2020-10-01 - What Women Want (As Presented by Itzhak Rosencrantz)

What a morning, is the thought that dominates Ravn Abildgaard's mind as he heads back towards his boat in the marina after his up-before-dawn shift at the Two if By Sea. As it turns out, working at a popular bar is not merely playing Tom Cruise, looking hot, serving up exciting cocktails, and listening to people's interesting stories. Most of the work is pretty mundane. And when you've got the earlybird shift after karaoke night, the work isn't very glamorous at all. Particularly not when the windows have been blown out, the place looks like it's been shot up, and there's already a work crew working on repairs. Gray Harbor, you do you.

Ravn doesn't mind. He gets a certain satisfaction out of restoring order to chaos. Washing the floors and tables down. Emptying the ashtrays and mumbling a bit about people who use the floor instead. Making coffee for the work crew. Picking up bottles, a few broken glasses that were dropped off the deck by drunks, empty condom wrappers in the bathroom stalls, even chasing off the yachter who turned out to be sleeping by the firepit. The night had already been exciting from the looks of it, but the yachter -- once caffeinated and restored to an upright position -- had stories to tell.

And now Ravn is heading home after a very thorough washing up, whistling lightly to himself and greeting the day with a smile. Sometimes, Gray Harbor's rather unusual approach to story telling does indeed come with a happy end, he thinks as he strolls onto the pier.

And there's one more surprise waiting for Ravn: a tall Jewish fiddler, sitting on the dock with long legs swinging over the water. The early fall midmorning is cool, and Itzhak is wearing a long sleeved shirt with an Overwatch League team logo--the NY Excelsiors.

He squints in Ravn's direction, determines it's him, and climbs to his feet. He's got his fiddle case of course, and a soft sided cooler bag. "Brought breakfast."

He hasn't talked to Ravn or been seen much in public in a week and here he is, on the day of Easton Marshall's return.

The day began well and it's not getting any worse. Ravn lights up in a smile at the sight. "Sounds like I should be putting on a kettle -- if you can drink instant coffee, that is. I've got milk and sugar to disguise the worst parts of the taste. How are you? It's been a few."

The Dane pulls on the mooring rope, and then, as the Vagabond sluggishly comes within stepping distance, hops onto her prow. The black cat curled up into a ball there gives him a look of disdain. This is her boat, and they both know it -- but she will tolerate the owner of the opposable thumbs for now, at least until she manages to secure a food supply from elsewhere.

"Come on out," he calls over his shoulder. "I need to change my shirt real quick -- the Twofer looked like a small thermonuclear war played out last night. Did you hear the news?"

Itzhak can't help but return that grin, although his is fainter, not the brilliant flash he can display. "Whole town's heard." He follows Ravn, bounding across the gap to Vagabond a moment after. "Shit, son, I brought real coffee, I ain't drinkin' that swill, I got standards." So he must be doing okay if he can give Ravn a solid ration of shit like that. But he seems tired, worn out.

Kitty Pryde gets a smirk as Itzhak walks by. "And I got somethin' for you too, you skinny little minx."

While Ravn takes care of the necessary, Itzhak sets his stuff down and unzips the cooler. A Thermos of coffee and a couple of foil-wrapped burritos the size of newborn babies are the treasures within, plus a little bag of transparent beige jerky. "Breakfast burritos for us, and bonito flakes for Miss Thing over there."

"Keep doing that and she'll follow you home." Ravn ducks under deck quickly. He pulls off his shirt and replaces it with another, identical black turtleneck before rummaging around for plates, easily heard -- and for that matter, seen -- through the open door. "I imagine rumour gets around this place before the Devil gets out of bed, nevermind picks up his fiddle. I heard from some drunk I found out by the firepits. I'm kind of curious as to what really happened, though -- my new best friend didn't have the shine and according to him, Easton Marshall suddenly stomped into his own bar with a shotgun and started yelling at people until he got talked down."

He emerges again and moves a pair of sneakers decidedly too small for his own feet off one of the seats. "So, how's life?"

"She better not. De la Vega's allergic to cats." Itzhak unscrews the Thermos top to pour the coffee. He's moving slow, concentrating on these simple tasks when normally he flies through them with the same kind of pananche he plays his violin. "Wish I was there," he murmurs, going about setting out breakfast. "Was hanging out with de Santos, having an autistic kinda night. Me, not de Santos.

"My hands quit working," he adds, in response to how's life. "We got back from that Dream and ...I dunno, they just, didn't work. I lost my shit kinda a while. They were fine, de la Vega took me to the hospital and I spent a few days hooked up to a bunch of leads and nothin'. Came back mostly on its own. Who the hell knows." But this is why he looks exhausted, surely.

Ravn frowns. Not at placing 'de Santos' -- he's pretty sure that's the Spanish writer with the haunted house, the man of the great home cooked meals. Spending an evening with him sounds great.

Hospital, on the other hand, doesn't.

He settles on the seat, handing Itzhak both mugs. "Your hands. They were injured in that dream with the -- Aztec gods. They were injured before that dream, I mean. Did you do anything about it? Anything -- Veil related, I mean. Anything at all, really?"

A suspicion nags at his mind, visible in that frown. It's not a very nice suspicion, as suspicions go.

"They was busted up from a Dream I had just before that one. The bad men are hungry lately." Itzhak even brought a half pint of cream, which he opens to fix his coffee. "Fincheleh--that's Finch de la Vega, Ignacio's girl--she helped, but the healing, it don't work like it used to. Anyway," he's getting off track, which he realizes with a sigh, "aside from that, nothing, and they were healed after that Dream, just....broken. So that's why I couldn't text. De la Vega took care of me. God I love that man." That last is muttered as he takes a sip of creamy coffee. "How's you? I'm glad Marshall's back but I hope that all didn't scare ya too bad."

"I wasn't there when he got back. Karaoke night? Not my thing. I signed on for the morning shift instead, somebody needs to muck the place out after those big nights." Ravn keeps looking at Itzhak's hands, still frowning.

He accepts the mug of his own and curls his gloved hands around it. Thinking. Piecing it together.

Understanding.

"Fuck." The Dane puts the coffee mug on the seat beside himself and twists his long fingers around each other instead, almost as if holding on to his own hands with, well, his own hands. "The stones. The black stones. That's what happened. Oh god, I am so sorry."

Completely misinterpreting that, Itzhak frowns at Ravn. "Wasn't your fault. How could you know that Aztec god guy would be an asshole about me not taking his stupid rock?" Because Itzhak had refused payment, out of what had appeared to be at the time and certainly was sheer orneriness.

"That's... possible. But it might not be... you." Ravn swallows. "It might be me. Please hear me out before you punch me in the face?"

"Don't be fucking ridiculous. It wasn't you. Couldn't possibly be you. So nu, out with it." Itzhak twirls a couple fingers in a circle to urge Ravn to out with it.

Ravn nods. "I'm a folklorist, you know that. There are rules for how these things work. I spent... a lot of time, trying to figure out what the hell to do. Because I didn't trust that Quetzalcoatl effigy any more than you did. But there I was, with a bloody wish stone. And thinking the same thing -- he might get pissy if I just ignored it. You never ignore the gifts of the gods in stories -- that's somewhat the equivalent of pulling down your pants and mooning them for attention."

He gestures with his hands as he talks. "But wishes are dangerous. You get exactly what you wish for, but twisted into some kind of nightmare. Wishes are cheating in a story narrative. So I felt that I couldn't just ignore the thing on pain of angry Aztec god to our faces a second time, but I also couldn't use it. There's one way around this mess in story telling, and that's genuinely wishing for something nice for someone else. Something selfless. I was trying to -- make it harmless. Insignificant enough that this piece of shit Mesoamerican asshole --" someone is not impressed with the trickster deity "-- couldn't twist it into a new nightmare, or just wouldn't care."

The Dane takes a deep breath. "So I -- wished your hands would heal a little faster. And I kind of figured that the twist would be you healing thirty seconds faster, take that, hahah. You know. Harmless. Gods, Itzhak, I am so very sorry."

The burritos are stuffed with scrambled eggs, sauteed onions and bell peppers, salsa, refried beans, and chorizo. They're excellent. Itzhak waves Ravn to one. "De la Vega made 'em for us." So the interim Chief cooks for his boyfriend as well as lurks in abandoned houses with sniper rifles at 3 AM, it turns out?

Itzhak peels the foil away from his burrito and chomps into it while Ravn talks. He's got a lot of eating to get done. Where does he put it all? As Ravn's story unwinds, though, and he gets to the part about wishing for something nice, Itzhak swallows too much too fast. He knows what's coming. It's clear as glass on his face. Aaaand there it is and he sets the burrito down so he can bury his face in his mostly-working hands.

"Oy vey izt mir it IS your fault," he mumbles.

Ravn just stares at his. Hands, that is -- not burrito. He hasn't got that far yet.

Half-assed excuses flit across his mind --

you were trying to minimise the damage
you were trying to help
you should never
if only
but

Half-assed excuses never made anything better for anyone, ever.

At length he just says, "Yes. It is my fault."

Itzhak stays like that, hands over his face, elbows on his knees, half-bent over in the gently cool autumn morning. Someone with a telephoto lens is probably taking a picture of him and captioning it SWEDISH CHEF DUMPS RUSSIAN BOYFRIEND!.

"Okay," he mutters into his hands, then abruptly surfaces and picks his breakfast back up. Tone brisk, like he's explaining a line item to a customer, he says, "Okay. One time, de la Vega was cursed. Some of us got pulled into a Dream where Baba Yaga granted us wishes. You know what mine was? I wished I could protect people. So she made him attack us and I got my wish. I got to protect everybody else from him. Bax, you know him? Grant? He wished for de la Vega not to be cursed anymore. She told him someone else would have to take on the curse, and he said, himself. He said 'do it to me.' Well it didn't quite take and then they were both cursed."

"You can't do it right." Ravn speaks with the quiet certainty of someone who does in fact happen to be a specialist on the elements and archetypes of stories. "It was a lose-lose scenario from the start. I hoped -- that it would backfire in some negotiable fashion. Some way that didn't matter. Break a finger or two for me at worst, not really do anything at all at best. It's the one who does the wishing who gets punished for trying to cheat God. That's how this archetype works. It's all about the hubris."

"And I suppose it works as it says on the label. Hubris invoked by me trying to outsmart gods. And now you're injured because of me being an arrogant know-it-all. For fuck's sake." The Dane shakes his head. "Still following the script of wish stories. There is no way to win this."

Itzhak turns over one of those hands that Ravn wished upon, palm to the sky, fingers spread. "It coulda been worse," he says, Jewishly philosophical. "I mean. I kinda lost my shit and de la Vega had to talk me down and then take care of me, but it could have been a lot worse. Besides, I think he kinda liked it a little, don't tell anybody I said so."

He cocks an eyebrow at Ravn, mouth tugging. "Just, uh, promise me no more wishes. Yeah?"

Is that it? Does Ravn get off this lightly?

"I can't promise that. I mean, I can, because I spent my stone. But the others who got one, didn't. And whatever they wish for will go bad too, even if they try not to wish. If Quetzalcoatl wants to screw them over badly enough, we're going to see August Røn get out of bed mumbling something about 'I wish I could sleep in', and then fall into a coma." Ravn curls his hands around each other, holding on to them. "The only thing we can hope for is that it's someone else's turn to be the scapegoat. It would be -- within story parameters for it to be me. But I don't think these Dark Men care very much about story archetypes. They're just cheering because first they get to make you suffer for a week and now they can feed on -- whatever happens next."

Itzhak's attention drops to Ravn's hands. "Hey. Stop that." Reaching to wrap his fingers around Ravn's hands, he veers off at the last second and grips the other man's forearm instead. It's a solid grip, meant to be reassuring. "Stop," he repeats, lower, eyes searching Ravn's face. "Don't do this to yourself. It was an accident. You didn't know."

Ravn almost laughs; a humourless chuckle. "See, that's -- I can't even say, 'at least odds are the one who takes the next face punch is me', because it won't be. That's how hubris works. There's no fair. All I can say is, I'm really, really sorry. And Aztec gods are assholes."

"There ain't no fair. Look, if life was fair, what would Jews do, we'd have to invent something to complain about." Itzhak risks leaning forward, letting go of Ravn's arm so he can try to wind his own long arm around him in a rough hug. "C'mon, get ya shit together, yeah?"

"... Yeah." Ravn relaxes a little. He is not a hugging kind of person. But at the moment, at least he's not a person about to get intimately acquainted with STAY and DOWN, either. "Shouldn't have to be like that, though. That they can use us to hurt each other. Not bloody fair."

No shit, Sherlock. He just said as much himself, that there is no fair. But from his tone, he clearly thinks there should be.

"I guess I thought -- well. This morning, when I heard the news about the Twofer, I thought to myself, at least there are happy endings. This town is not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Maybe it's not all so terrible? And then this. I guess that's me still being an arrogant idiot, thinking I have everything figured out when I very clearly don't." The Dane shakes his head lightly again and takes a deep breath. "Thank you."

"That's how They'll get you. They get me by makin' me chase around trying to protect people. They get you by playing your own shell game with you." Itzhak squeezes Ravn around the shoulders and lets go, unwinding and sitting back. "'Are you right this time? Nope you're wrong, you thought you were right but there ain't no nut under that fuckin' cup.' You know what I'm saying?"

Contrarywise, he is a hugging kind of person, and Ravn seemed like he needed a hug. Therefore, a hug was provided. Itzhak studies him with eyebrows tilted. "Drink ya coffee, will ya? I didn't schlep it out here so it could get cold." He suits actions to words, himself drinking his coffee. "So lemme ask you something."

"Right." Ravn reaches for his own coffee with a hand that is very determinedly not shaky. Anxiety can be beat into submission by sheer force of will. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. "Sure. Anything."

Itzhak doesn't waste his breath telling Ravn it'll be okay or anything silly like that. It'd ring false to both of them. He's just here, drinking coffee and eating breakfast on the deck of Ravn's boat, being himself. What he does is a handy bit of misdirection, instead:

"Who's the girl you had over?"

Wha'?

The question is plain on Ravn's face. Misdirection definitely accomplished.

Then he catches up and glances at the women's sneakers still sitting on one of the seats. He shakes his head and laughs softly at the obvious misunderstanding. "Oh! No. No, those are Bennie's. She came out for a talk and some stargazing, and forgot her shoes. I forgot to bring them to work this morning but, eh, considering the current state of affairs, I doubt she's worrying about shoes anyhow. Imagine she's holed up somewhere being very, very happy."

Comically, Itzhak's eyebrows pop up. "Talk? Stargazing?" He gives Ravn a hell of a funny look. "Oh, buddy." His tone is wry sympathy. "Well, how'd it go?"

"Think it went pretty all right? She seemed like she was in a better mood when she left. Think she just needs -- well, needed -- somebody to talk to." Ravn carefully picks up the burrito as well. "It's hard, losing someone. Part of what makes it so hard is that other people, who also knew that someone, keep transferring their own grief onto you, until you feel like you're only there to remind them of the person who was lost. I know I felt like that -- it's part of why I left home in the first place. I never met Easton. I guess that's about to change, which is probably a lot happier as endings go than we have any right to hope for."

"Yeah. I felt like that too, after my pop died. That's exactly how it feels. Like, shit, Pop's dead but I'm still here, right? I look a lot like him, which everybody had to inform me, like I wasn't well a-fuckin'-ware." Itzhak clears his throat when Ravn's done. "Listen. I swear I won't tell another soul, but I gotta ask. Did you fuck her?"

Ravn blinks, and then cants his head to blink a second time. "Uh. No? That's a very odd question."

"Odd?" Itzhak drops his voice and glances over his shoulder in a not-at-all suspicious manner, like someone might catch him. "Whaddaya mean odd, what do you think a girl's got in mind if she shows up at your place for 'stargazing'?"

"Needing to talk to somebody. Feeling lonely. Stars?" Ravn looks at the other man blankly. "Don't tell me you're the kind of guy who thinks two people of opposite genders can't occupy the same building unsupervised without one of them ending up pregnant."

"Okay, first off? I am absolutely that kind of guy. Second off, are you joking me?" Itzhak loses the battle against Ravn's blank look and starts laughing into his hand, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Did she bring booze? Did she climb on you? Did she try to kiss you? Did she accidentally take her clothes off and then declare she just don't know what's come over her? Come on, Abildgaard ya killin' me here!"

Ravn frowns. "Well, if you want to make it sound like that. Yes, she did bring a bottle of rather good Chilean red wine. She did kiss my cheek. Not that way. Clothes stayed firmly on. We mostly talked about grief, and coping with grief. Chrissakes, Itzhak. Somebody feeling vulnerable doesn't mean they want to be in your bed."

"Oh my God. This is how. This is how you escaped ya twenties with only one girl managed to make you hold still!" Itzhak laughs until he's wheezing, face bright red. He makes a valiant and visible attempt to sober. "No, okay, look, of course her feeling sad and vulnerable don't mean she wants to bang you. But listen, Abildgaard, Ravn, buddy, pal, coming over to your place, alone, in the middle of the night, with booze, for 'stargazing', when you're the one. Guy. In. TOWN," Itzhak smacks the back of his hand into his other palm on each syllable, for emphasis, "who didn't ever know Easton? You're not stupid, tateleh, do the math!"

Ravn cants his head, considering the other man's words. Eventually he cedes, "Maybe."

Then he shrugs lightly. "Doesn't really matter, does it? I'm not a relationships kind of bloke. I never notice things like that until the girl's given up hinting and has gone off with someone else anyhow, and besides, Marshall is back -- so,happy endings all around. Also, office romances are the one thing anyone will warn you about, they never end well."

Maybe, Itzhak accepts. "Maybe. The good news is, you kinda dodged a bullet, with Marshall showing back up like that. I mean, don't get me wrong. If you slept with her, he wouldn't care. He'd probably jerk off hearing about it. He's that kinda guy, yannow? But it'd be tough on Bennie and maybe tough on you. Less of that the better, far as I'm concerned." He lifts his mug to Ravn's. "Here's to not schtupping the boss."

Ravn laughs softly and clinks his mug against the New Yorker's. "I don't know. I mean, all I know about Easton Marshall is that everyone tells me he was the best man on Earth, but the instant someone's dead, it's taboo in our culture to speak poorly of them. So, the only things I actually know for a fact about the man is that he is in a relationship with Bennie, and he owns guns. Which is -- not a lot."

He leans back in his seat a little and finally starts to nibble on de la Vega's very excellent burrito which absolutely deserves more love and recognition than it's currently getting. "I know you're joking about the... escaping my twenties with just one relationship and all, but it's pretty true. I don't do relationships. It's not a matter of principle, it's just who I am. Women want things out of relationships that I don't offer so I don't usually think in those terms at all."

"You'll like him." Itzhak then tips a hand back and forth. "I hope you'll like him, how's that. Nobody doesn't like him, usually. He's a charmer. Also? Hot as hell with abs you could grate cheese on." Like Itzhak is not going to give his personal hotness opinion on any given dude Raven hasn't met.

He finishes off his own burrito--seriously, where does he put it all, is he ever not hungry?--and nods, listening, with that musician's ear. "I didn't do 'em either, to be real honest. Had only a couple of long term boyfriends before I moved here. Girlfriends, a few months, maybe, before I would be a total asshole and get dumped. After dating girls here, I dunno, I don't think I'm cut out to be in relationships with 'em. For pretty much that reason, God forgive me for saying it," Itzhak rolls his eyes up at the sky and makes a little fingers-together bob of his hand, asking God to forgive him for saying it, "women just need stuff I'm no great shakes at. So I feel ya. I feel ya. Besides, de la Vega's enough relationship for any five regular people, let alone my autistic, dysfunctional ass."

"I'm going to take that pretty much as it comes," Ravn nods. "Twofer's closed for repairs at the moment. Boss is back after, what, six months, more? Probably going to want to go over the paperwork, look at the things that changed in his absence. Might end up laying off any staff Bennie hired while he was gone, for all I know, and no hard feelings about it -- if I were him, I'd definitely be pulling at the reins to get control back. Or handing it all over, one or the other, but probably not much middle ground. Because on some level, it's about being in charge of your life such as it was, or handing control of it over to someone else."

He listens carefully to the other man's semi-confessions about being relationship material -- or indeed, not being relationship material -- and then nods, again. "You get into a relationship with someone -- I don't imagine it's much different if it's a bloke, though I got nada experience on that account -- they want to... How do I put it, they place obligations? They want to know who you are, what you do, what you plan to do with the rest of your life. To fit into that puzzle. But that's the thing -- I want to look at where I'm going, not where I have been. I have next to no ambition. And I plan to... just wander. All of which are answers that you can't really build a relationship on."

Itzhak smiles just a little, a curl of one corner of his loud expressive mouth. "Ahh, boychik. It depends on the person. You think that's how I figure out who I'm gonna date? Like, hey, de la Vega looks like he's got his five-year plan squared away, think I'll get with him? Not the kinda thing that's important to him and me. There's a girl who will wanna just wander right along with you, I promise. A guy, too, if you ever decided to try one on for size. Not everybody wants someone who knows exactly who he is or where he's going. Probably not most people, or I wouldn't never get laid."

"Maybe. Way I see it, a guy like me can do one out of two things." Ravn stretches his long legs and puts one booted foot up on the seat across in a display of not very fine manners. "I can piss and moan about it like some incel out of 4chan. Or I can live my life. The only time I really, seriously worried about all of this was when I was in fact engaged to someone and wondering how to tell her I wanted out. This is what I do -- I don't get attached."

"Yeah you say 'maybe' and I hear 'whatever, Rosencrantz, you don't know what ya talkin' about!'" Itzhak shoves Ravn's foot with his own. "One day you'll look back on all this and say 'shit, Rosencrantz really didn't know what he was talkin' about.'"

That Ravn is busy getting attached, just like Itzhak himself did, just like all the out-of-towners did when they came here, Itzhak does not say. He doesn't even recognize that he doesn't say it. The moment just sweeps by. You'll become closer to random people here than you ever were to your fiancee--these things and more he does not say.

Rather, he unlatches his violin case, fingers careful. "So let's practice already, why ya sittin' around jawing?"

"Because the idea that I might go to work Monday and find out people think I'm screwing my boss -- either one -- is kind of disturbing?" Ravn smiles lightly, and for a moment the relief is plain on his face. Itzhak can play. His hands are not all fucked up if he can play. He gets up as well and heads towards the cabin, presumably to fetch his own instrument.

"You do know what you're talking about, though. Wouldn't be having this conversation if you didn't. Every now and then, somebody decides to be all, oh poor Ravn, he just doesn't understand girls, don't you worry, son, there's a girl for everyone, at me. Makes me want to punch people in the teeth. This is different. Gray Harbor's different. People here get attached to each other because people here is all we've got. And I'm kind of all right with that. Because it's about me. People here want me around because they think I can contribute something, right or wrong as they may be. Not because they like my name or think that a lonely guy is probably easy to train the way you want. So, what are we playing -- classic or Cajun?"