It. (rasatabula) wrote in repose, @ 2016-02-13 16:23:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | *log, cat dubrovna, jack penhaligon |
The diner: Selina C and Jack P
Who: Jack P and Selina C
What: Hallucinations (no poetry)
When: After the latest Cat-attack on the Mansions, and the height of purple-mist.
Warnings: Sexual imagery in opening, language after that.
When he startled awake, head on the spread of his arms on a desk so cluttered with shit, it was impossible to see if he had any paper on there with any snippet of a story worth telling or in fact just the detritus of a long night, grist burned down to sinew and nothing. A hell of a night before, or at least the vacancy between brain-cells ransacked for a reason, suggested in fact, he'd been drinking so heavily the days prior were blotted out. An empty bottle of whiskey in the wastepaper basket said much of the same. An argument, then. He'd pissed his editor off enough to send him so far beyond the reaches of civilized society in pursuit of a story that he'd forgotten the tip-off for and the desk wasn't his, it was borrowed. A spread of papers where his ear had been: red pen, glorifying in flicking through a story that wasn't half-bad to begin with, the editing a hatchet-job to take it down to stultifying. Clearly, whoever occupied the office on the regular was either a talentless hack and bitter about taking his pound of flesh out of his staff or he didn't know good writing if it yanked his balls.
The phone rang. Alive, curt, sharp underneath a sift of paper. The phone never rang in his town an hour away from anything worth writing about, and Jack picked it up, fitted it into the groove of neck and shoulder while he palmed a hand over raw-fresh stubble. God. If she was here, she'd give him hell for looking like freshly-pulverized meat on a broadsheet. He could feel his pores sweat liquor, the ashy taste in the back of his mouth the cigarettes he didn't smoke other than surreptitiously out the windows of anonymous hotel rooms, away from the place he didn't bother to name 'home' because it wasn't until they were both bloody there. "'Lo?" And reflex, his mouth curled into something slow and relaxed and nigh on filthy on his name on her lips.
"Sleeping on the job?" Her voice is soaked in laughter, he could imagine her slithering out of the suit-skirt, kicking off heels (there was a rhythmic thud, one-two in the background, against the wall). "Are you planning on coming home this week, or should I fuck off to the nearest bar and pick somebody up who'll actually do me?"
He ran his thumb over the flat of the ring where his finger seamed into his palm, laughed into the cradle of the phone. "Soon," he had no fucking idea of where the pad with the story was, pencil scribbled onto flat lines. Hell, if it wasn't worth remembering, he'd leave anyway. Check out, fly back - fuck his editor, she was a bitch. "You're too busy to pick a poor fucker up who'll pleasure you, you'll be barking orders in his ear to hurry up."
She laughed, low over the rustle of sheets and he could see her inside his own head, sliding over sheets in their bed, the twitch of her mouth destroying any attempt at deadpan. She couldn't feign irritation if she fucking tried, his bright and shiny business-maven with a mouth like a fucking sewer. Jack sat low in the chair, back curved against the slats.
"I like my chances, asshole. It's got more likelihood of getting me off than my husband coming home. What's the story this time?" He could imagine the smirk. She had a pitch, Jack thought he remembered. A big fucking deal, the kind that she brought home along with her, late nights back arched over the light-box, kicked off heels and passed out on the couch in the morning, face creased from the couch pillow.
"Hold your fucking horses, all right? I'll be home." He palmed a hand over the desk, sifting for something that looked like a pen. She breathed into his ear, words that were near pure filth seared through a smile and he forgot the fucking story in the heat that blurred straight down to his cock.
She hung up, half an hour later to go to sleep and he fucked off out of the office empty of anyone. Bookstore downstairs, and that looked like it had shut-up shop for the night a long time ago. His stomach rolled over, trying to chew on nothing but the bilge of what had to have been a drinking binge, and he went back to the motel room numbered on the key shoved into his back pocket until he could shower and shave the last of stale whiskey from his pores. His editor was cheap as shit. The motel was the kind with broken vending machines on the landing and nothing that resembled food in the near vicinity so back to town, clean jeans and his jaw scraped clean and the notebook he'd found in the desk drawer folded into his pocket with a pen.
The diner looked like the kind dotted all over America. Cheap, but good and he inhaled coffee first step over the threshold and his stomach roiled the demand of appetite as he slid into a cheap booth, one of the last free seats in the house. Whatever this town was for, there wasn't much in the way of PG-13 night life and if you were under 21, the local theater had shut its doors temporarily. The diner was crawling with the awkward length of limbs that were teenagers, and Jack had unfolded the pad and was flipping pages looking for signs of his own scrawl in it when the door opened again, a gasp of cold air admitted along with the woman.