2020-08-14 - Duelling Violins

Overthinking is human instinct. It's natural to get engrossed or think about certain things. Nothing to be afraid or ashamed of. However, if overthinking is driving you into a pool of negative thoughts, it is surely something to be a little worried about. In such a case, by overthinking, you are only creating problems that aren't there. You can't change certain things in the past or control what happens in the future, so learn the art of controlling one's thoughts and emotions. Learn to let go and live your life to the fullest.

A therapist said that to Ravn Abildgaard once. He paid her a fair bit of money and hence, a fair bit of attention, but whenever he thinks back to that day in her pleasant office, he has to shake his head and think it was a waste of both. Learn the art of controlling your thoughts and emotions. Learn to let go. Apparently, the solution to anxieties is to learn to eat your cake and have it too. He did take half of her rather silly advice to consideration, though. It's been a couple of rough years -- at least by his standards, which he will admit are quite sheltered compared to those of some other people he's met along the way -- and getting out into the world did indeed help him to learn to control his emotions and his anxieties. There are few problems that cannot be solved by flashing a friendly smile, deploying a carefully considered approach, and indeed, not getting too attached to anything or anyone. Transient guests are we.

Part of being a chronic overthinker is that you learn to spot problems before they become problems. Yachting people are very often entitled windbags who don't quite grasp that having the biggest boat doesn't make you king of the pier. Ravn can't be bothered to deal with the inevitable complaints if he was to take out his violin and get some practise in, on the deck of the Vagabond -- and it would indeed have to be on the deck, in full view of everybody, because the Vagabond isn't big enough that you can stand up comfortably below deck, nevermind play an instrument. The obvious solution is to not play, or find somewhere else to play.

You can use my fuckin' garage if it's that big a deal, nobody's gonna complain there.

And there's the solution. The lanky fellow with the New York accent and the name of a Danish noble family or a small hamlet in Schleswig -- Rosencrantz, first name Itzhak. At the time, Ravn had pretended to not hear the offer; but the other man managed to corner him on playing anyhow, and -- everything was all right. It was fun. Playing Brahm's Violin Concerto together, surf licking at their feet, sun rising over the ocean like somebody had paid well in advance for the appropriate cinematic effects.

The urge to make music is what drives Ravn to find some deli in Gray Harbor that caters to kosher customers. He has no idea whether Rosencrantz is a practising Jew and very little idea what that actually entails -- but if he shops in a place catering to the faith then things can't go all wrong. There is the matter of the dead man on the beach as well -- a Park Ranger, the morning paper said. The pictures of the contents of the dead man's wallet are safely stored in Ravn's cell phone -- with a copy quietly uploaded to storage on the ISP his blog lives on. He wants to get the other man's opinion on that whole situation too - but primarily, it's the promise of music that pulls at him and the bag of bagels he's picked up on the way.

Here's to hoping turning up with bagels isn't going to come across completely like some crazy stalker, the Dane thinks and knocks on the door of the garage. And a good thing, indeed, that I am not actually prone to overthinking things because then I'd worry about that. Which I don't. All sunshine and smiles, me. Always.

Itzhak has a certain way about him like that. Cranky enthusiasm bounding along like a puppy who really needs a nap.

His garage, Steelhead...or was it Salmon Garage?...Steelhead, right? no, Salmon. It must have always been Salmon. Anyway it's in the late stages of construction, where there's about a million square miles of wiring to run and half a million details to attend to, but otherwise it's operational. It's small, only three bays, but it has a gracefully arched roof and is fronted with garage doors of tempered glass. It looks rather like a fancy high-end European auto shop. There's a gorgeous deep plum-purple Stingray parked out front, and music coming from within. Not Itzhak, for once; he's working while lively bluegrass plays. He's wearing coveralls tied at his waist and his long wiry arms are bare--he's wearing a tank top--and showing his spectacular sleeve on his left arm, and the weird scarring and more ink on his right.

"It's open!" he yells from inside.

"I bring bribes," Ravn murmurs as he wanders inside and looks around. The choice of music bodes well; he's a long time Creedence Clearwater Revival fan boy, regretting through-out a lifetime that the band split up nearly twenty years before he was even born. Holding up the bag of bagels much in the manner of a shield or sacrifice to a potentially angry volcano deity about to emerge from the mechanic's pit he wanders towards the mechanic in question. "I can come back another time if you're busy, though. Figured I'd check on you and... Well, check on you. Not every day somebody finds a corpse in their sandcastle, I figure, not even in Grey Harbor."

Itzhak, tall lanky guy that he is, is standing on a ladder and doing something with a hanging overhead light. He squints down at Ravn. "Hey, pal! Bribes? Oh man I LOVE bribes." He makes his way down the ladder and, grabbing a rag out of his back pocket to clean his hands, comes swagging on over. The dude seems to swagger as his default stride. Then up go the eyebrows. "Yeah. Well it ain't the body that bothers me so much, yannow? It's the weird Cthulhu octopus thing and the runes. And that it's a ranger. More fucked up Gray Harbor shit. Though the body was pretty gross but it wasn't like that time at church."

When the gunman got his brains blown out, Itzhak means.

For a guy who'll cheerfully proclaim to be a quiet academic with a background of nothing interesting happening ever except that time Aunt Amalie's cat got stuck in the pear tree, Ravn seems quite casual about the whole violent death happens weekly thing Grey Harbor appears to have going on. He holds up the bag of bagels and waves it a bit like one might wave a biscuit at a playful puppy. "Briiibes."

Then he nods and watches the other man wipe clean his mitts. "That fellow at the church -- I never found out what that was all about. I got completely distracted by the Headless Horseman. I mean, one moment I'm watching someone's brains decorate the church floor and the next I'm running through the woods with Dante Taylor. I think that was about the moment I decided to stay -- er, not because I'm keen on people getting hurt but because I figured that I'd seen enough that I wouldn't be able to leave anyway if I tried. Hotel California and all that jazz."

He looks around for a convenient surface to place his bagels and his bag on, preferably one without engine grease or paint. "I might go ask questions. About the park ranger. Somebody ought to, and it was pretty obvious that the other park ranger wanted us to."

"Smells like fresh bagels, awwww yeah." Itzhak beckons Ravn over to the little sitting area he has set up. It's some cozy thrifted armchairs, a battered thrifted table, a thrifted sideboard, and a thifted rug. It doesn't fit in with the airy, light-filled garage, but, "Place didn't have a waiting area when I got it, so I did this. I coulda put one in during remodeling but I figured why mess with a good thing?" There's paper plates on the sideboard, plastic utensils, and coffee.

He doesn't reply to anything about the gunman, just grunts, "yeah I dunno," and then laughs under his breath. "Taylor's a real good guy. I'd run with him through the woods anytime. You'd probably be a pretty good candidate to ask people stuff. You're like, chill and likeable. You know, the opposite of me."

"Looks good to me -- this place looks pretty high class on the whole. Not sure what I was expecting -- when Danes say 'garage' they really mean 'carport', not mechanic's shop. Purple thing out front certainly looks fancy -- and I guess that tells you a lot about what I know about cars, doesn't it? I don't even recognise the brand." Ravn surrenders the goodies; as fresh from the oven as you can get without eating them in the actual bakery.

Then his lip curls into a small, wry grin at the other man's observations. "Good at stapling a polite smile to my face, you mean. That's Danes for you. We don't do middle ground -- we're either all up in your face or so polite and proper that we give the British inferiority complexes. I'm pretty careful, also, because there's so much I don't know about American culture that it's not even funny. I still haven't figured out whether I'm supposed to call you Itzhak or Mr Rosencrantz, for example."

Laughing a little more, Itzhak says, "Well, high class it ain't. Looks a lot fancier than it is. I did that on purpose. Previously the place was a low box, exactly like everything else in the PNW built in the sixties. That purple thing is a Corvette Stingray. Her name is Heartbreaker."

Now that Ravn's properly inside, there's one more major feature of the garage: an enormous terrarium built into the back wall. It houses an also enormous brilliant white snake with bright yellow drips and drabs along her length. She's coiling her way up a big, thick branch. Itzhak nods in the direction of the terrarium. "That's Lemondrop. Don't worry, she's not hungry. God, don't call me Mr. Rosencrantz, makes me feel like a judge is talking to me. You can call me either Itzhak," which is said in almost a Scandinavian fashion, actually, "or Rosencrantz. No misters. I hate the mister. And...yeah, that's exactly what I mean, but I didn't think to put it like that."

Hope Ravn came to talk, because talking, it's happening.

Ravn wanders over to the terrarium right away to look at the beautiful animal inside. "She's gorgeous. Python of some kind? I don't know a thing about snakes and reptiles either except that they're beautiful. A pet shop owner asked me to hold a constrictor once while he cleaned the cage -- I'm pretty sure he was joking, but the joke came home to roost when the silly thing decided it was nice and warm under my shirt and the guy had to take me to the employee bathroom to undress to get it back off me. I gave very serious thought to adopting it only, well, I'm too squeamish to feed them live mice." Says the man who didn't look particularly disturbed about pick-pocketing a bloated, headless corpse.

Maybe talk is happening isn't Ravn's vision of a nightmare day, either. At least he turns and grins. "See, that's the thing. To me, using the first name is the normal thing. Last name only -- you're probably military or something along those lines. Mister last name -- you're either super formal, a very conservative wealthy guy, or I'm deliberately trying to piss you off. I struggle to find the balance sometimes because you Americans all introduce yourself as Bob and Jack but talk about each other as Smith and Jones. Think I'll go for Itzhak if that's all right."

Itzhak glances up from the bagels and smiles. A real smile, this, full and brilliant, for just a flash of a moment. "Python reticulatus. She's a reticulated python with a fancy paint job. There's an equally fancy name for her color but why use it? I don't need to call her a supertiger albino sunfire or whatevah, she's just my baby." And the story of the snake crawling into Ravn's shirt just makes him laugh. "Yeah they do that. Down the shirt, seems like a nice warm dark place to hide. Well, I got good news for you, buddy, you don't feed 'em live mice except under very rare circumstances, like they absolutely won't eat anything else. It's dangerous to feed 'em live food, prey don't always sit there waiting to be eaten. It fights back. Lemka eats rabbits and whole chickens and stuff like that. All dead, though. You buy 'em frozen and thaw them out for feeding. You gotta feed them the whole animal, fur and feathers and all, to keep 'em healthy."

Also hope Ravn came for a lecture on feeding snakes.

Coming over to help Ravn admire Lemondrop, Itzhak goes on, the motormouth. "Ehhh I call damn near everybody by their last names. I don't know yours so I can't call you it. Hey baby girl, how you doin'?" he croons to the giant snake. She flickers her tongue out, looking at him, then Ravn.

"Abildgaard," Ravn murmurs, watching the snake with the admiration of someone who thinks snakes are beautiful animals, and more so when he's not the one who needs to convince them to eat a smelly dead bird or an adorable baby bunny. "Mister Abildgaard is my father, though, and he's not only quite dead, I'd prefer for him to stay dead -- which, I'm given to understand, is not necessarily the convention in Grey Harbor."

That must remind him of something; at least he turns around. "I talked to -- Clayton." Alexander? Clayton is probably the safe bet. Oh, the trials and tribulations of a non-native speaker. "Wiry fellow, twitchy, everyone tells you to talk to him about anything Grey Harbor? He turned up just as the police was cleaning up the beach, wanted to know what happened. Gave me quite the pep talk about the dead guy's wallet -- not so much that I nicked it as about obstructing policework. Talked about contaminating evidence and most murders being solved within twenty-four hours or not at all. I handed the wallet in to the police, of course. Just took pictures of everything in it first. So, I guess, don't be surprised if he comes around to ask you about it -- he seemed worried how you'd be dealing with things."

"Abildgaard." Itzhak can pronounce that pretty damn good, although his New York accent sort of turns 'gaard' into a honk. He shoots Ravn a wry sideways glance. "Yeah. Dead people don't always stay so dead here."

The siren lure of the bagels takes him back over to the sideboard. Then he's laughing again, listening to Ravn's encounter with Alexander. "Now there's someone I call by his first name. He gets mad if you call him by a nickname. It's adorable." Quite a lot of fondness is in his tone as he digs out a bagel, redolent of rosemary and crusted with salt. "The guy knows his procedures, you oughta listen to him. You don't have to do what he says, but he knows a lot about crime and murder and weird shit. You better know the rules so you know what you're getting into when you pickpocket a corpse."

He's taking a bite of the bagel when Ravn says Alexander seemed worried, and his eyebrows drift up, giving him a poignant, wistful expression. "Really? He's worried about me?"

"He seemed worried about you, yes. Said you have enough to deal with as is, something along those lines." Ravn settles and picks out a bagel for himself too. "And, I will. Fellow clearly knows what he's talking about -- and I don't. I'm not too proud to get put in my place when I'm about to do something stupid, particularly not when the guy putting people in places clearly is a bit of an expert in his field. He didn't tell me what to do. Just what would be the right thing to do. Subtle difference, I know, but... You know. Besides, not like he had to explain anything to some clueless out of town tourist like me so I figure that in some way, I owe him one for being candid."

Mm, bagel. Not a pastry that really exists in Denmark outside of those towns big enough to sport Starbucks, wannabe American food shops, or kosher delis. One of the better things about the US as far as Ravn is concerned. "There seems to be two kinds of people in this town, really. People who think a stranger should just go on being a stranger, go right on, get out of here, go be a stranger somewhere else. And people who are all, you should get out of here but you're not so we're going to adopt you and explain everything to you. Strange as it sounds, Grey Harbor is probably one of the friendliest places I've come through -- most people in most places don't care about some drifter at all. Here I'm... Heh. I've come to know more people in two weeks here than I used to meet in six months back home."

"Oh I just bet he didn't tell you what to do. Didn't tell you but he looked at you like you're a dog caught getting on the counter and eating an entire pizza." So Itzhak knows Alexander pretty well, apparently, and this image amuses the heck out of him, from the crooked half-smile. He swallows his bite of chewy fresh bagel and rolls his eyes in appreciation. "God damn that's good." He gestures at Ravn with it. "Yeah, the thing is, we're pretty much at war here. And that makes us bond. Us against Them. Where 'us' is us who got the Song, and Them is...you know. Them. So when someone's 'us', yeah, we kinda rally around 'em. Don't blame me for this hot take by the way, Roen's the one who explained it to me."

"Myes -- it's a take I can get behind, though." Ravn remembers Alexander Clayton's eyes trying to bore into his skull -- not telling him what to do, indeed, but certainly making his opinion of what the right thing to do painfully clear.

He sits back a little on the chair and takes a breath that's slightly deeper than the norm. "I feel I owe you an apology. For the -- I made you feel like I'd lied to you about the whole violin affair. I didn't mean to. It's just -- if you tell people who actually care about music that you play, then they want you to play. If you tell them, on the other hand, that you're kind of half-decent at it, their mental process usually goes something like, oh god, how can I avoid having this bloke torture a cat at me and expect praise for it. For what it's worth, I'm sorry if I came across like a total drama queen. I'm not used to playing with other people unless you count doing a few reels for bus fare."

Itzhak tears up the bagel and eats it bit by bit while Ravn talks. He leans a narrow hip against the sideboard and keeps his eyes on what he's doing. But that he's listening, of that there is no doubt. He listens like a musician listens, intently, silently counting syllables and noting prosody, stitching the pieces together into a whole.

"Ehhh," he says, eventually, stretching the vowel out like taffy. Like Mel Brooks and Bugs Bunny, this guy's accent. "Apology accepted. But I don't get it." His hazel eyes flick up to Ravn's face, taking in data, and drop down again. "I don't get it because I know every single minute you spent sweating over ya instrument. I spent 'em too. Spent over half my life with my violin..." he cuts off abruptly, a flash of pain in his eyes, then grimaces horribly as if he's bitten into an aspirin, and goes on. "We worked. For years." Itzhak turns his hands both palm-side-up, rolls his long calloused fingers into loose fists. "You know how good you are, I mean, you must, right? So why hide it? That's what I don't get."

"I don't like -- the attention." Ravn looks at his bagel. "That whole thing about plastering on a polite smile -- I wasn't joking about that. I'm not a people person. I can pretend, definitely. Talking to people I'm never going to see again, no problem. I'm not used to connecting with people, though. And the idea of having everyone looking at me is utterly horrifying. I spent my whole childhood fighting my mum to be allowed to continue playing because while it was her idea, she never intended for me to get absorbed in it, she just wanted to be able to say, 'my son plays' at tennis club. I freeze up inside when people start really paying attention to me. And I have no idea why I'm making you listen to this like you were my therapist. Sorry about that."

"Hey, I asked," Itzhak says, raising his eyebrows like Ravn's being kinda silly. "Would I ask if I didn't wanna know? So, you really never played in front of anybody? No recitals? Never joined a band or an orchestra?"

Ravn shakes his head. "I've done a fair bit of busking. You know. Couple of Irish reels, Devil Went Down to Georgia, toss in Bad Moon Rising for good measure since everyone knows it. Thing about busking is, people waiting at a bus station or in the subway don't know anything about music. They just see some guy with a violin and hey, toss him a dollar for being more interesting than the departure plan, and then he's forgotten. I play -- for me. It's my escape. But I -- did enjoy playing with you on the beach the other night," he adds. "Even if I made a complete idiot out of myself."

Itzhak grunts an acknowledging sound in his chest. "Did some busking too, but it wasn't worth my time pretty quick." His expression warms up when Ravn says the violin is his escape. "Yeah," he says, quieter. "Me too. But I been in plenty of bands, been in youth orchestra, done more open mic nights than I could count. Way I was educated, I was taught to play in front of people. So, hey, listen, it don't matter if you don't wanna. I thought you were struggling. Thought I could help ya out and you were too shy to ask." Finally, half a smile. "Didn't expect Brahms comin' outta you. I had a good time too. Actually I had a fantastic time, don't know when I last played like that with another violinist. I hope you wanna at least keep playing with me."

"I do," Ravn confirms with surprising enthusiasm. "It was absolutely fantastic. I think I understand now why anyone would in fact want to be in an orchestra or band. Sharing that experience with somebody else --" He drifts off a moment, remembering the salt water, the flying music critics known as sea gulls, the backdrop of sound of the surf lapping against the rocky shore.

Then the Dane snaps back to this reality. "There's something else I need to ask you about too, though. Something more -- serious. Am I right to think that I overheard somebody, somewhere say you're in a relationship with the police captain? I'm asking because I found out some things about the dead guy in your sand snake and I was thinking that the police might want to know if they don't already. Not sure what the procedure is, though, and I imagine they'd be wondering why some barback on the pier thinks he knows anything at all about ritual murders. But maybe I could tell you -- I was going to, anyway -- and you could pass it on, or tell me whom to talk to, or whatever the appropriate thing to do is."

That enthusiasm on a man he damn near dragooned into playing violin with him makes Itzhak's entire posture relax. It wasn't so obvious he was tense, other than he seems always tense and on the cranky side. "Exactly," he murmurs, tipping a forefinger at Ravn, his eyebrows tilting up in the middle.

He too has drifted off a little, returning to those glorious few moments, and many moments like them in the past. Then he refocuses. "That's my guy," he agrees with a really quite smitten curve to his mouth. "But listen, he ain't exactly out. Even though we live together and everybody knows. So don't talk a lot about it, yeah? Gay and living with a man is the kind of thing a police captain can't be. Even though everybody fuckin' knows," he adds, rolling his eyes. "As long as the guys on the force don't get it shoved in their face, they can live and let live."

Interim Chief of Police, but Itzhak doesn't call Ruiz that.

"Well one, you could talk to him yaself. The cops know, Niall called 'em in. But most of them don't do the weird shit. To be real honest, de la Vega doesn't do much weird shit either, and he might be grumpy at you--don't tell him I said so though." Itzhak's eyes glint with mischief. "When it comes to weird shit, we don't have a procedure so much. We just kinda show up and get it done. So tell me, what's up? Finding that body kinda ruined my day."

"Right." Ravn takes mental notes. "I get that. Denmark's pretty open about the gay thing but that doesn't mean we don't have our religious people and our bigots too. Whoever was talking left out the keep this quiet bit."

He dips into a pocket and takes out his cellphone, tapping up pictures on it. "The symbols on the guy is the important thing. It's cuneiform script -- really old writing, one of the first alphabets man invented. I thought it might be something along those lines -- or some Lovecraft fan's silly attempts to make it look as if it was -- so I sent a copy of the picture to a friend who teaches ancient middle-eastern cultures at the University of Copenhagen. Turns out it's ancient Sumerian writing. It's a name, the name of a dragon god of destruction, Kur." He calls up the email that said friend sent and reads aloud,

I am not afraid of you. Of any of you’ she said out loud, and she meant it. ‘ You are my half brother, Kur, and so are the dark little ones. And somehow I feel there is beauty within you all, even if you and others don’t have eyes to see. But I have. Dive into your Essence, brother, search for the seed that brought you, me and all into being. I also came from that seed. There you will find what unite us, what make us One of a Kind with the One who is All Kinds.

"But it's a little confusing to me at least because Kur is also the land of the dead in that mythology, in the same way that Tiamat is the queen of the sea and the ocean. So on the bottom line, I think it's safe to say that we're dealing with someone who either really knows this stuff, or has overdosed severely on Wikipedia in an attempt to throw the police off the lead."

Itzhak shrugs. "It's a weird kinda thing. Ain't a secret, but, it's kind of a secret? And I mean, look at me." He flicks his fingers down at himself, not without humor, indicating 'all this'. "I'm queer as a three-dollar bill. There's an Americanism for ya!" Snappoint, bam, Ravn just got Americanismized.

Anyway, there's creepy shit to address, and Itzhak pushes off the sideboard to come sit in one of the armchairs, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "Yeah, yeah, like Hades is the god of the dead and also the land of the dead," he says, reasonably unfazed by that part at least. "Oh. Cuneiform? I watched a thing on Discovery channel about that. Okay, well, who's Kur's sister?"

The helpful person at Copenhagen U even sent back a cleaned up version of the cuneiform glyphs. Ravn pulls them up next, showing them to Itzhak. "Ereshkigal, I think. This is not my field, I should add. It's been literally a decade or more since I had to read any of this in introductory classes. But it's the sort of thing that's easy to pull up on the internet once you know what you're after, so if I wanted to make a body look like I'm basically going Call of Cthulhu on it... I mean, I have this idea that an actual occult killer would pick something more obscure. Unless, of course, we're to assume that the Sumerian gods are about to emerge in Grey Harbor in which case I need to buy a proper camera."

Itzhak has to admit, "I got no idea what an occult killer would do." He doesn't venture an opinion on whether Sumerian gods are about to emerge in Gray Harbor, but he does look intensely uncomfortable over the idea. Like he considers it way too plausible.

"Did ya notice his neck was seared off, too?" He gestures at his throat. "Like it was cut with a lightsaber."

Ravn frowns. "I didn't. I didn't really get a close look at him besides the bit where I stole his wallet. I'm starting to think that maybe I want to hit the library later and brush up a bit on Babylonian myths. I figured I'll check out the places on his loyalty cards too -- particularly that barbershop, the card that the glyphs were drawn on too. Might just have been whatever he had a hand when he looked them up somewhere but... I mean, the least I can do is find out if someone else checked out Sumerian Horrors 101 at the library last week. Have you told the police about this?"

The Dane fishes out another bagel; decapacitated bodies freshly in mind isn't going to deter him from good food. "I'm kind of torn between minding my own business and not trying to play private eye, and well, doing exactly that. I've got no illusions that I'm the only person in Gray Harbor who's ever read a book, I mean. But if this is the start of something... Let's say Gray Harbor is going to do its thing. I think we should find out what we can. And make sure to find time to play in the surf too, because if we're all going to get swallowed up by the dragon sea, at least I want to go out to proper music."

Itzhak grabs another bagel too, because why not, and tears a chunk off it. "Mmmf. Okay, one, nobody minds their own business in this town. You can't afford to if you got the Song. Business is gonna come mind you sooner or later. Two, I think that--" pronounced dat--"all sounds right up your alley, pal. You're a folklorist? Here's some god damn folklore. Do ya thing. Harper Price is the librarian here, she's amazing, you want her on your side. Leon and I guess that was his girl, I dunno them too well, Leon's an ex-military guy, we're lousy with 'em. Probably everybody and their mother told you to talk to Alexander and Roen. And three, I fuckin' agree. We oughta work out what we can before more bodies start washing up.

"What I can do, I dunno, I sure ain't no scientist or researcher." Itzhak eats another chunk of bagel. "I'm a frikkin' mechanic. But I can do some pretty baller stuff, with the Song."

"I met Harper at the library last week," Ravn confirms. "Very lovely lady. I think I made an all right impression on her -- at least she offered to help me with whatever research I might want to do on Gray Harbor, so it can't have been all terrible. I'm definitely going to go brush up on my Middle East creation myths, and if she wants to help out, I'm definitely not turning her away, you know? I'll see about Alexander and Roen -- I've brushed against Roen a few times at the bar, but he's the kind of man everyone knows and needs to talk to, and from what I've seen, he got put through the wringer himself. After getting stabbed in church, at that. Gray Harbor does seem to go hardest on the people who seem to be closest to the centre, doesn't it?"

"She's a feisty one," Itzhak says, fondly. He raises his eyebrows in rueful agreement about Roen. "That guy has been through seven flavors of hell. I'd tell you he's my friend, because he is, but..." he fidgets with the bagel, turning it around in his fingers, not looking at Ravn. "He's more than that. Not that we're dating, he flat out told me I was way too much for him." Then he has to think for a little while about what, in fact, he wants to say.

"He told me once," he says, venturing, "that sometimes the right people just walk into your life. They walk right past all the barriers you put up to keep people out and suddenly they're a piece of your puzzle you can't imagine living without. That's Roen, for me. There ain't no word in English for what I have with him, but he means the world to me. I'm telling you this," and he glances up, hitting Ravn with full-force eye contact, "so you know how I feel when he gets stabbed in a church and brains blown out all over him."

Itzhak never seems to look anybody in the eye, taking pains to avoid it, but he's looking Ravn in the eye now.

The Dane's blue-grey eyes are in their own way as intense; he's the sort of man who watches people on the sly, and generally tries to be forthcoming but not stare directly at people. He lets Itzhak pin him now, though, and returns the look -- there's a lot of communication going on there, after a fashion. Things that don't quite have words in either language.

At length he murmurs, "I've never been that close to anyone. But I think I do know what you mean. And I think it says a lot about a man that he inspires others to feel that way about him. You have to be a pretty good person to do that. And I figure that everyone tells me to talk to Roen because he is somebody worth talking to. Somebody they trust."

Itzhak's eyes are gray, with radiating lines of color in browns and greens. Sometimes they seem almost green, sometimes, almost amber. Mostly they're this grayish hazel. They're clear and at the moment, fierce. Itzhak, it should be obvious by this point, is a man of many passions. He offers Ravn a charming dip of the head, almost an abbreviated soloist's bow. "You get it. I knew you would." He thumps the arm of Ravn's armchair in affirmation. "Now didja come here to listen to me gossip or do you wanna play some fuckin' fiddle?"

"Well, we do make a nice pair of gossiping housewives, don't we?" Ravn may pretend to play coy but the gleam in his eyes betrays him. Ye-es, he's brought his instrument. And he is indeed aching to put the bow to the strings and lose himself in the world of sound. He fiddles with his bag (ha?) and the black case appears. "Think we could make this a regular thing? A play date, if you'll excuse the god-awful pun?"

Itzhak grins ferociously. "Buddy, I thought you'd never ask."