2020-03-30 - Orange Blossom Special

Addington Memorial Hospital is just as busy as ever, its halls, as usual, the center of the daily war waged between Hope and Death, its air laced with the perpetual strains of antiseptic and the distant clacking of fingers on keyboards and the clatter of glass and instruments. In the pale purgatory in which Isabella is consigned, it's quiet, at least - she hasn't spent her recovery alone by any means, Alexander's chair has been pulled close to her bed, though at the moment, it is empty, but there are flowers nearby, arranged in a good imitation of an actual Grecian urn.

There is a book on her lap, opened into the middle; a volume dedicated to lost places and mysterious histories of the Pacific Northwest. She drinks in the passages with eager eyes, a quick reader by nature when she flips the pages after only a minute of perusal for each. She's in a gown, somewhat wan, though she has managed to secure her hair with a ballpoint pen.

Knock knock on the doorframe. Itzhak Rosencrantz has come to visit. Tall and beaky, he leans around the door, eyebrows up. "Hey. You up for company?" He's brought his cherry-red violin case and a flattish canvas bag of the laptop carrying sort. Gray hazel eyes, strongly marked with radiating streaks of green and amber, glance over Isabella cautiously, like he's not sure of his welcome, and not sure what condition she might be in.

She is well on the mend, though by the way she shifts, there's discomfort. But Isabella's surprise is palpable when she sees Itzhak there, expression brightening like a comet's tail. "Itzhak!" The greeting is enthused. "Come in, it's good to see you! Uh, sorry for the mess." She means herself with a gesture of her hand. She is the mess. "I meant to look you up when I got back for that movie, but Gray Harbor happened." There's a faint grimace there, pushing herself up in a better sitting position. "Alexander had to step out to work, so it frees me from his fussing for a couple of hours." There's no exasperation when she says it, her tone laden with affection instead. "How are you? All healed up? How's Javier?"

Itzhak relaxes into a wry little quirk of a grin at Isabella's enthusiasm. He comes on in. "Mess? Please, you're always beautiful, it's disgusting actually." His grin crinkles the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes. Setting down his stuff, he settles on Alexander's empty chair. "Yeah, I'm okay, pretty much. Javier's good. We got smashed at karaoke and he took his shirt off, it was amazing." Laughing, like he still can't believe it, he shakes his head. Then, "Yeah, I know, I know. Gray Harbor happens. So I brought the movie. Also brought my fiddle. I got all the entertainment options. Including pictures of de la Vega and Roen with their shirts off."

There's no blush; it's often an investment to get the typically shameless archaeologist to exhibit color, but what he's treated to instead is a visible and growing smile, mercilessly bright. "You're sweet," Isabella says with a laugh, pressing her fingers over her heart....and winces when she finds the bandages there. "Keep grinning like that, though, and I might actually die on the bed. Save the murder by bliss for when you actually treat me with the sounds of your fiddle." There's a curious peering at what he has brought. "This is so great, Itzhak. Thank you so much."

She laughs again at the mention of the pictures. "You know, August made a lot of sounds about how nobody would ever want to see him stripped, but there he is anyway, owning the shit out of it, Did the crowd prove him wrong?" Another glance at the violin case. "What genre is your favorite? To play, I mean. I keep thinking to ask."

"God, we were all so fucking drunk," Itzhak says, shaking his head again, and continuing to grin like that despite Isabella's claims of perishing. "Me most of all. Well, he won, because he's furrier than de la Vega. He won sixty bucks." He leans over to undo the satchel. "Uh, I remember Alexander said you don't like sweet stuff, so I made you these." Which turn out to be homemade spicy, tangy chili-lime cashews, a bag of them that he settles on the tray. Glancing up, eyebrows tilted, he takes a second, processing what she said. "Folk!" he says, then, pleased that she's asked. "Played in a Cajun band for years in New York. Bluegrass, too, Cape Breton style, Romani, klezmer...good shit."

"....he told you I don't like sweet things?" Something about her expression softens there, Isabella reaching out to rest a hand on Itzhak's shoulder, squeezing it just a little. "That man's impossible." Said in the most affectionate way a woman could ever speak of anyone, reaching out for the cashews. "Oh god, they smell amazing. I knew you could cook, but snacks are still the best." She samples a handful, crunching into them appreciatively. "Mmm, they're perfect." Said between chews.

"So August won because he's not a manscaper?" she wonders with a laugh. "And yeah, it sounds like good shit. Could I hear one? Before we start on the movie? Anything you like, what's your favorite piece to play?"

Itzhak reddens a little, pats Isabella's hand with his big knuckly calloused paw. "I can't really cook, not like de la Vega or Roen, I can just do easy stuff. Those are real easy. Glad you like 'em." His eyebrows quirk fondly as she calls Alexander impossible, and his whole face lights up when she asks to hear him. "Uh, sure! Sure, I'll..."

Leaning over again, he unlatches the violin case. "My favorite to play is one called Orange Blossom Special. S'about a train that used to run from NYC to Miami. I get to make train noises, which believe me you don't get to do in a classical orchestra so much." Preparing to actually play takes a few minutes; he plucks the fiddle's strings to test the tuning, tightens and rosins up his bow (the rosin is a chunk of dark clear amber that leaves a sticky powder on the horsehair of the bow).

"Train noises on a fiddle?" Isabella wonders. "Sort of how like...that bumblebee piano piece actually sounds like a buzzing bee?" She seems eager to hear it regardless, settling into the pillows behind her and her bag of homemade seasoned cashews on her lap.

But with him making preparations to play, she can't help but observe him - not just his movements, but the visible care he demonstrates towards his instrument, long fingers with his pronounced knuckles. "So you're not a fan of classical orchestras that much, then?" she asks, unable to resist asking - she had homed in on his earlier comment about them.

Big, long-fingered hands, with scratchy little callouses on the left fingertips from holding down strings, Itzhak's got. He handles the bow and the fiddle with absentminded skill. "Yeah, making train noises is a real bluegrass thing!" he explains, chipper and eager to share his music. "You can do it on harmonica too. The front guy of the Cajun band I was in did harmonica, I mean it's not hard, but doing it well really takes a special kinda soul. He had that in spades." A spacey, nostalgic look floats across Itzhak's face. "I miss that guy. Anyway. Nah, I actually love classical music, even played in a youth orchestra, but when ya get right down to it? Classical musicians gotta do a bunch of stupid shit because 'tradition'." Itzhak rolls his eyes. "Tradition, feh, I play because it's fun. So I kinda jumped ship, went into folk music, have had a blast ever since."

He stands up, then, suddenly seeming to fill the wan hospital room with his height and his presence. He swings the violin around to set it under his chin with a flip of his sinewy wrist. "Ready?" he asks, mischief in his eyes and voice as he looks at Isabella.

"I hear auditions for classical orchestras are something else, no matter how young." Isabella looks impressed, at least - not just that he made it, but that he had the courage to abandon it to pursue music that he is really passionate about. "But I didn't know that, about orchestras. I love all sorts of music, but I'm fond of Jazz and Classical, it's always interesting to hear what happens behind the curtain, though. I know nothing about music as a performer." She is utterly devoid of artistic skill, and there's a hint of envy always towards those who are.

When the performance is about to begin, though, she settles further against her bed, and there's an eager light in her eyes. She even reaches out to take some flowers from a vase - not from the Grecian urn, but another arrangement another visitor had sent her in mischievous readiness. "Let's hear it!"

Itzhak hikes his eyebrows, expression going saucy, like 'prepare for the knocking off of socks'. He draws his bow across the strings in a long wail, the same pitch as a train whistle. Whooo-ooooo.... WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO... The bow scrapes rapidly across the strings, back and forth, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, then the whistle cries, WHOOoooo-OOOOOOO! Itzhak actually laughs, just way too gleeful making choo-choo train sounds on his fiddle.

Then he starts playing, rapid blurring strokes of the bow. The tune is lively, of course, and fast, and he stamps to the quick rollicking beat. Isabella has a one-man bluegrass concert going on in her recovery room. Seems like Itzhak could fill the entire hospital with the shouting of his fiddle and the stamping of his boot.

The lively tune puts enough of excitement and adrenaline in her blood to get her to move. Her dark-haired head bobs up and down, and her hands come up to clap in time with the tune, to join in with the stomping of his feet and the mimicked sounds of the train wooshing past. Isabella's expression is bright with her enjoyment, lips pulled up in a wide smile.

It isn't long before a few curious nurses and patients strolling past are peeking in, and lingering - it isn't every day that the hospital gets live entertainment, and as his music spills down the hall, the antiseptic corridors even seem to brighten with the sound and his presence.

Whenever Itzhak finishes his performance, there's an actual round of applause from multiple hands; from Isabella, herself, and the audience that he has managed to collect at the entryway of her recovery room.

Swaying, stamping, smirking--that's his violin face--Itzhak plays to make the rafters ring. Not that there's rafters. There's drop tile ceiling. But he tries! He charges into the last few bars like a bull charging a matador, winds it up, and whips his bow into the air with a whoop. "HELL yeah! Now that's fun!"

Applause behind him makes him jump a little, surprised, and he turns to flash a quirked half-grin at the impromptu audience. He bows, an elegant little stage bow complete with flourish. "Ahhh, ya too kind." He's kind of flushed. "That was 'Orange Blossom Special'." Because of course, they all need to know.

They keep applauding until the song ends, and as the audience starts dispersing, Isabella is still clapping on her bed. Green-gold eyes are lit with both excitement and amusement, cheeks flushed faintly from all the stationary dancing around she was doing on her bed. But the tempo is enough to galvanize dormant senses into a state of wakefulness again - she hasn't felt this alive outside of the times that Alexander has kissed her since being admitted to the hospital.

"That was amazing," she tells him with a grin. "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it. I know that you mentioned you used to roll with a musical crew back in New York, are you doing the same thing here now, or...?"

Itzhak just glows under Isabella's praise. He'd be the first to tell anybody he doesn't play music in order to impress people, but actually he kind of does. Beaming at her, he wipes his wrist across his forehead to push back his long, curly forelock. (His hair's pretty long these days, a mane of black curls.) "Hey, thanks. Glad you like it. Yeah I was in a Cajun band. We did stuff starting at old timey swamp music and through all kinds of folk punk. Good shit. Here, I'm in Lyric and Park's band, it's a lot more pop. But eh, it's somethin' to do."

She's so alive right now, and he did that, he brought her a gift of music that refreshed her physically and emotionally, and Itzhak studies her all pleased.

The two names he mentions aren't familiar at all, but the fact that Itzhak is still playing only increases her growing radiance. "I'm so glad to hear it," Isabella says, slowly settling back down against her pillows, watching him with a flushed, but pleased expression. "Talent like yours, it'd be terrible if you didn't play as much as you wanted. Is that going well?" There's so little that she doesn't know about him, so her questions are particularly neverending. Sorry, Itzhak, this is your life now.

Her hand rests on her ruined ribcage. "I can't help but feel a little special," she teases him with a grin. "Food, a one-man concert, and now a movie. If we weren't seeing other people, this would be the part where I ask you where the massage table is." Her dark brows waggle at him playfully before she sighs, expression softening. "Thanks for this, Itzhak. Really."

Promptly Itzhak blushes at that eyebrow waggle. "Feh," he says, waving his bow at Isabella like 'go on with you', "who needs a massage table?" He loosens his bow again, hangs it up in the case, meticulously wipes down his fiddle with a soft cloth before setting it all away. Then it's his laptop he's getting out. "Ehhhh. Ya welcome," he grumbles, like it's such a chore that Isabella is thanking him. "I just, yannow. Wanted to help somehow." He glances up at the question about the band. "It's going pretty well, I guess? Not how I'm used to things going, Park and Lyric really got big goals. We're gonna cut a single. I'm the lead singer, by the way." And he winces, like he's still not used to that. He isn't. "So, uh, God forbid, but you might hear my voice on the radio."

"You are," Isabella tells him, gently. "Dad's not much of a fusser, and Alexander has been happy to take up all the fussing that my own father hasn't been doing. Ex-navy, you know the type, I think." There's a faint smile there, nothing but affection when she talks about the two most important men in her life. "But even he can't be here with me twenty-four-seven to prevent me from getting into trouble, and he has to work. I get lonely, easily - especially these days. Field work can get rather solitary, so it's not prevalent while mired in the middle of it, but when someone like me becomes accustomed to being around people, again, the absences are felt more acutely." Her smile is then directed at the Grecian urn.

Falling silent as she listens to Itzhak's latest musical endeavors, her brows shoot upwards. "I didn't know you could sing, also. Itzhak, that's great! So, does that mean I get free tickets for whatever concert you guys put out when you all get famous?" Her grin turns more mischievous there. "Alexander and I would definitely come."

Itzhak half smiles, fondly, as she talks of Alexander. "That guy. He gets into so much fuckin' trouble, and yells at anybody else who does it." There's nothing but affection in his tone. That he's had a longstanding crush on Alexander is his worst-kept secret, but it's tempered now, steadied into something rock solid and enduring. Then, laughing under his breath, he nods. "Know what you mean. Didn't have nearly so many friends before I moved out here. Real friends, you know? Not just fuckbuddies or people to drink with. Now I'm like, how did I get along without?"

Then she's asking for free tickets and his laugh is more rueful. "Oh yeah. Absolutely. Free tickets for everybody. We don't have any yet, but you'll be first in line." He sort of sounds like he doesn't expect free tickets to actually be a thing. Meanwhile he sets his laptop up. "I'm definitely gonna cry at some parts of this movie so I hope you're not gonna think less of my masculinity." The side-glance he shoots Isabella is shyly wicked--quite an expression.

"I know, right?" There's a touch of dryness there, Isabella rolling her eyes skyward; but there's a resigned acceptance there, also. "But I don't think I wouldn't love him half as well if I didn't. I'm not immune to the allure of being cared for, but he could stand to realize that not many of us would be okay with him getting hurt, also, in the process." It's a crush she knows about; it's probably a miracle that her more jealous nature doesn't surface whenever Itzhak is in the room, but she has given her own promises on that end also - to trust, if nothing else, not just Alexander, but Itzhak also. She even reaches out to share her bag of chili-lime cashews with him.

"It's kind of funny how that works, when you realize that there might be something lasting in a place that makes you reluctant to call anywhere else home." She makes a face. "No matter how fucked up it is." She gestures vaguely towards the window. "Exhibit A. I mean...I know I'm meant to travel. Felt it ever since I was young, but I think there's no harm in having some kind of...headquarters."

When he sets up the movie, she grins faintly at him and presses her hand over her heart. "No judgment, I promise. Besides..." She winks at him sidelong. "I've found that I like it, being around men who aren't afraid to show their tears."

Plucking a couple few cashews from the bag, Itzhak nods, mouth tugging funny. "Met people here that, well, I never wanna live without." He averts his eyes, reddening again. "Never woulda thought I'd want to leave New York, but now?" Shrug. He crunches the nuts, swallows. "You know there's a Neil Diamond song about that, kinda. 'New York's home but it ain't mine no more.'" He sings the line, sweetly melancholy. "...People call him the Jewish Elvis, but personally, I think Elvis is the goyische Neil Diamond."

Glancing back at Isabella, and at her statement that she actually kinda likes it when a man isn't afraid to cry, he quirks his eyebrows wryly. "Then you oughta love being around me, I'm a huge damn crybaby." So Isabella has learned a lot about him today!

His reddening face when he mentions the ones that he can't live without earns him a quieter sort of smile. "No man's an island," Isabella quotes, digging into her bag. "And especially in a place that's so dangerous for the likes of us, that's important, too. Not just the fact that there's safety in numbers. A place can wear on a soul if there's nothing good attached to it. I'm glad you found them."

She laughs; the sound is free, with nothing held back, and while she winces and presses her hand on her ruined ribcage when javelins of pain carve into her at the doing, she doesn't seem inclined to stop. "I already do," she tells him with a blazing grin. "There's nothing wrong with that, and I could stand to learn something about that." She scoots closer to him and the laptop, as much as her bed could allow. "Alright, so. I think it's time. Ready to take a very nostalgic trip? Because it's been years since I've seen this."

Itzhak's eyes drop to Isabella's ribs, where she presses her hand against the hurt. There's something in his gaze that's a little like Alexander, a too-interested, sharp investigation that has no pity for the human pain behind it. But he doesn't say anything about her wound, instead just settling in next to her, stretching his long damn legs in front of him and crossing his boots at the ankle. And can't help a quick tug of a grin when she says she already loves being around him. "Yeah yeah. Watch ya movie. I'm gonna sing along to every song."

And he's serious about that, as he promptly proves. "When the laaaast eagle flies - over the laaaast crumbling mountain..."