2020-10-27 - Ice Cream (Anti) Social

Finally the last patron of the bar has wobbled out and the clean up has been finished and the staff sent home. Chairs are flipped over on top of their tables, and all of the bar stools have been set up likewise, save two. One is of course for Bennie, but she's chosen instead to sit up on the bar itself, legs folded lotus style as she scoops plain jane vanilla ice cream out of a cardboard drum from a Food Service company into two pint glasses.

The late night hardly bothers Alexander; he only barely sleeps as it is. So he's happy to wander over for the promised Ice Cream and buddy talk over said ice cream. His sweater is so oversized that his undershirt can be seen under the sagging neckline, and he has to push the forest green knit back over his hands to bunch up around his wrists before he can reach for the door. His hair, at least, is nicely combed, which must be Isabella's influence, and he has a tired but genuine smile for Bennie as he walks inside. "Hey." A look at what she's doing. "Milkshakes?"

Bennie flashes a smile aside to Alexander as she teeters on her perch to face him. "Floats! You have the option between cola or..." She reaches to the back of the bar with a lean, pulling up a bottle of Godiva Chocolate liqueur which she waggles in his direction. It obviously seems her choice because she's twisting off the top and glugging in an ample portion of the dark liquid over the balls of ice cream.

"Floats." Alexander grins back. "I always figured that if there was little enough ice cream that it could float, you were doing something wrong," he drawls, in a not-very-good imitation of Joe's laid back, Southern accent. He slips onto the stool near her. "Pop, please," he says, and nods towards the cola, then eyes the bottle of liqueur with deep suspicion. "Chocolate...liqueur. That doesn't even seem like a thing to be drunk."

The bottle gets stopped back up and tucked away so she can snag the soda gun, having learned without having the look which button dispenses the cola. As the ice cream starts to foam up with the addition of the carbonation, Bennie says, "I'm preeetty sure it was invented by one of the Real Housewives." She jokes as she adds long handed bar spoons and straws to each and then nudges his over. "You ever read the Peanuts comic strip?"

"Sounds legit," Alexander agrees. "I think they make chocolate martinis, some-fucking-where. Probably New York, or LA. They make all sorts of weird shit there," he says, with the serene confidence of a small town man who's never gone more than a couple of states away in his entire life. He makes a thoughtful noise. "I've...seen the strip in the newspaper. I can't say it ever seemed like it required much in depth study, but I know the characters and...uh. I guess I don't know the plot. Does it have a plot?"

"Something about a football." Bennie says to the plot of Charles M. Schulz' creation. "The point is you look like the dog, Snoopy, when he gets all mopey on top of his dog house and it's my job as your tiny yellow bird friend to figure out what's wrong and make it better by the end of the little squares. So?" Asked before she lofts a spoon full of the alcoholic foamy ice cream to her mouth, eyebrows lofted up with the question.

"Right," Alexander says, regarding the football, because that makes perfect sense to him. He reaches for his own spoon, and his eyes widen a little as she explains the reference. He doesn't answer immediately, but scoops soda and ice cream into his mouth, and lets the cool, fizzy treat slip down his throat. Once he swallows, he says, a bit dry, "Wait. This is about me? Or is this about focusing on my issues, because you know that I have many, so we don't have to talk about the whole Easton-coming-back and processing that?" Maybe he's doing a little deflection of his own, although there's concern under the teasing, as well.

Bennie's nose wrinkles slightly, "You mean besides the fact he wants me to keep the bar and completely sucked about explaining why to the point of belittling me and being condescending? How about that his time in the Veil put us right back to square one in regards to his drinking and self destruction?" She motions at him with her spoon. "Your turn."

Alexander thinks about that for a moment. "Keep the bar? Do you want to keep the bar? Why does he want you to keep the bar?" He takes another mouthful of float, swallows it down, giving him time to think of his own answers to her spoon-gestured return volley. "Um. I don't...I don't really know." A pause. "Not true. I do. I just had an interaction that reminded me that, no matter how nice people have been lately, I'm not, uh, normal, and my thinking is still broken and weird. And I was thinking about my past. And the present. Wondering if I should ask some questions that are gonna make people who I really like probably pretty unhappy with me, and maybe I don't want to know the answers."

"Nope." Bennie answers simply about the bar, sucking down some of the liqueur through the straw before she expounds. "I kept this going for him, and in the possibility he wasn't going to return, I was going to keep this going for our friends. But now he's back and acting like he doesn't want his pride and joy? It's not jiving. And if he truly doesn't want the bar, then why bother? I love my work with the department, and he acted like it was some...I dunno. Like I could just give that up because it was a meaningless dead end job. So it turned into a whole...thing."

She switches topics with ease, "Your thinking isn't broken or wierd, it's different and unique. At some point you need to learn to embrace these things and find your happiness with them. I know it's easier said than done, but we all love you for who you are. Not some made up sunshiny version that's more socially accepted." Speaking from experience a bit, in that regard. "So. There are these questions. You've listed the cons, what are the pros of asking them?"

Alexander nods, as if the answer was what he expected, although he winces as she goes on. "That hurts. When people treat what's important to you like it's something anyone could do, or it's not worthwhile." He abandons the spoon, and just takes a swig from the float, giving himself a fine vanilla mustache for a moment, until he reaches for a bar napkin and wipes it away. "Easton probably just wants you to be what he sees as financially secure and independent. So, not working for anyone but yourself. But it's a rich person's point of view, in some ways." A pause. "And I don't know that he knows what he wants. I mean. I haven't pressed him on what happened while he was gone, but I know it was terrible. He's probably just flailing around, and hits people by accident. Doesn't make it right, though."

He doesn't switch topics as easily, but that may just be the topic that's being switched to. "No, I'm broken. I know that. It's okay. I just don't like...when I remind people of that." He clears his throat. "I don't know that there are pros. I'd know. But if I do anything with that, it'd hurt my friends. Or I'd get a couple of bullets in my head, if it turns out they're not as much of my friends as I hoped they were."

There is just a shake of Bennie's head for a moment on the subject of Easton, apparently now at a loss as to what this means and the complications that surround it. "He said we'd talk about it, so I'm holding out hope. But he's a marine. If he opens up to anyone, it's going to be another guy. I'm just the girl back home." Bennie gives a long exhale out of her nose and focuses back on Alexander's problem.

"So knowing versus being willfully ignorant. The second doesn't sound like something you'd be happy with in the long run. On the other hand...wait, bullets? What the heck-ola kind of questions are these?"

Alexander chuckles, briefly. "So, you're saying he's probably going to be looking to punch someone. I'll, uh, see if I can't volunteer, but I don't know if I'm his type of guy for that stuff, either. I don't get it as much as someone like Kelly or Javier, or even Itzhak does." A sort of helpless shrug, there. He takes another swallow, acquires another mustache. This one, he leaves in place long enough to say, "The just-how-deeply-in-bed-with-the-local-crime-lord-are-you sort of questions." Which are serious questions, which the white ice cream on his upper lip sort of undercuts. He wipes it away.

Bennie boops the tip of her nose with her spoon, meaning Alexander hit the nail on the head with the whole punching thing. She can't help but smile at the whole mustache thing, despite the gravity of his words, "And who are you going to be asking these questions of?"

Alexander snorts as she boops the tip of her own nose. He waggles his spoon at her. "If this is just a ploy to imagine us both shirtless and punching each other, I'll find out. And have my revenge." Then he plunges the spoon into his float, and sighs, his shoulders drooping at the question. "I'd rather not say, Bennie. If there's nothing there, then it would just cause problems for no reason. If there is, then it could be dangerous. I don't know, yet."

"Puh-lease. I have a very active imagination, how do you think I survived four months alone and sexless? I don't need to concoct some elaborate plan. I mean. Not that seeing the real thing could hurt." Her smile shifts towards the impish before it withers away. "That's fair. Okay, so what if you approach it as trying to offer your help? Either to help them out of it, or help them stay under the radar. Because if you made the connection there's the slim chance someone might be able to do the same in the future. Way, way in the future, 'cuz everyone is like a zillion steps behind you, but still."

"If I helped them stay under the radar," Alexander points out, gravely, "then I'd be a criminal, too. And I try not to be that. It's not an easy line to walk - I know that some of the people I'm involved with are," a hesitation, "not as law abiding as I might wish, or struggle with things that require them to utilize the black markets. They're not bad people, for the most part. But some of them are dangerous, and are hurting people. And if I got the opportunity and the evidence, I'd have to...do something about that." He bites his lower lip. "Because aiding organized crime isn't really victimless, even if all you're doing is helping move some money around." But he's troubled by the thought of pitting himself against his friends, that much is clear.

"I didn't say you had to help them. I said to offer. If they accepted, you'd have your answer, just in a..." Bennie makes a swirly motion with her spoon, filling the answer with a gesture when she can't pull the right turn of phrase out of her brain meats.

"That would be lying, Bennie." Alexander quirks a smile at her. "Have you ever seen me try to lie? It's not pretty." He takes a deep breath, lets it out. "But that's a problem of my own making, I guess. What about you? What do you want to do? Easton is back. That's wonderful. But you put some things on hold for a while, I know."

Bennie's head wobbles in consideration of Alexander needing to lie to make that work, that in and of itself the fatal flaw in the plan. That seems to be her only advice at the moment, because she just answers his question with a question about her life. "Like what?"

Alexander makes a face at her. "Things?" A flap of his spoon hand. "Things! I know you had things you were doing, now that the financial extortion you were the victim of had receded." He gives her a brief, suspicious look - because he knows Bennie is a better liar than he is. But ultimately, decides she would, probably, maybe, tell someone if that had reappeared. "School, for one. Weren't you doing classes at one point? I thought you were."

Blue eyes roll to the ceiling, "Please tell me you're not jumping on the 'my life isn't enough' bandwagon? Sure, at one point I had considered going to medical school, but that was back at Addington High. When I was sixteen. I dropped out at seventeen when my brother died, and I've been working ever since on a GED and vocational night school to become an EMT. I'm thirty now. So we're talking four years as an undergraduate, then four at medical school, then three to seven in a residency. So not even becoming a doctor until I'm, what, almost fifty? Not to mention the debt that I just got out of?"

Alexander's head tilts to one side. "You save lives," he says, simply. "That's always enough." He grimaces. "I'm sorry. I thought you'd mentioned it at one time, but I probably just remembered wrong. I'm sorry." He shrugs. "I mean, you're talking to a guy doesn't even have a fucking license as a PI, so I'm really just a nosy asshole who occasionally gets paid for it. I'm not flexing on anyone's occupational choices, Bennie." His smile is brief, and crooked.

"Sorry." Bennie chews on the corner of her mouth for a bit. "I guess I'm just a little touchy after the whole Easton thing. I probably did lob out the idea once of taking a class or something. Because you want to know the truth? I have...zero idea what to do with free time."

"It's okay." Alexander smiles, "I probably just remembered wrong. There's a lot, sometimes," he admits, with a shrug. "And it's okay not to know what to do with free time, too. You...it seemed liked you worked a lot. I guess those guys had you on the hook for a long time." It's just a simple observation, one filed away somewhere in his brain, which always sticks with crime related things more easily than others. "But now that you do have it, you should enjoy it. Just...have fun. Screw Easton's brains out, go running with Gunner, or just lounge in your underwear and watch stupid movies while drinking five million of these things," he raises the float, "because they're awesome."

"If I drink five million floats I'll need to go running with Gunner, if I can even still fit out the front door of the cabin. You know what's funny? My guy and your gal close down the bar, and then here we are doing the same. We might not solve our problems here, but it feels good to talk about them, doesn't it?" Bennie as she stirs the last dredges of her float into a slurry.

"That's what bars are for. They made a television show about it and everything." Alexander eyes her, with teasing speculation. "You might be too young for that, though." Then he grins. "And it does. And we're doing okay, objectively. I mean, we both have people who love us, although in my case, I'm perpetually bewildered as to why. And we helped catch a serial killer! Your assholes were sent packing. No one's shot at me in...few weeks, at least. I hope you can say the same. And people actually hire me for things, now. The Revisionist made me, uh, a brilliant but addicted detective?"

"Oh come on, now The Revisionist is just ripping of Sherlock Holmes stereotypes. If anyone needs cable, it's that one. But hey, if it's good for business! Anything exciting you need a junior sleuth to help out with? I'm really good at not getting squicked out. Sure that's handy for something." Bennie beams.

"I told her to read true crime rather than watch soap operas. I think this is where she ended up," Alexander admits, ruefully. "I think she's got a good heart, though. Or...whatever passes for a heart. The Exorcist suggested that all of the ...-ists, for lack of a better term, are people who died in the Veil. So I guess she died." He grimaces. "As for cases...hmm. Do you have access to something that could test for toxins? A guy is convinced that his wife is poisoning him through his food, and hired me to prove it. I don't actually have any equipment for that."

Bennie makes a very bleak face at the information about this particular -ist. "You mean if Easton hadn't made it back, he could have ended up as one of 'Them'?" This seems to weigh heavily at the forefront of her mind, a bit distracted as she answers Alexander, even if it was in response to her original ask. "Uh, there's a few things I can test urine for if there are drugs, but we're talking, like, opiates. Testing food you'd need something like the lab for. Have you asked that Cecil fellow?"

Alexander shakes his head. "I haven't. I'm not even sure that it's really happening. I could just read the woman, probably, but it's more interesting to do it the hard way." He pauses to take a drink of his float, which is now delicious fizzy slush. "Not Them Them. The Exorcist, Archivist, and those...they're not the Shadows. I don't think they're our enemies...although I'm not sure they're our friends, either." He frowns. "Although...more people have to die than there's room for -ists. I wonder if some of them do become the Dark Men." He sucks in a breath. "Unpleasant thought."

"Very." Bennie comments to the unpleasantness. "But there is a chance that darkness breeds darkness, like a zombie apocalypse. They whisper into ears like our friend the serial killer, and eventually he'll just...become one himself. Didn't he, like, disappear from lock up?"

Alexander's eyes widen slightly. "He did. I figured he escaped Over There. He was throwing things at us, so he was probably a psychokinetic. But that doesn't rule out what you were saying...the Shadows can twist you up pretty badly if you listen to them." He licks his lips. "I don't...know how we would test that. It makes a sort of twisted sense, though." He eyes his float. "Maybe I should have gotten one with booze in it after all."

"Not too late." Bennie waggles her glass to indicate if he wants a refill there is more ice cream and the booze to go in it. "Oh, he was totally a Mover. His aura was totally an angry red. Maybe we could put trackers on people! Tag and release the crazies and see where they end up. And yes, I'm kidding."

"If we would make a tracker that reliably follows people across the Veil," Alexander starts to murmur, then freezes when she says she's kidding. He coughs, awkwardly. "Right. A joke. Yes. But, if we could..." Then he sighs. "I don't know anyone who would even know where to start, though."

"Well, the next time we catch someone who's gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, the first thing we do is slap something like that on one them. Or maybe something subcutaneous...hmm. But like, better than microchipping a pet. Those only work if you can find them again and scan. Which would work, I guess if we could catch a Dark Man! And are there Dark Women, or is the Veil super sexist?" Bennie gets sucked into the rabbit hole with Alexander. "You know, we really need a rolling white board."

Alexander laughs. "So far, the Veil seems to be equal opportunity horrors. Of the '-ists' we've seen...I think most have been women? The Exorcist, The Vivisectionist, the Revisionist...all women. The Archivist is...Archivist. I hesitate to speculate. If Easton's uncle counts, he was male. The Dark Men...I don't think anyone's ever seen them. I, I, I, I've heard them. Mostly by implication. Themes and whispers that might just be the rotten parts of my brain talking to me. But when the actors were here - when I reached out at one of them, with my abilities, I touched something beyond her, and it was terrible." He takes a breath. "And then one of them might have spoken way back when we dealt with the theatre troupe. But that's the closest. Ever."