Who: Gus and Marion What: The Lunch Where: Around Town, starting at the supermarket When: Saturday, around noon Rating: PG-13? Status: Complete
Considering Marion had only slept for a few hours, her morning had gone smoothly - a warm breakfast of oatmeal and blueberries. A shower - something she didn’t think she’d ever truly get used to, however much she adored it. These were the simple morning rituals that served as replacement for the glorious songs she would sing in praise of Father, back when they all could still hear Him.
After meeting with M’Ken, she’d found herself wandering the town on foot, skirting the edges of the territory loosely carved by the degradation of the souls that called this place home - their true home, that is - not beings like her, shut out until her own words ran their course.
She went to the lake, half frozen in some places, thick enough to walk on in others. The expanse of frigid beauty glowed like the surface of a pearl in the moonlight, while the dark, horrible depths spelled nothing but pain and End to those who might fall through its cracks. Marion was a creature of poetry and metaphor. She stared at it from the beach for a long time.
That image was still in her mind when she arrived at the supermarket, where she would meet Angus as promised. That was another thing she’d been pondering over the long hours of the night: she had taken it upon herself to hold Babylon’s good-hearted Sheriff under her wing, as was her custom since the beginning of history. Father had always entrusted humans of import to the celestial world to her care, and so it remained even after His voice had gone silent. Times have changed, of course, but never in her long memory had any of her charges ‘asked her out’. The angel was not unfamiliar with the custom, nor the emotions that came with it; she was, like many other things in this world, a bit detached from it all. She’d seen other brothers and sisters Fall; her own beloved Baqashal had given her heart to a human man and produced a girl-child. Her death had been the harbinger of Haziel’s arrival in Babylon - it would weigh on her forever.
But, these were affairs of angels, and Angus was looking for her - in her mind’s eye, she could see him at the front of the grocery store, having just stepped through the automatic doors. The rest of the day, and many of the aspects of her own involvement with him were still completely out of focus. It worried her, but she did not allow it to show in her face.
It wasn’t difficult to smile when she saw his face with her own eyes, stepping up from his side where she’d been waiting by the strawberries (they smelled so good). He looked positively shiny, with the gleam of a teenager in his grown-man’s eyes, and the smile that seemed weighted on one side.
Gus’s morning hadn’t been half as in-depth as Marion’s, but that was hardly any surprise. He was surprisingly (to him, anyway) calm about the whole thing, and he hoped it was because maturity had smoothed things out. Of course, he was still very eager, and Marion had seen it shining in his eyes when he caught sight of her. From what he could see of her outfit, it was another flowy number, and he had to wonder if she even owned a pair of pants.
“Hey, afternoon,” he said, “You give any thought to where you want to eat? I was thinking that Italian place on main street, if you couldn’t decide.”
It was mostly informal (and mostly a family place, at least at night), but the food was excellent, and Italian was probably one of the most inoffensive places to go on a lunch date. Who didn’t like Italian food?
“Oh, the place with the really long sandwiches?” Clearly by Marion’s arched eyebrows and hopeful grin, she knew the place, and was on board. “I love the bread there. Very authentic.”
It was, too. Avanti’s had been a curiosity to her when she first arrived, with the aromatic lure of fresh Italian bread on the wind. It reminded her very much of a certain corner in the heart of Venice. Could’ve been an heirloom recipe.
“Would you like to walk?”
“Uh, sure,” Gus looked somewhere between perplexed and pleased, starting towards the door and pulling his gloves out of his pocket, “It’s sunny today, so why not?”
Avanti’s it was. Since he couldn’t open an automatic door for her, he moved slightly ahead and made them swish open for her, and settled into an easy pace. A little slower than he might normally walk, but he knew he had longer legs than most. Gus shrugged his coat a little closer around him, but despite the chill, the sun made it tolerable.
“Just so there isn’t a scene at Avanti’s,” he said, “This is my treat, all right? I’m really glad you came out with me, Marion.”
He’d decided that he wasn’t going to play any of the games they’d thought were necessary back when he was on the market. Gus was glad she’d agreed to come out with him, and he wouldn’t pretend otherwise.
His choice of words stuck out in her mind enough to filter through her memory for a certain context. Her first instinct was to ask why there would be a scene in the first place, but something held them back. Probably a version of humanesque common sense she’d developed over time.
“No scene will be had,” she quipped comically, absently fingering the knit strap of the bag at her hip. “Unless you allow for a few possibly out of the blue and awkward conversation topics.” Looking up over her coat’s fuzzy hood, Marion gave Gus her nose-wrinkled smile - one that showed only when she was ‘flying blind’. “I don’t always know how to act without a lesson plan.”
The words ‘lesson plan’ had never had so many meanings.
“I’m thinking you’ll manage,” he laughed. She had the past three times they’d bumped into each other, so he was counting on more of the same. It was part of her undeniable charm.
When they reached Avanti’s, Gus opened the door for her and even held out her chair, though he didn’t pour it on too much and get her coat, to. These were all learned behaviors from being with Francine - he’d never been big on manners before then. Once they were out of their winter gear, he took note of her dress, which was possibly flowier than it had looked trapped under her coat.
“You look really nice,” he said, peering at the menu. Gus hadn’t gone overboard himself. He was wearing jeans, but he had a button-up long sleeve shirt on that he’d gone so far as to tuck in. They got their complimentary breadsticks and gave their drink orders - just water for Gus - and resumed menu browsing.
All right, now he was a little nervous. He’d never really done classic dating. More hook-ups than anything else. They’d talked fine before, though, so he wasn’t going to let the venue and the purpose make him stumble.
“I still haven’t found any use for that salt, by the way,” he decided to tease her lightly, “But the kleenex and the chili powder both found good homes.”
The smile that came from his compliment was automatic, though more from being assured her efforts to dress in a manner that fitted her current station and situation were successful, rather than taking it as flattery - that was something that would have to come with more practice. It hadn’t exactly been a focus of her existence.
She sipped at her hot tea, giving the small lunch crowd a careful once-over when Gus brought up the addition to his shopping cart. The puff of air from her nose could’ve been called a silent laugh, a delighted one, but subdued nonetheless. It rippled the amber liquid in the mug before she sat it down.
“Of course it will be useful if you look for a use for it,” she joked, tilting her head a bit and making her eyes wide, just for a moment. “It also helps that salt is, y’know, one of the most useful substances on Earth. Good to keep it handy.”
“Fair enough,” Gus laughed. He considered pursuing a little bit more, but he didn’t want to get into a joke-y discussion about psychic powers on a date. A sort-of date. Gus wasn’t sure why he wasn’t classing it as one entirely in his mind. Possibly so he could assure himself it was fine if it went horribly wrong, but that was just an excuse. Mostly? The Sheriff wasn’t sure how he felt about dating. He sure as hell needed to get started again, but he probably ought to have a better headspace about expectations. Gus wasn’t an untethered twenty-something anymore, and this was a very small town.
Thankfully the waitress swooped in to take their orders and give him some time to consider what angle to go for. Maybe just getting to know her was the best route.
“So, Marion,” he said, “What brought you to Babylon? Must be a real switch up, Europe to small-town America.”
It wasn’t much, but a little bit of her smile faded. Marion’s eyes drifted from his face down to the red and white checkered table cloth, just enough to really put her words in order. It hadn’t been a happy move, but it had been an inevitable one. There were few instances of regret in her long life, but one of the sharpest was that she hadn’t come to Babylon sooner.
“My sister lived here,” she started with a quiet honesty. “Becky - she was much older than me. She was killed last summer, so I came to help my niece.”
The story had been known in the town; a local private investigator had died in a fluke car accident during the last night of May. That was the glamor. Baqashal had actually been a casualty of that month’s confrontations, and she had called out to Haziel with her dying breath. Marion had been by the angel’s human-born daughter the day of the funeral, and hadn’t left since.
“Ah, shit,” Gus grimaced. He remembered that. Messy. He shifted in his chair, feeling like a jerk for bringing it up, but how could he have really known? “Sorry, Marion. For your loss, and for bringing it up. I didn’t connect the dots.”
He hadn’t really known Becky, either, but he was still sorry for bringing it up.
“How are you doing with the whole thing?” he asked. A senseless death like that was never easy to come to terms with, especially with her not even being in the area when it happened. She must’ve been looking after Becky’s daughter, come to think of it, “I mean, we don’t have to talk about it. Obviously.”
All he could follow up with was his own reason for coming to Babylon, and it seemed a little petty in comparison. Maybe it’d just be a welcome distraction instead.
“It’s alright,” Marion started in the same mild tone of voice, never losing the hint of serenity in her smile. It was, however, complicated. She busied her hands pouring a bit more hot water into her mug, watching their progress as she continued. “Speaking of her does me good. Obviously, I miss her. For quite a long time, she practically raised me.”
Everything she said was the closest, human equivalent to the actual truth. Baqashal was among the first beings ever created, who had taken special interest in Haziel when she followed, many eons later. And when Father disappeared, the two were closer than ever. Until Baqashal fell in love.
“Though my niece is grown, she’s still very... “ Marion’s eyes rolled up to the right, and her free hand tilted back and forth as she searched for the right word. “Unworldly? Not terribly so, but enough.”
“I follow,” Gus said, “My son is the same, although he’s learning pretty quick.”
He dreaded his daughter getting to that age, but it’d be on him sooner than later. And here he was in goddamn Iowa with only her mother to keep an eye on her. Kimberly was a capable girl, and it wasn’t like he didn’t give her credit. She was his baby, was all. He wanted the best for her.
“Does she live with you, or does she have her own arrangement?” he wondered. Gus could see if going either way - the death of her mother would either drive her to her aunt’s for companionship, or have her feeling the need to muddle through it somewhat on her own.
Still looking into her tea, Marion flashed back to that very dawn; the look on Grace’s face reflected in her celestial aunt’s mirrored eyes was the same as the angel’s.
“I’ve lived with her since coming here.” She looked up, nodding with her sad smile. “There are ways she and I are worlds apart, but... human nature, right?”
Marion eased her shoulders back, sitting up in her chair. She hadn’t realized how she’d been leaning so heavily on her elbows. A breadstick grabbed her attention, and she slid it from the basket, pulled a small piece off in her fingers, and offered it toward Gus - a timeless tradition she hadn’t let go of.
“Right,” Gus agreed. He raised an eyebrow - Marion had been pretty lucid for this conversation, so he wasn’t too surprised by being offered bread - but took it, and before he popped it in his mouth, he said, “Great bread here. They’re all about the tasty carbs.”
He decided that he’d just come out with his own story for showing up, since he’d more or less forced her to spill some guts, nevermind how willing she was to do so.
“I had a falling out with my wife two years ago. Ex-wife,” not a necessary correction, but he didn’t like to think of her as his wife anymore, “Eighteen years together and I guess she thought she was allowed to try out a different man. I didn’t really agree. Just so happened that Babylon was in need of some more experienced law enforcement, and folks here wound up liking me so much, well,” he spread his hands and smiled, “Here I am. Your friendly neighborhood Sheriff.”
A very, very short version of a rather unpleasant part of his life. It was behind him now, but still part of him.
After sampling her own pint sized bite of garlic, oil, and ‘tasty carbs’ - as he put it - Marion pressed her lips tight and offered him a sympathetic nod. It wasn’t an anguish she had experienced personally, but she’d seen it enough to know the damage it causes.
“That’s a trouble with human beings,” she started with the tone that often included a proverb or riddle or little piece of history. “Bodies created to ‘go forth and multiply’, souls created with something else in mind entirely.”
She set half the bread stick on the little plate in front of her and wiped the oil off her fingers. They then reached into her bag (which had never come off) and pulled out a single colored pencil - denim blue. “Slightly on subject; I once met a blind man who told me he knew the secret to seeing a human soul.”
Marion borrowed the empty saucer under Gus’s unused coffee cup and turned it over, flat on his plain paper place mat. Reaching over, she traced the perfect circle, “But like in the body, it must be contained to do any good.” When she finished, the plate was removed, and Marion smiled up at Gus, offering the pencil. “Just start drawing a line, let it curve and angle and point, but never cross. Connect the shapes, but don’t overlap them.” And anticipating the look she was probably going to get, “I teach this to my kids, so when they doodle in other classes, they do it with some kind of meaning.”
Gus raised an eyebrow at her. He’d been ready to make a crack about going forth and multiplying (in so much that his ex-wife had wanted to do it - just with other men), but she was moving on, going on about an art project and offering him a pencil. Well, this was new. At least she wasn’t having him make sand candles, right? Really, though. He didn’t mind. She always seemed to get to a point with these things.
“I’m not really an artist,” he said, tapping the pencil on the mat a moment, “How long should I draw for?”
He was admittedly a little self-conscious about this - he really wasn’t an artist of any stripe, even his stick men were sad looking - but Marion didn’t really strike him as the type to judge. The big man started to doodle, glancing at Marion and waiting for the answer to her question.
“Until you think it’s done,” she answered simply, every bit of truth in her tone. Clearly the topic shift had been preferable; it did her good, and it showed in Marion’s easier smile. She even laced her fingers together, rested her elbows on the table and used her hands as a hammock for her chin, watching his progress with interest.
Alot of interest - even those who consider themselves less than creative had it in them somewhere, it only needed to be tapped by motivation. This might not have been an epiphany moment for Gus, but what would end up on the paper was absolutely unique to him. That’s what Marion liked about it.
Gus wasn’t nearly as intrigued as Marion was, but he was giving it a try. He wasn’t much of a doodler, though, even on the phone. Usually, if pressed, he would fill in solid shapes, but he wasn’t much of a swirler or a zig-zagger. Blocking in the circle was against the rules, so he struggled, getting as close as he could to drawing geometric shapes, packing them in as tightly as he could.
It didn’t take him long to feel like he’d done what he could, and he smiled sheepishly.
“I think my soul says that I slept through art class in high school,” he said, apologetic.
Marion snickered lightly, letting her head fall a bit to the side so she could see what he produced. There were a lot of angles and points, but what she could tell, an equal amount of softer, rounder shapes; all of them entwined. Like looking at a pond when rain drops send random ripples to curl and conflict with each other.
“Well, I bet you drooled in a few interesting designs. Either way.” She teased him, again wrinkling her nose.
“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit,” she added, then nodded at the drawing and held a hand out. “May I?”
“I give myself credit when the situation warrants,” Gus was already laughing and shaking his head, “Yeah, here you go. Knock yourself out.”
He handed it over, actually sort of hoping that his rather phoned in doodle got him some top marks.
“Usually when I’m on the phone I just fill stuff in,” he offered, “I’m not really a shapes guy. More of a... wasting ink in disposable pens kind guy.”
“So empty shapes bother you?”
The question was intended not as a deep delve into his personality, but more along the lines of someone asking something to be explained. Marion’s eyes were on the ‘doodle’, which she framed with one hand and touched the pencil to with the other. Not a lot, just a few light passes that gave the random curves life, and the points a shaded edge.
“Guess so,” Gus said, not really thinking on it too deeply, either. He was more interested in what she was doing to it, “I don’t think they bother me, really. It’s just what I end up doing. That say anything about me?”
Marion didn’t even look up when she answered, “You finish that which you perceive as unfinished.”
Barely fifteen seconds had passed of her touching up and darkening specific areas when she suddenly stopped, setting the pencil to the side. “Food’s coming.” She shuffled the doodle to the side of the table, and propped it up between the little vase with the plastic daffodil and the brightly lit window; the shadow given by the sun cast a stained glass-like play of light on the table between them.
Gus raised an eyebrow. Sounded a little hokey to him, but it didn’t really ring false, either. He didn’t like loose ends. Who did, though?
“Huh?” he turned in his seat, and sure enough, their server was approaching. Gus looked at her sideways, but it made sense she would know. Right? She was facing the direction the server was coming from. While he was distracted, she propped up his picture, and he didn’t think it’d be polite to take it down. It was, however, a little embarrassing.
“If I had any idea how to interpret those,” he said once their server had given them their food and left, “I’d have you do one of those.”
Marion’s order was the same as she’d gotten every time she visited Avanti’s; a half loaf of their fragrant bread and a bowl of home made Wisconsin cheese soup. Not exactly very Italian, but it was the combination she’d tried her first time, and it was positively unmatched. She went to work prying a piece of the hard-crusted loaf off, and sent him a playful, if slightly challenging grin.
“I wasn’t ‘interpreting’ your drawing - I’m certainly no psychologist,” she said, dipping the soft part of the bread in the soup. Marion nodded at the wispy design of light and shadow between their plates. “I was admiring the picture.”
The Sheriff had gone with something generic as well - there was no going wrong with spaghetti bolognese.
“If you say so,” he said without any suspicion. He honestly believed she liked it. She was definitely the only one, but he supposed being a teacher made her more able to see merit in things that generally weren’t worthy of said merit, “Great spaghetti here, by the way. Well, great everything, but I’m a big fan of the classics.”
Another way of saying he wasn’t especially adventurous when it came to food. Marion’s meal was mostly bread and cheese, which was funny to him for some reason. Not a salad in sight.
The meal went by pleasantly, and Marion eat all of her soup without ever touching the soup spoon on the plate. All of it was sopped up by individual pieces of bread.
“I meant to ask you,” she said as the waitress scooped up their dishes and swooped away. Once the table was free, the art teacher filled her mug with still steaming water. The tea was some simple, generic brand, but aromatic, especially with the honey she mixed in. “How’s your job going?”
Gus had the check in front of him, and he produced a credit card once he’d filled in a tip, laying both the slip and the card on the edge of the table.
“Oh, how it usually goes,” he said with some cynicism, “We win some, we lose some. I would like to see how this place got by before that casino went up. There’s no such thing as a crime-free town, but I’m betting people used to be able to forget to lock their doors at night and not pay the price.”
He shook his head and offered Marion a smile, “We’re still on top of things,” he pointed out, “A lot of it is prevention, which is why I’ve been doing lots of boring assemblies at the schools.”
This lunch had been nice. Gus wasn’t so sure they had chemistry, but he enjoyed her company a whole lot. She was interesting. Probably a friendzone situation, especially since he actually knew her niece. He’d just never met Grace’s aunt before - now he had. What the hell did it say about him, that he had so many platonic friendships with women, anyway?
He was surprised that he thought of Justice, right then. He’d pretty much friendzoned her forever with what had happened at his place, and then the subsequent affirmation of what a good friend she was. And now, suddenly, he was ready to be back on the market? What was that about?
There was a visit to The Cellar in his future. For now, he focused on the present.