Smash!
by Memphis Lupine
--~--
The diner was a crisper brightness than it had been a mere two months before, slick white replacing the grime of past decay as the nation finally seemed to be heading steadily away from the depression. Faded aprons were discarded, now, for ironed uniforms, stiff blouses tucked into small, but chaste, skirts as waitresses moved in quivering high heels through the establishment, checking off orders on the legal pads held tightly in hands still rough from other, more strenuous jobs needed for survival. The atmosphere was humid, a cloying hint of spring folding into the familiar weightiness of summer, and it pervaded the brightly lit diner though the dented air conditioning strove to banish the coming heat. Sunlight had long since slipped at the heels of night's speckled darkness, and he found need to blink in the shocking brightness filling the place.
Still, he was glad to be rid of the dry west, free of the ever-shifting sands and dust plaguing yet the southwest and the other coast of the country. He could feel the dirt trapped under his coarse fingernails, an accumulated brown that hardly stood out from the shaded tan he had developed, one that passed directly over the golden honey so desired by the public and into the stress of constant work under a flaming sun. A dark swath of hair, highlighted darkest blue by its sheer pitch, added to the simple, almost intimidating appearance. He knew exactly what he wanted and, three desperate showers to peel off dirt and a hasty rental of an automobile used to drive God knew how many miles cross-country later, he was not going to let anything stand in his way.
Not even, he forced his willful thoughts to bow down to essential bodily needs, the handsome girl with long golden brown hair tucked in a neat loop at the base of her neck by a blue ribbon, seated as pretty as you please on one of the cherry-topped stools at the sleek counter rimming the center of the place. "A water," he stated bluntly to the harried woman, a plump redhead, behind the counter, taking a seat next to the tall girl he had noted, "and a pack of cigarettes." He used girl to refer to his quiet unknowing companion mentally, as she looked not a day older than twenty, and the odd hat she sported, a round disk lined with frills and a streamer of silky blue fabric, brought to mind old Victorian-style snapshots of dutiful toddlers lined up in jolly England. Her entire outfit, he committed to memory as he accepted the clear container of water and the thin box of cigarettes, was smooth and delicately laced, the skirt pale and mildly layered.
"Hello!" the girl said cheerfully and he choked on his water, eyes widening at her unbidden speaking as his mind raced, alarmed, to figure out if he had stared a bit too long at her. "I'm Melissa Saralee Thompson," she continued in an open voice, picking with her silver fork at a half-eaten slice of cheesecake proudly sitting before her. He translated the soft accent in her voice, a lilting 'ah' becoming 'I' with the resuscitation of old memories, and immediately recognized the warmth of Southern speech.
"Hello," he answered with a small smile, grudgingly giving in to his longing to talk with another human being and the tingling in his legs that informed him the limbs were going to sleep. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Thompson," and he injected every bit of the legendary Italian charm he possessed, his smile bordering on rakish. "What brings you to the north?" Though the woman behind the counter enviously spotted his intentions a good mile or nine away, the belle seated at his left obliviously danced around it, her wide lips splitting easily into a broad expression of happy congeniality.
"I got a lovely letter from an old friend of mine," she answered, leaving him a bit surprised but nonetheless still in a good mood, and she snapped open the gold-hued knobs of her small hand-purse, "and she was so urgent that I come!" She pulled a twice-folded letter, safely locked within the confines of its original envelope, out and flipped its corners away from the resigned center, handing it to him. Not being a man to forego the opportunity to share space with a woman, and, besides, she was contagiously friendly, he obliged her and leaned closer to read the writing on the addressing label.
He very nearly choked upon coming across a name far more familiar to him than that of his current fellow conversationist, but disguised it with a quick smile when she glanced at him, curious, with large eyes reminiscent of a doe. "What did she need you to come all the way to New York for?" he said, taking any concerned words away with the question.
"Oh, it's such a wonderful thing!" she cheered, hurriedly wiggling the faint parchment from inside the envelope and unfolding it with something akin to sisterly pride. Holding the letter aloft, a smile that could light half the diner glowing on her face, she gestured to the unadorned handwriting and stated, "Her dream is coming true!" Before he could reply with something about cliché turns of speech, she continued, beaming all the while, "And I told my father I just had to come see her, as it isn't everyday that one's sorority sister gets to sing at a place like the Silver Bell, you surely know. He agreed and, by golly, here I am, on my way to see her debut! I even remembered to call up and reserve a room at the Southeast Winchester Hotel for a week or so." And then, in deflated retrospect, she sighed, her smile fading into a pouting frown, "But I had to buy a slice of cheesecake and I missed the bus when it left after the stop. I couldn't just go to the washroom, though, as it would have been terribly rude for me to not try some of the dessert here, and I was mighty hungry in any case."
"Is that so," he murmured, taking the letter gently from her loosely firm grip and scanning its contents swiftly, noting key words and places written in a slightly bolder print than other things. "The Silver Bell?" he echoed, and she nodded, somewhat puzzled, forking a tiny bite of her cheesecake into her mouth and working part of a butchered strawberry lying on the plate in with it. "Well," he couldn't help but grin at her, and she returned the expression without realizing it, "it just so happens I'm headed to Winchester. I need to visit my sister there and I could take you to the hotel."
"Oh!" Melissa gasped, an indescribably pleased look sweeping her features into brilliant joy. "That would be ever so kind of you!" As he downed the rest of his drink and slipped the plain cigarette carton into his breast pocket, she once again grew somber, touching her chin thoughtfully with one long index finger. "But my mama always said it was awful impolite to impose on someone else when you're supposed to take care of yourself," she contradicted her earlier excitement, her slight eyebrows merging together in hopeless upset.
"Your mother sounds like a wonderful woman," he spoke wryly, moving casually off his stool and stretching out the dead weight of his legs, and she nodded in devout agreement with his sentiment, "but my own mother taught me it was even more impolite to leave a lady alone when I could be busy helping her." He bowed fractionally, holding his work-calloused hand out for hers, and he was startled to feel the same roughness on the skin of her palm, indicating a compromise she must have made at some point, sacrificing Southern pride for manual labor. It was upsetting to recognize even women were forced to do hard work in times such as this, but he merely helped her down from her stool, acknowledging her grateful smile. "It would be an honor to escort you, madam."
She giggled and, folding both letter and envelope to place inside her purse before clicking it shut, took his offered arm, striding toward the glass exit. "How very kind of you," she informed him as he led her around the bulky front of the black rental car, popping the passenger door open for his unexpected comrade on the travel north. "My brothers were so insistent that all men from up north were ruthless scalawags, but you're such a pleasant person. Perhaps ya'll are gentlemen, even to stranded women you've only just met."
"Don't be so quick to assume anything about anyone," he replied in a serious, joking manner, stooping in the driver's seat and closing his door. She folded her hands primly in her lap, blinking sweetly, innocently, as she mulled over his words. "Not all of us Yankees are scalawags, but neither are all of us gentlemen." He flashed a smile, one verging on flirtatious, but simply settling for warm, and twisted the key in the ignition, moving the car forward gingerly onto the main road. "But for me, I have the blood of Italy in my veins, and it would be a crime to let a stranded woman suffer, Miss Thompson."
"Milly," she corrected automatically, her eyes twinkling with some inner sense of humor that was simultaneously pleasing and bewildering. "And what should I call you?"
"Nicholas D. Wolfwood," he answered, his lips twitching in a cat-like smile, the name resting on his tongue in a manner close to foreign. He was used to using pseudonyms and to brandish his true name was a rare thing indeed, but he was more than confident the innocent that was Melissa Saralee Thompson would know it.
"How do you do, Nicholas D. Wolfwood," she greeted cordially, the proper sound of her sentence ruined by the happy pitch of her voice. After a moment of comfortable silence, stirred only by the rhythmic clanking of the engine and the muffled hum of tires spinning over chipped pavement, lit by the waxen moon and the studded glitter of stars, she questioned, in a slow voice, "Did you pay the woman at the bar, Mister Wolfwood?"
He grinned in the dark of the car.
--~--
Disclaimer: If I owned anything but this story, the idea, and so forth, then I wouldn't technically have to write fanfiction. However, such is not the case, but I don't mind, because I get to write fanfiction anyway!
Author's Notes: Besides having written the prologue in about fifteen minutes around midnight, I doubt I have much of an excuse if it isn't particularly well done. Before someone points out the general badness of getting in a car with someone you've just met, keep in mind that this is not set in the present day, but the 1930s, when it was more or less safe to do so. (I wouldn't recommend it now, though.) As for Milly being Southern…well, it just fits, doesn't it? That and, my family having moved due to USAF orders once more, living in Mississippi has exposed me to Southern culture. Stereotypes aside, it is rather pleasant. (Outside of the high school, which is horrible.)
Feedback: Encouraged. Pwease?
by Memphis Lupine
--~--
The diner was a crisper brightness than it had been a mere two months before, slick white replacing the grime of past decay as the nation finally seemed to be heading steadily away from the depression. Faded aprons were discarded, now, for ironed uniforms, stiff blouses tucked into small, but chaste, skirts as waitresses moved in quivering high heels through the establishment, checking off orders on the legal pads held tightly in hands still rough from other, more strenuous jobs needed for survival. The atmosphere was humid, a cloying hint of spring folding into the familiar weightiness of summer, and it pervaded the brightly lit diner though the dented air conditioning strove to banish the coming heat. Sunlight had long since slipped at the heels of night's speckled darkness, and he found need to blink in the shocking brightness filling the place.
Still, he was glad to be rid of the dry west, free of the ever-shifting sands and dust plaguing yet the southwest and the other coast of the country. He could feel the dirt trapped under his coarse fingernails, an accumulated brown that hardly stood out from the shaded tan he had developed, one that passed directly over the golden honey so desired by the public and into the stress of constant work under a flaming sun. A dark swath of hair, highlighted darkest blue by its sheer pitch, added to the simple, almost intimidating appearance. He knew exactly what he wanted and, three desperate showers to peel off dirt and a hasty rental of an automobile used to drive God knew how many miles cross-country later, he was not going to let anything stand in his way.
Not even, he forced his willful thoughts to bow down to essential bodily needs, the handsome girl with long golden brown hair tucked in a neat loop at the base of her neck by a blue ribbon, seated as pretty as you please on one of the cherry-topped stools at the sleek counter rimming the center of the place. "A water," he stated bluntly to the harried woman, a plump redhead, behind the counter, taking a seat next to the tall girl he had noted, "and a pack of cigarettes." He used girl to refer to his quiet unknowing companion mentally, as she looked not a day older than twenty, and the odd hat she sported, a round disk lined with frills and a streamer of silky blue fabric, brought to mind old Victorian-style snapshots of dutiful toddlers lined up in jolly England. Her entire outfit, he committed to memory as he accepted the clear container of water and the thin box of cigarettes, was smooth and delicately laced, the skirt pale and mildly layered.
"Hello!" the girl said cheerfully and he choked on his water, eyes widening at her unbidden speaking as his mind raced, alarmed, to figure out if he had stared a bit too long at her. "I'm Melissa Saralee Thompson," she continued in an open voice, picking with her silver fork at a half-eaten slice of cheesecake proudly sitting before her. He translated the soft accent in her voice, a lilting 'ah' becoming 'I' with the resuscitation of old memories, and immediately recognized the warmth of Southern speech.
"Hello," he answered with a small smile, grudgingly giving in to his longing to talk with another human being and the tingling in his legs that informed him the limbs were going to sleep. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Thompson," and he injected every bit of the legendary Italian charm he possessed, his smile bordering on rakish. "What brings you to the north?" Though the woman behind the counter enviously spotted his intentions a good mile or nine away, the belle seated at his left obliviously danced around it, her wide lips splitting easily into a broad expression of happy congeniality.
"I got a lovely letter from an old friend of mine," she answered, leaving him a bit surprised but nonetheless still in a good mood, and she snapped open the gold-hued knobs of her small hand-purse, "and she was so urgent that I come!" She pulled a twice-folded letter, safely locked within the confines of its original envelope, out and flipped its corners away from the resigned center, handing it to him. Not being a man to forego the opportunity to share space with a woman, and, besides, she was contagiously friendly, he obliged her and leaned closer to read the writing on the addressing label.
He very nearly choked upon coming across a name far more familiar to him than that of his current fellow conversationist, but disguised it with a quick smile when she glanced at him, curious, with large eyes reminiscent of a doe. "What did she need you to come all the way to New York for?" he said, taking any concerned words away with the question.
"Oh, it's such a wonderful thing!" she cheered, hurriedly wiggling the faint parchment from inside the envelope and unfolding it with something akin to sisterly pride. Holding the letter aloft, a smile that could light half the diner glowing on her face, she gestured to the unadorned handwriting and stated, "Her dream is coming true!" Before he could reply with something about cliché turns of speech, she continued, beaming all the while, "And I told my father I just had to come see her, as it isn't everyday that one's sorority sister gets to sing at a place like the Silver Bell, you surely know. He agreed and, by golly, here I am, on my way to see her debut! I even remembered to call up and reserve a room at the Southeast Winchester Hotel for a week or so." And then, in deflated retrospect, she sighed, her smile fading into a pouting frown, "But I had to buy a slice of cheesecake and I missed the bus when it left after the stop. I couldn't just go to the washroom, though, as it would have been terribly rude for me to not try some of the dessert here, and I was mighty hungry in any case."
"Is that so," he murmured, taking the letter gently from her loosely firm grip and scanning its contents swiftly, noting key words and places written in a slightly bolder print than other things. "The Silver Bell?" he echoed, and she nodded, somewhat puzzled, forking a tiny bite of her cheesecake into her mouth and working part of a butchered strawberry lying on the plate in with it. "Well," he couldn't help but grin at her, and she returned the expression without realizing it, "it just so happens I'm headed to Winchester. I need to visit my sister there and I could take you to the hotel."
"Oh!" Melissa gasped, an indescribably pleased look sweeping her features into brilliant joy. "That would be ever so kind of you!" As he downed the rest of his drink and slipped the plain cigarette carton into his breast pocket, she once again grew somber, touching her chin thoughtfully with one long index finger. "But my mama always said it was awful impolite to impose on someone else when you're supposed to take care of yourself," she contradicted her earlier excitement, her slight eyebrows merging together in hopeless upset.
"Your mother sounds like a wonderful woman," he spoke wryly, moving casually off his stool and stretching out the dead weight of his legs, and she nodded in devout agreement with his sentiment, "but my own mother taught me it was even more impolite to leave a lady alone when I could be busy helping her." He bowed fractionally, holding his work-calloused hand out for hers, and he was startled to feel the same roughness on the skin of her palm, indicating a compromise she must have made at some point, sacrificing Southern pride for manual labor. It was upsetting to recognize even women were forced to do hard work in times such as this, but he merely helped her down from her stool, acknowledging her grateful smile. "It would be an honor to escort you, madam."
She giggled and, folding both letter and envelope to place inside her purse before clicking it shut, took his offered arm, striding toward the glass exit. "How very kind of you," she informed him as he led her around the bulky front of the black rental car, popping the passenger door open for his unexpected comrade on the travel north. "My brothers were so insistent that all men from up north were ruthless scalawags, but you're such a pleasant person. Perhaps ya'll are gentlemen, even to stranded women you've only just met."
"Don't be so quick to assume anything about anyone," he replied in a serious, joking manner, stooping in the driver's seat and closing his door. She folded her hands primly in her lap, blinking sweetly, innocently, as she mulled over his words. "Not all of us Yankees are scalawags, but neither are all of us gentlemen." He flashed a smile, one verging on flirtatious, but simply settling for warm, and twisted the key in the ignition, moving the car forward gingerly onto the main road. "But for me, I have the blood of Italy in my veins, and it would be a crime to let a stranded woman suffer, Miss Thompson."
"Milly," she corrected automatically, her eyes twinkling with some inner sense of humor that was simultaneously pleasing and bewildering. "And what should I call you?"
"Nicholas D. Wolfwood," he answered, his lips twitching in a cat-like smile, the name resting on his tongue in a manner close to foreign. He was used to using pseudonyms and to brandish his true name was a rare thing indeed, but he was more than confident the innocent that was Melissa Saralee Thompson would know it.
"How do you do, Nicholas D. Wolfwood," she greeted cordially, the proper sound of her sentence ruined by the happy pitch of her voice. After a moment of comfortable silence, stirred only by the rhythmic clanking of the engine and the muffled hum of tires spinning over chipped pavement, lit by the waxen moon and the studded glitter of stars, she questioned, in a slow voice, "Did you pay the woman at the bar, Mister Wolfwood?"
He grinned in the dark of the car.
--~--
Disclaimer: If I owned anything but this story, the idea, and so forth, then I wouldn't technically have to write fanfiction. However, such is not the case, but I don't mind, because I get to write fanfiction anyway!
Author's Notes: Besides having written the prologue in about fifteen minutes around midnight, I doubt I have much of an excuse if it isn't particularly well done. Before someone points out the general badness of getting in a car with someone you've just met, keep in mind that this is not set in the present day, but the 1930s, when it was more or less safe to do so. (I wouldn't recommend it now, though.) As for Milly being Southern…well, it just fits, doesn't it? That and, my family having moved due to USAF orders once more, living in Mississippi has exposed me to Southern culture. Stereotypes aside, it is rather pleasant. (Outside of the high school, which is horrible.)
Feedback: Encouraged. Pwease?