2019-08-20 - Scrabbling And Resiliance

Quiet at the Pourhouse. Tuesday evening quiet. Teresa is occasionally handling your due couple of customers who like to sit at the bar and pass thoughts to the bartender now and again. But it's quiet. The customers tonight want bottle beer. Easy. Easy, quiet night.

Alexander peeks in, scanning the interior. Oh good. It's hardly got anyone here, so he eases the rest of himself in, a twitchy guy in jeans and an Iron Maiden t-shirt, who's trying really hard not to look guilty as hell, and subsequentally looking even more guilty. He pauses to check his phone, exchange a quick text just inside the door, then move towards the bar. "Miss Fulton," he says, staring at her for a moment. "Good to see you. How are you?" The polite question is sort of hurled at her with nervous energy.

"Bored and boring. Looking for a drink?" Teresa asks. She leans her elbow on the edge of the bar, facing Alexander, regarding him flatly. "Haven't made any progress on shaking any of your list down for -- opportunities, so nothing to report. You, though. I understand you had an adventure in this very bar."

"No. No drink. Thank you." Alexander pauses, as if perhaps realizing he has no purpose being in a bar without drink. "Uh. A soda. Just a soda will be fine." He winces as she mentioned his 'adventure'. "I'm sorry," he says, softly. He reaches into his pocket, draws out a wallet, slides over several bills, a couple hundred dollars in wrinkled bills. "I broke a chair. I am very sorry." Another pause. "If it doesn't work out, I'd be interested in seeing. What it's like to try to go over. Have you tried? Since then?"

Teresa ducks behind the bar to grab a bottle of Coke, which she sets atop. Her eyebrows raise at the sight of the bills. "Suppose I can hand this off to a manager." She slides the money to herself. "I have no news for you, Alexander chair-breaker. None. No progress." She slips the money out of sight. "What was your little fight about?"

"I would appreciate it," Alexander says, with the faintest hint of a sheepish little smile. He takes the bottle of Coke, opens it up and gives a little salute. "Brought a friend here. Someone hassled her. She doesn't like to be hassled. Events proceeded from there." A shrug. "People can be assholes, sometimes." He narrows his eyes thoughtfully at her. "Thought any more about not-bartending?"

"Most women don't like to be hassled. Sorry it happened here. Most of us would have stopped it. Given opportunity. Warning." Teresa drums her fingers on top of the bar. She says, "Plenty. None of it sensible. Journalism. Reselling curios out of a trailer. Bodyguarding. Or the opposite. How do you get by, chairbreaker, muckraker?"

"Few of anyone like to be hassled," Alexander responds, dryly. "And shit happens. Don't worry about it. Don't think anyone got sent to the hospital, and I paid for the chair. We're good. I hope." A hopeful sort of smile in her direction, before he takes a pull from his bottle. His eyebrows go up. "That is a wide range of interests. Me? Uh." He thinks about it. "Various things. Sometimes people hire me to look into stuff. I locate fugitives in exchange for a cut of the bounty. I teach a class here and there. It's just...things. It's not like an adult career or anything." A grimace.

Teresa steps aside to handle a querulous query from another patron about another beer. Then she steps back toward Alexander. "Depending on who you talk to, neither is anything in the service industry. Everyone wants to be at the top. Big, stable paycheck. Enough to build a life on, a house on." She smiles. A narrow thing. "I can keep my cool, run without breathing too hard, and I have stray talents. Nothing to build a life on. Bounty hunting, though. That sounds interesting."

Alexander drinks his Coke while Teresa handles her other customer. His eyes are rarely still, flicking about to each exit, watching anyone who enters or leaves, every time the doors open or close. When she returns he refocuses on her. "Stability isn't a bad thing. Nice not to have to worry about the bills every month, if you can manage it." He tips the bottle towards her. "Bounty hunting is interesting. I don't like the chasing and punching parts, or getting screamed at by bailjumpers, so I don't do that. Means I don't get the full bounty, but um, also don't have to worry about getting stabbed or shot." A smile flashes. "If you wanna be a bounty hunter, though, you probably can. Most of it's just running someone down at their lover's or cousin's house."

"You've a soft heart, don't you," Teresa says, oddly neutral about it. "Or you like the dirtiness, but want to mitigate risk. That is closer to what you said and is more likely to be true." She eases back on her heels and examines Alexander. "I don't have the skills for stability. If you must live hand to mouth, scrabbling to get by, you might as well enjoy it."

"Little of column A, little of column B," Alexander says, with a shrug. "Finding people who don't want to be found is an interesting intellectual challenge. But I don't wish them harm, even if I think it's important that they have to deal with their...whatever." A vague wave with the bottle before he takes a swallow. "There are skills for stability?" His eyebrows arch. "Damn, no wonder I'm so bad at it."

"So I understand. One can be a successful lawyer, doctor, manager or create profitable software. One can win the lottery. Otherwise, we all scrabble." Teresa's smile remains very slight. "But listen to you. A moral scrabbler. You hunt bounties from a sense of justice. Listen, bailjumper, you must come full circle with yourself."

Alexander shakes his head a little. "Not justice. I don't know that these people have done anything wrong. Most of them were probably just doing the best they know how, even if they fucked it up along the way." His brow furrows. "I know too much about the legal system to say it's all about justice. But it adds chaos and misery, having people on the run. They're nervy, panicked, might hurt others. Or get hurt. Better to resolve things." Another of those little shrugs, and his eyes fix on Teresa with a dark-eyed stare. "What else can you do? Other than slip over to the other side. You don't seem freaked out about enough for it to be your first experience with weird."

Teresa makes a low chuckle. "Not justice, then. But order. You wish to prevent unpleasant ripples. Tie up every frayed rope." She glances aside, then. As if looking for listeners. "It is not my first experience," she says. "I see things. Little bright people like yourself. I have manipulated matter with my mind before. Certainly. You still haven't told me your talents. Exactly."

Alexander smiles, the closest to a true smile of the conversation. "Yes. Order from chaos. A place to everything. An answer for all questions. An ultimately unobtainable goal, but not the worst one to strive for, if I have to have one?" He doesn't seem to care about listeners, but then, everyone knows he's crazy. "Interesting. Moving things or breaking or repairing things?" A sip of his bottle. "I can't do the former at all. But I can fix a few little things, here and there. Mostly I read people. Things. Whatever."

"It's at least a useful impossibility that you chase. Everyone can pick from the epiphanies in your wake. Or the mistakes," Teresa adds, her smile slightly widening. "Reading. So you are like the girl with the gone sister, the collector of curios. If I were to bring you something from the other side, you could tell a story. You could look at anyone strange and tell a stroy."

"Miss Whitehouse," Alexander murmurs. "Yes. Like that. Your may gave her hope, you know. Thank you for that, Miss Fulton. I like her. She should have hope." He finishes off the bottle, and idly plays with it in his hands. "Usually not the full story, but bits and pieces, yes. As you might imagine, it's usually helpful in my line of work. But it's always incomplete."

"If a few open doors and thrown rocks can give someone hope, I am happy to provide. Do you want another Coke, perhaps?" Teresa asks, idle and soft. "Your talent would not be terribly interesting, I think, if it told you everything. I imagine it tells you just enough to whet the appetite and hint at a new path. It's a spur to the hunter."

Alexander makes a startled noise, and looks down at the empty bottle as if he hadn't noticed it'd been emptied. "Sure. Sounds good." His eyes flick back up. "Mm. In general, it varies between not providing enough information, and providing far too much. Like any of our abilities, it's a useful tool in the right circumstances, but shouldn't be over-relied on. For many reasons," he adds, a bit dry. A thoughtful look at her. "How long have you had yours?"

Teresa ducks back beneath the bar to slide across another Coke. "So you sometimes get faint, vague glimpses, and other times you're drowning in someone else's nightmare. Sounds like a ride. Not always a good one. Like a car that'll cut out from under you at a stop light. Or send you through a wall." She smiles. She still smiles. "Me? Maybe known a year or so. Not so long. You?"

Alexander's eyes widen a bit. "A rather apt metaphor. Yes. Exactly like that. And only a year? You're calm. To be new to it." A thoughtful observation, that. "Or heavily medicated. That happens, too. And I've had it as long as I can remember. Just one of those Gray Harbor things."

"I /am/ calm. It's the skill I have. To see the dogs of horror and not blink." Teresa is back to drumming her fingers on the bar. "I'm from Florida. It's easier here. The bit of shining. Shake around a few rocks. Shake around a little ice. It's nothing." Her smile grows that touch. "Perhaps I will learn terror in time. Like some of you locals."

"It's less the dogs you have to worry about, and more the worms that latch themselves in your brain and have to be yanked out through your nasal passages," Alexander mutters. "But calm is good. Rare. But good. I hope you don't have to learn terror, Miss Fulton." He reaches for his wallet, pulling out enough for the second bottle, and a tip, sliding it across. "In the meantime, try not to die, okay? You seem interesting."

Teresa does . . . blink, at that. "That sounds terribly, terribly unpleasant and I hope to avoid anything in my brain. Thank you." She takes the cash. She tucks it back into whatever pile she's accumulating. (She really ought to go to the till.) "You seem interesting as well, Alexander, and I think you've been rather better battered than me. Take care. Don't wreck any more limbs. Or chairs."

"Incredibly unpleasant. Stay away from the carousel in the Park. And anything playing 'It's a Small World'." Alexander gives a shudder that isn't all theatrical. "Battered like fish and chips," he agrees. Then grabs his bottle, waves good-bye, and slouches his way towards the door.