A/N: This story was written for a challenge I read about on an lj community called Happy Time, the one about the painting of a guy who looks like Rube (and does he ever!): img(dot)photobucket(dot)com(slash)albums(slash)v287(slash)oliviacochrane(slash)DeadLikeMeficpic(dot)jpg
(This thing doesn't do links, for some reason, so just replace the words with the symbols and put http in front of it.)
Apparently the painting is in D.C., but I'm relocating it to Seattle for the purposes of the story.
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George accepted the yellow Post-It with a sigh. More than a sigh came out, though, when she happened to glance at it. "No fucking way!" she groaned. "Rube, the museum? That's like on the other side of town from Happy Time! How the fuck am I supposed to get to work before Delores fires my ass?" "Those little things on the ends of your legs, Peanut. They take you places if you move them along the ground." Mason snickered, and Roxy elbowed him in the sternum. "As I was saying," George drawled, rolling her eyes at Mason's kicked-dog expression, "you'd think by now I'd have stopped being surprised at how much my life sucks." "You'd think," Roxy murmured unsympathetically. George lifted her middle finger almost casually; it was practically a greeting between her and Roxy now. She had one for all of them; for Rube, either an angelic smile or a wide-eyed 'hide me' stare, depending on how many thunderstorms were brewing in his eyes. For Mason, "are you high?" Or failing that, a body-check to make room for herself in the booth. For Daisy: well, she never got a word in before Daisy either called her 'Georgia' or 'sunshine,' followed by a story about something like blowing Errol Flynn in the dressing room, with the director knocking on the door. And then she said nothing to Daisy; she liked to keep her daily quota of expletives at a reasonably satisfying level, but the ones reserved for Daisy were not really safe to use in public.
Rube gave her a half-smile over the top of his newspaper and tossed his keys in her direction. Mason made a grab for them, but they slid under his arm into George's lap. "Good shot," Roxy put in approvingly. George grinned at Rube. "Thanks!" He gave a nod, only bothering to add, "one scratch, young lady, and you will pay for it in Post-Its." "You mean except for that huge dent in the back bumper?" Daisy remarked airily. Rube glared. And glared. "Yes, except for that." Mason snorted. "Ah, the fuck-up speaks," came Roxy's biting voice from behind the newspaper section she'd swiped from Rube. George was sure it was the obits; that was the only thing any of them read, except for Rube, who often scanned it meticulously to avoid having to talk, and Mason, who sometimes read the funnies. "I'm going now," she stated flatly, rolling her eyes at Mason. "Don't wait up," she threw in Daisy's direction. "Seriously."
George almost gagged when she walked through the museum's glass front doors. The place was packed; there were harassed-looking parents with screaming, sticky-handed kids desperately trying to get away from them; there were conflicting food smells wafting around out of vendors' stalls, vendors who were almost hostile from trying to keep up with so many customers. There were huge groups of school kids on field trips. George headed straight for the staircase; there was no way she was going to be crammed into an elevator in this three-ring circus. She made it to the Impressionist gallery with two minutes to spare. There were very few risk factors; unless a really heavy painting fell off the wall and smashed someone's skull, she really didn't see who was going to die, or how. Desperate, she craned her neck all around the first room, down the hall, into the next... and saw a woman, a security guard, rocking back and forth on her chair.
Not far enough to tip over, not yet; but out of the corner of her eye, George suddenly caught the wisp of smoke and the ghoulish grin as a graveling hopped gleefully up and down on the wobbly hind leg of the guard's chair. George tried to look as nonchalant as possible as she feigned interest in the painting above the woman's head and brushed her fingers lightly over a navy-blue shirtsleeve. She moved away only ten seconds before the woman tilted backward with a cry and a dull thump, as her skull cracked on the hardwood. George winced. Lousy job, lousy life, lousy death. At least the woman looked happy when George pointed her in the direction of her lights. Task accomplished, the young reaper started to swivel around back the way she had come when a very familiar pair of depthless eyes caught hers for a moment, as she turned. George leapt a mile in shock when she turned back and saw that the eyes were in oil paint, on a canvas across the room. Just sitting between two landscapes was a portrait of a man, dark, unassuming, wearing clothes that could only be described as—nondescript. But the eyes, and the cap...she would know them anywhere. 1905 was the date on the plaque. And it was painted in France. But it was Rube, all the same.
George made it through her day at Happy Time in a daze. Delores was very busy most of the day and barely spoke to her, not that George listened. There were only two things that saved her sanity; that was one of them. The other was the slight, struggling hope that she might not have to spend every single remaining moment of her eternal working life in this sanatorium disguised as a temp agency. If a bunch of proactive asylum administrators ever organized a raid on Happy Time, Delores would be their first captive. Well, maybe second, after Crystal.
George worked at an exponential rate that in her could be born only of an extreme fit of absent-mindedness. She was burning with curiosity. Not that she could show it, if she wanted any answers out of Rube. He was like that Rodin statue, The Thinker, she thought, remembering the picture of it she had seen in his art book. Contemplative, secretive, utterly imperturbable and very stingy with words. And now he was also like a gardener who had sat for a portrait over 90 years ago. At the stroke of five she made a dash for the door like Cinderella training for a marathon and got herself over to Der Waffel Haus, leaving the speed limit writhing in the dust. Lucky today, she thought, which she almost never was. Rube was the only one already there.
She bounded into the booth, across from him as usual, and pretended to be bored. He looked up. "How was your reap?"
"No big," she said, shrugging. "Museum guard rocking in a chair that wasn't really...rockable, and then add in a graveling, bake for about two minutes, and voila...dead chick." She waited for the signal of approval—the chin thrust forward slightly, the quick nod, the return of his attention to the appointment book—and then she continued: "I saw something interesting, though, at the museum. Nothing to do with death or anything; well, not really. There was a painting there; it kind of scared the living crap out of me."
Rube looked up again, the slight glimmer in his dark eyes the only sign that he was interested now. "You're dead, little girl. Why be scared of a painting?"
"Well, I wasn't really scared; it just kind of startled me. I looked around and I saw you. But I knew you weren't there, so I started looking closer, and it was a painting, just hanging there on the wall. It was you; about 90 years younger, give or take a decade or so, but it was you."
Rube hesitated, scratched his nose and beckoned a finger at the waitress. "Hey, can we have two coffees and a bowl of chocolate ice cream, please. Thanks."
"Nice try," said George dryly. "I'm not letting this go. Was it you?"
"What do you think?"
George was annoyed. Rube was wearing that little grin that meant he was planning to keep her dangling on the hook. She cut through the bullshit. "I think you were a gardener in France in 1905."
Rube stared down into his coffee. "Well, a reaper's existence lends itself to travel. I'm sure Betty talked to you about this, about having been several different women? She didn't invent it, Peanut; even Betty wasn't that original."