2020-01-18 - Synesthesia

He really should be home in bed. Days like this make those broken bones ache something fierce, and it's all too tempting to just hibernate the time away. Especially when there's the emotional equivalent of an old injury to nurse, too. But Joe's too stubborn or restless, so he's dragged himself out to come peruse the shelves again. Just somewhere he has an excuse to be, when the Surprise doesn't need tending, nor writing to be worked on.

The former pilot's in his heavy navy greatcoat, the white scarf tucked neatly around his throat, and he's idly turning over a copy of 'Neuromancer', as if trying to remember if when last he read it....and if he needs to add it to his growing stacks in his apartment.

Miserable day, the worst of the PNW, and Itzhak should probably be in the garage--but he can't. It's wrecked. That whole disaster of a situation has made him unhappy and restless, and he's wandering his narrow ass into the handsome bookstore. He's bundled up too, peacoat and soft thick knit cap and a lovely handmade scarf with a violin stitched into one end, when he makes the door jingle coming in. At least it's warm in here, which he'll be able to feel soon when his face thaws out. He skims the cap off his black curls (which are getting a little manelike, he could use a haircut) and tucks it in his pocket. Glancing around to case the place, he spots Joe, and he'd leave him alone, maybe, but he's holding Neuromancer. Itzhak's eyebrows wander up his face.

He approaches cautiously, like he expects Joe not to welcome his company. "Cavanaugh, 'ey," he says quietly, since it's a bookstore. Not exactly a library but close enough.

Joe looks up from the book, and his expression is mild, a little dreamy. No, strike that, a lot dreamy, bordering on vague - the long face pale. His smile, while faint, is genuine enough, though, and unshadowed. "Hello, Rosencrantz," he says, gently. "Hell of a day, ain't it? I haven't been in cold like this since I lived in Boston." Small talk will do, it seems.

Itzhak doesn't look at Joe's eyes--seems he avoids most eye contact, actually. Instead he's looking at the book held in Joe's graceful hands. "Hell of a day," he agrees. "Don't lemme bother ya. I just saw you got one of my favorite books there. You read it?"

Something about him is knotted up; he's tense, tall thin frame poised even at rest as if he's going to have to move fast.

"You're not bothering me," Joe says, smile widening. "Yeah. It's been a long, long time though. I'm thinking maybe even college. There used to be a wonderful SF bookstore in Boston. I know I've read the whole trilogy, at least once.....but not his more recent stuff. Sometimes I get him confused with Stephenson." He glances down at the book. "The prose sings, though, still, even if this isn't the future we ended up getting, right?"

Itzhak glances at Joe's eyes now, as if gauging the truth behind how much he's bothering him or not. The smile reassures him a touch, but he's still obviously worried. He's a funny guy like that. He spent an entire night charming a roomful of queer folks while wearing a gold lame muscle shirt, and here he's acting uncertain and kinda bashful. "Yeah. It's a beautiful book. Even if we don't have even a single street samurai with claw implants. Instead we got ironic racism and bronies." One corner of his mouth twitches up, and his eyes tick back down to the book. "Violent as hell, too. I had to hide it from my ma to read it."

One on one is different. Joe himself is, at the moment, a far cry from the garrulous barfly he can be. "Right?" he says, with cheerfully theatrical disappointment. "That's like.....we made it through the entirety of 2019 without even a single replicant," he says, on a sigh. "Not one. But yeah, it was. So vivid, though, all the imagery. If you like Gibson, have you read Stephenson?"

That gets Itzhak to smile a little more, that theatrical disappointment. "His early stuff I like. Snow Crash, Zodiac. I even liked Quicksilver, mostly. The latest stuff he's doing with writing thousand-page doorstops of boring pretentious shit, though? Feh." One big knuckly hand comes out of a coat pocket to wave dismissively.

Joseph lifts the worn paperback of Neuromancer and gestures with it, like a Communist agitator haranguing the proletariat. "I couldn't agree more," he says. "His editor needs to set him down and have a come-to-Jesus meeting with him, because you're a hundred percent right. He's vanished up his own ass. He's got Frank Herbert's disease, or somethin'."

"And they wonder why paper publications are havin' trouble, when they let guys like him get diarrhea of the typewriter all over the place." Itzhak's tone is all classic Yiddish disgust with the way of the wicked world. "Who's gonna pay forty bucks for a million words' worth of sleeping aid? Nobody, that's who." Dat's who. Then, like he'd done when he was holding forth to Joe about violins, he hesitates and glances over at him. He's a smidge taller, with a similar build, although his proportions aren't as well-made; dude is lanky. "Just tell me to shut my yap anytime. You probably didn't come in here to get talked at by some loudmouth New Yorker."

He catches it immediately, grins that dreamy grin. "No, Itzhak. I like talking about books. I always have," he says. "I've been a big nerd since I was a kid, especially SF. You don't need to worry about it. Yeah. Some of these guys run on like they're getting paid by the word. I just tried to reread Mailer's book about the moon landing, for the fiftieth anniversary, and Jesus Christ, I couldn't get through it. He's so damned windy, y'know? I mean, how the fuck do you make the first moon landing boring?"

Itzhak's eyebrows lift, at that dreamy grin of Joe's, and he grins back at him, slight and brief. "I'm a huge dork," he confesses in a wry undertone. "People don't figure me for one, but Jesus, am I ever." Then he snorts, amused. "Seriously, how do you make anything space boring? That shit is riveting. Takes a special touch to suck the life out of it."

"You look too big and tall and tough, yeah. But then, it's not like it used to be. People are a lot more accepting of geeky stuff, especially the kids coming up. I'm glad for them. And right? Especially that, the most insane thing the human race has yet accomplished, and it was just....this particular account was so masturbatory I wanted to wipe the pages off with a kleenex."

Itzhak snorts, coughs on a surprised as hell laugh and winds up laughing into the back of his hand, turning red. "Oy vey, that's an image I didn't need today!" he complains, but it's just good natured kvetching. Then he nods, eyebrows up. "We put men in a tin can and threw them at the moon. And it fuckin' worked. God, the engineering that went into that!" And he actually goes a little dreamy himself, gears turning in his eyes.

Joseph laughs, turning a little red himself. "Sorry. Used'a be a sailor, sometimes I'm still kinna raw-spoken." But there's that light in his face. "We did it more'n once! We're gonna do it again, too. First women on the moon, too - it's bein' called the Artemis program, which I think is neat as hell." He could've been part of it. Could've been part of the next generation of moon-walkers, or their trainers....and for a moment, something flickers behind his gaze. "'minds me - you ever read any Heinlein? I feel like he's someone I gotta re-read, see if I like him as much as I did. Sometimes the stuff you love as a kid don't hold up when you're an adult."

Itzhak does a lot of communicating with those eyebrows--they pop up, now, like toast. "No kiddin', women on the moon? About goddamn time. Man, that's cool." He hesitates, though. He caught the flicker, but he doesn't know what it means. But Joe's providing him an easy way to continue, so he takes that bit in his teeth. "Yeah actually I really dig a lotta early Heinlein. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, he wrote those YA books, those are good, they didn't call it YA then." Like Joe might not know that. "He lost his fuckin' mind, though." He shakes his beaky, curly head. "Pretty sad."

"Yeah, he really did. It happens. Guys get lost in their own ideas. Starship Troopers is still so good. And I loved the YA stuff. Later on, it got real damned creepy. That's like.....I've never made it to the end of the Dune series. I've tried like five times, and I always bog down in book four. 'cause it goes from this neat space fantasy to just him blathering on through self-insertion characters. Who's your favorite author? Gibson?"

"The book where he fucked his own ma, that's when I swore off any new Heinlein." Itzhak rubs the back of his reddened neck, really looking embarrassed at that, possibly on Heinlein's behalf. "I only read the first Dune, everyone tells me the rest suck, so I ain't even tried. Gibson? Nah, uh, Peter Beagle, actually." And he kind of looks embarrassed about that too.

"That's a wise decision. Dune two and three are okay, but the first one's the real classic." The mention of Beagle makes him grin. "So, my little sister's all time favorite movie is The Last Unicorn. We musta watched that movie dozens of times as kids. I ended up reading the book, as well as some of his other stuff, and the man can write. I should reread that one, come to think. Wonder if they got it here....." And he drifts down the aisle to the Bs, comes up with a battered book club edition that also contains A Fine And Private Place.

"That's my real favorite book," Itzhak says. Admits, really, and he's definitely blushing. Yes, he's tall and he talks like a tough guy from a rough part of New York and he's covered in tattoos, and here he is bashfully admitting his favorite book is about a unicorn. He follows Joe, interested in what he's doing, and looks pleased when he finds the book. "'The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.'" From memory.

Joseph offers it to him, held out. "D'you want it? Or you already got a copy?" he says. "The thing that always struck me....was how she didn't know regret. Something immortal or magical may sorrow or grieve, but it doesn't regret. It doesn't look back. I feel like, as beautiful as that book is, you can't appreciate it totally until you've at least gotten near middle age."

"I got my own." But Itzhak accepts the book anyway, for the pleasure of holding it. He opens it, flipping through the pages, eyes scanning bits of text here and there. "She learned regret, after she'd been human," he murmurs. "'Cuz that's all we fuckin' do. Regret." The pages purr as he rifles them. "I always related too much to Schmendrick, yannow? Some tall skinny yutz, got this crazy-ass power he don't know how to handle, workin' shit jobs because that's all anybody'll give him."

The pilot's eyes are dreamy, thoughtful. Still with that vagueness to him, like something else is insulating him from the cold and the pain. "I liked that about him. That too much power is as unwieldy as too little. I think the one I felt most like was Lir, though. The unicorn didn't need him. But he needed her....needed someone to be a hero for."

Itzhak's eyes tick up to Joe's. His eyes are clear gray, streaked and striated with greens and browns, like agate. "She did need him. She didn't need him to be no hero, though. She needed him to teach her..." he drops his eyes again. "Uh. You know. How to be human and stuff." He'd veered off from whatever he was about to say. Too raw, to say to this man who is older and vastly more accomplished than he.

His own are that blue, like summer skies, guileless, level, and faintly sad. The more he talks with the musician, the more he knows he made the right decision, no matter how Javier may rage. "You're right," he says, gently. "It's no fable for children, is it?"

Itzhak's eyebrows slide cautiously upwards again. Those things are busy. "Nah. It ain't, that's why I always loved it. What's that someone said, that kids don't need to be told there's monsters? Kids need to be told monsters can be beat. Uh. What's wrong?"

"Chesterton," he says. "I think is who said that. That that's what fairy tales are for. And it's true." That absurdly expressive face, not conventionally beautiful, but always worth watching. Joe glances down at the book, again. "I'm just kind of out of it, sorry. I took a medication I don't usually take unless I'm intending to sleep, but I was too restless, so I got up and went out. Makes me glad I'm not driving."

Itzhak shakes his head, negating the apology. "Don't worry about it. I'll give ya a lift if you want." But he's pretty sure he said something wrong. The book gets turned over and over in his hands, calloused fingertips investigating its textures. Soft here, where the cover's been worn away. Smooth here, where it's intact. The scent of it, aged paper. He just stands there, knowing something's wrong but not what to do about it, big tough guy gone awkward.

It's hard not to make it worse, by wanting to just watch him...to remember to make the necessary nods towards normalcy, towards that public persona. "I may take you up on that," he says, and by the look on his face, Joe's surprised himself. "I could walk back, but man, that don't hold much appeal, right now. I might have you drop me at the dock." Because somehow, sleeping on the Surprise is better. The berth is almost denlike.

"Sure. Ain't no trouble. Hate to see an old man walkin' around in the cold." Itzhak goes from awkward to friendly insults, recovering his poise some. He doesn't seem to want to give up the book. It's so comfortable in his hands, the literature equivalent of a beloved stuffed animal. "You want some coffee or somethin'?" he offers, with an inviting quirk of one of those talky damn eyebrows.

He does a fairly creditable Yoda, cocking a sidelong glance at the fiddler, "Look I so old to young eyes? When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not." Then there's that grin, the one that takes years off his face. "Sure. I still don't wanna go in yet, y'know? I feel like I'm hibernatin' my life away....where you thinkin'?"

He catches Itzhak by surprise again! Itzhak's back to laughing into his hand, the corners of his eyes crinkling with crow's-feet. "Yoda is Yiddish af, you know that? That's exactly how Yiddish grammar works. Plus, some tiny little old guy who was a badass in the war? So Jewish. Let's hit Ellie's place. That's Espresso Yourself." He holds the book up. "I'm gettin' this. I like the way it sounds."

He has a way of laughing that's nearly soundless, just a jolting of his shoulders and wheezing breath. "All right," Joe says. "I'mma get Neuromancer, my copy's still in Savannah. And I've heard that before." A cock of his head that's almost bird-like. "Like the way it sounds?"

To demonstrate, Itzhak ruffles the pages between his fingers again, causing the book to thickly purr. "...Look, I never claimed to be normal," he says, with that hitch in one corner of his mouth. He jerks his head towards the front counter and saunters on over there on his rolling stride. Almost like a sailor himself, with that gait. He pays for the book with a neatly folded ten.

"I was wonderin' if you were synaesthetic," Joe allows, after a nod. No comment on normality. God knows he isn't. He's moving without his usual hitch - must be the good drugs. Then he's paying and tucking the paperback into the voluminous pocket of his greatcoat, lets Itz lead the way on to the coffee shop. "But I like the tactility of real books, for all that I been usin' an ereader the last couple years. Only way to fit a full library on a sailboat. An' I'm cheap, so mine's just stuffed full of free classics."

Itzhak wobbles a hand, striding along on the wet cold sidewalk towards Espresso Yourself. Like a real New Yorker, he's not going to get into the car to drive four blocks. (Eventually he'll learn things are different in the PNW. Or he won't.) The book has vanished into a pocket of his peacoat. That scarf of his really is cunningly made, by a hand that knew what it was doing. It's in colors that flatter him, and of course, has a violin knit into it.

"I get a little synesthesia, yeah. Not so much as it's a primary diagnosis. I'm a little too into the way stuff sounds, though, and therapists told me that's synesthesia thing. And I kinda see music."

He keeps pace easily enough - for all his disclaimers about not wanting to walk, it doesn't seem to bother him. "I can imagine," he says, after a moment. "Numbers have colors for me. And visual patterns. Spatial relationships have sounds. Flying for me, it was like....not always music, but I could kind of hear to feel where I was. Or at least, my senses were interpreting it as sound with meaning beyond just....what a sound ordinarily means. Sometimes it makes it hard for me to listen to non-instrumental music in a language I speak, 'cause it was like....two threads at cross-purposes. What the lyrics were about, and what my brain was telling me the music was about."

Glancing over again, Itzhak looks surprised--and very interested. His whole face gets into these expressions of his, mouth quirking and eyebrows tilting and there's a lot of face on the move. "No kidding. I ain't met another one in a million years. And you got it better than me!"

Not worse. Better.

"I gotta play for you," he goes on, pulling open the door of Espresso Yourself for Joe. A gush of warm air pours out. "I wanna know how you perceive it."