Naomi Richardson, M.D. (hiswidowedbride) wrote in mnhttnprjct, @ 2010-05-13 20:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, naomi richardson, norris hale |
Who: The Doctors - Naomi and Norris
What: Tulips, trees, tomatoes, and tea.
Where: At the Robin Hood Public Auction.
When: 4 May 2029, just after the events of the auction.
Rating: This log was brought to you by the letter T. Seriously. It's harmless.
“Sold!” the auctioneer slammed his gavel into the podium, and the hall was suddenly filled with the sound of sighs, disappointed and relieved, bored and exhausted, the sound of the city’s most elite all deciding at once that they had had enough of one another’s company for one day, and that no matter what they had managed to lay claim to today, only the man going home in the bright, red Cadillac would go home a crowned champion. From her vantage on the dais at the front of the hall, Dr. Naomi Richardson sighed as well. Oh, she continued to smile, of course, bright as the overhead chandeliers reflection that bounced off the polished door handles of the car, but the straps of her navy blue dress lifted imperceptibly from her skin as her shoulders slouched in resignation. It had been a tiring afternoon of tea trays and wardrobes and diamond earrings held up to her cheek to be made examples of, and with the final, winning bid on that car, she felt herself nearly giving in to fatigue. But as she stepped down from the dais, one red patent leather pump at a time, she embarked upon Stage Two of the event: mingling. She knew very well she wasn’t about to escape without congratulating the winners and thanking them for taking such an interested in such an important cause. “Yes, it’s our duty to help those who can’t help themselves,” she’d say, and, “I’m glad we had such a fantastic turn-out! It’s great to see so many people willing to do their part,” and so on, until everyone had had their turn, and the hall was nearly empty, save for a few straggling would-be buyers, and some half-empty champagne glasses. Norris had sat towards the back of the auction hall. He felt out of place amongst the elite of New York, and watched as diamond earrings, antique lamps, and little teacups passed in a blur. He had only risen his hand once, to place a very small bid on a rather nice lamp, but the bids following his had been too outrageous for his small professor's salary. Well, it had been worth a try, he thought, a wry smile on his face as he watched a little old lady snap up his coveted lamp. He glanced down at the tulips in his lap. They were beginning to wilt in the heat of the hall. Finally, oh yes finally, the auction ended, and a new phase of the auction seemed to begin. Norris stood as the rest of the bidders seemed to gather in little circles and discuss the preceding events. It didn't much interest him to jealousy harpoon the winner of the convertible. He, after all, had not much of a chance in such affairs, nor did he really want to. It was enough trouble convincing his students to take him seriously without owning a candy apple red convertible. Keeping the tulips close to him -- they had previously been half-hidden in his floor-length brown leather jacket but the hall's heat had forced him to shed that layer long ago -- Norris navigated his way through the crowd until he found himself nearer to the front. His rather old, if not well-ironed, blue suit with brown leather patches on the elbows seemed to keep the elites at a distance. It was as if Norris had stumbled out of a comedy act, carrying an array of different colored tulips and wearing old-fashioned clothes, into a world which was the complete opposite of any he really knew. At last, he reached the head of that vast ocean of people - mingling, this was really not one of his talents. Norris did not immediately see Naomi, but eventually he noticed her near a group of buyers. He hesitated, glancing down at his rather wrinkly and mismatched tulips. But Norris, although perhaps a bit shy and a bit despairingly hopeless, at least understood the concept of mingling even if he did not enjoy it. He waited until the groups started to disperse a bit more, and then approached her. "I didn't know which color you liked, though I suppose red... Yeah, maybe red," he said in a sort of rambling manner. He scratched the back of his head, in that awkward manner that he did when he was nervous, and offered the tulips to her. "Bit hot for flowers though, should have tried orchids, not that I... know anything about flowers." “Well, yes,” Naomi had been saying, “I hope we see an improvement soon too, but at the very least they’ve started to put more emphasis on interior policy. Which is more than we’ve seen in a long time, I think.” Then she bid farewell to the couple, offering a final nod at their beautiful new antique grandfather clock as it was wheeled out before them by one of the staff employees, and folded her arms, before turning to see the patch-work professor standing before her. “Oh, you made it!” she exclaimed, relieved to see a familiar face that she didn’t feel immediately obligated to charm and flatter on cue. “And, you—oh, good gracious—they’re lovely.” She took the flowers from his hands, speaking quickly, surprised and delighted. “You didn’t…you didn’t have to do that.” Lifting the multicolored arrangement to her nose, she smiled over the petals’ scent. “Thank you. That is really…very sweet.” She added soberly, "Tulips are my favorite. Red, sure, but any color, really." "Red would have gone with your other dress," Norris said, noting that she was no longer wearing the red dress from the advertisement. "Not that I - well - you look nicer in blue..." The compliment was sincere, if not half-fumbled in its delivery. Norris did not often compliment living women on their appearances, being both a historian and a widower. Considering this, Norris decided to change the subject away from flowers and dresses and especially red dresses. "It was quite a nice auction, nice turnout... Did you raise enough for the charity? I tried my hand at one of the lamps but..." He shrugged. "Apparently an elderly woman coveted it more than I did..." Norris grinned, suddenly amused by the situation at hand. "She'll be an antique herself soon, I imagine. Anyway, I'm glad you like the flowers... They aren't much, but I - you said you liked tulips, and I thought you needed something. It must be tiring, all of this..." "Yeah, it was a long afternoon," Naomi smiled, softer now, believable and sincere. "I'm sorry you didn't win anything. Auctions are a hundred times more exciting when you're bidding. Not that I've ever really won anything myself. I seem to always be hosting these things. But my--" No, Bill used to send an assistant to bid on the items Naomi had pointed out to him beforehand. "My husband was fond of auctions, though," she finished quickly. Glancing at her feet, Naomi paused, then blinked her eyes back up toward Norris' face. "Yes, yes, I think so," she went on. "Well, I'm sure it'll take a great deal more than one auction to save the huge number of refugees flooding into this city everyday that have no place to live. But I hope we can help at least a handful of families." The small size of her apartment aside, something like Providence had certainly helped to usher her into the city when she had arrived almost exactly two years ago. She counted herself lucky, still among the elite of the city--and more than a little jealous of those who had retained their immaculate homes on the Hudson Archipelago. Her husband. Norris stared at his own shoes. He ought to have them polished, he thought, as he listened to Naomi. He could imagine her, and her husband, and his wife - and no, no, he couldn't imagine that right now. "Yeah, it will be a start at least," he spoke a bit softer now, a bit sadder. "People ought to do more of these charity things... It has to be really difficult, after the bomb, to leave everything behind and end up here. I mean -" He looked up at her, knowing she was one of those who had been moved from the West to New York. "I'm sure you understand. I think after awhile people forget that there are others out there who are still suffering, but these sorts of things... are helpful reminders, really... Much better than a few obstructing trees and a tomato garden." "Yes." It had been difficult after the bomb, to leave everything behind, to board a train with nothing but two large suitcases and the shoes on her feet. The train chuffing along, swaying from side to side over the foothills of the Rockies and across the Plains, no man's lands, once a wide, open arena for tumble weed free-for-alls, made into bustling metropolises of tents and broken down pick-ups. Every moment, the Governor's Mansion of Denver faded into the deepest recesses of a great American history: an empty hallway, the creak of a door on slowly rusting hinges, a forgotten dog, barking, howling at the moon, whimpering into starvation. Where the sun stared through the windows into deserted rooms, beating the patterns right off the faces of fading floral curtains, a tombstone sat sad and alone in an abandoned cemetery, looking on over an unobstructed view of the western mountains. "Yes," Naomi was saying, the glint in her eyes nothing more than the reflection of the chandeliers on her contacts. "It is really difficult for so many westerners. And now even midwesterners! I hope you're right; if nothing else, at least we can hope people will notice. It's been almost four years since the bomb, but things have not gotten any easier for many refugees." She hated the word, hated to think of herself, the First Lady of Colorado, as a refugee, one of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But, of course, she wasn't free, she had never been free, and even now, living on her own for the first time in her entire life, she felt more like the tempest-tost wretched refuse teeming the shore than ever. "But at least," she offered Norris a half-smile, and held the tulips under her chin, "trees and tomato gardens and tulips can make it all seem a little better in the meantime." Norris could never have imagined -- if there hadn't been the bomb and the current situation, of course -- such a beautiful and well put together woman as a refugee. Refugees were the sorts of people who crossed borders in Africa, or Eastern Europe, or Asia -- not here in America. True, Norris knew that even well-educated and well-intentioned people could end up as refugees. But this, this entire situation with the bomb -- it was heartbreaking to see the least. He hesitated, halfway between a smile and a somewhat melancholy look, as if he didn't know how to carry-on with this facade of normalcy. He, who had lived in New York his entire life, found such perseverance overwhelmingly - Overwhelmingly inspiring, really. "Do you want to go for a cup of tea?" The words sort of slipped out as he found himself recollecting his thoughts. "I mean, I suppose you have to wrap up here, but I thought, maybe, later... Sort of adds to the alliteration, doesn't it? Tea, trees, tulips, tomatos." Norris thought that he had gone momentarily mad. Why was he, a little shabby professor, always asking one of the finest doctors in the city to tea? To tulip vandalism? To tree planting? Certainly, she'd prefer the - his eyes scanned the room peripherally - the glamour and elitism that surrounded him over a sad tea shop in midtown. Naomi bit back a bemused grin. Who was this professor, this charming lover of tea and British history? A widower, who seemed to live the quietest of lives, even in post-Carson City America; a man who seemed to force that quietness, as if it were a necessary element of survival. No, Naomi could hardly believe that Norris had enjoyed the auction, an event which was decidedly not quiet, and which relied on the awareness and publicity of its attendees as its very purpose, and she feared he had only attended because he had felt an obligation to her. Of course, she had hoped her advertisement post would bring up the attendance numbers, but she felt somehow guilty for having drawn the professor in to where he was clearly not entirely comfortable. "I could certainly use the downtime," she said, secretly promising herself to pay for his tea as a thank-you. "In what language does coffee start with a T sound? I'm sure there is one, and I would hate to ruin the poetic theme we have going on this week." Glancing about the emptying hall, she hoped to catch the attention of her colleague, the host of the auction. "I just need to help Steve with the...or did you just want to meet there?" She was only too eager to escape, but really, she owed it to Steve to stay on until everyone else had gone. Perhaps it was because he did not quite understand why he kept trying to spend time with Naomi, or perhaps because he had expected her to want to spend more time within her proper milieu. Either way, he had not expected her to simply accept his invitation - and then continue on with his silly little poetic theme, as if it were somewhat important in the scheme of things. "I suppose we could look it up on Google," he said, wishing he had studied up on languages in graduate school. Norris nodded when she went on about meeting there. He understood what it meant to organize a grand event. Granted, his grand events were usually on a much smaller scale and involved readings from history papers. But they were still rather grand as far as he was concerned. "We could meet there," he agreed. "Did you want to set up a time, or should we allow the tree gnomes to guide us?" Well, he thought, it had been tree gnomes or trolls. Certainly gnomes were more pleasant. Naomi laughed, not unkindly. "How about in an hour. It looks like we're mostly emptied out, and I just have to go over some things with Steve." She glanced toward the right, watched her colleague bid farewell to a pair of elderly bidders, promising them that the delivery men would be by later that day with their new antique bureau. After waving them toward the door, Steve caught Naomi's glance and shrugged. "An hour ought to be plenty of time," she went on, looking back at Norris. "If that's alright with you, I mean. Surely the gnomes won't keep you much longer?" Norris smiled. "An hour seems fair enough," he agreed. He watched the elderly bidders leave, and then turned to leave himself. "I'll make sure to tell the gnomes not to keep me." |