Logs:Outside Jokes

Outside Jokes
Dramatis Personae David, Toni
In Absentia Lucien	2024-04-30 Always a million little cracks in everything if you can figure out where to push.
Location <NYC> Le Sanctuaire, Le Bonne Entente - Astoria, Queens
This café occupies what had been the sanctuary of the old cathedral, and retains some echo of its solemnity without any sense of severity. Two additional levels have been installed in the trefoil footprint, but do not extend all the way to the walls, supported instead by a sturdy steel frame. This gives the impression, as one enters, that the space is fitted with scaffolding and perpetually under renovation--but in a deliberate, beautiful way. The harsh lines of the load-bearing frame are softened by wrought iron fleur-de-lis scrollwork accented in gold. The tables and seating are also of graceful black iron relieved with cushions in red velvet. The long counter is curved along the back wall, and to either side arched doorways lead out into a colonnaded patio in the garden. In one lobe of the trefoil, a square spiral stair ascends to the upper levels, while a platform lift does the same opposite, both balancing utilitarian design with aesthetic sensibility. The most striking addition is the immense stained glass window, masterfully marrying to the neoclassical splendor of the original structure and the Parisian café ambience of the added levels. Its colors are rich yet pellucid, its lines clean and decisive, and its subject decidedly not Christian. The towering figure of Apollo gazes down serene and benevolent, three golden arrows clutched in his right hand and and a golden lyre cradled in his left arm. He's bare to the waist save for a sumptuous red mantle and gold pauldrons, and wears a white skirt overlaid with gold pteruges. He is crowned with a wreath of living green laurel, the great silver bow across his back like the arc of a crescent moon rising across the bright sunburst that halos him. A great serpent encircles the pedestal upon which he stands and lifts its sleek head toward the god in obedience if not adoration, visually recalling the legendary staff he gifted his brother Hermes. It's a beautiful spring day, clear and mild, and the cafe's patio is bright with blooming color. Toni is currently bright, too; impeccably make-upped, nails freshly done, the bold pink and green suit she is wearing framed at the moment by an immense spill of lilacs growing high behind her table. She has a pile of work in front of her, several folders tucked beneath her laptop, but just at this moment she's taking a small break from drowning herself in paperwork to luxuriate in a slow sip of very good coffee, her eyes fixed out past the plants to the river rippling by beyond. "Are you Miss Jefferson? Mind if I steal a few minutes of your time?" The man who's approached Toni is colorful too, if not quite bright, in a rich blue suit with a pop of orange and yellow in the pattern of his tie; he's holding his own cup of coffee rather daintily on its saucer in his hands, an unassuming brown leather briefcase slung over one shoulder. It's hard to pin down his age, his ethnicity, where Toni might know him from, but he is helping himself to the chair opposite Toni already, dark eyes flicking to survey the folders under her laptop with bright curiosity. "What an awful turn of events this weekend, huh? I'm sure it's kept you quite busy." Toni is minimizing all her windows and looking up quick, with a very broad and very bright smile. It fixes just a touch more stiffly in place when David sits himself down uninvited, but she isn't quite objecting. There's very little on the outside of the folders to tell of their specific contents, but they each have dates from this past weekend. "Whew boy, it's kept a whole lotta people quite busy," she's agreeing readily enough. "Doesn't look like it's stopping any time soon, either. I'm sorry, have we met?" She's fluttering a manicured hand over her computer and files both. "Whole weekend's got my mind just a lil crispy at the edges." "David Smith," David introduces himself, "Entrepeneur, philanthropist, yada yada. You might remember me best from my days at Twitter, though. I'm a wee bit new in town." He busies himself setting his coffee and saucer clinkily on the table, fussily smoothing his tie, before extending one hand to shake (his handshake is neither too firm nor too limp.) "It's a pleasure," he adds, whether or not it is. "Lotta my colleagues have been absolutely frantic just trying to keep up, and we're all losing our head keeping them outta trouble too. What a disaster for the NYPD." His smile stretches bright and white over his face, incongruous when he repeats, "Simply awful, for them. But I'm sure I don't need to tell you that." "Oh, well, welcome to town. I'd tell you where the best place to enjoy a quiet coffee is but you already found it." Toni is taking the offered hand, shaking it with one quick pump. "David Smith," she's echoing this with only the very slightest widening of her eyes and taking another sip of her coffee. "Did you move out of tech when you came here? I can't imagine there's been a lot of splashover into that industry. I would not want to be a be a cop this week, I can tell you that. God bless 'em for keeping us safe," she's saying this like kind of a rote formality, "but lemme tell you if there's one shot you can always count on a cop to make it's their own foot and God bless 'em twice for that." The look David shoots back at the coffeestand does not suggest that he has found this the best place to enjoy a quiet coffee, but he agrees readily, "Lovely little spot, what a tragedy about the owner. My wife and I saw him in Captain America last year, he was quite talented." He takes a sip of coffee, pinky raised -- "Ah yes, I have," he says. "Tech is fun but the people bore you after a while. I'm in media now. Bit hush-hush where -- just an interim position for now -- but keep an eye out for any high-profile Me Toos in the next few weeks." He taps the side of his nose, eyes crinkling in amusement, his voice tinting like they're in on some joke together -- "God bless 'em twice," he says. "I was in the military, way back, met a lot of the same type there, finds himself in a hole and just starts digging. Now I've never worked in law --" his conspiratorial tone is relaxed and broad once more, now, "-- but I bet even the best journalists aren't half so good at digging as a lawyer. Makes me pretty curious what sorta dirt you've been finding." "Really a shame. His employees seemed to love him and that," Toni is glancing towards the cafe doors with a very small furrow of brow that soon smooths back out, "tells me more than all the reviews together." She's setting her coffee down, now, only now giving David a look of actual interest and not just politeness. "Media? Oh, I'll keep my eye out for sure. My line of work, can't have too many friends there. The law gets you real far, you wield it right but." Now her smile is just a little conspiratorial, too, "sometimes it can do with a lil push here and there." Her eyes flick for just a second down to her stack of folders. "And this one, mmm. This one's gonna have been litigated a thousand times before it sees a courtroom." One stiletto nail taps absently at her stack of folders. "Wellll, it's early and I shouldn't say too much," she's saying this with the kind-of-playful kind-of-cagey shouldn't say more that is definitely, probably, about to say more, "but I tell you, every cop killing like this I see, you could be digging with a teaspoon it won't take you more than a minute to hit pay dirt." "I don't know an industry I think you can have friends in," says David; his gaze has dropped again to the folders under Toni's laptop with a considering gleam. "Ain't that always the way," he says. "I spent most of my adult life figuring out how to get into the closed rooms that run this world. The Room Where It Happens, as it were," this too is in the cadence of an Unsolicited Inside Joke. "Always thought it was legislatures and Supreme Courts and executive boardrooms but for plenty of people the world is pretty damn small. Everything can change in any shitty conference room you can imagine." He lifts his eyes again, bares his teeth in another smile -- "But nobody will pay attention to that unless there's a good story behind it, huh? I'd ask if you have any good stories outta all this chaos but --" now David's tone takes on a vaguely uncomfortable playfulness, "You probably shouldn't say, huh." He raises his eyebrows, and the too-broad smile eases a little -- "I'm sure I can rustle up a teaspoon somewhere." "I thought a law degree was the way to that," Toni says with a laugh, and, cheerfully brash: "turns out I was so right. Heard every lawyer joke in the book a million times but boy if even the ones in those boardrooms don't want us on their side when the water's getting turbulent. You right, too, though. Not one path to it. Always a million little cracks in everything if you can figure out where to push." She's leaning back in her chair, picking up her coffee for another slow sip. "You think anyone in your hush-hush position be interested in digging with more than a teaspoon, I tell you one thing. The NYPD just got through settling a big case over use of force back in 2020, and they are scrambling right now to cover up how involved the SRG was with the Freaktown action. Those boys shouldn't have been on the ground at all with the dirty laundry they're still trying to clean up but there's only so long they're gonna be able to stall the reports on which guns shot which bullets." David quirks his eyebrows higher still, leans in over the cafe table, and if his eagerness at hearing this tidbit is a little vulgar it seems somehow natural, anyway. "The SRG?" It's anybody's guess what a recent transplant should know about individual NYPD units, but he's scratching his chin thoughtfully -- "God bless, they did shoot themselves in the foot." With another slow, creeping, tickled-pink smile: "I'm sure I can find some hush-hush people for a scoop like that. Here's hoping --" he lifts his coffee cup not quite in a salut before he takes a sip, "it doesn't stay hush-hush for long."