Awake: Two
"The cause of the collapse is as yet unknown," Theresa Stevenson-Vasquez said smoothly, "And authorities warn the residents of southern california to be ready for earthquakes at all times. More information after these messages."
William couldn't help but chuckle over his hamburger. He'd have been more surprised if the powers that be knew anything more about that city than he did. At least now he didn't have to worry about pretending not to know about the crater. And at least now he knew the name of the demolished town.
"Weird affair, that Sunnydale place," he noted to the waitress behind the bar of the truck stop, "Saw it with my own eyes on the way here."
The waitress, a tired-looking thirty-something with an "Anna" nametag, turned to him with rather A Look on her face. "Guess you foreigners don't know..."
"Don't know?" he asked, noticing the heavy difference between their accents.
"Whole damn town up and took off a couple weeks back," she explained, pouring him some more coffee, "Said there were 'unexplained occurances,' or something. Nobody's wanted a piece of that place for a while now. Most travelling folk give it a nice, wide berth..."
Raising a hand to signal her to halt her pouring, he remarked, "Yeah, hadn't heard about that. Bein' English an' all."
"I gotta wonder," she asked with a smile, "What's a guy like you doing down that way, anyway?"
"Hell if I know..."
Nodding knowingly, Anna offered, "Yeah, know what you mean. It gets that way sometimes, huh?"
---
The speculations began again at Thirty-five miles to Los Angeles, and this time he didn't try to stop them by diving into a truck stop. He needed a game plan, and he needed it soon. Unless things had changed drastically in the last 123 years, he'd need room, board, and some way to pay for it.
A hundred and twenty years.
It was still pretty unbelievable. Obviously, it was the year 2003, and obviously he'd been around for a while. He knew how to work the car, when even knowing what one was surprised him. Or actually, it hadn't. The most shocking part about the affair was his complete lack of shock. He would have speculated that he had been somehow ripped from the grave, if not for that part.
"Maybe I'm a bleedin' immortal," he speculated, "Cutting off heads and all that lot." For some reason, he had found that amusing. Lord only knew why.
And there it was again. It was like there was a hole in his memory, and he could only make out the shape of what was missing. Everything he did only served to infuriate him further. Hell, his unexplained fury infuriated him. He never got so angry before. He was nice, and polite, and friendly, and an utter poof.
At the same time as he knew that he was, in fact, pathetic in his past, he wondered just how he knew that. He never felt like he was such a poor excuse for a man. He knew that he was just being proper. And yet he also had some kind of innate knowledge that he was wrong. That he wasn't half of who he would become.
"There's a goddamn continent missin' here, and it's right pissin' me off!" He complained, the last few words growing into a roar as her shook the steering wheel with his whole body.
He couldn't handle it. He couldn't think about it. Not now. Not when he had to find somewhere to stay. Too bad he didn't know anyone in L.A.
Too bad he didn't know anyone anywhere.
---
"Got any I.D.?"
William smiled ironically. "Not my own," he answered, presenting Frank's driver's license.
The mustachio'd man clicked his tongue a few times and looked up and down, from license to man. William didn't know what was going on, and didn't really care. He'd been through this scenario before, trying to find somewhere to stay the night. The first three motels had turned him away due to his false identification, and he had given up on presenting himself as Frank at this point.
"Frank here know you got his wallet?"
"Probably not," William admitted, "But he must be a good friend of mine to let me use it, yeah?"
The owner jolted back as a large, low laugh fell out of his mouth. "Friends call me Jacob," he said, the smile beneath the mustache threatening to overrun someone else's face, "You got thirty bucks, I got a room for you."
William found that the man's smile was, after all, catching, and sighed in relief, "Thank's Jacob, you got no id-"
"EY!" Jacob snapped, freezing in the middle of taking the money, "I said friends call me that. Customers call me Tangerine."
It was a few moments of William's confusion and Jacob's transaction before William responded. "Why?"
"It's my last name, dipwidth."
---
Frank J. Cumbersworth had friends in Los Angeles.
Fairly soon after settling into his room, William had found himself rifling through the lost Wallet, not knowing what to expect. Of course, there were the family pictures, and the business cards, and the credit cards (cancelled, he soon found out), as well as the (also cancelled) bank card. But, among all the effluvia wallets seemed to gather, was something useful.
A scrap of folded paper with names, addresses, and phone numbers on it was tucked ito the middle part, scrawled with the care that comes with forgetfulness. Tomorrow morning he would call some of them, tell them he had got ahold of Frank's wallet before he left Sunnydale, and that he only just found the piece of paper with the numbers on it. He'd leave out the part where he tried to use Frank's credit cards and call it honesty.
---
"I'm terribly sorry to hear about Sunnydale," Tanya soothed, "I'm glad you made it out... in time."
"Yeah, same here," William replied noncomittally.
She looked down at the wallet in her hands, their coffees cooling on the table next to them. "Once again, thank you for bringing this to me. It was very honest of you."
He had to stifle a bit of a smile at that. If Franky boy expected to get his money back, he had another think coming. "There was a bit of cash in there," He added, throwing caution to the wind, "But I had to use it to get a room last night. Got nowhere to go since Sunnydale..."
Hey, it was probably true.
"Oh, that's alright. I won't tell Frank if you won't," Tanya conspired, moving in a little closer.
It was then that William realized that he was attractive to women.
He had to make a concious effort not to say, "Oh yeah." The slightly prideful smirk still made its way to his face, though. And judging from decently-attractive Tanya, she liked it. Or maybe she thought he was smirking about the money thing.
"So, Tanya," he said lightly, "What's your story? Don't wanna be rude, but, I just kinda wondered."
She was an office lady, and she worked for a Law Firm. She'd met Frank through her brother, who was Frank's best friend. She liked dogs, and was single. Oh, how she was single. Just waiting for the right man to come along and settle down, she was. Single, and, oh, she had a good secretarial job. And what did William do for a living?
"Uh..." It was a good question, "I'm a poet by choice, bit of a traveler by trade."
Something flashed across her eyes which he couldn't pin down as particularly good or bad. "Oh, how European!"
Bloody fucking colonials.
"Do you have any of your poems?"
"Oh, they're all sodding awful," he said without a moment's hesitation, "Why I didn't have a good go as a poet."
"Oh," Tanya replied uneasily, "I'm sorry to hear that..."
William chuckled and mumbled to himself, "Not as sorry as I was."
After a few seconds of sipping at her coffee, she brushed the hair away from her neck and stated plainly, "I could get you work."
Oh. Thank. God.
He hadn't known what he was hoping for when he decided to return the wallet, but now that she had offered him a job, he knew godamn well that's what he was hoping for. He'd be able to at least survive. Then he could deal with trying to figure everything out.
"Really?" he said excitedly, barely managing to hide it, "Your law firm?"
Tanya smiled warmly, as though she trusted him. Something told him that wasn't very wise, but no point in telling her that, was there?
"Well," she sipped, "We have a problem keeping people in the mailroom. Guess most don't want to stay on the bottom of the ladder."
Almost smiling, William added, "Yeah, I can see how that could go. Lucky you, I don't aspire to be Matlock any time soon."
Who's Matlock?
---
"An advance?" Constantine Tristaple said quizzically, "It's unusual, but not unheard of."
William apologized, "Sorry, but I've got to pay the rent, and now. Don't worry, though, I need this job too much to try and split with the dough."
"No, it's fine, just unusual. So, do you have your social security card, or green card?"
"Uh..." Shit. "They were, ah, lost in Sunnydale. Big collapse, big problem, you know."
Might be true.
Constantine smiled slyly and lifted a finger with one hand as he lifted a phone with the other. "Deborah? Pull up whatever you can on mister William Smith Crawford, out of London, England. He lost his, ah, Identification in Sunnydale. ... Thank you."
And with a click, the finger came down.
"It'll just be a moment," Constantine said nicely, "We are a law firm after all; we can pull up your records easily. Good thing you came to us, WIlliam, can I call you that?"
"What? Yeah."
There was a fairly wierd silence until the little light on the phone blinked and Constantine picked the reciever up.
"Tristaple," he said confidently, "Yes? Good. Good. Yes. Good? GOOD. Yes, good. Goo- yes? ... Good. Thank you."
And that was that.
"That was that," he smiled, "Just fill out the paperwork they fax me, and you can go on down to the mail room."
Both men stood, Tristaple a tower of grinning, confident man hidden behind that desk. He offered a broad hand, his skin smooth looking and unicolored. He also didn't have fingernails. Warily, WIlliam took him hand and shook it, actually straining to match the compression this man was using.
"Thanks," William grunted.
Constantine smiled and let go of William's hand, bringing both hands out in a somewhat inviting gesture. "Welcome to Wolfram and Hart," he said with a crooked grin.
"The cause of the collapse is as yet unknown," Theresa Stevenson-Vasquez said smoothly, "And authorities warn the residents of southern california to be ready for earthquakes at all times. More information after these messages."
William couldn't help but chuckle over his hamburger. He'd have been more surprised if the powers that be knew anything more about that city than he did. At least now he didn't have to worry about pretending not to know about the crater. And at least now he knew the name of the demolished town.
"Weird affair, that Sunnydale place," he noted to the waitress behind the bar of the truck stop, "Saw it with my own eyes on the way here."
The waitress, a tired-looking thirty-something with an "Anna" nametag, turned to him with rather A Look on her face. "Guess you foreigners don't know..."
"Don't know?" he asked, noticing the heavy difference between their accents.
"Whole damn town up and took off a couple weeks back," she explained, pouring him some more coffee, "Said there were 'unexplained occurances,' or something. Nobody's wanted a piece of that place for a while now. Most travelling folk give it a nice, wide berth..."
Raising a hand to signal her to halt her pouring, he remarked, "Yeah, hadn't heard about that. Bein' English an' all."
"I gotta wonder," she asked with a smile, "What's a guy like you doing down that way, anyway?"
"Hell if I know..."
Nodding knowingly, Anna offered, "Yeah, know what you mean. It gets that way sometimes, huh?"
---
The speculations began again at Thirty-five miles to Los Angeles, and this time he didn't try to stop them by diving into a truck stop. He needed a game plan, and he needed it soon. Unless things had changed drastically in the last 123 years, he'd need room, board, and some way to pay for it.
A hundred and twenty years.
It was still pretty unbelievable. Obviously, it was the year 2003, and obviously he'd been around for a while. He knew how to work the car, when even knowing what one was surprised him. Or actually, it hadn't. The most shocking part about the affair was his complete lack of shock. He would have speculated that he had been somehow ripped from the grave, if not for that part.
"Maybe I'm a bleedin' immortal," he speculated, "Cutting off heads and all that lot." For some reason, he had found that amusing. Lord only knew why.
And there it was again. It was like there was a hole in his memory, and he could only make out the shape of what was missing. Everything he did only served to infuriate him further. Hell, his unexplained fury infuriated him. He never got so angry before. He was nice, and polite, and friendly, and an utter poof.
At the same time as he knew that he was, in fact, pathetic in his past, he wondered just how he knew that. He never felt like he was such a poor excuse for a man. He knew that he was just being proper. And yet he also had some kind of innate knowledge that he was wrong. That he wasn't half of who he would become.
"There's a goddamn continent missin' here, and it's right pissin' me off!" He complained, the last few words growing into a roar as her shook the steering wheel with his whole body.
He couldn't handle it. He couldn't think about it. Not now. Not when he had to find somewhere to stay. Too bad he didn't know anyone in L.A.
Too bad he didn't know anyone anywhere.
---
"Got any I.D.?"
William smiled ironically. "Not my own," he answered, presenting Frank's driver's license.
The mustachio'd man clicked his tongue a few times and looked up and down, from license to man. William didn't know what was going on, and didn't really care. He'd been through this scenario before, trying to find somewhere to stay the night. The first three motels had turned him away due to his false identification, and he had given up on presenting himself as Frank at this point.
"Frank here know you got his wallet?"
"Probably not," William admitted, "But he must be a good friend of mine to let me use it, yeah?"
The owner jolted back as a large, low laugh fell out of his mouth. "Friends call me Jacob," he said, the smile beneath the mustache threatening to overrun someone else's face, "You got thirty bucks, I got a room for you."
William found that the man's smile was, after all, catching, and sighed in relief, "Thank's Jacob, you got no id-"
"EY!" Jacob snapped, freezing in the middle of taking the money, "I said friends call me that. Customers call me Tangerine."
It was a few moments of William's confusion and Jacob's transaction before William responded. "Why?"
"It's my last name, dipwidth."
---
Frank J. Cumbersworth had friends in Los Angeles.
Fairly soon after settling into his room, William had found himself rifling through the lost Wallet, not knowing what to expect. Of course, there were the family pictures, and the business cards, and the credit cards (cancelled, he soon found out), as well as the (also cancelled) bank card. But, among all the effluvia wallets seemed to gather, was something useful.
A scrap of folded paper with names, addresses, and phone numbers on it was tucked ito the middle part, scrawled with the care that comes with forgetfulness. Tomorrow morning he would call some of them, tell them he had got ahold of Frank's wallet before he left Sunnydale, and that he only just found the piece of paper with the numbers on it. He'd leave out the part where he tried to use Frank's credit cards and call it honesty.
---
"I'm terribly sorry to hear about Sunnydale," Tanya soothed, "I'm glad you made it out... in time."
"Yeah, same here," William replied noncomittally.
She looked down at the wallet in her hands, their coffees cooling on the table next to them. "Once again, thank you for bringing this to me. It was very honest of you."
He had to stifle a bit of a smile at that. If Franky boy expected to get his money back, he had another think coming. "There was a bit of cash in there," He added, throwing caution to the wind, "But I had to use it to get a room last night. Got nowhere to go since Sunnydale..."
Hey, it was probably true.
"Oh, that's alright. I won't tell Frank if you won't," Tanya conspired, moving in a little closer.
It was then that William realized that he was attractive to women.
He had to make a concious effort not to say, "Oh yeah." The slightly prideful smirk still made its way to his face, though. And judging from decently-attractive Tanya, she liked it. Or maybe she thought he was smirking about the money thing.
"So, Tanya," he said lightly, "What's your story? Don't wanna be rude, but, I just kinda wondered."
She was an office lady, and she worked for a Law Firm. She'd met Frank through her brother, who was Frank's best friend. She liked dogs, and was single. Oh, how she was single. Just waiting for the right man to come along and settle down, she was. Single, and, oh, she had a good secretarial job. And what did William do for a living?
"Uh..." It was a good question, "I'm a poet by choice, bit of a traveler by trade."
Something flashed across her eyes which he couldn't pin down as particularly good or bad. "Oh, how European!"
Bloody fucking colonials.
"Do you have any of your poems?"
"Oh, they're all sodding awful," he said without a moment's hesitation, "Why I didn't have a good go as a poet."
"Oh," Tanya replied uneasily, "I'm sorry to hear that..."
William chuckled and mumbled to himself, "Not as sorry as I was."
After a few seconds of sipping at her coffee, she brushed the hair away from her neck and stated plainly, "I could get you work."
Oh. Thank. God.
He hadn't known what he was hoping for when he decided to return the wallet, but now that she had offered him a job, he knew godamn well that's what he was hoping for. He'd be able to at least survive. Then he could deal with trying to figure everything out.
"Really?" he said excitedly, barely managing to hide it, "Your law firm?"
Tanya smiled warmly, as though she trusted him. Something told him that wasn't very wise, but no point in telling her that, was there?
"Well," she sipped, "We have a problem keeping people in the mailroom. Guess most don't want to stay on the bottom of the ladder."
Almost smiling, William added, "Yeah, I can see how that could go. Lucky you, I don't aspire to be Matlock any time soon."
Who's Matlock?
---
"An advance?" Constantine Tristaple said quizzically, "It's unusual, but not unheard of."
William apologized, "Sorry, but I've got to pay the rent, and now. Don't worry, though, I need this job too much to try and split with the dough."
"No, it's fine, just unusual. So, do you have your social security card, or green card?"
"Uh..." Shit. "They were, ah, lost in Sunnydale. Big collapse, big problem, you know."
Might be true.
Constantine smiled slyly and lifted a finger with one hand as he lifted a phone with the other. "Deborah? Pull up whatever you can on mister William Smith Crawford, out of London, England. He lost his, ah, Identification in Sunnydale. ... Thank you."
And with a click, the finger came down.
"It'll just be a moment," Constantine said nicely, "We are a law firm after all; we can pull up your records easily. Good thing you came to us, WIlliam, can I call you that?"
"What? Yeah."
There was a fairly wierd silence until the little light on the phone blinked and Constantine picked the reciever up.
"Tristaple," he said confidently, "Yes? Good. Good. Yes. Good? GOOD. Yes, good. Goo- yes? ... Good. Thank you."
And that was that.
"That was that," he smiled, "Just fill out the paperwork they fax me, and you can go on down to the mail room."
Both men stood, Tristaple a tower of grinning, confident man hidden behind that desk. He offered a broad hand, his skin smooth looking and unicolored. He also didn't have fingernails. Warily, WIlliam took him hand and shook it, actually straining to match the compression this man was using.
"Thanks," William grunted.
Constantine smiled and let go of William's hand, bringing both hands out in a somewhat inviting gesture. "Welcome to Wolfram and Hart," he said with a crooked grin.
