pups_dt (pups_dt) wrote in morningstar_mnr, @ 2010-01-19 16:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | jazz, npc |
Michaels Bros., Late Morning, Jazz and George Hazeldene
It had been fun the night before, and it had made the lovely surprise she'd gotten that morning possible, but even so Jazz couldn't quite bring herself to be happy about the pounding headache she had or the cottony-fuzz feeling in her mouth that just wouldn't go away no matter how much coffee she drank. To keep from ripping off the face of someone who dared to talk to loud in her vicinity she spent the first several hours of her shift hidden away in her office, staring at the little figures on the productivity spreadsheets that seemed to wriggle and dance around in front of her eyes.
That was where George Hazeldene found her. He tapped on her open door with the gold head of his walking stick.
Jazz looked up and managed to pull a smile out of somewhere for him. "Hello, Mr. Hazeldene," she said. "Here to see Mr. Michaels?"
"Of course, my dear," the craggy weathered face split into a smile as George reached up to remove his hat and he stepped into her tiny office. "But you know I like to stop and see my favorite consultant as well."
"You like to stop and see if I've changed my mind about working with you at the Institute, you mean," Jazz pointed out.
He laughed and pointed at her with his cane. "Clever girl. That's why I like you." The end of the cane returned to the floor and he leaned on it gently. "You would do well at the Institute."
Jazz smiled but looked back down at her spreadsheets, "I know, Mr. Hazeldene. But I like it here. Mr. Michaels has been good to me."
George studied her as she bent over her paperwork. Loyalty, that was another quality he admired. He couldn't begrudge her for that. His eyes drifted over the rest of her desk, stopping for a moment on a ring case by her right arm, then got caught by a square of pale paper half-trapped under her mug. He tipped his head, recognizing something inherently familiar in the tiny black scribbles on it....
"What's this?" he asked, stepping forward and freeing the paper gently.
"What?" Jazz's head came up, gaze landing on the napkin in Mr. Hazeldene's hand almost instantly. "Oh - that...that's just a doodle I did a few days ago. I must have forgotten to throw it out. It's trash."
George turned the napkin one way, then the other, recognizing the scrunched jumble of lines for what it was. "This is your design?"
Having already dismissed it, it was a moment before Jazz realized he was still talking about her napkin design doodle. "Yes sir." She smiled a little. "Please, don't judge it too harshly, I was bored and wasn't really trying. I was just hoping to pass the time while I waited for an appointment."
"Hmm," was all George said.
Jazz shifted, feeling a little uncomfortable now. "Like I said, it's trash. Nothing important." Pointedly, she looked down again and made a decisive mark on the spreadsheet.
She said it was nothing, a silly doodle she'd done on a whim, and that may very well have been the truth. But George Hazeldene recognized potential when he saw it. The design was rough and the medium wasn't ideal, but it could be worked with. He was sure of it.
He looked at the young woman again, who was carefully not looking at him, apparently ashamed by her unrefined design. Well, he could fix that.
Smiling, he folded the napkin neatly and tucked into the breast pocket of his coat like a little pocket square. "Well, Ms. Gonzalez, I can see you're busy and still unfailingly loyal to Spencer." He tapped the end of his can on her desk and put his hat back on. "Both entirely admirable I assure you."
Jazz looked up. "Thank you for stopping to see me, Mr. Hazeldene. I'm flattered, as always."
"The pleasure, Ms. Gonzalez, is all mine," George replied, still smiling as he turned and stepped out.