ArchivedLogs:Presto
| Presto | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
2013-11-19 Food, friends and phones. (Part of Infected TP.) |
| Location
Phones, then <NYC> 606 {Lilia} - Village Lofts - East Village | |
November 18, 2013, 7:00PM.
There's no reply until the next day, around 3PM.
Exactly 90 minutes later according to the timestamps on the phone, Joe sends his next message.
Joe stares at his phone, mouthing the word 'fancy' at it. He chuffs a short laugh, looks up at the building, and shakes his head. He turns to GaryMountain and HectorMountain, gesturing for Gary to hand him the big black backpack the man was carrying for him. "Ok, beat it guys. With any luck, I'm gonna be here a /while/. You get me?" Hector looks away, and Gary somehow manages to choke down the disgusted expression he had all queued up. "Uh," Gary says. "We ain't supposed to ditch you, guy." Joe sighs and gestures at the Suburban they arrived in. "Just wait in the car. Keep the noise down and I'm sure you'll be fine. This looks like a pretty clean part of town." Gary and Hector exchange A Look, both sigh, and then they pile into the SUV. At least there's heat inside, and they can charge their phones. A minute or so later, a young woman /about Lilia's height/ strides across the apartment building lobby and to the front door. Contrary to what Joe is probably expecting, though, /this/ young woman has close-cropped white hair, with a black kerchief wrapped around her head and neck in an old-fashioned style. She's dressed in a black dress with tiny white polka dots, with a pink belt around the waist to add some color, and black strappy sandals on her feet. When she gets to the door, she looks out and sees Joe standing by that SUV, frowning slightly with a little sigh, but ultimately opens the door and waves briskly - with white-gloved hands - for him to /get over here/. Joe's expression is slightly confused, but he jogs across the street, eyes glancing to a furtive movement in an alleyway a couple blocks down, but then he's at the door. He's wearing a cheap black suit with no tie, and cheap dress shoes, with the shine worn off in odd scuff marks. His eyebrows go up as he studies her face through the glass door, perhaps not quite sure how he remembered her from their coffee crash meeting. "Uh hey," he says, still outside. "Almost didn't recognize you..." He clears his throat and pulls his jacket back to reveal the butt of a pistol in a shoulder holster. "You want my gun before I come in? Or can I hang on to it?" The sight of the gun causes Lilia to widen her eyes, stopping just shy of letting out a surprised yelp. "Jesus! Give me that!" Welp, that's her mind made up; whether Joe offers the weapon or not, Lilia will reach forward to /grab/ for it, almost touching the handle before she stops herself. "You can't just-- you don't go to a girl's apartment building during a quarantine and tell her you have a /gun/, Jean! What the hell is wrong with you?!" "Whoa there, Annie," Joe says, turning just a little to be out of Lilia's reach for a moment. In a smooth, but carefully non-threatening gesture, he unholsters the weapon, ejects the magazine and hands the empty gun to Lilia. The magazine goes into his own jacket pocket. Joe seems a little bemused. "One, everyone walks with a weapon out here right now. Two, are you suggesting I should have /hidden/ it from you? Because I /could/ have. But I thought it would be best to open with you. Honest. I don't like lying, and I only keep secrets on stage." Joe's confidence is really the only thing going for him right now, but of course, even that could be off-putting. His bug eyes and his reedy voice really do nothing to counteract his hunched build and pasty complexion. Snatching the gun, Lilia holds the door open a little further to let Joe inside, shaking her head a few times and muttering for a moment before raising her voice again. "You could have left it in your /car/, with your /guys/. It isn't like you're going to /need/ it." Even as she's leading Joe to the elevator, she's shaking her head again, once more mumbling to herself in angry French. Pressing the 'Up' button once she gets to said lift, she turns back to Joe, jabbing his chest with the index finger of her free hand, the hand with the gun held at her waist. "If you start /any/ shit, I swear to /God/." "{Sorry,}" Joe says in poor Italian. His tone says it pretty well, even if Lilia doesn't know any Italian. "Honestly, I forgot it was on me until I ran up to door." He shrugs, and adds, "I never even carried it until all this shit went down," Joe waves his hand at the lobby doors. "Kind of sad I've gotten so used to it that I don't even remember it's there until too late. Again, {sorry} for scaring you." Joe is such a practiced liar, sometimes he doesn't even realize when he's spinning cons of convenience. When the elevator dings, he reaches out to put a hand in front of the sensor, making sure the door stays open for Lilia, and then he follows her in as well. "I'm not gonna start anything, promise. You're way out of my league. Shit, I /know/ that. I just wanna have dinner with you before you forget about me. Plus, I was worried you were short on supplies... but I can see that's not the case." Once inside the elevator, Lilia presses the '6' button, standing with her hands folded at her waist and fiddling with the gun idly. "I didn't mean starting anything like /that/, thank you very much, not that you aren't /wrong/." She's staring straight ahead, occasionally looking up at the roof, generally just being restless until the elevator makes it to her floor. And from there it's a short walk to her apartment, which she unlocks quickly, ushering Joe in before she steps inside herself. The room is usually tidy, though since the plague started it's gotten a bit... less so. Things have clearly been pushed around and reoriented out of place. Aside from a bit of a 'stale' smell, it otherwise isn't so bad; and once Lilia is inside, she locks the door behind herself, removing her gloves to set down on a kitchen countertop, next to the gun. "We've been getting some food. Not /much/, but I have enough canned goods that I can supplement... so it's been pretty okay, honestly." Joe's brow furrows slightly as he bends to the effort of following Lilia's triple and quadruple negatives, but in the end, it seems he's figured it out. His brow unfurrows and he makes quiet 'hm' of assent. Joe general demeanor is one of quiet alertness, especially moving through the halls. It could almost cross the line to 'furtive', but these days, who would call that a bad thing? "Nice place," Joe says when they're inside. He shrugs off the backpack which rattles with the sound of dried pasta in boxes, and sets it down. Then he peels off his jacket and hangs it by the door. His physique, with just the white dress shirt, could not be less imposing. Rounded shoulders, slightly hunched back, wimpy and flabby - not much threatening here. He picks up the backpack by the handle on top and nods at the kitchen. "Want me to cook? I kinda figured out some tricks with this powdered sauce. I mean, it's pretty much crap since we don't have any milk, but... I have my ways." He waggles his eyebrows in faux conspiracy. "You're sweet." Despite the compliment, it nonetheless comes off as condescending, and Joe doesn't need to be good at reading people to tell that Lilia meant it that way. She's taking off her shoes while Joe gets himself comfortable, then finally strides across the apartment in bare feet - no stockings, even - to open the kitchen door. "I keep /real/ sauce around, spaghetti makes a good 'lazy meal', you know? But if you're sick of pasta I have some leftover actual food..." If he looks over her shoulder, Joe will see that the fridge is /mostly/ bare, save for a few storage containers filled with mystery leftovers, cheese slices, a partial jug of water, a few mostly-empty bags of bready items (bread, bagels), and assorted condiments. Including a partially-full jar of pasta sauce. "There's some soup and some... other-soup, if you'd rather have that." "Nah, I'm good with spaghetti, thanks. Especially if you have real sauce," Joe says, openly impressed. He sets his backpack down on a chair at the kitchen table and pulls out several boxes of spaghetti and several more of shells. They're all just dry pasta, no fake cheese or other flavors to mix in, stacked up on the countertop. He also comes up with a small box of 'dehydrated alfredo' which he leaves on the counter with all the pasta. "So let's see..." Joe says, turning about in the kitchen, and then back to openly study Lilia's face. "You can tell a lot by how a person sets up their kitchen." He holds up a hand and says, "Let me try and guess, no spoilers ok?" Invisibly, Joe extends his localized sense to identify the location of the things he's looking for. "I'm going to guess... the big pot is in here!" He opens the correct cupboard dramatically, and gives Lilia a knowing glance. He repeats the show for a couple more items, and by the time he's done, water is heating in the pot. While Joe is doing his mind-reading act, Lilia just stands there with some mild amusement on her features, smirking somewhat, though the expression does falter when Joe keeps guessing correctly. "Well, just don't burn the place down," she finally remarks, striding to the living room to tidy up a bit, which in this case mostly consists of putting away the old magazines she's been reading and re-reading. "The strainer's in the cabinet next to the stove," she calls from the other room, trying to get /one/ thing out without Joe figuring it out himself (whether he actually already has or not), and eventually just makes herself comfortable sitting across the arms of the armchair in a distinctly un-ladylike pose while she waits for Joe to finish cooking. When all is said and done, Joe actually makes a decent pot of pasta. It's not al dente, but that's because he doesn't like it that way. He even says as much when they're sitting down to eat. He might eat bachelor meals, but apparently he knows his way around a pasta dish at least. When Lilia comes back to the kitchen, he's even found the dishes and silverware, though there's been no sound of rummaging. "Thanks again for having me over. Eating with hired bodyguards isn't really the same as having a meal with a friend." | |
