eddie likes to (riddlethem) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-03-22 11:21:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | cassandra cain, riddler |
Who: Breeze and Thea
When: Recently
Where: Bookstore!
What: two girls making friends but being cool about it ok
Warnings: swearin. poetry. lit kids.
Breeze was happy to have her own brain back. The riddles were tiresome, Gotham was ugly and the taste of defeat still burned in the back of her throat like a six dollar vodka. She didn’t hate Nigma the way someone might hate the clown or scarecrow for their sadistic spin. In fact, the only time he pulled her back was when she started making actual death traps for normal people out of a compulsion she didn’t understand and couldn’t fight on her own. His efforts to change and keep her out of Arkham earned a respect that wasn’t there before and that was something she didn’t think would come out of being Riddler for a month. But, now life was so quiet in the best way. She didn’t shut Nigma down as often as before, but sometimes she could achieve a sort of heavenly quiet with him on mute and world at a dull whisper.
Like right now. In this bookstore in the middle of the day. Very few people haunting the floor and those who were there stayed quiet like they were inside a temple. Her arms were usually full by the time she got to the counter where she sorted out the ones she didn’t need, but today she was happy simply looking through some old favorites and grazing through short stories that she could read before having to take the whole book home. Breeze found herself straying from any kind of fiction that starred a cerebral man or a con artist, and instead went to make herself comfortable in old poetry she learnt about in high school and her college classes. Stuff she pretended to not really care about with the other kids, but hid printed out copies of them under her bed and between her binder paper. Breeze wasn’t an intellect, not like Nigma, but she loved poetry. She loved stories. She loved fiction. And, that was what they had in common.
Breeze noticed someone else in the poetry section, a girl dressed like she was thrown through a thrift shop and checked her book stack carefully from behind a worn Tennyson compilation. Her dark eyes shifting between the girl on the floor and the pages in front of her. Making a quick assessment, she decided that the girl would like a personal favorite of hers: Robert Browning. Dark, flowery and Victorian as all hell. Maybe it was a little telling of the Arkham crazy in her head, but Breeze didn’t notice. Too hopeful for meaningful interaction. Too eager to share something she loved. Slipping forward with a gait like she was simply checking the different books on the shelf, Breeze dropped the Browning book on top of the girl’s stack and then moved a couple feet away like nothing had changed at all.
The girl crouched in the stacks was there, defiant of the time displayed on the back-to-front clock on the wall of the book store. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, all skinny striped knit tights and the kind of boots that could kick someone’s head in and it looked like it might be as much about comfort as it was casually blocking off the very corner of a set of stacks that were already half in shadow. She had picked her spot very carefully; there was history of feminist critique of poetry to the left and there was commentary on the neo-colonial shift in Spanish poetry from fourteen hundred to her right. Thea did not prefer poetry above all other possible books within the store but had selected the corner with an eye for the lack of light, the proximity of a stepping stool with a cracked first step that no one appeared to have noticed was missing and the very fact that the awkward oblong these particular stacks had been jammed into made it exceptionally easy to stretch out with a variety of reading material and glare mulishly at anyone who dared consider consulting letters D through L on this particular kind of poetic theory. She was crouched, like someone starving, and her back was curled over the book splayed open in her lap - another tucked beneath the hardcovers, like it had been forgotten.
She noticed the girl the way one notices a shift in light; she noticed her legs and she noticed the wooden slide of books against the shelves. It was a sound Thea found comforting, like sweater sleeves that you could tuck your thumbs inside, and black and white movies, and getting into cold sheets in warm jammies. It was familiar, it did not require translation and it was popular the world over. The hiss and slap of freed books was like an escapee’s cry of freedom and triumph, and Thea permitted the intrusion into the poetry section with only the vaguest of glances to note that it was a) female, b) young and c) not dressed in a t-shirt with some fucking obscure musical written across the back with a date, like it was a point of pride for no one to know what the hell you were referencing. (The latter, Thea had found within two weeks of attending school here, was common. It was also really fucking annoying, but no one else seemed to agree. Mostly because they too, were wearing obscure musical t-shirts.) However, there was an utter lack of this, just flat Converse moving in and out of her field of vision, and Thea settled, the edgy way people do when it is a new bolt-hole but a nice one they wish to colonize.
A book was on her pile.
Thea blinked, stringy blond hair in curtains either side of her face; she pushed one length of it back, skinny, long fingers competent in a familiar, unconscious gesture, flicking back behind her ear. Yep, definitely a book on her pile. There was a volume from C. Yardley about Renaissance thought on top of a bright pink book about the mysteries of Atlantis, but on top of that was a slim, nondescript volume of Browning. Thea’s piles were big enough and grandiose enough that people sometimes mistook them for artful book display on the part of the store but her pile wasn’t big enough for that today. This was either deliberate or the girl in the Converse had just forgotten her book. Thea nudged it; her thumb was red around the knuckle, like she’d been chewing it whilst reading, and the nail was painted, peeling metallic blue.
“Hey,” she said, neutral - it was quiet, the way Thea was quiet, despite the bright pink sweater. (It was ironic). “You forgot your book.” And she slid back into her own - not that she was reading, not entirely but she kept one eye on the page and her head down, the way you do when you don’t particularly want to start something but you want to watch.
Breeze rocked on her dark, dark green converses, toe to heel the way they teach you in tap dancing lessons when you’re seven. Only it was a bored kind of shuffle. Like Breeze knew the move by heart, but hated it the way fat kids hate stepping on the scale at the doctors. She was a good contrast to the twiggy blonde on the floor. Skinny jeans tucked into her dirty shoes, t-shirt black with a single hole near the shoulder because Target didn’t give a damn about their quality and a dark red zip up sweatshirt that didn’t match the shoes but she clearly didn’t care either. Dark eyes. Dark hair pulled back and maybe a day unwashed. Eyes keen like someone who wasn’t supposed to like bookstores, but wandered in there alone more than she liked to admit. She looked down at the girl and didn’t smile, but there was a rough lift in her voice. Friendly, if not a little worn. “I left it there.” Each word was mumbled, but not from shyness. She didn’t look away and she didn’t blush.
“Browning is one of my favorite poets. You’d dig him.” Breeze explained, instinctively thumbing through the Tennyson in her hands as the girl looked back down at her book. Flipping through the pages lightly like she was reading every other word with the tip of her fingertips. “It’s mostly poems spoken from the characters themselves. Like one guy who loved his wife a lot, but she smiled at other people too much so he got kind of crazy about it.” Breeze’s voice twisted like she was murmuring a ghost story she heard about the local graveyard. It was funny in a dry way. Removed to cover up a real passion for something because she was trained to know it wasn’t cool. “Or some chick thinking aloud while she’s mixing a poison. It’s creepy and kind of funny at the same time.” Breeze ended her description proudly. Lovingly, even.
Thea didn’t do bookstore meetings. They were meet-cutes, in the kind of films that she made bored little noises about, the kind that were stacked around the DVD player back in DC because that was what Mom liked to downtime with, all pink-plastic packaging and bubblegum storylines and total holes in logic. She looked at the Converse and her eyes travelled up, all the way up, like she could read the girl as well as the book and it wasn’t total disinterest but it was casual, calm. She looked at the book and she slid it off the stack. The rest of her nails were painted the same color but splintered, as if she’d done it a week ago and had spent the entire two hours sat on the bookstore floor picking it off with her teeth. She didn’t open the first page and she didn’t read the contents. She flipped to the back of the book, to the last poem listed and she read that, instead.
She took her time. Thea was not a fast or slow reader, she was methodical and she didn’t care if it was rude or if it was weird that she was reading a poem instead of talking to the girl. The poet, Browning, had been flagged like he was important - like the girl liked him like kids liked their first crush, quiet and secretive, doodles in the back of a notebook instead of screaming about it. Thea gave time to important; she collected the stuff that meant something to people. She read the poem and she closed the book, and she added it to a pile to her left, out of sight in the shadow cast by the stacks. It was a smaller pile, one dipped into the space near her elbow. Protected. “Do you give poetry books to everyone?” Thea was looking at the page of her book, conversational - like she’d asked where the girl had bought her Converse from. She looked up - she squinted, the girl was in the light - and a flicker of a smile came and it went like Thea hadn’t bothered enough with it to keep it. “Does the bookstore like, employ you or something?”
Breeze would have been disappointed if the girl just took her word for it and left the book there as she returned to whatever she was reading. That would be a sure sign of being brushed off and Breeze would have made a noise in the back of her throat and grumbled her way out of the store. She wanted friends, but she wasn’t always sure how to make them. And, just like any young woman, once she put herself out there, being shot down or ignored stung for days like a cat scratch. So, when the girl blasted to the back of Browning’s collection and started to read, Breeze barely smiled to herself and looked down at Tennyson in her hands. But, she didn’t read any of it. Instead, she nudged and nudged Eddie. I’m not doing Porphyria’s if that’s what you’re asking for, he finally responded all smarmy and she could practically hear him rummage for something else. Something from Men and Women? No, no. Do Porphyria. I’m not doing it. Do you know how inappropriate that poem is? And, it went round and round like that the entire time the girl read.
Still in the midsts of pulling verses from Nigma’s teeth, Breeze snapped back to reality when the girl spoke and shrugged. “Yeah, I’m like a poetry Easter Bunny come early or something.” Breeze put her Tennyson on top of a row of other books and crossed her arms, reflecting the casual with even more casual like this was some kind of anti-dance contest. “Your stack of books just needed some color, that’s all.” This time there was a hint of a smile. Friendly and harmless.
Color. Right. Thea lifted the books out of the shadow, one by one - the books the girl couldn’t have seen, and stacked them silently, one on top of the other, spines out. A veritable fucking rainbow, all glossy paperbacks interspersed with hardcover, gold titles stamped versus loopy ‘handwriting’ style signatures. They were a selection from across the store; it could have been the returns pile, for all the method there appeared to be in the choice. An academic text on treaties of war, nestled up close like it was whispering secrets to a book on feminism from the seventies, all burn the bra and righteous anger over gender roles. A flippant guide to the renaissance next to a volume of Rilke - notably not in translation. Thea looked at the girl. She looked at the Tennyson in her hand. She raised an eyebrow. Slowly.
Thea did not make friends often. Friends - definition: the essence of companionship, the kind of people who knew your poetic taste, what color you wore when you felt shitty, what your cat in second grade had been called (Thea had never had a cat). She caught herself up in the nexus of other people easily, the effortlessness of not caring and of not giving a shit about sneaking beer into a party (drinking wine at the dinner table mixed with water from, like, five had effectively killed that little buzz) and other dumb crap made it easy. You knocked up against someone else and you bonded over the plaid skirts that were supposed to end on the knee, and calculus and the brand of iced green tea you liked. Rarely over poetry.
Thea narrowed her eyes, and she looked at the Tennyson once more, all thumbs tucked into sweater sleeves and evasive maneuver at the ready. Tennyson was lightweight, Tennyson was easy; it could be forgiven with a sophmore poetry course or the need for background reading for a history paper. There was nothing to say the girl in chucks and a teeshirt that wouldn’t be sold in any thrift store outside the former Dust Bowl actually read poetry but a lilt in the voice like she’d fallen in love or something.
“Thea,” she said, like it was a comment on the weather. “It’s not Italian, so don’t be pretentious and make it like, tea, or whatever.”
Breeze tilted her hip in a sassy, just past teenage stance as Thea looked her and Tennyson over. Before Gotham she might have raised her shoulders or looked away, but strutting around the Narrows in heels and fishnets while she twirled a giant, metal cane changed her for good. She knew how girls were, especially smart girls who made book forts on the ground like they were going to literary war. They thought they were different from the kind who bounced their way into student government or the cheer squad, but the superiority thing and the checklists in their head made them the same. Breeze didn’t pretend to be above that shit, either, but she had played high school social games enough to get how it all worked.
“Jen, but everyone calls me Breeze.” She lifted her eyebrows proudly. Reigning champion of the weird name Olympics. “It’s not French, so don’t be pretentious and make it like, Breezeeah, or whatever.” Breeze smirked, taking a seat across from Thea and thinking over the books she saw in the secret and open piles. “What’s with the gender stuff?”
Thea smiled. It was a small smile, but it was real instead of pandering and she dipped her head and the blond hair fell like curtains either side of her face, screening her off and shutting her and her smile effectively away. “Not French, got it,” she said, like it was a dumb thing to be, and she looked back at her own book stash like she was seeing it as someone new. Thea didn’t read at random, but she didn’t read in order. She zig-zagged, she read about Amelia Earhart and she moved on to Marie Curie and then she read about chemical elements and their history. There was a pattern, it just wasn’t visible, and Thea liked it like that. It meant impenetrability without trying, when trying wasn’t cool and it meant she could lug her backpack of books back to the place that wasn’t home, and her aunt’s couch and she could read in full view and no one understood unless they understood.
She shrugged skinny shoulders; the sweater slid, exposed skin the color of milk and the bump of a collarbone. “It’s not like, a thing or anything,” she said, like Things were something to be avoided. She looked at Jen - Breeze - with interest, studied the tear in her shirt like it was something to notice, and she twined her fingers together, wrapped her hands around her knees and tugged them, tight against her chest.
“I was reading something that made me want to read about it. What’s with the Tennyson?”
Breeze reached her arms out over her knees instinctively, stretching and trying to make herself comfortable, but snapped one arm back as it pulsed with a bone deep pain. She wasn’t in the pain or physical condition Nigma was in, but she still felt like her face wasn’t right and her arms we about as useful as strands of noodles. When the appearance of pain was left beyond the door, it was easy to forget about it. People didn’t gawk and that was good because there was nothing better to gawk at than a young woman covered in bruises. While it made Nigma some kind of Old Gotham war hero, it made Breeze a battered woman who either didn’t know when to stop bitching or a victim of some guy who liked to get too rough. How was that for gender studies? Playing it off like she just had a weird kink in her arm, Breeze smiled down between her sneakers. “Good. I didn’t want some weird lecture. Or for you to get offended that I even asked.” And she flicked a look up at Thea that said everything they both knew about women who couldn’t ease up a little. Breeze was on their side, she just rolled her eyes at every lecture they had for her.
“I’ve only read the stuff they teach in class.” Breeze rubbed her fingers against the cover of Tennyson thoughtfully. “I always feel an obligation to get a taste of the B-sides before I make any real judgements, you know?”
Her posture was weird, like she’d forgotten she couldn’t do something until she tried - the movement was too sharp, too quick to be anything but a forgetting. Thea noticed with interest, and she leaned forward, looping the long hair behind her ear with her finger and thumb and watched Breeze with the shrewd, blue-eyed intensity of a people-watcher at work. “I don’t get offended,” Thea said, truthfully. She tried - often - to offend other people - to see where the lines were drawn and whether they could be stepped over but Thea was too aware of all the things that could possibly be said about her that were offensive to be at all bothered by them. She was elbows on knees now, and the tiny kind of smile that was yeah, those women, and she shrugged, the comma of her spine drawing a shallower curve.
“They can’t teach poetry,” Thea said with an adult’s dismissal of the genre of literature, of classes where books were read and parsed and deconstructed, each phrase examined and picked clean like bones in fish. “It’s about feeling. Most people who teach can’t feel,” her eyes darted back to Breeze, the cards laid down in front of her, a hand she was daring Breeze to play with her.
Breeze’s posture turned careful, sticking to one sitting pose that had the least amount of pain and she thought distantly how maybe this one time she’d let Eddie paw over some drugs from his side. She was the type who was afraid to even use too much ibuprofen and edged away from people who smoked too much pot, but damn she didn’t want to feel this way anymore. And, for the first time during their meeting, Breeze shied away from being studied. She wasn’t afraid of who she was, but girls like her were always afraid of showing fresh weakness. Eyes darting from her fingers pressed against the book and then up to Thea. A moment of gathering fortitude and then she was fine. Breeze was a girl used to working on her emotions.
She hummed in thought, head resting back against the bookcase as she looked at the top shelf and imagined reaching long, impossibly stretchy arms to grab the books up. “I think a lot of teachers want to feel. I think they desperately want to feel.” Breeze said after a moment, shifting through the different passionate teachers she had through her life. “Or maybe they used to, but they had to teach the same thing over and over again until it got dull. Like a song. Not your favorite song, but one you like. You listen to it too much and suddenly it’s dull like a butter knife.” Her mouth upturned in a tiny frown like she locked her car keys in the front seat and she looked down at Thea. “So, maybe it’s been a while for them, you know? I mean. When was the last time you really felt something? I can’t remember.” Breeze could remember how Nigma felt. She remembered thinking that psychopaths weren’t supposed to feel anything, but sometimes his mind went positively electric with it and she’d let the sensation move over her.
Thea curled in upon herself, like an anemone something had brushed too close to. She tucked her cheek against her knee with her arms fastened around her legs and she looked at Breeze thoughtfully, behind pale eyelashes and the sway of blond hair. The books lay littered around; like tombstones. Breeze spoke like it was okay to talk about feeling, like it wasn’t uncool or you weren’t supposed to not care - that, Thea supposed, was cool in itself. She had paused, like maybe Thea had looked too long or in the wrong place, staring at someone on the subway kind of wrong, but a beat later, the rhythm was back, the flow. Thea relaxed; it was the softening of her shoulders, the rigidity fading.
“All the time,” Thea said simply, and she hugged her knees all the tighter, locking her fingers together. “It’s why I think it’s bullshit.” It was an adult word and a tight, small posture, the way an adult wouldn’t sit at all, wouldn’t fit. Thea was despising of adults, the real kind who trudged to work and back like that was some kind of purpose. “I don’t think you can forget feeling. Not even if you feel the same thing over and over, I think you’d feel it more.” She shrugged, a tight little construction of shoulder and neck, and she smiled at Breeze, magnanimous, forgiving. It was a soft, wide kind of smile, impish at the corners.
“But I’m totally willing to be convinced about the Browning.”
Breeze’s eyes lit up a little from their usually dull monotone. She related to honesty and her people were open wounds, people who were willing to keep thinking things through until it unraveled into some kind of mess. If you asked, she liked to think of herself as a young Bill Murray. Sometimes susceptible to anger and huffy fits, but drawn back and friendly in a cranky kind of way. Like someone who worked at the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and got paid to be a little rude and creepy to tourists. “That’s true. But, some people need to be reminded. Or awakened.” Breeze offered a tiny smile, looking down at Tennyson and deciding that she ought to grab something pulpy and ridiculous to balance him out. No suggestions from the Riddler peanut gallery..
“Cool.” She said about Browning the way someone said cool about a new video game or a hilarious cat video on the internet. Breeze made a small noise of approval and then gathered her book up. “This is so lame but,” Breeze reached into her jacket for a tiny pen the size of a pinky finger and a notebook not much bigger. She scribbled her number with a large Breeze above it and handed it to Thea. “Call or text me if you wanna book talk or whatever. You seem rad.” And, there was no irony in her voice that she used a word like rad that originated years before either of them were even born. She liked words the same way she liked old pop songs.
With a careful wobble, holding onto the bookcase as she stood, Breeze cradled Tennyson in her hand and then gave a tiny wave before wandering over to the sci-fi.