2021-11-23 - Merry Thanksgiving

It's cold. And damp. It's the kind of weather that makes one bitterly remember that day a month or so ago when they welcomed the arrival of autumn. Clouds have blotted out the stars and the wind has a penetrating feel that slips past the clothes to suck the warmth from the skin. Inside The Pourhouse, however...

Bright buttery light shines warmly on the wood paneling, and the green pleather hints that, somewhere perhaps, nature's greenery is alive and well. A gentle din fills the air as patrons mumble about the day's minutae, susurrating tones punctuated by the occasional clink of glass.

Still slightly damp from the weather, Henry has slipped inside and taken up residence at the bar, numerous empty stools to either side of him. He might be anyone from the neighborhood out for a drink, were it not for the suitcase, shiny with the damp of rainwater, that rests near the base of his stool. A newly poured glass of beer, pale and golden, rests before him on the bar. Perhaps he sees something of interest swirling in the rich color, his eyes locked on that mystery.

The weather doesn't usually bother Lyric as is proven by her attire. Pretty much the same as any other time except a touch more representative of the coming holidays. She's mostly skipped over the spirit of Thanksgiving though and gone straight to Christmas. Her attire consists of a pair of wet Converse, a faded pair of jeans with frayed hems and a few threadbare places that have nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with general wear and tear.

Her hoodie is a black with AUGMENTED REALITY across the front in a splash of color, red the most prominent. Except the words are cut in half by the zipper being undone and the words from her red and white long sleeved shirt boasting.. 'I Can Help You Get On The Naughty List'. Her white blonde hair is sort of plastered to her head from the dampness, a testament to her time out in it.

Strolling inside, she goes directly to the bar and to the very left hand side stool in which she slides into place. It leaves a few empty spots between her and the person staring at his alcohol. She rests her elbows on the bar, leaning onto it and calls out, "Pepsi Daniels." With that done, the important stuff anyway, she turns on her stool to survey her neighbor with blatant curiosity. "Coming or going?" And eye briefly to the suitcase. "Cause in this town, it's always one or the other. Mostly the going." A lopsided smile given his way at the last.

Henry pulls himself from his study of the beer glass with some slowness, but after a second, his eyes seem to find the source of the voice and they focus intently on Lyric. A smile comes quickly to his face, dimpling one cheek. "Coming," he informs her, only then pausing to truly take her in, eyes dancing over visibile details. It isn't too long before he speaks again, however. "Though the last time I was here I was going, so that's got to count for something, right?" That dimple deepens for just a moment, then smooths itself out as his face relaxes into a more neutral expression. His glass is raised. "Merry Thanksgiving. Or something like that." The toast made, he takes a healthy swallow, sighing softly in the aftermath.

Giving him all the time he needs to withdraw his gaze from the glass, Lyric continues to study him until he finds her. Her smile in return comes naturally, but she follows with laughter, "You mean you got away clean and came back?!" The words hold a teasing incredulity though, not real chastisement. "I've always said this place was Hotel California." Because everything is a song reference to her. "You can leave, maybe, but if you do you always have to come back." She gets her drink and fishes into her back pocket for some bills. She slides them across the bar with a cheesy smile for the bartender. "Thank ya." With the toast, she lifts her own as well, "Definitely somethin' like that." Likewise, she takes a drink too, a much smaller one to get herself used to the burn of the Jack Daniels.

"Ten years ago." He gives a little wince at the amount of time. A quick glance is offered down to the suitcase on the floor beside his stool. "I keep thinking," Henry drawls slowly, "that maybe if I don't unpack it will be like I didn't come home, after all. Or that maybe I can stay a little bit and still get back out. It's like a part of me knows that as soon as the underwear is in the drawer, it's curtains." There is something like a smirk, then...amusement with a twist of unpleasant truth. "No escape for you?" A light brown eyebrow quirks upward.

"Oh, you must be kind of old huh?" Lyric lowers the glass and places it back on the bartop, lips twitching as of trying to hold back laughter at the question. "I don't think the suitcase matters much but if you don't have curtains in the new house, I think you should unpack your underwear to cover the windows for sure. There's some crazies in this town you know. I'm two of them." There's an attempt at a straight face but she can't contain it and laughter spills out anyway. "Probably," she muses, "You're here already, so you're already in too deep." There's a note of seriousness in her voice at that despite her attempt to keep it lighthearted. "I've lived here forever. I don't even bother leaving town anymore."

Henry opens his mouth, then closes it, then, still at a loss for words, surrenders to laughter. It might go on longer were there not some undercurrent of dark truth to Lyric's words, a buzzing of distant television static as if all the places beyond the city limits were stations whose programs had suddenly ended. He listens for a second, then closes his eyes. "'Curtains' is something ancient people like me used to hear villains say on the radio. Before TV was invented." He sticks out his tongue playfully, then takes another sip of beer. "Still. Probably good advice about the windows. If I recall correctly, dark and stormy nights in Gray Harbor bring out the greatest hits of Santa's Naughty List." A nod is offered to Lyric's shirt.

The laughter strikes her and Lyric grins in response, a touch enchanted by his response despite the frisson of truth in it all. "Ancient people like you." Pondering that, she laughs too. "Maybe not so old. You got a dimple in your cheek that isn't a wrinkle yet, so you're still young." So, she had noticed the dimple! Even as she takes note of his tongue sticking out at her. She crinkles her nose in response before reaching for her glass again and taking a sip from it. "Dark and stormy nights are great though. Mostly when you're inside a nice warm home but even sometimes when you're not." Going more for the levity of the moment, she glances down at her shirt and gives a saucy smile. "There's lots of ways to do that. Are you on his nice or naughty list? You don't have a really long time before Christmas!"

"Does Santa have a 'boring list'? Because I'm preeeeeetty sure my name is on it. This year may be a done deal." Henry slides a finger across his adam's apple. "There's always next year, though." His green eyes leave Lyric's face for a bit to look around the Pourhouse, taking it in. "This is already a better start than I had any reason to expect, though." The ghost of a smile plays on his face as his attention returns. "So what do you do around here besides help Santa with his lists?" Discovering that his beer is gone, he fishes some bills out of his pocket and slides them onto the bar with a nod to the 'tender.

"Oh.." Lyric's features turn more serious, a puckering of her brow, lips pressed together gently as she ponders his confession. "Oh no.. no no. The Boring list is the same as the nice list! We'll have to do something about that really quick!" When he looks around, she studies him more, the nuances of his expression as he surveys his surroundings. Only when he looks back does she lift her eyes from his face to his eyes in particular. Her lips curve into an absolutely wicked tilt. "I work at the strip club." And for several spaces of a heartbeat or ten she doesn't elaborate. After the deliberate pause though, she clarifies. "I'm a DJ there. I play the music for the girls and for the customers. What do you do when you're not covering your windows with underwear?" A guileless smile given over this time, head tilting just enough to support the look.

"Covering my windows with underwear is a pretty full time job. Just saying." Henry, still reeling from the gear-shift presented by Lyric's partial truth / full truth admission blurts it out, then seems embarrassed by himself and coughs lightly. "Um. Well. I just...I'm starting a job on Monday. At the hospital. I'm a psychiatrist." The statement is followed by a slight tensing of the muscles, as if he expects some physical response. And perhaps to stop one from coming, he says almost immediately, "Not nearly as interesting as being a DJ in a strip club."

With a nod of mock-solemnity, Lyric seems to agree that it would indeed be a full time job. "They must be tiny then and you have to stretch them out." Biting her lip, she does give away how amused at the conversation though by the way her eyes show the laughter she's holding in. His own confession does have her considering him and while she doesn't have any real physical reaction, she seems to seriously contemplate his position. "You're a doctor, I'm a DJ. You fix people with advice and words, I fix them with music and lyric to songs. I guess there's not much difference in what we do at all."

"Your way is probably more fun and effective," Henry says with a wry twist of his mouth. A nod of thanks if given to the bartender as a second beer is brought. The sip he takes leaves a little foamy mustache on his upper lip. "I probably should have stopped at one," he admits forlornly, "but the idea of going to my parents house..." He trails off, then gives Lyric a studious look. "You ever go to your parents house, and your old room is just...not yours anymore? Maybe its a study? Or a bedroom for someone else. Or a 'guest' room...which really means it isn't allowed to belong to anyone. But especially not to you. You try to fall asleep staring at the same spot on the wall you always stared at as a kid, and it doesn't matter if there is a new coat of pait or a new sheet of wallpaper. That...being there and not being there at the same time. That dissonance." He suddenly shudders. And then just as abruptly laughs. "Jesus. What do they put in the beer here?"

"Maybe it's more fun, because why wouldn't music always be fun? I guess when it's super sad songs that aren't fun at all. But words may help better when they're more personalized to someone's problems." Lyric smiles her encouragement for him to talk, but the smile slowly fades until it's gone completely and even evolved to a slight downturn of her lips. "Is it really so bad there? Did you want to stay at a hotel? Just not the murder motel." The warning just comes naturally, out of habit, and she continues on as if that isn't something alarming in itself. As to whether or not she's gone to her parents house and the room there, she shakes her head, "I haven't done that. Nope." And wisely leaves it at that. Instead of talking about herself though, she encourages him to talk him himself. "The room has changed, you changed, maybe you don't fit there anymore. I'd offer you a place to stay, but I live with my bandmates. There's my room and then the boys room. I mean we got a couch too, but I bet you could sleep there and then you'd have a good reason to feel weird about being there, since you have never been there before."

Henry laughs. It's a slightly rough sound, and though there is some genuine mirth there, it also seems designed to get him out of his funky thoughts. "Oh, gosh. That's...not necessary. I mean, it's kind of you to even think about it. But my mom is expecting me and she's probably freaking out that I died in a cab ride on the way over there because I should have showed up an hour ago." He glances at his watch and then takes an even longer sip of beer, perhaps rethinking the order and trying to hurry it along. "I'm Henry, by the way. Henry Covington. Good ol' Teddy S. class of 2006. At your service. And not at all surprised to learn that the town now has something called 'the murder hotel'."

The laughter succeeds in lightening the moment and Lyric finds herself smiling in response, no less enthusiastic than she was before. Her drink is taken again and this time she swallows down a larger sip from the glass before continuing on. "Maybe you will find your own place sometime. I think I will, the band isn't.. banding.. so much lately. Probably it's my fault I've been really busy workin'." It's about as personal as her side of the conversation gets though. Like before, she focuses mostly on him. "I hope you don't get in trouble for stayin' out too late. Especially with the wetness and all. I think mothers worry a lot." Her smile returns in full force, "Henry Covington. Doctor Covington," trying out the sound. "Maybe I'll see you again sometime. I hope so. You gotta get on that naughty list somehow." Hearing his alumni, she grins. "I graduated there too in 2015."

Henry laughs softly. "Goooooo LOGGERS." One hand does a half-hearted little pump in the air before falling to cradle the perspiring surface of his beer glass. "2015? I knew you were too young to drink." He gives a quick wink. Then, with one last look at the half-finished beer, he pushes it away. Not today, Dark Men. "I hope I'll see you soon, too. More than that, I'm pretty sure I will because this town has about twenty four people in it. Including my parents." He gets off the stool, then bends to retrieve the still-wet suitcase, before looking back. "Before I go...what's the name of the band?"

"Gooo team! Rah rah!" Certainly, Lyric wasn't a cheerleader in the school. Mostly that was the Addington girls. "Yeahh, 2015." A little playful roll of her eyes at the comment of her age. Turnabout being fair play and all that. "I guess age is just a number huh?" The smile remains. "I bet I'll see you. It's the holidays, we'll probably run into each other doing Christmas shoppin' and stuff. There's only so many stores in this town and all." As he gets to his feet and collects his suitcase, she ponders it a moment even as her hands move to sort of zip up the hoodie. "Augmented Reality." The same as the hoodie says. "And I'll tell you my name next time we meet, how's that?" She grins before taking another drink from her glass. "It was really good meetin' you Doc Covington. Glad you're using your underwear for the curtains." Another pause before she laughs a little. "Boxers are better."

Henry stares for a moment, then laughs and shakes his head. That dimple, the same one that made its appearance as a greeting now returns to offer a farewell to the mysterious young woman. With a final nod, he moves to the door, rolling that suitcase behind him, then steps out into the cold clouds of his new, old home.