Re: Cass & Alex: the (bad) diner
Cass presently knew nothing more than she'd told him. The future might choose to flit between the trash-cans and the boy but it did not, presently. The past wreathed shadows around his wrists like bony dusk and if he had ghosts, he was not one himself. She saw his outline on the sidewalk, she saw the way his chest moved fractionally as he breathed. She saw the way the brick dust crumbled over his shoulders when he slouched into the wall. He wasn't a ghost, even if he'd died. Perhaps his death was an unreality. Cass's face didn't hold trouble, it was smooth as water but she wondered over it, like a frayed knot picked at patiently with fingernails.
"Don't you think they are?" Amusement widened in her voice. The living. They were all odd, every one. There was no one who was so ordinary they didn't hold secrets. "There's a man in there, he eats with the newspaper. He doesn't read it, he eats with it. As if it were his companion." She glanced down at his green shoes and Cass admired anyone who was oddity. She liked different. She liked cracks in coffee mugs and stained glaze. It was clearer that way, that most things tarnished. She dropped her own cigarette butt and stepped on it, in white sneakers that were grubby at heels and toes. They looked cheap, and they were. The shirt was not, it was some designer who'd spent hours over the perfect placement of a dart. Both were under cheap polyester that crackled as Cass slid past him like oil, to get to the door.
She smiled at him, the kind boy with the generosity. "I drink it without paying for it," she told him, as she pushed the door with her shoulder - not her hand - and stepped into the florescent light of the diner. "What can I get you?" She spread a hand grandly toward the booths. "Anywhere."