Musings

[email to Hayley, Monday night]

H.-

I still have a job. I'll see you in the morning.

-W.

***

[email to Connor, Tuesday afternoon]

Connor,

As you may have heard or experienced, there was quite a chaotic exchange of feelings on Monday, and unfortunately my employer received one of mine. He is now aware of my condition. In addition, I could not bring myself to accept responsibility for the attack on his friend, the woman you encountered last month, so he is also aware of another Wolf in the city.

I have not revealed any of your information to him, nor do I plan to, but I felt you should be informed. There was much talk about controlling the Wolves during changes, and I am not quite sure how successful I was in convincing him that we both do our best to take measures to avoid being caught out during a change. He is offering me a protected space for the moon, and days around it as I see fit, and while I know you make your own plans, I figured I would extend the offer to you as well. I know it is not ideal, and that the thought of being essentially locked in a space not your own is unsettling, so I will not blame you if you turn down the offer. I felt it best to mention it, though.

I'm afraid there is going to be extra diligence and scrutiny placed on the city in these next months, especially during the moon, to make sure that neither of us are causing safety problems to the citizens. I know that I will be taking extra measures to keep things in check. You may wish to as well, just to avoid extreme repercussions should something happen.

Thank you, and I hope you are well,
William Lowell

[Sent Sunday morning, after the full moon.]

locked to v. anna

Hope the blackout wasn't too much of a mess for you. My apologies, things have been a little wolfish? busy. I just wanted to let you know that I talked to the producer, and he wants you to come in and sing for him.

locked to w. lowell

[The full moon on Saturday night was the closest the moon has been to the earth in 20 years, and the force of it hit him like a mac truck. He still feels fundamentally out of sorts.] How did you do last night?

Answering Machine Barbie paging Straight Man Ken.

The opera rehearsals are going swimmingly. I have to admire the Queen's resilience after the zombie-person attack thingie.

I still can't go upstairs in the opera house but we're well on schedule for our production of The Magic Flute.

I do hope some of you will come to it. It's going to be a wonderful production.

[The day this.]

do you usually talk business with men in dive bars?

I think a lot of people come on here their first time and probably ask about the city or something, but I've been here a while so...hi. Not new to the city at all, so I don't really need recommendations for good burger places or things like that. Answer this question instead: if zombies aren't enough to make everybody flee the city in droves, what's it going to take? Are we a particularly stupid bunch, or just tenacious? I leave the judging to the people, I just think it's interesting.

Does anyone know if the Centro party is gonna have tight security? The last time I had a mask on, someone tried to put a hole in me.

There's morning tea and there is afternoon tea and there is even goodnight tea but there's nothing that calls itself evening tea. Nothing to drink in the evening that isn't cheating another part of the day and stealing its tea-drinkers.

And goodnight tea doesn't even help to make you sleep.

[Wolf has been minding his leporine charge like the world's most docile Labrador. He waits at the door when Bunny leaves for work, always with something small in hand: a cup of cinnamon-laden coffee, a sugar-crusted doughnut, a flower he noted on his walk over from Hamartia. On anyone else there'd be an impression of wooing, but not Wolf; he doesn't want any tender blonde morsel, oh no. His smile is crooked, harmless because around Bunny and Allyson, Wolf chants over and over to put the beast behind the door, be a man, be a man, be-a-man.

During the between hours, when little Miss Lucine's at work, in bed, out with her friends and thus comparatively safe, he hunts. Up and down Seattle's streets, awash in fog and sea air and the scent-sound-taste of too many people in too small a space, Wolf looks for what he wants. When he finds the tea shop, it takes his breath away. Dor's not there, of course, but her fingerprints are all over the place. Wolf fights back the urge to run inside, to lay his hands where hers have been, to suck in the scent of forbidden things long lost.

He opts instead to skulk about for hours upon hours, relatively inconspicuous across the street yet oh so loathe to leave when it's time to circle back around for Bunny. He'll be back in a few hours. Soon, Wolf tells himself. Soon, soon.]

Sure, there's monsters and angels and demons afoot, but ain't it just a beautiful day in the neighborhood?

[Right at the very back of the library, below a light that flickers and does not quite illuminate the books enough to read their spines, there is a case of very particular books: high adventure mixed in amongst deep fantasy -- the old kind, prior to science fiction's flights of whimsy, this is fantasy where magic roams and adventurers bend knee before their liege. It is dim and dusty in the very back here, quiet away from the centre of the library (such as it can be called 'more quiet' when the library itself is a tomb, a crypt of silence and wordless reverence) There is an armchair drawn up to the nearest window, one where the paper shade has been bent just enough that a crack of light could chase across the pages of any book held in the lap of someone sat curled up tight inside -- it is an armchair with cracked leather arms and a soft beaten spot that looks like someone has rested bare feet there one too many times.

At the left of the case is one particular book, one she knows the librarian recommends to those who might ask for something other. It is an adventurer, sole and alone, journeying far and wide and questing -- a little like Don Quixote, if he were less sad and much less mad, and if there were the occasional fantastic beast to encounter. It is this book she selects, pulls it out and scans the library card tucked in the back just to check -- there's her name, over and over, but not another newer one. When she leaves the library, the card has an addition -- a note on the back]

( Wolf )

Mary, Mary, quite contrary. How does your garden grow? With pretty MARIGOLDS all in a row. Wolf, your noise to INTOLERABLE. Stop the incessant HOWLING. It is worse than The Howling 3, even with Christopher Lee.

And someone who was dead is not? This will not do. Follow the rules, people.

His borrowed book is returned to the library scant days after being checked out; Wolf lived and breathed it with a voraciousness only matched by actual appetite. (And he scratched together enough cash to visit MacKenzie's diner and go whole hog on the menu, satiety being the watchword, so all hungers could ebb away barring the one which sat high in Wolf's heart.) There was an ethereal kind of glow about that book, those words, the cover splayed across his bent knees and pages held between his fingertips like threads, flower stems, veins, a (particular) woman's wrist. Wolf finished reading, closed Joss's book, rested his forehead on its cover with a sigh so deep it seemed to come from his toes and work its way up. Then he took it to its right and proper home.

But only after eyeballing the card full of names who'd checked it out previously -- J. Makepeace, sitting there clean and dreamy and clear as glass -- then hunting down a stub of pencil. What he writes into the margins of page 74 is traced out with a light touch, yet the words are stark despite Wolf's efforts. He doesn't know if Joss will see them, though suspects with her it's less a question of "if" and more a matter of "when".

( [Page 74] )

My roommate seems to insist on returning to work soon. You were the nicest Could we discuss rates?

I do not know what kind of credentials to ask for. So.. no. I suppose I am not.

Okay, so riddle me this, riddle me that, riddle me everything over the sun can somebody explain what's going on? People end up dead, but the papers don't say anything. And when they do, it don't exactly compute from what they say. Like they're leaving stuff out. Standard for papers, I know. Don't have vocal cords, so they can't talk, and the people that make them tend to muzzle them puzzle them just don't guzzle them just to make sure, but that's no excuse. And then there's the guy in spandex and heavy artillery plastered all over the building. And I'm pretty sure it's not just me that's seeing them. I don't know if he's supposed to be somebody I'm supposed to look for or stay away from or if he's coming to town to do birthday parties or what. ...Although anybody who carries loaded guns to a birthday party should have their head examined. People who would pay for that, too. So...some help? I'm a little lost confused scared lost.

[after this and this and this; posted from Ally's mobile]

I would like to hire someone for personal security, to look after my roommate. I can pay very nicely.

Serious inquiries only, please and thank you kindly.

( A résumé, of sorts. )

[Wolf already likes Seattle, in part because of its frequent cloud cover. It doesn't render sunglasses completely unnecessary, but even a degree of pressure off his senses inspires profound joy. Besides, a couple of days in the new digs and he's already encountered interesting people. (Which means information, which means picking up a long-cold trail.)

Today he puts on a mask of respectability, positioning it deftly so as to cover up his (canine) lizard brain; a man doesn't need money to live, but he sure as little green apples needs it to find the unfindable. He'll visit the library Joss mentioned, dip his head down near the stacks and huff the scent of much-loved books, of fantasy, trial, tribulation and happy endings. First thing's first, though.]

Say you're a guy in need of income -- all the better to maintain room and board, my dear -- but you've never been much for wage slavery. Any recommendations on where to make a buck?

I would like a horde of puppies so I may take over the world as these guys apparently are doing:

( Safe for work! )

[He skulked into the city on a stealthy scavenger hunt, sensed what he was looking for was enticingly near, and with the toothiest of grins used what little cash he had to set up shop. Wolf's arrival at Hamartia is punctuated by a merry tune as he whistles his way down the second floor. When he finds the proper apartment, there's silence. Twenty minutes or so, then the walls and floor of #204 shake: A box of something heavy is dropped. Silence again, shorter this time. Another heavy thump, then another, then another. It stops after the fourth thump.

Hamartia goes quiet (as it ever is) again. Wolf familiarizes himself with the lay of the land. Then:]

Tea shops! Stores! Cafes? No, that's coffee. Where's a body get a scone in this neck of the woods? And books! The discerning kind, what about those?