ArchivedLogs:Deja Vu

Deja Vu
Dramatis Personae Jim, Neve
In Absentia	2017-07-21 Part of the Future Past TP.
Location Pier 64
The Hudson River Greenway is the longest greenway in Manhatten, running along the west side. It's known for its bike trails and green space. Amidst these trails, Pier 64 juts into the Hudson River and is a popular site among those who enjoy pretending they're communing with nature without leaving the city. It's an odd combination of the organic and concrete, of water and glass, earth and steel. The long neck of the concrete pier reaches out over the water like some ancient dinosaur, its flat top hard and sun-bleached and worn smooth from traffic. Along the sides of it, though, where the rough broken cobbles of the shore lurk down by the water at its base, just past the drop of a retaining wall, it's a different creature, a different /land/. Feral and overgrown with moss and scrub, long shadows are thickening with the coming night, the sky twilight and poked through with a few determined stars. The pier above has accommodated the steady pedestrian traffic of an August evening in the city, small clutters of voices, jingle of dog collars, the ratchet of bike wheels, faint smells of hot dogs and cigarettes. Signs of civilized life shaking it's defiant fist at the sparkling evening water, where the moon patiently unravels and reforms amongst the rolling waves. Down below the pier, it's a different world. Dark beyond the reach of lamp light, the smells are green, and waves break their spines on knuckled tree roots, as they pulse and squirm like tentacles. Burrowing patient and methodical into the loose wet gravel. Jim stands here, amongst the tangled city foliage, scrubby and wild and smelling green and wild over the damp earth scents of humid soil and moving water. He wears no clothes nor skin to beg them, bark and leaf, vine and branch collaged together into set shoulders and flat planted heels. Hands fisted at sides and sharply awake blue eyes look out at the black night time ripples. A woman is hunkered down two feet to his right. She isn’t dressed for this, for the boundaries between wilds and civilized. The cuffs of her linen trousers are already dappled with muck and dampness, staining the creamy fabric where they puddle around the heels of her ballerina flats. The top is sleeveless and white, delicate enough to show the thin trace of slender straps beneath, curling over her shoulders. Her hair is dark and cut short, longer over her forehead but leaving the nape of her neck exposed. The nobs of her spine are visible with her head lowered. One arm is curled around her knees, the other is extended. A crumpled Snickers wrapper is picked up from where it’s been shoved ashore by the restless water. She whips her arm to the side and flicks her wrist, sending the wrapper back and away, towards the retaining wall. The grit left on the pads of her fingers from that action is rubbed away in equally restless circles, fingers to thumb. She sighs, or maybe the limp breeze sighs for her. Head unturning, Jim's eyes flick towards the hunkered woman. First to her face, then down to her shifting fingers. Then back out to the water as though something were expected there. Mud and silt shifts beneath the woman, between her feet. A faint pulsing rising up, relaxing, then rising further until it splits open and a thin-delicate, starkly green vine emerges. As it climbs, it hold a slow rotation, tiny leaf shoots opening and orbiting the stem like a micro solar system. It drops blindly toward one of the woman's wrists. Just a faint flutter against the sensitive skin. Her head turns minutely when that brush of greenstuff to skin is felt. She turns it just enough that a slice of cheek, a spray of eyelashes, the suggestion of a smile can be seen. More tangible is the touch that comes in return, as her fingers wander over to curl a tendril of green about one knuckle. The pad of her thumb brushes over that verdant delicacy. Then, with the care needed to keep from bending or snapping the vine, she frees her finger, frees her wrist, and shifts weight to heels in order to stand. A turn and a half-step positions the young woman beside Jim and her face finally turns up towards his. The gloom has darkened brown eyes, smudged shadows around them but her cheeks are round and smooth, her brow pale. It glimmers, catching light thrown out over the water from the distant glow of the city. Her brows lift. A question, unspoken. It seems for a moment that no answer shall come. Until wood creaks, and Jim's head tips sideways. The slow inexorable drop of a felled tree, landing his temple atop that smooth brow and a harsh 'hrrf!' of breath cuts the night. His arm loops around the woman's back, drawing her in as eyes slide closed. Light at first. Then tighter. She’s soft and unyielding, easily pressed close. One arm curls against his lower back. The other curls to let her hand rest, palm flat, against his ribs. Her glossy hair, when her head settles in the crook between chest and shoulder, smells floral. Shampoo. Perfume. Sweet and light, vying with the smell of salt and rot that seasons the silt beneath their feet. She takes a breath and murmurs, “It’s going to be all right.” The night answers with a round of fervent applause. Like a gunshot, the wave of it grows and grows. And then there’s her voice again, laughing and light this time. “Please, please, you didn’t let me finish…” On the TV screen, she turns her head to let her smile twinkle at the host seated opposite her. She is no longer brunette but blonde, though the style of her hair remains the same. They’re /both/ laughing, she and the older woman. The older one, the host of the show, is flapping a hand at the audience to get them to settle. “Let her speak, let her speak. If this keeps up we’ll /never/ get around to plugging your book, Neve.” “Given some of my reviews, that might not be a /bad/ thing…” And then the audience is laughing with them too. The television light spills across a battered coffee table, strewn with the glossy faces of photographs, each zoomed in snapshots of the same handwritten letter. Many have been scribbled on, rapid notes written directly onto the picture surface, certain specific loops of the cursive penmanship, telltale ascenders and descenders, serif flourishes, that manifest inconsistently are circled. Axis lines stricken down the center of other letters where some stand parallel to one another, others at slight odds. Other zoomed in shots have two lines drawn in, one following the top of each tall letter, the second the height of each small letter, with a note to the side what the maximum and minimum distance is between the heights. Amongst these, like a monolith in the TV glow, stands a cup of coffee long gone cold. Pens. A stack of college ruled notebooks, some opened with their ruling measured and photographed as well, compared against the letter. Beyond the table, Jim is lying back on the couch, other photos forgotten on his chest, eyes wide open and blinking rapidly in the gloom. Fixed on the television, casting two small rectangular reflexions in either cornea. There's something bearlike to the way his chest rises and falls, the way one of his hands fumbles for the cup of stale coffee. The papers on his chest cascade to his lap, to the couch, to the ground when he sits up and rubs his face. And then sits for a long while. Watching the television with a hand dragging itself back and forth over his mouth. Then he rises to his feet, crams his feet into the shoes set beside the couch, and heads for the door, just a hair faster than a midnight walk might require.