"Maybe I should get a new tattoo."
The priest's truck is parked between on 9th Avenue, less than half-a-block from the Sante Fe Arts District. Still light outside, early evening, Tuesday on a fucking holiday week. The galleries are open 'til nine p.m. tonight but there's not much foot traffic, and only the trendiest of the bars and restaurants have anything close to a full house tonight.
They're still sitting in the cab because the meters are enforced until 7 p.m. and Pan gave his change to an mother with two toddlers in her charge who needed bus fare and the smallest bill Serafíne has is a $20 because she never keeps the change because the change cannot fit in her chic little black clutch because in her chic little black clutch she has to have room for money and an ID and drugs and cigarettes and condoms, are what she needs room for, and quarters and dimes and nickles fill up space that could be put to much better uses.
And they're parked in front of a tattoo parlor that specializes in old school pieces - anchors and mermaids and mermaids wrapped half-naked around anchors and her eyes are lazy in the shadows of the cab and she's looking at him sidelong, see, his shaggy hair. There's a gallery showing folk art including three pieces by one of his parishioners that he should go see and she was just there at the rectory when he came home from the League of Mary Meeting because they wanted to pray the rosary and it all ran late and she was sitting on the steps wearing god knows what (we will describe that in the next post) and texting someone and squinting against the evening sunlight and getting ready to call a cab and she said -
You look hungry. Let me buy you dinner.
So here they are. He has no idea what drugs she's taken today or maybe she's like this sober. Maybe sobriety is another sort of drug to her because when they crossed the street to the church parking lot and she slid in the passenger's seat she slid all the way across and braced her elbow on the center console where she sat her skinny ass that one night a month ago, right between the two disciples and reaches up to clasp a lock of his black and gray hair between her index and middle fingers and pull it out from where it curls against his collar to its full length.
Did not say you need a haircut this time, just grinned at him. The tattoo on those two fingers, though, is of a pair of scissors. So.
"You don't have any, do you?" tattoos, she means. Her eyes are half-lashed and she's leaning against the passenger's side door now and studying him from beneath those hooded eyes. When she looks at you like that it feels so fucking personal.
PanThe Old Testament made it pretty clear that humans couldn't handle the level of cleanliness God demanded of the Israelites. That was why Jesus was born: to wipe clean the slate so people could eat bacon cheeseburgers and wear cotton/polyester blends and shake hands with menstruating women and not spend the rest of eternity frying down in Hell.
So says one interpretation.
Today was a long day by mundane standards but Father Echeverría did not look exhausted by the time he came home. That aura around him of renewed spring, that light shining with the coming dusk. She knows by now that he Works sometimes and his Work involves kicking his mental awareness into overdrive so even if he is bone tired his brain doesn't betray him.
Hasn't had a goddamn haircut since the business with Brogan started but it suits him, almost. Doesn't make him look younger. Growing out like it is the silver and white are even more prominent and with the prominence of his hair's fading the green of his eyes is louder.
He's not paying any attention to what Sera's eyes are doing as they sit at the curb waiting for time to pass. Both the windows are rolled down because he doesn't believe in air conditioning. Pan blinks like she's just hauled him out of a reverie and he makes a small hmm? noise like to play the question back in his head. Clears his throat before he answers.
"Nah," he says, and then the brief quiet before an explanation. "When I was maybe thirteen, fourteen, I got sent to live with my tía in Boulder. She was súper-religiosa, yeah, would have tanned my hide if I got a tattoo while I was still living with her."
She knows the next part of the story: he knocked up his high school girlfriend and didn't finish school. Ended up working in an auto-body shop to support everybody while she finished nursing school. Dot dot dot.
SerafínePan Echeverría does not believe in air conditioning does believe in sin and Serafíne (he knows the last name to attach to her first name but it does not fit and does not suit her and she never gives it out to strangers except maybe him, once, once. And anyway, oh anyway, both names are assumed. And that he does not know.) does not believe in sin but does believe in air conditioning but it does not matter now as the evening's heat is fading and it is dusk and there's a breeze and the streets give up their heat the way lovers give up their secrets in the dark.
Anyway, she wears so few clothes she must be cold all the time in the chill blast of air conditioned galleries and offices and restaurants. No wonder she likes dives so much, the humid press of human bodies all around. All that fucking heat, so close to her skin.
"Did you want one?" she asks him, in her humming voice, with her lazy eyes. "Or was the threat of your tía tanning your hide enough to keep you from both the tattoo parlors and a covetous heart?"
The only time she looks away from him is to mark the movement of the metermaid, drifting like a bee from parking meter to parking meter in the evening shadows.
They are almost in the clear.
PanHe's almost too big to fit comfortably in the cab of this thing. It's not as ancient a truck as the one Sid drives but by consumer standards the damned thing is aging. At least ten years old, possibly more. Sat back against the cloth seats like he is, his black jeans and tanned forearms nearly afford him obfuscation.
As summer presses on, so does his skin bake darker. He has more Taíno blood in him than European.
"Just the tattoo parlors," he says. "Wouldn't have had a son if I was that scared of her. Don't regret it, neither."
He glances down at his watch, strapped to the wrist lain on the center console a respectable distance from her arm.
Serafíne"Good," she returns, quiet. Good that he doesn't regret it; good that he had a son, maybe. Good that one upon a time, a long time ago, he had a fucking covetous heart. Her eyes drop from his profile to his watch with that glance, to his arm, tucked on that console. If he's almost too big to fit comfortable in the cab she's small enough that she can curl in the passenger's seat with her legs tucked up beside her in the bucket seat. She's wearing jeans, skinny black ones that are so form fitting they seem like some skim-coat poured over her skin rather than a garment made of fabric one might somehow slip on and take off. Above that, a slinky see-through black lace tank / halter top over a black bra.
Reaches over to grab his wrist and her hand is paler than his and her blood is more European than his but even if she's white by Argetinian standards she's not white by American standards and she's getting tan, too.
And not the farmer's sort of tan, Padre. Not that sort of fucking tan at all.
"You're getting so dark." Musing over the contrast between their skin. Her hand around his wrist and she tips his watch in her direction. " - and your watch is wrong. We're in the clear. Let's go."
--
She's waiting for him on the sidewalk, right, pulling the chain of her clutch after her to drape it across her body. Ready, he's got to know, to tuck her arm into his when he gains her side, familiar and thoughtless as a dream.
"Luciana Victoria's father come forward yet? Signed himself up to pay child support?"
Because Sera, fucking Sera keeps up on Pan's stories about his fucking flock, tucks herself into them the way she tucks herself into the frame of his body, as if she belonged right alongside.
PanThere was a time when he thought maybe a daughter would've been easier. Like she wouldn't hate him half as much as his son did for a while or like it wouldn't matter as much if she did hate him because he wouldn't look at a daughter and wonder if she was gonna end up like him.
He learned after he got the proverbial collar around his neck. Doesn't matter if the daughter's yours or the son's yours or who they belong to. He's the teacher and the guiding light and the healer for his people. Oldest goddamn Willworker in the city and he doesn't think of the rest of them as his people exactly the way he thinks of his parish as his people but he sure as shit stands in front of them when there's something twisted and blackhole-hungry coming at them and he didn't think before he did it the first time any more than he thought before he did it the last time.
That may very well be the thing that kills him, is standing in front of someone who's weaker than him. Weaker doesn't mean helpless.
Anyway: he holds out his elbow for her not like they're going off on a date but like it's keeping her safe and when she brings up the new mother there isn't any sense that he's failed. She hasn't sensed that in him since the night she climbed into the shower like she was dragging him out of the ocean.
"No," he says. "I'm going to pay him a visit soon. Took me a while to find him."
SerafíneSera doesn't care how he holds his elbow out for her, just that he does. Just that he's close to her and allows her to be close to him; invites it, really, without thinking. And she's not imagining this as a date even if some outsider readers might, she's just standing on the sidewalk in the late evening light with a priest on her arm and then she's walking. The sun's still in the sky but it is setting soon.
There's a girl coming out of the tattoo parlor peeling back the bandage on her arm to marvel at her new bare-breasted mermaid anchor tattoo while her girlfriend trails behind, texting someone on the phone. Across the street, a few outdoor tables in front of a gastropub are filled with the smoking patrons and the curl of their mixed tobacco is sharp in the summer air.
"You should bring me with you, when you go." Her voice a background hum, really, "I can show him the consequences of his actions." Her half-bare shoulders curl in a near little shrug, and her footsteps are a swifter counterpoint to his own on the sidewalk. "Then maybe he'll take responsibility and do the right thing, mostly on his own."
PanHe walks as if he is in no particular hurry. He never walks as if he is in any particular hurry. With his time properly managed and whatever end toward which he goes laid out for him and not chosen for him, Pan feels little room for deviation and instead of fearing constraint he revels in the certainty of it. The knowledge that the One will provide so long as he does not stray.
Childish thinking, maybe, but children don't stride unhurried towards servants of Death and strike down they that would build new altars to him. He sent two Fallen back to the depths from which their souls emerged and it is not a permanent end but maybe when they reawaken one day he will be stronger. Maybe they will wish for salvation like Leah did, not destruction like the others do.
This boy they're talking about is no more wicked than Pan himself was when he was his age. Only Pan did not run out on the girl he'd left burdened with his lust. Two people must join themselves in the making of a child wanted or not and he has shirked his duties. He was not there when the girl cried in Pan's office and said she didn't know, she didn't know. Other boys were not there when other girls did the same thing and other boys were.
He who has the power to wipe nightmares from the mind of the tormented has the number to the local abortion clinic in his Rolodex. Since he arrived at La Iglesia del Buen Pastor a year ago though none of his parishioners have gone there. No children have gone into the adoption registry. The option is there but thus far the few who have come to him swollen from child and crying have chosen to keep their mistakes and raise them Christian, to love them.
"That won't be necessary," he says, of her going with him. "But thank you for offering."
SerafíneThat won't be necessary. he tells her and oh, her eyes are quick on his profile and they are close enough as they walk that last half-block toward the Sante Fe that he can feel her turning into him. He takes her arm like he is there to protect her and she accepts it like they are old, old friends. Her eyes find his and in the slanting shadows of late evening she can see the green. From this angle, gleaming with reflections from the streetlights, flaring in the sudden movement of headlights across the street as someone up the street climbs into an SUV, flicks on the lights and turns over the engine. The couple from the tattoo parlor are catching up and then moving around them, the one with her phone turning to glance back at them as she goes by. It's just a little tug of sharpened - something, call it awareness - call it instinct before she looks away and is already moving on.
Then the movement ahead of them catches her attention and she turns and watches them. One girl pulled in the other's wake, not reluctant but there's no particular rhythm to their movement. A certain stutterstep before they collide, one and one into two-in-one, just so.
So that moment of resistance sharpens to a point and then just eases. Sera is smiling in Pan's peripheral vision, then, and hums, quiet beneath her breath. One of those melodies he never knows.
"What are you going to do instead?"
PanAny truth she's asked of him before he's given to her. Little point in hiding something that would bring her closer towards a lighter soul. If he told her she was okay or that things would be okay or that they would prevail over the darkness, all of those things turned out to be true. He is no seer but his faith gives him a confidence that eschews foresight.
So it may jar her that he keeps something from her. Not the same as lying, but he keeps it secret where he hasn't made a habit of such before. He's told her this much about Amanda and Luciana, himself and Rafael. Plenty about the past but nothing about what lies ahead.
"You going into the seminary?" he asks. Light teasing, lighter parrying.
SerafíneOh, the deflection jars her. Most assuredly. There's a flicker of awareness in her profile, the dark and leading edge of her eyes drawn back to him. Black eyeliner, heavy black mascara, and little else around them. Her usual post-punk drag. Warm enough that she has her hair pulled back and twisted off her neck, which reveals the oft-hidden triangle tattoo just beneath and behind her ear, and of course the piercings through the delicate loops and whorls of lobe and cartilage. One is a spike, curving like a horn in and then out."Fuckin' A." But also: she likes his teasing. Loves it when he smiles, when he breaks out the fucking dad-jokes, for god's sake. His humor seems to rumble up from someplace she cannot see, unexpected and strange. So, that cut of her dark eyes on his profile and the quickened twist of her mouth. The responsive gleam of humor in her eyes, all layered together, all interwoven with the note not of tension, but of awareness, of the point where things shift aslant. Where she asks and he deflects. "Maybe I will. Bet the last-night-before-holy-orders parties are fucking killer, right? Seven-up punch with the ice cream instead of vodka and Danish butter cookies from those big blue tins. Two things I cannot resist." She's looking at his profile full on then, painted mouth spreading in a familiar crawling smile. Which fades to something else, rather more gleaming.So many things she cannot resist, but this she does: the instinct to tip her head forward lay a gentle kiss on his shoulder, through the black work shirt, in the failing light of dusk."So you gonna scare him straight?" There's something like compassion in her voice, closing her throat, giving the question a rough, quiet tinge. Something else, too, that he never sees. " - put the fear of god into him? Just take over the fucking papers to have him sign? Make him feel what she felt when she was scared and alone? You can tell me to shut the fuck up, you know, Pan."You can say, shut the fuck up, Serafíne. It's none of your fucking business." Breathes out here, all huffed and quiet but her amusement - her bemusement - is genuine and rich and easy. " - you can even leave out the 'fuck' and the 'fucking' when you say it. I won't mind."
SerafíneOh, the deflection jars her. Most assuredly. There's a flicker of awareness in her profile, the dark and leading edge of her eyes drawn back to him. Black eyeliner, heavy black mascara, and little else around them. Her usual post-punk drag. Warm enough that she has her hair pulled back and twisted off her neck, which reveals the oft-hidden triangle tattoo just beneath and behind her ear, and of course the piercings through the delicate loops and whorls of lobe and cartilage. One is a spike, curving like a horn in and then out."Fuckin' A." But also: she likes his teasing. Loves it when he smiles, when he breaks out the fucking dad-jokes, for god's sake. His humor seems to rumble up from someplace she cannot see, unexpected and strange. So, that cut of her dark eyes on his profile and the quickened twist of her mouth. The responsive gleam of humor in her eyes, all layered together, all interwoven with the note not of tension, but of awareness, of the point where things shift aslant. Where she asks and he deflects. "Maybe I will. Bet the last-night-before-holy-orders parties are fucking killer, right? Seven-up punch with the ice cream instead of vodka and Danish butter cookies from those big blue tins. Two things I cannot resist." She's looking at his profile full on then, painted mouth spreading in a familiar crawling smile. Which fades to something else, rather more gleaming.So many things she cannot resist, but this she does: the instinct to tip her head forward lay a gentle kiss on his shoulder, through the black work shirt, in the failing light of dusk."So you gonna scare him straight?" There's something like compassion in her voice, closing her throat, giving the question a rough, quiet tinge. Something else, too, that he never sees. " - put the fear of god into him? Just take over the fucking papers to have him sign? Make him feel what she felt when she was scared and alone? You can tell me to shut the fuck up, you know, Pan."You can say, shut the fuck up, Serafíne. It's none of your fucking business." Breathes out here, all huffed and quiet but her amusement - her bemusement - is genuine and rich and easy. " - you can even leave out the 'fuck' and the 'fucking' when you say it. I won't mind."
SerafíneOh, the deflection jars her. Most assuredly. There's a flicker of awareness in her profile, the dark and leading edge of her eyes drawn back to him. Black eyeliner, heavy black mascara, and little else around them. Her usual post-punk drag. Warm enough that she has her hair pulled back and twisted off her neck, which reveals the oft-hidden triangle tattoo just beneath and behind her ear, and of course the piercings through the delicate loops and whorls of lobe and cartilage. One is a spike, curving like a horn in and then out.
"Fuckin' A." But also: she likes his teasing. Loves it when he smiles, when he breaks out the fucking dad-jokes, for god's sake. His humor seems to rumble up from someplace she cannot see, unexpected and strange. So, that cut of her dark eyes on his profile and the quickened twist of her mouth. The responsive gleam of humor in her eyes, all layered together, all interwoven with the note not of tension, but of awareness, of the point where things shift aslant. Where she asks and he deflects. "Maybe I will. Bet the last-night-before-holy-orders parties are fucking killer, right? Seven-up punch with the ice cream instead of vodka and Danish butter cookies from those big blue tins. Two things I cannot resist." She's looking at his profile full on then, painted mouth spreading in a familiar crawling smile. Which fades to something else, rather more gleaming.
So many things she cannot resist, but this she does: the instinct to tip her head forward lay a gentle kiss on his shoulder, through the black work shirt, in the failing light of dusk.
"So you gonna scare him straight?" There's something like compassion in her voice, closing her throat, giving the question a rough, quiet tinge. Something else, too, that he never sees. " - put the fear of god into him? Just take over the fucking papers to have him sign? Make him feel what she felt when she was scared and alone? You can tell me to shut the fuck up, you know, Pan.
"You can say, shut the fuck up, Serafíne. It's none of your fucking business." Breathes out here, all huffed and quiet but her amusement - her bemusement - is genuine and rich and easy. " - you can even leave out the 'fuck' and the 'fucking' when you say it. I won't mind."
PanThroughout the night he has projected a sombre countenance not because he feels the need for seriousness or because he's been in a mood. Driving and listening and sitting in the setting sun before getting out has put him into a state of silent introspection from which he has been easily but infrequently roused.
And now she's making jokes about virgin punch and butter cookies and he laughs that goddamn laugh of his. The one that gripped her in the rays of the clean light the morning after a bad trip salvaged and showed her what a young man he'd been once. He rubs his jaw with the hand that is not instated guiding her down the sidewalk like to walk off the amusement but she keeps going.
And keeps going. And keeps going.
And he endures it because he knows all things come to an end eventually and maybe some masochistic part of himself enjoys seeing how much of her rambling he can endure before he has to interrupt her. He has never interrupted her. Not when they've been talking during the day, not fighting shadows in his kitchen.
"Serafíne," he says and his voice is taut with suppressed laughter, "you just keep talking. How I'm gonna tell you to shut the fuck up, mija, huh?"
SerafíneSera is so pleased by his laughter. So very pleased by the sudden assertion of it that she squeezes his arm and leans into him. The gesture is easy and familiar and alive and she keeps going and going and going past it. They've reached the corner now, where the feeder street on which they'd parked opens onto Sante Fe proper and it is evening and a warm, dry dusk is falling and while many of the galleries are still open, hoping to lure in a few folks from the bars and restaurants for a quick look around, a few of them have long since closed. Dark storefronts and padlocked front doors.
Then she finally stops and he has never interrupted her and even tonight he does not interrupt her and he says what he says and she gives him this sparking glance, bright and aslant, which catches on his profile and she's opening her fucking mouth and she's half-smiling and she can see the laughter even in the frame of his mouth even if he hasn't loosed it yet and -
- just reaches up and makes a nearly solemn gesture as if she were zipping her mouth closed. Her brows are lifted in careful arches and her attention is sharp on his profile.
JimSometimes you turn a corner and meet a new friends. Sometimes it's an old one. This time it's an old one. Jim is walking out of a yoga school with a green yoga mat sticking out of the open top of that rucksack slung over his shoulder. In his hand he has a manilla folder he's sticking into the bag as well, before its other strap is slipped into. When he looks up is when he spots Serafine and Pan.
He's dressed how he can usually be found, a pair of swimsuit bottoms that could double as workout shorts, walking around shorts, fighting evil Awakened in an Ascension War shorts (if you're Jim), color block paneled in red and white with a red cross patch over his ass. A v-neck and sandals complete his attire, them and those ever-present wayfarers he has pulled on over his eyes.
When he sees them he takes them off with a smile, hooking them onto the v of his shirt and opening up his arms for a hug aimed first as Serafine and next at Pan if he'll allow it. "What a pleasant surprise!"
PanFor a change he is not merely amused by something which should not strike him as amusing now. The list has grown longer as time has passed but started out small with her blasphemy in the confession booth. Now her humor is neutral enough for Rosa to stomach and he laughs low in his throat, not sudden but still smiling.
He's charmed.
Not enough to notice the undercurrents of her leaning closer or to pick up on those impulses she barely controls. The kisses she does not plant on his shoulder or his jaw or wherever.
Then they're on the boulevard and joining in with dozens of other pedestrians and no one notices them. From a distance they look like they could be related somehow, no other reason for a man his age to be escorting a woman her age like that, his manner so easy and hers so alive. No one notices them but the one past whom they walk.
Without blinking Pan turns his head and it's before Jim calls out to them. He felt him before he saw him. Releases the young woman to give the young man a hug and then smiles amicable and glad. He does hug Jim. He's Anglican. They hug everybody.
"Evening, Jim," he says. "How are you?"
SerafíneJim's wearing his Fighting Evil Shorts as per usual which means he is for once in his life wearing more clothing than Serafíne. Who has her right arm tucked into the priest's left. Most passing assume must be Pan's daughter, to be walking so closely and familiarly with him. So: yes. More clothing than Jim and his shorts - as tonight she has on jeans, skinny black ones that are so form fitting they seem like some skim-coat poured over her skin rather than a garment made of fabric. Impossible to figure how she actually got her ass into them. Maybe she throws herself into the dry to shrink them after she's gotten them on. Above that, a black push-up bra beneath a see-through black lace tank top.
Below them: heels high enough that she's nearly 5'10" tall. Soon as she see Jim though she detangles herself from Pan's arm to hug her fellow Cultist, then sort of - grins as the two Disciples hug.
Like she finds this fucking adorable, gentlemen.
"Pan was just telling me I talk too much for him to even have a shot at telling me to shut the fuck up." Her familiar, quick-crawling grin. A cut of her gaze back toward the yoga studio from which Jim had emerged. Then back to Pan's profile. "We're going for dinner. You should come."
Jim"I'm well. Job hunting," the Ecstatic answers, as if he felt he needed to explain why he would be doing yoga anywhere but in park like his baked-in golden tan indicates. "Looking for something with flexible hours." A pause, and it comes. A subtle grin that breaks into a broader smile. "Get it?!"
Of course they do. He answers as he finishes wrapping each of them up in a lanky embrace, full because it's imbued with a different form of caring for each. He folds his hands over his crotch and leans back a step, shifting onto his heels and beaming at the two.
"You wouldn't anyway. That's what I like about you," still happy, without a care in the world. "I'd love to," his answer to that final invitation. He even pats his belly like it needs filling and he's assuaging its hunger until they can get wherever he'll lead them.
And then it changes a bit. He gets a bit more serious, lips thinning and brow furrowing. He leans in. Almost like he's so addled that he's going for another round of hugs, these more solemn. But he speaks instead. "Sid, Lena and me ran into someone the other night. Someone that made someplace. Mad Awakened on some kind of PCP-turned-charm," looking back at the yoga school's door, then up and down the street, before that last sentence comes out.
It certainly sounds like there's a good deal more to the story.
Sid[where all my beaches at?: awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
SidThere is a little cluster of Awakened hanging out on a section of the street somewhere, only it's not just somewhere. Sid, awareness open as usual, senses the odd collection, and she heads toward the familiar tangle like it's magnetic north and she's the needle of a compass.
And lo! There they are. Sera and Jim and Pan. When Sid sees them, huddled together-ish, talking seriously, she picks up speed where a few months back she might have turned abruptly and walked away. She goes to join them.
When she's there she offers them nods of greeting, because as we all know, Sid and "hellos" is a combination that just plain don't exist.
SerafíneSorry guys! I thought that Jamie was posting and was waiting for her but NO MORE WAITING post incoming it may be small. :)
Jim[ Extended. Difficulty +1 and -1 for spending a Quintessence. ]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
SerafíneSoon as the hugs are over Sera seems ready to, I don't know, loop her other arm through his (or perhaps they should flank the priest, one on Pan's either arm) and find a place where they can sit outside and smoke and drink and (maaaybe) consume food. Break bread together. Then Jim steps in close and glances around and Sid walks up, quiet - she can read the way they are clustered, right? That wary alertness to Jim's posture that does not enter it unless there is need. The way he surveys the street before continuing on.
Sera gives Sid a wave of greeting back when the Orphan joins then, and does not in the end loop her arm through Pan's.
Instead she crosses both of her arms beneath her breasts, glances away as Jim tells them his news, and breathes out, sharply, and breathes in, consciously, and swallows something in the back of her throat.
The glance she gives the priest, then, is very nearly wary. Her dark eyes cut back to Jim, then.
"Did you get a text from Hawksley?"
Jim[ That should have been a PM. Was doing some jazz. Ignore the roll. ]
Pan"Sid," he says without going for the hug like Jim did, "hello."
And he misses the look Sera casts him because as she's casting it to him the priest's pager is making that delightful high-pitched pay attention to me noise most of them are too young to have grown familiar with before the turn of the century.
He takes it off his belt and reads the number. Sighs once and hard then tucks the pager away again and shakes hands with Jim and touches Sera once and light on the elbow.
"I have to go," he says. "Have a peaceful evening."
He turns and walks away then. Not hurried despite the urgency in whatever the page had indicated to him. He won't speed once he's back in the truck and he doesn't speed to get to it, either. Sleepers part for him on the sidewalk not because he bids them but because he is tall and broad and exudes an intensity that they don't want to mess with this close to nightfall.
Sid you're totally taking his place at dinner.
JimPan has a pager. Jim seems interested in that. It almost breaks his focus on what he's saying. And then Sid shows up, and he has to go, and it seems to segue her into the conversation, or at least leave a void behind where the priest had been for her to fill should she wish. Jim's smile toward her is a little harder to conjure this time, now that he's thinking of past events. "I was telling them about the other night."
SidSid hadn't intended to shunt the Chorister from the group, but apparently that's what her arrival does. Well, not really. She didn't make his pager go off, didn't send a number to it to draw him away. Or did she? As well as these people have come to know Sid Rhodes, there is still an ocean of mystery to the shy, timid woman.
There is a void now to be filled, one made by a man much bigger than Sid in more ways than merely physical. Her head is lowered, though not so much as it might have been when she first met these weirdos. She does step a little closer when Jim says that, though, comes around and stands nearly shoulder to shoulder with Sera, comfortable with her Cultist friends.
She nods. "Have you heard anything else? Is anyone else using those...Charms?"
SerafíneSera has a little black leather bag on a sleek silver chain slung across her body. The chain bisects the line of her see-through lace tank-top, like a fucking pageant sash. Her body language is all taut right now, so much so that she doesn't even unbend as the priest takes his leave. Doesn't even uncross her arms. But, look. Now she does, as Sid comes closer to join them. Uncrosses her arms and pulls around her bag and snaps it open.
These are the things she keeps in it: one iPhone. Cash. Cigarettes and a lighter and a couple of joints. An ID. Condoms. Four tabs of acid. Her cigarettes and joints are in a tiny little metal case because that is the only way they'll fit in the bag along with the iPhone.
They're in the middle of the street. It's the iPhone she wants and she wakes it and slides her thumb across the screen and pulls up her messages.
Shows the last two from Hawksley first to Sid and then to Jim.
Burnout named Kelsey w/ me in the Four Seasons (IKR?). Coming down off some Time-and-Space-altering shit, requesting backup plz+thx.
Either of you know some fucker named Byron?
"It was blue, right?" Sera's voice is - constricted and there's a line between her brows but she makes herself breathe. "The PCP."
Once they've both had the chance to glance at the messages, she takes the iPhone back.
"I know more, but man, not on the street. We should go somewhere."
She's not quite in the right frame of mind, Sera, to suggest where.
SerafíneNot quite in the right frame of mind, but she does have an iPhone in her hand, the screen gleaming, the two texts on the screen. Hits reply and says, You home?
SerafíneJim saw a butterfly and was convinced the flap of its wings had some bearing on the prophesies of Denver's future.
He walks off.
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