I'M OCEANIC, MOTHERFUCKER (oceanic) wrote in write_lab, @ 2014-09-15 09:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | instance one, ~oceanic, ~sandinista |
instance one.
PLAYERS: sandinista (has a prominent gap between their teeth) & oceanic (collects pennies).
SCENARIO: Having a photo taken.
WARNINGS: None.
“Wait until tomorrow,” he cries, “I don’t have a teeths today!” “You will not have your tooth in tomorrow, child,” the old woman chides, “so do not think I will wait for that.” So he is shoved into a suit with woolen pants that cut at the knee, and scratchy socks that stretch up his calf but don’t cover the scrape he got last week when he bit the concrete after trying to bike. He looks so dumb and he knows it because no one wears this anymore, but the old woman dresses him now, doesn’t she? So he wiggles in his suit and wiggles in the grasp of her hand and wiggles on the subway and wiggles all the way up to the big office where the old woman plants him down and they wait. They wait and wait, the type of wait that makes him feel as if he probably coulda at least gotten in an inning or two down at the park with Mark and Robbie, but no he’s stuck in this dumb room. It’s a really dumb room, the dumbest really: yellow mustard wallpaper and lots of people who look a lot more realistically not-dumb as he, and they don’t even have a big ol’ hole in their mouth like he does. (Funny thing is that he’ll always have a hole in his mouth: when he had all his teeth, the baby ones, the whole kit and caboodle, he could squeeze a dime through the space in his front two teeth if he wanted to. He didn’t, though, because it was dumb and he reckoned that no dumb moron would do that anyway. It made for good whistling, though, which he still wishes he could do, especially right now. Even the music in this place was dumb, absolutely dumb.) There’s a point where the old woman leaves to do something and he’s left to his own devices, which is mostly swinging his legs and wishing he could reach the magazine rack to grab the latest Highlights. Instead, he’s surrounded by a bunch of adults, but he’s so bored, he is so so so incredibly bored. So he looks to the right and looks up, up, up. “Who,” the little pipsqueak of a boy demands, “in th’ heck are you.” You is already looking down, so he looks to the left through his thick-framed glasses and focuses on the insistent voice and its accompanying squinty-eyed face. He's been so lost in the silent contemplation of his palms that he's not certain when the seat next to him filled, or why the child seems to be on his own like some miniature adult in short pants and high socks, his feet dangling inches from the dirty carpet. He takes in the details carefully, as always. It's more than just the second-hand clothes: it's the slouch in his posture, the resentful set of his jaw, the spray of freckles blasted across his cheeks, the strand of hair that stubbornly defied combing. It's the scrape on his shin and the tiny hiss of air that lisps through his words, which is how he notices the dark gap in the part of his lips. He files the details away. Age? A scrapper? An antsy kiddo, at least, with the confident arrogance of a child whose spirit is still fresh. It makes him smile a bit. He remembers that age. He doesn't sit up straighter, but he shifts the pennies into his left palm, dries the right against the knee of his suit, and crosses to offer his hand. "I am Dimitry," he says softly, just above the tinny melody jangling out of the speaker in the corner. "What is your name?" “Well,” the younger says to the elder as he shakes the man’s hand, “I mean, my ma went an’ named me Alexi, but I just done go by Alex because it’s real easier that way. When you’re in second grade, not everyone is sophiz– sopfees– so-pista– you know, real fancy enough to know that Alexi is definitely a boy name for real.” Alex looks up through the handshake, looks up at that tall, old feller who calls himself Dimitry (wasn’t he related to somebody named that? But the old woman says Dimitrys from their neck of the woods are like John Does out here), and scrunches his nose. Now his hands are gonna smell like those pennies, but does that mean his hair’s gonna go and gray at the temples like this feller too? You can never tell with handshakes. “It’s def’nitely a boy name, by the way, I don’t want you to go an’ thinks otherwise.” When Alex settles into his chair again, he tries to mimic the gentleman next to him, which means his legs dangle towards the floor, his posture not the best but not awful either, his hands resting near his lap. He doesn’t have anything to mess around with, though, so Alex’s hands go restless, his legs kicking like metronomes. “Th’ ol’ lady says I have to go get my picture today even though I don’t have a teeths.” It’s hard to tell if the bad grammar is accidental or made to whistle into his gap even more. “I don’t get it none, I might have a teeths tomorrow and this picture won’t count.” He looks over again, wonders if this Dimitry guy feels the same way about his thick old glasses like he does about his tooth, and plays around with the gap with his tongue. “They say this picture’s really important or somethin’. Is your picture gonna be important?” A pause, as his eyes grow wider, saucers in a big pale face. “Are you even here for a picture?” The boy rattles on with the unselfconscious enthusiasm of a child. Even for Dimitry, even as long as he's been here, it is a bit of a challenge to follow his thick vernacular, so he watches more than he listens, and it seems to make more sense that way. It's always in the details. "I am also here for a picture," he confirms. "Everyone here is waiting for a picture. It is a very important picture, yes. Without it, they can say that you are not a person who belongs in this country, so I think that it is a good thing we are both getting our pictures taken." But for all of his serious words, he can feel the prickle of amusement rising inside of him. Everyone else in the room seems in a daze, dressed formally but most with a kind of shabby dustiness to them that he sees everywhere these days. No one has more than a shade of Alex's liveliness. It's infectious; he feels real again almost immediately, separate from the other hanging heads and lidded eyes, in another portion of the world altogether with the little boy and his windowed mouth. Dimitry curls his long, thin fingers around the pennies, one hand clamming over the other. He can still see the copper glinting between his knuckles. "Is your mother Russian, Alexi?" “She’s not really around much anymore, so I couldn’t really tell you.” Alex says this matter-of-factly, chin raised up, trying to grow from the bottom up so he can look down and around like Dimitry does too. “Th’ old lady, she said that she knew my dad from a place called Yaykrat– uhh, Yuhkrat– wait, I got it in my pocket, Mister Dimitry, I can read it for you.” He digs like most boys do at that age, which is to say with enthusiasm and no little lack of shame into the back of his pocket, rummaging while splayed around in some ridiculous contortion rarely seen in anyone over the age of ten. He grasps his prize triumphant a minute or so into the exercise and plants himself back in the chair while smoothing the paper out, someone else’s spider-thin script rushing across the page. “Ye-kat-er-in-burg,” Alex sounds out carefully, looking up to Dimitry, as if he’s the gatekeeper for this word, the expert on what this means. “It’s an awful long word, isn’t it? I always wonder if wherever that city is, if it’s as big as its name. Anyway, I guess that’s where ‘m from, but whenever I try to ask questions, they go an’ tell me, ‘Go play outside!’ or ‘Don’t worry about it,’ which is funny because why would I worry about having a question? People are real silly sometimes, I think.” As he says this, his little head bobs up and down, as solemn as can be. “Real, real silly.” The copper catches his eye then, and Alex pokes his head over his armrest to get a closer look at Dimitry’s hands, pale cages for bright objects. “That’s an awful lotta pennies,” he comments, as if the man holding them had no idea. Suddenly, the little boy’s voice is full of awe, as if he’d never, ever considered the idea before: “Wow, are you gonna go pay ‘em only in those?” A beat. “They’re gonna have to be real good at countin’ if you’re gonna do that.” "No, no," Dimitry smiles as he uncurls his fingers, slowly opening the cage to reveal the pile of treasures within. "I do not give these away. I collect them, you see." His fingertips stroke across his collection, shifting some onto their ridged sides, others heads or tails up. As easily as that, he comes away with one that isn't copper, one that stands out from among the others for its silver edges and the little crown atop the wreath on its upward face. "This one is a kopeck. A Russian penny." He holds the coin up for Alex to see, turning it to either side. "In some places, the people scrape and save every cent, but these little coins often get left behind. I find them in the most unexpected of places, abandoned, where no one is looking for them. Except for me, of course," Dimitry explains. Gently, he turns his wrist and the coin dances across his fingers, flipping with bright glints between his knuckles. It's as easy as breathing these days. An easy little trick to amuse a little boy. It works; Alex’s eyes go wide again, his little jaw dropping in amazement as the older man does his little trick – well, magic trick in his young eyes, his world still gilded in that place where the impossible was clearly explained away by simple answers such as fairy dust. It’s also the quietest he’s ever gone for at least a week, if not two, as well as for the longest spell; if the old woman could have seen this, she probably would’ve proclaimed magic too, albeit of another sort. But finally, he says: “Well gee, mister, did you have to find all those other coins to find the fancy one to do that… thingy?” His little hands wiggle in an approximation of what he saw Dimitry do, visual definitions for when words fell short. Then he gets excited again, bouncing in his chair as his wide, gap-toothed mouth grins. “Wait, maybe they’re all special now! Does the kopek make them special? Is that why you have the kopek, because you know it can make the other coins special and fancy and float over your fingers an’ ssstuff?” The longer he talks, the more of a whistle starts to blow through his diction. The longer he talks, the more he starts to look to Dimitry as if he is some kind of coin wizard. In some ways, he is a coin wizard. And in some ways, the coin is magic. They have always held a special kind of power over Dimitry, woven an indefinable spell that causes him to reach for them in strange places and take them out of his pocket to pour between his fingers like a dragon lording over its hoard of shiny trash, treasure only to him. Their power is never more evident to him, however, than in this moment, seeing the light in Alex's eyes and the simple, uncomplicated joy that it brings him just to watch. He's willing to flex the truth a bit for a little boy whose teeth whistle like a train in miniature. "The kopek is special," Dimitry affirms, dancing it back across his hand again, and a moment later the silver penny is joined by a copper penny, and then another, tinted green with age. "I have had it for so long that it knows me. I brought it here from my home. It was the last cent that I had left, in my pocket, when I arrived in this country. So that now, it is the master of all the other coins. It calls to them." He adds a fourth to the flashing show, concentrating for a breath to keep them in concert with each other, some forward and some backward. Then his hand stills. The coins disappear back into his palm, and he holds the kopek alone, pinched between his fingers. "Here." Dimitry smiles, tilting his narrow chin at the boy whose father is from Yekaterinburg, whose mother named him Alexi. He offers the silver penny. "If you teach it to know you by practicing with it every day, it will become powerful for you, too." If the boy was quiet before, he grows nigh funereal now for all the reverence his silence now holds. His eyes are as big as they can go as he takes the kopek and nestles it in his cupped hands, to his eyes more rare than a blue butterfly in his palm, more precious than a nugget of gold. For a while, Alex only watches it, his knees scrunched up close and his face crystallized in reverence. Eventually, he goes to place the kopek very gently between the dip of his fingers, attempting to have it dance much like Dimitry did. Naturally, it only wavers, then falls backwards into his other palm. There’s a moment there, where Alex almost looks very crestfallen, and it flashes in his eyes before he straightens his jaw and looks up to Dimitry, grave in that childish way, a boy playing at being what he thought men did when being self-assuring. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I’ll take very good care of it and we’ll become very good friends. Then it’ll get all magic for me, just like it does with you too.” He takes a peek down at the kopek, as if he’s glimpsing in on a secret of his very own. In the background, some lady keeps on calling for someone and they won’t come up. Sounds familiar, but he can’t quite place it. “I’ll practice every day, like they say you should when you go and play piano, ya know?” He looks up again at Dimitry, all grave and earnest, a pinky in the air. “I promise. I’ll even swear on it if I hafta.” The way that his long, bony finger fits around the little boy's chubby pinky is almost comical, but Dimitry seals the promise with equal gravity. The kopek isn't lightly passed along: it is special to him, and it does have a kind of magic of its own. It has crossed the ocean and kept him company in a strange land for a long time, never spent in vain, and it can conjure up memories like a flip book of pictures when he runs his thumb along the beveled edge. It may not know him, not the way that he professes for the sake of a little mystery, but he knows the coin very well. It is discipline, trust, and faith. Good qualities to try to pass along to a little boy who is missing much, even his homeland, even his two front teeth. "I believe you, Alexi." He nods, his head wagging up and down as his glasses slip further down the bridge of his nose. "And if you lose it, then —" But his guidebook to the magical kopek is set aside as the name called pierces his consciousness, louder this time, too insistent to filter out. "Oh," Dimitry pauses, disappointed, craning his head to tilt his myopic vision through the frames and fix his blue eyes upon the disgruntled woman at the counter. "It is my turn for my photo." Is it melancholy in his voice over a long wait cut short? Unfolding his angled body to its full, towering height, Dimitry slips the handful of pennies into his pocket with muffled clangor that nonetheless rings loud in the room. "Do svidaniya, Alexi." Until we meet again. “Dosh– dosee– aw shucks, see ya later, mister.” The syllables are betrayed by his teeth, and Alex is never more grumpy than that moment when that special word – special enough for the coin wizard to say it – fizzles and whistles out of the gap. But even though the word sputters, the kopek stays, a little reminder of something that he doesn’t know. Right now it’s magic, but there will be time when the magic Alex is convinced of now transmutes into another, a knowledge of a home he’s never known. He remembers something at the last minute, just enough for the little boy to rise on his stumpy legs and shout towards the end of the room. “Mister, I’m not gon’ go losin’ it, though! I swore on it, an’ my swears keep!” “Your what keep? My goodness, Alex, I leave for a few minutes and this is what you’re up to!” Alex is guided back down to sit on his chair with a sullen thump, the old lady’s hand firm as she takes the seat where Dimitry the Coin Wizard once sat. “You know better than to stand on furniture,” she hisses before going into something about how he’s too old to not know the home rules, but the words fade into the usual murmur of agitation as Alex’s legs go back to their rhythmic sway. His little legs kick as she drones on and on, and he peeks down at the magic kopek, its silver back flashing up in fits and starts. “... and for goodness’ sake, are you even listening, Alex?” “You should call me Alexi,” he says then, fixing his wide eyes on the old woman. She starts, a funny look on her face, almost taken aback if Alex knew what that emotion even was. “Beg pardon?” is all she can say. “‘S my name, is all, an’ it does right fine,” he replies, looking down at the kopek. “An’ ‘sides, I was listenin’ just fine – you don’ like me standin’ on furniture, so’s I’m in trouble like I always am.” The flashbulb goes off in the background, the queue moves up. The old lady goes to looking in her billfold, rifling through his papers again. And Alex – Alexi, really – squints at the kopek, balancing it between his index and middle fingers, hoping just to wiggle them enough to get it to cross over that one finger, to have it move even one space over, never mind the graceful flip that Dimitry so effortlessly committed to. When it finally, finally does, they call the little boy up. |