julian greene . the hatter (cleancup) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-01-19 13:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | elizabeth bennet, hatter |
Who: Julian and Eli
What: Julian bothers Eli.
Where: Around about Seattle, then Reliquary.
When: Today.
Warnings: NONE. Not even bad language.
It was a few days after the tent mixer, and Eli had left to pick Georgie up at school. He had, in fact, left early, wanting to be alone with his thoughts. He normally took his car to the school, preferring to pick Georgie up himself, rather than leaving it to one of his employees, but today he walked.
It was crisp out without being uncomfortable, and he was wearing a woolen black coat, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his his gaze on the ground in front of him. He was lost in thought, wondering how he’d ended up where he’d ended up, and he wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention as he neared the crossing.
It was quiet, yet. Not time for people to be driving home from work, not time for children to be playing on the sidewalks, and he didn’t even have to wait for any cars as he crossed. Seattle was being rebuilt around them all, and with the new police chief appointment the feeling was generally positive, at least in Creation circles. He hadn’t had a job in over a week, which was unheard of, and he let himself think (for only a moment) that perhaps EIT wouldn’t be needed anymore.
There was a great many people left homeless in the wake of Seattle’s most recent catastrophe, most of them moving from shelter to shelter or trying to find ways to recover what they had lost. In general, the homeless who had populated the city’s streets before the Reavers were among the many unidentified dead. Julian was now a replacement, and he certainly had (after two days) the appearance of it.
It was cold enough for him to fold his arms deep under his green jacket, and he had a deep pout on his face under the leavings of some scrounged leftovers, and his hair was tangled low over his brows. So close it was near enough to hear what he was saying to himself as people crossed, solemn and steady: “Should have called ahead for a reservation... or brought something... to reserve. But I didn’t have any reserves to reserve with. Should have called.”
It was the muttering that caught Eli’s attention, more than the other man’s appearance. Like many people going through life in a strange sort of autopilot, he didn’t notice the people around him that were less fortunate. It was not a matter of pride that kept him from taking notice of their plight, but rather a life lived with blinders. It was, in truth, the very thing he was always railing against - the sort of modernization that meant no one looked out for one another, no one spoke to strangers, and no one took care of the people who had no one to take care of them.
And so, it was the muttering that caught Eli’s attention. The man looked homeless and unkempt, but he held no sign asking for handouts, and Eli sighed in the manner of someone who wished he had not noticed something that, once noticed, could not be ignored. “Might I help you with your reservation?” he asked, as if the comment had made total sense to him, which it had not.
Julian was playing with a quarter that someone had given to him that morning, turning it around and around between long careful fingers, fingers that were better suited to finer things, like playing the piano or tracing print lines on a page. He looked up at Eli with a frank, interested gaze, eyes bright instead of wide and hungry. “No, not unless you are very good at that kind of thing.” Julian stood up, a process that was like watching a paper fan unfold, and stood up to his full spindly height, which was a strange sight indeed. He was a lot younger than he seemed when he was bent over, and stood very straight. He peered close into Eli’s face. “...Perhaps you are. Are you?”
He was younger than Eli had a originally thought, taller, too. He refrained from pulling back when Julian peered close to his face, but only just, and his attention was drawn to the quarter, shiny and new in dirty fingers. Homeless, he decided, even though he’d suspected it before. “I’m good at quite a number of things,” he said. “Would you care to walk with me?” he asked, motioning to the direction he was going.
Slowly Julian leaned back, settling his shoulders, and then nodded. The quarter disappeared. “Yes, I’d like to be some elsewhere.” He looked back once at the curb, frowned, and added, “This is not the best place to be. Several people have told me. Which is good, because I’m new here and didn’t know, but only the first time I heard it.”
Eli shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, and he resumed his walk toward the school. “Where would you like to be?” he asked, looking over at the odd man beside him. He was confusing, but articulate, and he could only assume he had not been long on the streets. “When did you last sleep in a bed?” he asked, clarifying further. “One with a mattress.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. What’s important is where I’m not.” Julian slid along the sidewalk in what would have been an amble if his legs weren’t so long, sending occasional glances at Eli as if he were the odd one and not the other way around. “Never been one with a mattress,” he muttered, half-to-himself or perhaps not realizing he was saying it aloud. “Would it be tough or soft? To be one with...? Oh, I slept on one before I left.” Correcting himself. “Before I arrived.”
It took Eli almost a full minute after Julian had finished talking to realize where the misunderstanding was. “But not since?” he asked, trying to keep the question as direct as possible. He turned over the first statement in his mind - what was important was where he was not. He suspected that just asking where the other man wasn’t would send him off course, and he realized this was some sort of puzzle. Interesting. “But you’re not there,” he said, motioning from where they’d come. “There are many places you are not; how am I to know which one you mean?”
Julian abruptly stopped walking as if struck with a brilliant idea. “You can’t,” he said wonderingly, enthusiastically. “Very good. You can’t. There are some more important than others, though, obviously.” He resumed course, with renewed vigor. “To me, it is very important to be here, for example,” pointing firmly at his feet, “and not one of the places you can’t know which.”
“And if you weren’t here,” Eli posited, pointing at the other man’s feet, “where would you rather be? Or not be?” And, honestly, he was confusing himself now, but he thought perhaps it all made sense in some abstract way. Regardless, he thought the young man harmless, if in desperate need of a wash.
“I would rather not be where I was,” Julian declared. “And I would rather be...” he thought about it for a little while, and then pulled on a greasy curl. “...somewhere cleaner. Are you going there? If I was you and I was with me, I would.”
Eli smiled at that, because he thought it was quite a good idea, really. “I’m picking someone up at the elementary school, but we’re going somewhere you may clean up, yes,” he said, nodding toward the school, which was just across the road at this point. “Will you wait here?” he asked, not wanting to lose the young man before he could help somehow.
Julian stopped short. “I don’t need to go to school,” he agreed, goodnaturedly, fixing his feet to the ground. He hunched a little more into his coat and sighed a little. “Maybe when you come back it will be lunchtime,” he suggested gently, in a way he thought was polite.
Eli quirked a brow, and he cracked a smile. “I think we can find something to eat once we return to Reliquary,” he said. Georgie liked her afternoon snack, and he knew Nana wouldn’t mind setting enough out for two. “I’ll return in a few minutes,” he assured Julian.
Looking both ways before crossing the street, Eli hurried to the school office. Georgie was waiting, since he’d lingered longer than anticipated in his conversation with the boy outside, and it only took him a few moments to sign her out and cross back over with her. She was chattering a mile a minute, as he approached, and Eli inclined his head toward the way they came.
Julian was in the same spot, but he had turned back to face the way he had come with an air of general confusion, and when both reappeared, he looked at them without recognition. The gesture toward Eli’s path, however, was enough to entice him to follow, and he put his arms behind his back as the child chattered. “That’s nice,” he said, as the child explained the process of painting mugs for parental gifts, “as long as it’s the right color. You never want to paint mugs the wrong color unless it’s a special occasion and they all match.” Without warning, to Eli: “Where are we going?”
Eli added memory loss to the strange man’s list of eccentricities, and he started to respond, only to be cut off by Georgie’s long explanation that they were going to Reliquary, which was named after boxes for old things, because there were lots of old things there. But there was hot chocolate, too, and good grilled cheese. Eli smiled at her. “This is Georgia,” he said, “and I’m Eli.” The and you are? was implied, but not voiced.
Julian listened with studious interest, unsmiling and serious, though his eyes lit up at the mention of ‘good grilled cheese.’ “Oh, Reliquary,” he said, as if he was an expert on the topic. “The place you mentioned yesterday before you left.” Something like memory loss, at least. Julian tended to be oriented very much on what was going on externally, and it only seemed that he was internal because his processing was not the best and he’d lose touch with what he was thinking fairly easily. It was perception that was the problem. At the moment Julian was perceiving they were going to a place with food, and introductions didn’t matter a great deal. “I hope I don’t have to wait until tomorrow for grilled cheese,” he added wistfully.
Georgie stopped walking, slid her free hand into Julian’s and asked his name, which Eli was fairly sure was going to reap more rewards than his own tactic. He waited before responding, even as he tugged everyone past the crossing guard. “I think we shall have grilled cheese within the hour,” he said, clarifying further, “today. Not within the hour some other day.”
Julian stopped to bow at Georgie, which brought his forehead all the way down to hers, and gravely introduced himself as, “Julian Greene, charmed.” They were hustled along over the pavement after that, Julian bemused about the process and Georgie delighted. “Yes, it’s infuriating when people are vague about which hours go where, when there are so many kinds...”
Eli wasn’t at all surprised that Georgie seemed so delighted in the dirty stranger he’d managed to find on the side of the street. He had a moment of worry over what Kathy would think, because he had no doubt that Georgie would run home with the story. Georgie told everyone everything, and that was simply the way of it. Reliquary came into view, and Georgie ran ahead to tell Nana they had company, and Eli turned to look at the young man as they walked the remainder of the way. “What kinds are there?” he asked, in reference to the question about the hours; he almost made whimsical suggestions, God help him. Perhaps it was contagious?
Julian’s long fingers sprang out like a Chinese fan. “Lunch hour, this hour, that hour, in-the-last hour, kids’ hour, witching hour, midnight hour...” He let his other fingers wraggle out into oblivion. “Plus all the numbered ones, and then the numbered ones for yesterday, tomorrow, and today.”
“Ah,” Eli said, smiling despite himself, “but which one matters most?” he asked, looking toward where Georgie was waving from the steps of the old house that was the coffee shop, waiting to introduce Julian to the others. “There’s a shower upstairs,” he said, “which you can use while Nana makes grilled cheese. I have some clothing that might fit,” he added, grateful that he’d lived out of Reliquary for a few years and hadn’t bothered to take everything when he’d left.
“Today,” Julian replied firmly. “Today, and after that in importance, yesterday, because I wouldn’t be so hungry today if I wasn’t also hungry yesterday.” Julian rubbed a finger over his chin, thoughtfully, and then he said, “Yes... I am unappetizing even with an appetite. Someone mentioned it to me last week. Or perhaps that was this morning.”
Eli chuckled, low in the back of his throat, and he walked the remainder of the way and ushered Nana and Georgie in side. To Julian he simply inclined his head and started toward the stairs. “Georgie, help Nana with sandwiches until I come back,” he told her, adding (after a glance toward Julian), “perhaps soup as well.”
Reliquary was old and crowded, as the way most old homes were, with things once loved lining the walls and cluttering up the floor space, and Eli navigated through the thin halls to the bedroom at the far end of the top floor. He pulled his key out of his pocket, and he unlocked the room, which had been his home for a very long time. There was an antique bed in the center, and a hand-stitched quilt in deep blues, and there was a bathroom beyond with a claw-foot tub. “There are towels,” he said, “and clothing in the drawers. A comb as well.”
Julian was distracted by all the antiques, and he kept stopping to test drawers and trace false gold leaf, but before very long he would hear Eli’s step and come wandering back toward him, hands clasped behind his hips and an expression a tourist might have in an interesting museum. Julian ranged all over the room as soon as it was open, a catlike pressing curiosity taking him beyond the bed to look underneath and then to the bathroom, where he looked with interest upon the claw-foot tub. “It would be a lark,” he said, “if it walked away with me in it. I wonder where it would go?” And so mumbling to himself, he tried the knobs and pulled out drawers until the bathroom was soon filling with steam.
Eli had never thought of the tub as something that might walk away with him in it, but he glanced at the legs and imagined it like a child would. Georgie would, no doubt, cast the tub as a pirate boat, so it was not a surprise that Julian (who Eli was starting to imagine as much younger than his years) would cast it as a creature with legs that could whisk him away. “It would go downstairs,” Eli assured, “where food will be waiting.” He moved to the bedroom door and out of the room, beginning to shut it behind him to give Julian privacy, but he stuck his head back in at the last minute “But I believe it might have trouble fitting on the stairway,” he said, closing the door behind him.