[Charlie] [123 NOT ME]
[Izzy Montoya] She walks. A lot. And sometimes she stops – which is why she’s here, in the park, now. A lot can be learned about a city in watching it’s citizens as they interact – or don’t – in the park. And if it’s one thing Izzy is good at, it’s people watching.
She is not, however, good at sitting on a bench properly. Instead, she has her feet planted on the seat, her ass on the back, and she’s leaned forward with her forearms braced on her thighs, a cup of coffee held in her hands between her knees. Her eyes are dark, perceptive, missing very little as he watces – and her hair is long, dark too – darkened in the damp weather.
Fuckin’ Chicago. She’d forgotten how much November sucks.
She’s dressed professionally, yet comfortably too – dark slack, a tailored blouse, under a leather suit-like jacket, comfortable shoes. Bent over as she is, there is a clear bulge at the small of her back, too. Izzy’s got a gun. She doesn’t look like she’d be too shy in using it either.
And of course? There’s her blood. She’s already been stopped twice and told how much her blood stinks of old Heroes and Warriors. She expects it’ll happen again, anytime now.
[Charlie] The list of things that most normal people would rather do than hang out in a major tourist trap in the middle of the night on a Monday is too long to even bother mentioning. There is nothing to do here once the sun goes down unless one is looking to somehow participate in a mugging or a stabbing, unless one is looking to score drugs or pick up flesh-and-blood entertainment for the evening, attempt to forget one’s life for a few moments behind a set of shrubs or off in a copse of trees beyond the extent of the world’s vision. Most of the establishments within walking distance are closed about now: the Shedd Aquarium and the Art Institute of Chicago both lock their doors within hours of each other, there are no boat launches or public performances to capture people’s attention, and the food vendors tend to go home with the sun.
Yet there are still people here. By the transitive property, the people out here this time of night aren’t normal. If they aren’t at home with their families, or hunched over their books, or working those soul-draining night shift jobs that nobody else wants to do, then they fall outside of the definition of what would make one ‘normal.’ One could argue that Izzy Montoya, sitting on the back of a bench with little more than a suit jacket and a paper cup filled with coffee to keep her warm on a night cold and humid enough to see one’s breath, can’t be normal if this is what she’s choosing to do with herself after sundown.
She isn’t alone for very long, though it’s likely been several minutes since the last body traipsed past with a plume of steamed breath trailing behind it. Out of the distance there comes a tromping of hiking boots against the paved pathway, the approach of a tall, spindly-looking man who could be anywhere from mid-teens to his thirties depending upon how generous one is willing to be with one’s approximation of his age. He is dressed as though he doesn’t have much to his name, his jeans patched-up and stained, his sweatshirt old and ratty and zipped up to mid-sternum, his face gaunt and his hair unwashed.
There’s something off about him, something vaguely dangerous that leads most people to the conclusion that he is either a drug addict or a criminal upon first glance. He gets within about fifteen yards of her when his nostrils flare and his steps slow down. Dark eyes glance around at their surroundings, as if he’s trying to find something or someone that isn’t there, and then he pushes his tongue into the back of his left incisor and squints.
To walk past the cop, or not to walk past the cop…
[Izzy Montoya] She’s very perceptive, Izzy. In fact, she rarely misses anything, though this time around the approach of someone is easier because there has been a timelapse between people, and the crowd is mostly gone this time of night. Even so, it’s no mistake when she turns her head to study the lanky youth, who is likely anywhere between 2 and 15 years younger than she is.
They’re always young.
She lifts her cup of coffee, and takes a swig, grimacing at the taste as she lets the cup fall back to it’s previous position. She doesn’t move – she just watches, curious.
You’re move, Charlie.
[Izzy Montoya] .
to Izzy Montoya
[Charlie] There’s something not quite right with this kid, something that makes him either think that it’s perfectly okay to stand and stare at a woman for half a dozen heartbeats or not notice that he’s doing it, but that’s precisely what happens: he stands stock still for five seconds just watching Izzy, that dubious expression on his tired face, and then he traipses forward again, moving at a pace not quite on par with the one that he had achieved prior to catching sight of the seated detective.
His eyes have the sense necessary to leave Izzy’s form as he continues on his path, watching the ground in front of him rather than the woman, his hands remaining crammed into the pockets of his sweatshirt and his gait remaining loose-jointed and almost purposeless.
The last time he was in the park with Fenrir kinswomen nearby, he was disemboweled and had to drag himself back from the brink of death. She has no way of knowing this.
[Izzy Montoya] He stares, and she simply looks back at him. It’s likely she’s well used to the stares now and again – though at least he’s looking at her and not specifically at her ass – like Mac. Wonder it he’ll have the balls to actually call and take her to dinner. Whatever, that’s not important. What’s important right now is that the kid was staring, and then he made an obvious effort to not stare any longer, and start to shuffle on past.
Carefully concocted loose and purposeless walk nearly ALWAYS means that someone is hiding something.
She takes another drink of her coffee as he gets closer, and waits until he’s just about even with her bench before she talks. “You fuckin’ hiding something, kid? Or just like t’stare?”
[Charlie] [Subterfuge+Manipulation: Because I Like Tempting Fate.]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1 (Botch x 1 at target 6)
[Charlie] [Stamina]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 6, 7 (Failure at target 8)
[Charlie] It’s a reasonable enough question. He looks like he’s hiding something, like he’s got something that he doesn’t want the world at large or a cop in particular to suss out about him, and when she addresses him, the kid–isn’t everyone a kid to Izzy?–stops dead in his tracks and looks at her with his brow furrowed and his lips folded into a straight line.
This is her introduction to what tends to happen when this kid tries to lie:
He blinks, heavily, takes a deep breath as if to stifle a yawn, and says, groggily, “I’m not–” before his eyes go unfocused, his lids slide shut, and he collapses like an article of clothing slipping off of its hanger. His fall is noisy, his skeleton being largely unpadded, but he doesn’t appear to hurt himself as he crashes to the stone pathway.
[Izzy Montoya] She just watches him, and then he? Collapses. “..jesus FUCK what the shit?!” In a fluid movement she’s up and off the bench, her coffee cup dropped to the side as she kneels by the fallen Fury, and rolls him over to his back, checking his airway, and pulse.
He seems to be breathing, to be alive, and she’s…. perplexed.
And she does what she’s trained to do – Digs out her phone and dials 911.
[Charlie] He’s breathing, he has a pulse, and his eyes are rapidly moving behind his lids as Izzy gets down off the back of the bench and crouches at his side. That doesn’t happen unless a person is in a stage of sleep classified by rapid eye movement; and that doesn’t tend to happen unless the person has been unconscious for an hour and a half.
Yet Izzy flies on autopilot, abandoning her coffee in favor of ensuring that the young man didn’t suffer a stroke or a heart attack or a ruptured aneurysm, and doesn’t wait to see if he’s going to regain consciousness before she does anything else.
The detective pulls out her phone as the young man’s eyes flutter open, and though he doesn’t appear to panic, doesn’t open his eyes wider or speak or even appear to register that anything has happened, his bony left hand leaves the ground beside his body and shoots up to make a grab for the phone.
[Izzy Montoya] He reaches for the phone, and she pulls away, quickly, a fluid movement of shoulder and torso, even as she’s muttering. “On fuckin’ HOLD? Jesus Mary mother of shit.”
But, even so, she reacts automatically, and thumbs the off button as he is… conscious again. Weird. She settles into a crouch, resting easily on the balls of her feet her arms braced on her knees.
“You owe me a fuckin cup of coffee.”
[Charlie] The phone is thumbed off, and the kid’s hand appears to have accomplished what it set out to do. He doesn’t clamp his fingers around her wrist, or try to knock the tiny piece of technology out of her grasp, but rather withdraws his hand and lets it fall to rest upon his sternum. He appears groggy, as though he has just been awakened from an interrupted nap rather than from passing out on the sidewalk, and he squints up at her when she claims he owes her a fuckin’ cup of coffee.
“Why?” he asks, reaching up to scrub at his face without sitting up.
[Izzy Montoya] She arches a brow, her lips curving into a lopsided smirk. “Seriously? Ya fuckin pass out in the middle of the walk, so outa the blue I dropped my fuckin’ coffee, an ya wanna know why…”
Her gaze narrows, slightly. “Ya always pass out when someone asks ya a fuckin’ question?” This is a test of the emergency pas out system…
[Charlie] As the detective smirks and goes off on an obscenity-laden explanation of why it is she’s owed a cup of coffee, the kid finishes coaxing blood to the surface of his skin and drags it down his face, letting it rest over his mouth for several seconds before hitching himself up onto his elbows. As he moves, the vertebrae between his shoulder blades crackle; he cants his head to the side when he’s asked if he always does this, and he actually seems to be giving the question due consideration before speaking.
“Sometimes.”
He sits the rest of the way up, seemingly unbothered by the fact that the ground is wicking heat away from his body at a pretty quick clip.
“Nobody’s ever dropped coffee because of it, though.”
[Izzy Montoya] “Huh.” She says, that smirk remaining in play as she watches him. He sits up, and she stands, and steps back. She tucks a hand into her pocket, the other remaining loose at her side.
“Why?” – obviously not why she dropped coffee, but why he passes out. At least, it’s obvious to her.
[Charlie] It may be obvious to her what the question was referring to, but it comes immediately after he claims that no one has ever dropped coffee because of his passing out after being asked a question, and he doesn’t stop to think about what else she could be inquiring after. To look at him, he’s just another burnout or high school dropout, maybe a prostitute or a drug runner, someone who doesn’t use his brain as frequently as he uses the rest of his body.
Detective Montoya ought to know as well as anyone else that appearances are as much a cover-up as they are tell, but she also has her instincts, and her instincts have got to be telling her that she’s dealing with someone who isn’t afraid to do what he needs to do to survive. There’s no telling what would have happened if she hadn’t shut that phone off when she did.
As he speaks, he gets his lean legs underneath the rest of him and stands up.
“I dunno. Someone told me once that when I get too stressed out I tend to pass out a lot, and I guess lying stresses me out.” He pauses, chewing on the inside of his lower lip, and then poses a question of his own: “Isn’t it like, late? Why’re you sitting out here?”
[Izzy Montoya] She keeps a bit of distance between them, something done automatically, her training so ingrained by this point that it’s likely she doesn’t let many get close. Especially if she’s yet to decipher who he is, what he is, and what side he’s on.
“I see.” Sort of. And then she smirk slightly. “People watching. What’re you doin out here? Aside from failing miserably at lying to a simple question that you know I’m about to fuckin’ ask again…”
[Charlie] The kid frowns, a look of hesitant mistrust coming across his features as he looks at her. What distance she’s inserted between them remains there, and he does little to alter it in either direction.
“Which question?” he asks, as if he’s about to take a step back. “The one you asked me before I passed out?”
[Izzy Montoya] The smirk remains as she watches the hesitant mistrust flare across his features.
“Umhm. That’s the one. Ya hidin something, or jus’ like to stare?”
[Charlie] At least he doesn’t try to lie again.
“I don’t like staring.”
[Izzy Montoya] She chuckles, softly. “Good, now we’re getting somewhere.”
She steps back to the bench, steps up on the seat and sits her ass down on the back of it again, reclaiming her former position. “I’m Izzy. Now, there’s a few reasons folks stare at me. Ya like my ass. Think I have fine tits. You figure I’m a cop – to name a few. Now.” she holds up a finger, and that little twist of her mouth returns. “Since you’re obviously hidin’ – I doubt it has anything to do with my tits and ass. Which leaves – you think I’m a cop, or ‘other’.”
And she just quirks a brow, expectantly.
[Charlie] The kid plunges his hands back into his pockets as the detective perches herself on the back of the bench, sans coffee this time, and proceeds to explain the myriad reasons why people tend to stare at her. It appears as though she has his undivided attention: his eyes remain on her face the entire time she speaks, his body so thin that she can clearly read the rising and falling of his chest with each cycled respiration in and out of his lungs, a tension written into the minute muscles between his eyebrows and at the corners of his mouth. He doesn’t fidget or look away, and there’s really nothing keeping him from walking away from her. Curiosity isn’t a valid enough reason to risk being arrested, one would have to think. He looks like someone who has plenty of reasons to fear being arrested.
“Are you a cop?” he asks, as if he already knows the answer.
[Izzy Montoya] She, unlike him, doesn’t even try to lie. “Yes. Detective Izzy Montoya. CPD, Homicide.” It’s not like he hasn’t figured out the answer already on his own. However, they both know she is more than that – they just don’t know that the other knows it.
While there is tension in the muscles of his face, along his brow, the corner of his lips, she doesn’t seem to have that problem – at least not visibly.
“And you are?”
[Charlie] If she had been expecting him to stroll up to her, get as far into her personal space as he possibly could without having a handgun jammed into his throat, and inhale before saying anything to her, this exchange has to be something of a disappointment. Then again, if she had been expecting that, that would mean that she had the slightest idea what he is, what she’s talking to.
There’s a heavy pause after she asks who he is, as if he’s digesting what she’s just told him. He keeps looking at her with that wary mistrust in his gaze, his very stance suggesting that he’s ready to walk away at the slightest hint that she’s going to advance on him, but he hasn’t yet.
“Charlie,” he answers at last. His grammar and enunciation thus far has been indicative of a person with minimal education, but it isn’t until he says his name that his city of origin reveals itself: he pronounces his name CHAH-lee. There’s another pause, but before she can ask another question, he supplies one of his own: “You know what a metis is?”
[Izzy Montoya] And there it is at last- confirmation. There’s the slightest bit of ease in her shoulders, as if it at least confirms something about him. Other than him doing what every other damn Garou she’s seen so far has done – there really is no way to tell. Other then the normal -my what an angry young man you are – that isn’t always confirmation enough.
She sits up, and digs around in her pockets, like someone for a pack of cigarettes, but instead she comes up with a pack of gum. She frees a piece for herself, and offers the pack to him. If he takes a piece, fine, if not, fine. Either way, after he decides, the pack goes back into her pocket as she unwraps the gum strip and folds it into her mouth.
“Yes. I do. Which – if your sniffer is screwed on right, Charlie – shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you.” A beat, as she chews her gum contemplatively a moment. “S’that the reason for your stress collapse maneuver, then?”
[Charlie] Charlie eyes the pack of gum with the same degree of suspicion and hesitation that has been coloring his gaze the longer he’s stood watching Izzy, but not to be rude, he takes a leaning step forward and extracts a stick of foil-covered gum from the orderly cluster, quietly uttering a monosyllabic show of gratitude before starting to slowly unwrap the strip. It takes him far longer to get it open and into his mouth than it does Izzy, and he’s puzzling over what to do with the wrapper when she states that it shouldn’t be a surprise to him that she knows what a metis is. That makes him frown again, his chewing halting, and when she asks her next question, he briefly glances away to fold the wrapper the way it was presented to him and carefully slip it into the left front pocket of his jeans.
“Yeah,” he says. The gum doesn’t stay in his mouth for very long. He swallows, then sniffs to clear his sinuses and says, “Sniffing ain’t got nothing to do with it. What if you were one of those lost Kin? Some of them you can smell from a mile away but that don’t mean they know what a metis is.”
[Izzy Montoya] She nods, slightly, even as she watches him just swallow the gum. “Ya know that shit stays in ya stomach for 7 years if ya swallow it, right?” It comes across as mostly curiosity, really. She doesn’t mean anything by it.
She snaps her gum between her teeth, and then nods. “True – just like you could justa been some roid filled angry kid… and a shitty liar.” She chuckles, amused. Then, “My partner back in the day was just recently found. He ain’t fuckin know shit the whole time we was together. Turns out we’re fuckin’ cousins. Ain’t that the shit? He and I gotta lot a catchin up to do.”
There’s that lopsided smirk again, amused. “But rest assured, Charlie, I’ve been covering your collective trueborn asses as long as I can remember.”
[Charlie] Charlie just scoffs when she asks if he’s aware of the myth that ingested gum remains ingested for seven years, an unimpressed Yeah, right lighting in his eyes without the words leaving his throat. Gum remaining in his stomach for longer than makes any physiological sense is the least of his concerns tonight, it would seem.
He listens as she explains that her former partner is one of the lost Kin he’s referring to, flicks his eyebrows when asked if that’s the shit. Listen though he does, he doesn’t interrupt her, nor does he answer every question that is posed to him or comment on every point she makes. He lets the conversation go as far as it can go on her steam alone, gnawing on the painfully blunt nail of his right thumb with his front teeth, and crams his hand back into his pocket when she falls silent.
“What’s that mean?” he asks, then clarifies: “‘Covering your asses’?”
[Izzy Montoya] She arches a brow. “I work Homicide, Charlie. What the fuck do ya think it means?”
She isn’t one to fidget, now that she has a piece of gum in her mouth. The rest of her is carefully still, showing an awareness of the area around her, and her placement in it. She watches him more than anything else, as it is clear to her that the most dangerous thing in the immediate vicinity is him.
Her smirk is a wry and comfortable thing. “Ya guys don’t always clean up so well. I do what I can t’keep the mortals from realizing th’shit ya gotta do, anyway I can. It’s what got my ass demoted and booted to Miami a few years back in an attempt to rebuild my reputation. I just returned home.” A beat. “Just cuz ya ain’t on th’front line, don’t make ya any less needed.”
[Charlie] What the fuck do ya think it means?
“I don’t know,” he says, the edgy young man bristling somewhat in the face of her aggressive language.
Izzy isn’t a spirit posing riddles to him, attempting to best him at a game of wits, yet neither is she a homid-born Garou to whom he is inclined to defer lest he have his throat torn out or bones broken. While amongst the Trueborn of Chicago he’s developed something of a reputation for being mild-mannered to the point of timidity and quiet to the point of fearing to speak up for himself, she isn’t aware of this reputation. All she has is what’s right in front of her, and what’s right in front of her doesn’t appear too thrilled with how it’s being spoken to.
He calms down quickly enough when her smirk gives way to an explanation, but he’s not relaxing. He hasn’t been relaxed around her from the moment he scented the purity of her blood from over forty feet away, and even though he now knows she’s with CPD, Homicide, whatever that means, he still doesn’t seem entirely convinced she’s not going to… what? Arrest him? Shoot him?
“I didn’t say you weren’t needed,” he says, sounding baffled.
[Izzy Montoya] He bristles, and it has an affect. She stiffens, momentarily… and then… “Don’t know… what Homicide is?” It clicks, and she nods. She’s crass, rude, foul mouthed – but she isn’t stingy with information when it’s need is warranted.
“Means we investigate murder – everything from crimes of passion, to people thrown from the top of buildings, drug kills, gangs, to weird ass ‘animal'” and yes, she uses finger quotes “attacks in the city. When you guys call – I do my best to steer things in a direction that th’higher ups will accept, without tipping them off that there’s something deeper going on. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it ain’t. But it’s part of what I do.”
Then, she sits up, her hands on the back of the bench next to her hips and studies him. “Ya act like I’m gonna whip out the gun and handcuffs an minute. I make ya that fuckin’ uncomfortable?”
[Charlie] Four months ago, Charlie might have just rolled over and accepted the way that Izzy Montoya was talking to him. Not just ‘might have.’ He would have accepted the way that she was talking to him because in his mind he would have deserved whatever tone she wanted to use or hostility she wanted to fire at him. The same would have gone for the way Warcry was addressing him in the common room several days ago. He never would have back talked or fired back if that conversation had been occurring at the beginning of his stay in Chicago. He was a different person back then.
Now he’s got to seem like all the rest of them, to her, when his temper flares up just now, even if he does not seem placated or mollified by her decision to provide him with an explanation of what her job actually entails. All that really changes is his level of irritation. It dissipates.
It’s replaced by suspicion when she sits up and asks if she makes him that fuckin’ uncomfortable. For a moment it seems as though he’s going to try and lie again.
He doesn’t.
“I don’t know,” he says, slowly.
[Izzy Montoya] She’s not hostile. In time that becomes clear – she’s simply unapologetic – crass, and often rude. Not hostile. At least – not yet. Though he’s hardly known her long enough to be able to discern that.
When he answers her question, she nods, slightly. “It’d be pretty fuckin’ stupid for me t’try and arrest ya, even if I had reason, which I don’t, don’t ya think?” That covers the cuffs, and then she chuckles again. “And ya ain’t made me wanna shoot ya.” yet.
She makes a living out of making people uncomfortable. Even so – she’s clearly a little suspicious that he is that way around her. She’s just kin, after all.
[Charlie] For someone who hit the ground a few minutes ago, he doesn’t seem to have any real desire to sit down while he’s talking to the kinswoman. There hasn’t been any point in the conversation where he has relaxed enough to warrant demolishing what’s left of the distance between them and sit on the bench next to her, either on the back like she is or on the seat itself. When Izzy asks if he doesn’t think that it’d be pretty fuckin’ stupid for her to try and arrest him without a reason, that is the first time since he woke up that Charlie doesn’t appear to be trying to come up with a reason to quickly vacate the premises.
“There’s a bunch’a cops in Boston–” BAH-sten. “–who must be pretty fuckin’ stupid, then.”
[Charlie] [Uhh, how about “… a reason not to quickly blah blah blah…”]
[Izzy Montoya] She laughs. It’s a brief sound, but it exists, and sometimes that’s enough. She leans forward again, resting her arms on her knees, and letting her gaze wander a bit, making sure they are still alone in the park, succumbing to habit and training, though it’s not without frequent steady looks in Charlie’s direction.
“Maybe they just didn’t have enough fuckin’ information.” And damned if she don’t start clicking off on her fingers what she knows in their short time they’ve been acquainted.
“Now, while I only know ya name – Charlie – I know you’re Trueborn, and what breed. Ain’t too clear on the Tribe, but that’s never been my strong point unless one of you fuckers is a walking stereotype – like that Mac dude that wouldn’t stop starin at my ass the other day. Ya ain’t tried to smack me in the head and drag me off, so I figure your on the right side of the nation.” A pause, and she glances over him. “An’ ya don’t eat enough, though I wager ya get a good amount of sleep, jus’ not always where ya fuckin’ want too.”
The smirk returns as she nods. “Guessin the stupid fuckers in Boston ain’t know – or care – about half that shit.” A beat. “But I do. So, ya safe from me Charlie. Ain’t no reason t’be so wound up.” so far.
[Charlie] Even based on physical appearance alone, attempting to guess Charlie’s tribe is not an easy task. Of the twelve tribes recognized by the Garou Nation, Charlie has been accused of being a Bone Gnawer, a Child of Gaia, a Silent Strider, or a Silver Fang as people’s first guess; the second tier of stabs in the dark consists of the Fianna, the Shadow Lords and the Uktena; as a last gasp, people will ask if he is a Red Talon or one of the Wendigo.
No one ever assumes he is a Glass Walker, no one ever mistakes him for one of Fenris’s, and even more improbable than his belonging to either the technologically savvy or the Nordic warriors is his belonging to the tribe of militant females.
Unless, of course, people look at him and his Mediterranean complexion and bone structure, take in his deformity, and realize that he defers to about every Trueborn female me meets and manage to slap that all together into one neat little explanation before taking the first stab at his heritage or affiliation. There are people in this Sept who have heard him stand up at Moots or viewed his trophies on the Wyrmpole and still think he’s a Bone Gnawer or a Child of Gaia.
Izzy isn’t trying to guess who claims the sorry bastard, though, or if she is she’s keeping it to herself. The matter at hand right now is whether or not he has anything to fear from her. He still doesn’t seem entirely convinced that she’s on the level, but the tension leaves his shoulders, and his brow lightens, and he stops clenching his hands into fists in his pockets. That’s got to count for something.
“Okay,” he says. He squints again, and asks, “You want that coffee now, or you want me to keep like, owing you?”
[Izzy Montoya] She’s always been aware of her breeding. People point it out all the time. That Charlie didn’t, is likely the most unusual thing to happen to her since returning home. She’s always getting sniffed at, asked who her parents are, her grand parents, asked to recount her ancestors deeds like she gives a flying fuck about who anyone before her is. Even the Trueborn don’t really fuckin give a shit – they just know it increases her chance of birthin more of them.
Yeah. Like she’s ready to put aside the badge for THAT duty.
She doesn’t really care what tribe he is. Is is of A tribe and that makes him something of her responsibility. Sort of. If anything goes down, anyway, that they can’t handle.
But he asks about the coffee, and she gives him that little lopsided grin of hers and shrugs. “S’up to you. S’just coffee. I drink the shit by the gallon on a daily basis. Don’t worry about it.”
[Charlie] “I’m not gonna worry about it,” he says, as though the expression doesn’t have the mapping within his brain necessary to tell him that it isn’t to be taken literally. If he had seemed well into adulthood simply based on the haggardness of his face, his demeanor must be taking great strides to make him seem younger in the seasoned detective’s eyes. “I’ll just owe you.”
[Izzy Montoya] For some reason that amuses the hell outa her – he can see it in her eyes. “Good. Wouldn’t want ya to lose any fuckin’ sleep or anything.”
Detective’s got jokes.
She stretches, her hands bracing her lower back as she arches, before she moves to stand up. “My ass is fuckin’ numb.” a beat, and a random switch of subject. “So who ya with, Charlie? Tryin’ to put a map in my head of territory and shit – lot’s changed over the past years I been gone.”
[Charlie] Izzy makes a second comment about the frequency of sleep the young man gets, and for the second time, he says nothing about it. He doesn’t even have a name for the deformity his parents’ sin has saddled him with for as long as he can remember, doesn’t have a list of symptoms that he can rattle off to help those more knowledgeable than himself provide a diagnosis. It doesn’t really need a name, so far as he can tell. Giving it a name won’t make it go away, and besides, attempting to hide, curtail, or otherwise do away with one’s deformity is dishonorable. It’s attempting to pretend to be something that one is not. Being able to name something, he’s always thought, is to be able to deal with it. All he needs to do to ‘deal’ with what afflicts him is to suck it up and live with it. It doesn’t need a name.
So he doesn’t tell Izzy that he doesn’t actually sleep all that often, that he has insomnia that strikes him when he’s actually laying down to try and get some rest and that he gets by on naps rather than full seven to nine hours of peaceful slumber; he doesn’t tell her that when he laughs, or gets truly upset, or is genuinely startled, he falls down; he doesn’t tell her that sometimes when he falls asleep on his back, he finds himself paralyzed when he wakes up. She doesn’t need to know all that, and he doesn’t seem to care if she thinks that his losing sleep is a joke. He keeps whatever he thinks about that to himself.
The conversation turns back to matters of the Nation soon enough, and as Izzy stands, Charlie takes a step, then two, back to give her room.
“You mean, like, my pack?”
[Izzy Montoya] He doesn’t dell her much about himself, and when they think back to the conversation, there will be actually very little he can tell anyone about Izzy too. Other than her job. It’s safe to assume she’s more than her job. She just doesn’t put it out there.
She nods, slightly, and slides her hands into the pockets of her jacket, and wraps it around herself. “Yeah. Ya got a pack? Territory? Or ya live at that brothel of brotherhood like I hear some do. I swear that’s the weirdest shit I ever heard of – a dorm for crissakes. That CAN’T be healthy for folks. Course, they do make a mean fuckin roast beef sandwich.”
[Charlie] [Pause!]