2021-12-06 - Old Ladies Make the Best Girlfriends

Ravn Abildgaard is no church goer (to a point where he's actually yet to work out which church he ought to be going to as a Scandinavian Lutheran Protestant). He's visited St Mary's a few times -- but never for actual religious reasons. The closest he comes to religious services on most days is carried under one arm as he walks up to the Steelhead Service Centre: A black violin case, containing the instrument upon which he is quite happy to play Händel or Bach, or any other of the classic, religious compositions. The feeling he gets out of playing certainly borders on the religious at times.

He shakes damp December rain out of his hair as he steps inside and looks around for his play mate, usually popping up from the pit or out from behind some fancy car or other. Sure, the garage services ordinary engines too -- but it's the curious ones that Ravn remembers. The fancy ones, the vintage cars -- too many, really, for a town this small, with only so many people able to afford those kinds of cars.

He's never asked. It doesn't take a genius to put together what's going on here sometimes, and he's perfectly fine with pretending to not notice. Obliviousness is Ravn's defence number one against things he doesn't want to be asked about, after all.

The glass rolling doors glow in the rainy damp. Itzhak is 'home' all right, having chased Grant off and cranked up the speakers. Brian Setzer is playing. Itzhak is kneeling next to what the educated eye will recognize as a vintage Triumph. He's whistling along with "Brand New Cadillac" while polishing the fuel tank.

He glances up as Ravn comes in, and grins at him, all his crow's-feet crinkling up, he's so pleased. Like a cat who's brought an entire live bird home. "Yo, Abildgaard, I got someone I want you to meet!"

"As long as it's not a woman with romantic aspirations," Ravn tells the other man with a grin and shakes his wind breaker out before tossing it on the nearest not too oil stained available surface. The Italian leather jacket he bought to replace the jacket that got a bad case of meat cleaver to one sleeve is gone too; Gray Harbor is not kind to Italian leather, it seems.

He plonks the violin case down as well and walks over to admire the motorcycle; steel and chrome and decades of history. "Niiice. Please tell me you found her sad and lonely in the carport of an old house, and now she is going to get live her best life rather than go into somebody's collection to sit in another carport."

"Kinda, I did. I got a call to go check out an estate sale in Olympia. This is actually a pretty common model, not worth a hell of a lot to the real collectors, even in such good shape. So, what, was I supposed to not buy her? It's a goddamn shame to make a machine like this sit around doing nothing." Pleased, Itzhak jerks a thumb at a tarp-covered lump in the next bay. "Sidecar, too."

"Hell no, I'd have done the same and I don't restore vintage engines." Ravn grins approvingly and sticks his hands in his jeans pockets, rocking back and forth on the heels of his booted feet. This pleases the historian; something old and beautiful, getting dug back up and put to its intended use. He's firmly of the school of living history, rather than simply keeping its records. "Collectors always make the same mistake -- they only collect the rare specimens. And then, five hundred years later, we know all about what kings and queens used while we have to guess about the everyday stuff. Got a buyer in mind for her?"

A guy can hope.

"A buyer in mind--Abildgaard, don't insult me!" Itzhak stands up, winces as something pops in his back. He tucks the rag he was using into the back pocket of his coveralls. "She's for you. Mazel tov, use her in good health."

"Bloody hell, man." The Dane's eyes gleam bright blue as he walks over to rest his fingertips on the saddle -- and then lets them glide down the engine almost sensuously. He walks around the Triumph, looking at her from all angles; Ravn is by no means an expert in all things engine-related; cars interest him insofar that they can get from one place to another, and when they can't they need to be replaced. This, however, is something else entirely; and if he had a therapist and that therapist was here, they'd probably mumble something about a mostly absent father who loved to ride a vintage Nimbus.

He doesn't think that much about it, though. This is beauty. This is something he has wanted for a while. This is fun, and it's something he gets to do for the sheer heck of it. "I'm officially in a polycule now. Her, me, and Kitty Pryde."

Nobody needs to be an expert to appreciate the beauty of a good machine, at least that's what Itzhak will insist if asked. (Possibly drunkenly, loudly insist.) He watches Ravn take in the lines of the Triumph, and if it's weird he doesn't care.

"What're you gonna name her?" He holds up a hand. "You gotta ride her first. Then you'll know."

Ravn opens his mouth, and then shuts it. Then he nods. "Yes. Her name will come to me. And I'll give it exactly one week until that side car is property of Kitty Pryde, enter it on pain of having your ass shredded."

A glance Itzhak's way. "I know you, buddy. You're going to tell me you got her for almost nothing. Don't, all right? Write the same bill you'd write some other asshole. I really, really appreciate that you'd go out and find this beauty for me. I want to go ride it somewhere with you in your fancy purple car while we eat up the miles and end up having greasy cholesterol-laden food in some pit stop along the highway. And not think for a minute that I put one over on you -- do that for my anxiety, all right?"

Here's something you don't see every day: Itzhak Rosencrantz called out and without a comeback ready to hand. He protests, turning red, "I did! I mean. Relatively. For a '63 Triumph Bonneville in damn near cherry condition." He snorts, laughing, absolutely the color of a tomato. "Fine. Jesus. I'm charging you a finder's fee too, then, you wanna be like that."

Ravn laughs and nods. "Good. I can afford writing a cheque but I can't afford feeling like I grifted my best friend. And if haggling is traditional, I will insist on paying lunch at that pit stop too. All the hash browns and rubbery eggs you can eat, mate."

He lets his fingertips rest on one handle, lightly. "I love her already. How is it that this town is a hell hole according to everyone else, and to me it just becomes more and more right? Like I was here all along, I just needed to get around to finding myself."

"A hellhole? Nah. Not now that I seen a little a what you left." Itzhak quiets for a moment, remembering the wedding. "I couldn't be a friend to you, not to any of them. I had to be a pimp or a drug dealer or whatevah. Didn't occur to anyone there I wasn't your pet criminal. Except the bride, what was her name? She was nice enough to think I was your boyfriend, at least."

He gusts out an irritated sigh and rolls on his half-strutting sway to the covered sidecar. From under the tarp he pulls a glossy black motorcycle helmet, painted with delicate black feathers, invisible unless turned the right way against the light. He holds it out to Ravn. "I'll let you pay me for the bike, but this is a gift."

"Marie Louise," Ravn murmurs and promptly forgets about a cousin he's spoken to maybe four times in total, three of which were before she left kindergarten. He reaches for the helmet and holds it in gloved fingers, turning it to see the reflections in the subtle pattern. "Itzhak, this is beautiful. Did you make this design? If you'd told me that a motorcycle helmet, of all things, could be beautiful . . ."

He's got a point. Most of them look like giant egg shells. "It's gorgeous. And I wish I could give you the bloody hug you deserve."

Itzhak shakes his head. "Kailey did it for me. I told her it oughta be subtle, and all black, I mean, obviously, right?" He hitches his eyebrows, maybe a touch bashfully. "Glad you like it. Don't hug me, I'm covered in grease."

"I won't, because you don't deserve to get screamed at. But figuratively speaking? Consider yourself glomped." Ravn flashes white teeth in an uncharacteristical open-lipped smile; not so much his usual lopsided one but a far more open, vulnerable one. It's not the first time he's let his guard down like that around Itzhak but it remains a rare sight; someone's born and bred in the world of keeping a stiff upper lip and the absence of disapproval is approval.

He can't resist trying it on. "How do I look?"

Itzhak looks. His eyebrows go all the way up. "Like a superhero," he says, honestly surprised. "Like ya secret identity. Kinda like Ghost Rider, except, yannow, not hellish. Like if Ghost Rider was a druid? This is a terrible analogy, why do I even try? You look amazing."

Ravn pulls the helmet back off and laughs softly, cheekbones dusting a little pink; it doesn't look so great against the copper highlights in his hair. "Man, I feel like a birthday boy -- the kind of birthday where you have been secretly wanting that one thing for six months but you didn't really dare hope, and then it's morning and it's right there. This is me, Itzhak. Cat, bike, road. Just going wherever the wheels take me."

And like a stray cat that has learned where the food bowl is, coming back when the weather gets bad or it feels lonely.

"I really owe you a lot," the Dane adds and very carefully places the helmet on the Triumph's saddle. "You realise that? You let me drag you through that shitfest in New York, and now this. At some point you need to start calling in those favours, Rosencrantz."

Itzhak rolls his eyes, unconvincingly, and stalks over to the sideboard to pour coffee into the bright blue mug covered in Yiddish insults. "Please, what do I need a favor from some skinny-ass grifter for, huh? " Big words from a guy who won't look at Ravn while he says them.

"Hey, maybe you need someone to teach you a card trick." Ravn pongs the ping back in the same tone; he knows all about getting flustered and leaving things unsaid that don't need to be said.

He walks over and plops himself down on the corner sofa in a fluid, boneless kind of way. "Spare a cup of engine oil for a skinny-ass grifter? It's been ages since we just sat down like the gossip girls we are and sorted everyone's business. How's life treating you? I'd go pester Perdita for my gossip fill but she's all moon-eyed about the guy who fell out of the Veil and into her living room."

That makes Itzhak laugh, at least. He brings Ravn over a paper cup of coffee, setting it on the low table so not to risk contact. "Wait, some guy fell out the Other Side? Into her house? And she likes him?" He shakes his head in mock sorrow. "Here I thought she was a smart girl."

"Bloke named Garrett. Doesn't seem like a mad axe murderer at least. When I left after going to check on them, they were doing that circling each other thing people do when they're kind of negotiating who gets to make the first move. He was pretty into finding out whether I'm competition -- but since I'm not, he was pretty chill." Ravn hitches a shoulder. "She gets some company and a good time, good on her."

He sits up a little and reaches to curl gloved fingers around the paper cup, warming them; Pacific Northwest or Denmark, December is damp and cold and miserable in that 'can't get around to proper snow, let's just throw in some more rain' kind of way. "Let's see . . . Bennie drunk texted me, after six months. But given there were like five or six other people in that text chain, it didn't get personal. And a little old lady moved in across the street from Aidan and me, and promptly grew a blond granddaughter who thinks I am taking her on a date."