Who: Michael and Connor What: A diner meetup during the dust storm. Where: The diner where Michael works. When: Backdated to the dust bowl event. Warnings/Rating: None
Connor had only been in his car for a few minutes when the wind started to pick up and carry dust, more and more, until visibility was down to practically nothing and he was driving at a crawl. It was enough to make him wonder if his intended trip to Michael’s diner was worth it after all, but he was more than halfway there - no sense in turning back now.
In truth, his own motivations were a bit of a mystery to him. The best he could manage to come up with was that Michael himself remained something of a mystery. He knew that he was often unable to let things go until he’d sufficiently dissected them, flayed them open and read what was inside. Better yet, there was something about Michael that felt familiar, and yet very different from himself. He wanted to know why that was, and the only way he would find out was by learning more.
It was nice to have a hobby, after all. He couldn’t spend all of his time hunting down criminals and researching the wicked and the bizarre. Everyone needed an interest.
By the time he arrived at the diner, he couldn’t see more than a few feet. He parked as close to the front doors as he could manage and made the trip from the car a sprint, one arm over his eyes to protect them from the stinging sand. He stepped inside alongside a few other pedestrians who’d happened by on the sidewalk and were quickly congregating inside the diner for shelter. Connor brushed off his suit (straight from work, of course) and looked around for any sign of Michael. He half expected that he would be long gone, headed straight home once the weather got rough. That would be practical, the sort of move someone who’d found the wherewithal to flee foster care might make. Every man for himself.
Michael had been listening to the wind howling, because he’d never heard anything like that before, and he had heard men and women howl gales in ways that he assumed no sound could ever top. He put his hands on the cool metal on the kitchen-side of the slide, a rectangular opening that he had to duck his head to see through, the massive shoulders hunching down to fit into the expectation of a window, room, building all made too small for him. He felt that the world was built that way, all of it, and it didn’t make him feel big, it made him feel like he was the wrong shape. Sometimes he wanted to cut other people to fit into it too, and sometimes he wanted to fit into it himself. It depended on the day.
He turned his head toward the door automatically because that was what the sound of the bell did to the people in the diner, called their eyes toward something nobody was likely to see unless it was hourglass shaped in a red dress. A radio soaked with static was attempting to read out the news into the still air in the main room of the diner, which boasted ten booths, four tables, and a counter where red stools with no backs stood mostly unoccupied. It was obvious that the diner was not attempting to do any real business or enforce any general rules. Bunches of people sat around, some of the floor to wait out the worst of the dust, some waiting at tables. Most people had a glass of water, no ice, next to their hands or elbows. No one was eating, though there was some empty plates with crumbs, which suggested a pared down but available menu. Quiet, awkward people forced together by natural disaster had a specific look on their faces: grateful, uncertain, vaguely apologetic.
Michael’s expression was not only calm, it was vaguely interested. This was a new experience, something he hadn’t lived through before. He recognized Connor as soon as he came through the door, and he took his hands off the top of the slide, his head temporarily disappearing from view as he straightened up. A few seconds later he was pushing through the swinging door at one end of the counter. Most people, including a tired waitress propped against one of the stools, looked vaguely surprised at this new development, watching Michael duck through the door and straighten up to his full height. More people in the room stared, trying to comprehend his large-ness the way they tried to comprehend the storm.
The generator’s engine was working somewhere in the back of the kitchen, and Michael looked across the register at the newcomers. “Pull it shut,” he said, obviously referring the door and the amount of dust trying to make it into the diner. His voice was so soft that a third of the people in the room, the ones who had not yet looked away, leaned in unconsciously in an attempt to hear it.
Most of the group of people were so busy wiping dust from their eyes, glasses, lapels, and subtly emptying it out of the bottom of their bras by grabbing the straps and lifting to empty, that they didn't hear Michael's quiet request. Those that had only spent a short time in the dust, like Connor, heard Michael just fine. Connor was the only one that moved, however - the others were busy staring. He reached back and yanked the door shut until it clicked. Not exactly airtight, and a little dust still sifted against the bottom of the door jam, but it would be good enough.
Connor didn't stay by the door long, however. As the fresh crop of dazed people spun in by the dust found places to sit, he moved toward the long bar, just past Michael, sitting on the red stool at the end, closest to the door. He spun to face him, running a hand through his hair to get some of the dust out of it. "Your diner has a plague problem.”
The majority of the room went back to what they were doing. Michael was huge, in a human kind of way, but when he did not sprout wings or roar in subhuman rage, most people accepted the new dimensions of humanity and moved on with their lives. Michael had long accepted there was something about his size and expression that made people expect violence from him. On most days he was pleased with that, as it meant he could never be the kind of predator his father had been. He watched Connor, who was probably more aware than nine-tenths of the population, make his way into the diner, and Michael didn’t inhibit the path to the counter. After a moment, he moved parallel, staying on his side of the counter. His head tipped from side to side as he worked out some of the kinks in his neck, the kitchen ceiling somehow seemed lower than the dining room as a whole.
“The diner does?” Michael said in his incongruent voice. It had the some faint syllabant sound as the dust did as it wailed against the glass windows. “You mean plagued by permanent guests?” Michael was not as stupid as he looked and he obviously found his conclusion vaguely amusing. His mouth creased. Nobody came up to him to order food, they just shuffled in like lost cards to a deck.
"Very much like locusts," Connor said. He plucked a sugar packet from the square holder and turned it against the counter under his thumb, firing it from one hand to the other across the formica. "They come in a wave and eat all the food," he explained, glancing behind. No one was ordering food yet, but they would be, once they recovered and shook some of the dust out. People were predictable in many ways, and Connor had a lot of the routines down. In times of crisis food was a balm for many. Reminded them they were still alive. He wondered idly if anyone had died out in the storm when it struck up so swiftly, driving their cars into poles or walking off badly railed balconies.
It amused Connor a little that everyone simply stared, then accepted Michael's enormous presence and moved on with trying to cope with the cataclysmic situation they'd just escaped. Maybe storms straight from the bible made you find the unexpected less so. That would be a logical explanation. "I didn't bring it," Connor said, gesturing to the door and currents of dust flowing through the air outside, spattering against the windows like vicious snow. "I just came for lunch."
Michael looked down at him. “Funny time,” he said. He wasn’t altogether displeased, yet he managed to still communicate a general distrust of everything that Connor represented or could ever be. Michael turned and slowly began to make coffee. This was obviously not a common sight, as the waitress was watching with wary fascination, but Michael felt that here he was on firm ground, and no threat dared be too large when he was here. Whatever and whoever forced him out of this warren would live to regret it.
With his distorted long fingers he plucked out the damp cone of old grounds and dropped it carefully into a nearby bin. Turning his knuckles, he wiped his fingers on his apron, which was stained down the hips and waist, with splashes of red up to about his middle chest. That was about as high as the counter reached, one had to imagine. Michael’s long sleeves were only rolled twice, just off the wrist, and despite the heat he looked as stoic as ever. He started the coffee and then poured a glass of water. He did not offer ice as he set it down on the seat in front of Connor. The clear liquid sloshed smoothly from side to side. “What makes you better than a locust?” he asked.
Connor took the water and downed about half the glass while Michael was talking. He hadn't dared open his mouth in the dust storm outside, but some had still come into his throat breathing through his nose, and the water was a welcome balm for his dusty throat. Then he removed his jacket, which was dusty itself and doing nothing except stifle him in the heat. "A little more conscience," he answered, loosening his tie. Debatable indeed. He couldn't say he was dissimilar in sweeping through and devouring things other people had sown. But they weren't good things, and the people they belonged to had no right to reap anything else.
"Do you like working here?" Connor asked, staring up at Michael where he towered somewhere around the ceiling. He thought on it a moment, then pulled his tie off altogether, blinking hard, once, to get the dust from the tie passing over his face out of his eyes. "Does it suit you?"
To Michael, the removal of the jacket and the settling on the stool suggested that Connor didn’t plan on leaving anytime soon, and he was generally reassured by the comfort Conner displayed with this little visit. It meant that he didn’t have any real agenda, and Michael was reassured by that. For a few moments he stood there and surveyed the rest of the crowd, who were barely human, just empty upturned faces tinged with bland desert dust. He felt nothing for them, and instead listened to the burble of the coffeemaker, one ear out for the sound of his oven timer.
He put one hand the length of a fry pan down on the counter and leaned on it casually, his dark eyes concentrated and unblinking. Lizardlike, Michael did not need to blink as often as most people. “It pays the bills,” Michael answered, to the first question, and then he turned his head on its axis about ten degrees for the second question. “I don’t know. Does it?”
Connor looked at Michaels hand for a moment, mile-wide there on the counter, and then looked up again. "Not my question to answer," he said, cordial as could be. He set the water glass back down on the counter, empty now, and leaned over the countertop a little. "Is it what you want to be doing?"
Connor had a general sense that Michael might or might not know what he wanted to do. The man was enough a mystery that he couldn't pin that one down. Maybe the diner was a safe place, and what he wanted seemed inconsequential in comparison. Maybe it was a way station because there was nothing else he found interesting enough to bother with. Many men had dreams, but Michael seemed like the type who had them well guarded or didn't have them at all. So naturally, that made him want to ask directly about them. He was still trying to work Michael out, figure out what was at the core of him. He was sure that once he had that, he would understand the rest better.
Connor didn't know that this was the impulse to seek likeness, or real friendship. He could pretend to know what those things were, but he didn't, not really. He felt curiosity, and knew it only as that.
If Michael had been designed for such things as human connection to begin with, the impulse had been taken out of him very young, probably frozen over with dry ice, packed away with shattered slivers of bone and cold, staring orbs of flesh that used to be eyes. It was not that he could not make any connection, he had discovered it was possible to care, possible if he was careful about the circumstances and and the words he chose to keep behind his teeth. Instead, Michael had to decide he wanted to talk to someone, the way some people decided they might choose a pet for company. It was a great deal of responsibility and required more effort than simply living.
Michael had to think about it. “Cooking is better than not cooking.” It wasn’t quite a straight reply, but Michael nodded agreement, making the answer closer to “yes” than it might otherwise have been.
Belatedly, Michael followed Connor’s gaze down to his hand on the counter. The knuckles were pink with kitchen use, rough with repeated sterilization, the bones standing out hard and macabre against the burn-speckled skin. The scars his father left were on the inside of his arm, out of sight, but he pulled the limb away in a defensive gesture that he could not control. Like most people, Michael had an easier time controlling his mouth than his body. Passing it off as unimportant, Michael pulled at his sleeves and then at his apron.
The oven timer went off with a harsh buzz that made it through the hiss of the dust storm, and half the room looked around for the source. Michael turned and disappeared back behind the slide in three strides. There was some rattling around, metal surfaces vying for attention, and a fresh flush of scent: greasy meat, fresh pastry, and tomato sauce with a liberal tinge of garlic.
That satisfied Connor, mostly. There was just enough to it that it wasn't quite a non-answer, and that was enough. Michael's hands were a testament in skin to his vocation, and he was just making that connection when Michael pulled his hand sharply back.
Connor looked up. That kind of reflexive flinching back was familiar to him. He'd seen it a lot growing up in the other kids, hiding their walking wounds, scars from old beatings or self-harm. Some of the ones who did it had skin smooth as an acre of unbroken snow, but they had reasons to pull back too. Not about things that might be seen, for them, but things that might be reached. It was all about vulnerability, though, drawing in and making a tighter, harder surface with nothing to grab hold of.
When the buzzer broke the silence, Connor said nothing. He waited, watching as Michael smoothly executed his disappearing act into the kitchen. He still spun the packet of sugar between his fingers, and he waited for Michael to return. For once, he didn't bother to cover his interest. What was not quite right behind his eyes was naked there, staring and curious, hungry to know more.
There was some scraping and banging around in the kitchen, and Michael reappeared. His right hand was covered in a burnt up old oven mitt that barely went past his wrist, and he effortlessly held up an oven sheet that resembled the outside of a tank after battle. A dozen oblong pasties stayed flat along the surface of the pan as Michael moved, and he stopped behind the counter in a cloud of glorious scents: simmering hamburger meat, savory oregano, mouth-watering garlic and crisped parmesan cheese. The pastries looked to be constructed of flaky dough not unlike that of a croissant.
Michael bent down and took a massive round plate meant for pies out from under the counter. He summarily dumped the pasties onto the plate, where they tumbled into a pile of crispy, palm-sized meals. Little bits of dough slid off in all directions, and the creation did not resemble thick Cornish pasties in the least. The Italian scents didn’t remind anyone of turnips and stewed beef, either.
Michael surveyed the room. About a dozen heads were craning their necks with interest, including the waitress. The massive man pointed at the bowl. “Five bucks a pop. Not vegetarian. They’re hot. Dessert is later.” And pointedly he went back into his kitchen, only reappearing again when most of the scavengers had returned to their resting places. He poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned against the wall, facing Connor once more.
By the time the scavengers descended and then fluttered away from the plate, almost everything was gone, and Connor was quietly picking apart his own handheld pie creation. He tended to forget he was hungry until food was quite literally under his nose, and the scent coming off the plate had reminded him strongly that he hadn't had breakfast, or dinner the night before. "It's good," he said, when Michael reappeared with his coffee. More detail seemed irrelevant. He couldn't name the spices that were in it or how it might have been made - Connor's knowledge base tended toward the centralized and specific, and there wasn't much about food or cooking in it. But he knew what he liked, and this was more than simply edible. It was good enough that obvious talent and care had gone into making it. "Better than good," he added, after tearing off another sizable chunk. "Worth more than five dollars." In one of the better restaurants on the Michelin-choked strip, Michael could have charged an arm and a leg for a plated version of the meal in Connor's hands. "There are a lot of places around here where you could cook things like this," he said. "Why aren't you there?"
The coffee cup seemed dwarfed by Michael’s large hands, and his skull seemed strangely close to his skin as such a small, harmlessly ceramic thing came up to his mouth and floated back down again. Michael watched Connor eating, keeping a careful eye on his expression and showing more interest in what the other man was saying and thinking than he ever had before. Michael liked to know what people thought of his food. It trumped most other feelings and interests.
Michael smiled a pleased smile. It went all the way across his face, a gentle, self-satisfied smile, not unlike the kind small children wore after presenting mudpies to whomever would pretend to eat one.
“No credentials,” Michael said, sipping his coffee. “I don’t like paper on me. People don’t like that. And I look dangerous.” His dark eyes slid slowly upwards to the ceiling, through it, out into the sky that rolled with desert rubble. “I could be dangerous.” He shrugged. It was not what he liked to think, but he had no trouble admitting it.
That flutter of pleasure and interest on Michael's face was arresting mostly because Connor hadn't seen anything like it from Michael thus far. The smile was still a surprise, however. Connor stopped tearing bits off the pasty-like thing and stared instead, for a moment. He wouldn't forget that expression, or the praise of Michael's cooking that had prompted it.
Connor nodded in silent consensus. Michael did look dangerous. It was what had first caught his attention about him, the obviousness of that in his physicality, the lean of him, suggesting brutality. He was beginning to think that was incorrect, however. Capable of violence, yes. Tending toward it? He doubted that, now. But there was no doubt in Connor's mind that Michael could be very dangerous indeed. "I don't doubt it," he said, mildly. He popped another piece of the swiftly diminishing pasty into his mouth. "With provocation," he added. It meant to him the opposite of what it commonly would. With provocation, there could be violence. But not without, and that made it positive, not negative, by most moral standards.
Michael expected Connor to argue. Not about looking dangerous, but about the paperwork. Every legally employed person he knew seemed to enjoy telling Michael that his paranoia was unfounded and that he was being ridiculous. There was no technical reason, legal or otherwise, for Michael to avoid putting his real name on a piece of paper. Legally no one could deny him a job based on his name, they would say. Michael knew that was bullshit. Any employer with eyes and a sense of self-preservation would find a reason not to hire him. Even his pseudonym, which was not a legal name change, was an easy connect to who he was, and the journalists, press and biography-writers would eventually show up. It was only a matter of time.
Michael raised his eyebrows at Connor’s affirmative response and lifted his coffee cup again. Interesting. “Most people just say, ‘why, just put your name down?’” Michael said what was on his mind more than might be smart, because he only censored the graphic or non-empathetic thoughts. The rest bubbled to the surface like soap bubbles.
The paperwork didn't bother Connor. Small legal violations hardly registered on his radar, really. No doubt many of the people he'd been in foster care with now worked without papers or legal recognition from the establishment. As far as he was concerned, the things people lost by opting to live off the grid in such a way were theirs to lose, if they wished, or if they were forced to do so.
Connor considered Michael's suggestion. Yes, that did seem like a more normal response than not being bothered by the fact that he was working without papers. But Connor had been feeling tired, of late. His life had grown to be so abnormal that feigning normality seemed more exhausting than it ever had before, and sometimes his honest opinion was simply more interesting to him to express, so he might actually find out what he wanted to know. Small talk was easy to fake, but deadening. Go without it, however, and people looked at you sideways. Say you didn't care about whether someone's family members died of a terrible disease got you dirty looks and trouble finding work. So many things to remember - so many motions to feign, like a bad old silent movie. Connor finished his pasty, considered pretending a growing outrage, and dismissed the idea. It didn't seem necessary, here, with Michael, who had his own problems to cope with and no reason to spread the word that Connor was a bit odd. "If you don't want to, you shouldn't," Connor said, looking up, grey eyes all still steel. "You’ve thought about the risks,” he added, since he couldn’t imagine how Michael wouldn’t have. “So just don’t get caught.”
“Caught,” Michael repeated. His expression was lost somewhere between anger and resentment, not directly at Connor but at the implication of the caution. “Nothing to catch me for. I got a card to handle food safely, something says I’m allowed to work in this country. If I don’t put my real name down on the paper, this guy can fire me, but he’s not going to call the cops for something like that.” Perhaps it was a very, very slight risk. If the cops thought he did something and wanted an excuse to haul him in, maybe that stuff at the bottom of the employment form might count for something, but he doubted it.
Michael was not well-educated but he wasn’t stupid. He read the fine print and if he didn’t know what something was, he looked it up. Not paranoid but careful, he watched the people around him and scared off anything that posed a threat. Connor was such a strange appearance in his personal landscape that he hardly knew what to make of him even when he was sitting right there.
Michael took Connor’s empty plate and put it under the counter in a tub for dishes. He plucked up one or two more plates that arrived, and directed the limp five-dollar bills toward the bland waitress at the end of the counter. “I still want to know what you wear the suit for. Office job. Something dangerous?”
The brief flare of words caught Connor's attention, and he wouldn't forget what prompted them. What was in a name, after all, if not a series of deceits that created an identity? Michael might be running or something, or he might believe in conspiracies. Connor suspected the former first. He had a hard time imagining Michael shaking at the threat of a government agency brainwashing the citizens through the fluoride in their water.
The query about Connor's job drew his mouth into a vague twist. "Very," he said, bland as could be. The smile didn't entirely reach his eyes, but almost nothing did. Michael wasn't a fool. Sooner or later (would there be a later?) he would read enough clues from his dress and the way he always seemed busy with something or other when the world was in upheaval, and a light bulb would go off. "The most dangerous office job there is."