Bedlam - Friday evening
May. 16th, 2008 05:36 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsOnce they've been made aware of the situation, Marie-Ange and Doug go to try to get some answers and smooth things.
Doug frowned at the pair of laptops sitting on the hotel bed. Attempting to hack into London police records in an attempt to pull the file on the incident that appeared to have brought Amanda back to them was like trying to swim through molasses. Even given the capabilities of his and Marie-Ange's laptops, and his own natural skill, it still took quite a while to get anywhere, and he was nearly at the point of tearing out his hair. He grunted and tapped a few keys, his scowl deepening.
Across the room, Marie-Ange paced, the heels of her shoes click-clacking on the bathroom floor, then muting to muffled taps on the carpet as she crossed the floor, and then a slow swish as she turned and paced back the way she came. She repeated her steps several times, accompanied by a sigh or low mutter every time she passed by Doug. "Have you found -anything-?" she finally said, arms crossed in front of her. "There has to be something, they must have filed a report. What is going on?"
"I haven't found anything new since the last time you asked, which was three minutes ago," Doug replied testily without looking up from the laptops. "When I find something, I'll tell you. There's almost certainly something, it's just a question of getting to it. But to get to it, I need to concentrate." Left unsaid was that Marie-Ange's pacing was a bit distracting. He understood that she was anxious, but her questioning wasn't helping his own anxiety levels.
"You do not have to be so snippy." Marie-Ange snapped, ignoring that she was actually snippier then Doug was. "Do you need help? I can get lunch, or a drink, or I can call Forge." True, the last was a jab, but Marie-Ange's patience was worn far too thin to remember that it was a bad idea to poke the ego of the person actually doing the hacking.
"Five minutes of not talking would be good." He realized it was snippy, but he was on the verge of finally breaking through the firewall. "Go, I dunno, pace in the hallway or something." Marie-Ange turned to do just that, and Doug made a note to himself to apologize to her later.
"There," he muttered after a long period of silent concentration. He stood from the bed and crossed to the door of the hotel room, peeking out at Marie-Ange. "We're in," he told her before going back to the bed. He typed rapidly, then perused the information on the screen, tapping his lips thoughtfully with a finger. "I have the address. How do we want to play this?" He looked up at Marie-Ange questioningly.
"Where was she arrested?" Marie-Ange asked, but rather than wait for an answer, she sat down on the edge of the bed, leaning over to look at the screen. "An art store? Vandalism?" She questioned, thinking out loud. "If it is one of those overpriced stores, I say we just bribe them. If not... " She shook her head a little, frowning. "I am ... I wonder if honesty may not be the best policy. Well, perhaps not total honesty.."
---
"Poofter. Poofter. Poofter," Doug muttered to himself as he and Marie-Ange approached the art store. "Like Amanda, not like Spike. Blimey, shagging, bollocks, knickers. Poofter. Poofter." He rolled his shoulders, trying to get himself into the "part" he was about to play.
It was hard not to giggle every time Doug repeated himself. Harder still when he grunted and ran his hands through his hair in frustration when he slipped back into the 'wrong' accent. It was very probable that Marie-Ange's inappropriate snickers were more a result of the relief that Amanda has been found then any actual mirth at Doug's antics. She doubled up her steps to keep up with him, holding a messenger bag close to her chest, as if to protect the contents.
Doug scowled every time Marie-Ange giggled, but inside he was actually relieved that her mood was improving with the news of Amanda's retrieval. Now if they could just tie up some of the loose ends...
The tiny bell above the door of the shop tinkled cheerfully as the pair entered, and Doug flicked his eyes towards the aisles, where Marie-Ange wandered off, appearing to browse the shelves. Doug blessed the fact that the hazy afternoon meant that there was nobody else in the shop but the proprietor. He wandered over to the counter and leaned against it.
"Can I help you?" the shopkeep asked politely from behind the till.
"I'm hopin' so," Doug replied, trying to strike a balance between hopefulness and a slight embarrassment.
Like every other art store seemingly in the entire world, this one had narrow little aisles crammed with every nature of drawing material, inks, paints, canvases, clays, anything you could want if you were in any way artistic. Here and there, Marie-Ange picked up a charcoal set and set it back down after looking it over, or bent to examine some coloured pencils or oil pastels - seemingly just another artist picking up new supplies. While looking at a set of sketchpads, one she was quite tempted to purchase - hers were still home, and eventually they would have a many hour flight back to New York - she saw it.
One of many 'its', she realized - once she'd seen the first, the rest were impossible to miss. A stick figure - shaky, almost as if a child had drawn it, with a pointy hat, and a broom between it's crayon'd legs was scrawled on the floor. Above it, drawn on one of the canvases and in the same wax crayon, a bald man sitting in a chair, and next to him, another stick figure with red lines coming from his fingertips.
The red crayon was on the floor. Marie-Ange almost stepped on it as she moved to the end of the aisle to take out the digital camera in her messenger bag. She snapped a few pictures, and then stood, wandering back towards Doug with the sketchbooks in her hand. "Can you ask the shopkeeper if he speaks French, please?" She asked Doug, sticking to her native language, with every ounce of Lyon accent firmly in place.
It was rather easy to guess the answer from the blank face, but Doug repeated the question in his put-on English accent, then shook his head at Marie-Ange at the other man's reply. He leaned against the counter again, clasping his hands nervously. "Um, I'm not quite sure how to put this," he told the shopkeep honestly. "We've got a friend. A bird, she got nicked by the old bill. She's a good 'un, just had some problems lately."
Marie-Ange nodded firmly at Doug, and then once he was done speaking, held up the sketchpads, pointing to the price tag and then her messenger bag. "There are drawings in the aisles. I am going to take some pictures, but I am sure it is hers." She waited a moment, handed the sketchpads to Doug, and then ducked back down the aisle she'd come from.
There were a few more drawings in the aisle itself, mostly on the floor. She took a quick photo of the ones she could, and went around to the next aisle. Where it looked like someone had gotten into the oil paints. The drawings were larger and more colorful then the ones before, and the quality was certainly better. These weren't stick figures - they were full on drawings. Not portrait quality - if Marie-Ange hadn't known the subjects, she would have no idea who they were meant to be. But a woman with purple hair and a sword, that could only be Betsy. And the little green boy hugging the leg of a blonde woman who was surrounded by lights? Miles and Alison.
Doug guessed at Marie-Ange's ruse when she handed him the sketchpads, and asked about the price, carefully choosing open-ended questions to keep the shopkeep engaged. When he finished, Doug picked the conversation back up. "Anyhow, we asked around, and it turned out our friend had been arrested because of some ruckus here at your shop."
The shopkeeper's face closed off in a severe frown at the mention of his problems. "That's one way of putting it," he said harshly.
The aisle was blocked off by tape and cones - obviously intended to be cleaned up later, when they shopkeeper could get to the mess with solvents. Marie-Ange straightened up, checking around the endcap of the aisle to see if anyone was looking and then ducked under the tape. The drawings were all up and down the aisle on the far end, surrounding a black place on the floor - Amanda must have sat drawing for at least some time before anyone noticed.
Doug raised his hands placatingly, doing his best to radiate trustworthiness. "I can understand your being mad," he said quickly. "Made a right cock-up of your livelihood and all that," he continued, his London accent thickening. "It's just that, from our side, it's a good friend who's had a spot of bad luck. Just out of rehab, and went a bit off her nut. We're just tryin' to clean up after her, smooth things over if we can." This was the tricky part, not seeming too much like they were trying to buy the man's silence, even though that was what they were trying to do. There was a delicacy, almost a dance to it.
Marie-Ange tried to get at least one snapshot of every drawing - it might be useful later - even if the quality wouldn't be good. She couldn't use the flash on the camera, after all. Closer in, the drawings were more detailed. Knights - one grey skinned, and one with blonde hair. She took quite a lot of pictures of those. And the monk with his blue skin and tail. And a wolf, and the little monster with pink bows in her hair. And last the ghost, with his head nearly cut off. It was nearly a portrait, if a slightly clumsy one; despite the washed out colors, it was unmistakably Charlie.
After the last photo was taken, Marie-Ange reappeared at Doug's side, with a small selection of colored pencils in her hand. "If it was not her, it was someone who knows her very well. Look! I found new pencils too!" She said, showing the pencils off to Doug. Despite the apparent language barrier, it took no effort at all to get her purchases rung up. "If I did not know better, I would have thought they were something I drew. It was all symbolic, like she was trying to make sense of something." The rapid-fire explanation in french didn't match at all with Marie-Ange's gestures, excitedly pointing at a display of colored glass and tile for mosaics. "You are just about done, yes?"
Despite his grumpiness at the mention of the crazy girl who'd used up plenty of his supplies in defacing his store, Doug was being too likable for the shopkeeper to ignore. "Smooth things over?" he repeated Doug's words, a slight hint of curiosity in his voice.
"Well, it only seems fair to me to pay for the things our friend used up, since you won't be able to sell them, now," Doug mused, seeming as though this were coming to him just then, when in reality he'd spent the entire trip to the shop rehearsing this speech. "Plus whatever it takes to clean up all the doodles and such." He'd seen a few hints of the graffiti, plus he'd read about it in the police report. "Plus a bit for yourself for the hassle." He paused. "And perhaps in return...you might see clear to dropping the charges against our friend?" he asked hesitantly, as if it were too much to ask.
The shopkeeper sized Doug up, in his T-shirt, worn jeans, and Converse. "You've got the dosh for all of that?" he asked disbelievingly.
Doug shrugged. "Name me a number, mate." He thought, totaling up the price of the art supplies, added on the cost of solvent and paying someone to clean the oil paint stains, put in some more, then added another ten percent to the number before giving it to Doug. Doug fished a wallet out of his pocket and began counting out twenty-pound notes on the counter. The shopkeeper's eyes widened at the stream of bills, his hand flexing involuntarily. Doug kept his hand over the stack after he counted the last bill out, raising his eyebrows and leaving the next move up to the man on the other side of the counter.
"Nothing shady?" he asked.
"Nah. Technology field pays well, and I know a bloke at Barclays who's done right by me." Doug shrugged. "So?" The shopkeeper narrowed his eyes and looked intently at Doug before nodding. Doug took his hand off the money and smiled, sincere gratefulness in his expression and voice. "Thank you. I promise you won't regret it."
Doug frowned at the pair of laptops sitting on the hotel bed. Attempting to hack into London police records in an attempt to pull the file on the incident that appeared to have brought Amanda back to them was like trying to swim through molasses. Even given the capabilities of his and Marie-Ange's laptops, and his own natural skill, it still took quite a while to get anywhere, and he was nearly at the point of tearing out his hair. He grunted and tapped a few keys, his scowl deepening.
Across the room, Marie-Ange paced, the heels of her shoes click-clacking on the bathroom floor, then muting to muffled taps on the carpet as she crossed the floor, and then a slow swish as she turned and paced back the way she came. She repeated her steps several times, accompanied by a sigh or low mutter every time she passed by Doug. "Have you found -anything-?" she finally said, arms crossed in front of her. "There has to be something, they must have filed a report. What is going on?"
"I haven't found anything new since the last time you asked, which was three minutes ago," Doug replied testily without looking up from the laptops. "When I find something, I'll tell you. There's almost certainly something, it's just a question of getting to it. But to get to it, I need to concentrate." Left unsaid was that Marie-Ange's pacing was a bit distracting. He understood that she was anxious, but her questioning wasn't helping his own anxiety levels.
"You do not have to be so snippy." Marie-Ange snapped, ignoring that she was actually snippier then Doug was. "Do you need help? I can get lunch, or a drink, or I can call Forge." True, the last was a jab, but Marie-Ange's patience was worn far too thin to remember that it was a bad idea to poke the ego of the person actually doing the hacking.
"Five minutes of not talking would be good." He realized it was snippy, but he was on the verge of finally breaking through the firewall. "Go, I dunno, pace in the hallway or something." Marie-Ange turned to do just that, and Doug made a note to himself to apologize to her later.
"There," he muttered after a long period of silent concentration. He stood from the bed and crossed to the door of the hotel room, peeking out at Marie-Ange. "We're in," he told her before going back to the bed. He typed rapidly, then perused the information on the screen, tapping his lips thoughtfully with a finger. "I have the address. How do we want to play this?" He looked up at Marie-Ange questioningly.
"Where was she arrested?" Marie-Ange asked, but rather than wait for an answer, she sat down on the edge of the bed, leaning over to look at the screen. "An art store? Vandalism?" She questioned, thinking out loud. "If it is one of those overpriced stores, I say we just bribe them. If not... " She shook her head a little, frowning. "I am ... I wonder if honesty may not be the best policy. Well, perhaps not total honesty.."
---
"Poofter. Poofter. Poofter," Doug muttered to himself as he and Marie-Ange approached the art store. "Like Amanda, not like Spike. Blimey, shagging, bollocks, knickers. Poofter. Poofter." He rolled his shoulders, trying to get himself into the "part" he was about to play.
It was hard not to giggle every time Doug repeated himself. Harder still when he grunted and ran his hands through his hair in frustration when he slipped back into the 'wrong' accent. It was very probable that Marie-Ange's inappropriate snickers were more a result of the relief that Amanda has been found then any actual mirth at Doug's antics. She doubled up her steps to keep up with him, holding a messenger bag close to her chest, as if to protect the contents.
Doug scowled every time Marie-Ange giggled, but inside he was actually relieved that her mood was improving with the news of Amanda's retrieval. Now if they could just tie up some of the loose ends...
The tiny bell above the door of the shop tinkled cheerfully as the pair entered, and Doug flicked his eyes towards the aisles, where Marie-Ange wandered off, appearing to browse the shelves. Doug blessed the fact that the hazy afternoon meant that there was nobody else in the shop but the proprietor. He wandered over to the counter and leaned against it.
"Can I help you?" the shopkeep asked politely from behind the till.
"I'm hopin' so," Doug replied, trying to strike a balance between hopefulness and a slight embarrassment.
Like every other art store seemingly in the entire world, this one had narrow little aisles crammed with every nature of drawing material, inks, paints, canvases, clays, anything you could want if you were in any way artistic. Here and there, Marie-Ange picked up a charcoal set and set it back down after looking it over, or bent to examine some coloured pencils or oil pastels - seemingly just another artist picking up new supplies. While looking at a set of sketchpads, one she was quite tempted to purchase - hers were still home, and eventually they would have a many hour flight back to New York - she saw it.
One of many 'its', she realized - once she'd seen the first, the rest were impossible to miss. A stick figure - shaky, almost as if a child had drawn it, with a pointy hat, and a broom between it's crayon'd legs was scrawled on the floor. Above it, drawn on one of the canvases and in the same wax crayon, a bald man sitting in a chair, and next to him, another stick figure with red lines coming from his fingertips.
The red crayon was on the floor. Marie-Ange almost stepped on it as she moved to the end of the aisle to take out the digital camera in her messenger bag. She snapped a few pictures, and then stood, wandering back towards Doug with the sketchbooks in her hand. "Can you ask the shopkeeper if he speaks French, please?" She asked Doug, sticking to her native language, with every ounce of Lyon accent firmly in place.
It was rather easy to guess the answer from the blank face, but Doug repeated the question in his put-on English accent, then shook his head at Marie-Ange at the other man's reply. He leaned against the counter again, clasping his hands nervously. "Um, I'm not quite sure how to put this," he told the shopkeep honestly. "We've got a friend. A bird, she got nicked by the old bill. She's a good 'un, just had some problems lately."
Marie-Ange nodded firmly at Doug, and then once he was done speaking, held up the sketchpads, pointing to the price tag and then her messenger bag. "There are drawings in the aisles. I am going to take some pictures, but I am sure it is hers." She waited a moment, handed the sketchpads to Doug, and then ducked back down the aisle she'd come from.
There were a few more drawings in the aisle itself, mostly on the floor. She took a quick photo of the ones she could, and went around to the next aisle. Where it looked like someone had gotten into the oil paints. The drawings were larger and more colorful then the ones before, and the quality was certainly better. These weren't stick figures - they were full on drawings. Not portrait quality - if Marie-Ange hadn't known the subjects, she would have no idea who they were meant to be. But a woman with purple hair and a sword, that could only be Betsy. And the little green boy hugging the leg of a blonde woman who was surrounded by lights? Miles and Alison.
Doug guessed at Marie-Ange's ruse when she handed him the sketchpads, and asked about the price, carefully choosing open-ended questions to keep the shopkeep engaged. When he finished, Doug picked the conversation back up. "Anyhow, we asked around, and it turned out our friend had been arrested because of some ruckus here at your shop."
The shopkeeper's face closed off in a severe frown at the mention of his problems. "That's one way of putting it," he said harshly.
The aisle was blocked off by tape and cones - obviously intended to be cleaned up later, when they shopkeeper could get to the mess with solvents. Marie-Ange straightened up, checking around the endcap of the aisle to see if anyone was looking and then ducked under the tape. The drawings were all up and down the aisle on the far end, surrounding a black place on the floor - Amanda must have sat drawing for at least some time before anyone noticed.
Doug raised his hands placatingly, doing his best to radiate trustworthiness. "I can understand your being mad," he said quickly. "Made a right cock-up of your livelihood and all that," he continued, his London accent thickening. "It's just that, from our side, it's a good friend who's had a spot of bad luck. Just out of rehab, and went a bit off her nut. We're just tryin' to clean up after her, smooth things over if we can." This was the tricky part, not seeming too much like they were trying to buy the man's silence, even though that was what they were trying to do. There was a delicacy, almost a dance to it.
Marie-Ange tried to get at least one snapshot of every drawing - it might be useful later - even if the quality wouldn't be good. She couldn't use the flash on the camera, after all. Closer in, the drawings were more detailed. Knights - one grey skinned, and one with blonde hair. She took quite a lot of pictures of those. And the monk with his blue skin and tail. And a wolf, and the little monster with pink bows in her hair. And last the ghost, with his head nearly cut off. It was nearly a portrait, if a slightly clumsy one; despite the washed out colors, it was unmistakably Charlie.
After the last photo was taken, Marie-Ange reappeared at Doug's side, with a small selection of colored pencils in her hand. "If it was not her, it was someone who knows her very well. Look! I found new pencils too!" She said, showing the pencils off to Doug. Despite the apparent language barrier, it took no effort at all to get her purchases rung up. "If I did not know better, I would have thought they were something I drew. It was all symbolic, like she was trying to make sense of something." The rapid-fire explanation in french didn't match at all with Marie-Ange's gestures, excitedly pointing at a display of colored glass and tile for mosaics. "You are just about done, yes?"
Despite his grumpiness at the mention of the crazy girl who'd used up plenty of his supplies in defacing his store, Doug was being too likable for the shopkeeper to ignore. "Smooth things over?" he repeated Doug's words, a slight hint of curiosity in his voice.
"Well, it only seems fair to me to pay for the things our friend used up, since you won't be able to sell them, now," Doug mused, seeming as though this were coming to him just then, when in reality he'd spent the entire trip to the shop rehearsing this speech. "Plus whatever it takes to clean up all the doodles and such." He'd seen a few hints of the graffiti, plus he'd read about it in the police report. "Plus a bit for yourself for the hassle." He paused. "And perhaps in return...you might see clear to dropping the charges against our friend?" he asked hesitantly, as if it were too much to ask.
The shopkeeper sized Doug up, in his T-shirt, worn jeans, and Converse. "You've got the dosh for all of that?" he asked disbelievingly.
Doug shrugged. "Name me a number, mate." He thought, totaling up the price of the art supplies, added on the cost of solvent and paying someone to clean the oil paint stains, put in some more, then added another ten percent to the number before giving it to Doug. Doug fished a wallet out of his pocket and began counting out twenty-pound notes on the counter. The shopkeeper's eyes widened at the stream of bills, his hand flexing involuntarily. Doug kept his hand over the stack after he counted the last bill out, raising his eyebrows and leaving the next move up to the man on the other side of the counter.
"Nothing shady?" he asked.
"Nah. Technology field pays well, and I know a bloke at Barclays who's done right by me." Doug shrugged. "So?" The shopkeeper narrowed his eyes and looked intently at Doug before nodding. Doug took his hand off the money and smiled, sincere gratefulness in his expression and voice. "Thank you. I promise you won't regret it."
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