ArchivedLogs:Tastes Like Stolen

Tastes Like Stolen
Dramatis Personae Jim, Shelby
In Absentia	2013-01-18 Oh no!
Location <NYC> IHOP - Bronx
Pancakes. Not the greatest pancakes, but it's two a.m., you're probably drunk, and they're available all night long. It's bitterly cold tonight, one of those nights where the sky is dark and clear, the stars vivid but brutally silver, and the wind a knife. Smart street kids have retreated to shelters, crashpads or, in Shelby's case, IHOP. Usually the girl is strapped for cash--moreso now that she's no longer in possession of a guitar--but somehow she's come up with a crisp twenty dollar bill and it's been laid down in exchange for pancakes and hashbrowns. Also coffee, all of the coffee she can drink, and that's a -lot-, since the cream and sugar packets are also unlimited. She's tucked into a table in the corner, where she has a decent view out of not one but two windows, and she has shed three layers of outer clothing, leaving it piled on the opposite bench. The table before her is a veritable maze of unhealthy food. The teenager is wolfing it down like it's going out of style--hey, when it's cold, you burn more calories! Bitter winds can make for unusual bedfellows - or restaurant goers, as the case may be. Jim's ruddy complexion and dry-flaky skin seems /built/ to chap in a dry cold, scruffy overlong hair was either a bit dirty-when-combed /or/ badly moussed and now worsened by a draft, with an errant hunk of graying brown hair fallen forward on his brow. He shoulders in through the double glass doors with his hands jammed deep in the pockets of his tatty tweed, elbow-patched jacket, rolling his eyes when the supposed be-uniformed door greeter waves him on to select his OWN table, and for the sake of orneriness takes a HIKE through the table aisles, /touching/ things as he goes. He picks up a roll of silverware and taps it in his palm as he travels. And, without a shift of recognition or surprise, he unceremoniously /drops/ into the seat across from Shelby. "You owe me a hat." And a flake of hashbrown. Because he's eatin' it while saying this. It isn't as if the IHOP is thickly populated, it being cold and still a little early for the Friday night drunks. So when the door opens, Shelby spares a glance at it and for the man who comes on through. But...she must be lacking in Spidey sense, because she goes back to playing the chipmunk with her food. Nom nom nom. That's why it comes as such a surprise when the bench she'd reserved for her jacket is so rudely taken. There's not a hint of recognition in the startled look given to him--no recognition at first, but definitely a flash of unease and guilt. God only knows why, or what else she's been up to. She tongues half a slice of toast into her cheek--covering for the guilt with a skewed grimace--and squints narrowly at the man. "Wha'? Dunno wha' th'fuh...oh shit." Aaaand there it goes, she knows him now. Maybe it's the set of his shoulders. Her eyes cut off to the side to scan an escape route. "...what hat?" "My hat." Jim actually sounds less confrontational and more /internally/ aggravated, seeming to mutter either to himself, or the /next/ piece of hash(brown) he appropriates. "It had a feather. I fucking loved that hat." If Shelby makes a run for it, she'll have to go without her jacket. He's sitting on it. "I didn't take your fucking hat," Shelby huffs, opting for a good offense. Running is off the table for the moment or so she seems to want him to believe--she slumps back against the bench and regards him across the table with a scowl. Not an expression that helps with her looks at all. "Who wears hats with feathers anymore, anyway? That's like, so church lady, dude. Jesus." There's a pause. Then, "Could you maybe like stop eating my food?" "Or what," Jim moves onto her coffee, slurping /liberally/ of it with faded-denim eyes set frankly across the table, "you'll get me shot again? It fell off last time." He wraps both dry psoriasis-y hands around the cup, /warming/ them as he defends, "Not that kind of feather. /Christ/, do you hear this kid? It was classy. It was a fucking good hat." Woe. Shelby's brows knit together when her coffee is taken, drawing into a single ginger line of exasperation. She's looking at him as if praying that the liberal amount of sugar used to dose the drink might give him insta-diabetes. The cold has chapped her lips--though not to the extent his hands are chapped--and she begins to bite at them, picking at the loose skin. Gross. Also anxious. "I didn't get you shot. The guy was a tweaker, he'd've shot you anyway." Another pause. "You didn't die and you're bitching about a hat?" "I'm not dead, so I /get/ to bitch." SIP. Jim doesn't seem to even /taste/ the sugar. Or the coffee. He is systematically and /joylessly/ mowing through Shelby's resources. "Besides. It's fucking cold in my apartment. The heat's not working." And by 'not working', he probably means 'been shut off'. "I'd take a 'sorry'." Maybe 'sorry' is a type of syrup, to accompany the pancake chunk he's torn off with a bare hand. And maybe Shelby is allergic to sorries. Or really fond of those pancakes, because her eyes narrow to sea-green slits at the sight. Her right hand appears atop the table, crawling towards the side plate with the three slices of toast that remain. "Yeah, well, it's fucking cold out -there- and I'm hungry." Huff huff. But as her fingertips connect with crust and she begins sliding the piece back towards herself--on a course to a pocket, probably, fake butter and all--she mumbles, "Anyway, I'm sorry you got shot." Rather than glad to hear it, Jim just kind of slows down his decimation and sighs, "Yeah." He raises up a hand to try fitfully to summon over a waitress - he SEES her over there, toying with a note book and chatting bouncily with the manager - "Me too, kid. You get out alright?" /Finally/, here comes the waitress. He lays down an order of straight carbs and protein and GREASE, eggs, s(n)ausage, bacon, another order of hashbrowns, a coffee. "Is that a trick question?" Hers is certainly a sullen one, which makes for a decent mask for surprise. The slip of toast disappears beneath the table, never to be seen again. "Went from being mugged to having someone wave a gun around, then ended up sleeping on someone's stoop 'cause I didn't have the money for the subway. That's pretty fucking not alright, you know?" Nevermind that it beats abdominal bleeding. Shelby seizes the opportunity of Jim's distraction to lean over and make a grab for her coffee mug. "Refill, please." "Yeah, that sounds rough," except that Jim says it like he wasn't really listening, mouth-breathing over his /own/ coffee once it's delivered to take a quick surface temperature sample just in case it might be hot. Finding it just a few degrees above room temperature, he seems to feel this is Just Right and pushes Shelby's hostagedrink back to her, old-man cooties and all. "Guess it was kinda a day for mugging. I was in a morgue getting a bullet dug outta me." Pitifulness Challenge ACCEPTED. "Yeah, well..." Challenged failed. Woe! Fortunately Shelby has the excuse of holding her mug out to be topped off. She's not fashed about possible cooties--a quick wipe of the rim suffices for her, after which she begins the process of loading the cup back up with as much cream and sugar as it will hold without spillage. "You gotta watch out for the assholes around here, you know? At least someone dug it out. I knew a guy, he got shot and they just left it in there. Couldn't go through metal detectors without setting it off." This is probably what experts would call "a diversionary tactic". "Plenty enough assholes to watch out for," Jim will go along with this one; his own coffee is taken black, though possibly more by dint of laziness than preference. Preference demands energy. "Yeah, I got a few that ain't been dug out," been there, done that, ruined the T-shirt, though Shelby has gotten his attention with a wary stare. Behold, a bit of impression for the knowledge, "Didn't know they'd set of a metal detector. That's a /shit/." A singular shit. Worth demonstrated, Jim has apparently annexed Shelby into some parallel universe where they have been talking casually for hours, leaning back against the booth corner and putting up a leg to take up the /whole/ seat, "So how long you been rattling around this fucking city." And still sitting on her jacket. Damn it. Shelby's scowl makes a brief reappearance but behind that facade, she's watching him closely--willing to go along with the sham for now, and clearly looking for -why- he's playing it out. "Yeah? This is me being surprised someone else has taken a shot at you," she mutters into her coffee. Seriously, into it--close enough that her upper lip makes ripples on the surface. Sip. "I've been here long enough. A couple years anyway," she lies. She lies well. "Why? And how come you're being so..." Words fail, or the educational system has, and she just gestures at him to fill in the blank. "Eh," tatty jackets are /made/ for lazy-casual shrugs, and Jim pulls back his elbows to make room for the delivery of dinner set out before him, "I'm bored." Entertain me. "You're bored," Shelby repeats. It is perhaps not what she'd expected to hear because she just watches him as plates are off-loaded. Once the waitress has whisked off again--it is probably a safe bet that her relationship with the manager is not only professional--the teenager reaches out to try and snare a slice of bacon. "You're fucking weird," she decides. "And you better not be farting on my coat." "I'm workin' up a /meaty/ one right now for you," Jim assures around a a cheekful of sausagemeat. "You're one to talk, kid. The fuck's your name, anyway." His eyes have slipped to peripheral, watching the waitress carry on her chirping laughter and twirling hair. "You know these places run on a work release program? Half the employees here are ex-cons. The other half are teen girls. Y'know what that makes?" He chases something around his coffee's surface with a fingertip, patrolling for floaties, "/Pregnant teens/." "Son of a bitch." As complaints go, it's mild. Shelby has either resigned herself to a coat that smells like ass or she figures he's bluffing. The bacon is gnawed on as her eyes cut off to the side again, this time to study the waitress and her prey. "So?" It takes another moment or so before a thought occurs to her, and she straightens up. Ohhh, the look Jim is given. "Aw fuck, you're not one of those sick shits who likes girls, are you? I swear to god, I am -so- not in the mood." "You wish," Jim /states/ this nasally, like he's finally learning to be /New York/. "You can kiss my ass, kid, you're about two decades too late to catch that ship. I got enough harpies in my life without looking for one that'll out-live me." He is apparently immune to Looks, because he bears up under it with a /weighty/ are-you-kidding-me stare. Shelby retaliates with a stare that is pure you-started-it. Also she reaches for one of the sausages, because the bacon theft went off without a hitch. "Whatever," she says, the perfect skeptic in spite of her lack of years. "You're the one who brought up old guys and girls. -You- look like an ex-con. -I'm- a fucking girl. What am I supposed to think, huh?" Beat that logic, she is daring him. Jim doesn't seem to notice the sausage theft any more than the bacon theft, though only because he's taking another shred of pancake off Shelby's side of the table's No Man's Land. It's like Buffet Battle Royale, "So any time someone mentions anyone fucking," he gestures around the IHOP as though it were /teeming/ with examples of this past time, "you think they're really thinking of gettin' it on with /you/." He bites a scrap of bacon with a pointed emphasis, and uses the uneaten end to point at Shelby, "That's some wicked conceit you got there, kid." "Oh, fuck you. No one just -talks- about fucking to a complete -stranger- unless they're thinking about it. I'm like, barely seventeen, dude. That's -sick-." Conceit -and- a terminal case of the dumb, when she's annoyed. Shelby has a lot going for her. "I swear to God, if you fuck around with me, a shitload of people are going to come down on you. Hard. And -not- in a fun way," she warns him in dire tones. Then, to finish making her point, she takes a chomp out of the sausage. "These the same people that left you sleeping on a stoop in the middle of winter?" Jim pokes a hole in that one without seeming to even hear himself; a woman has just tried to enter the diner in six inch heels, a deep air of inebriation and a Ralph Lauren shoulderbag, from which the sweet little white face of a waltese terrier is peering eagerly. She is not thrilled to be stopped at the door. Jim watches this with a huge fixed-manic crook of grin plastered on the front of his face, cupping his chin with his hands as though in /love/. "/You're/ sick. Maybe I should be offended, some punk kid comin' onto me when I'm just trying to get some peaceful dinner. You're not my type, kiddo, get over it." If she had the sense that God gave little fishes, Shelby would just shut up. But she is annoyed. Nay, she is -offended-. -Deeply- offended. "You sat down here! -You- sat down at -my- table," she growls--or tries to. Hers is not a growly voice. But it is a carrying voice, loud and high enough to drift towards the confrontation between management and the drunk woman and her pup. "I wouldn't fuck you if you paid me to! Oh my god!" Shelby scootches to the edges of the bench and stands up, seizing the trailing sleeve of the coat as she goes. It's given a tug. "Give me my jacket." There's one single moment where Jim looks utterly unamused, Shelby's volume likely dragging attention from whatever patrons might be nightowling the restaurant as well as the management. He shakes his head, just once, not in pity so much mild... remorse? Because he then puts on his /own/ game face, one of wide-bulging eyed shock and he launches to his feet (freeing the jacket while he's at it), and full-on roars, "Did you just steal my wallet!?" He thrusts a hand inside his inner jacket in sudden inventory, "You little /thief/! Give it fucking back! Hey, you!" He /points/ at the manager, "Call the fucking cops!" Shelby did not see that coming. At all. For a moment--a very long moment--all that she can do is gape at Jim, clutching the jacket without even realizing it's come free and dangles from her hands. She is simply astounded someone would not only call her bluff, but turn the tables on her...and it shows. Then instinct kicks in. She hisses, "You fucking asshole!" before making a break for it, right down the aisle. The waitress, who'd turned towards the table--as if expecting they were looking for another coffee refill--is bodychecked, slammed out of the way as Shelby pelts by on a course for the exit. "Get back here!" Jim roars after her, a snarl of bared teeth looks so close to a grin, but surely in a situation like this his expression should be plain. Depending on who you are. "That kid stole my fucking wallet! What the shit!" He takes just enough time to gab the last sausage and a sloppy handful of hashbrowns into his big meaty fist, and then he takes off /after/ Shelby. The poor waitress, just now trying to get back to her feet, will probably get bowled over a second time when he bowls himself past her. No sooner does she burst through the door, than he bursts through it after her. Ah, the Bronx. Where an unjacketed girl can go running across a parking lot with a middle-aged man in hot pursuit...and no one really looks twice. Some drunk Guidos going by in a car shout out something, their laughter chased by the sound of screeching tires. They take off. Shelby's trying to do the same but she's in sneakers and the slushy pavement is not her friend. Common sense--of a sort--tells her to stop and scream for help. The possibility of the manager calling the cops is a good incentive to keep running. She compromises by continuing her flight and wasting breath on shouts of, "Get off of me! Help!" But once their a block away, Jim can only be heard laughing with a delighted (if smoker-raspy) volume. And with a last glance over his shoulder, his jog slows to a winded lope and he cups hands around his mouth and, as he comes to a stop he calls, "Thanks for dinner, kid!" Or at least, a good enough excuse to run on the check. He takes a bit of the hashbrown... mash still gripped in his hand. Tastes like stolen.