It. (rasatabula) wrote in repose, @ 2016-07-22 18:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, jack penhaligon, perry pearson |
Who: Jack P and Perry P
What: Job-giving
When: Backdated, guys. Pre-plot.
Warnings: Nada
The collateral damage of digging out the vodka at the back of the freezer required forcible relocation of both Jack and Bukowski and in the absence of any immediate options presenting themselves to him (and the need for a roof for the duration of at least one night) he had moved the both of them into the small newspaper office over the bookstore. It was small usually, and it smelled strongly of printer ink, alcohol, burned coffee and a faint tinge of sweat. The walls were plastered with faded, framed prints of former issues (the name on the masthead was not current) and ideas for new articles, and the small office hemmed in by desks and humming printer had blinds drawn but drunkenly askew. Any new-entrant to the place was likely to see the feline lodged in between the slats, sat on the desktop and glowering out at the territory.
Bukowski took poorly to confinement, which Jack thought evidenced the terrible idea it was to keep the animal confined in the first place. He looked even more vile in a civilized setting, as he was a motley of colors, his fur bristled in places and clumped together in others and he was missing parts of his ears that probably amounted to a whole one in total. His eyes had slitted down to amber fury on the door being shut on the office, and his tail was slashing about. Jack himself had thrown himself across the couch wedged against the back wall of the office, and the righteous destruction Bukowski had wrought to anything within clawing distance was not yet known, because he’d drunk enough after wrangling the cat and a change of clothes across town from the lake-side to make the sleep stupor rather than light.
He wasn’t particularly bothered as to when the kid with the camera (Jack had invited him in to fill out required paperwork and to look over his shots) eventually showed up, because the door was open and there wasn’t anything of value in the place to lift. Bukowski on the other hand, began yowling the minute the door onto the upper floor opened, his hackles spiking under his fur until he resembled an angry pincushion menacing the blinds.
It had been a rough few days for Perry, but moving through the front door of the tiny news office and getting hit in the face with some serious vodka fumes, he figured that however bad it was, it wasn’t as bad as this guy’s. He was wearing his camera around his neck, the strap fraying a little at the edges of the weave, the all-over direction of Perry’s hair sprouting out from a layer of summer jacket and thick glasses he liked to wear when he was feeling vulnerable. Perry stopped, his hands on his bag, which was crossed over his chest and contained prints, to stare at the cat in the center of a kingdom of destruction.
“Uh. Hello?”
Perry edged in further, looking around for the scent of burnt grounds and crossing in a haze toward a half-buried coffee maker, whose burner he switched off before he saw a heap on the couch move and jumped.
Fidgeting, Perry edged closer, toe by toe, and keeping a wary eye on the cat. Perry had a pretty good relationship with animals: they went one way, and he went the other. “Sir? Are you… you okay?”
The dream, which majored on a brass band thumping somewhere in the region of his temple, drifted and Jack half-surfaced, cracking one bleary and bloodshot eye open on the nearly empty room and the throb of strip-lighting overhead. Nearly empty, because there was an entirely too earnest looking body in the room. Jack objected to earnestness on principle and nearly all his staff had learned to look deeply bored or otherwise uninterested in his conversations, on peril of lecturing. All but one, who was a soccer-mom type who had grown up into an obstinate grandmother type who was responsible for the distribution contract with local stores, and of whom Jack was reasonably terrified.
But this boy was hovering, with intent. Jack lifted his head off the pile of cushions crammed into the crack of the arm-rest and the couch cushions. “Don’t move,” he croaked. The growl Bukowski was emanating was a new development, and Jack preferred the idea that the newspaper office saw the brunt of the animal’s temper, rather than him.
“You’re Perry.” He couldn’t be anyone else. “Jack.” The brass-band of the dream had set up residence inside the left quadrant of his temple, inside what felt like an iron echo-chamber that was shrinking painfully into the recesses of his skull. Jack put a hand over his eyes, and moved with undue haste to usher himself and Perry out of the office proper, and closed the door on Bukowski, who with predictable dislike, threw himself promptly against the glass with a thud. Now inside the newspaper office, but the other side of the editorial niche, Jack surveyed the kid himself.
“Photographer, correct?”
Obediently, Perry didn’t move, and then he did move, really quickly. He looked over his shoulder only just in time to see the dragon-as-cat attempt to assassinate him, and his eyes were appropriately wide.
“Uh.” Perry seemed unable to put together a sentence without a proliferation of syllables. “Uh yeah. That’s me.” He picked up the camera off his chest a little unnecessarily, waving it gently left and right to display it. Perry was trying to ignore the successive waves of vodka and stepped backward as soon as he was able to do so. “I got the assignment you sent me.” Now he dropped the camera onto his chest again and turned to dig into his messenger bag, a frayed thing decorated with cloth patches, including an NYU seal.
Perry pulled out a manilla folder that he handed over with the prints, which featured over ten shots for the editor to choose from, all featuring a grandmotherly lady sitting on her porch (head, three-quarter and shoulder-shots). She had a scruffy black and white cat on her lap. Perry had endured a lemonade more lemons than sugar for the photos, but otherwise had flattered the lady with his earnest compliments, and in her photos she looked pleased and kindly.
The kid - because he was a kid, halfway house between child and man and there was no word more appropriate for it than ‘kid’ in the English or the American language - waved his camera around as if it were a dick in a measuring contest. Nice bloody camera, if Jack focused on it but focusing on it made his head hurt and his eyes were rimmed-red dark. He didn’t stutter so much as he misjointed his sentences until they squeaked at the hinges.
Jack stared at him as he dug into the bottom of his bag, incapable of much else as the fog of alcoholic stupor began to recede in inches. “The assignment,” he repeated blankly which he’d clearly forgotten or had been so below notice he hadn’t remembered it beyond giving it in the first place and watched the photographs emerge from the recesses of a bag trailing insignia with confusion.
“NYU,” that much registered, and Jack’s voice held a kernel of curiosity as he reached out his hand for the photographs. The face registered, and his mouth didn’t register approval so much as the line it was flattened into became less severe. The kid was all right. ‘Good’ was reserved for prize-winning pieces and the woman in the photograph wasn’t gallery-ready. Better than he’d imagined.
“How much?” He looked at the kid expectantly.
Perry chewed on his words for a little bit before answering. He seriously doubted that Jack’s newspaper had a 50,000 circulation, and he had no idea what their operating budget was, but it probably wasn’t good. Perry’s operating budget was really bad too, though, and he thought uncomfortably of Aunt May’s carefully arranged spreadsheet with their expenses. “$50 a shot?” Perry hazarded.
Perry glanced down at his bag, impressed that Jack had managed to observe anything through what must be a brutal hangover. “I ended up not going,” he said, vaguely embarrassed he hadn’t removed the patch, and yet not really wanting to do so. He let the editor keep the photographs, and had by this time not learned to look for approval on the faces of hard-bitten newspapermen. Perry was never going to be a prize-winning photographer; he didn’t have the passion or the artistic eye. He was an action boy, and liked taking pictures, but the spark of creation wasn’t in him for photography.
His passions were elsewhere.
Jack was more observant when he wasn’t drunk, the blood to alcohol ratio narrowed his focus to what was immediately before him but the kid looked of that age and the college patch was right there under his nose. An overly zealous parent perhaps, or just a kid who’d mustered his all on going to a particular college. He watched Perry mull over how much cash he was going to ask for, and his mouth curled into his cheek at the request. The fact of the matter was that while the paper’s operating budget was shit, he had his wife’s money at his disposal and it didn’t matter how many shitty broadsheets he put out, he could piss the money up the wall and still be able to knock it out.
“You think you’re good enough for fifty bucks a shot?” His accent curdled over ‘bucks’, pithy Scots commingled with acerbic English until it withered over the blatant Americanism. “Or are you taking me for a ride?”
It didn’t matter either way, Jack was just interested in seeing what the kid said to defend himself.
Perry did not smile, and despite himself he looked down at the folder in Jack’s hands before looking up to meet his eyes. He might not be made of steel, and Jack might have ten years on him, but Perry wasn’t going to be ground under by anyone, either. “I think I got three times that to the last paper I sold to,” he said. This was a very slight exaggeration. It was probably something like… 2.5x.
Perry tipped his head, vaguely interested in Jack’s accent, but not interested enough to push. It was an old stereotype that newspapermen drank a lot, and in the age of the internet maybe it was true. He couldn’t imagine someone with Jack’s success (Perry knew how to google) being in Repose unless he was feeling pretty low. Perry wasn’t sure he wanted to know why, exactly.
Jack didn’t trot out his life-story on command even if someone extremely pretty asked. Perry wasn’t Jack’s brand of pretty and he wasn’t served alongside a glass of whatever loosened up the tongue the most so Jack wasn’t inspired to rattle through what had reduced dreams down to dandelion fluff on passing wind. Three times? He looked again at the photo in his hands, and scratched his head. Jack’s hair was thick, but it looked like he needed a shower - the rest of Jack looked like he needed a shower too.
“Three times. Taking pictures of what?” But he wasn’t haggling exactly, because Jack liked to fight about money as much as he liked to fight about everything else and this was considered instead of pugilistic. “You’re OK. This isn’t your passion, is it?” He waved the photograph. If it was, the kid needed time. Time and to see a little more and maybe his eye would soften. The shot was OK, better than he’d expected and better than the shitty little paper deserved, in all truth. But occasionally, Jack liked to forget he was a terrible editor, churning out a rag of a product.
“Is it?” He squinted at Perry doubtfully. What the kid’s passion was, he couldn’t tell at first glance. “Fifty it is.”
Perry had a press pass (outdated but there), but he was no reporter. He wasn’t inquisitive in that way, and he lacked persistence in things that weren’t his business. Unless Jack was hurting someone (other than himself), Perry felt it was impolite to pry before his first paycheck. He had to adjust again to move upwind from the fumes, and did so surreptitiously, both hands clasped around his messenger bag like it might shield him. He didn’t want to impress Jack, except with the photos, to the extent of a payday.
Jack could look up the answer to his question, so Perry answered it, staring upward at the ceiling with interest for a moment. “Vigilantes, usually. I’m… patient.” Perry gave a bright, innocent smile, and glanced evasively back for Jack’s reaction. “I guess I’m not super great at it,” he admitted. “I’m okay, though, right?”
Perry grinned with accomplishment as Jack agreed to Perry’s asking price. “How many do you want?” The brown eyes behind the thick lenses gave a quick look sideways, to either wall, where previous generations had mounted yellowing front pages. “I’m not sure… how big of a spread it is.”
Jack didn’t care if he fumigated the new staffer or he didn’t. He was upright which was of benefit, and not swaying which was really surprising and he eyed Perry’s fascination with the ceiling tile with some misgivings. The kid knew how to take a lens cap off, which was really all that was required in the circumstances and if he didn’t have passion for it, that was all for the better. God knows someone with passion would get tired of the lot of it before a few months passed.
He dropped the print in his fingers to the battleground of a desk nearby. It at least looked like it was mostly used as a work-space, rather than a work-cum-living space. From that angle, it almost looked good. “She’s not paying for it, so it’s not that big a spread,” he agreed with Perry. “Give me two. And you’re on call to take pretty pictures of businesses who’ll pay to see them in the sheets. Vigilantes?”
God, for a moment the treacherous swill of his belly turned nostalgic. He hadn’t been writing on papers about vigilantes when they’d come sweeping into the headlines. If he had -- “Patient. You were asked to take pictures of vigilantes?”
Perry suspected that Jack had a lot of passion for his paper. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be here in the office, and he wouldn’t have troubled himself to rise out of the cloud of alcohol fumes to meet Perry. He’d flipped through the last couple issues at the library, and in Perry’s considered opinion the paper wasn’t that great, but in a deliberate kind of way. There were one or two articles where he thought perhaps the editor hadn’t been able to resist doing his job.
Perry readily flipped open his folder, selected the two he thought best, and handed those over, even though Jack had already taken one. He figured an extra around wouldn’t hurt, and it wasn’t like Jack was going to use all three. He nodded hard at the suggestion of more work. “Thanks!”
The angelic vague expression reappeared. On Perry’s vaguely academic face it came off as distracted. “No, sometimes I was just around at the right time, and then I got okay at it, so they let me take a photo now and then.” Perry smiled. “Just lucky I guess.” He hoped there was going to be a check now, and not a vague promise of one in the mail. Reflexively, he looked around.
The paper had gone to shit for a number of reasons and they began and ended with Jack. He’d fired every reporter who appeared to know what they were doing, taken on interns instead in some hazy approximation of giving back to the community, and devoted vast amounts of the paper’s space to ads. So it resembled a circular, and the occasional article was thinned down to the least dangerous.
He shuffled the photographs together and made his selection without what looked like much thought; one photo was slung onto the table nearby, where it sat face-up. The kid was looking around like he thought the fifty bucks wasn’t going to materialize, Jack’s face was creased lines and sour humor. “I’m good for it. You don’t have to start looking for price-tags on the furniture.” Dry. But vigilantes who humored a kid by letting them take their photograph sounded as outlandish as running a paper into the ground deliberately to offset a really poor decision with a demon.
“They let you?” He was digging through the pile of papers on the desk in search of the checkbook now, rifling through old editions, what looked like receipts, letters and worryingly, bills. “I thought the whole idea was staying below the radar.”
Perry might have wished for better things for the paper, except he didn’t know what small-town papers were supposed to look like, and he thought it logical that there was not much news in a place like this. He did think it strange that there had been all that mess in the Facility, the recent suicide of a local woman, and that rash of weirdness on the holidays of the last six months, with mostly circulars to show for it. Perry tried to mind his own business unless people were being hurt. (He reminded himself of this.)
Perry was suitably chastised for what he had been caught doing, and he flushed a little before taking a retiring step backward. “Okay. Sorry. Thanks.” He did spend a lot of time apologizing for nothing, it seemed. “I could just… uh. I could just use it as soon as… as convenient. For you. Please. Sorry.” He gave Jack another furtive, hopeful look.
Perry was slightly offended. “I don’t take their portraits or anything. Action shots. Lots of shadow, you know.” Perry was pretty proud of his shutter speed settings. “I’m good at those.”
Most people in town had learned not to wish anything for the paper. It was easier that way. Jack thought the story that had been written (and edited) drunk rather caught all the news the paper ordinarily would have strung out over weeks and months to build readership, but equally, Jack failed to mind his own business so often he could have reported town gossip as news.
He dug out a checkbook from the morass of things on the desk, and flipped it open as the kid stumbled over being polite and sounding needy in the same sentence. Jack had been a starving journo once; no family money, just a name attached to a public scandal and making tea between bouts of trying to convince the sub-editor to read his work. Starving made you fast, not better. He scribbled in the amount and eyed Perry.
“You want to give me your full name? All I’ve got is Perry. You’re good at action shots, huh? Not a lot of action in this town.” All things considered. Minus the dramatic events at the Facility.
Perry drew closer to peer around Jack’s shoulder, interested to know if his checks had pictures of pandas or Impressionist paintings, or if they were the boring business kind. It was only a whim, and Perry had those, along with a running commentary of his life in his head and a hankering for heights. He leaned back again when he realized he was being eyed, and dug his hands out of sight, one in a pocket and one behind the strap of his bag.
“Perry Pearson.” He spelled it.
He shook his head. “No, no action. But I guess I wasn’t expecting any, you know? I do deliveries for the flower shop too, and let me know if you got any other odd jobs around.” He smiled helpfully. “Just me and my aunt right now, and we’re still settling in. Thanks.” He said this about the check.
Jack’s checks were the kind they gave out via envelope. He didn’t pick anything for their front because choices about what they looked like would have signified some mental investment in the business and he didn’t want to wade in deeply and drown. Perry Pearson, spelled out correctly on the face of the check, hovered near his shoulder and close enough that Jack could practically smell the unpaid bills.
“I’ll look out any odd jobs.” His mouth pulled into a reluctant smile and he held out the check to the kid, expecting him to snatch it and run. “You’re new. The newness will wear off.” And with it would go the very-polite, very-well-brought-up kid attitude, Jack was certain.
“Now, get out. I’ve got more sleep to do.” Bukowski yowled menacingly from behind the glass, all teeth and Jack studied this for a moment. “Perhaps not.”