It. (rasatabula) wrote in repose, @ 2016-07-26 21:48:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | *log, cat dubrovna, jack penhaligon |
Who: Jack and Cat
What: Chess. No doubt some life lessons.
When: Recently hand-y wave-y
Warnings: Language, probably.
It was Atticus's bright solution if you stripped it down to bare bloody principles. Atticus had lodged him on a corridor of old ladies, all predetermined to talk his ear off until either he was harangued into making something of their nonsense in a very small, very insignificant column (to fend off, in his defence, the endless comparisons between himself and 'my grandson, George, he's making something of himself in finance. Perhaps if you can't find any news to put in the papers, you might want to go into finance? He's very good. It would mean moving to Ohio, but I'm sure George can put you up' or he was cornered, usually on his way to take a piss until they'd talked him into white-faced silence. Atticus, Jack was beginning to think, had a cruel streak a mile wide because the blue-rinse brigade were clearly a punishment to be inflicted upon the woebegone.
Unless and until one biddy who had declared herself his companion at breakfasts (which in Jack's case became ever the more liquid the more she was immoveable; Matt was owed a lot but Matt could leave the bloody skirtings bare if it made the move out of the B and B any quicker) proclaimed her Russian heritage. Little pancakes.
Of course, that was bloody it. The minute Jack proclaimed an interest in anything, the corridor of lonely old ladies set about to douse him in it to drowning point. Case in point, there were a stream of matrioshka dolls lining the mantlepiece at the foot of the bed that he could do absolutely sod all about. There was a plate of mini pancakes sitting on blue-patterned china and the caviar had been sourced from the depths of the little General Store who had forgotten they had any. In actual fact, that had begun the whole escapade. Vodka, too. That had come with a remark about the number of times he'd shown up to breakfast looking ill but the broad who'd handed it over looked like she'd done some serious drinking in her time and didn't have room to comment.
So he had a room decked out like a tribute to Mother Bloody Russia courtesy the Sunday crowd but the chess board was solidly this side of the world. It was broad and heavy and it belonged somewhere you could stretch out and sprawl and idle over whatever choice you'd made that had lost the game. Jack didn't mind losing, Christ, he didn't know how to win. Which was apposite, given the tenor of his chats with Cat. The blue rinse brigade would have solidly loved her, he had no doubt, but he had every intention of not alerting the corridor or there would be no end to it. Not that caviar and vodka was a seduction routine, it was making up for what he largely suspected had been an oblique conversation in the dark centered on his own failings.
He had a book, one of Rilke and he was slung into the chair with his legs sprawled out front, idly tipping a matrioshka doll on the table back and forth on the tips of her base by the top of her head with his middle finger. Bukowski was curled into an antisocial ball on the opposite chair.