2020-02-27 - The Fouled Anchor

There is a buzzing from the intercom in Joe's apartment, indicating someone down in the lobby of the building is trying to reach him. At the rent rate of Bayside, there is likely a video screen that turns on to show who is buzzing. Roxy, or Riika as he knew her, is standing downstairs, wrapped up in a vintage wool coat, with what looks to be yoga pants and rain boots . She doesn't look so good. There are some bandages visible on her face, beneath the edge of her vintage sunglasses.She has a small cardboard box in her hand as she waits.

What's a Joseph, when it's at home? A middle-aged man actually wearing his glasses, for once. As well as jeans and a t-shirt that reads "On the 8th Day, God Created Sailors And the Devil Said ' Oh Shit'". He buzzes her in, after greetings.

The apartment is one of the one bedroom plans - big open living area that's kitchen and dining and living all at once. A scatter of papers and books on the dining room table, as well as an open laptop. Little there personal.....well, little except the books. The walls are lined with shelves and the shelves are filled with books. Science fiction and science, fiction and history, a dazzling profusion.

"Hey," he says, as he opens the door to her. "How's it goin'?"

Roxy looks concerned when he opens the door. She steps inside with a surety and confidence. This is right. She is doing the right thing. "I apologize for arriving unannounced, Joseph. But something very strange happened the other night, and I think it is related to you." She shrugs out of her coat and it is clear she came from the dance studio, with her yoga pants and sweatshirt over a leotard, rather than her usual vintage attire.

She hands him the box. "I was pulled into one of those Dreams. The ones that are things of Over There, with several others. And Syöjätär was there. Ah, I believe other cultures call her Baba Yaga. There was a fire ringed with stones, and the stones had symbols. I saw one that felt like it belonged with me, a tree with roots of crystal. And she offered us wishes. Some took them, unwisely, and they were twisted. I foiled her by wishing we had no wishes. And a storm kicked up and pelted us with things, including the rocks." That explains the bandages and bruises covering her.

"I grabbed one stone before I was back in this reality, and when I looked at it, the symbol struck me. I think, I am not sure but, I think you have a tattoo that matches it?"

Whatever he expected, it wasn't that story. Wasn't this thing. And that shows clear on the long face. "No trouble at all," he says, ushering her in. Manners first. "Would you like something to drink, something to eat?"

But then he takes the box, carefully, in both hands. Looking down at it, though his gaze flicks up at the mention of the witch. "I know of her," he says, quietly. "The Russian stories about her...." And he lays the box down on the kitchen counter for a moment, peels up that ridiculous t-shirt. He's got a compass rose tattooed over his heart, a vegvesir inset in its center. But it's clearly the one on his pectoral he means to display - a firebird in the Russian style, all crimson and orange and gold. A word beneath it in Cyrillic. And down at the waistband, a smear of burn scars up his flank, with a higher ridge of stitching wending down to disappear. Then he lets it drop.

"Smart," he says, approving her choice of wishing away the wishes. Then he opens the box and lifts out the stone. Something about it makes the muscles of his face go taut. A little cascade of memories, perhaps. Then he displays the forearm tattoo - a matching anchor, with fraying rope wound around it.

"A cup of coffee would be lovely," Roxy admits. She looks tired, and achy. She insisted on teaching her classes despite being banged up. She watches him as he peels up his shirt, bright blue eyes sweeping over tattoos, some vaguely familiar like she recalls them from those hours sitting beside his bed in that dark Asylum room. Others still unfamiliar, either never seen before, or swept from her memory by the strange power of that place.

The anchor though, that is the one she recalled most clearly. She moves closer to compare the symbol to the tattoo. "I was right. Does this mean something to you, Joseph?" she asks, rubbing lightly at the side of her head where she got hit hard enough to knock her out. One of her employees found her unconscious outside of her office.

Joe waves her to a seat at the bar counter that divides the kitchen area from the living room seating. "Got some brewin' now," he admits, as he fishes a mug out of a cabinet.

The scars on his side likely new, as was the ink under his shirt. But then, she'd never seen him wholly shirtless. He's left the stone sitting out on the counter. "That's the first tattoo I ever got. When I was a young man who'd just gotten into the Navy...why it would show up there, in a Dream.....anyone else in that Dream with you?"

"Yes, there were several, but I only knew a few of them. Itzhak Rosencrantz was there and, I think, Javier De La Vega, but if it was him, he was not himself. There was a young man with purple hair and two women I did not recognize." Roxy slides onto a stool gingerly

"She knew my name. Baba Yaga. My real name," she adds with a slight frown. "I wonder if anyone else took the rock I was drawn to. I never got my hands on it." She tilts her head slightly, studying him with a thoughtful expression. "What does the fouled anchor mean to you? It must have meant something, to have it put on your skin."

That has Joe's lips thinning out, even as he pours the coffee out, carefully. "Rosencrantz and de la Vega I know," he allows, drawl slower than ever. "And I think I know the man with the purple hair. De la Vega....They've been hurting him, of late. Driving him."

A glance back over his shoulder, before he comes over with the two cups in hand. A look at the tattoo. "Just a way of....confirming the permanence of a choice. A path I'd picked. It means a lot of different things. Hope. The keeping of faith. I had this one touched up a few years back, since it was the oldest. I wonder if that stone was meant to refer to me specifically.....but then, I don't really believe in coincidence, when it comes to Dreams, when it comes to what's done in this town."

"I think it did mean you. Like the other one was supposed to mean me, or something about me. I think the others were drawn to different ones as well." Roxy folds her arms on the counter top, her expression a bit far away for a while. "Mine was a tree, a weeping willow, with crystals for roots. And I have no idea why that should mean anything to me at all."

She accepts the cup of coffee and sips it, before wrapping her hands around the mug to soak in the warmth. "It is not every day you run into a being of folklore. I think, although I outsmarted her, I think she liked me."

"Huh," he says, as he sets out sugar and cream. Real cream, not some powdered non-dairy nonsense. But the idea that a creature out of myth might know him....it seems to bemuse him a little, rather than frighten or dismay. "She's like that, in the myths and stories I know. Not wholly a monster or a villain, sometimes the harsh teacher who rewards the clever student. D'you know the story of Vasilisa the Wise, for instance?"

Joe's dosing his coffee as he speaks, but he looks up at that last question, blue eyes very curious.

With the cream and sugar out, Roxy doctors her cup of coffee slightly. She nods along with his assessment of Baba Yaga. "Yes, I recall she, or The Ogress in my culture, walked a line between good and evil." She tries the doctored coffee and seems to find it far better with cream and sugar.

"Vasilisa the Wise?" she asks, brows raising. "I do not know that story. Do tell." She props her chin in her hand, eager to listen, for once, instead of being the storyteller.

He settles down on a stool of his own, mug cradled loosely in those long hands. "Okay. So. Once upon a time, there was a wealthy merchant with a beautiful daughter Vasilisa. But his wife was sickly and died young. But before she died, she gave Vasilisa a tiny wooden doll with instructions to give it a little to eat and a little to drink if she were in need, and then it would help her. As soon as her mother died, Vasilisa gave it a little to drink and a little to eat, and it comforted her."

A sip, and he goes on. "But of course, her father remarried, and her stepmother had two daughters. They were jealous of Vasilisa's beauty and delighted in making her life a misery. One day, her stepmother put out all the lights and fires in their house, and told her she had to go seek fire from Baba Yaga. Vasilisa set off, and came to a hut fenced in bones, standing on chicken legs. When the Baba herself showed up, she set Vasilisa to impossible tasks to earn the fire, but the magic doll completed them for her. When Baba asked how it was that Vasilisa accomplished this, she said it was by her mother's blessing. Well, witches can't abide blessings, so she threw her out....but she did give her a magic skull lantern from her fence post to relight the fire in their house.....and when she got home, the fire from the skull burnt her stepmother and stepsisters to ashes."

Roxy listens, wide-eyed to the tale. She looks more her age, perhaps even younger, as she listens, childlike, to the story. Some of the care and weathering from the last few years of her life slides away for a moment. "That sounds similar to the Cinderella story, which has many, many iterations. I..." she looks away a moment, squinting, trying to remember. "I think I collected them when I was a girl. The different versions. Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, Pygmalion, all the way back to Ancient Greece and the tale of Rhodopis."

She blinks at the sailor, flushing with embarrassment. "How is it I only remember this now, and only vaguely?" Perhaps part of it was taken from her to remember parts of her stay at the Asylum.

A tilt of his brows, amused. "I love the Russian ending. In the French version, she just marries the prince and lives happily ever after. In Russia.....revenge. It sums up a lot to me. I lived there for a few years."

Then he spreads a long hand. "I don't know. The Asylum rots other memories. I try not to think of it, because of that. Try not to think about it. Like it's a stone grinding away at other, softer things." Joe plants a palm on the counter, abandons his cup to go rummaging in his shelves. High, low, until he comes back with a book of Russian fairy tales, which he proffers to her. "Here. Plenty of stories about her in here. Maybe I'll meet her, sometime...." The prospect seems to please him.

"The German version is vengeful as well," Roxy notes with a small smile, sipping her coffee with an expression that clearly reads, 'Germans, of course'. "With the step sisters' eyes plucked out. I do believe Mister Disney chose to not put that part into his lovely animated film."

The note about how the Asylum rots memories has her looking worried, her pale brow marred by furrows as she frowns. "Does that mean, is it possible...?" She doesn't want to even consider it. "Is it possible my parents were not monsters, and I only remember the bad things?" she asks, flitting her eyes back to his.

She takes the books and looks at it a long moment. "I will read it and return it, I promise," she vows.

A look he returns, with that curling little half-grin. "Yeah. Disney had to leave out a lot of the Grimms' stuff, didn't he?"

That question, though, fades it into solemnity again. "I don't know. It's more like....whenever you dredge up a new memory of the Asylum, you lose a good one. How the air smelled like snow as a child. Your friend's face, in grade school. What it felt like to kiss your beloved for the first time. I don't think it implants untruths, though, or does it with particular selectivity."

"Oh yes, like the fact that he only showed half the Sleeping Beauty myth," Roxy notes chipperly, "and not that the Prince was the son of an Ogress who tried to eat her children." She waves a hand dismissively, as if this is no big thing. "Or that the Little Mermaid let herself turn to sea foam, rather than risk interrupting her prince's happiness with another woman. I feel like the lessons of the stories were somewhat lost because of these omissions."

She takes a long moment to ponder his words, sliding her hand over the cover of the book a few times as she looks down at it, her eyes glittering a bit from unshed tears. "I cannot recall good things about them. I think that is why I read those fairy stories. I felt like one of the girls in them, whose families were terrible to them."

He settles back on his stool, takes a sip of his coffee, mulling his response. "A man named Chesterton once said...Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten," Joe says, finally, looking up. "If they gave you strength to survive, to know that your circumstances don't have to define you - that you are truly a princess and a heroine and not just the girl who sleeps in ashes - then they've served that purpose."

He casts a look at that book of fairy tales. "Read those. The Russian ones are as dark as they come, as much so as the German. Take a little strength from them. I think we'll need yet more of it. And the more advice for dealing with the Baba, the better. My gut says you'll see her again, even if I don't."

Roxy tips her chin towards the stone. "I think, with that, you might see her yet, Joseph Cavanaugh. But thank you for the loan of the book. I will find strength in it." She sets the coffee mug aside and gathers up her things. "I should head home. I do not wish to take up too much of your time." She gives him a small smile, forever skittering away, just like back There, whenever she thought an orderly might show up.

He looks at her, levelly. "My time is my own, now. Stay as long as you please, I'm always glad of the company. Thank you for the stone. I'll have to talk to Rosencrantz about it, too, I see him now and again."

Musing over the idea of the stone with his symbol on it....he drums fingertips lazily on the curve of the mug, a rippling rhythm.

Roxy blushes at the invitation. "I enjoy your company, Joseph. I just do not want people to view you poorly for having me in your home at all hours. Considering my former profession, I try not to damage any reputations, if I can help it." She doesn't seem upset, just matter of fact. She was a stripper. A damn good one. And Americans are still ridiculously ashamed of people's bodies. The puritanical view of it boggles the Finnish woman.

The idea that he has any reputation to damage, let alone by such means.....Joe can't help himself, he grins. Not mockingly, though. "No, not at all. I'm not here to worry about other people's opinions, small town or no," he says, gently. "I don't think you'd hurt my reputation. My neighbors mind their own business, and I mind mine."

"If...if you are sure? I am glad to stay and talk as long as you wish," Roxy admits quietly. "I almost made a wish, from Baba Yaga. She could sense it. I almost wished not to be so lonely anymore. But I think she would have turned me into one of her goats or made me stay with her in her hut with the chicken legs."

She leans on the counter, still halfway to her usual fleeing. "Getting close to people again, it makes me uneasy. I can sense things, bad emotions towards me, which is why I ended up in There. And I have issues of trust, for obvious reasons. So I have not made many friends here in Gray Harbor, and no relationships of any deeper nature." She pushes her hair on one side behind her ear, unconsciously, and the bruise on the temple from the rock is more visible.

A boy's impulse, to offer, but he follows it. "I'll be your friend," he says, simply. "If you think you can trust me. It's hard here, and harder yet for those who've come new and weren't born here. But we've already got that place in common.....and you were very kind to me, there. I'm grateful."

Looking into her face, with that guileless warmth. "They love nothing better than carving us apart from one another. Making sure we can't share strength, as we should."

"Yes, yes they do love that. And they stoke our suffering while they eat our joy until nothing remains of us," Roxy says softly. She finally sinks back onto the stool, setting the book on the counter top. "What little I remember of the Asylum," she doesn't call it that often, but she chooses to now, "was terrible, except for you. I think helping you, helped me to survive that place. I think bringing kindness into that madness, that torturous hell, made me stronger. So thank you."

"Precisely," he says, leaning in a little. "And you were one of the few good things there. But....we survive, in Their despite. I wonder if They intended me to die there. I felt like it, some of the time."

And that she can remember, the evenings when he was gray-faced and still, skin drawn over the stark bones, another silent presence. "But you defied Them.....and we both made it. Thank you."

"I wondered that sometimes too, but I think if we die, they also lose. They lose what they feast on. Part of me is deeply afraid, that by fighting, we keep them alive along with ourselves," Roxy nearly whispers that dark though. "So, I fight twice as hard, to bring joy, inspire others, even if it's just a kind smile, or paying for someone's coffee. Anything to fight back the darkness even the tiniest bit. Do you understand?"

She reaches for his hand to give it a little squeeze. "I remember that many in There were little ones, children. I think that is who I started reading to, when they first arrived, to help them be less afraid, and give Them less to eat."

"There has to be a way to destroy them. Neutralize them. Do something beyond merely being happy and existing, in their despite," Joe's voice is thoughtful, as he idly swirls the coffee in the cup. "But yeah, I do. Peace, acceptance, loyalty.....may They choke on that."

It has an oddly formal air to it, the way he says is. Like he's invoking a curse, or a blessing. His fingers wrap around hers - his hand is callused, very worn, dry and warm. "That I do remember. That it was mostly the young, there...."

"It is why we were so different. And you extremely so," Roxy says quietly. Wait, did she just call him old? She seems to realize that implication and her eyes widen. "I do not mean your are old, Joseph, just compared to the children there. They were usually discharged at the age I came in and you, well you were a full grown adult!" Backpedal, backpedal. Blush. She stares into her coffee cup, trying to will the redness to fade.

It just makes him laugh, and that wholeheartedly. "I am pretty old, especially by the standards there. I was in my late forties....I turned fifty last summer." No shame or embarrassment about it. "But you're right. It seemed like it was kids to teens. Not a lot of adults, and no one in my age cohort," he allows.

He squeezes her hand again, and withdraws it.

"Age is just a number, Joseph. I thought that saying was silly, until I went to that place, and then had to rebuild my life after. I am 22, but I feel both like I have lived ten lifetimes, and never had a real one at all. I did not have a childhood so to speak. Ballet is a cruel mistress."

She draws her hand back into her lap, always the good girl, the nice girl. "And you may be fifty, but that doesn't make you less of a handsome man, and you do not seem at all rickety!" she adds cheerfully.

He arches a brow, but his expression is still wry, rather than offended. "Yeah. It's a lot more about ...about what you've been through. What you had to experience. Twenty-two, huh? But yes....a field like that, you have to grow up early. I feel like I had some of that, myself. I went into the military early, at twenty, basically."

A snort for that. "Thank you. And I'm mostly not rickety. Not yet, thank God."

"I was four, when I began ballet. People do not tell you, before you enter into the training, just how all-consuming it will be, and how strict your life regimen will become. Not entirely unlike the military in that respect," Roxy comments quietly, sips her coffee.

"Fourteen hours a day that were practice, strength training, learning new moves and routines. Two hours of tutoring. No social life, no fraternization, free time was very limited and that was mostly filled with the demands of family," she explains.

Joe pulls a face, baring his teeth. "That sounds more like.....back in the Middle Ages, you could give a child to the Church very young, to be trained up to a monk or a nun. An oblate, is what they called them, if I remember right. Because while I went to military school, I did get time at a civilian university, before I took up my commission. I wasn't under my family's thumb, the whole time...."

He shakes his head. "I imagine that....that being able to set your own path seems very freeing? But also very strange. I know it does for me - after all those years on someone else's schedule, someone else's orders, someone else's rules......now I can do as I please."

"Extremely difficult," Roxy confesses. "I find myself pushing my days far longer than I need to. I cannot dance like I used to. When I was in There, whatever They did to me, well..." She gestures vaguely at her body. "Like a gymnast who suddenly retires, the same happens to dancers. Puberty came late, but come it did. And I am no longer 85 pounds and simple to lift and throw about the stage." She chuckles a little and wrinkles her nose.

"But, I teach, and I love that. I am very much failing at other things though. Like dating. It appears this happens mostly on phones and online, and all those harmony match tinder dot comms are intimidating. I am just not good at it flirting in person, for the reasons we already discussed."

Now that chuckle is rueful. "Yeah," he says. "I imagine that's so. The regimen is so strict that once you fall off of it....but....do you enjoy things more? I mean, physically, now that you don't have to worry about keeping in the necessary bounds for a dance career?"

The idea of dating makes him roll his eyes. "I'm no help. I haven't gone on a date in years and years. I had a fiancee, in Russia....but she died and....I didn't have the heart to even think about it, long term. Then I was in a wreck, then the Asylum, then sailing. This is the longest I've been in one place in a very long time, but..." Joe just shakes his head. He doesn't seem particularly sad about it, though.

"Oh yes! Eating! I LOVE EATING!" Roxy enthuses with a broad smile. "My diet was so restricted. I suspect ballerinas and jockeys share a lot of the same issues there, having to 'make weight' so to speak for our professions. Now I can enjoy food, and that is wonderful. I have gone to see some classic movies at the theater, I've started learning self-defense, and all of that is wonderful but it is still just me mostly." She smirks. "I am bad at social interaction. Put me on a stage and I can be whomever you wish. I just can't seem to figure out who I am, so off stage I do not know how to be."

She looks deeply concerned at his story. "I am so sorry for your loss. That is terrible, Joseph. Was she in the military too?"

"Well," he says, pragmatically, after a last swallow finishes off the cup, "You can explore. Find out what you like and don't like. Who you are, what you want. And I bet. Doing something physical like self-defense....I bet it's good to have something where it's not about how you look, about performing for others. Just knowing who you are."

Joe shakes his head. "No. She was a .....clothing designer, of a kind. It was an accident. An icy road in winter." Sadness there, but it's faded. He's had years and time and distance to learn to bear it.

"I am so sorry. But surely you can find someone else? You are a very attractive man, an author, you have been to space! I am shocked half the town isn't throwing their undergarments at you, Joseph! You can have your pick, so do not stop putting yourself out there." Roxy is like a cheerleader at times, go go rah rah rah! Just ask the other Joseph. Or Ruiz. She finishes her coffee as well and sets the mug down.

About that. His face is a study in a kind of perplexed amusement. "Thank you," he says, gently. Even blushing a little. "I....well, we'll see," he says, and leaves it at that. No way of easily explaining the pattern he's already edged into. "I s'pose it's been long enough....."

"Good. If you can get out there, I can get out there. We can support each other's attempts in the horrifyingly frightening world of dating!" Roxy declares, standing. "I really do need to go now, though. I have classes to teach in the morning." She gathers up the book and pulls her coat on. "Thank you for the coffee, Joseph, and the book, and for the company." She leans to kiss his cheek if he allows, ready to make her exit.

He permits it, without hesitation. Still a little pink in the cheeks. "Go well," he says, gently. "I'll see you soon....and remember to enjoy yourself." Then he's getting up, in turn, to go gather up and rinse the coffee cups.

"I will do my best," Roxy vows as she moves to the door and opens it. "Goodnight!" she calls cheerfully, then she is gone, the door closing behind her.