valerie anna . climbing the stairway (24k) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-03-05 00:16:00 |
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Entry tags: | lady, prospero |
Who: Cassidy & Valerie
What: Old lovers chance meet.
Where: Out and about near Aubade.
When: Couple days ago?
Warnings: None!
Cass had only been in the city a short while, but he’d found it almost precisely the way he had left it - just without Wren in it. He’d gone to the police as he’d promised he would and gotten nothing for his efforts, just the reassurance that they had listened to the tape in Thomas Brandon’s possession and found it sufficient enough evidence to say that she had left of her own free will. He didn’t like it, didn’t truly believe it, but there was no proof to back him up. So Wren was gone into thin air, and all he could do was hope it was somewhere better, and that, where ever it was, she was safe.
It certainly didn’t make him feel any better about his decision to return, however, and he spent the first few days seriously considering just picking up and leaving town again. There was nothing for him here - then again there wasn’t anything waiting for him anywhere else. Here was as good as any place, at least for now.
At least he knew where the rare bookstores were here. He left the apartment early in the afternoon on Sunday and stayed in the bookstore into the early evening, leaving with a pair of books under his arm. He hadn’t really lost the appearance of someone who spent far too much time indoors, though it wasn’t nearly as severe as it had been even a year before. He was still thin, and wan, and serious, but not so pale or faded at the edges. The world was no longer so simple or so cut and dried that he could dismiss things without engaging with them, and so he had been spending more time in it. He left the bookstore and turned right, walking up the street. He would need to take a cab home, but he didn’t mind the cold, and maybe the walk in the cold would stir up some solution he hadn’t thought through yet.
It had been in her youth, in the late 1920s, that Valerie had first heard the term “window-shopping.” Before that, it seemed, everyone walked past a window or went inside a shop, and no one ever though to have breakfast at Tiffany’s. It was when manufacturing was constant and fashion became big business that the concept of window-shopping even entered the public consciousness, and to this day Valerie stood on sidewalks, looking at faceless mannequins, and felt a sense of dislocation, as if she was the only woman left on earth with any sense of style. Age had revealed the secret of fashion to Valerie, a secret that was, simply, a cycle of things going out of fashion and the same things coming in a couple decades later. It felt like nothing would ever be really pretty ever again, and she ought to just stop looking.
A woman of practicality, however, Valerie dressed to reflect the times as much as she was able. She found the return of “vintage” attire--strong colors and “modest” cuts from the fifties--more of a relief than anything else, because nothing had been more hellish than the eighties and the things she’d had to do to her hair. Now the style generally dictated length and straight lines, and chameleon that she was, Valerie only got away with ringlets and upswept curls on gigs, leaving fine brushed blonde and careful neutral make-up for the rest of the world. She even came down from blood-red lipstick to pomegranate pink. Stepping away from the store that displayed the big vinyl belts and bright caps of the fashion decade she so despised, Valerie let her gaze slide in either direction down the street, calm and collected in her mid-height heels. With the straight-line dress cut-to-fit, she could get away with fifties housewife and still look modern.
The man who met her gaze, however, knew as well as she did she was no housewife. Valerie had a strange mix of feelings for Cassidy, who was no more than a boy, really, but possessed a sharp intelligence that had been like fresh water in the desert of her last marriage. She stood on the curb and watched him, waiting to see if he’d feel the weight of her gaze, and curious to see what he did with it.
Cass looked younger than he was in a multitude of ways - he looked younger than he felt in spirit and younger than he literally was in years, though not quite to the extent that Valerie did. People had a tendency to underestimate him or dismiss him as a result, and they tended to find themselves caught off guard by the way he spoke and carried himself, with the tones of someone aged into vinegar already in his late thirties all mingled with the emotional maturity of someone who had spent a decade fixed in youth.. It had been three years since he’d last seen Valerie, and he hadn’t changed much since - though there was, maybe, something a little different in his gaze that was difficult to quantify - and she had changed not at all. He looked up, across the street, as if he could tell he was being watched, and there his gaze halted, his expression shifting minutely into surprise.
He stopped for a moment, and then glanced up and down the street, walking across and to her, unhurried. He tucked the books a little more closely against his chest. “Valerie,” he said. A dozen questions cropped up, chief amongst them what she was doing in town. “I didn’t know you’d come to Seattle.”
Valerie smiled into his surprise, a smile that was warm honey and comfort, or what looked like it, anyway, and as he stepped up onto the curb next to her, she secured her purse to her side with one arm and hugged him around the neck with the other. Faint vintage perfume, slightly chemical and always floral, mixed with the sweet chocolate she must have stashed in her bag somewhere. “It’s a surprise to see you too, Cassidy.” They’d never chopped their names up into smaller, lesser things, but Valerie’s tone reflected what they’d had rather than what they’d lost. She let her arm slide off his shoulder and looked into his face, smiling still, unperturbed by the chance meeting. “I moved not too long ago. I would have thought you would run off somewhere exotic, like Venice.”
He really wasn't sure what to make of the quick embrace, and was no more used to human contact than any other hermit in the world, so the hug was there and gone again before he'd had a chance to figure out whether or not he should make a move to reciprocate. He smelled a little like rain even in though spring had yet to fully thaw the city out, along with the dust and old books of his home and the store he had come from.
Valerie was behaving like nothing had ever happened, which he expected from her. He wasn't nearly as good at playing the part of being unaffected by how things had gone, and her presence brought the feelings he'd felt when he left L.A rushing back. "I did. Not for long, but I was in Europe recently, over the last few months. I was here for a few years before that, though. How have you been?" He wasn't very good at this, the niceties of small talk, but it wasn't useless chatter. He wondered what she'd done between then and now, where she'd gone, where her husband was.
She smiled fondly into his face. She really was just the same, except for the dress, and perhaps the height of the heels, though she moved with the same confidence she always had. She read the hesitancy of the embrace correctly, and was even more certain she had done the right thing in the greeting, and her smile deepened into his eyes. “Ah, Seattle. Yes, it’s rainy enough, isn’t it?”
She glanced down, it seemed, at first, that she was looking at the ground, but then she brought up her bare left hand and gave a fleeting smile that wasn’t at all like the one she’d given him in greeting. “I left him. Few months ago. Then I came here. All this fog...” She shrugged her shoulders a little deeper into the coat she wore, which was only slightly longer than the dress. “I guess we both thought it would be a good place to get away to.” She ignored the lapse of grammar. “What made you come back?” she asked curiously, looking down at his books.
It seemed like an odd thing to observe, unless she meant that it was rainy enough for him. He smiled faintly. "I suppose it is."
At first he wasn't sure if he'd even heard her correctly, but then there it was - I left him. "Why?" he asked, unthinking. He paused. "You don't have to answer that if you don't want, I just thought..." He'd thought she would never leave. She certainly wouldn't have for him - that was why he'd left L.A. three years previous, hollow and heartsick and sure that the whole thing had been a sign to him that there was nothing out there for him in the world. His outlook was at least a little less bleak these days. "Well. I'm surprised, I suppose."
"It's a long story," he said, and there was a touch of his usual acidity. "And my reason for returning no longer applies. I was actually considering leaving town again, but I think I will stay here a while." The implication was that here was no better or no worse than anywhere else, and that moving wouldn't do him any good. He could not, after all, move away from himself.
Valerie thought of Cassidy as a kind of depthless sorrow that nothing would fill, except his own effort, but of course he might never realize that and keep looking elsewhere. He was the perfect kind of man for someone like her, and she ignored that small part of herself that only felt sorry for him, seizing instead upon the blunt honesty and the intelligence she preferred. His appearance was fateful, because her reserves were dangerously low, and she was clinging to her foolish job singing at the foolish club like it was the only thing that mattered.
“A woman?” she guessed, because Valerie would always guess the problem was a woman, unless it was Orin Monarch, who refused to be troubled by any woman ever.
His eyes flickered while he took that in and tried to decide how to answer it. "Yes," he said after a moment, because really, it was. There were other things involved, but really it all came back to Wren. "Things didn't work out as well as I would have hoped, so I left. Apparently I've made a habit of leaving when things don't work out." He regretted saying that as soon as it was said, and so moved swiftly onward. "I like the city, though, so I don't think I'll be going anywhere."
Valerie didn’t take it personally. Come to think of it, Cassidy had never said anything that she took really to heart, nothing that had made the soft clear gaze buckle, and he certainly had never made her cry. The worst she’d done was frown at him and say his name in a really irritated manner--if you didn’t count averting her gaze and leaving a room. “You have a soft spot for us,” she said, affectionately, and she stepped closer and nudged his elbow with hers. “Where are you staying?”
The 'us' made Cass pause - did she mean her and him, or women in general? He assumed the latter. "The Aubade," he said, nudging back after a moment, with a small smile. He had liked her, once, and cared for her, but when it came down to it she was never going to leave her husband for him. No, that, it seemed, had to wait for something else. "503. Where are you staying?"
“Not too far away,” she said, smiling back, warmer, as if his had heated hers, though it was not a sexual smile. “I’ve been to Aubade--or past it, anyway. It’s nice. Do you like it there?” She turned with their elbows still touching, as if he was escorting her, obviously expecting to walk with him back the way he meant to go.
He began walking again, keeping pace with her. “It’s spacious and it’s quiet,” he said, by way of an answer. “I’m not very picky when it comes to the place I live as long as I can get those things.” The warm smile and friendly conversation disarmed him a little. It had been some time since he’d encountered either. “What have you been doing since you came here?” He wondered if she’d taken a job of some kind, or if her divorce had afforded her enough money to live on.
Valerie knew that space and quiet cost money, and she smiled to think that Cassidy found them wherever he went. She felt that the opposite would do him better than wallowing in his silence, but she didn’t say any such thing. The competition wasn’t fierce in empty space. “Honestly? Nothing really worth while. I should be looking for a real job but...” She gave him a guilty little smile. This was all truth, of course. Valerie never had any trouble talking to Cassidy. She just didn’t say everything.
"If you ought to be looking for a real job, what non-real one do you already have?" He hadn't known Valerie in any other context but married, and he tried to think of a job that might suit her. Nothing seemed to fit. Over head, the sky was lightening, almost imperceptibly.
She looked at him sideways, unsure if he was the type that would scorn or not. Not because she’d be hurt, but because she couldn’t afford to be scorned so early in the game. “A small stupid one at a bar nearby. Nothing involving taking my clothes off,” she added quickly, with a little smile.
He smiled a touch again. "I never would have jumped to that particular conclusion, but now you have me wondering if you just protest too much." He looked down the street ahead of them. "No, that doesn't strike me as your kind of profession. I guess I'm just going to have to wonder, then. You've always been very good at remaining a mystery."
Valerie smiled quickly, and it wasn’t false. “Wondering is good for you, Cassidy. You don’t wonder about very many things. You’re all about your books.” She reached out and tapped his outermost book cover. “And your space.” She nudged his elbow again. “I like my new job, and it’s fine for now. What would you do if you needed a job?”
He shrugged. She was right, after all. "I suppose I don't see what else there is, or what use it is to wonder" he said, voice taking on a little of that sharp edge again. There was no use wondering about the world when you had already passed judgement on most of it. He was trying to get over that, he was, but it wasn't a won battle.
"If I needed one? I don't know." He seemed about to go on, then stopped, thinking. "When I went to school, I had a clear idea of who I was and what I was going to do, but that was a long time ago. Now I think I would try to do something...quiet. Restoring old, rare books, maybe." There were the books and the space again, a job that wouldn't require much if any interaction with other people.
“What were you going to do when you were in school? You restore old books now, darling.” She only said that when she was being particularly affectionate. “It’s one of the most exciting things you do.” She dialed her pace back to match his, easy in the heels and trailing his quiet steps with slow click-clicks.
"I don't restore them," he pointed out. "I purchase them. It might be an interesting trade to learn." There was a joking kind of persistence in that, and he turned that small smile on her again. "So it's even less thrilling than you thought. You lead a very exciting life by my standards, mystery job and all."
"I thought I was going to be a lawyer," he said. There was a lot unsaid there - he had wanted to help people, to better things, to somehow improve the world. Then all of that had been, in a moment, dashed on the open ocean. "But law school never happened. So restoring books it is."
“You can always go to law school,” Valerie observed, “or read law books.” They reached a corner, and Valerie watched a car speed past over the wet pavement. Everything here was always wet, she thought, with some fascination rather than disgust.
“I’ve thought about it,” he said, his hands in the pockets of his coat. He watched the car speed by, throwing splashes of water up onto the pavement. “It hardly seems worth it anymore, though.” There was a little doubt in that, at least - he was thinking about it. “I’ve read a lot of law books, actually.” Twelve years locked in a house doing nothing but accruing books and reading tended to foster the intake of a wildly wide variety of knowledge. “When I was in college, the world seemed wide and fundamentally good, worth defending. I was very young.”
“Yes,” she agreed, soberly, without one of her winsome smiles. “That is a very young thought. It goes away, however, as you know. You could be a lawyer without being idealistic, Cassidy. I know a lot of lawyers who are horribly so.” The way she said ‘horribly’ was just another emphasis, rather than something abhorrent. “You could try to get into a university,” she added, “but then again it’s rather complex these days, I hear, and it involves a lot of questioning.” Valerie realized she shouldn’t want Cassidy to have the opportunity to meet other women.
"I can afford the papers," he said."Enough to silence any questions about my qualifications. I have my bachelor's, though it never went any further than that. I don't know." He nudged her with his elbow to indicate the direction to turn, an unthinking, absent gesture. "I'm not sure that I would make a very good lawyer, but school would be...something to do." And that was what he was searching for, wasn't it? Life here was finite, but still potentially long ahead of him still. He was going to have to fill the years stretching out in front of him (and what a grim sentence that had seemed when he was in Musings, only a little less so here) with something.
Valerie immediately turned, not tripping on him or over him, and close without interfering in his step. She was very aware of him, of asking questions without crowding, of leaning without smothering. “You might be a very fine lawyer; you like questions, as I recall.” She smiled to soften any imagined sting in the statement. To Valerie, Cassidy was still young enough to think that forever was a burden. She found it endearing.
"That is a fact," he said, smiling faintly. "I suppose I've never been satisfied with a half-answer. Who knows, maybe it is the profession for me." They were closing in on Aubade, just a block away now. "You know, you never did tell me exactly where you were staying." There was maybe a touch of a challenge in that, to not avoid the question a second time - practice for being a lawyer.
Valerie hesitated. She worried about telling him where she lived, worried because the men who had come to her door had been looking for her and she didn’t know why. She didn’t think Cassidy was angry enough at her to send men after her, but someone was, and she didn’t know how to narrow possible culprits down. The concern touched her brows before she could stop it.
He saw that, and his pace slowed. "What is it?" Was she really that concerned to tell him where she lived? Did he still have bitterness about the way things had gone? Absolutely. But that didn't mean she wasn't safe around him.
“I just... had some people come by my apartment.” She looked up into his face to see if there was anything he was hiding from her there. “It worried me; I’m there by myself.” These were all essentially true things; Valerie found, increasingly, that Cassidy received truth more often than lies from her.
There was nothing there but a flash of anger. “What sort of people?” he asked, stopping altogether. “What did they do that frightened you? Did they hurt you?”
The anger reassured Valerie. Not Cassidy, then. That was good; she wouldn’t think... but it was best to be sure. “Men in suits, but not nice suits. Security men, probably. They just came to the door and woke me up, but when I wouldn’t let them in, they left.” She frowned, still bothered.
“Did they tell you what they wanted?” he asked. He tried to think of who could be coming after her, or why, and he frowned. “...how did things end with your ex-husband?” He’d never met the man, not during the affair, not after - all he really knew of him he’d heard from her. He didn’t know if he was the sort of man who might send men to harass her, but that was purely conjecture. If there was something else involved, money or an affair on his part, it was possible. He knew, too well, that people in love did things they shouldn’t, or wouldn’t otherwise.
“Not well,” she admitted. “But I don’t think he’s the kind of man to send people after me,” she continued, her real worry over the situation more apparent in the last couple words. “I can’t imagine him going so low.” Valerie’s husband was the aloof, Victorian sort she thought had died out years ago. Then again, she thought, in Musings, of course they hadn’t died out.
"And they didn't tell you what they wanted, just tried to get into your apartment?" He looked up, past her, to the other side of the street, as if someone might be watching them and the answer would be neatly revealed. "Thugs don't come to your home for no reason, Valerie." Overhead, the sky darkened a few shades, and the rain that had been threatening all afternoon seemed a much realer possibility.
“I don’t know if they would have broken in. They knocked and... and they asked for me. I don’t know if they would have broken in. They made too much noise to be hoping for stealth.” She looked where he looked, though she was not naturally paranoid, and shifted uncertainly closer, this time winding her arm around his without asking.
He was a little surprised to find her arm around his, and he paused for a moment before relaxing minutely into the touch. He began walking again, if slowly, toward the building. "It would be helpful if real villains at least did the courtesy of announcing their intentions," he said, almost to himself. "If they visit you again, let me know. There's no reason for you to be terrorized by men like that."
“They haven’t. It has been a couple weeks now, and nothing. I don’t know if it was an isolated incident, but if so, I can’t think what caused it.” She pressed her advantage without thinking and leaned. “It’s nice of you to listen to my problems after just running into me again,” she said.
He let her lean and he didn't pull away, but he also didn't encourage the touch - didn't shift any closer to her. He was willing to be there for Valerie. They'd had something but they'd had it, and if she hadn't loved him then she wasn't going to love him now. He didn't know what the touching and leaning were about, but chose to believe that they were a product of her being freshly divorced and looking for comfort. She might be able to pretend that nothing had ever happened, but he didn't have that sort of forgiving memory. He wouldn't be cruel, but he wouldn't act as if there hadn't been a split between them, or that it had all ended happily for everyone involved. "What else would I have done, spun you out into the street and had that be the end of it?"
Valerie correctly interpreted the lean, but she didn’t correct her action in response. She’d hurt his pride, even if there hadn’t been anyone to see, and she understood men needed soothing once they were left behind that way. “You might have. I can’t remember exactly what happened when I left but I don’t think you gave me a kiss goodbye.” She gave him a faintly rueful look.
He smiled faintly, and his usual sharpness was back in the smile. "Not quite," he said. They'd reached the gates of the Aubade by then, and he stopped just ahead of them. "I won't ask you again where you're staying, but now you know where I am if you need anything."
Valerie stopped too, and before he could, she gently unwound her arm, securing her purse again. She smiled. “Thank you, Cassidy. It was nice running into you.” She shifted back away from his books, looking down at them with amusement and then back up at him with a sunshine smile.
He couldn't help but return it, if in a smaller way. "I hope I'll see you soon, Valerie," he said, and to his surprise, he actually meant it. He turned in and walked past the gates, which shut behind him with a metal clash.