2021-06-30 - Candy Apple Red

What goes pling and sits in the pocket of an expensive yet very practical leather jacket? It's a pink phone with a Hello Kitty print, and the incoming call is labelled Bitey Blonde.

Ravn looks a little surprised at seeing the request, and then taps it. Heading from the main basketball court towards a perhaps more quiet place in the store room, he dodges a couple of kids playing hide and seek, hops onto a -- whatever that thing is, gymnasts like doing stuff on top of them -- and says, "Something on fire or wrong number?"

Cassidy's calling from her iPad and it is propped up against something or other as both her hands are clearly free. The shot is a tilted angle looking upward. Cassidy is there in her kitchen. The cabinets can be seen behind her and the kitchen light overhead can also be seen. She's sitting down and there's a glass of red wine to one side of the screen.

She's clad in reddish-pink cotton pajamas that have little pictures of the Eiffel Tower, poodles, French flags, cups of espresso and the words 'France', 'Paris' and 'OOH LA LA' printed all over them in a scattered arrangement.

Cassidy isn't looking at the iPad, though, she seems to be looking into something off to the side as she applies a layer of deep red polish to a fingernail. "Hey Rav, what's up?"

The Dane in turn looks like he hasn't shaved for three days (and for once, like it's not a carefully achieved look). He glances around -- sniffs the air -- and sighs. Somebody smoked in here, and not long ago. They obviously shouldn't, and now he feels like doing the very same thing. "Oh, pretty much what you'd expect from a hurricane shelter in a hurricane. A lot of bored, upset, and frightened people who try to pass the time picking fights, arguing, snoring too loudly, and claiming that grape ice cream gave them food poisoning. Going to Paris?"

Cassidy lifts the polish brush and gives her completed nail a look. Before moving on to the next one she places the little brush in its glass bottle and reaches for her wine glass. She takes a sip and shakes her head.

Holding the glass about a palm's distance to the side of her face she says, "No. I've been there a couple times. Went on a field trip with my high school once when I was learning the language." She takes another sip and puts the wine glass down.

As she reaches again for the brush to apply a coat to the next nail she does glance briefly at the screen. "Oh you look awful, Rav. How long do you have to be holed up in there?"

"Until the bloody storm clears, I figure." Ravn runs a gloved hand through his hair, attempting to goat it into some kind of submission; success is highly debatable. "Been sneaking out on a few errands but largely, I think we just need to ride this one out the hard way. I'll say this: 'Borrowing' a school bus to get to the laundromat with a sack of dirty toddler underwear has not been the highlight of my career. It's certainly 'an adventure'. Very 'character building'." He even makes the air quotes.

Then he gives in and lights a cigarette; somebody else already broke the rule in here, the place already smells, what the hell. "How's the storm treating you? Looks like your place is still standing."

"It better - what I pay in rent..." Cassidy mutters as she applies a coat of polish to the next nail in line. This requires focus, of course, but really just the focus of her eyes. She's only looked at Ravn the once. "It's a full on house here. I live on Oak Avenue. So I'm sure nothing will cave in. The windows are all holding up and so forth."

"Honestly, the storm came at a good time. Seems to have deflected the attention from mysteriously missing evidence and officer suicides." Cassidy scrutinizes her work on that fingernail.

"Do you like the color?" she holds up the bottle. "It's called 'Candy Apple Red'."

"I'm going to be honest and very 'man' at you," Ravn says with a small, lopsided grin. "It's all red to me. Sorry, I realise it's a big deal to people who can in fact tell the shades apart. Read somewhere that there's scientific evidence for it -- people born biologically female do in fact see far more shades and hues than people born biologically male."

Maybe it's the chance to think about something not little Vicky Barrett's crusade for vegan food, something not Mrs Neely and Mrs Jankowski arguing over whether pets should be allowed in the shelter, and not bankers from Olympia complaining that there's not enough hot water in the high school gym showers. He grasps at it because a man can be 'guy in charge' of chaos for only so long before he's ready to talk about something else, anything else. "Do I want to ask about missing evidence and suicides? That sounds very -- Gray Harbor, somehow."

Because it does. Of course it does. Only, there's no way to explain to the ADA exactly how Gray Harbor something like that sounds.

"It's sparkly and it's cute AND it's very red," Cassidy explains to Ravn, thus giving his male (and therefore color-scrutinizing-deficient) brain the subtle difference between Candy Apple Red and plain old 'red'.

Art class now over, Cassidy sets the bottle back down and carefully applies a coat of the polish to the next waiting fingernail. "Exactly. See? It was in the news and everything and you don't even know about it. Perfect storm timing." She seems pleased by that, but she frowns at the comment of 'very Gray Harbor'.

"Funny...This reporter was going on and on about how the police rush to solve things and close cases by implicating innocent people, but from where I sit, it seems like cases are never closed or they take forever to solve. This is just another example of that." She shakes her head as she assesses the work done on that last fingernail (on that one hand, at least). "I'll be happy to get out of here when I am finally allowed to."

"Gray Harbor seems to have a -- culture, for lack of a better term? - of leaving things unifnished," Ravn murmurs, not quite certain how to explain this effect to someone without the shine. "A lot of things seem to happen here that probably wouldn't fly anywhere else. And a lot of people don't seem to care a whole lot. What's keeping you here if you don't mind my asking -- work?"

He fights the temptation to tell Cassidy to get the hell out while he can. Both because that'd prompt the inevitable question of 'why?' and because no one ever does.

"Work. Duh." Cassidy says with little attention given to the screen. She's checking the job on her nails and, from the looks of it, letting them dry for the moment. Perfect opportunity to take another sip of red wine.

"You seem to be here by choice, though, which is super weird."

She sighs, "I fucking want a cigarette but these aren't dry yet." She pouts and looks over the top of her iPad at, presumably, a door that would allow her to go outside and smoke.

The Dane can't help a lopsided smile -- at Cassidy's inquiry, and at the fact that he has a cigarette and she doesn't. "Figured it'd be work. What's so weird about being here by choice? Gray Harbor's a screwed-up place but it offers me what I want. So of course I'm sticking around. Just like you want to be somewhere that offers you what you want -- which isn't Gray Harbor."

"Yeah well what you want is weird." Cassidy that time actually addresses the iPad and gives her head a playful and saucy shake and then she hunches over a touch as she giggles.

Another glance at her nails and she decides they are now dry enough. "Ok. I'm going out."

Cassidy stands and collects the iPad with one hand and a cigarette and lighter with the other. The image is shakes and bounces as she carries Ravn around the kitchen counter and through a dining area to the back door. It opens to the sound of pouring rain but it seems Cassidy at least has some sort of over-hang or something to stop it from drenching her and the iPad and the cigarette.

She places Ravn on an outside shelf and then stands, leaning against the opposite wall so she can look at the screen. She lights her cigarette and vanishes the lighter into the pocket of her pajama bottoms. "It's kind of nice out, actually. Not nearly as much wind as earlier today."

"Nice place you got there," Ravn observes as he is carried through it virtually. "Oak Avenue does seem to be the better part of town, insofar anything in Gray Harbor is upscale." He's visited some of the Bayside apartments but, on the whole, this town isn't exactly a millionaire's playground.

Then he glances back towards the basketball court and the people camping on it, on the other side of the door to the gym store room. "Some of the folks here did go out for a little walk on the high school grounds, yeah. Being cooped up is driving people batty. No surprise there -- and no surprise either, that it's the well-to-do yachters stranded here that's making the most trouble. Some of these people think they're at a resort or a hotel. Hasn't dawned on them that their only alternative is to go back on that boat of theirs which is about to get smashed to bits against the pier if it hasn't been already."

"It's okay. Too big for just me with three bedrooms, but there's really not an alternative." Of course there's not. Not for Cassidy. "I had a roommate for a short bit when I lived here before. Haven't tried to find one since I moved back." She takes another drag and then leans her head back against the wall and turns her profile to the camera while she looks out into the rain. "All those yacht people have insurance. They don't care as much as you might think. It's the folks living on sail boats and trawlers who're going to be fucked."

"Most of us who actually live here dry docked our boats, or moved them out to buoys at sea in good time. Because we like having boats and we'd like to keep them." Ravn nods. "My Vagabond is sitting safely on higher ground, for instance. It's just these tourist yachters thinking that if they complain enough to whoever looks like they're in charge, the storm will go away so they can resume their leisure trip to Olympia or Puget Sound. Unfortunately for me, I seem to look like someone who might be in charge of a hurricane shelter. Fortunately for me, none of them understand Danish."

He chuckles. "I'm looking for a place myself -- have the room mate ready, just need to find the right size and location for us to room in sometime during summer. I'll be living on my boat until around October 1, but I can't spend the winter months there. Spent last year in the trailer park but I'm honestly rather tired of banging my head against a low ceiling. Room mate's girlfriend lives abroad so bachelor pad it is."

Does Cassidy look like she has any idea of life on a boat? No. No she doesn't. All she has to offer is, "smart" and then a drag of her cigarette. She puts it out in an ashtray after and walks back toward the device to pick it up.

While it jostles around as Cassidy opens the door back to her house she talks, "I'm sure you'll find something easily. Not like this town is over populated by any stretch."

The iPad is sat back down where it was on the kitchen counter and Cassidy sits down again. The Cherry Apple Red bottle is back in view and then it's a second coat for those nails, starting with the thumb.

"Oh, I'm sure. Issue is finding the right place for Kinney and me. Not small enough we rub each other's elbows raw, not large enough we might as well just get our own places. I'm picky like that." Ravn leans back on the -- whatever you call it, gymnasts do things on 'em -- and blows a smoke ring; is he a chain smoker? Yes, he bloody well is when it's the only chance he will get for a while. "Lots of empty properties on Spruce and Elm. Renting the old butcher's shop for HOPE was the most odd negotiation, felt like they were almost willing to pay us. I suspect a lot of town is like that, any lease is good if it means somebody will maintain the property while the owner waits for the financial crunch to end and the town magically become affluent once more."

"Uh huh..." Cassidy's focus is on the second coat of polish on those nails. This is especially the case when the conversation focuses on things like rent economies in a creepy small town that she hates. "Well I'm sure you'll find something," she drawls absently.

The polish brush is placed back in its bottle now that the hand she was working on is done. She takes her glass of wine and looks at the camera with brows raised as she takes a sip.

"Where'd you be, if you had the choice and no obligations? Washington? Walking up Capitol Hill to make the FBI your bitch?" It's as good a guess as any from Ravn's side. "Why'd you take the assignment here if you hate the town?"

After her sip is taken she holds the glass loosely. "I wanted to do appellate and constitutional law in DC, yeah, but it didn't quite work out straight out of school. So I took a position as a public defender in Seattle until the ADA job opened up." Cassidy's eyes look to the side off-screen... something's missing... "Oh! I'm from Spokane originally, so it was more like just coming closer to home for work." There.

As for why she's here? "I work for the State, Rav. So if they need me here, I'm here. No sense in jeopardizing my career and throwing away goodwill just because I don't happen to like the place they're sending me."

"Sure, but there's a difference between 'well, yeah, I can go if you want me to' and 'pick me, pick me, I'm practically a native, please pick me'." Ravn offers another lopsided smile. "Sounds very much like a case of the former. So what's this about suicides and missing evidence? Tell me the bits you've also told the press -- I could do with having something else on my mind than the urge to throttle the guy from Olympia and his wife, and the vegan kid."

Did she say missing evidence? Shit... That wasn't technically in the news... Luckily (for her) Cassidy is well practiced to be poised and cunning. "I haven't spoken to the press, but a cop committed suicide last week. Officer Higgins...?" she lets that settle just to see if it rings any bells from reading the news.

"Day after he shot himself Anita had to drop charges in that McNeely murder case." Cassidy takes a sip. She shrugs..Oh! "Anita is the ADA who was working the charges against the brother. But I guess they didn't have what they needed to make anything stick."

Ravn frowns lightly. He's not really familiar with the case -- a headline here, a mentions there but no talk about Cthulhu, gremlins, or ghosts so until now, not really something that registered to him a whole lot. There's just something -- and the last time there was just something in this way, he eventually ended up sniper bait in a garden expo while out of town mobsters fought local mobsters and police. He's still got the bullet scars (and the awareness that if not for some very quick Glimmer-y first aid, he'd not have been around to show them to anyone).

"I don't know the first thing about policework," he says, a bit speculatively. "I do know a bit about aging, largely abandoned industrial harbours like this one, though. Back home, the next town over is a bit like Gray Harbor in this regard -- the shipping industry is kind of gone, leaving a lot of cheap properties on the harbour, and not a whole lot of attention. The Russian mafia barely bothers to keep it secret that they ship drugs from the Baltic states to the rest of the world right through there. So if you tell me there's -- deals and shady business in Gray Harbor, I believe you."

If Cassidy's face, and the way her eyes kind of scan some space off-screen, say that she isn't following that's because she's not. How did they get from officer suicides to Russian mafia? She slowly reaches off screen and slides what looks like a nail polish bottle but of clear liquid into frame. She screws out the brush and begins to apply a clear top coat to her Candy Apple Reds.

She thinks of something to keep the conversation moving. "Yeah, I don't think it's any secret that Felix Monaghan runs drugs through here in much the same way and has important people in his pocket protecting him." She tilts her head a bit and slowly drags that brush up the center of a nail. "Obviously you know that, Rav. You so brazenly introduced me to his cousin, after all." She points her eyes to the camera and smirks.

"Seth's a bouncer at the Firefly," Ravn points out blithely. "If you ask me off the record? I'm sure he's seen some things, but I don't know about them and I don't ask about them because I have no desire to get involved. It seems to be a bit of a social faux-pas in town to refer to Felix Monaghan or Byron Thorne as anything but upstanding local businessmen, and that's a hornet's nest I figure I don't need to stick my gloved mitts into. Explains why you seemed rather less excited to bump into the bloke, though."

"Yeah we know what Seth is and what he does." Cassidy says with more attention to her nails with a fresh top coat layer than the conversation. She lets those dry and reaches for her win glass with the other hand.

"So the way it works in America, Rav, is that there's what we know, what we can prove and what we can do about it, and they don't always align." She takes a sip. "But just be careful, Rav. It's almost always guys like you who get the set up."

"I appreciate the warning. Not being an ass -- I do. But I'm also curious as to what you mean exactly when you say 'guys like me'. I've lived on the streets, Cassidy. I'm not completely blind to the fact that most people will sell you down the river if their own ass is on the line. That's not a Gray Harbor thing, that's a being human thing." Ravn puts the second cigarette out, though he shows no particular inclination towards rushing back into the fray on the other side of the door to the store room.

"It works the same way in Denmark, by the way. What we know, what we can prove, and how neither matters if someone can write a check big enough. Whoever's holding Felix' leash wears a suit and might just have that apartment near Capitol Hill. Still, people want their drugs, and other people will cash in on it, that's how it works. It's not right but it's the way it is."

"Small time crooks or ex-grifters." Cassidy explains. "Someone that a charge can stick to. They aren't one of the boys, but they're known by the boys. They don't want to be involved, but they'll tolerate things and look the other way if needed."

Cassidy pulls into frame another, different, small bottle with a clear liquid but it's not the other bottle with the clear liquid. She unscrews it and with her left hand very carefully starts applying it to the still undone nails on her right hand.

"Then it's an idea here and an idea there. How they can help in some way - totally legal. Or would they mind doing something not technically illegal, but just this side of sketchy. Then after a while everyone's comfortable with each other. One day they need someone who isn't one of the boys but can be trusted to do something innocuous like drop something in the mail box, or run an errand. And that's when the police nab them with a smoking gun of some sort."

She shrugs, "It's never personal and it's not even really planned or set up that way. Can't even call it grooming. It's just that when they need someone to take a fall? They're going to use one of the guys who isn't one of the guys."

"Yeah." Ravn nods; this is familiar territory. "You're pretty much describing why I ended up getting myself back out, back in the day. More specifically, after I got out of burglary on a technicality and having parents who could afford settlements. It was never personal. Just, as you say, one thing takes another, and an attention starved kid will do stupid things for acknowledgement."

He can't help admire the detail that she goes to with the nail brush; keenly aware that if he was to try to replicate a procedure like that, he'd probably be scraping Candy Apple Red off his face, his shirt, his jeans, and his shoes for a week. "I'm too old for those kinds of things now, fortunately. And too old to try to win anyone's approval."

Once that bottom layer of clear coat goes on she'll let it dry. "But not too old for a bachelor pad with a roomie," she grins into the camera.

"Too young to make it a white picket fence with a wife," Ravn grins back. "And definitely too young to make it a Bayside penthouse with an escort."

"How are you going to have a wife, Rav? You have to, like, let her touch you and stuff." Cassidy says with wide eyes and a waggle of her head as she reaches now for the Candy Apple Red - to be delicately and carefully painted onto the nails of her right hand under the control and guidance of her non-dominant left hand.

"Must suck having to bone someone when you have neurympathy." Or whatever.

"I'd like to think there's more to marriage than just sex," the Dane returns, half-laughing. It's definitely not the first time he's had this question -- not even in the first hundred times. "But yeah, it complicates things, and it's been a deal breaker on a number of occasions, definitely. Way I see it, though? Rather this than some of the other fun stuff people deal with."

"Maybe you just need to find, like, a contortionist who could have her legs totally up and then a little crane in the bedroom that can just, like, lower her down onto you so that there's no other touching involved," Cassidy tilts her head as she's applying the Cherry Apple Red, delivering the ridiculous solution with a perfectly straight face.

"I'd be surprised if no one made this movie already." Straight face on the other end of cyberspace as well. "But then, you don't strike me as the kind of blonde who'd turn up for the audition anyhow, and I am not on the market. How come somebody like you don't have one or two nice young prosecutors from Seattle lined up with hopeful expressions? Or is that you do, but they're in Seattle and you're stuck here?"

When he mentions the auditions, Cassidy squinches her face and protrudes her tongue a bit while shaking her head.

She's finishing the first coat on the last nail as she explains, "I don't have time for boys, Rav. I'm a working gal." She puts the brush back in its bottle as she looks up. "I haven't even been on a date in....2? 3? years." She yawns and stretches out her arms.

"I'd say make time, but I haven't been on a date for about three years myself either, so who am I to talk." Ravn nods. "Hoping to find the opportunity at some point, though. There's a crab shack on the marina I hear is quite good, and a lady whom I'd like to take to find out. Haven't managed to schedule it for four months though, so that crab shack better not be betting its future on having me as a customer."

"I don't want to make time, Rav. I'm not interested or looking at the moment." Cassidy smiles and settles on close to the camera now that the deets are coming out. She draws the wine glass close to her and is all eyes on the camera. "Oooh but sounds like you want to make time! Who is she Rav? Just ask her out and tell her when you're picking her up. Don't be a loser." She teases.

"Oh, but I do," the Dane agrees with another lopsided smile. "But everything in its time. And she, indeed, is not somebody you just tell when to be ready. If anything, she's the kind whose personal assistant texts you to tell you when to be ready. Between her business and me getting caught up at HOPE, well -- if it's meant to be, we'll manage to find the time." If Cassidy's teasing him bothers Ravn he's chosen to not let it show. "That's the thing -- I'm quite happy as I am. I can wait for whenever life feels like giving us and this silly town a break."

"Oh so romantic." Cassidy rolls her eyes and sits back again. She reaches for the Candy Apple Red to apply the second, and final, coat of polish to her right hand's fingernails.

"Don't recall professing to be one. And neither are you from the sounds of it, Miss Working Girl. Being single hasn't killed you so far, has it?" Ravn glances over his shoulder momentarily at a loud noise like somebody dropped something on a basketball court floor. As no screams ensue, he feels fairly safe it wasn't anyone's kid getting into a fight with someone else's kid, again. "And if anything, this week is reminding me that I'm in no rush to spawn the next generation, either."

"Yeah but I have, like, stuff going on. You know? A career..." Cassidy wiggles her head. She's still heavily focused on getting this second coat of polish on. And yes, she is suggesting that Ravn doesn't have 'stuff' going on. At least not as much as she does.

The man's smile doesn't falter; he's either got a rather good poker face or he doesn't particularly feel called out. "I've got a PhD and tenure at Copenhagen University. Don't know that I need more unless I decide at some point I want to up my pay grade to professor, in which case it's pretty much just a matter of putting in an application. Not sure I need to have more of a career than I already do. But then, I'm not aiming for Capitol Hill, either."

Cassidy just looks into the camera with her lips pressed into a smirk. "But what do you do with that, Rav, and what have you done lately?" She giggles and looks back to her nails. That second coat is now done and she twists the brush back into its bottle. "You have plenty of time kill. Let's not compare schedules," she laughs.

"I've made life no worse for most people and possibly better for a few. There are worse track records." Ravn grins slightly. "Teaching suits me fine. Humanitarian work seems to be something I'm not entirely bad at, and I do enjoy the success stories. But maybe that's the difference between you and me right there -- you have something to prove, and something to achieve. I don't. All I need to do is, well, spawn a kid or name some cousin's kid in my will."

"Oh yeah? What do I have to prove, hmm?" Cassidy wonders with irony. She's not looking at the camera now. She's getting the clear top coat prepared to glide over those freshly painted Candy Apple Reds on her right hand.

"You tell me. Why do you want to be a big shot in Washington, rather than wait tables in Gray Harbor?" The Dane sneaks a glance, and then lights another cigarette. To hell with it. He's running on the fumes of stolen smokes, strong cafeteria coffee, and sheer stubbornness, interspersed with supernatural visits that he couldn't explain to Cassidy if he tried. "The money plays a part, I imagine."

Cassidy frowns at her nails as she wraps up the clear coat. She's frowning at them, but not because of them. "Because I don't want to wait tables?" Duh.

She screws the clear coat bottle closed and fans out her fingers in front of her with arms straight out to look at the finished product. Then she pulls her arms on and turns her hands the other way so the nails face the camera. "What do you think?" She wiggles her fingers.

"A very nice paint job in red. Which you tell me is called Candy Apple Red, and I will take your word for it because to me it looks like red. The kind of red we use for mailboxes back home, at that." Ravn leans back on the gymnasts' thing, resting his head against the wall behind it for a second looking like he might doze off right there if he thought he could get away with it. "And that's my answer too -- I do what I do because I want to. And I don't pursue a prestigious career because I don't want one, and I don't need one."

"Yeah...Exactly...So you have time to ask your girlfriend to go to dinner at the crab shack." Cassidy rolls her eyes. She smiles, then, and waves at the camera. "Byeee Rav!"

Then the screen is blank.