2019-10-30 - We Never Got Back Around To The Woman With The Monkey

It was a typical Wednesday afternoon in Gray Harbor. The sky was gray, the air was chill, and there was a 75 year old woman with a leashed monkey on her shoulder arguing with a clerk about how it wasn't fair that those beans were half off but the beans she likes were not on sale. Should she have a monkey in a grocery store? Probably not. But it was there, chittering away and occasionally scratching its little paws through its owner's hair, probably looking for ticks or lice or other bugs to eat.

It was the kind of weirdness that was almost... normal around these parts. Which was probably why Anne keeps poking her little golden brown head around the corner to people watch while agonizing over the brand of lotion she was going to buy today. So far, it looks like a debate between scented and sensitive skin, considering the two different bottles she holds in her hands. It was, indeed, a dilemma.

A rattling, wheel-wobbling cart starts off a shopping trip fraught with frustration. The car is constantly drifting left, so Patrick is alternately hauling it back over so it goes straight and just letting it crash into the shelves, watching with a listless disapproval when things from higher shelves fall into his basket. He's fished out most of these refugees, but the latest one - a box of Nice & Easy red hair dye - has given him something to do while he waits rattles his way up the 'personal toiletries' aisle, leaving him reading the back of the box with an intense interest that no box of hair dye ever really warranted.

As such, he fails to notice anyone - let alone Anne Washburn - in the aisle with him. If she's attentive, she can avoid getting crashed into by his cart; if not, this is how they're about to get reacquainted. Either way, it should be more interesting than his reading of hair dye, but less interesting than having a monkey paw through one's hair. (Someone at the back of the line is huffing very loudly and talking about how SERVICE ANIMALS don't include random exotic pets. So probably there will be a fight soon.)

This is one of those moments where, when looking back at how everything went down, Anne will wish she'd been paying far more attention on her surroundings and far less attention debating the pros and cons of different lotion brands while secretly hoping this old lady sics her monkey on the store clerk (or maybe the guy in the back of the line). It certainly didn't help that Patrick was engrossed in his own light reading of the hair dye box when he should have been paying attention to the listing nature of his wobble-wheeled cart, which angles just enough to the left that bumps right into Anne's be-skirted rump.

The events that follow the knock of the cart against her rear-end are as follows: she is promptly thrown off balance, a hand sweeping upward and tossing the bottle of lavender-scented lotion back, where it is either going to bounce off Patrick's head or land in his cart along with the other assorted items. She just barely catches herself on the side of the shelf, but hip-checks the display of pimple cream in the process, sending little tubes of Neutrogena scattering to the ground, one of which lodges under Anne's heel and that's what makes her ultimately fall ass over tea-kettle, squishing the 'sensitive skin' lotion bottle with her knee in the process, and smearing herself in the kind of lotion that doesn't even have that fresh lavender scent.

And all of this should piss her off, but when she looks up with wide clear blue eyes to send dagger glares to whoever was responsible for the cart, she finds none other than Patrick mother-fucking Addington, and the words sort of just get lost in her throat.

The flying bottle is some kind of over-achiever, for it both bounces off his head and lands in the cart. He'd be utterly puzzled by this except that Patrick has just looked up from reading the box of hair dye, on account of his cart crashed into someone. A quick, "Excuse me," gets out of him reflexively, but he's too late to make any course-corrections, and so can only watch the ensuing chaos from the sidelines, his eyes widening by degrees - a little wider when the zit-cream crashes, a little wider when the heel catches, a lot wider when Anne goes tumbling, and then a little wider again when lotion goes all over her.

"Well, that's a reaction," he comes up with after a moment spent clearing his throat, managing to contain his humor in the bounds of a smirk that wants to turn into a laugh, but he very firmly is not permitting it to. "Though I'm not sure it's the one for which I might have hoped." The edge of that smirk is still clinging when he exchanges it to smile down at her, offering a hand to her be-lotioned self. Since he has managed to survive all this without tumbling to the ground.

If it matters, he's probably come from some sort of work thing: shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows, slacks, evidence that there was a tie at some point today, but what kind of asshole would actually wear a tie to Safeway? Not this kind, that's for sure.

"You hit me with your cart," sputters out of Anne was he comes ambling up with that smirk and helpful hand, though at least now the obvious is out there and out of the way. There's no humor on her part, just the confusion that comes with seeing a ghost of your past while also sitting in a globby puddle of unscented lotion, the subsequent furrow of her brow dimming the brightness of blue eyes that attach themselves to the hand he extends.

She spends a considerably awkward amount of time staring at his fingers, internally debating if it were actually a snake in disguise, before she opts to take the risk if only because it means she can get out of this lotion. So she seizes his hand and pulls herself up to her feet, then promptly extracts her fingers from his own. Though in her haste to put some distance between them, she drags her heel through the lotion on the floor and catches off balance again. "Shit!" she yelps, flails through the air to catch something solid, and winds up grabbing a fistful of his shirt-and-no-tie, pitching forward into him after and absolutely getting his nice button-up greasy.

Shaking his head faintly, Patrick silently denies that sputtered comment - the one where he hit her with a cart - but he manages not to actually spell out the technical faults of her accusation. It costs him effort to refrain, though, especially when he's left lifting his brows to a questioning set or arches while she's just staring at his hand like that. He tilts it a couple times while she's dithering, even gets as far as commenting, "It's just a hand, not a viper, Anne." But then she takes the help...

...and proceeds to fall all over him instead of the aisle floor.

So now there's the faint sound of his collar ripping with the weight of her grab, even while he scoops an arm around her. Solely for the purposes of avoiding further calamity, not at all because it's pleasant. With a glance down at his ruined shirt, with his other hand holding their combined weight against the shelves behind him, he comments drolly, "Still not quite how I would have played out this moment, but we're moving in the right direction." At least he finds it funny? Instead of, like, awful and inappropriate?

Maybe she should've just stayed on the floor. It's a passing thought that stays firmly on the inside and doesn't make its way out into the open, though the tension from distress was likely plainly felt in the position of his arm about her. Still, he's got jokes, and she tries to find the humor in this in spite of the flare of hot pink across her prominent cheekbones, tipping backward as she smooths greasy fingers apologetically across the tear in his collar. "Well," she clears her throat, ahem, and tries to pry herself off of him without slipping in the lotion again, only to find the the heel of her shoe broke in the chaos. So she weebles, she wobbles, but she doesn't fall down - she just stays pressed against him, solely for purposes of remaining upright and not at all because it's pleasant.

Because it wasn't. Pleasant. No matter how solid he feels in the moment. This was terrible.

"I'm almost positive that my tearing off your shirt in public isn't what I would consider moving in the right direction," she points out, "But I guess it's a far more positive direction than any of the times I played this out in my head. Not that I played this out in my head." She pat-pats her palm across the tear once more, flashes him an overtly pleasant - and entirely fake - smile, "Hello, Patrick. You're back in town." And with that out of the way, she dares to try and grab the shelf to the side of him, with hope that she can keep herself upright on her own accord.

"No?" It isN'T what she would consider moving in the right direction. Patrick's eyes brighten keenly for a second, on the tip of his tongue to be like 'o plz tell me how it normally plays out in your head' before Anne's busy back-pedaling over that comment, so he just quiets and lets it go. Aside from the fact that it's written all over his face that he totally heard it and will never un-hear it, so there.

While she's testing her balance, he leaves a hand against her elbow, helpfully making sure she's entirely situated on her own two feet before withdrawing, stepping back to the handle of the rickety cart that set all these events in motion. "Hello, Anne. So it would seem," that he's back in town. "How have you been? My wife and our five little ones are just over in the ice cream aisle." He turns at the waist, looking over his shoulder at the way he came, even rocking onto his toes for a moment like he might try to see over the shelves for said wife-and-five-kids, but he's not that tall. He drops back to the flats of his feet and answers her smile in kind, deliberately making sure she knows that he knows that her smile isn't real. "I'm sure they'd love to meet you." He also looks pointedly at all the lotion she'll be wearing while she meets the family he doesn't actually have.

"No." It isN'T, full stop. And he can just take those keen eyes of his elsewhere, because she was decidedly not going to look in that direction, overtly focusing on keeping her balance steady with the shelf while also doing her level best to ignore the hand at her elbow. She's going to be forever off-balance with her heel broken, so she kicks them off to put her stocking'd feet on the tile. This was great, everything was fine, those were her favorite pair of heels 🙁

At least in bare feet, she can hold herself steady, even if her hand tightens to white-knuckles on the shelf at his mention of the wife and five kids. That smile widens in spite of the clench of her jaw, and she finally relinquishes her hold on the shelf so that she can bend and pick up her shoes. "How nice for you," she doesn't mean it, but the pleasantry is there. Her shoes clatter as they are unceremoniously dumped into her own cart, which she makes her way to on careful tip-toes. "I'd love to stay and meet them, really. I'm so happy that you've finally settled down, but.." she casts a look down her lotion smeared skirt, tips her head, and smiles bright enough to bring out the dimples when she looks back up to him. "I guess I've got a bit more 'dolling' up before my date tonight. At least I figured out which lotion not to buy, this is certainly a bit too messy." A beat before she adds, "We should totally catch up another day. Are you here for very long, or is this another fly by night sort of affair for you?" Her brows hitch up as she adds, "You're a few months out from summer."

While she's dumping her shoes into the cart, Patrick is helpfully inquiring, "No dot-dot-dot, no shirt, no service. Or is that not a Thing anymore?" He doesn't seem to expect a reply, honestly, since he's already on to looking entertained by the ebullience of her joy about his imaginary family. He lets her make all this noise about her delight and her date - one brow hooks upward on that word, but he doesn't have anything in particular to say back about it - and only then reaches across to lay a hand on the corner of her cart, so she can't be all wheeling it off abruptly. "The little missus will be devastated to learn that I literally bumped into you. Please, Anne. As old friends, at least." The other hand lays lightly over his heart, like it is so very wounded.

"Please come and at least shake hands?" The pleading is real, his eyes convey the measure of how much he not only wants this introduction, but needs it down in his very soul. "Please?" He's going to start pulling her cart along regardless, so it would be easier to just acquiesce.

"Barefooting it is very 'in' right now. I should really find somebody to clean this all up.." It was a poor excuse, but it was an excuse, though her jerk of the cart is stalled by his heavy hand upon the end of it. It makes the tip of her nose crinkle up, but she rolls her shoulders and straightens up her back. What did it matter if there was a gloopy smear of lotion from her hip down to her hem, if her silk blouse was untucked and now wrinkled, if she was in her hoes with now broken heels in her cart instead of on her feet? She makes that smile look appropriately pleasant at his pleading, even if her brows arch higher towards her hairline when he adds in the 'old friends' part. She bites the tip of her tongue - pointing out that 'old friends' was definitely not how they left things wasn't going to get her anywhere.

"I guess I do have a minute, but only just. Really, I'm running late already, and I don't want to keep him waiting." Nevermind that the 'him' in this scenario was her dog. It's not like she could say no when he was pulling her cart along, the cart that had her shoes in it, so she was forced to follow after him. "Five kids though? That's.." nice things, Anne, think of nice things to say! " .. Five." Don't worry, she's rolling her eyes at herself. "I guess that means things took a turn when you left to.. where did you run off to again? Chicago?" She's doing her best not to sound bitter, while trying her best to blend the lotion into her skirt.

Hey now. Think of the chance that Patrick would be taking if this was a real scenario - shirt ripped, lotion smeared, and he's bringing his ex-something along to meet his wife in this state? Psh, he'd be sleeping on the couch for months! "Of course. I would hate to keep anyone waiting." Now they're both lying, 'cause he'd totally like to keep whoever is waiting for Anne waiting TILL THEY DIE. But come along, he stops steering her cart for her and instead snags his own, making it clatter down the aisle and muscling it around the corner, very nearly crashing it into a giant display of baby food.

"Five," he repeats as if in awe of his own fecundity. "In Chicago, yes. Until recently, we've uprooted the whole jolly lot back to lovely old Gray Harbor."

Then he brakes suddenly, stopping dead at the junction of the main aisle to the row with all the ice cream. The only people here are some stoned teenagers giggling their asses off about the names on the Ben & Jerry's containers. "Hum. That's odd."

Anne would totally be thinking of the chance Patrick was taking if she wasn't busy thinking about how she looks like a total hot mess whilst tottering off to meet her ex-something's (obvious trophy) wife and five (trophy) kids. Meanwhile, the dog(s) are being kept to wait, and those POOR PUPPIES DON'T DESERVE TO DIE, Patrick. "How.. incredibly lovely for you," is all she can come up with, because words are hard when one is pretending that this whole bizarro situation didn't bother her. She won't be hurt by this, no sir, it's been too long to have any feelings that would be hurt by this. It's these distracting thoughts that have her bumping into his back when he suddenly brakes in the junction of the aisle, but at least she doesn't fall all over herself again.

There's a sharp inhale through her teeth when she bounces off his back and clings to her cart. "Warn a girl when you're stopping next time," she requests, before she narrows a look down the aisle. No trophy wife. No trophy kids. Just a couple of stoners. Excuse the sigh of relief. "Well, I'm sure they're around here somewhere, Patrick. It's not a very big store," she'll be nice. She reaches out to pat-pat his shoulder, fixing him with clear blue eyes that suggest she's very hopeful he finds his family and that they didn't get inadvertently sucked into a Veil portal and EATEN BY SOMETHING. She grips the handle of her cart with every intention of whipping it around to head to the check-out. "Maybe they're waiting in the car. I'd stick around to help you find them, but I really do have to get a move on. This was.." think of something nice to say! "Unexpected."

Getting clipped by a cart stings, though, and he skitters forward a step or two with the bark at his heels, making a pained sound and turning at the waist to look first down at his heels, then back and up at Anne for ramming into him. The hypocrisy of this accusatory look doesn't register in his expression. Instead, Patrick follows it with a rapid, "Wait," and catches her pat-patting hand before she can effectively whip around and run away.

"Wait, Anne. What if they've left me here, in the store? Isn't that the old trope? Dad went to the store and that was the last we've seen of him, only..." He trails off, letting her complete the flipside of that story: they abandoned Dad in the store, and that was the last he saw of them. He clutches her hand in both of his now, looking down at her with a panicked intensity: "What if they never existed at all?" If it wasn't the actual truth, it'd be a very compelling fear to have. He swallows a lump that's not really there and whispers, "What if I just made them up?"

This was an incredibly cruel trick to play on someone who wasn't a walking bullshit detector. Call her 'gullible,' but Anne finds herself easily caught up in this panicked intensity of his. Maybe it was their past, maybe it was the way that he grips her hand in the moment, maybe she just wanted to think of anything other than the greasy wet on her skirt. Either way, she stares wide-eyed up at him, putting her other hand on the outside of his, fingers splayed across his knuckles. "Patrick, I.." She swallows, squeezes his hand between either of her own, that fakely pleasant smile slipping away until the ends of her lips bowed down into a frown.

"I'm sure that's not the case, they have to be in the store somewhere. Why don't you give her a call?" She knew it was entirely possible, what he was describing. "What's her name? You can stay here, I'll go to the front counter and have her paged if she doesn't answer the phone."

Oh, it's an absolute dick move. One hundred percent. His hands are warm, and he squeezes hers back briefly, stepping closer in the same moment. "You're sure that's not the case? Very sure?" asks Patrick, like he's really just seeking assurance and not just spinning his yarn that much more thickly. Emptying his lungs in one long exhale, he leans down before there's time for her to go do those things she said - the front counter and the paging - and confesses in a very small voice, "Because they're not real. I made them up."

He should look sorry. He doesn't, though, just smiles down at her unrepentantly, even brings her folded hands up, kisses her knuckles; it's okay to punch him in his face, he's earned it.

(Also, find the inside joke in the pose. I BELIEVE IN YOU.)

"Of course I'm sure," Anne was doing her best to sound reassuring even though there was a very big part of her that was beginning to doubt that his wife was in this store. She needed a moment to organize her thoughts and doubts, a few seconds of time where she wasn't mostly focused on the warmth of his hands that swallowed up her own. Surely, if this mystery wife of his came up on them now, she'd have questions. He steps forward and she has to will herself to take the tiniest of steps back, just far enough so that she isn't breathing in the scent of him with every quickened breath, and she tightens up that smile of hers to appear every bit of reassuring as she didn't feel in the moment. "And if all else fails, we can just head down to the diner and maybe get a cup of coffee and just talk it out, I really don't think there's anything.."

The words taper off at his quiet confession, and it's obvious from the knit of her brow that she didn't immediately put two and two together. It takes a moment for the pieces to click into place, but he'll be able to see from the sudden flare open of her eyes when it does. The pain in her eyes was unmistakable as well. She rears back, yanking her hands hard out of the grip of his own which likely scrapes her knuckles on his mouth, but she doesn't hit him. Even if she should. "You're an ass," she hisses it through her teeth before she snatches up her cart, ready to push off and storm down to the check-out lane. "For the record, this is absolutely the wrong direction."

Patrick is an ass. "I know. I am. I really, really am." He says it with conviction, so much conviction, all of the conviction, which only cracks when he's cleaning his teeth with a scrub of his tongue. Mm, tastes lotiony! His now empty hands hang near his chin for a moment, and he side-steps hastily to come between Anne and the end of the aisle, dropping one of those empty hands to the end of her cart again, wait wait wait.

Then he drops to his knees, clasps his hands, and begs for forgiveness! <-- In a perfect world.

In the actual world --> "You're not looking on the bright side here, Anne. I'm not married with five brats clinging to me. Surely, this is better." For him. For her. For the five brats. Definitely for the wife he'd be divorcing any day now if she existed.

"Please," she was not begging, it was just a firm suggestion that he get the hell out of the way when he comes in between her cart and her dramatic exit. There's a quick glance down to the sparse groceries she'd collected - maybe she didn't need any of this shit, maybe she could just come back later. Incidentally, she was definitely not shopping for two; it wouldn't take a devil-worshiping PI to figure out that she's got the 'single girl + dogs' thing going on considering the items in her cart.

Then he gets on with it, her head tipping to the side as she stares up at him like he's grown two heads. "Surely this is better? Better for what? What are you even in town for, Patrick? Halloween, the Masquerade? Are you just here to blow in and blow out, come for winter, leave for spring? " There's a quick shake of her head, a purposeful push of her cart. She won't run him over, but the intention to leave was loud and clear. "Look, it was great to see you but I've got places to be. It's a real shame we won't have a chance to reconnect before you're off again, I'm sure it would've been memorable."

That's okay. His cart has, like, shaving supplies and toilet paper and gin. So here are some hand-weighing motions about whose cart is actually telling a sadder story about the state of affairs. (At least he hadn't gotten to the condoms yet, thank you jesus.)

"Better for - " Ah, but those aren't questions she wants answers to, and so Patrick quiets and listens. That's not to say that he reacts to the cart getting pushed at him any further than that he pushes it back her way some, leaning his weight on both hands bracketing the corners now. He is holding it hostage, and challenges her to do something about it with an irritatingly mild-mannered smile. "I've come back home because Sue and Mike," his siblings, "were brutally murdered. I don't have a wife and children, but what's left of my family is here." Not that he hopes she feels guilty, but he's really trying to make her feel guilty.

"So I'm sure we'll have plenty of future opportunities to reconnect, Anne." There, he lets go of her cart and steps out of the way. She can now storm off without worrying about running him over. He even flourishes a hand toward the registers for her, that way, madam!

Anne keeps a firm grip on the shopping cart, leaning her weight into it to counter the press of his own hands. Consider this a stalemate - she was staring him down, narrowing those clear blue eyes into a squint while pointedly ignoring his smile. She'd keep her attention up there on his eyes, which was only reasonably less dangerous to look at, especially when he drops that murder bomb.

Kaboom.

"I heard," she admits. Actually, she'd sent flowers to Margaret and had spent half the night both times wondering if she should reach out to him with a text that she never did send. But before the guilt overwhelms her - and it was definitely, absolutely, beginning to overwhelm her, he lets go of her cart and the lean of her body into the handlebar sends her tripping a few tiles forward, the wheels wobbling along. She jerks it to a stop, rolls her shoulders back, and picks up her chin, resolute in her decision to not let her guilt keep her here any longer. "I'm sorry. About Sue and Mike," it was sincere, at least. "But you were an absolute ass and I.. whatever," she picks her shoes up out of the cart, shoulders her purse, and decides abandoning all of this was a lot better than hanging around this store and continuously running into him. "I'm going home. It was.." She swallows. "You know, maybe next time, it'll be good to see you." Then she's absolutely going to walk out of this store, barefoot and lotioned.

Patrick makes appropriate noises about her apologies. They include sounds like "mm" that trail off when she gets back around to calling him an absolute ass, at which point the sounds are more like "mhm." He makes no further efforts to waylay her, preferring to retreat to the safety of his own rickety cart, shoving the thing noisily when it starts to immediately veer into the freezer to his left.

Instead, when she's juuuuust about to get near enough to the front of the store that he'll drop out of earshot, he calls, "I'm at Addington House these days, whenever you start to feel like it might be good to see me again, Anne." Then he putters off to finish his shopping - which doesn't include any food at all.

Oh, except one big bag of Halloween candy. For trick-or-treaters. Not so he can sit at home alone and eat fun-sized Snickers and drink gin. That would just be fucking sad.