2021-01-01 - Riptides

The sailor's no longer a regular at the Twofer, but it hasn't been a one-one transition to the Poorhouse. Joe's out much less in public than he was, nominally at work on a new book....and less willing to expose himself to the cold winds off the Pacific. He's at a table near the bar, wearing his old greatcoat over a dark green t-shirt and old jeans. Absurdly, gleaming on the coat's lapel are a pair of pins in bright enamel: the Little Prince and his Rose in her bell. He hasn't ordered drinks yet. That's apparently waiting on his companion for the evening.

Itzhak is bundled up and sort of damp and icy when he tromps in. He's wearing a big black woolen peacoat of his own, some ancient thing probably older than he is, with a knit cap and woolen gloves with the fingertips snipped off. When he dresses against the weather like this, he suddenly looks like he could be from damn near any era at all. Some rough Manhattan dockworker, maybe.

"'ey!" he calls to Joe, cheery enough, slipping out of his coat to hang it up and skimming off the knit cap to shake out his curls. "How's by ya, Cavanaugh." He swaggers on over, walking as always in his rolling gait that's almost like a sailor's.

He may have been supposed to have given up smoking, and by and large he's done well. But this evening, he's off the wagon to the tune of a pack of Luckies. "Hey you," he says, amiably, sitting back in his seat, letting it tip up a little. "I'm a'right. How 'bout you, Rosencrantz?" He's had an air of lazy satisfaction since getting back from that trip with Javier. "How'd the circuit treat you? We ain't had much of a chance to talk in a while."

"Fuckin' awesome." Itzhak slings himself into a chair. "We won, I got a nice purse, I--well, I'll tell ya more later." Smirk. Troublemaker. He eyes Joe; he's jealous of that trip and he hasn't bothered to hide it. "Yeah, Christ, I been busy. They might want me back in a few weeks, in Florida, no less. I told 'em I can't always go runnin' out of the fucking state on their whim though. Did I tell you I got promoted to lead engineer? Javier complained when I let it slip that I didn't tell him before. Said something about me hiding." Well that won't do! Itzhak, hiding? Nope!

"But did it match your shoes and your belt, darlin'?" Joe retorts, unable to help himself. There's that wolfish grin of his, the one that makes his eyes blue crescents of amusement, highlights the crows' feet. "Where in Florida you headed, if you go? Daytona? Want....well, damn. Think you can get Javier to go with you? Hell, you want, if he can get more time off, which I doubt, I c'n show you where I used to work. Things're real busy there these days what with the manned commercial launches - could give you the tour, I still know some folks there. Man, no, you didn't congratulations on that."

"Cash money green, baby!" Itzhak laughs and holds out a fist for a bump. "I been just about flat fuckin' broke after remodeling the garage. Yeah, Daytona--oooh," he perks up at the thought of getting a tour of that place where Joe used to work. "Man. I'd love to see that. Actually I was thinking about askin' him to go to New York with me. Meet my ma and sister and niece. Take him around some, if he'd want it. I dunno, I haven't asked him yet." Because he can be really shy about some stuff okay? "I haven't told Ma yet." Also that.

Cruz steps in from the night, pausing in the door to stamp his cowboy booted feet as if to regain feeling in his frozen toes. He's still bucking against the idea of living in a cold climate, and thus has never purchased a proper winter coat but at least he's learned to dress in layers. A black leather jacket is over a grey hoodie, beneath a bright red t-shirt emblazoned with a Daddy Yankee logo. He heads to the bar once he's sure his fingers aren't going to fall off when he unzips his hoodie, shedding the outer layers in favor of adjusting to the warmth inside the Pourhouse. "Boys." He greets Itzhak and Joseph casually as he digs out cash to buy himself a glass of mezcal sans the worm.

Obligingly, he taps knuckles against Itz's. "What're you havin'?" he asks, getting up from his seat. Apparently he's the one ordering and paying. "Well, maybe we c'n do it later in the year, considerin'," he muses. "Spring Break or thereabouts, 'fore it gets too hot." That comment about his Ma has Joe pausing, fingers splayed over the table. "Sugar, you mean you haven't come out to her at all, or you just haven't tol' her that you shacked up with another man? Because I guarantee you, she knows both. Like.....I tried to come out to my mother and she basically said she'd known since I was fifteen." He clicks his tongue in disbelief. Cris gets an upnod, as he props himself against the bar.

"Whiskey sour, please. With extra cherries." Which is a little gay and Easton would give him shit for it but does Itzhak care? He doesn't care, he wants cherries. "Uhh," he looks away, nervously, when Joe pauses, and scratches the back of his neck, under his mane of curls. "Neither. I been keeping all that stuff from her." Cris cruises in and Itzhak says to him, "'Sup, Bridezilla?"

Cris leans back against the bar as he waits momentarily for his drink, his body hitched on one elbow. He eyes Joseph like a drink of water he hasn't had a taste of in a while before Itzhak catches his attention with that question that has his grin splitting wide, "I think Dante and I are going to be fighting over that title. He already turned down Vegas, but thankfully I got his mind off things before he started going grey about family details. What's new with you, Rosie."

"Itzhak Rosencrantz, you ain't kept shit from your mother," he says. "I've never met the honorable lady, but unless you were raised in the wilds of upstate and didn't meet her in the flesh until you was eighteen.....with that complexion, she's known for years. Fuck, you can't keep things from me and I ain't known you but a year." Whiskey sour it is, with plenty of extra cherries....and a Four Horsemen for himself. He's already lighting up at the bar with the clink of a Zippo. He's shaven off the beard again, though there's a faint scruff, like he hasn't bothered to shave close in a day or two.

Itzhak, perhaps predictably, blushes brilliant red. "Hey, listen, wiseass..." but then he trails off, eyes widening, as he realizes that Joe is probably ten thousand percent right. "Oy gevalt," he mutters, mind a little blown. "You really think so?" He fidgets, rapping his fingers against the tabletop in a rapid rhythm, and upnods to Cris. "I dunno, Vegas don't sound half bad to me. That's where Marshall and his husband got hitched, after all."

"It'll be an easier conversation than you think. Sometimes you build something up in your mind so much, and then find out all the ninos are thrilled to meet their new gay uncle Dante." Cris sweeps his glass of the bar and uses it to point at Itzhak. "Right? Vegas. In and out and then party. But Marshall married a dude? I thought he was banging some blonde. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd totally swap spit with him again in a dark alley but I figured him for total closet."

Joe, of course, can't resist being provoking by theatrically cupping his hand behind his ear - a broad pantomime of I'm listening. "I don't think so, I know so," he says, placidly. "Here," And he fishes in his wallet, comes out with a twenty, sets it down before Itzhak with a definite tap of a fingertip. "I bet you twenty bucks that when you call and tell your mama, she says, 'Oh, Itzil, I've known for years.'" He nods at the bill. "You'll be givin' that back to me with another."

Then he's snagging their drinks, flicking his cigarette to the corner of his mouth, and ambling back over. Only then does he reach over to snag an ashtray from an empty table.

"He married a straight dude." Itzhak shrugs. "No accounting for taste." Joe doesn't just tell him he bets, he literally puts his money on the table, and Itzhak bristles at him, only partially pretending. "Yeah? You're fucking on." Which his eyebrows immediately say he regrets. Because he is now sure Joe's right. But he doesn't back out. "Gimme one a them nasty things, would you?" He gestures at Joe's Lucky.

Cristobal shoots back his drink in a straight shot, craning his head slightly to the side as the first one kicks like a mule. "Hey, Cavanaugh, lemme bum one of those too?" He makes a little scissoring motion towards the cigarette to indicate what he means as he drifts close to the table. "No accounting for taste." Cristobal agrees.

He's got no complexion for gambling, himself, not even after the weathering of years at sea....and his first swig of that nasty whiskey concoction he loves has a flush streaking his cheekbones. "Take it," Joe says, grinning at the musician, pushing the bill at him. "It'll just be takin' a li'l vacation in your wallet, 'fore it comes home to me." Then he taps out a Lucky, proffers it between first and second fingers. Even as he's setting it between Itz's lips, flicking the Zippo alight again, he says to Cris, deliberately, "No."

"You're being a real dick about this, Yossil," Itzhak mutters, making the twenty vanish off the table with a slip of his hand. He accepts the cigarette with a grunt of thanks, leaning forward to let Joe light it--then he's holding back a laugh.

Someone else who hasn't turned up at the Twofer recently is Ravn Abildgaard; he's poked his head into the Poorhouse once or twice since quitting barbacking, but otherwise he's kept a fairly low profile -- not to mention, gone off to Denmark for a week and only returned a day or two ago. Gray Harbor said 'welcome back!' in its usual fashion, and he's maybe not gotten quite as much sleep to combat the jet lag as he'd have liked. At least that's what he tells himself as he wanders in and heads towards the bar to order a whiskey, on ice, without really paying much attention to anything or anyone. He does upnod a hello to the table at which he knows two out of three faces in passing but priorities are priorities; whiskey first, then social.

Cris' eyebrows push to little peaks and his hands come up in mock-capitulation. "There's my guy anyway." Taking notice of a guy near the front door, flicking a small white envelope between his fingers. He gives a little hitch of his head towards Itzhak, "Have a good one, Rosie." His hand reaches back to snag his coat combo, sliding it on his arms as he walks. "Let's step outside and get this done." He tells the other man, and the pair slip out into the chill of the air.

"Well, you know, a retiree's gotta have some hobbies," Joe says, serenely, as he tips back in his chair again, blows a plume of smoke at the already hazy ceiling. "You got to have the courage to do it, though, 'fore my birthday. That gives you more'n six months to get it done," he adds. Then there's Ravn, and it's one blond sailor eyeing another. "Long time no see, neighbor," he says to the newcomer. "Heard you went back home for a bit." Whereupon he's laying his cigarette in the ashtray and taking a sip of his drink.

Itzhak draws on the cigarette, exhales. "I can't believe you smoke these things." He narrows his eyes at Joe. "Double or nothing, and I'll do it by my birthday. That's the ninth of February." Why back off when you can just double down?

When Ravn comes in, Itzhak greets him with, "Yo! You doing okay over there, buddy?" Himself, he took a few good hits in that welcome, but apparently it hasn't slowed him any. He's hanging out drinking and smoking and kvetching (and making bets), you know, the usual Itzhak stuff.

Once whiskey is indeed acquired, Ravn turns around and rests one elbow on the counter, cradling the tumbler in his other, gloved hand. "Evenin'. Had to go sign some papers and tell some people that I won't be coming home anytime soon. And then I got back and Gray Harbor did its little hi how have you been we missed you dance and now I honestly just want to drink a lot and sleep a lot for a bit. How's life on the harbour? Rather looking back to getting back to sea." He quirks an eyebrow in that okay to join you blokes fashion.

"It'll put hair on your chest," Not that he's ever had much on that front, so clearly, he doesn't know what he's talking about. But he raises a brow at that, and says, "All right. Double or nothin' it is. I'mma have myself a real nice bender at your expense." A hint of that old arrogance, as he glances over at Ravn. "A'right," he says. "But then, I was out of it for Christjmas, too. Javier an' I went and saw the Grand Canyon and the meteor crater." There's a gleam of that ridiculous, childish enthusiasm in his face - it takes years off it. "Yeah, me, too, but it's gonna be a while. Spring seas here are rough."

Itzhak beckons Ravn over with a curl of his fingers. "Pretty nasty shit in that one," he says, around the cigarette, sympathetically. "Just in case you needed a reminder of why you're staying, right?" Then he makes a face at Joe, because he knows. He totally knows he's going to lose this bet handsomely. He plucks the smoke from his lips in order to sip the whiskey sour (extra cherries!).

"Grand Canyon doesn't sound bad, I'd like to see that sometime. I was giving Hyacinth Addington a guided tour of my home town which was -- surprisingly not traumatic, considering how much I hated living there. Turns out that she's perfectly capable of lecturing me on the finer points of the architecture of my own house, in my own language, but I guess that's what growing up here does to someone." Ravn pulls up a chair and flops down on it and nods at Itzhak. "Yeah. Still processing some parts of that."

Joe just grins at him, infuriating. Lose he will....but he doesn't press further. Instead, he taps ash into the ashtray. The idea of Hyacinth Addington being there makes Joe blink again. "I'd always wanted to see it up close," he says, mildly. "You c'n see it from orbit. And the crater, too. So Javier humored me, and we went. What was Addington doin' there? You and she aren't a thing, are you?"

Itzhak promptly chokes on his drink and has to spend a while coughing while also trying not to laugh. He waves vaguely at Joe and Ravn as if to say they should go on without him for a minute.

Ravn side-eyes Itzhak, clearly wondering what the joke is. Then he looks at Joe and shakes his head. "No, we are not. She just wanted an excuse to bail on the whole Addington clan Christmas affair where everyone more or less hates each other but keeps a straight face while doing it. Flitting around Denmark looking at old houses seemed like a better alternative. Suited me fine, personally, since I don't have any family I care to spend the holiday with, either. I'd argue she did fall in love on the trip, but it was with the grand staircase."

Joe's apparently not in on the joke, either, by the bemused look he gives the Dane. He shrugs, fractionally, and takes another drag off the cigarette, another sip of the drink. He's not charging through the latter - not an evening he intends to be really drunk by the time he gets home. "That sounds awful," he agrees. "I hadda promise to give my family lotta time in the spring to make up for not bein' there this Christmas, but....they've had me every Christmas I was on Earth for years, and I sent lots of presents to the nieces and nephews." He snickers at the idea of a romance with a staircase, and asides to Itz, "Least it wasn't with a Douglas Fir."

"The Last Unicorn reference, I see what you did there!" Itzhak points at Joe dramatically. He's still red in the face but, when he glances back at Ravn, it's with a certain empathy in his hazel eyes. "So she had a great time. How about you?"

"Not bad? Airplane food and jet lag both suck." Ravn samples his whiskey; a twelve year Chivas Regal it is not, but it'll get the job done. "Lawyers suck. My veterans didn't suck. And just hanging out with someone who's as geeky about architecture as I am about history didn't suck either. I like Hyacinth -- she's pretty chill when the whole town isn't looking at her like she's the crown princess of America."

"I bet it's liberating to get away somewhere where her name don't mean much," Joe opines, after another mouthful of whiskey. "And yeah, jet lag sure does." The mention of veterans has him looking up from eyeing the bottom of his glass. "Veterans of what?" he asks, more gently.

"I like her too. I mean, obviously." Itzhak did let Hya build him a new violin, after all, he doesn't give luthier privileges to just any schmuck off the street. "Well, I can't lie, I'm glad to have ya back, pal." He hikes his eyebrows at Ravn, interested in the answer to Joe's question.

"I help tutor veterans from Afghanistan," Ravn answers that question. "Denmark's part of NATO's peace keeping efforts there. Afghanistan has three hundred years of tradition for not peace keeping anything and the only thing anyone there agrees on is that outsiders suck even worse than the guy from the next mountain over. Our government tries to put those boys through university when they get back, help them reintegrate into society, that sort of thing. The ones I work with are guys with heavy PTSD who need someone to hold their hand while they try to train their brains to think less land mines and more academia. I picked up a couple of assignments more now that I'm not working at the Twofer."

Then he grins slightly at Itzhak and nods. "I'm glad to be back. This town is bloody bizarre but it feels a lot more like home. Crazy dreams, nightmare cats, and screwed up people are apparently my tribe."

Clearly, Ravn's just gone up several notches in Joe's esteem. He smiles at the Dane. "I did not know you did that," he says, quietly. Far more genuine warmth in his face. "I was there. I got....well, not shot down, the Taliban never really had the capability of takin' down jets. But because of equipment failure, I had to eject over the Korengal. Me an' my backseater." The smile fades, and there's something bleak in the blue eyes. "Some Marines rescued us, 'cludin' de la Vega, but it was a godawful mess. My buddy didn't make it, an' I was in the hospital a long time after. I hope Denmark treats its warriors better'n we treat ours."

"Didn't know you did that either." There's a gleam of--is it? yes--pride in Itzhak's eyes. "Look at you. Out there doin' tikkun olam." He snorts a laugh over 'screwed up people' and clinks his glass to Ravn's. "I'll drink to that. L'chaim." And he does drink, and then the eyebrows go up again as Joe goes over a little bleak. He doesn't even think about it, he just reaches over and rubs the other man's back.

"I want to say yes but to be honest, I don't think we treat our veterans all that great either. A lot of work is being done, but most of the effort is captained by private organisations and the soldiers' union, twisting the arm of the state. Lack of proper support and psychiatric care is a recurring complaint." Ravn dips into a pocket and strikes a match to light a rare cigarette. "It was a job I picked up a few years back because it means I can teach but not have to stand in a classroom -- I can do it from anywhere in the world and no one needs to know I'm criticising their essay from a bus somewhere. But I'm finding I like it -- I can actually make a difference to those people. Tutoring college students just makes me feel like they have to sit through it but they're only there because they have to. The vets who push through for a bachelor really want it."

Joe nods at that, and then he, too, lifts his glass. "To the veterans of Denmark and America, and those who help them. L'chaim," he intones. The rubbing of his back just gets a brief smile. There is, notably, no pride that makes him try to withdraw from the gesture. No settling of feathers for the sake of public face - as if Itzhak had every right to touch him that way, in front of strangers. "You're makin' me feel a li'l guilty for not helpin' the current generation of vets more. I'll take a lesson from that."

Izhak is just a touchy, huggy, effin' ridiculous kinda guy. Currently smoking one of Joe's cigarettes, nasty unfiltered thing, and sipping on his whiskey sour, and rubbing Joe's back as if to settle a restive animal. "You paid your PTSD dues, Yossil," he murmurs. He smiles, though, because Ravn is talking about liking teaching and that makes him smile. "Those guys are the college students you're tutoring? I actually had no idea. Too wrapped up in my own bullshit."

Ravn shakes his head. "Don't. You actually went there. Easy to have a lot of opinions on that conflict from back home, maybe not quite so easy when you're sitting in a jeep in the Helmand Province, hoping not to hit a roadside bomb. I'm a pacifist, but I learned pretty quick that the world is not black and white like that. Can't expect people like the Taleban to sort themselves out, and can't just watch what they do to others while they fail to sort themselves out."

"Anyway. To the veterans and other blokes who try to make the world a better place. Cheers." The Dane raises his glass as well, then drinks. He doesn't seem to pay any particular attention to public displays of affection; he's obviously not embarrassed by it, either. "Well, my vets are going for their bachelors. The college students..." Ravn makes a small face. "They're regular college students. Tutoring pays my rent but seventeen year old kids are seventeen year old kids. Most of them just need the points."

The sailor spreads his hands, leaving a swirl of smoke behind. "I know better, and I should've done better," he says, still softly. "I should still do better....." Then, finally, Joe's trying to reassemble that public face. Itz gets a wry look. "I hope so," he says. "I dunno about it, though. I got off real lightly, compared to the guys on the ground. I was only there 'bout a week, not down in it for months on end."

Itzhak takes the look as his cue to quit it with the back rubbing. He squeezes Joe's shoulder before stopping nonetheless, as there has not yet been the cue born he'll actually obey, that isn't musical, at least. He hesitates, looking sideways at Joe, clearly thinking about protesting and also laying down some Facts(tm). But, he looks away again, flicks the cigarette against the ashtray to tap off the ash. "Shit ain't black and white," he agrees, anyway. "Shit is hard. That's why Jews argue all the time, yannow. To figure stuff out."

"Survivor's guilt doesn't help," Ravn points out. "And I say that in spite of Rosencrantz probably slapping me silly in a moment because if there's one thing I'm really great at myself, it's feeling guilty about not doing enough or being too privileged. But it's true -- if you did what you could, and did it as well as you could, then you've done your part. There's always something better or more or should have done. It's part of the PTSD, they tell me, feeling like that."

He studies his tumbler a moment and then looks at Joe, trying to change the subject. "Røn told me you have a big house in Georgia. Have you had Addington try to chat it up yet?"

That question is a welcome diversion, for Joe's expression goes very dry - jolted out of that beginning part of the spiral. He lifts a finger, admonishingly. "No. I don't have a big house in Georgia. My family does. I know that that sounds like semantics, but - I don't have a share in it, now. I go to visit the kin that do, from time to time. Nah. Architecturally, nothin' special, it's just a big ol' Victorian. It's not the original antebellum house, Union soldiers burnt that one down, we were far enough out of town that making it a present to Lincoln didn't apply."

Itzhak looks aside, a little guiltily, no doubt thinking of that time he really yelled at Ravn over just that thing. He clears his throat, then grins at Joe. "You got no idea how on the nose what you just said is to this guy here." He looks like he personally arranged for the conversation to take this turn, he's so happy about it.

"See, he gets it. He can split that hair." Ravn grins slightly and glances Itzhak's way before looking back at Joe. "Same deal. I was trying to explain to Rosencrantz a few days ago how family owning something doesn't mean I own something. It's semantics, except, it isn't." Yeah, he and Itzhak are definitely thinking of the same few conversations there.

A quick glance between them. "How's that?" he asks, still clearly delighted to cling to this particular conversational straw. "I mean.....the boat I own, she's mine. I say what happens to her, I buy or sell her as I like. Same with my bike. I don't own the house in Georgia. I don't own any of our property in Georgia. Well, there are certain pieces I might get a share of if they sell, but it's not something I really get a say in. I don't own any property since my house in Houston got sold." He finally knuckles out the cigarette. "I mean, I'm not gonna argue that I don't have financial resources in my family if I need 'em. But it's not ownership."

Tikkun olam comes in many forms, humble and grand. Right now, this is Itzhak's contribution, sitting here doing the emotional equivalent of helping tow Joe back to shore from a nasty rip current. "Oh, well, maybe that's different. That sounds different. Tell him, Abildgaard, yeah?" That's him enlisting Ravn to help him. He finishes the smoke, crushes it out in a neat little twist of his wrist. "I mean you might as well, he already knows Hya is in love with your staircase."

Ravn quirks an eyebrow at Rosencrantz and then nods, lending the proverbial paddle. "Exactly that," he says to Joe. "There's a company with my family name on it, and like you, I could pull resources out of it if I wanted to, but it's not mine. I didn't get my hands dirty making that money, and I don't have anything to do with the company besides signing whatever papers my lawyer sends me. I was trying to explain that to Rosencrantz the other day but I don't think I managed."

And Joe doing his best to accept it. Whatever his glittering arrogance, whatever the front he presents of good nature or competence....he has sense enough to take some of the help that's offered. "Huh. One of those Abildgaards, I guess. Heard the name when I was workin' with some of the ESA guys, I think." He smiles at Itz, but it's still the Dane he's mostly focussed on. "Yeah. There's a lot of old money in the family, but....I'm just kind of off doin' my own thing. I don't draw on it, haven't needed to. I bought my boat with money from the sale of my house."

Itzhak half smiles back, mouth tugging up on one side, and quirks his eyebrows at Joe in a very specifically 'I got you' kind of way. It's the kind of look he'd give to another violinist whose bow just squeaked. The audience always forgives your slipups as long as you keep playing. "Ehhhhh," he says, then, certainly acting more embarrassed than he actually is, hamming it up a little with a shrug and a rolling over of his hands to present his palms to the ceiling. "Never been great with that kinda thing. So, wait, you're both like that? You both got super rich families and you struck on out into the wide world to make your own bones?"

"ESA? That honestly doesn't surprise me. Over here, you got Elon Musk trying to go to Mars, in Europe we have investors are fighting over getting their share of the pie too -- not so much the space travel itself as all the things that get invented to accommodate it, but I imagine you'd know more about that than I do. I read somewhere that NASA invented stuff like computer mice and cell phone cameras." Ravn shakes his head, looking a little amused at his own openly admitted ignorance.

Then he grins lopsidedly at Itzhak. "I pay the rent on my boat and my place with money that I made myself. Might not be glamorous but it's mine. So yeah, at least for me, that's pretty much it. I don't have a lot of family left admittedly, but things still pretty much take care of themselves back home, and people who actually do know what they're doing are keeping the wheels running, providing employment for a lot of other people. Which is great, but it's still got very little to do with me."

"I think it'd be real disingenuous of me to claim that," Joe admits. And it's worth noting that all of a sudden, his accent has changed. Become something far closer to standard public American English. "I was able to go to a top end prep school without racking up debt, and that, in turn, let me go to a prestigious university, again without debt. Which had me way the fuck ahead of the game when it came to doing what I wanted in the Navy, and that springboarded me to NASA," He's matter of fact about it, in that way he has.

"I mean, yeah, what I live on now is money I made - pension, royalties, investments. But I don't have to worry. If all of that fell through, I've got a backstop that very few do."

"Yeah. That there. That backstop." Itzhak taps the table at Joe. "That's exactly what I was tryin' to tell you, Rashka." Whoa whoa wait, Ravn suddenly got a nickname? "It's that backstop that makes the difference. Except I don't got no words! I shoulda tried to play you a song about it, I could have explained it like that." He then looks showily resigned, eyebrows canted up, what can you do? "That's why I shoved you, Cavanaugh," he adds wryly, about Joe's upward trajectory. He kind of says it into his glass, echoey.

Ravn smiles with a hint of wryness and nods to Joe. "That's a very valid point. I think I told someone -- de la Vega, actually -- that there's choosing to live rough, and having to live rough. I've never had to do anything. Being independent is a big deal to me, personally. I'm not going to tell you that I'm not essentially the European equivalent of a rich trust fund kid with a fancy name. I just keep my head down and hope most people won't think to ask. After all, I'm just a guy who lives in a trailer park."

"Exactly," Joe concedes, on a sigh. "I like knowing that I've done that much, at least. But I've never had to. And there was .....a soft landing for my fuckups, if I really went wrong. The backstop does. I've had fights with de la Vega about it, when we were younger men. How it affects how you view the world, what you expect from it, what it expects from you...." He tips his half-empty glass at Itz. "I don't blame you."

Itzhak rolls his eyes theatrically at people not thinking to ask. "Yeah, like yours truly over heah." He's always sardonic and when drunk, sardon levels shoot into the red. "Oh I just bet you fought with him over it," he says to Joe, pretty amused by the image. Then again, when doesn't he like thinking about de la Vega and fighting? Then his eyes go kinda wide and he looks at Ravn. "Wait a minute, that's why you've been over here, like, in America, and why you went went and didn't stop till you hit ocean. You were running away from your name. I mean, you told me that, but you really were!"

"Well, that's the thing about money -- it's a lot more fun when you have it than when you don't. I've spent enough time on the streets of Europe and the US to get to know a lot of people who have a hell of a lot of reason to resent the corporate world and the money that's tied up in it." Ravn glances at Itzhak. "We argued about that. Rosencrantz felt that I'd lied to him about who I am. And then we've got the whole poor little rich kid Hollywood archetype that honestly just makes it worse, because not only is this sucker well off, he's also expecting you to feel sorry for him about it. I don't usually talk about my background a whole lot because I don't want to deal with all of that. And well, because for a nation that literally fought a revolutionary war to put an end to the influence of European nobility, Americans sure as hell fall on their arse about it, and I don't want to deal with that, either."

Itzhak's little outburst prompts the Dane to laugh, though. "Why do you assume I'm not telling you the truth, you asshole? I don't lie. We've been over this. I leave things out, I make sure to bloody well not see things I don't want to know about, but I don't lie. Besides, I was also very much running away from the lady whose heart you tore out the other night."

There's that rueful look in his eyes, as Joe nods. "Oh, yeah. Admittedly, we once had one of those fights in front of my parents' beach house on a mostly private island, so.....there may have been an element of hypocrisy in any claim of mine that I could understand what he'd been through," he says.

Then he's shoving back from the table and rising. "Gents, I gotta get home, or they gonna find me dead in the snow. Good drinkin' with you, though. Rosencrantz, keep that twenty warm for me, I want to see it in good health when it comes back."

Itzhak shifts in his seat like he might go lighting out after Joe and fuss over him and insist to go along so he can make sure Joe gets where he's going safely and...he relaxes back, though his eyebrows aren't relaxed. "See ya, Cavanaugh. Careful out there, it's icy as fuck." Still some tension in him, though. Like that urge isn't sleeping quietly. He tips the chair back on two legs, like Joe was doing, and shakes his head at Ravn. "Nah, nah, not sayin' you lied! Only that...I dunno, sometimes I just don't get things. Like I always knew Cavanaugh went to space but it's weird, it's only as I got to know him more that I started to realize he actually, literally flew a space shuttle."

He lifts his eyebrows at mention of the lady. "What can I say, I named my car Heartbreaker for a reason. Uh, so," lowering his voice, he makes a little rolling 'so?' gesture. "So, so, you okay?"

"Yeah. Like I said -- I want to drink a lot and sleep a lot, but apart from that I'm all right. Besides, odds are that it was all just some crazy thing the Veil cooked up, right?" Ravn shrugs lightly. "Also? The idea that someone actually, literally flew a space shuttle is mind blowing. Think you get another perspective, from up there? I read something by Neil Armstrong, about the world being very small and the conflicts on it seeming very silly from out there. There has to be this point on your way up where reality goes click and you realise that if the engines cut out now you won't fall back down, you'll just keep on going. That moment -- that's when you've literally left the planet. I can't imagine what that must feel like."

The Dane tosses his whiskey back and chews on the ice cube. "I think I maybe should go home and drink a bottle of something strong, then sleep. I talked to Seth some about ... the Diner. It helped. Now I just need to deal with the hangover, so to speak, and I'll be fine in a day or two when the dust has had a chance to settle. I think I'd like to talk about it with you -- by then. Have you call me boychik and idiot in that way of yours, and then we get on with life and lead dead girlfriends stay dead. Deal? Deal."

For now, though, Ravn pushes off too, and follows Joe out into the night (though presumably not to the same destination).