Re: Outside: Clementine & Rudy
Town always felt choking. The air ripe with vying scents—holiday pine so unlike the evergreens sentinel near the cabin, almost artificial, though they were not. There was holly, berry red, deep in the back of the nose. Melting wax. Then there was sweat and skin, the sting of alcohol, cheap shampoo, rubber soles. It mounted, and Rudy couldn't swallow all of it. He lit a cigarette, butt between his lips as he flipped his lighter out and sent the tip cherrying, tobacco swelling in smoke over his tongue and down his throat. Tension eased from him was he walked, hard boots on the sidewalk. His hair was slicked back, unwashed, and his face was shadowed with scruff. The man held himself close, though he walked wide, and his body language was clear: Do Not Approach. He was in a heavy, work Carhartt over nondescript long-sleeved shirt, and, you know what? He didn't feel the cold either. The jacket was unzipped, hanging open past belt buckle.
He smelled her before he saw her. Heard her too. The quick, feminine steps, the too-sweet cloy of dying flowers, and he huffed. Rudy breathed out hard through his nose, like he could expel the scent, even as he turned toward the voice sticky as syrup under the sun.—He didn't know her, the woman. He held his cigarette between his fingers, looking down at her with his lips peeling back from his teeth briefly.
"The bar." He was no good at niceties. The man sighed. He wasn't good at niceties, but he knew the next part of the script. His eyes flicked to the doorway behind her. After a long suck on the cigarette, he asked in unspooling smoke, gruff: "You?"