Re: The Poor Thing/The Detective
Tommy should have been back in third class, tucked away in an itchy wool blanket while tossing, turning, and eschewing the inevitably tainted dreams to come while on this ominous trip. It was the same rotation in his dream bank, all where he lost too much way too fast. Yet, without the somnolent lull of the locomotive engine or the track-bound sway of the train, he doubted that sleep would come to him tonight, not while his stomach twisted into barbs of complaint and the chambers of his heart echoed hollow from recent loss. And so, neglecting horror and bone-deep dissatisfaction, Tommy opted for consciousness and most masochistic realism. He had the patchiest version of a 5 o'clock shadow, and that wasn't just the remaining mine soot.
"My apologies..." And then, with the least waggling of eyebrows that he could muster, "Detective." The word 'detective' was slow to come, savored like hard candy tucked into the meat of his cheek as he considered, with wonder, that a woman should have such a title. In his wold, if a woman came to any kind of title, she was married into it. That a woman should wear trousers was another, admittedly more distracting, issue altogether. He didn't belong here, not in this part of the train.
To him, she seemed impeccable and intimidating, some knife-shouldered Dietrich in good lighting. Her suit cut clean lines as if tailored by the hand of Daedalus. Tommy's ill-fitting vestments seemed a sham in comparison, and he was very aware of the ever assiduous inner monologue that banged hammers inside his head while reciting all of the reasons he was no good, nothing, perhaps somewhere less than equal to the ashen detritus that dribbled occasionally from the lit phoenix tail of her cigarette. "You're investigating the lost?"