Joss Makepeace // scheherezade (thestoryweaver) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-09-28 22:01:00 |
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Jennifer never favored one particular bookshop over another, the idea itself seemed absurd. It was more often a matter of being in a particular neighborhood at the right time. The vendor she’d discovered that day was small and disorganized, the two or three employees concerned more with keeping business in the black than properly alphabetizing their fiction. Browsing through their cluttered selection was more than a little adventurous, but for that afternoon she spared herself the time. Leaning down between two narrow, over-packed shelves, Jennifer balanced a small stack of books on her knee, leaning an elbow against it to keep her items in place. Sliding a worn, used paperback out from the shelf, Jennifer inspected the title. Rilke. Good, just what she’d been looking for. Flipping through the thick, yellowed pages, she was entirely engaged in the material and her ideas surrounding its possible use. If anyone bothered to approach her, they’d quickly catch the detective unaware. Her fingertips ran (like mice!) along the book-spines, skipping over hillocks and valleys of leather, of paperbacks that (contained kingdoms) inside their fragile, butterfly-skin-thin pages, their bent and battered backs-and-fronts (front-to-back, would the story be the same read backwards? Like a kitten’s fur stroked to sharp, biting points? Would it snap?) hid people already met, already found and how-do-you-do exchanged. Joss swayed on the spot like a dancer with the music-not-quite-yet stopped, but no-one looked as it wasn’t polite. Poetry was a world not-hers, the voices quieter with their calls, their siren-singing ‘read me, love me, tell of me more’ but it was still a world, a fraction-jump from this one. One bent at angles, perhaps, like light jumping through a prism and skittering itself into a rainbow, but certainly a world. Joss’s fingers hesitated over Rosetti (working backwards, never forwards, there was less to see at ‘Z’, less to shout its name than ‘A’ -- ‘A’ was crammed like a train-station at rush-hour, a thousand busy angry people pulling and pushing in different directions) her palm was the full-stop -- but there was a blockage and a stoppage in the way -- real? She bent, hair swinging like a silk curtain against the books, shutting out the clamour -- a pleased, warm kind of look that tugged that smile out from the corner, her face wore it like a banner, “Detective Warda.” Real. Definitely real. Jennifer nearly dropped her pile of books as the woman called her name, her head craning up in surprise. With a thumb set in the middle of the book to keep her place, her thoughts already a mess of scattered, awkwardly translated German, she took a moment to properly recognize the woman beside her. “Joss,” she replied, deep but unsure, as if she expected the woman to be nothing but an apparition, some trick of the mind--flickering into her view only to vanish once more. Jennifer set down her books and stood up, dangling a collection of sonnets from one hand. She wasn’t quite sure what to say, as she’d never been great with pleasantries; “how’ve you been?” seemed all but ridiculous. “I hope you’re not looking for something in particular,” she finally settled on, her voice as wry as ever. “All the King’s men couldn’t even put this mess back together again.” Something in particular. Finding something particular would be listening to a sole violin in a symphony, to tease out a thread from tangled twine, to separate a person in a pushing, massing crowd that surged joyfully with each careless brush of a hand, a single raindrop in a pulsing, thrashing storm. No, not something in particular. “There is no King,” for there wasn’t, not here, not now -- at least, there shouldn’t have been, there wasn’t when she woke. Had someone been crowned since lunchtime, gold-glitter regalia set upon a brow, solemnity trailing like a cloak in his wake -- “Is there?” Joss’s forehead furrowed, the book in hand fell silent, not able to couch its demand in even a whisper in the face of so many questions. She leaned her forearm against the stacks, like folding into the centre of family -- ‘R’ was for remembrance, and it held her like a lover might. There was a king now, he stood on the dais amongst the staff by the till, blank-faced -- he needed eyes, Joss decided fretfully, he needed to see his subjects, unless he had none and then, did he need eyes at all? “Nothing in particular,” she echoed: Joss looped her hair behind her ears, straightened; ‘R’ protested like a Greek chorus. Joss gave it a reproving look, manners. “Were you?” Jennifer folded her arms across her chest, tapping the book against one of her elbows. She forgot how tricky this was, keeping up with Joss--not that it prevented her from trying, however futilely. That seemed to be her norm, blindly chasing after strange, imperceptible women. She pursed her lips. “Maybe in New York--back home--but I’d hate to see a King of Seattle,” Jennifer replied, halfway serious. “We’ve got enough of a mess without people making claims to royalty.” She watched Joss’ movement, leaning against the shelves and absently fussing with her hair. It was all some kind of puzzle of complicated body language, Jennifer silently determined. At the woman’s question, she gazed back down to the pile at her feet, giving it a nudge with one of her boots. “Guess you could say that,” she mumbled, “I’ve been working on a strategy of sorts, but I don’t think my opponent understands the point of subtext.” She tried not to sigh at that, but looked back up to Joss with a raised eyebrow. “You can offer up an apple but it doesn’t mean they’ll bite into it.” “Sometimes it’s poisoned,” Joss’s voice was dreamy: tides of stories already told over and over again lapped at it, docile and soft and warmly welcoming. The clutter of books didn’t match, they jostled together like people in a queue, all elbows and indignant and unloved. She bent down with dancer-grace, sifted through them until they were in a neat stack with those who could bear to touch inured the others, “Sometimes, alphabetical isn’t the way.,” This to Warda, who wouldn’t know, couldn’t know, unless she heard the voices and so many didn’t -- not their faults. The king stepped off his dais into nothing, the clatter-clatter-ching of the till chuntered on (like a train on the tracks! No, no, screaming locomotive, a squeal of brakes) The girl who stood and smacked gum had hair like ink, like ravens’ wings, as if they perched on her shoulder and snarled nothings inside her ear -- they could fly? “It depends on the apple,” she said now, slowly, (apples black as pitch, a branch curling from wood that no longer grew but perhaps wanted to still, consigned to shelves) -- Joss didn’t quite touch one, but she could and that was enough. Jennifer opened her mouth to try and respond and she watched carefully as Joss pulled back, pulled into herself and away from--just what, exactly? Granted, it was an overcrowded and dusty mess of a shop but there wasn’t anything to take caution from. Not in her estimation, and it was even quieter than the halls of Verisimilitude. She watched with fascination as Joss placed the books neatly into order. It reminded her strangely of the table the two of them shared, so cluttered with loose papers and books, a messy labyrinth of ink and words. There were only so many foes that Jennifer could battle with, and she wondered if the shades that followed this woman were far too distant for her to grasp. Alphabetical. No, there needed to be order, structure, logic; any good strategy was built on precision of planning. Jennifer scratched her chin with the edge of the book. “From my experience, the prettier the apple the more poison it hides,” she glowered down to nothing in particular--Yeats and over to Whitman. “But that’s the way of any faerie tale, isn’t it. Every dies happily ever after.” Faerie. A dim and purpling mist of a place that curled like a hookah pipe’s smoke on the edges of this one (soft tendrils like shadow, like sleep, seeping beneath the stacks to tug on day-dreams and pull her in) Joss stretched out a hand for the book, careful and mothering like a shepherdess guiding a lost lamb home: her fingers closed around Warda’s, gentle-cold, like glass and took the book. “Don’t,” she said. She held it as though it held worlds in words -- reproving words and then a smile that tugged out answering smiles, like secrets whispered behind hands. “Rilke. I preferred you amongst so many outlined joys,” Her hold on the book was a caress -- a quiet pat, Joss held it back out to Jennifer as though ushering a child back out to play after a brief storm of tears, “Preferring,” she said thoughtfully, drifting -- outlined joys, (like choices lined up in a row, like soldiers, like spirits) “It’s right. They’ll like that.” It was an odd kind of encouragement. Encouragement all the same. “What--” Jennifer stuttered out, releasing the book without further protest. Her hand dangled in the air a moment in surprise. She watched the way Joss cradled the book, the words. To hear someone else speak of poems, words, to know them and not just--dismiss it so carelessly, like-- She shook her head. It’s not like she forgot so easily the witching effect Joss seemed to have on her, to wrap around all her sordid thoughts and pile them up like so many stacks of books. She took back the collection of Rilke, taking Joss’ words into consideration. “Maybe,” Jennifer replied, feeling a strange amount of uncertainty and something...something akin to hope. It was seductive, this sensation, and just as frightening. Jennifer stood there a moment, gazing down at her pile of used books, weighing her next point of action. She wasn’t about to let this scene imitate the former, the detective was far too much a woman of action to simply let things fall as they would. She reached into her leather jacket, digging around past her keys and fetching out a folded business card. Flicking it with one of her fingers, she slowly handed it over to the other woman. “Here, before you run off again,” she explained, indicating for Joss to take it. “Call me sometime, if you’d like.” These days were making strange changes in Jennifer, it seemed, not all of them for the worse. A card -- like a playing card, a pack spilled out across a table, (pick one, take one, win a hand) but plain and neat and stamped with a name like a bare and bold-faced fact. It sat between the very tips of Joss’s fingers; she rubbed the thumb against the edge, easing round the corner -- real, real again. That smile came and went again, a candle lit in the dark forest of books in what-were-trees. “I don’t have a telephone.” It was simple, it was true. Telephones buzzed and whirred like angry birds, like bees when writing, when sleeping, when curled up with tea in the window and watching. They stole in like changelings, interrupted dreaming. Her thumb smoothed again over Warda’s name, like soothing a scar. Joss wasn’t running; the hum and thrum of so many voices were soothed by the crooning sweetness of the Rilke in arms, preferred -- they would begin again when the others remained and the Rilke was gone, but for now, a little love amongst so much dust was enough to satiate. A meal for a disconsolate tiger. Joss’s head tipped up from ‘R’, rosemary growing between the books, rich and springy and a scent like a wind -- could she smell it, too? Not real, not real. “You can find me. You seem to do it without telephones.” Jennifer reached down for her books, a move careful enough to hide a grin at that. When she stood back up, the detective merely nodded in affirmation, expression as it always was. Rilke and the rest piled neatly under her arms, she moved closer, enough to put a hand on Joss’ shoulder. “Keep it anyway,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders, not quite meeting the woman eye to eye. “As a reminder, or maybe just a bookmark.” Her hand lingered for a moment before Jennifer wandered to the checkout counter, wondering when she’d find this woman again. Setting the books down on the counter, she decided she looked forward to it. |