theocracy (theocracy) wrote in regulation, @ 2008-04-12 23:09:00 |
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Current music: | "Song 2 (cover)"- My Chemical Romance |
Entry tags: | backstory, harry potter, matt cavanaugh |
Who: Harry Potter, Matt Cavanaugh
What: Harry is playing the role of an expatriot in Salt Lake City. Matt makes to greet the end of the world totally under the table. The two meet in a taxi cab on the eve of the 'Apocalypse' and discover the meaning of life is liquor and fast cars.
Where: SLC
When: December 31st, 1999
Note: Sorry, I WILL fix the formatting.
Parking in the parking lot of the temple of Mormon
colossus did not work in his favor. Nor did the
grocery
store lot. "The apples were a little much."
Harry was talking to himself. "I reckon it's fair to
say that the apples were a bit much." Tonight seemed
to be the Night of Stupid Conversations.
Currently, it was about ten thirty. In the last
episode of the Y2K saga, there had been a Muggle boy
in his backseat who had been ferreting around in his
backpack for about ten minutes. Weighing the
possibility of this kid carrying homemade napalm
against the reliability of his own reflexes, which he
had come to trust since the Last Battle, he had begun
speaking in the hopes of starting a conversation.
Glancing into the rearview mirror to attempt a better
look at the kid, he had been met by a frighteningly
wide stare. The boy's chin had suddenly appeared on
the back of the passenger seat, and he'd waved a
vial
of purple fluid in his face. Fuck, he'd thought
to himself. He'd taken one hand off the
wheel,
fingering the wand in his pocket; it had seemed like a
good time to give the vehicle a little juice.
"If you'd like to see one one zero, you'll get that
out of my face. What the hell is that?" Harry had
feared suddenly that he'd finally managed to attract a
wizard into his taxi- magic apparently attracted
wizards like flies to shit.
"Cabbage juice!" Exhuberant, but excitement was not
necessarily indicative of impending bodily discomfort.
He'd glanced over his shoulder; the kid was older than
Harry had thought.
"Sit back, please," he'd said politely, thinking of
his tip. "Why are you carrying a vial of cabbage
juice?" Muggle.
This had been the highlight of his evening- the kid's,
not his. "It turns colors to test the pH of tap
water. We're
gonna need it, y'know, because the stuff
in the plastic's gotta run out eventually."
"It seems not to've occurred to
you that electricity,
which you may not have in about two hours, is required
to drive tap water flow." Harry had avoided the center
of town, going in a wide circle about city center. The
traffic was shit, but no worse than usual, and Harry's
taxi moved quickly and unnaturally fast through the
moving threads of cars.
"Oh."
He'd dropped the kid off in a grocery store parking
lot in the Marmalade district, and as he took his
leave from the vehicle, bits of apple and canned pear
pelted him and the car. Harry had left quickly,
heading back into the main drag.
Now he was parked on a sidestreet in Sugar House,
talking to himself with his eyes half closed in the
empty cab. For the 200th time since a freak tornado
had caused a substation to explode a few blocks from
his apartment, he asked
himself why in the hell he had
settled in Utah, why he had bothered to age himself on
his IDs and obtain a license to operate a commercial
vehicle in Muggle Salt Lake City- though there existed
no magical district to his knowledge.
The thing about it being New Year's was that it meant
that even in Salt Lake City - maybe especially
in Salt Lake City-anyone who wasn't a Mormon was
duty-bound to get
excessively drunk.
And also, it was the end of the world.
Matt had still been sober long enough to hear, with
more than a little unease, about the power failure in
Sydney, and he hadn't heard more, but figured that it
was always possible that things were being
covered up.
It didn't really matter, though - he'd started
drinking when he'd heard that report - correction,
he'd started drinking more heavily - and the
dateline always fucked up his sense of time. He had
no idea when that had been, but apparently long enough
ago that it was really not possible to walk.
He fell to his knees, scraping them both painfully and
tearing the knee that had remained out of his jeans,
on a slight irregularity in the surface of the
sidewalk coming out of Hidden Hollow, and it was a
minute before he could get up and brush bits of gravel
and worse off his palms.
Also, by the time he stood, he
couldn't remember why
he'd left his friends. Cade was back there, still
drinking, and he had the niggling thought that the
reason he'd left was related to
that.
He gently swayed on his feet as he lit a cigarette -
it took several tries - and tried to remember.
Something to do with more booze. Or possibly with
beating up a bunch of fratboys. Something.
Then he blinked. There was a cab there.
Clearly, he had summoned it with the power of his
mind.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth - at this
point, not able to even find a horse, much less its
mouth - he opened the door and fell into the cab,
winding up mostly seated, cigarette still in his hand,
and everything miraculously unburned.
"Ha," he said mildly. He looked into the front of the
cab; when
there were only three cab drivers there, he
said "'m looking for something an I can't even fucking
remember what so I'll pay you to drive til I do."
Though it was possibly more slurred than that.
"Lord-all-fucking-mighty," Harry murmured in one word.
"You don't have any
cabbage juice do you kid? BYU
students pay triple, with shares in their eternal
souls." Thinking there was a very remote possibility
of that, he glided away from the curb with more
attention than he would otherwise have paid,
determined that he would not get out of this evening
wearing a vomit-coloured skullcap.
It occurred to him suddenly that he ought to cease
calling the teenagers 'Kid' since, theoretically, and
in reality, and actually he had not yet reached
his twentieth birthday, though since he'd gotten the
license he'd gotten into the habit of fooling himself
into the habit of being a
thirty-something. No, upon
closer examination, the swashbuckler in the backseat
appeared roughly his own age- his real age. "Avoiding
downtown, then," he said slowly, "Unless you have a
burning urge to get dragged out of the car and
filleted with tracts."
Rather than point pointedly
at the no smoking sign, he
rolled down the windows of the car a half-inch each,
not that he had any hope of the cool air drawing The
Swashbuckler back into Soberland.
Matt laughed. Or intended to, though it mostly came
out as a wheezed giggle. "All the students are in the
Temple praying for the Apoc'lypse. Or polishing guns
an waiting for...what the fuck is it...fucking...uh,
thing. Thieves. Yeah, thieves."
He sat forward suddenly, his eyes bright with
amusement and alcohol, his arms hooked over the
seatback, and said "Why would I have cabbage juice?
Does it keep off the Four Horsemen or something? If
they can get
off the Champs Elysees," he added,
apparently to himself, though there was no tonal
shift.
"Thieves?" Harry repeated, amused despite himself. The
Swashbuckler didn't look
the sort who could hold his liquor well, or at all,
though given the time and
the setting, it seemed an unlikely night
to judge that. And he was young.
"Cabbage juice," Harry informed him, "Is known as a pH
indicator, and will
help you determine that you have not suddenly started
drinking lye or sulfuric acid out of
your tap." He took a moment to digest the fruit of his
own imagination.
"That is, if vomiting blood through your rotted out GI
tract was not enough
of a clue."
He wiped his mouth with one hand. "Though it may fend
off the Four Horseman.
I was down by the temple, and it hadn't yet burst into
flame. What's your name k-"
He would actually make an effort to stop himself. "Or
else I'm going to call
you
Swashbuckler until you're dearly departed. Take your
pick. I'm Harry, by the by."
"Matt." He held out a hand - coincidentally, the one
that still had the cigarette in it, which distracted
him and he retracted the hand to take a drag. Some
vestige of the manners his mother had drummed into him
remained even now and he politely turned away from
Harry to exhale out the window. Or at least in the
window's general direction. "'m not usually this
drunk," he added. "So there were kind've too many
words in your explanation to make sense. Which is the
point. Of New Year's, I mean. Well, and apocalypse.
Ooh, liquor store." His attention was completely
distracted by that, until he said, a bit too loudly,
"That was what I wanted! Can we go back? Why're you
working tonight if you don't want to drive crazy
cabbage people around? Or are you - that was what I
meant, survivalist, not thief. Well, thieves
getting
shot by survivalists, maybe. So are you?"
"What?" Harry asked incredulously, uncertain he
had
followed that thread of thought. He wheeled the car
around, but
said in mild protest, "Well, Matt, this is an
intervention. I'd
rather not have you die of alcohol poisoning on the
most fucking interesting
night of the year. Are you old enough to buy liquor?"
He laughed,
mainly to himself. "Yeah, I'm a survivalist. I grow my
own potatoes
and barley on the roof of my highrise to make bootleg
beer and vodka.
Want to sign up?"
"Why the fuck not, it'll be better than the hangover
I'm going to have tomorrow. I can totally shoot, too.
And hike and kill things." He grinned, though. "And
fuck no, I'm fucking not. Going to stop me? Wait,
you said intervention." The grin shifted and Matt sat
back in the seat, eyeing the doors. It was a task
that would have gone better if he could really focus.
Breaking out of a moving cab - well, he could do it if
he were sober, and the plus side to being this drunk
was that when he hit the pavement he wouldn't care and
he wouldn't be able to hold his body wrong for the
fall, but the down side was best summed up as
"everything else ever." Like not being able to get up
before something huge ran over him. Or keeping all
the booze inside of him. Or the blood, probably.
So, probably not really a good idea. Odds on it,
anyway, since Matt wasn't prepared to rule anything
out as a bad idea right now. Snowboarding through
avalanches? Right on.
He glanced up again to find Harry watching him.
"Don't fucking do that, you're making me think you're
not paying attention to the road." It was a little
uneasy, though, as nerves penetrated the haze of
alcohol. Harry completely could deny him the liquor
store, and Matt wasn't sure if he would. "Can't jump
out," he added. "Not an live, anyway." He flicked
the butt out the window and grinned again. "I'll buy
you some vodka that'll be better than anything you can
make in your bathtub and then you can take me back to
Hidden Hollow" - it sounded more like 'Hidnoll'w' - an
turn off your thingy there, your sign an come
celebrate New Years properly."
"Well, I suppose that's better than bombing out a
grocery store of hicks and sit contemplating in the
parking lot all the ways I'm about to be arrested." He
glanced briefly into his rearview mirror. "Sorry, I
forgot you're having problems with big words." Slowing
when he saw the liquor store again, Harry leaned back
in his seat thoughtfully. "I doubt you'll be buying
any vodka, frankly, that I won't be buying for you.
I'm having a moral crisis, Matt, well done, because I
do believe if you want firewater, you ought to have
ouzo." And if you want to have good ouzo, you go to
a Mediterranean liquor store.
This is the New World morality. Driving across the
city would give his liver another quarter hour before
he started hitting it hard again. "You like licorice?"
The car slowed to a stop and they sat together before
the liquor store, whose liquor store light flickered
ominously. Maybe it is the end of the world. He
flicked on the radio and, discreetly, flicked off the
meter.
Matt didn't notice the small action, but Harry's words
penetrated - eventually - and he sat straighter,
something paying a little more attention in his eyes.
He was too drunk to really pretend, but the tiny sober
core was aware that there was danger now. "What's the
game," he asked finally. "Had ouzo." He winced.
"Not a big fan. What's the game? Saving me?" The last
was given with a hard, bright smile, the smile that
Matt had shown to those who'd taken offence at him in
the past.
This time, it wasn't likely he could do much about it,
unless falling on your own face counted as some sort
of stunning martial arts move somewhere, but he could
always pretend.
"I don't save anyone," Harry said easily, with an
undercurrent that was electric and vehement. He took
out his own cigarette from his pants pocket- where his
wand used to rest, but did not- and examined it. Then
with a laugh, he added, "Just livers. You need to have
a liver if you want to watch the world explode. So
what'll it be." He set the paper filter between his
teeth, but did not light it. "Vodka or ouzo."
Harry would not make choices for anyone else again.
"Rum," Matt said instead. "But if you fucking want
ouzo, we can do that. Market up the road's got it.
Like, fucking ways up the road. It's not my
favourite, but I've had it, and let's face it, my
mouth's going to taste like death tomorrow anyway.
Going to come watch the world end with us?" The
danger sense was gone, replaced with happiness and
what was almost glee.
"I s'pose," Harry said. "Don't go anywhere, or I'll
drink your rum myself and watch you cry yourself to
sleep." He left the keys in the ignition; if Matt
decided to take off, Harry fully expected him to end
up about halfway down the street with his head
bleeding beneath the windshield. That was his
prerogative.
The time in the liquor store was brief. Harry was not
a rum connosieur, and he bought a Jamaican gold rum
that was neither the most or least expensive
available. After he paid, he tossed back his head and
left the store, entering the car with a feeling of
mounting disconnect. This was Salt Lake City, and if
tonight was the end of the world, he would welcome it.
He could welcome fire from the sky religiously. "Merry
Christmas to you, I've now become your enabler."
Holding the bottle through the paper bag over his
right shoulder, he waited until Matt snatched it to
put the car in gear and pull away from the curb.
"How far to the market?" Harry asked, but he was
surprised if it wasn't the one he knew already.
Blueberry street.
"Since 'm not sure where we are," Matt said, with a
grin offered from under his eyelashes, his face tipped
towards the sack that he was touching lightly, almost
reverently, "'ve no fucking clue." It was still
slurred, particularly on the contractions, but not as
bad as it had been. Quite.
"That way," he decided finally, gesturing vaguely
north. "Blueberry Street, because that's not the
dumbest fucking name on the planet."
The sack was pulled just open enough to reveal the
shine of glass, but Matt didn't open the bottle yet;
something said wait. "I'll get a bottle there. Cade
likes that shit too. But he always was wrong in the
head. And everyone else is on their very fucking own.
We'll watch the sky fill with fire an' pour with god's
wrath, right, and we'll be very fucking drunk and it
will be awesome for the last night on earth. And," he
added, his voice sounding sad, the mercurial mood of
the drunk, "I'll never know why you've got an accent."
"Yeah, well, I think it'll be more likely that we'll
be sitting in the dark after midnight thinking we're
dead until the sun rises, and when our heads split
open we'll only wish we were dead. But I think
realism is easier to manage when you're sober," he
said, smiling to himself as he moved into the other
lane to avoid a gang of teenaged hoodlums. "Anyone you
know?"
Back on the correct side of the road, he said, "I
think I'll be looking for Gehenna along with you,
though, just give me about an hour."
"What d'you listen to," Harry asked with a vague
gesture at the radio. "And who is Cade?"
"My brother," Matt said. "He's fucking cool. Got my
back," he added vaguely. "Well, not right now, but in
general. Right now, he's probably fallen over."
He was distracted by the lights flashing past as they
went through a heavily commercial area, but finally
said "Chicago, that's what I listen to. You know the
Chicago scene at all? Where I'm from."
"Chicago as in the band?" Harry snorted, but
realizing that was probably not what Matt meant, he
said, "Nope, I haven't been to Chicago, except the
airport. Never been east of Kansas City, yet." He put
a finger on the 'seek' control. "Tell me when to stop,
SB."
The market was looking like an increasingly bad idea;
the traffic into the city was terrible, and when a
white ice truck cut him off, taking a fragment of his
front bumper, he didn't stick his finger out the
window for fear of unseating a motorcyclist passing
him close on the left. "What the fuck did you say you
shoot?"Harry said evenly, riled as he was. He made a
right turn as the truck disappeared. "Though for my
luck, that'd be a serial killer's mobile storage
container. Okay, are you waiting in here?"
"I come in, it's not likely to go well," Matt said,
but he opened the door and lit a cigarette - it only
took five tries - and said "I'll try not to burp. Get
a couple, I'll pay you back, cause Cade'll kill me if
I don't."
He wanted to lean on the cab, but somehow his knees
weren't working right - it was possible he'd picked up
a few extra somewhere - and he sort of slid down the
side, watching Harry walk around in the brightly lit
store, behind the plate glass, where it was warmer.
"No smoking, though," he muttered, and grinned.
When Harry came back, three cigarettes later, he
tossed the last one on the ground and watched it
fizzle out in the puddle, then climbed back in.
"I shoot a nine millimeter," he said suddenly,
remembering where the conversation had once been.
"But I'm good with rifles too. I just have a
nine millimeter. Who d'you want shot?"
He examined the damage to the front of the car before
he got back in, but was moderately mollified when he
discovered little more than scraped metal and an ugly
dent with traces of the white paint. It occurred to
him that he ought've looked for the license plate.
Back in the car, he set the new package on the
passenger seat.
"You missed him. He was wearing a Santa suit and tried
to piss in your window, but I killed him with a Vulcan
mind meld. So don't worry about it." Craning his neck
around to look at Matt, he asked, "Have you even shot
someone before?"
Then the car was moving again. "Hidden Hollow, here we
come. Do you have an address, or can you tell me where
we're going when we're in the area?"
"Carrying a gun doesn't make me not a pacifist.
Especially when you want Santa shot, did he not bring
you the BB gun you wanted?" Matt said mildly, but it
sounded distracted - the bag was drawing his eyes
again. "So no. And how are you a cab driver if you
don't know that Hidden Hollow's inside Sugar House?
You never did explain the accent." the last was half
muttered.
"This might not be a good time to tell you this." His
tone was dastardly.
"But I'm not really a cab driver." Evil laughter.
"Nah, it's a new job. Is Hidden
Hollow around the high school?" Glancing in the
mirror, he thought to tell
Matt to just go ahead and open it before he
felt dried out, but did not.
"I'm English, been here for about five months, arrived
about three weeks before
the tornado hit the city. You ever been outside of
Utah, SB?"
"Told you," Matt said easily, giving in to the
temptation and pulling the bottle out of the sack, "I
grew up in Chicago. Been elsewhere on vacation."
A clink of glass and the twist of the cap, and a short
near-silence, and Matt said, slurring a little again
already, "Why the fuck'd you wind up in a backwater
like this, then?"
Harry thought, but did not say, It counts only when
you've done it by yourself. "Why not?" he
challenged good naturedly. "Brits don't only travel to
New England or New York." Flexing his hands around the
wheel as he eased back into Sugarhouse, the houses
rising like broken teeth in a long, expansive jaw, he
decided to answer because the other man was
intoxicated. "I went somewhere where I knew no one
would know me, where there was a real slight chance of
meeting someone from the big Island."
One eyebrow tipped up crazily, in a gesture that
should have been amusement, but Matt's face was more
than a little numb right now. "A dark past, then? Or
just the real pressing need to get out of town for
something? What're you running from, Harry?" The
last sentence sounded marginally more coherent, but it
was all front and a lot of effort.
"We're coming up on the high school- we're going to
the park, correct?"
It would have been better to have said nothing to Matt
if he were intent
on keeping his past secrets, but Harry realized he had
no reservations.
He could remake his life right now, craft it into
anything else- truths, of course,
but the truths he spoke would be the ones he built
into this new
reconstruction of himself. To name something, to
speak of it is
to give it its due place in reality. "I killed
someone- vigilante justice.
He was a serial killer, and now he's dead. That's why
I left England."
The lightness of his tone, the offhandedness might've
been deceptive.
His hands tightened on the wheel and he smiled a smile
of razors.
"Would've thought you'd have gotten a medal for that,"
Matt said, a little unease in his voice. He wasn't
completely comfortable around someone who could commit
to that, even if it was understandable, but = he
couldn't condemn, either. It was complicated, and he
could only guess what he'd do if he had to take
someone down who needed it, but more than his drunken
mind could articulate right now. "Or just the
memories? Sounds like you did the right thing."
He looked out the window as they entered the park, and
his hand tightened on the bottle. "Hey, there they
are. Hang on, stop. Fuckers, they're moving."
In the distraction, Harry took the liberty of not
replying for the present. He pulled the car to the
curb and peered out the windshield. "Is that Cade?"
"The tall skinny one with the glasses, yeah." Matt
grinned. There were several people coming towards
them, but they paid no attention till he rolled down
the window - a hilarious activity in itself - and
shouted out the window. "Cade! Cade, you fucker,
com'ere!"
Ducking back inside, he looked at Harry. "Right.
Coming out with us, or we coming in with you? Might
be a wee crowded, though I don't know if they're
sticking it or not, it's fucking cold."
"Well, I'd rather not stay sober, and secondly, I'm
not going to be responsible for killing you all, so if
I'm not going to get towed, or else you have somewhere
nearby you want to go, I'm following you." Warily, he
looked out the window; he couldn't tell how many of
them were as drunk as Matt or how old they were. He
finally lit the cigarette that had sat for nearly
thirty minutes between his teeth. "How many minutes to
midnight?" This question he addressed to himself as he
looked at his watch. Quarter after eleven.
Matt stuck his head out the window again and lit a
cigarette while he and Cade had a quiet-ish, hurried
conversation. It seemed to be the opinion of the
group to go to some ghastly party that, most
importantly, would not serve alcohol, or maybe it was
a club that was all-ages and was also dry.
Either way it didn't fit Matt's plans. "I want to be
fucking drunker than a fucking lord for the
apocalypse," he said finally, pulling back inside the
cab. "Fuck off, Cade, you fucking traitor, I'll see
you tomorrow. If we all live." The last was
hissed, and Matt turned back to Harry. "Let's fucking
go."
The window buzzed up, an uncoordinated gesture, and he
added "I don't know where, but I want to
fucking leave, and fucking get really wasted."
"Are you religious?" Harry asked, unable to decide if
the man seriously believed in the possibility of the
apocalypse or if it was the rum talking. "Would you
prefer it if we didn't wake up tomorrow? Doubt the
world would be that bloody lucky." He did a brief turn
around the park and headed in the opposite direction.
When he hit the main road, he sped up, the car passing
other cars but not coming close to any of them.
"I live in the warehouse district in an old complex.
Has a decent view of the streets if you want to watch
people put flamethrowers or whatever on one another.
However it is Americans bring in the New Year." Said
the self-proclaimed killer.
"Generally with a carton of Camel non filters, a
bottle of booze, and a Uzi," Matt said, watching
traffic pass with the sort of concentration only the
very drunk can master. "Don't think we're going to
die tonight, but there was Sydney," he added. "And
I'm not fucking religious. You? Sorry, fucking
drunk."
There was a period of silence in which Harry
considered his answer. "If there were a religion that
wasn't totally self-promoting, I would join it. I like
Anglican- well, Episcopal, to you, and Catholic
services because of the incense and the ceremony, but
the latter, as flashy and as beautiful as it is, seems
a bit pompous for my tastes." Glancing back, he said,
"Sorry. I mean, those churches seem too fucking full
of themselves." Downtown traffic was more congested,
with people weaving in between the cars, holding
noisemakers or wearing stupid hats or carrying either
religious or inflamatory signs. Or both.
But Harry did not slow down, and hit no one. Soon
enough, he was passing through a delapidated district
in the process of conversion into an artsy locale. He
turned down a few smaller roads and pulled into a
small postage stamp parking lot. Weeds grew over the
edges of the asphalt. The building beside it was about
three stories high, resembling a poorly replicated,
Westernized version of downtown townhouses. A window
in one of the connected buildings was hanging
dangerously by its corner to rope in the pane.
Harry parked the car and got out, taking the ouzo with
him. He opened the backseat and stood at the bottom of
the stairs up to the doorway, sucking on his lips, to
prevent brain damage if Matt passed out or tripped and
split his head open on the brick.
It took him a moment to find ground level with his
foot, and when he finally hit resistance, Matt stepped
up and down several times to be sure that it was
really there.
"Stairs," he said. "Fucking wonderful. How far up is
it?" Without waiting for an answer, he started up the
steps, clutching at the handrail spasmodically as the
stairs shifted under him. On the first landing, he
stopped for more drink. "Now's the time for a good
elevator," he commented. "Wait, are you going to kill
me?" He swung around uncoordinatedly, his eyes
wide suddenly, but it was hard to sustain fear,
genuine though it had been, and he laughed, reaching
out for Harry with one flailing hand.
Harry caught him firmly, whether such was necessary or
not, heading up the stairs a few careful inches behind
Matt. "Obviously, and eat your liver with some fava
beans and a nice chiante. And I bet I won't even have
to flavor it; I love my liver with rum." He decided
not to roll his eyes in case Matt decided to gaze into
them lovingly and puked- though he'd still probably be
safe since he'd end up gazing at his chin. "Of course
not. It's the second floor, the first door just there-
hang on." He waited until Matt was standing on the
floor and well away from the stairs before he unlocked
the door and let them both in. It was a small,
sparsely furnished apartment; the first room the
walked into was the kitchen, and Harry set the ouzo on
a green counter. He crumpled up the paper bag and
threw it at Matt's head. "There, you're dead."
"Awesome, sherlock." Matt grinned and made a move to
bat the bag away, but since it had fallen at least
thirty seconds before, it was slightly ineffective.
He took a minute to carefully wad up the bag around
the rum and drop it into the trash, something achieved
only by standing directly over the bin and letting
gravity do its work. "So guilt-free drinking, even in
the Mormon capital of America. Guess this is pretty
fucking far from England, if that's what you're into,
but this town sucks hard." A swallow of rum. "Can I
smoke, or should I go outside?"
Harry walked into the living room area, essentially a
change of flooring, and looked about for suspect
articles. His trunk, his school things, and the
Firebolt were back in a locked up Grimmauld Place in
England... where had he left the wand? There were a
few seconds that passed that he said nothing, trying
to think, but then he could picture himself putting it
in the drawer beneath his bedside lamp. "Stay in here,
this isn't Buckingham Bloody Palace."
Back in the kitchen, he took one of the bottles of
ouzo and cracked it open. "Are you taking the other
back to Cade, or is this more for me?"
"He bailed, fuck him." Matt snorted inelegantly,
trying to laugh and failing, as he lit a cigarette.
The sudden inhale made the cigarette light a little
too quickly. "Drink up, I can always get more."
Another laugh, one that sounded real.
He looked around the room, at the point of drunk where
the furniture was pretty stable - worked on rectifying
that with more rum - and said "You're not into
decorating, or hacking a cab doesn't pay enough that
you need furniture more than food, or you're not home
enough to give a shit? I haven't seen you around, but
you're sort of professionally employed. Could go
either way."
"A combination of all three," Harry shrugged, his head
in the refrigerator examining a bottle of cola. It was
flat. "Well, guess I'm drinking it straight." Closing
it up and pouring the coke down the drain, he pulled a
clean glass from the drainboard. He couldn't
quite bring himself to drink it directly from
the bottle. "The pay is shit, but I didn't get the job
for the money. But I'm thinking about getting into
something else- limousines, or truck-driving, or
monster trucks, or who knows what. I like driving."
Sitting on a chair by the window- he set the bottle
between his legs, cracked it open, poured a glass, and
drank. He
grimaced with the first sip, but not the second. "What
do you then, besides drink?"
Matt looked at him from under his eyelashes again, a
smile on his face that could most easily be considered
flirtatious, and said "It's a tiny bit possible that
I'm still in school."
Then he laughed again. "No, not really. Graduated
this year and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing,
who fucking does? Just kind of..." He gestured
vaguely. "...still doing what I've always done.
Thinking of doing something else, but I'm not sure
what. I work part time, but doing something a little
less structured would mean I could do that when I need
to and everything else that I want to. When I
want to."
"Think you'll go to uni?" Harry asked, kicking off his
shoes as he contemplated his glass. He wasn't
necessarily in a hurry to be completely under the
table. He scratched his chin with his middle finger
thoughtfully. "You should learn to fix trucks, then
I'll get one and we'll join a fucking derby and run
over cars. There's a way to make a living."
"I rally race informally," Matt said. "That'd be
fucking awesome. Take it to the next level!" He
swooped around, apparently taking it to the next
level, and nearly dropped the booze. "But I wanna
drive," he added with a smile.
Harry watched Matt with a bemused expression, but the
gears in his head were turning quickly. "You said you
race? What kind of cars? What do you mean 'rally
race'?"
"The way I do it," Matt said, dropping into a chair,
not quite able to get back to the level of drunkenness
he'd been when he'd first met Harry but still finding
it difficult to stand, "it's this amateur thing. You
know, bring your car, go a route, who wins, that sort
of thing. I've spent some time on my car, it's more
rugged than it looks. And faster. Subaru Impreza, if
that means anything to you, but that's not pro level
or anything, that's just what I've got right now." A
quirked eyebrow. "But you can rally race
professionally, I think, or something like it. Love
to run the Wales Rally GB. It's short, challenging
drives with all sorts've things you've got to do to
win, sort of cross country racing for cars, but on
roads, just isolated. I wish I could've run the Mille
Miglia, but that's gone and now it's just a, a fucking
parade of cars. Do you race or something?"
"Not yet," Harry replied, eyes bright, and he took a
swig from his bottle, forgetting the glass. Here was
something more worthy of his time, perhaps, than taxi
driving. "When you race, d'you race for prizes? For
money, or just for the fuck've it? I haven't got a car
besides the one out there, but I've been thinkin'
about it. Could do it." He drank like a man
considering the deal of a lifetime. "Yeah," he said,
breaking into a slow smile. "Could you drive with the
weight of a second person, or would I have to get my
own car?" This was obviously not a financial problem,
by the tone he used.
"There are prizes." The slow smile said more than the
words, said that Matt had a history of winning them.
"I don't go at the professional level or anything,
since I'm not, you know, legal to do that yet, but on
the amateur level, yeah." He made an odd gesture,
something like a horse shaking off flies, and sat
forward. "I mean, I'm not in it to win, which I know
means I should have my citizenship revoked and just
fucking be a Commie or something, but I tend to take a
few more risks. Car'll hold two - maybe should do
some work to the shocks and the electrical, but I've
been meaning to do that for a while. My car isn't
just an out of the box any more." The grin now was
complicit. "Wanna go for a ride?"
"Right at this moment? Uh, no." Harry said, filling
his glass with somewhat more concentration than it had
previously required. "I'd like to live to see
tomorrow, no offense to your skills. But I will
go for a ride in the morning, or tomorrow, or any time
when you are sober. Then I'll induct you into the
Society of British Socialists, and it'll be fuckin'
grand. Where is it, anyway? Do you live in th'Hollow,
or do you just raise hell in the park on New Year's?"
"Canyon Rim," Matt said, naming a district a little
south and west of Sugar House. "Loran Heights Drive,
if you're curious." He raised his bottle at Harry and
grinned. "Cheers. Always wanted to be a socialist,
it'd make everyone crazy. Do you actually get well
paid here? I mean, this's like the most fucking
insular part've America, I can't see it, really.
Raise hell everywhere, and that's part've why - they
hate it here. Have done always," he added, but it
wasn't clear what, exactly, he was referring to.
"Not particularly," Harry said with a shrug. "I do
about well enough to have this place, then some beans
and rice. This is just something to do until something
better comes along- what that is, I haven't any idea."
Everything tasted and smelled like licorice, and Harry
nestled his head comfortably against the wooden edging
of the armchair. A bit of stuffing crept out of one of
the seams and dropped to the floor. "Well, then we
could start a nudist commune on... uh... well, there
are a load've islands about the Western Mexican coast.
What did you mean, anyway? Have always done what?"
"Not sure," Matt said after a moment. "They've always
hated it and I've always been weird to them? Both,
yeah." He grinned. "I know I got totally fucking
drunk and climbed in your taxi, but I don't think
we're up to nude communes in Mexico yet. Let's do a
rally first an see how it goes."
"Well, nudist commune rhymes with communist, yeah?"
Harry explained patiently through a partially bitten
off yawn. "What time is it?" The clock on the wall was
in English time for a reason Harry could not possibly
articulate. What's 5-oh-nine minus five?"
"Twelve o nine," Matt said without hesitation, his
eyes shut. "What are you counting, then? Time? Wait,
fuck." He sat upright, rum sloshing over his clothes
as he was jerked awake, and went to the window.
"Well fuck," he said quietly. "No apocalypse. Was
sort've hoping for one."