Just a little forgery between friends. Who: Cho Chang, Dean Thomas What: In which Cho needs to see a man about some papers. When: Wednesday, 19 August Where: Kendricks Bar, London Warnings: None really. Status: Complete
There was a chance that the myrmidons were watching, but by now they would know that the Chang woman went to Kendricks all the time -- it was her neighbourhood local, after all, and they would have seen her going there alone, with friends, with her editor, her agent ... there would be nothing at all unusual about her meeting with a new illustrator for a limited chapbook that she wanted to publish.
Which was precisely the cover story she'd cooked up for Dean; it gave them the perfect excuse to sit around and talk and push paper at each other. And she actually did want him to illustrate a book for her anyway.
She arrived at the pub a little on the early side to order up a pint and a ploughman's, and went through her email while she waited for Dean.
Dean walked into the pub right on time, quickly spotting Cho thanks to his height giving him a good vantage point of the place. Heading over to her, he gave her a warm smile as he held out his hand to her. "Ms. Chang. Nice to see your meeting schedule agreed with you this time."
Cho stood to shake his hand. "I really appreciate your patience. Things have been a bit mad lately. Oh, and please call me Katie. 'Ms Chang' makes me feel like I'm in trouble." The wry look on her face was strictly for Dean's appreciation. She sat back down. "Had a chance to look over the material I sent you?"
"I don't know, working with the likes of artists, you may be in trouble," Dean teased with a smirk before sitting down with a nod. "A bit of it. Is there any particular piece you want to start with?"
"The travel stuff is the main thing." She reached into her laptop bag and pulled out a folder, in which there were a few sheets of paper with the information Cho had written up for a "Christine Chen". There were also a couple of loose passport photos. She slid the folder across the table to Dean.
Taking the folder from Cho, Dean opened it, using the bulk of his upper body to keep it so that he would be the only one to see the papers inside. Nodding, he closed the folder and put it into his own bag with a grin. "Looks like that should come along well. Got all the information for that. At least that I can tell. If my consultant needs more information than that, I'll give you a ring." Pulling out his sketchbook, he raised an eyebrow as he flipped through the pages. "Do you have any more ideas for your new characters?"
"Yeah. Basically you've got a team of cops, right? The one, he's sort of this, well—this Denzel Washington-looking fellow, yeah? Built like an American football player. Sort of like the muscle, or at least he looks like it." She paused, looking curiously over at Dean's sketchbook.
"With or without all that padding?" Dean asked with a chuckle as he started sketching out a bunch of thumbnails automatically of body shapes. In between two sketches, he shifted a bit so he could push his chair closer to Cho's so she could see his sketchpad better. He had a good number of body silohuettes lined up across the top of the paper and was beginning on a few face shapes based off of what he could remember of Denzel Washington.
"That looks about right," she said, tapping some of the figures on the page. "His partner's a bit slighter, you know, for contrast? I'm thinking Asian. Maybe Japanese. Movie-star looks."
Putting little marks next to the figures she tapped for his reference, Dean nodding as he started to sketch other body types and faces. "Distinguished movie-star, hunky movie-star, teen heart throb movie-star, or he's so cute I don't know if he's legal movie-star?" he asked before chuckling. "If he was a Lord of the Rings movie star, which one would he be?"
"Orlando Bloom? Those kind of cheekbones, you know? You ever heard the term bishounen?"
"Sadly, yes," Dean said with a shudder as he kept sketching. "Although thankfully not in a long time."
Cho had to laugh. "Lot of that in—where was it you were at, Australia, then?"
"In some of the cities," Dean replied with a chuckle. "There are anime fans there, especially as a fair number of the stores in the Chinatowns of the cities sell discounted anime series. So you sit in the right parts of town and you get giggling girls asking you to draw 'bishounen' for them. Although you get that in a lot of different cities."
"Figures. Yeah, well, think bishounen with kind of an edge. Like he probably has about fifty different kinds of weaponry under his suit, all of it invisible to airport security scanners." Which had seemed entirely likely to Cho.
"So... basically your average anime character," Dean joked as he kept sketching, glancing up every now and then. "Anyone who'd meet these two would be lucky to get away from them alive."
Cho rested her chin on her hand and gave Dean a sardonic look that said in no uncertain terms, You're telling me. Aloud she added, "Well, higher stakes keep it more interesting, I reckon. Oh, I'm thinking longish hair on the bishounen, incidentally." She gestured against her own hair by way of demonstration.
Dean chuckled as he shook his head. "The higher stakes are only more interesting as long as the odds don't start resting too heavily on one side or the other," he pointed out before changing one of his sketches to go along with the new information. He then jokingly did a sketch with the bishounen having hair down to his knees.
She giggled. "Ever thought of getting into comics? You're pretty good." She tapped two of the drawings: that one and that one. They were pretty decent likenesses of the myrmidons, really.
"I've had the passing thought now and then, but then other things struck my fancy," Dean said with a chuckle as he made marks by the ones she tapped. "Traveling where ever you like whenever you like doesn't match well with trying to pimp out your skills to companies and authors." He made a face. "Or simply in compiling a portfolio that looks professional."
"Well, you ever feel like trying it out, give me a shout. Ian Rankin's gotten into the game, I understand -- he's a damn good writer." She glanced down at his sketchbook again. "So you got other business going on?"
Dean raised an eyebrow curiously. "I'm always up for trying out something new. I'm mostly just doing freelance right now for some private companies. Not all artistic work though, sometimes they need impromptu instructors and just plain physical labor." He grinned wryly. "It doesn't pay much though. And isn't very high profile. Getting into the game with a few big names might actually be good for me about now."
Cho smiled. "I could introduce you around, in the SF&F and horror community. I know people who know people and that sort of thing, and that's what it all seems to be about these days, doesn't it?"
"It always seems to be the name of the game in art," Dean said with a laugh. "Or any job circles. You don't mind introducing me to your work friends?"
"Not at all. I reckon it could be good for all of us, in more ways than one." Meaning: more mundane cred for Dean, which couldn't hurt. "If you want, of course. It's entirely up to you."
"I'm up for it," Dean replied with a smile. "If worst comes to worst, there are always creative differences. Is there anything else you figured out for these two guys?" He tapped the sketchbook with the doodles on it.
Cho thought a minute and shook her head. "Off the top of my head, no, but I'll let you know if anything else comes up. And if I get any more characters." A wry look. "Thanks for this; I really appreciate it. You got somewhere to be, or can I stand you a pint or something to eat?"
"You know how to contact me safely if you do," Dean said before laughing as he put his things away. "I don't have anywhere to be. The only thing that would stand in the way of a pint would be the puppy dog look I know my best friend will be giving me for drinking without him."
"We'll just have to make it up later, I reckon," Cho said, waving the waiter over.