Re: victor & irene; mariner's inn at midnight
Irene laughed. It was careless and diamond-bright, and it rippled in an establishment that cared very little for laughter that was not accompaniment to breaking the furniture. (That this took place with regularity might have explained why the furnishings were weighty or the legs of the chairs moderately unstable). Irene had not expected the opium-addict to be witty. True, it wasn't particularly clever, but it was more than she had thought possible in his lackluster state, and she looked about the room, her pointed chin turning within the cup of her palm.
Yes, this place was given to assignation. Not the kind, Irene decided, upon examination, that was the same sort that she herself played host to. Hers were the planned debauchery of the sordid encounter and temptation fulfilled. Here was unwetted appetite, the immediate slaking of thirst. Her eyes lit upon an unlikely shape that moved almost in perfect time up against the far wall: Irene's gaze was cool grey, trained on his face.
"And you are not the kind to keep it long," she observed, above the table. His friend, Irene didn't think much of. He wasn't a friend at all, if he was meeting the young opium-addict in a place where his purse would be taken from him if he dallied long, and something more besides. She didn't care that he looked at her as if he could understand the draw of the place to a woman whose eyes were clear and unsullied by drink or the poppy, and who was equanimous with the environs. Irene didn't think he'd remember it in a quarter of an hour, anyway.
"You should go," she advised him, with a look past him toward Sal. It was almost kind, in that moment, but Irene was never kind, and she punctuated the statement with a harsh, "Before you're dragged out into the alley and killed. Things like you don't last long here."