2020-08-26 - Wagers if By Sea

The afternoon sun smiles on the Two if By Sea's two level deck; the tables under the umbrellas crowd with yachters and tourists at this hour but one can still find a place to sit -- particularly if one has a reputation of the sort that means one might just pick up two loaves of bread, slap them on somebody's ears and call them an idiot sandwich if one gets annoyed. There are, apparently, perks to being a celebrity chef. Ravn has figured this one out, at least; as he comes off his shift as a bar back, he replaces the bright yellow rubber gloves of his work with his own black kidskin ones and settles at a table of his own with a cold draft beer. He's in no hurry to go home just because his work day is done; he either likes it here, or the odds of getting paparazzied are higher on the pier below. Or maybe it's simply that he's also grabbed a plate of onion rings because the Vagabond doesn't have cooking facilities for much more than heating water for coffee.

It's a beautiful day. The seagulls circle. The surf laps against the rocks of the beach. Children's laughter floats up from below. Gray Harbor is deceptively pleasant and welcoming today. It must be up to something.

Clifford missed the shift change, arriving at the bar just a few minutes after Ravn got settled out on the deck. Most days, the story would end there, a missed connection, two ships passing in the night. But this isn't most days. Or nights. It's a downright beautiful afternoon, and Cliff has every intention of enjoying his beer out on the deck in the sunshine and sea breeze. He doesn't start a tab, paying for his pint in full and leaving a reasonable tip before he heads out into all that wonderful weather. The accountant has managed actual casual today with jeans and a tee shirt, even if neither looks like they've ever seen the elements before, the denim a crisp blue, the tee shirt a soft heather grey. Even his sneakers are well-maintained despite some wear on the soles, some scuffs around the edges.

He starts toward the railing, like he might just park himself there, watching people playing on the beach, but the recently familiar sight of dark gloves in late summer catches his eye. Smiling, he heads toward Ravn and takes up a seat nearby. "Gorgeous, isn't it?"

"It really is, though. And no one's even asked for my autograph in the last hour." The other man's eyes glitter with amusement. "Pull up a chair if you like -- how's life?" Ravn seems to have turned the combination of jeans, shirt -- tee today, turtleneck yesterday -- and blazer into his ensemble of choice. To the casual eye, he is a casual dresser, just formal enough that he could get away with it in any office related to creative processes and relaxed enough to not stand out in a crowd. To a somewhat more alert eye, though -- such as that of a man like Clifford who clearly pays quite a bit of attention to his own sartorial choices -- there are small give-aways that perhaps the Dane isn't, or wasn't always quite so casual. The wristwatch is a little too expensive; the cut of the blazer fits a little too well to have been picked up from a rack; the boots are a little too well made. Tiny things.

"I'm finding myself in no particular rush to go home at least," Ravn says with a light smile, nibbling on an onion ring and watching a couple of kids dash past below in pursuit of a frisbee. "This is hardly a feast fit for kings but the sun and the sea makes up for it, don't you think?"

Clifford tips his head to one side, shoulder lifting ever so slightly in an uneven shrug, a noncommittal answer to the general question about life. Presumably his in particular. "Business is steady enough. Plenty of estates to settle." Morbid though that fact might be, he lifts his glass in toast to his continued employment, the misfortune of some of Gray Harbor's citizens helping him pay his rent. Setting the glass down, he reclines and draws a deep breath, taking in the ocean air... and the greasy onion rings. A brief crinkle of his nose suggests he might not be in agreement about that particular snack, but he doesn't let that distaste linger as he counters, "The company doesn't hurt either," though it's unclear whether he's referring to himself or Ravn. "No writing today?"

"Today I've been doing the job that actually pays my boat rent," Ravn says with a grin and nods in the direction of the bar. "I'm a bar back here. Glamorous it ain't but I am getting to meet a lot of people, hear all kinds of stories. Have to say I rather enjoy it. The writing, on the other hand -- that's purely recreational. If my blog has nine readers, eight of them got there by accidental Googling. You're in real estate, then? What's the market like?"

A few tourists point and talk among themselves as they pause in walking past but mercifully decide to keep on moving. Ravn looks after them a moment and then glances at the other man speculatively. "Say, has anything... changed for you, lately? Like, you thought you were a meek real estates salesman but people keep telling you that you're actually a world famous wrestler, something like that?"

Clifford winces sympathetically when Ravn makes mention of his paying job. The accountant's manicured hands would surely not survive that sort of work. His ego would take an even bigger hit if he had to wear those yellow rubber gloves. Still, when the bar back assures he enjoys the position, he nods agreeably, that concern easily shed, like maybe it wasn't all that sincere to begin with. Hard to tell. "Accounting," he corrects. "Less concerned about the actual property left behind than its value and appropriate distribution." Which is to say that he might not have the best read on the current housing market in Gray Harbor, a shrug all he provides for part two of that inquiry.

Though the onlookers earn a flicker of curiosity and a friendly enough smile, most of his focus is on the horizon, nothing in particular holding his focus for too terribly long. "I've never been meek," is the first point he feels the need to correct, a dashing grin flashed toward the Dane. "But no." His lips purse, smile going flat. "Still the prodigal son who never came back to help his family when his mom got sick last year. Everybody seems really stuck on that one."

Ravn decides against prying on that account. "There are some pretty insane stories going around. Røn ditching his fiancee for some younger girl. A couple of people being labelled Russian spies. Absurd things. Such as myself being a Swedish master chef. Absolutely pulled out of someone's backside. Don't be too surprised when someone asks if you're really Clark Kent." He sips his beer and picks out another onion ring to nibble on. "I guess it's Grey Harbor doing something again. It's not a prank -- I thought at first, but people really do believe it. That shops have changed names overnight and people aren't whom they claim to be."

"There's a reason I don't wear my glasses outside of my office," Clifford teases when his potential alternate identity is suggested. It's easier to answer that serious concern with humor, gives him some time to let that information settle, to take a longer pull of his IPA. His lower lip slips over his upper lip to clear away a thin foam mustache as he sets his glass back down, mood a little dimmer when he tilts his head in Ravn's direction again. "There are definitely reasons to get out of town and not come back." Yet here he is. For better or worse. "I wouldn't get too worked up about it. The more you let stuff around here get to you, the worse it all gets until all your patience is worn thin and--" His hands come up to gesture, curled up then exploding outward like a small explosion. "I wouldn't stick around too long. If I were you."

"Everyone tells me that," Ravn murmurs and takes another sip of his draft beer. "And I get it. I mean, I do get it. People here get hurt. Mentally and physically. People disappear, people die. People break. The funny thing is, though --"

He pauses a bit and looks at the ocean as if he's really only quite piecing it together himself at this point. It's clicking into place, that last piece of the puzzle.

Then he looks back to the accountant and says, "The funny thing is, this place can't do much to me that life hasn't done somewhere else already. Sure, it can traumatise me physically, and I'm sure it will. But the important things? Life here is simply just that much better for me that I don't really care."

Clifford watches Ravn as he speaks, patient while he works through his thoughts on Gray Harbor. Whatever doubt he wears goes unvoiced until after he's heard the man out. And, even then, it's marked only with a dubious, "Mm," at first. It's not exactly polite to ask how life's gaslighted the guy prior to his arrival here, where the inconsistency of reality is just a fact of life. "There's the view," he allows, with a nod toward the beach. "The small town feel. The pace. The company." With a gesture to himself, he adds, "Family." One might guess he's gone down this list a time or twelve before, reminding himself that there are things about Gray Harbor that he likes quite a bit. "I do think you underestimate its ability to traumatize you psychologically. It'll show you how terrible you can be." He flashes a rueful smile as soon as those words are spoken. "Anyway. How'd you find your way out here in the first place?"

"Got into an argument with the truck driver who was giving me a ride to Portland. Chucked me out on my arse on Main Street here, saying that the European shitmonkey could find another ride." Ravn grins slightly at the memory and then looks back at the other man. "I don't doubt that this is Hell. Literally, some kind of Hell. It's just that to me, that's a good thing because literal Hell means the demons are real and I can punch them in the face. This is not a small town to me -- I grew up in a town of seventeen hundred people -- and I've got no living relatives besides a maternal aunt who thinks I'm a waste of space. To me, a place like this, where I can actually make a bit of a difference, where there are other people like me -- it may be Hell, but it's the Hell I belong in, instead of just the Hell I seem to be wandering through at random."

He falls silent for a bit, then shakes his head. "Well, don't I sound like an emo teen now. My life's been pretty comfortable. Just very, very boring. Here is not boring." Thus speaks entitlement, indeed.

Clifford might be curious about the nature of that argument, but he also might know that the details don't matter. Chances are, the discord was just a result of driving through Gray Harbor, the disagreement exceedingly trivial. "Boring isn't a bad thing," says the accountant... but he's quick to hold up a hand in surrender, fairly certain the blogger might contest that point. When that hand drops, he leans a little closer to Ravn, voice dropped lower, eye contact held a bit more steadily. "It's a nice picture you paint. Adversaries you can fight. Someone you can punish for all the awful things that happen in your life. But that's not how it always plays out. What this place really does, when it gets down to it? It makes enemies of the people you love. It makes you see yourself for who you are. All the worst of it. It makes an enemy of yourself." Leaning back into his chair properly and reclaiming his pint, he mutters, "Good luck punching that."

Ravn listens carefully and does indeed fall silent for a while; he clearly gives the other man's words careful consideration before saying anything. When he does speak, he too keeps it on the low lest some random tourist overhear. "I don't... get attached. To love somebody you have to get -- attached. That's the thing. I know who I am. I'm not a particularly bad man, I suppose, but I'm not a particularly good one, either. Most of all I'm just... some face. Someone in the crowd. Here today, gone tomorrow. That's how I used to live -- just drifting around, going wherever the wind blew."

He shakes his head. "Thing is, you're probably right. Being here makes me feel like I might get to know people. The place makes me feel like I belong here. Everyone with the shine or sparkle or whatever they call it -- they all say something like that, don't they? Maybe I'm just taking the bait hook line and sinker but if I am -- then it's too late to get out of the pond already, isn't it? Might as well make the best of it."

Clifford arches a brow curiously at the indifference to attachment, but it's the claim of self-awareness that earns Ravn a nod. Of course, the claim of being just a face in the crowd has the accountant grinning, but he doesn't interrupt just to point out that the Dane is currently an unintentionally famous face, entirely recognizable, like it or not. He offers up, "Glimmer," with no further commentary, nothing else said until Ravn falls quiet. "Look. I'm not telling you to get out while you can. It feels like that might be a bit hypocritical of me while I'm still here." He pauses, considers citing local family as his excuse for sticking around, but decides against it. "Just be aware that Gray Harbor will come at you from angles you don't expect, hurt you in ways you can't anticipate. It won't always be inconvenient rumors and easily punched demons."

"Pretty damn sure I never did expect to wake up a tuna from the waist and down," Ravn says blithely as if it was the most mundane thing in the world. "I know. What's the life expectancy for people like us here -- a few years at best? At least they'll be interesting years. Maybe I'll make a difference to a few people. See some things ordinary people don't get to see. Live. And then, break, no doubt, like everyone keeps saying I will. It seems -- those of you who were born here endure it a little better, but it's the same in the long run for all of us, isn't it? The real world out there -- the normal world, the world that isn't full of ghosts and underwater gods and whatever else Gray Harbor has -- out there, people live for maybe eighty, ninety years. A lot of that time, they just get up in the morning, go to work, come home, watch some TV, and go to bed. Sometimes they ask themselves, why do I bother? What do I have to live for? And the answer, very often is, because I don't have the imagination to do something else. Here -- I've got a feeling life is short and brutal here, but at least life has meaning."

"You've got a pretty grim view of life on the outside," Cliff notes, as if this, with all its sunshine and salt air and golden beer and bright laughter, were a prison. If he disagrees with that perspective, though? He doesn't say so, doesn't provide any counterpoint. He tips his pint glass, considering the dwindling liquid therein, seemingly more left for the angle at which it's set. "I'm glad this is working for you, Ravn." He pauses there, looking to the Dane curiously, wondering if he got the pronunciation alright. "I think maybe we should meet back here in six months, maybe inside, and see if you still feel the same way, if you can still speak so passionately about the perks of a not-boring life." Holding up a hand, he clarifies, "Not because I think you'll be singing a different song. I'm not interested in placing a bet on this. I'm just curious."

"Sure, why not?" Ravn clasps the hand in his own; bet accepted. "Six months and if I still think life here is better than life on the outside -- dinner's on me. If I've joined the oh my god get out while you can brigade, dinner's on you."

Clifford's lips part as Ravn takes his hand. He sees how that happened, the sequence of events which lead to the unintentional wager. And he rolls with it, shaking to secure his agreement with a brief laugh. "Alright. Until then..." He lifts his nearly empty glass and gets to his feet. "Need another?" He's heading back inside either way.