Gideon Ayers (shallmovehell) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-02-21 15:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | acheron hades, violet harmon |
Who: Hannah and Gideon
What: Hannah goes in for an interview for job-finding.
Where: Gideon's suite in the Venetian.
When: Sunday afternoon
Warnings/Rating: None.
Hannah was nervous. She spent the entire morning before her interview with Gideon Ayers changing in and out of chaste dresses, all without looking at herself in the mirror. She’d seen more naked women in the past few weeks in Las Vegas than she had in the entirety of her life, but she still hadn’t seen herself naked, and it felt wrong to turn around and look at the mirror as the different muted-flower dresses slipped over her slip-covered skin. In the end she chose a gray dress that reached her ankles and was too thick and oppressive for the Vegas heat, and she pulled her brown hair back in a braid.
She had never been into one of the casinos, having only stood outside them to hand out her pamphlets, and the Venetian was not what she expected. Somehow, she expected uncomfortable warm air as she walked inside, maybe the licking of flames at her ankles. She imagined that all the paintings of souls in torment that hung in her house were literal representations, and she was surprised when the Venetian doors opened on to cream and blue coolness. She stood there, her prim black shoes dark and harsh against the marble floor, and she looked up at the painted ceiling with eyes that had never looked upon anything truly beautiful. Someone jostled her shoulder, bringing her back to reality, and she watched her feet as she walked to the counter and gave Gideon’s name.
The walk to Gideon’s room was a slow one, because she stopped to look at everything along the way. It was all a sin, and she would have to confess after leaving the interview, but she’d already planned for that. She had to confess her lie about her age, and her almost denial of Jesus, but she knew her priest would be forgiving. She was possessed, after all, and she couldn’t control the things the demon inside her did; no one expected it of her.
She knocked on Gideon’s door, intending to be perfectly well behaved once inside, intending to request a chaste job in the service of the Lord. Unfortunately, it was more Violet than Hannah that waited for the door to open. Violet wanted a job that wasn’t standing out in the heat of the Vegas summer, and she wasn’t about to entrust that to Hannah.
Gideon, for his part, had put the interview down in his planner and then gone on with the evening; the next morning he was busy trying to work out some of the finer details of Las Vegas real estate prices, and by the time the call came up from the front desk that Hannah Montgomery was here, he realized belatedly that time had, once again, gotten away from him. He had them send her up and changed into a less wrinkled shirt, black and gold tie glinting slightly in the light just starting to come in the windows. The rest - gray jacket and pants, black shoes - were more than suitable, and when the knock at the door came, he tidied up the office desk and made his way out into the sitting room.
The man who answered the door wasn’t Gideon, but he only gave Hannah a cursory look to ensure that yes, it was only the young woman mentioned, before standing aside and ushering her in. The marble entryway of the suite was polished and nothing looked out of place. The windows were wide and gave a fine view of Vegas. Gideon turned from them as he heard the footsteps silence themselves moving from marble to carpet, a genial expression on his face as he evaluated Hannah.
His first instinct was to assume that she’d lied about her age. It was entirely possible she was 21 and just looked younger, or that the clothing - completely unsuitable for the weather - was taking years off her, but his gut instinct said she had to be at least 19. But he didn’t make a point of it - so long as she was 18, he could find her a job without quarrel - because it would be rude, and possibly make her uncomfortable or leave, and because he didn’t like being unsure. There had been almost no information available on a Hannah Montgomery, except that she did exist. What little he’d gotten was that she’d been born in North Carolina. No credit history, no driver’s license, barely a mention on school websites, not so much as a hint of social media … combined with her referencing the diocese, it gave Gideon a certain feeling about who that ‘higher power’ she had mentioned was.
“Ms. Montgomery,” he said, offering her a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I assume the trip here wasn’t unduly stressful.”
Hannah looked at the offered hand, confusion ghosting over her features momentarily before being chased off by Violet’s knowledge. She shook Gideon’s hand, and the girl who held onto his grip a second too long was a sure little thing, confident and saucy and completely ill-suited to the heavy fabrics she wore. She wore defensiveness like a shawl, the kind of teenager that had long since decided to be angry before anyone slighted her, and she looked around the room before looking back at Gideon. “Got a smoke?” she asked him, no South in her voice, and long, confident steps to the arm of the nearest couch. It might be an act, all that I don’t care, but it was a good one, and she slid up onto the arm and swung her legs as she took in the man sharing the room, a longer perusal this time, one perfected to be slightly disconcerting. “It was fine. Hot, you know. So, what kind of work do you find for people?”
The change in her demeanor was something of a surprise, even for Gideon, but he didn’t let it show on his face. There wasn’t even a pause, a slight raised eyebrow or flicker of a grimace to show that he was taken aback at all. Possibly her softer Southern drawl and eager attitude had been designed to get her an interview, and now she felt safe enough to act normally. But, of course, there was the dress. If it was a show, it was an elaborate one.
“I’m afraid I’m not much of one for smoking.” He appraised her as she did the same, and if he was disconcerted by the intensity of her stare, it wasn’t obvious. “I find work that’s suited to the applicant in question, ideally tailored to their experiences and skills. If they have preferences for a certain field, those are taken into consideration as well. Though sometimes branching out provides the best results.” Gideon idly clasped his hands in front of him. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said, watching the hands that were clasped in front of him. “I want something that isn’t outside, and it would help if it paid well. I kind of want to move, and I need a good paycheck to do that,” she said, bluntly, still wishing she had a cigarette. This took a lot of work, this puppeting, but Violet had plenty of practice being alive when she wasn’t, and she was going to make sure Hannah left this interview with a decent paying job. “She’s- I’m pretty, and young, and there has a to be a market for that, right? Even if there aren’t many skills to go along with it.” Once upon a time, making a suggestion like that would have been hard for Violet, but not anymore - dying, it kind of made everything else seem like cake.
Gideon turned to the bar to pour drinks - water and ice for both of them, as she wasn’t possibly 21 and he tried to avoid drinking before the evening - and felt a twinge of amusement as she made her points. He could have made a number of comments on the job markets open to pretty young women with few skills, but he hadn’t yet traversed into that sort of market, and had no intention to. The thought passed briefly, and he made his way over to Hannah, offering her a glass. She certainly had changed over the course of a day. Which was the real thing?
“Secretarial work has always been a comfortable place to start from for some people.” Gideon sat down in a chair across from the couch where Hannah was perched. “The pay rates aren’t enviable, but they’re very much livable.” He was silent for a moment as thoughts and possibilities sleeted through his mind. So many questions, and yet he was almost sure he’d get relatively few answers. But it never hurt to try. “Where is it that you’re living now? An evaluation of where you are and where you’d like to be can help with the placement process.”
She took the water with a smile that was ill-suited to her lips, something entertained at the fact that he thought he had to protect her from anything hard to drink. I’m dead, crossed her mind as an option, but she wanted his help, and she was starting to think he’d have her committed if she told him the truth. He was so adult. She sipped the water, the ice clinking against the edges of the glass, and she let her legs go a little spread wide - shame about the dress, which countered anything she could to do to convince him to help by flirting with him.
“I don’t think I’d be a very good secretary,” she said, which was true. “I was good in school, but I’m not really great with authority figures.” And, yeah, it would be Hannah going to work and not her, but she didn’t really want some sick manager asshole controlling her if they managed to get her away from the twisted priests and nuns. “I’m living in a shithole. It’s not really important,” she said truthfully, turning wide eyes on him intentionally, looking for salvation from the big bad world. Dad-types liked that stuff.
Well, there was always other work. Quiet work, he assumed, tucked away in a corner somewhere, going unnoticed and ideally unabused. As she looked at him with those large, bright eyes, asking for help in an unheard voice, something flickered in the back of his mind before he could even consider responding to her. Isn’t she just so young. So sweet. It wasn’t his voice, but they were his words, or at least ones he wouldn’t find out of place in the ice palace that made up his subconscious. So looking to you for help. What a pure soul.
There was something reverberating in his mind at that. It was different, and unexpected, and it made Gideon pause for longer than he’d intended, watching Hannah with a distracted gaze. Purity was never something he’d cared about, so why would he think of it now? Especially when it came to her - her smile was odd but nonetheless there, her bluntness was almost palpable, and her first words to him face-to-face were to ask for a cigarette. What did purity have to do with it?
The purest souls are the easiest to stain.
A thought definitely not his. For all her sharp tongue and the way she was sitting on the couch arm, she still looked more like a shadow of a girl, ill-suited to the opulence around her and likely with a good chunk of her story still to tell. He didn’t traditionally inquire into the lives of the people he interviewed, but then again, it was rare enough that he interviewed people personally. And by all rights she wasn’t someone he would take much interest in, being plain and somewhat mouthy. Yet …
“Tell me, Ms. Montgomery,” Gideon said after finally collecting himself, “what exactly was your work with the diocese? I can’t imagine the church does much of note in a city like this one.”
Hannah - and Violet in her mind - was blissfully unaware of the thoughts of the man across from her. For all her bravado, Violet (in her living life) had suffered nothing beyond bullying for being strange, beyond her father cheating on her mother, beyond her own cutting and suicide. And dead? Well, being dead had kind of been the worse thing there. Tate, sick as he was, always protected her from anything really terrible. She was more show than substance when it came to her worldly knowledge, but she was still more knowledgeable than Hannah, which gave her an advantage there - and here, in this room.
She turned, placing both of her feet on the cushion of the expensive couch. They were shiny Mary Janes, the shoes, and there were thick stockings beneath them, only a hint showing beneath the obscenely long hem of the dress. “I handed out fliers,” she said, disdain seeping into her voice, because that had been just stupid. Like anyone walking into a casino was going to want a Jesus flier. “Fliers with big ol’ crosses on them,” she added, slipping into a thicker version of Hannah’s southern twang, “inviting folks to come back to Jesus.” The tips of her feet dug into the couch cushions, and she gave him a smile that tried to be knowing and sensual but failed on all accounts. Lost little girl, that would be the title of a picture taken of her just then.
“When we talk again, I won’t be as sure as I am now,” she said, laying the groundwork for the fact that she wouldn’t be able to do anything like this for weeks to come; it was too exhausting for her. “But I do want another job, a better one. One where I don’t have to stand outside all day, and one where I don’t hand out fliers, and one where I don’t hide in an office. I’ve been hiding.” In more ways than once, she she couldn’t leave the house after dying in California. “I want to experience things.” She smiled. “You’ll help me?”
What strength she had was an effort, Gideon guessed, and as thoughts that were and weren’t his ticked into place he decided not to press too far. He could humor her for the moment and not talk down to her, try and keep her on this wire of strength and self-assurance. He sipped at the water as she spoke and thought: little experience. Absolutely a Catholic, if lapsed. Young. Realizing what she was missing. Likely without much support around her if she’d come from North Carolina to Las Vegas. Could come to trust someone who helped her, supported her, and gave her what she wanted as well as what she needed. And he was a very amicable person when it suited him.
Of course, that still left the matter of the actual job. No hiding, no invisibility in the open. There was only so much he could likely find for her … through normal means. Few places in this city would be interested in hiring her, or so his initial scouring of availabilities would lead him to believe, but he was now officially in this city, wasn’t he? It was entirely possible to make good use of an impressionable young woman. Plenty of the company’s interns had started out that way.
“Of course I’ll help you,” Gideon said with a faint flicker of a smile. “If you’re willing to pick up some extra skills - nothing too significant - it would give you a better chance to find something perfectly suited to you. There are plenty of indoor jobs that can give you a view of the world without putting you outside your comfort zone. The courthouse, one of the many hotels … ” There were so many specialized jobs these days, all suggestions that would eventually boil down to: you can do what I say, and I’ll make your life ideal.
But that would come later, once he had a better idea of just who Miss Hannah Montgomery was.