ArchivedLogs:Finding a Spot

Finding a Spot
Dramatis Personae Eric, Heather
In Absentia	2018-09-16 "Some shit about being wise, probably."
Location <NYC> Lower East Side
Historically characterized by crime and immigrant families crammed into cramped tenement buildings, the Lower East Side is often identified with its working-class roots. Today, it plays host to many of New York's mutant poor, although even here they are still often forced into hiding. After a somewhat dreary and rainy week in the City That Never Sleeps, the weekend has kicked things into gear with two whole sunny days in a row. It's no surprise, then, that both native New Yorkers and their tourist counterparts have decided to soak up the warmth before crashing straight into another week of rain and wind. Restaurants and bars across the city have lugged their patio furniture out, and those scattered along the streets of the Lower East Side are no exception. Evolve, too, has its patrons spilling out into the streets, taking up the few outdoor seats and rotating back in to enjoy the air conditioning -- or, in some cases, take shelter from the curious and disgusted eyes of those passing by. Leaning against the brick wall and soaking in the sunshine, Eric has not managed to get one of these precious seats. Dressed in a light pink pair of shorts and a sleeveless tank top, Eric is either people-watching or passed out in bliss; behind dark sunglasses, it can be difficult to tell. Occasionally, he takes a sip from the iced coffee in his hand -- so, at least, he shows /some/ signs of life. While Heather has occasionally been checking for spaces out on the Evolve patio, the impatient fifteen second gaps between her checks ultimately fail to yield much in the way of differences between those checks. Her clothing, a red tank top with a faded image of a cartoon turtle in the center of it, and a pair of yellow and purple striped shorts, are more suited for the warmer outdoors than the air conditioned interior, so she decides to take an unoccupied leaning space near to Eric, and in the other she holds her recorder which plays, "Greetings. Do you mind if I take this unoccupied space next to you?" The recording doesn't actually finish playing by the time Heather starts to prepare doing just that. Brown eyes peer over the top of the dark sunglasses as Eric gives Heather a quick up and down glance with his eyes, then a longer, more curious one. "Not at all," he demurrs, eyeing the tape recorder with a small lift of his eyebrows. He doesn't comment. "Wall's public property as much as it's mine," he says, shrugging a shoulder non-committally. "It's certainly nicer with something cool to drink, eh?" He lifts his iced coffee indicatively, shaking it slightly from one side to the other as the ice clinks and swishes in the liquid. "Feels like summer ain't quite over yet." Heather nods a few times rapidly, raising her own cup of iced coffee in solidarity with Eric's. She looks over through her tinted goggles. "I have been looking forward to the autumn. That is the best season. It never feels like it is too long," plays the recorder. "Warm days and cold drinks are good. Important to enjoy." She tilts her head slightly. "I think I recognize you. I would have to check my notes. It has probably been longer since I have seen you than you have seen me." Eric takes a long sip of coffee through his straw, considering this in silence. "You're probably right. I meet a lot'a people, but you do seem familiar." He taps his nose several times with the tip of the straw, thoughtfully, letting his head fall back against the brick of the building gently. "You're... Paige's friend, right?" Eric says, suddenly, after several moments of silence. "I think that's where I met ya before." He looks up, glancing at the store next to them. "Actually... I think it was in there." Eric jerks his head to one side, nodding towards the door to Evolve. "But I'm honored that I'm important enough for ya to have made notes on," he says, voice lightly teasing, emphasized by a playful wink. "Her roommate. But also friend is correct," plays Heather, nodding a few times rapidly as she thinks about it. "I remember now. That's right." She recites what might have been the note entry, though whether she is joking is not well-carried through her recorded voice: "Eric is a wet cop." She shrugs a few times rapidly. "I have a good memory for people. But I keep notes so I do not forget details. You are no longer wet. That is probably why I did not recognize you at first." 'Wet?' Eric mouthes to himself, reaching up and idly scratching behind one of his ears. "I suppose I've been called worse," the dry cop muses to himself, nodding along. "Admittedly, I wouldn't mind so much bein' wet right now. A lot nicer when it's like this outside than when it's cold n' raining, and you're wet on top of it all." He pauses for several seconds, then grins a wolfish grin at Heather. "Now don't take that as an invitation ta' toss that drink on me or nothin', even if it would help ya with your recognition." Heather makes a high-pitched chirping sound that is almost like laughter, but passes by pretty quickly. "Do not worry, I will keep my drink to myself. I cannot waste the calories and caffeine. But if I had a cup of water I could help us both out." Here, she makes an overturning gesture with her recording hand in Eric's direction, chirping a bit again. Eric's grin widens, almost as if in imitation of Evolve's owner. "Have ta' say, it wouldn't exactly be the first wet t-shirt contest I'd been in. Voluntarily or not." He takes a long sip from his coffee and glances over at the tables next to them, towards the door of the cafe, and then back out to the street. "A waste'a caffeine is a terrible thing, for sure. Crime against awake-ness, s' what it is." "I do not understand how someone can competitively have wet t-shirts. But given that wet is a primary descriptor I assigned to you, I am sure you would be a real contender," says Heather, pretty matter-of-factly. She nods and takes a drink from her iced coffee, glancing around quickly in her usual jerky way, though the goggles prevent her gaze from fully being tracked. "People sometimes tell me they think I drink too much caffeine." She makes a slashing movement with her hand. "Impossible." "'I could'a been a contenda','" Eric says, in a truly atrocious imitation of a New York accent, made all the worse by Eric's long residency in New York and exposure to actual New York accents. Mind-rendingly bad. Just, trash. Utter, complete trash. "Yeah, I know what you mean. These days, I feel like I need an entire gallon jug a' the stuff just to get out of bed, never mind comin' out of a double." Eric pulls the cover off of his iced coffee to sip out the last few drops, ice cubes piling up briefly against his face. "I don't think I could ever have too much." Heather raises her eyebrow in response to Eric's imitation, clearly not at all impressed by it, and that expression lingers on her face a bit longer than most do. It's still forgiven pretty quickly, though, and may have even elicited a quick chuckle when she finished with her judgment, but her expression fades back into neutrality as she looks forward. "Me neither. I keep a different schedule compared to most people, though. I am often up when it is still dark. It feels harder. Especially when you are not doing anything active and exciting." "Like, sitting in a patrol car waiting for a call?" Eric counters, emptying the ice cubes against the wall and tossing the cup into a trashcan along the curb. He makes it in -- barely -- and raises both of his fists into the air, pumping it twice. "Three points." He turns, leaning a shoulder on the wall as he fixes his attention fully onto Heather. "Caffeine helps twice as much then. Though, it can be hard for me to drink enough for it to actually do anything. And if I do... well, what goes in...." Eric trails off, spreading his hands and giving Heather a half-shrug. Heather puts her arms up into a 'touchdown' gesture when Eric sinks the cup. Close enough. Her recorder plays while she makes this gesture, and continues while she downs much of the remainder of her drink. "Sitting in a car waiting for a call does sound extremely boring. Do you have something else to do? You could take up journaling. I keep a lot of journals. You probably just drink more coffee. What do you mean it's hard for it to actually do anything though? Have you gained a resistance? That's a shame." "Yeah, you could say that." Eric says, shrugging once more. "Sometimes, if I really need it, I dissolve these caffeine pills into the coffee. Helps, but it makes the coffee taste /awful/. Just...." Shaking his head, Eric sticks out his tongue briefly and scrunches his face. "Not a fan. But, needs must, as they say. Anyway, I usally play games on my phone, or watch something. Occasionally, I'll help out on other calls, but... well, sometimes that's not a good idea. Better to just sit around until we're needed." A pause. "Bejewelled is actually a quite underrated game." "Caffeine pills crushed in coffee does sound pretty bad," agrees Heather, the corner of her lip ticking down a bit. "But I also add lots of cream and sugar already. It would end up being lots of tastes that do not work together. You could just wash them down with the coffee though. Then they don't taste." She shakes her head slightly and finishes off her own iced coffee, peering down into it afterwards to make sure she got all the non-ice parts. "I like Bejewelled too. Games that go on forever and make you think a little. They make the boredom easier." "I don't know how much thinkin' I'm usually doin' at that hour, but..." Eric's smile is warm as he runs one hand through his hair. "I guess some people'd say I never do much'a that." He winks at Heather, one hand bracing himself against the wall briefly before he pushes himself off of it. "Speaking of caffeine... I think it's about time for another round for me. You getting another one yourself?" "It seems rude for people to say you never think." Heather throws her cup at the bin as well, but it just travels in a fast straight line and crunches against the side. She zips over and deposits her failed attempt, before just as quickly zipping back to where she was. She rubs her chin in an exaggerated way to imply that she is contemplating before she nods. "Yes. Another one. We have established that more caffeine is necessarily better." Eric pauses mid-step towards the door as he watches Heather zip to and from the trashcan, weight shifted forward but not taking the next step. It lasts only a second, though, before he strides over to the door and holds it open for her. "People say a lotta rude things. Sometimes, I say 'em back." Eric purses his lips for a moment, stepping into Evolve after Heather. "More often than not, I think. New York really has rubbed off n' me. Still got the Georgia accent, but I ain't so sure I've got the Southern Nice anymore. Too many years spent around Yankees," he adds, in an exaggerated drawl. "It is easy to be affected when you have stayed in a place a long time. I come from St. Louis. While I have lived here for almost two years it feels like longer than that," plays Heather, stepping quickly through the door when it's opened to her, and she just shuffles along once she is indoors so not to outpace Eric towards the counter. "You have probably been away from Georgia for much longer." "Yeah, I've been here on... pfff." Eric scratches at his chin for a moment as he follows Heather to the counter at a modest pace. "Seven years, eight years? Moved up here in 2011, so, it's been a minute." He gestures for Heather to go first as he stares up at the menu boards, head tilted slightly to one side. "Feels like it's been a lot longer for sure. Decades. And despite what it might look like, I ain't got a lot of decades for me to have been spendin'." "Decades would seem like right," plays Heather, nodding a few times rapidly as she slips a paper from her pocket onto the counter to express her order, while she also gestures at one of the pastries on display to be included in her order. "It does not look like you have had many decades to be spending. You look pretty young. I am not good at telling apparent ages though." "Why thank you, ma'am," Eric says, smile stretching wide once more. "Whoever said that flattery'll get you nowhere never got any compliments." He turns that same smile back on the barista, glancing up once at the menu. "Can I get a mocha with three shots? Thank you, darlin'." Leaning against the counter, Eric looks over to Heather again. "Some'a the last few years have felt a lot longer than 300-something days, you know? I'm sure they took more'n that off of my life. God damn. Anyway, I ain't need to tell you that." "Some years feel longer than others," agrees Heather, "These last couple of years have been pretty something." She scratches her head lightly, digging into her thick hair a bit as she waits for her new large iced coffee to come up, though she immediately starts snacking on the cinnamon bun she is given first. "I cannot say what your experiences have been. I am not surprised when anyone tells me that everything's feeling longer these days though." Eric side-eyes the cinnamon bun contemplatively, giving its companions still in the case a longing look, but puts his hands in his pockets and visibly shakes himself off. "That's for sure. Gonna turn gray before my time. Somehow, I don't think it'll be able to make me look distinguished." Eric grins rakishly, voice light and teasing. "But you never know; miracles can happen. Cats lyin' down with dogs, pigs flyin', me, lookin' like an elder statesman." "You seem like the type who will age gracefully," plays Heather, again pretty matter-of-factly. "I bet there is an app on the phone that can tell you how statesmanlike you will look with some grey in your hair. I bet the app will give you at least a six." She toys with her own hair thoughtfully. "It is strange to me to think of aging like that. I think I should look older than I do. Good genes I guess." "Six outta what?" Eric says, chuckling. "Ten, or a hundred?" Still, he pulls his cell phone out of a pants pocket and briefly glances down to it, tapping at the screen. "How else would you think of it?" Heather can only shrug at the question of whether it's six out of ten or a hundred, before she considers the latter question. "I don't really know. I don't think I will ever look like an elder statesman either, though," she decides as she picks up her new iced coffee. Being in no small part made of espresso, Eric's drink is taking longer than Heather's. This has given him time to begin downloading 'Oldify', the app to make yourself look, well, old. "Elder stateswoman. It's an egalitarian time, of sorts." Eric says, absent-mindedly. He holds his phone up, making a duckface at the camera, as he snaps a picture of himself. A few seconds later, Eric holds the phone out for Heather's inspection of his computer-aged face, set to a 'dodderingly old' setting. Heather flips up her goggles as she takes a closer look at the image that Eric shows to her, and she chitters a bit to herself in amusement. "Maybe you will not look dignified. But you will make a cute old man. You will get many pudding cups from kind nurses looking to take care of you." She shakes her head quickly and actually removes her goggles, now gesturing for Eric to take a picture of her to oldify. Eric laughs and clicks a few times, tilting his phone so both of them are in the selfie and taking a photo set to MAXIMUM ELDERLY. "I do like me some vanilla puddin'," Eric says, thoughtfully. "And it'll be kinda awesome to just be elderly and be able to do anythin' I want. Go to a store, wreck the place -- oh, sorry, I thought I was in 'Nam." He grins and leans back to take his drink from the barista who is giving both Eric and Heather a Look (TM). Heather happily poses for the elderly photo, keeping her expression still for long enough so that she can see this old version of herself. She looks at it with a curious expression, "I am not sure how old I would have to be to look like that. I used to think that I would get old pretty fast. Time is different for me." She puts her goggles back on and shuffles away from the counter to avoid getting any more Look (TM). "It would be nice to be socially inappropriate freely. Currently, I can only be socially inappropriate while getting looks." "You and me both," Eric says, shaking his head and taking a short sip of his coffee. "You and me both." Eric wanders a bit away from the counter, looking around the inside of the room for a seat and frowning at the masses of other customers. Stupid customers, all... sitting and things. "Is that why you have the recorder bit?" Eric asks, a note of curiosity in his voice. "Speed the rest'a us up?" "That's right. Slow my speech down. Speed your speech up. And it changes the pitch. I can't hear when people have voices that are too deep. And my voice is hard to understand because it's too high," plays Heather, shaking the recorder a bit in her hand. "It is very useful for communication. Maybe not the most convenient. But the most convenient that I have." She taps her foot a bit impatiently at seeing that nobody is vacating space fast enough. "Interestin'. One of my teammates has an ability sorta like yours. He can only slow time down when he's movin', though. He can do the same sprint thing that you can do, but, not at will. Makes for handy when you're chasin' someone down, though he ends up trippin' over things sometimes." Eric chuckles and takes along sip of his coffee. "I suppose that's why we're mutants, not gods. Gifts come with heavy weights n' all." The police officer frowns and looks around the room. "You see anyone leavin'?" "I can't not slow down time. It's just slow all the time," plays Heather, shrugging lightly. "I would like if it were only when I am moving. That sounds very convenient." She continues to look around the room, pointing to one of the tables that a pair are just getting up from. "I think you could also be pretty socially inappropriate without commentary if you were a god. Maybe I should have been a god instead of a mutant." "Must've missed that option at the start menu," Eric comments, dryly. The police over ambles over to the table, eyes glaring briefly at another customer that had begun to approach it. He collapses down into the chair, letting his head fall back against the chairback with a light thud. "It's a good career if ya can get it, but the application process is a killer." Heather puts the remainder of her cinnamon bun and the coffee on the table and settles down across from Eric, quickly finding a comfortable sitting position. "Maybe you just have to ask right at the beginning. Unfortunately babies cannot ask properly." She chitters another laugh at her own joke, apparently thinking it's a pretty good one despite the delivery needing work. "I know there's an old myth that..." Eric scratches at his chin, looking up towards the ceiling. "Let's see. That the angels teach each of us all of the wisdom of the world, but then right before we're born, they make us forget all of it." Eric looks down back at Heather and gives her a crooked smile. "If that's true, it seems a bit of a dick move to me." "What's the point of learning it just to forget? That's very mean teasing," declares Heather, her eyebrows furrowed as she shakes her head. "It also would seem like a bit of a waste of time on the part of the angels. Teaching all the wisdom of the world seems like a major time investment." Shrugging his shoulders, Eric shifts on his chair and takes another long sip of his coffee. "I think that's a question to ask a philosopher. I'm much too simple'a man to answer it. Some shit about being wise, probably." He chuckles, shaking his head once. "Seems kinda unfair to me, but. What do I know about what's fair?" Heather gives an exaggerated shrug and starts picking apart the remainder of her cinnamon bun. "It seems like it's kind of unfair to me too. So at least by consensus we can agree to that. It would be nice to be even able to know what we are supposed to be doing. Much less know all wisdom. It's hard to know." Eric nods along as Heather 'speaks', and he doesn't say anything for several moments afterwards. Finally, he clears his throat and straightens up, lifting his plastic cup of mocha up as if a wine glass at a state dinner. "A toast. To figurin' it out, and hopefully not fuckin' it up too badly." He extends his plastic cup forward towards Heather, smile twisted and wry. Heather devours the torn up cinnamon bun in the moment's pause that Eric provides prior to his toast, though she looks up and chitters something softly before picking up her cup of iced coffee to tap it lightly against the edge of the mocha. "To figuring it out and not fucking up." There's a pause on the recording, before it adds, "Too badly."