2020-04-12 - None of the Above

It's a couple days later when Itzhak knocks on Cristobal's door. He didn't text or anything. He just...showed up. Is Cris even home? Whether he is or not, he's got a tall Jewish fiddler at his door.

The notes from a guitar promptly cut off at the noise from the knock, as if someone laid the flat of their hand over the strings to abruptly cease their vibrations. A shadow moves across the curtains, Cristobal answering the door shortly later. Dressed in a pair of grey lounge pants and a white tank, he looks like he was just relaxing at home, neither on the way to something or just home from it. He eyes Itzhak silently for a moment from a bruised face that he's done nothing to hide or really even tend. Instinct has his eyes traveling past the man as if to check to see if he's come unaccompanied. "Rosy." He greets evenly, pulling open the door the rest of the way to bid him entrance.

"Didn't know you play," Itzhak says, when Cris opens the door. He's alone, and he stands there to let Cris figure out that he's alone before he comes in. "Sounded good. Better than your face." His knuckles are kinda bruised from that face. He and Ruiz really took turns at Cruz. Anyway, he comes in, shoulders hiked nervously.

"I don't." Cris says of the guitar, its bridge now facing the wall where it leans as if it's been put in time out. "And what's wrong with my face? Black and blue are my colors. I'm a 'winter'." He nudges the door closed, throwing the lock more out of habit than any effort to cage Itzhak inside. Without asking if he wants something to drink, Cris moves past him all the way to the other side opposite the entrance to where the fridge is, popping it open and grabbing a couple bottles of beer. "Are we fighting, fucking, or friendship ending, because I'm sort of running low on energy for any of that."

"Well, lucky for you it's 'none a the above.'" Itzhak drifts after Cris to the kitchen. The lock doesn't trouble him. There is not a lock on God's green earth that Itzhak Rosencrantz couldn't open. "I just wanna talk. Believe it or not, I actually like being your friend. So. Friends talk." But his eyebrows are tilting up, like he's asking Cris to please agree with him.

Then tension in Cristobal's frame immediately shifts, going from gearing up and getting ready to throw down if need be to a lazy latino slouch as he pops the beers open on the edge of the counter and offers one over. "Yeah, they do." And friends talking isn't relegated to uncomfortable counter chairs or the ones from the kitchenette, but rather he directs Itzhak over to the couch and matching chair whose caramel leather is soft as butter. "I just meant that kiss to start a friendly fight. Not..." He makes some vague motion, because he doesn't quite know how to finish that sentence.

Itzhak takes the beer with a mutter of thanks. He follows along and gets into his own couch-slouch, one arm along the back of the buttery caramel leather, one holding his beer bottle propped against his thigh. The beer sloshes gently as he tips the bottle up for a drink. His gray hazel eyes are on Cris, but not making eye contact, as usual. He's looking him in the chest. "I know," he says, his tone a lot softer than his normal. "I know, I wanted to explain myself."

"Itzhak." Cris says with a defeated sort of tone. "You don't have to. You don't owe me an explanation. I fucked up, I deserved what I got. Probably deserved a lot more. All I want is your forgiveness, man. Not that I wouldn't mind adding a chapter in 'How to Not be Such an Ass' book, but let's face it, I've skipped to the end and read the last page. Spoiler alert: I die as I lived. Still an ass."

Itzhak sighs and rubs the bridge of that impressive nose. "Cruz. Would you shut the fuck up and let me talk." He sets the beer bottle down, leaning forward. The guitar draws his eye, and he nods towards it. "You mind if I...?" The reason he's asking might not be obvious, but it also might be: he badly needs an instrument in his hands and he neglected to bring his own.

Cris jolts forward before he can stop himself, sliding to the edge of his seat to stop Itzhak from getting the guitar. He swallows hard, ignoring that tick in his jaw and he forces himself to ease back though the grip on his beer bottle has gone knuckle white as he holds it in the hand that isn't bandaged from his little wall punching incident. "Yeah, fine." He says tightly, and then gives a little nod in case Itzhak needs further encouragement. The guitar is a relatively cheap acoustic, standard blonde wood, but the front is decorated in childish stickers: unicorns, kittens, rainbow colors and the like.

Itzhak is startled by that jolting motion, and rears back, raising his hands, fingers spread, in the universal sign for 'backing off now'. "Whoa, hey, Cris. It's okay, buddy, I won't touch it if it bothers ya." Not a reaction he expected, and now he's the one triggering Cris. His eyebrows are very concerned.

Cris gives Itzhak a flat look, his lips spread into a thin line. He reaches forward an clunks his beer down on the old ornate crate that serves as his coffee table and hoists himself to his feet, taking the few steps required to ring the neck of the guitar and spin it up onto Itzhak's knee. The strings are new, recently tuned. For its age and how it's been defaced like Lisa Frank threw up on it, it's well cared for. "To play a wrong note is insignificant, to play without passion is inexcusable. So I don't play anymore. Maybe it's time someone did." Cris quotes Beethoven, flopping back into his seat bonelessly.

In rare direct eye contact, Itzhak looks back. His eyes are complicated in color, gray and green and amber-brown. He takes the guitar into his arms, cradling it to him carefully, tilting it up a little so he can see the stickers. "I like unicorns," he says, running a calloused fingertip over the bright little things. "And rainbows." He almost smiles. "Beethoven. Nice." Of course the violinist recognizes a Beethoven quote.

Long fingers pluck the strings individually, then strum gently. Itzhak bites his lip, concentrating. He mutters, "I can't really play a guitar, it's all upside down." Still, after only a moment, he's noodling along, playing something that sounds not entirely unlike 'Sweet Caroline'. It's certainly passable, if no better than passable. Itzhak calms as he experiments, face softening, shoulders relaxing.

It's while he's distracting himself with music that he says, looking down at the guitar, "Stuff happened to me in prison that I don't talk about. Ever. And I don't think about it, neither. But sometimes...you know how it goes." He shrugs, eyes on the strings, fingers working the neck of the instrument. "Sometimes somethin' happens and I can't help thinking about it."

Cris meets that gaze for however long Itzhak holds it, searching the color of the man's irises there as if that's all the explanation he'll need. His own, normally a paler blue, look stormy and gray in a trick of lighting and emotion. "Pertenecían a mi hija." He mutters in Spanish, the confession easier to give in his native tongue. Even if Itzhak doesn't speak it, he's surely been around Ruiz long enough to know that Cruz mentions his daughter as Itzhak admires the stickers. The music comes, bringing a twitch of a smirk to his lips that quickly sobers when the story follows. All Cris can do is tilt back his head until it rests on the couch and mutter a, "Fuck." To the ceiling.

Itzhak grows a little more confident handling the guitar as he warms to it. "Where it began," he sings, still soft, "I can't begin to knowin'. But then I know it's growin' strong..." Barely a murmur, but on-key. He lifts his gaze to look at Cris again, his fingers never pausing. "It wasn't your fault." It's what he said to him that night, and he said it again. "You didn't know. You had no reason to know. And you've apologized ten times over. But, well. I wanted you to know. I don't need to forgive you for anything, Criskha. I just needed you to know."

He does understand 'mija', and he comes to several realizations at once. Then he's looking back down at the guitar. "Didn't know you had a daughter."

Cristobal lifts a hand rubbing at his eyes over the bridge of his nose. No, he had no way of knowing, but that doesn't mean he doesn't look like he feels like utter shit about it. Imagine that, Cris actually have an conscience for some of his actions. "Had, being the key word there." He makes a gesture over to the altar that's beginning to be set up, a statue of a Virgin Mary with a necklace wound and hanging from it, a few candles scattered at her feet and a milagro cross hanging above her head with a single charm tacked to it. And a tiny wallet photo of a little girl, no more than three.

Itzhak follows Cris's line of sight to the altar. The Virgin, the necklace, the candles, the cross, and the picture: he looks his fill of them all, his eyes flicking from object to object. Then, he's studying Cris. It doesn't surprise him that Cris has a conscience. Not in the least. "We say the Mourner's Kaddish for a year, after a death. When my pop died, I didn't say it, because I was," he shakes his curly dark head, smiling a little, ironically, "I was just so fucking mad at him. Ahhh, what did I know."

"Sofia Renee." Cristobal fills in his daughter's name as Itzhak studies the altar. He pitches forward to reach for his beer, but after a swig of it realizes this calls for something harder and he stands to wander back to the kitchen, only to retrieve a bottle of bourbon and a pair of glasses from the cupboard. "Losing faith is easy. Getting it back is the hard part. Did you ever...Kaddish for him later? When the anger faded and all you had left was a hole? I'm still trying to fill mine." A head tilt as he sets down the boozy offering and retakes his seat. "Phrasing."

"Shalom aleichem, Sofia Renee," Itzhak says to the picture, with every evidence of being completely serious. "You have a beautiful name." He finally has to stop playing in order to take up the bourbon, with which he salutes Cris. "L'chaim." Sipping, he considers the question. "No," he says, brief and flat. Then, more naturally, "No. Never did say Kaddish. Lost my faith pretty fuckin' thoroughly after that. Wouldn't do the meal blessings or the Shabbos prayers. God, my ma was furious. Wish I hadn't put her through that, yannow?" A little hitch of a smile at 'phrasing'.

"Her mother's eyes and my temper." Cris raises his glass, reaching to tink it quietly against Itzhak's own before he drinks to the phlegmy noise of cheers the other man gave. "My mother would have taken off her flip flop and beaten me half to death with it if I refused to say Grace at the dinner table. If you meet a Mexican who hasn't had the fear of La Chancla put into them, I'd like to shake their hand. I still flinch at their sound, and forbade my wife from ever owning a pair." Kidding? Hard to say. "So why the anger? With your dad, I mean."

Itzhak laughs, just a couple breaths or so. "I grew up around a ton of Cubans and Puerto Ricans. I know all about La Chancla. Caught it a time or two myself, them ladies don't give a fuck whose son they're disciplining. Jews, we don't do that so much." He tips the glass to watch light chase around the surface of the liquor. "He died in a car crash. They told us he was blind drunk. I didn't even know he drank. He was always gentle, even though he'd been in Vietnam and he didn't do so good with it. Then I'm told some man died who's supposed to be my father? Whoever that man was, he couldn't be him. Musta been some mistake, you know?" That he's holding a glass of hard liquor while telling Cris this story doesn't escape him, but he just drinks more of it anyway. "What happened to your daughter?"

"Rough." Cristobal says of the way Itzhak's father went, and why. Nodding along to the notion as to why that would raise a son's ire so high that he wouldn't pray after his death. The question of his daughter though, makes him drink more. Harder. A gulp and then another before his throat is wet and numb enough again to answer. "Cancer. Stomach cancer. It wasn't quick." He waggles his finger at the guitar, "Do you know Madonna's La Isla Bonita? That was her favorite. That's what I used to play for her..."

Itzhak grimaces, gives a little shake of his head. "That fuckin' sucks," he mutters. Almost he says something else, but doesn't. He raises his eyebrows at the request. "Yeah. I can figure it out. None of that stuff is hard." Experimenting again, he tries out a few chords and rhythms, finding the right ones with the ease of somebody who is very well versed in music theory. "There we go," he murmurs, settling to it. Eyes drifting half-shut, he lifts his voice and sings.

"Last night I dreamt of San Pedro
Just like I'd never gone, I knew the song
A young girl with eyes like the desert
It all seems like yesterday, not far away
Tropical the island breeze
All of nature wild and free
This is where I long to be
La isla bonita..."

"Yeah. It really did." Suck. Cristobal manages a bit of a smirk, but it curls his lip towards a sneer that seems to be aimed inward rather than at the man also occupying his couch. He watches as Itzhak's fingers move over the fret, figuring out the chords. He even sings along the first little bit, but somehow when it gets to 'eyes like the desert', his voice seems to give out. He's clearing his throat roughly, reaching out to slap Itzhak on the shoulder before he can continue onto the next verse. "Yeah. You're allowed to touch the guitar." He declares as he stands, "I need a smoke."