Re: The Poor Thing/The Detective
Men reacted one of a few ways when they found out she wasn’t just a secretary or a housewife, with zero variance. Either they were skeptical of her credibility, like she’d swindled her way into the gig with the power of breasts and witchcraft and no actual merit. Or they assumed her a doormat they could grind down under their heels, delicate sensibility and no stomach for violence instead of the record holder for marksmanship in the whole fucking precinct, three years running. Or sometimes they just assumed she must be a dyke and dismissed her out of hand without further thought. Sometimes she preferred those guys because at least she didn’t have to listen to them for very long before they fucked off out of her periphery. Also, they were the first to forget that she was packing.
But the dirty kid, still mortared to the wall, was giving her a look that she couldn’t immediately decipher. Annoyed, she rolled her eyes skyward with an air of impatience. “Detective Amoux,” she added, ah-moo, the French name entirely clobbered by her flatly American accent. But on either side of the exasperation, she scanned the guy from head to toe. A twinkle at the base of his neck snagged her eye like pantyhose on a splintered chair leg. That was going down in the notebook later, with a big fat question mark next to it. Robbery was an excellent motive for endeavors like murder and kidnapping, and even a skinny little rake of a man could’ve overpowered the old bitch.
Inhale on the cigarette, exhale that wreathed around both their heads in a cloud. She ashed on the carpet and she didn’t care. She didn’t back up to give the guy any room in the hallway. “Sure am,” she nodded, the blunt edge of her haircut swinging against the side of her chin as she looked at up at him (because he was taller, though not overly). “You didn't happen to see anything, did you...?” Trailing off with an expectant lift of her eyebrows, straight shooting that she was prompting for his name.