Re: Late-night intermission, at the bar: Sonya C & Jack P
He knew nothing about legends from the sea. Until his career had dissipated, foam on water, he hadn't bothered much with other people's words. Narrowed in on his own he hadn't needed to sift through history to admire other people's. Now he glutted himself on them but he chose fact and dry history, an appetite belonging to someone who lived in the past to avoid present. He knew it perfectly well, it was deliberate. But it meant nothing but an inkling of what sirens did or they didn't.
She watched him drink and he was nonplussed. He didn't smell like a brewery, that much he knew. He hadn't come from the office where the smell of spilled liquor had steeped into carpet fibers and was so sodden he smelled like a cheap piss-up even if he hadn't touched a drop at his desk. It was just whiskey, and she smiled like it didn't matter and it had been a while since Jack had looked for something in a woman's smile that was more substantial than the curl of mouth itself.
"I haven't the foggiest. I don't believe in sin." He believed in demons, and it was a half-step between demons and the devil but he didn't believe in God. He'd grown up mouthing words on Sundays until he'd earned free will with age. "I've sinned too much to have any interest in penance, I'd be there for the rest of my sorry lifetime." He lifted the sharpness out of the words with another smile, finished the glass and ordered another.
She was new. Of that much, he had already discerned. Why from Jersey, he didn't know. Maybe Jersey left you with a desire for clear vistas and tree-tops, the silence that blanketed the town a compelling reason for someone who heard city hum all day and night. "What are you moving in to do?" He scanned the room: tassels and tits and alcohol, it was possibly a novel combination to this town but he'd seen it before.
"I did. That, and I wanted to see if it was worth drinking here."