Re: Late-night intermission, at the bar: Sonya C & Jack P
She was doing a damn good impression of a siren, of a woman made for smoky corners and blue music and glasses slid over polished surfaces. Young, but Jack had seen enough women smile like the unfurling of a flower deliberate and potent to appreciate it for what it was. He took the first mouthful of whiskey and swallowed good and slow. No doubt the prices encouraged languor in the drinking, the idling over a single that cost several times more than the price in a temple to the liquor rather than the company.
"There's a carnival," he confirmed without the slightest inclination to see any of the shows beyond the strictly adult. It struck him as incongruous or emblematic of a simpler time when carnival rides were novelty in an existence that slowed around work and sleep and living for the purpose of living.
There was a knife-edge to the way Jack smiled in exchange for the sly riposte from the woman with her cherry-stem. It was hollowed and it was aged but it belonged to a man who had flirted in bars with impunity. "There's a church in the town," he shrugged, swallowed another mouthful. "Without some sin to confess to God, the church would be out of business."
He hadn't visited Jersey. Hadn't needed to at any point in his illustrious career and buried here in Repose he hadn't needed to after his career slid towards the rocks. "And you're here now, because... You have a vested interest in burlesque?" Hazarded guess. Another one of those smiles. "No, I'm not."