2019-07-23 - Gorillas With Skeletons

So apparently half the town is worried about getting murdered or something, so maybe that's why the park isn't packed to the brim on a fine, sunny afternoon in July? There are a few kids on the carousel, and some people enjoying the walking paths, but there really should be a lot more activity on a day of such rare, fair weather. At least it means there are very few people around to be bothered by Duncan out here, taking pictures. Not just like with his phone; the guy has a full-on camera and is, at the moment, aiming it at the marquee over the Daydream Theatre. Which is weird, because there's nothing on the marquee right now, but he clicks away like it's just the most fascinating subject ever. Were it not for the camera... he kind of has a borderline-homeless look about him, with the scruffy beard, the unkempt hair, faded jeans, flannel tied around his waist, and very old t-shirt.

That's probably why people give him a wide berth. No one wants to get tangled up with a homeless guy wielding a camera.

The hospital is right over there. This probably explains Abby out for a stroll in her pink floral scrubs. She looks less concerned about the murders and more concerned with the cup of coffee she's sipping on as she walks along. It's very leisurely, like she's just relaxing and enjoying the weather and the sights of the park. Seeing someone doing some serious photography right up ahead, she stops, sipping on her cup, and tilts her head, squinting curiously at the marquee as if trying to see whatever it is Duncan sees there.

While Duncan takes pictures of the blank marquee of the Daydream Theatre, Maddie slinks around the side of it. She's got that look about her that suggests she's either loitering or a terrible private investigator; she wriggles the stage door knob, gets frustrated, and throws her hands up in the air in a vaguely exasperated motion that's directed towards Duncan. There's a lot of grumbling noises as she tromps back, shoving her hands in the pockets of her khaki short-shorts. "Nothing," is all she says. Unlike her counterpart, she doesn't look homeless. She's wearing those aforementioned shorts and a black 'THE OTTERS STRIKE BACK' t-shirt, which has a picture like the Empire Strikes Back original movie poster. Except, you know, with otters. Her long brown hair is pushed back out of her eyes with a bright powder-blue colored headband. When she spies Abby, there's a defensive side-eye. "I was looking for the bathroom," it's a terrible lie.

These two are just super at being casual. "Yeah, nothing out here, either. But I don't get it. How could it not be hauoooh hi." Duncan twitches a smile into place, following the eye-line from Maddie to Abby once he lowers his face away from the viewfinder on his camera. Not that she even asked, but he still totally explains for Abby, "Yeah, we were just looking for the bathroom? Uh, doc...tor?" Just taking a guess.

Abby blinks at the explanation, and the smallest of creases works its way onto her brow. Maybe it's doubt? Maybe it's just concentration. She offers the pair a wide friendly smile either way. "Hi," she says, then starts looking around, turning left and right to search her immediate surroundings. "I don't know any bathrooms around here. Well, besides the hospital's! I should know those, right? I don't really recommend them, though, if there's another bathroom you could use around here." And either she's oblivious or just pretty content to play along. "Oh, no, no, I'm a nurse." She clarifies, then takes another sip and looks back towards the marquee. "Sorry! I didn't mean to interrupt your photography."

Maddie mirrors back the smile that Abby shows them, her own wide and friendly and showing just a hint of teeth. "It's okay, we don't need the bathroom. We're just.." she throws a glance over her shoulder, to the blank marquee, and then slowly swoops that gaze over to Duncan. She steadies him with a look, brows subtly raised, before she looks back to Abby. "Scoping out the building. For a performance space. We're a two-man show. Or, well, a one-woman and one-man show, if we're being precise," it's spoken so easily, effortlessly. "Do you like the theater?"

"You didn't." Interrupt his photography. Even though Duncan is very clearly not taking photographs any more. He just winds up looking baffled when Maddie says they're not looking for a bathroom, scratching the back of his head confusedly and asking a quiet, "We're not?" Oh, but wait; Maddie is communicating with him with her eyes and he goes, "Oh! Oh, yeah. We're not." Yep, he's totally up to speed now (lol no he's not, he's so confused), and he smiles and nods about how they're a two-person show. "I like nurses," he contributes pleasantly.

Abby's still smiling, there's just a subtle twisting of her mouth that suggests she's finding this amusing, though the frown's just barely there. She listens to Maddie intently, and her eyes move back and forth between the two. After another small sip she leans in and continues in a deliberately hush-hush tone. It's out loud, because she's not close enough to whisper, but it's conspiratorial. "Is this one of those guerilla performance pieces? Is that what they're called? I think that's what they're called." She's not sure. But Duncan gets another bright friendly smile, "Oh. Thank you!"

It takes everything in Maddie's power to not facepalm at Duncan's confusion, though she totally rolls her eyes at him. But at least it's affectionate eye-rolling, mixed there with increasing irritation. Still, she keeps that smile fit and firm on her lips when she looks back to Abby, nodding her head encouragingly. "Yes, exactly. Something exactly like that. Do you know if the theatre's had a show lately?" she inches towards the closest bench, keeping her focus on Abby. "I mean, since you work at the hospital, I bet you would've seen something on the marquee if something got put up there. I'm Maddie, by the way," it's polite enough, the introduction.

Duncan puffs a bunch of air into his cheeks, scratching his underarm with the hand not minding his camera, and making quiet 'ooh ooh ah ah' noises inside his puffy cheeks. Because he's being a gorilla. "You're welcome!" he chimes back, immediately breaking character so he can beam at Abby, and then offer to shake her hand with the hand that he'd just been using to scratch his armpit. "And I'm Duncan. Like the donut place. Me and Maddie are really interested in theaters. Not for any particular reason, just we heard that this one was interesting. And we're really interested in interesting things. Like theaters. And other stuff. Though it'd be more interesting if they had a show going on right now..." His smile slips into a puzzled frown, eyes tipping back up to the blank marquee.

"That's pretty neat," Abby says, like she honestly thinks it's pretty neat. Of course, then Duncan tells an entirely different story, and Abby frowns mildly. By now, she's more baffled than anything. "Oh, theaters? I like theaters. I don't really get to go the theater a lot... oh, I'm Abby." She also introduces herself after giving Duncan a handshake. She nurses on her cup of coffee, attention returning to the theater. "You know, I haven't really noticed! I wish I could help. Have you tried googling it? Do they have a website?"

Maddie's eyes nearly bulge out of her head when Duncan starts 'oooh ooh ah ah'ing like a gorilla, but she manages to successfully control her expression and laugh instead. And it's a wholly natural, in-the-moment sort of laugh, as she swats Duncan on the shoulder. It's a playful gesture, even if she puts a little more oomph into the whack than was entirely necessarily. "Duncan's a comedian," she explains to Abby. As if this entire situation wasn't confusing enough already, Maddie's just going to keep adding layers to this sucker. "He's trying out a new bit. Like, 'oh, I totally don't understand why we're looking at this theater even though my helpful sidekick already explained,' sort of thing. It's hilarious, right?" she even laughs again, as she perches on the bench and clears her throat. "Annnnyway," she drawls that out, locking eyes on Duncan briefly again, before she smiles back to Abby. "You know, it's sort of a funny thing, how when you're looking for something in particular, you can't find any information on it. Like how the website.. says nothing about how many bathrooms are in this place," she glances aside to the marquee. ".. Or anything about the last show here. You didn't see it, did you? The 'Shakespeare in the Park' thing?"

Duncan's a comedian. "And a photographer. A photomedian? Comtographer? Photocomgraphian?" He smiles and stops making up portmanteaus for jobs that clearly aren't his actual job, having been shoulder-shoved enough to stumble forward a couple steps. "Annnnyway," he agrees right back into Maddie's eyes, then makes with the milling around in the immediate vicinity and not trying to act casual when it's clearly not working, taking a couple more pictures of the outside of the theater. Surprising no one, he's not good at pretending he's not extremely interested in Abby's response to the Shakespeare in the Park question, leaving him lowering his camera and looking eagerly at their new nurse-friend, with his eyes all glued to her and everything.

"Oh really? Mmmhmmmm." Abby is now at the nodding and making vaguely encouraging sounds stage of the conversation. She's pretty good at it. "Mmmhmmm. Ohhhh! Okay. Sure, it's funny! I just didn't get it at first," she says and makes a face, like she's sorry for not realizing it was supposed to be comedy. And yet, she's still not quite shaking that confused tension that places a tiny wrinkle on her forehead. "Shakespeare in the Park? Right! I remember that. I didn't see it though, I'm sorry. It didn't really work out with my shifts," she says, then gives Maddie a long curious look. "They had good food, though."

Maddie's laughter tapers off into a few half-hearted 'heh.. heh-hehs' when Duncan keeps going, but she smiles that wide smile to Abby and shakes her head. "It's a work in progress," she shrugs, the look on her face like: men, what can you do? But anyway! "Oh," comes the response when Abby mentions having not seen the play. "That's.. not so bad, you know, that you missed it. At least you got to eat the food. Did they have the fried strawberries? Those are amazing, especially if you ask them to add a little honey to the whipped cream?"

"You didn't?" That's Duncan, reacting with a hefty sigh of disappointment when it turns out that Abby missed the performance, ho-hum. "Man, that's - " Oh, he blinks at Maddie, then contorts his mouth into the words, "Not so bad," as an echo of hers. They do a lot of eyeball-communicating, these two, but Duncan is just terrible at hiding it, and his brows are all up high and his eyes are wide when he passes them across Maddie's in a silent question that he might as well just be shouting: HALP MADDIE HE GOT THE LIES ALL CROSSED UP AND IS CONFUSED NAO. The best he can do is to throw out random information that no one asked him for. "I like funnel cake," sounds exactly like how he said 'i like nurses' earlier.

"Was it that bad? I hadn't heard." Abby asks Maddie with a wide smile and raised eyebrows, curious after being told it's not so bad that she missed it. Then she leans in, looking round and speaking out of the corner of her mouth. Again, conspiratorially. "Do you think maybe there's a conspiracy to hide the evidence of how bad it was?" She's not serious. Look, she's grinning all the way to the corners of her eyes. "Was it one of those shows where they take away people's phones?" Looking back at Duncan, she confides with a small sigh. "I like funnel cake too... I've never had fried strawberries, though, that sounds really unnecessary! But probably delicious."

"Oh, I don't know, I wasn't there," comes Maddie's reply as to whether or not the play was bad. She's actively avoiding making eye contact with Duncan now, he should probably be prepared for a beating later. But at least her answer to Abby was genuinely spoken, honest-to-a-fault, as is the follow-up when asked if there's some kind of conspiracy. "Yes," is all she says, completely dead-pan. And then she moves right along! "I think most fair food is really unnecessary. But also really delicious. So you sort of forget about the unnecessary part of it all. Have you ever tried fried Coke? I didn't think it was possible to fry soda but apparently they can."

"YES." Duncan clamps right onto the idea that there was a conspiracy, wedging his wholehearted agreement somewhere in among all the much more casual conversation that Maddie is managing to string together. He takes a deep breath, really winding himself up to jump on the conspiracy train, when he winds up shouting, "Hey! Hey! Get away from there, you can't touch that!" And jumping and waving his camera-free hand. "HEY! You can't just look in people's windows like that!" He's shouting these things at Chetson, everyone's favorite beat cop, who is peering through the window of the camper parked on the curb at the edge of the park. There's a lot more 'hey!' and information about what the cop can't do while Duncan full-on sprints across the park to deal with this situation.

The words "you can't STEAL a skeleton, officer, we ADOPTED him" drift back almost immediately. He's definitely going to need Maddie over here, or he's going to get himself arrested.

"Oh." Abby reacts with polite neutrality when Maddie confirms the conspiracy. She's curious, her eyes just a little wider to go with her rising brows, but she doesn't push it. "I think that's just batter with coke syrup, though. I have to admit I was really disappointed when I read that." Abby rests a hand on her heart and makes a sad face for Maddie. It lasts a second. When Ducan starts shouting, she puts on her best look of pleasant neutrality again. There's a thing happening, and she's acknowledging this thing is happening with mild interest, but she's not about to say anything. She must practice this face a lot. There's a touch of sympathy as she looks Maddie's way, though.

"Really?" There is a look of utter disappointment from Maddie that is cast Abbyward at the indication that it's just Coke syrup. She's either a good actress, or actually upset by this fact of life. "That's false advertising. They should really.." she stops when Duncan starts running off towards the camper, following him with her gaze that gets progressively darker when she sees the cop. And then she's up out of her seat, flashing Abby a pleasant smile that's forced in the moment. "It was nice meeting you! I've got to take care of this," she points to the cop, tucking a strand of errant hair behind her ear. "Showtime," she winks at Abby and then jogs forth to her camper, making a lot of noise along the way.

"Ahem, ahem! Officer, excuse me! I think there's a misunderstanding. You see, Duncan and I are actors.." she can be heard saying, though the rest of the story gets lost.