Re: Selina C/Jack P: the (bad) diner
Jack didn't look for the patinas of people, what had fused to them for so long the substance was almost one and the same. He had, before. He had looked because he could and because he did and because identifying those people had picked out the people in a room who had lived. There were good stories, in people who had lived enough to rely on themselves. Now he didn't pry, even if the bar-owner from the better side of town shone with energy that didn't say 'quiet little town, nothing to see here'.
"Oh I consider it over and over every day," wry over his coffee, and he had. Why didn't he? Stubborn, bloody-mindedness. The hope that one day, the sand would run out and he could claw back his own life and with editor on his resume instead of something more 'unending, painful waiting' illustrated in minimum wage, no tip in courier on white paper. Not that 'editor' meant a damn thing in a town as small as this.
"Lost my morals years and years ago," Jack said as blithely as he knew how, with his own coffee in hand, clutched like a man trying to stumble toward sober in the squint-bright hour of the morning. "Never looked to find them. Never known a newspaper man with a scrap of it, you sell your soul for a story, you don't have any guilt going after it." A little too true, and the smile was paper-thin.
"Next you'll be telling me you're licentious as well as immoral. And commercialism. I was complaining about commercialism, not Christmas. Even the immoral give a shit about flogging cheap stock with a few candy-canes and Christmas cheer."