process. "Um... hmm. Oh! There was the one time a man disemboweled himself convinced there was another, smaller and crazier version of himself inside his belly. I had to scoop him up and wrap him in cellophane before transport. Craziest thing is he survived, and they actually found evidence of a parasitic twin in his stomach. Like this little ball of hair and teeth."

"To be fair, he was having sex with a woman who was robbing him blind. He interpreted it in a way that was more comfortable for him," Alexander says. There's no judgment in his voice; it's just an observation. "I confirmed the woman was stealing from him, and let him do what he wanted with the information." He takes a swig of soda, eyebrows going up. "Fascinating. So he understood, on some level, what was wrong, but could not get other people to understand. Eventually, he had to take action." A shake of his head. "I'm glad he survived. You're brave. To be able to do that with people, day after day."

"So our cases were similar! The human mind is so interesting how it parses things and interweaves our imagination with reality. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out for the best." Bennie sounds as if she's speaking from personal experience on that one. "But I'd be a completely lousy psychiatrist. I'd end up weeping right along with all of my clients." Bennie muses as she sinks her propping hand into her locks, giving a little five pointed massage of her scalp. "I don't know about brave. I just like to help people, and that's the best way I know how."

"That would make you a poor psychiatrist," Alexander agrees, his voice placid. "But it probably makes you a decent friend." He looks away, studying a group of kids playing football on a part of the grassy plains. "People adapt as best they can. To whatever. Even when maybe they shouldn't." There's a sense that her answer to the last is being studied, weighed, turned over in his mind one way or another. After a moment, he asks, "Why aren't you sleeping?"

"Who has the time?" Bennie says flippantly of sleep, smiling slightly to take the edge off her words. "And the one thing I had in my life that could slow me down and let me rest, I've managed shun before he could the same to me. It's no sunshiney picnic day up in these brain meats of mine." Something occurs to her and she shifts around her bottle of soda and her positioning so she can dig into a pocket and pull out her cell phone to check the hour. "Speaking of time, I better get going. Thanks for the drink and the chat."

Alexander turns back to stare at her as she answers. "I see." His eyes narrow, slightly, but she interrupts whatever he was trying to put together to say by checking her phone. He rises to his feet. "You're welcome, Bennie. It was nice to talk to you." There's a frown. "Try not to get lost." With that, he starts walking away, shoulders drooping, head bent.