he's (misterenigma) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-02-12 00:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, *log, eddie nigma, evangeline sablier |
eddie/evie log: gotham
Who: Eddie and Evie
Where: A back Gotham alley
When: recentlyish!
What: a chance meeting. sweeping
Warnings: a little cussing i think probably. talk of silent hill things.
To say that the woman in the black polka dotted sweater dress, black tights, clunky mary janes, short hair, and sensible eye make up looked out of place standing behind the Easy End clinic talking to a group of working girls while all of them smoked cigarettes and gabbed away like it was nothing was the understatement of the century.
It was chilly, the woman’s arms crossed around her midsection, bitching about having left her coat inside, her hand holding her cigarette away from her face and blowing the smoke away from her, she didn’t want it sticking to her if she could stand it. She danced from foot to foot. But she made no move to go inside, she was enjoying the company, even when she put her butt in the can by the backdoor - leave it to an east end Gotham medical clinic to have a smoking section. “Ladies, go inside, my break is almost over and I need to digest everything I just heard,” she teased but shooed them inside just the same. Every single one of them dropped their butts on the ground, but they did as they were told. Rolling their eyes bitching about what a bitch she was but she told them she was moving them to the bottom of the list for dropping their butts on the ground and she grabbed the broom and started sweeping up.
There was no doubt in Eddie’s mind that the woman sweeping up used cigarettes didn’t belong in Gotham. The polka dots were worn without obvious flair or ironic sensibilities. The flat Mary Jane’s were suburban discount and her makeup wasn’t caked on to hide marital bliss in the form of a facepunch. No, she was Disney princess normal and that was like finding a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk for most people in Gotham. Where did she fall out of the sky from? Eddie couldn’t imagine a world outside of his smog filled city these days. Oh sure there was a time when he was all about white picket fences and potlucks in backyards, but that didn’t pan out. Actually, it didn’t look like it panned out for miss dots either.
Eddie was dressed like money. His suit was Italian, blue and expensive. He had spent the whole day reconnecting with some lovely mob types, eating pasta and watching old men with fat deposits all over their faces get drunk off expensive wine. Lots of small talk that couldn’t add up a single brain cell. That was likely the most boring part of playing The Game, but everything else wasn’t so bad. His name carried weight, he got to wear expensive suits and people were all too willing to hold the door open for him. Being a bank robbing rogue had it’s perks, being a green bat did too, but this was the easy life. Comfort in money and silk and wine.
He walked past Evie and her suburban humdrum, stopped, spun around on his heels and then moseyed back towards her. “Let me guess. You had the day off from housewife duties and Gotham City Clinics seemed like a good place to volunteer at so you could brag at the next PTO meeting.” His voice was crisp and city-slicker. When he said Gotham City Clinics he motioned with his hand like he was describing a movie title up on the big screen. He wasn’t making a real guess, just trying to edge under her skin. Eddie was like a corner just below eye level that you bumped your frickin shin into every single time.
Evie might have rolled her eyes and smiled and even bullshitted right back, but her hackles were a little raised on the whole soccer-mom bit given recent conversations and the man in the blue suit could just go fuck right off.
Because the thing about shin injuries, once you got enough of them, you started cussing out the coffee table and hitting it back. “No. I owe this clinic seven thousand four hundred and sixty two dollars and thirty eight cents for sewing up a bite I got from when my dead boyfriend turned into some kind of hell hound monster and ripped into my calf muscle like a god damn pit bull and I wound up lost in Gotham City one night, and a cab driver brought me here because I said I had 47 bucks and needed medical attention. So I came back to have it looked at and answer phones. So you can take your Brioni covered ass and walk right on by before I beat you to death with the handle of this broom,” she paused and looked closer taking a step toward him into the - admittedly dull - street lights. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at his suit. She cleared her throat.
“So you can take your Zegna covered ass and walk right on by before I beat you to death with the handle of this broom,” in exactly the same tone, and while she had missed a beat, the correction hadn’t taken long at all.
No, Eddie couldn’t have predicted a story about hellhounds and dead boyfriends. His face fell and expression changed. Cool, dark eyes going soft and he put his hands up like he was trying to stop a train. Now wait a min and hey were lost, tiny interjections to her spew of information and eventually he just let her go. The story didn’t sound real, didn’t sound like something that could even happen in Gotham so, she had to be from the hotel, right? The riddled man knew a thing or two about being jerked around by the hotel and her story, the pain on her face was something he could immediately recognize as something close to his own.
He smiled at the Zegna comment and his posture changed from mobster with dollar bills that cut to a street rat that talked his way into a good suit. “Feel better?” Eddie asked and his voice was soft, apologetic. Nothing like the city slicker snap from before. “Hey, look I’m sorry.” He bent at the knees to get her to look at him, not the suit. Eddie was good at masks, one of the best, but right there he was just a middle aged divorcee nerd trying to get back into the solitary life. “The hotel jerked me around, too.” And the apology was genuine, mismatched with his suit and slicked back hair. He unbuttoned his blazer and then held his hand out for the broom. “Let me finish up for you. Take a break, alright?” And, okay if she wanted to beat him with the broom, he was in striking distance.
She realized she must have sounded insane, but when he mentioned the hotel she handed the broom over quite willingly and stepped back a bit toying with a pull on the sleeve of her sweaterdress (it had come from Walmart and been washed more than once already!) “I don’t know,” she answered but she chuckled a little. “I didn’t mean what I said about Pit Bulls, I had one. I love them. That’s just the story I told in here, and I’m almost used to it. I don’t think the injury was like a Pit Bull at all.” It was an odd direction to take it, but she wanted to make that bit clear.
He was pleased and maybe a little surprised she didn’t put up a fight about the broom. Eddie hadn’t completely made up his mind about her, but she looked the type that liked doing the work, even at the expense of herself. Maybe it was the sensible haircut and Walmart attire. Anyway, this had to have been some kind of tipping point for her and the riddled man tripped her over the edge. He was good at that. Eddie glanced up at her after a few steady broom sweeps. “Is it okay if every time you say pitbull, I think of the musician? Mista World Wide.” Eddie leaned on the broom, hands wrapped around the handle as it pressed against his cheek. He looked a little like Dick Van Dike, minus the soot on his face.
“You could have told them it was a giant paper clip with googly eyes and they wouldn’t care.” Eddie assured her. Gotham was full of masks, full of ugliness people didn’t want to talk about. Girls came in with worse cuts than hers, each with a story to tell that wasn’t true at all. “Was it badly infected? What door was it from?” He didn’t know if she wanted to talk about it, but he got curious.
She was a doer but she was tired. So tired. And she was getting much better at being tired lately. And she was also a mother and as far as she was concerned he was making up for being a butt. She watched him and tried not to smile, so she could look completely serious when she said, “Do they call you that because you’re worldwide orrrr…?” she said because honestly that song. Though she did wait for the chim chim chiree that never came, disappointed.
At the paperclip comment she did laugh, “It looks like you’re attacking your girlfriend with your jaws of death! Would you like help?” she almost cried. She almost did it. But she took a deep breath and held it off. Laughing instead. Just keep swimming. “It wasn’t the first time I came. But I didn’t do very well taking care of it after I went back home. So I came back, and had them look again. It’s better now. I was in Silent Hill. The man died over a year ago. It was all just awful. But. I’m back. We’re all back now.”
“No, I’m afraid I’m just Mr. Gotham City.” Eddie said with absolutely zerrooo remorse. Gotham was his home and he didn’t look like he had any desire to go elsewhere. Not anymore, anyhow. Eddie laughed along with her, smarmy smirks and amused dark eyes that lit up. Sure, he caught that contorted flip of the card when she almost started to cry, but he didn’t prod at it. She was laughing it off and wasn’t that the Gotham way? “Clippy finally getting revenge for all those times you clicked no.” He laughed again and then went back to sweeping.
“Silent Hill, jesus christ.” Said with the familiarity. “Yeah, that place will dig up the worst thing in the back of your head and try to crush you with it.” He cleared his throat. “But, you’re back. That’s a nice thing to be able to say.” He knew because he had written it in giant green letters the second he walked back through the door. Eddie smiled up at her and reached for the dust pan, putting his shiny shoe at the back of it so he could sweep in dirt and cigarette butts. “Gotham isn’t so bad, you know? Once you get past the gatekeepers like me, it’s pretty nice. Great tacos, better karaoke and these clinics? Don’t expect you to pay them back. You shouldn’t worry too much about it.”
“You’re Mr. Gotham City? Is there a contest in a newspaper or some other source that can verify this?” She hadn’t spent much time in Gotham City. Back and forth to answer phones, it reminded her of the seedier parts of New York. And nasty parts of Vegas. Nasty parts of anywhere really. She’d grown up in the Ukraine in the last days of the Soviet Union, and while she was young, she was old enough to remember nasty. “Nah, Clippy came for revenge because I always swapped him out for the cat.”
She nodded and looked down the street at a whole lot of nothing really at least she noticed a whole lot of nothing there had to be something. She just stared for a long moment. “There were things that place dug up that I didn’t even know were in the back of my head, things I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have come up with,” she still wasn’t convinced those smaller bits weren’t real.
“I have to confess, I don’t actually live here, I live over in Marvel. But!” she held her hand up, just in case he thought about protesting, “I have had some good tacos though, the lady who has been taking over as a Wayne Foundation Medical Services Coordinating Director of Something or Other I have no idea, she’s from Marvel too. But moving here. She brought in tacos the other day. And they were great. Karaoke I haven’t tried, and I feel like I should do something because not only does money not transfer, but I don’t have a job at home - I can at least try and write this on a resume sometime. I have a kid I need to support and soon. I don’t live here, so I don’t pay taxes here. Even when I get a job at home I can’t give them any money. It’s a mess. I just want to try to help a little if I can. So I come when I can.”
“Sure, except Mr. Gotham isn’t decided with muscles. It’s how many places you’ve been stabbed. I beat out the Bat family because I’ve been stabbed on the metro and I don’t think they take that very often.” Eddie picked up the dustpan that was now full of cigarette butts, dirt, grime and clumps of grey gross from the Gotham street. It occurred to him all of a sudden that sweeping outdoors in his city was not only pointless, but sort of unheard of. He stood there, a funny, confused look on his face as he tried to figure out where to throw it away. Eddie didn’t want to brave the dumpster because there might be a half-dead hobo in there or a raccoon and frankly he didn’t know what would be worse.
“Kids are the most important.” He said automatically and if she knew anyone from Gotham, she’d know that was a very popular opinion among decent types. Bats and cats and birds. “Well, if you need a job I own a couple different-” Eddie said distantly, still holding the dustpan with an increasingly confused look on his face. “Where? Would I put this? I don’t-” Was all he asked and he childishly made a tiny noise and stuck out his tongue a little in thought.
She was about to ask if he meant places on his body or places in the city when he answered that question for her, then she was about to talk about the evening she spent on the Gotham City metro but she changed her mind about that as well. That was not a good night. “Well congratulations on your title, Mr. Gotham City.”
She watched him, slightly amused while he tried to figure out what to do with the nastiness he’d swept up. But when he mentioned work the dust pan was forgotten and she was tilting her own head toward him, “Own a couple of different what?”
She chuckled then and nodded toward the coffee can she’d put outside. “There. It goes in there.”
Eddie squinted at the coffee can as if it were a rubber chicken with a pulley inside. Surely something so out of place had a purpose, but what? A trash...can? A tiny trash can. He looked up at her like he was unsure and then walked over to it, crouched and then decided that it was an innovative idea. Thrifty, even. “Ah, I see!” He said like she handed him a missing puzzle piece and in went the dust, grime and used cigarettes. Relieved, he leaned the broom next to her and set the pan down before dusting off his hands and buttoning his jacket. His dark hair had come loose from its tight, gelled back style and that infamous Riddler curl bounced forward before he could slick it back in place.
He inhaled, looking around the gross (but somewhat tidied up!) alley and then back to her. “I own a hat shop, an electronics store, a deli and I run a brokering business. If you need a job, I can give you one.” Because some girl trying to pay back a clinic and keep the streets literally clean was a good enough resume for him. “I ah- where did I put it...” Eddie smiled and patted down his suit before finding his card. It was green with a shiny question mark on the back. On the front it said Edward Nigma and had a phone number. No business title, because why bother? Everyone in Gotham knew who he was. If she asked anyone inside that clinic, oh they’d know his shade of green anywhere. Eddie held out the card between his fingers. “Think about it.”
The eyebrow she quirked at him while he tried to work out the coffee can was half perplexed and half amused, maybe that was the very definition of bemused but whatever it was Evie was it and her lips curled into a smile as her eyes rolled toward the Heavens. It was one little corner of one little alley in one little slum in one bigger slum in big city. But she had set about to keep it a little tidier than when she’d found it, and now someone else had too. That. That was something.
She decided she liked him better discovering waste bins, with dusty hands, rather than wandering around being a shit head. But she supposed she liked most people better that way. It hadn’t turned out too terrible, and he was willing to talk to her about work, she didn’t know how it would help her find a place to live permanently in Marvel, but it wouldn’t hurt to phone him. And she was thinking about that while he looked for his card, “I like hats,” she said absently. Of course when she took his card she rather recognized it as well, though rather than worry or fret she just smiled and tucked turned it over in her hand. It was a nice card. “I will. It was nice meeting you. My name is Evangeline, by the way.” She offered holding her hand out. “Evangeline Sablier, most people call me Evie.”
“I like hats, too.” Eddie said and took her hand with a nice, friendly shake. “Evangeline is a mouthful, but it’s pretty.” He said it like he was describing the plot of a movie he just saw. A little observance that he couldn’t help. A step backwards like he was performing soft shoe; all roguish grace. “Give me a call.” He made a little phone with his thumb and pinky, holding it up to the side of his face before waving and continuing down the street.