a drink with lunch
Characters: Caroline and Reece Setting: Cafeteria, noon
By the time Reece surfaced, it was getting on towards lunch. Despite everything that had happened, no real sign of it showed now that he was post shower and dressed in clean clothes. It took a few moments before he was able to rustle up a sandwich then drift towards the cafeteria, mostly to scope out the new bar. He already had the best part of it, but the collection of cigarettes was a good sign and the choice of booze was also nice. Maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all.
Caroline had also been absent for most of the morning. She had kept to her room, checking out her small haul from last night. Nobody had found her during the game of hide and seek, but she hadn’t actually been interested in being found, so she hadn’t been trying in that way. Instead she had sequestered herself away in a few small parts of the facility and took little mementoes from each. She’d had to - it was only right. Nothing was anything valuable. She couldn’t be seen to be stealing. Not by her neighbours, and certainly not by the cameras which were bound to be watching. So, she had been careful, only taking tiny bits. Nothing anyone else would deem important. And then, that morning, she’d hidden in a corner of her bathroom, by the shower. A place that she hoped basic privacy would mean there were no cameras. And she’d hidden everything. She had used a knife she had taken from the kitchen to loosen one of the tiles, then she had scraped out some of the plaster. The end result had been far less than perfect, yet it calmed her for now. And she would come up with a more permanent solution soon enough. Before larger items took her attention.
But, in the meantime, she had headed for the cafeteria. A social place. Somewhere that she could get to know more people. She wanted to know more people. She wanted them to trust her. To like her. It would make everything smoother. She would pass more quickly.
“Hi,” she said, greeting the person she saw as she walked in with a friendly smile. She had been about to say more when she stopped. “Well - I am certain that wasn’t there yesterday,” she said, blinking at the bar.
Reece turned, glancing up at her and grinning a little. “Nope, it wasn’t.” He set the sandwich down on the plate he’d left on the bar itself before he’d moved behind. Waving her to an open seat he waited expectantly. “Nice though isn’t it? Can I get you something?”
“Well, normally I’d say it’s a little early for me. But I feel that if this is our surprise, I should probably help break it in. What would you recommend?” she asked, crossing the floor to hop up onto one of the barstools, crossing her legs as she faced the guy.
That sort of enthusiasm appealed to Reece and he nodded, before ducking below the counter to determine what was there. “Something...lighter. It is only lunchtime right?” He found her a short glass, then a bottle of vodka and a container of orange juice. Very fitting. He took a moment to put it together before setting the screwdriver in front of her. “Enjoy.” His smile was back, something almost mischievous in his smirk.
Caroline’s eyes sparkled as she took the glass, gave him a mock toast and took a sip. A small sip. She was not looking to get drunk, not right now. She put the drink back on the bar and smiled, winningly. “Lovely. I’m Caroline. And you are...” she trailed off, waiting for him to fill in his name.
“Reece,” filled in holding out a hand for her to shake, since that seemed to be the thing here. Maybe they were all trying their hand at physical contact again. “Lovely is exactly right.”
Caroline caught the double meaning there, but coyly made as though she didn’t quite notice it. She shook his hand, lightly, a delicate touch that was far more so than her normal shake. If he wanted to decide she was just a piece of eye candy, then she had no problems going along with that. “Nice to meet you, Reece. So - how are you settling in?” she asked, dropping her hand and taking another small sip of the drink.
The gentle touch was different, odd given the circumstances, but Reece wasn’t the type to read too far into it. “Settling in good,” Reece said with a nod. He might not have said that before this morning, but since Susanna’s visit, he really couldn’t complain. “How about you?”
“Compared to where I was before, I certainly have no complaints - though I would imagine that common to us all,” she said with a smile. “Honestly? Given the size of this place, I feel that in a few weeks some of us may be suffering with cabin fever, but personally, I have no complaints.”
“It’s certainly better than where I was,” Reece agreed with a nod. He looked around then reached for his sandwich again. “Might get bored of being stuck here, but really is it that much worse than an twelve by twelve cell?”
“And there is the question,” Caroline pointed out. “I hear that we’re going to lack visitors, but personally that doesn’t bother me that much.” Caroline did not, in fact, ever receive that many visitors.
“Did you have a rush of visitors?” Reece asked, leaning on the bar more, watching her as he took another bite. His parents had come by at holidays, occasional a brother or sister would stop by, but he wasn’t as close to them as he had been when he was younger. Going to jail for five years did that.
Caroline laughed. “Really not so much.” She rolled her eyes and decided to be honest. “I was the type of person they set those prison visitor types at? To make you feel like someone gave a damn. How about you? Lots of friends, family - someone always mobbing you?” she asked.
Reece nodded, holding back a smirk at what she said about herself. “Did it work at all? Make you feel like someone gave a damn?” he asked, curious how that worked. “A few. My parents, despite hating that they had a son in jail showed up for birthdays and holidays. Brothers stopped by every so often, but I wasn’t particularly popular.”
“Not so much - though some of the people were interesting,” she admitted. That, at least, was honest. “From the sounds of your family, they have a thing about reputation.” There was something in the phrasing of that that made it sound like they were concerned about what the neighbours, or the people at church, or down the country club or [insert group or organisation here] would think of them having a criminal in the family.
“At least they were interesting. Break up the boredom of being locked up for so long,” Reece grinned a little then shook his head. “I highly doubt the Conners cared that much about reputation, but I know they were disappointed. Higher hopes for the child that slipped through the cracks.” They probably hated the way people at church or around town talked about it, but his parents weren’t in that high of a rank of society. They sure as hell probably weren’t the only people they knew with a kid in jail or at least wrestling with the law.
“What did they want for you then?” Caroline asked him, sipping at her drink again. She knew that people had had higher hopes for her. As it was, she had loved her life. And now - well, she had known the risks. And she was working on a way out. Then she could get back to her precious babies. Her stash, all alone in the darkness, where they were never meant to end up. Feeling the twitching in her fingers, she reached out for one of the matchbooks on the bar and palmed it, slipping it up under her sleeve. LIttle things that didn’t matter. That was all she would allow herself right now.
“Something that wasn’t prison?” Reece said with a shrug. “I wasn’t going to be a doctor or a lawyer, but I figure they probably didn’t want me to wind up in jail. Probably would have liked it if I had been better at holding down a job too.”
“God - save us from doctors and lawyers,” Caroline said with a laugh. “At least that was never on the cards. Judging from this, though, you may have made a great bartender,” she said, jokingly.
“I was a great bartender for a stint. Mostly I worked construction, but I did tend bar for abit.” Reece smirked a little and shrugged. “What did the world expect of you?”
She smirked, cocking an eyebrow. “Everything.” She paused, and pulled a look. “Nothing more than I expected of myself. But not everything turns out the way you expect.” She didn’t sound in the least disappointed by that, though. Sure, she expected to be in a far different place than she was, but the position was still the same. She was the best. That was all that was important. All that was ever important.
Reece waited for more then shook his head. “That’s not really giving me much to go on,” he pointed out but smiled anyway. Even if it was vague and not much of an answer, it was a conversation with a woman that wasn’t ending badly. Reece was fine with taking what he could get.
“It isn’t, is it?” she agreed, cheerfully. She was enjoying stringing him along rather. “Do you wish to hazard a guess?” she suggested, smiling a little, hoping that he would. It would relieve the utter boredom of this place at least.
“A guess at what you expected from yourself or what everyone else did?” Reece asked. He was more than willing to play a guessing game with her, but he wanted to make sure he had the right game in mind.
“Let’s start with everybody else - since that seemed to be the subject at hand. What we expect from ourselves is a great deal more personal, after all,” she pointed out.
“Are you afraid of getting personal?” Reece ventured, almost teasing. “But if we’re going to stick with what everyone else expects, I’d say if you were from where I was from, you’d have been a debutant.”
She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at that. “A debutant? Do I look like that type?” she asked, knowing she did. She had found, in the past, that looking like you owned the world made it easier to move in practically any circles. It was easier to dress down than dress up, and being a well groomed woman rarely hurt anything.
“Yes,” Reece said without hesitation. “And I figure you know it.” Which she had to. Those girls knew they were as pure as driven snow. They also knew they could get what they wanted, just looking like that.
She didn’t respond to that directly. “I would like to think that I am rather more useful than that. And possibly less likely to waste my days doing charity work.” She paused, stroking a finger down the bar in front of her. She never wanted to end up like that. One couldn’t be too sure. Then, she continued, “Though, I’ll admit to not really knowing what a debutante does. Or is. Which, really, is probably the biggest giveaway that I’m not one.”
“Honestly I’m not sure they do a whole lot besides their boyfriends on prom night,” Reece pointed out with a wry grin. “But that you don’t want to go about helping people out is interesting. Not the ‘giving’ type?”
“There is a whole gulf of a difference between devoting all of your time to charity and not wanting to help people,” Caroline said, with more of a mind to the cameras she was certain were watching and listening to every move made. “And that doesn’t mean that I’m not the ‘giving’ type.” Actually, she was more like the ‘taking’ type - and trying to restrain that impulse was getting harder and harder. Hell, she’d only been here a matter of days and she could feel that already.
“Still you figure the people who devote all their time to charity, that’s what they care about. Or they just want to look good.” Reece shrugged, then smirked at her. “Depend on what you’re giving then?” he asked, curious tone to his voice.
“I think the kinds of people who decide to devote all that time to those kind of organisations want the reputation and publicity that comes with it,” Caroline admitted. “Generally speaking, of course - in life there is always the exception to the rule and I wouldn’t want you thinking that I don’t believe that the world has some actually genuinely good people in it.”
“I’m not even sure I believe there’s genuinely good people in the world. Outside of my mother of course.” Reece grinned at that then turned to study the bottles behind him before picking a glass and a bottle to pour himself a drink. “But you did describe a fantastic job for a former debutante.”
“So, what do you believe then?” Caroline asked, taking the opportunity to deflect the conversation away from herself. He had been right - she wasn’t a particularly giving person, and she’d given enough information away for now. His turn to talk.
Reece swirled the amber liquid in his glass, studying it while he thought before answering her. “I think people do good things, but not always for the right reasons. There’s few people who do good things for strangers just to do them. Most people do them so they sleep better at night and to make up for something they’re not doing in their lives.”
“...Like?” she prompted, leaning back a little and shifting position slightly. She mirrored his actions a little, stirring her own drink as she watched him.
“Like not taking care of their own. Or doing what they should be doing in general.” Reece was pretty sure most people weren’t inherently good, they were just good at hiding it.
She tilted her head to one side and eyed him. “Are you speaking from personal experience?” she prompted. She knew next to nothing about the man in front of her, and she wanted to know more. Information was power, after all. She liked power.
“I could be. Or just what I’ve seen,” Reece said shrugging again and taking a sip of his drink. He didn’t mind giving her a little insight. He wasn’t the type to be good at mystery or lies anyway.
She noted that. He was as loathe to give out too much information as she was. She backed off a little. “So, a bartender who builds things and doesn't believe in good people,” she said, summarising what she knew of him. “Who’s now playing get along with the rest of us. All lined up to jump over whatever hoops and tests they have for us to regain his freedom. Do you think this program will work?”
Reece smirked and nodded at the summary. He liked that. It fit him perfectly. “I think I’m doing a little more than just playing ‘get along’. I’m not totally unlikeable.” He considered that if he’d be willing to do what it took to get out. “Depends on the hoops, but I’m willing to work with what I’ve been given so far. I’d like to get out before I’m old.” As for if it would work Reece that to think about that. “I don’t know. I’m not sure there’s much I can do to change myself.”
“From what I hear, that’s exactly what we’re expected to do. If we change, we won’t go back to the wicked ways,” she teased, her brown eyes flashing with mirth as she took another sip of her drink. It was halfways gone by now, and tasting better by the minute.
“Maybe I’ll be here a long time then,” Reece said, leaning against the bar as she took another drink. “Can’t be all bad. Company’s better than prison and there’s drinks.”
“And is all that better than what you would have out there?” Caroline asked, honestly a little shocked at the attitude. She wanted out. She wanted out so very badly. Even here - step up from where she had been as it was - was nothing compared to what she had left behind and what she wanted for her future.
Reece considered that as well, then nodded slowly. “Not sure what’s waiting for me. Parents’ basement maybe, if they let me go home which they might not. Here, I get three squares, no one’s trying to kill me yet and again, I’m enjoying the company. Out there, who knows?”
With that comment, Reece fell sharply in her estimation and Caroline found it a struggle to hide that. She attempted to cover by taking a larger gulp of her drink. "Each to their own, I guess," she offered.
He might have missed it but he was watching her, and it was hard to miss with his eyes on her. “What’s waiting for you?” he asked and though he kept the ‘that’s so much better than what little I have’ off the end of the question, the tone was creeping into his voice. While he wasn’t much, he wasn’t sure he’d be a fan of someone who thought they were so much better than him given their circumstances.
"The world?" Caroline suggested. "Opportunities. More than we have here, anyhow. Life. One that can be actually lived, not just survived. Choices, control. Lots of things." And her stash. Locked all away. Alone. It had never been meant to be like that.
“The world eh? We lived a different life before here, but unless they mean every word about changing everything, I’m still a guy with a record, as are you. Opportunities are what you think they’d be.” He’d met more than one former convict working construction and he knew they had little in the way of options. “You have plenty of choices and control here, what more are you looking for?”
Caroline mused on how much she should let known. Unlike most here, she figured, she had read the press release. And she had read between the lines of it. “I heard a rumour that, if we graduate from here. And if we want it. They’ll set us up with a new life. A new identity even. Apparently they really mean it when they talk about a ‘fresh start’. No record. No conviction. Opportunities.” Not that Caroline had any intention of going straight, but nobody else needed to know that.
Reece thought about that, considering what was being left behind if he became someone else. “Are you ready for that? To be someone different?” She might be. She had admitted to having no one there. He had a family though, a lot of family, who while they were upset with his mistakes, he had a hard time letting them go and guessed they would feel the same way.
Caroline laughed. “Sweetheart, I’ve been being someone different for years now.” Half her jobs had involved some kind of make pretend. Being someone else, to get in, to case a place, to get out. She was no grifter, but she’s walked the line enough times.
He ran his tongue along the inside of his lower lip, contemplating that. “Do you miss who you were?” That would be his concern, missing being Reece Conner, middle child of eight.
“I’m still me,” she shrugged. “To me, anyhow. It’s everyone else who perceives the change. AT least, that’s the way I view it. And that perception has already altered, hasn’t it? Take you - what I know of you anyhow, which will mean a fairly simplistic analogy, but let’s go with that. Before, you were a bartender who builds. That was how people saw you. Now, you’re a criminal. Possibly one who used to be a builder, and a some-time bartender. But, the world sees you as a criminal. There’s no going back to what you were before that. But you can move forward to be something else entirely. Start again. Build something new.”
Reece nodded slowly. The world had been close to seeing him as a criminal long before he wound up in the big house, but he didn’t correct her. “I’m curious to see if we can change that much. Seems like an undertaking that’s going to take more than a few weeks here.”
She raised an eyebrow at that. “You think we’re really only going to be here for a few weeks. Try years. In this place. No way out. No visitors. Just us. And them - watching. And doing whatever they want to make us into good and nice members of society.”
Reece laughed and shook his head. “I already told you, I’m not sure I’m leaving. I’m starting to like it here.” He leaned on the bar again watching her. “So it’s not perfect. It wasn’t supposed to be perfect. But it’s not prison. I can be really tough, but I don’t have to be as tough here. It’s nice to relax a little.”
“Then I hope you remember me fondly when I’m gone,” Caroline said, her brown eyes sparkling as she drained the rest of her drink and set it down on the bar. Always in exactly the same place.
“How could I not?” Reece said. “A face like that? Hardly to remember any way but fondly.” He smirked a little at the sight of her finishing the drink, but didn’t comment on it.
She smiled at that, but said nothing, hopping down off the barstool and betraying her real height once more. Nobody could ever say that Caroline was anything but, well, short. “Thank you - I hope you continue to mean that,” she said.
Her size didn’t matter much to him, but he did note it. “Hopefully you’ll feel the same way about me,” he said. “Even if you’ll be the one doin’ the leaving.”
“Maybe,” she told him with a smirk that was really all for show. Whether she would remember him or not, she couldn’t tell. At least she wasn’t making empty promises for flattery - for Caroline did not really believe that he would remember her. Not that she was going to share that. It was nice to hear, and she figured he found it nice to say, but she wasn’t going to hold him to it. “In the meantime, I think both of us should get some practice. It was nice meeting you though.”
“Pleasure’s mine,” Reece said, raising his glass towards her. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.” For now at least. She talked in years and while he believed her, something itched at him, that they could get out of here much sooner than years from now. He could be wrong sure, but he was starting to think that wasn’t the point. If they wanted him for years, they’d have left them in prison.
Caroline gave him a little wave and then turned and sauntered out, slowly enough for him to enjoy the view. Sure, it was shallow. But... whatever worked.