Logs:A Beginner's Guide to Excavation

A Beginner's Guide to Excavation
Dramatis Personae Kamil, Kasim
In Absentia Khalil, Kadar	2024-10-26 "... U-Haul have excavators?"
Location <NYC> Surfside Motel - Queens
This is a very cheap motel room that might end up costing more than it's worth -- though Kamil covered up the smoke detector and has been trying to smoke out the window, after a couple days the heady smell of menthol and tobacco is clinging to the curtains, the bedspreads, the tacky suspiciously-stained furniture. Kamil is slouching low in a tacky, suspiciously-stained armchair pulled up to the window, wearing the motel's ratty bathrobe over ratty jeans and a faded black t-shirt; though the window is open for smoke the curtains are pulled to obscure most of the view outside, like he's afraid the Sword of Tyr or possibly the Terminator is still coming for them. His shiny bald head and its dark tattoo are marred by many-many scabbed-over snicks, his chin and much of his neck the pale, sensitive new-skin of half-healed burns, and though he's reaching irritably to scratch at the crusty side of his head he's very quickly stopping himself, twisting his hand into a fist around the terrycloth of the bathrobe instead. Kasim is in/on one of the squeaky (also-stained) thin-mattressed twin beds. Also in jeans, and a grungy grey (maybe originally white?) undershirt, his leg heavy in its cast where it's outstretched before him and his other (boot on) dropped over the side of the bed to the floor. He's also a speckled mess of scabs and angry skin, and though at the moment he's managing not to scratch at it there's an irritable weepiness to some of the marks that suggest he's been ill-advisedly doing so here and there. Right now, he's not scratching at anything. He's been drinking a shitty beer, kind of slowly. This time when he puts the can down on the latest of many rings marking up the surface of the nightstand, there's a telltale hollow clink that explains the accusatory glare he is giving it. He reaches for his phone, beside him on the mattress, but then just grips it without bothering to turn it on. "Gonna have to go back." It's the first thing he's said in a while. Kamil turns his head very slowly to stare across the motel room, like he's surprised either of them are speaking. "Don't wanna," is his immediate, petulant response, his stare momentarily -- accusatory? hostile? nope, belay that, he tosses his head back into the chair before his expression actually approaches anger. "I can go," he says. "Get our shit. Get Khalil's shit." Kasim's growing a little pinched at this offer, but as he shifts uncomfortably where he sits, the confining weight of the cast on his leg dissuades him from whatever reflexive/protective objection was mounting. He grimaces. A finger taps restlessly at his phone, and he drops it unused back to the mattress. He rubs slowly at his forehead, and his head shifts in something that isn't really either a nod or a shake. "You're gonna need a hand." "Your hands are fine, I'm worried about your leg," but this point is common-sensical enough that Kamil is not mustering up much argument, just scowling as he turns his head to glare back out the window, stubbing the butt of his cigarette into the overflowing ashtray on the sill. "Idiot goes and dies on us," he scoffs, voice pitching into a bitter grumble that is probably not sincerely meant. "Like he doesn't know we can't do this by ourselves. God! Now we have to go to U-Haul." His tone is very strongly suggesting this is a fate worse than death. Kasim gives a sharpquick huff. He shifts again, like he's checking one more time juuust in case his leg is spontaneously no longer broken. Alas, says his sharp wince, it is definitely still broken. "... U-Haul have excavators?" Kamil glances over again, scowl slackening with confusion and then furiously rescrewing itself, eyes watering fast and shiny before he shuts them; he drops his head back against the chair again. "See," he says earnestly, "I don't even know how to rent an excavator -- fuck!" Does shouting make him feel better, probably not, probably thumping his boot heel against the chair is not helping either, but it does expel enough built-up grief-rage that he can drag his gaze back to Kasim, eyes still quite watery but clear and alert again. "Fine. Who do we know who's still talking to us who's not a Nazi." Now Kasim does turn his phone on. He's answering this shout simply by turning his it to face towards Kamil, Google pulled up on the screen. He looks down at the phone, and proceeds to not type anything at all, so presumably he is not actually looking up how to rent an excavator. He's considering. "Well." Starting to scratch at some of the redder skin beside his beard and then dropping his hand to sit on it. "We do know those Mongrels." "Ugh," says Kamil. This powerful and well-reasoned disagreement notwithstanding, he leaves the topic alone, sitting up out of his slouch only to slump forward, elbows on his knees and head in his hands, the skin of his scalp distending unpleasantly where his hands are sinking into his skull as he squeezes it like a rubber ball. He sighs. "We gotta call --" he is not saying it with his words but the guilty-morose tone of his voice is doing some of the work for him, here. "So they can say bye." Kasim is still sitting on his hand, and though he twitches that arm as he looks down he does not reach again for the phone. He turns his head to the side to rub his cheek against his shoulder, and checks this instinct, too, with a grimace. His head thumps back against the rickety headboard. "Bet Kadar could find us an excavator." "Show-off," says Kamil. Kasim just sighs (more than a little exaggerated), and picks up the phone.