Ice Cream

Molly Toombs
While bars were typically the place to meet a friend in Molly's adult life, she was hardly opposed to having an ice cream date instead.  The weather was nice and mild, hovering in the sixties even after the sun had since gone down, and the sky was clear enough for the moon to be bright like a ceiling lamp up above.

"Santa Fe," Molly had recommended on the phone call beforehand.  "There's a creamery I know of.  Plus, Santa Fe."  By now Nate knew she just plumb liked the neighborhood.  She's said before that she would consider moving there if that didn't mean, you know, moving.

But it is a pleasant part of town, and the ice cream that she and Nate exited the front door of the aforementioned creamery with was pleasant as well.  Molly had stepped outside and onto the sidewalk ahead of Nate, dressed simple but neat in dark jeans, a white blouse, tan flat shoes and a tan jacket, cinched and tucked nicely at the waist to make those curves all the moreso.  In hand, a cone of plain chocolate ice cream.  Sometimes it was the simple things in life.

They were mid-conversation, and it carried into the street as the exited the little ice cream shop.

"I've actually had to learn how to build a shelf and mount it on brick wall-- that's how hard pressed for space for books I've officially become."  She'd been a reader before, but the recent influx of novels purchased and spines tucked into her bookshelves was due to her passion for the Unreal and Abnormal (except they knew how real, and carried stones in their stomachs because they knew how unfortunately 'normal' the types of things they knew and bore witness to really were).  Molly's library was turning into something that a very specific crowd would drool for.

Maggie Smith
Did Maggie have a library?

She did. She did and it was full of books, most of them old. Most of them for decoration. Most of them about leadership and building codes Okay, so it wasn't her library, it was Marshall's library, but she did have a shoe box full of romance novels in Polish shoved under her bed that she occasionally pulled out when she was feeling winsome and lonesome and other somes that a woman felt from time to time that only Polish romance novels could satisfy.

She liked ice cream. Marshall was still out of town and she had decided, or maybe Lux had decided, that they should have ice cream. Because ice cream was delicious. Because company was delicious. because Marshall could't eat dairy on account of his acid reflux or something like that. Maggie didn't pretend to understand, but in some quiet conspiratorial way that was not going to be her problem sooner or later.

She felt bad about going out and buying ice cream with her allowance, so she was instead spending her artist money. So there she was, waiting outside for her friend-date to show up for ice cream. Because ice cream? And friends? And ice-cream and friends when one's husband is away?

What could be more American?

Nathan Amherst
Most people have some semblance of a tan by the end of the summer. Summer has been gone from them for weeks now and though the city is still warm enough to convince oneself that snow won't start falling until the holidays if it weren't for the fact that the sun bleached out his straw-colored hair Nathan would look as if he hadn't stepped foot outside all year.

It was warm today and it's cooling off now. Nate appears to have met Molly straight after work. He's wearing loafers and khakis and a white button-down shirt tucked in and belted. He's lost weight since the springtime but that's what happens when you quit drinking and don't replace the calories with anything else. When you take up jogging and start smoking again because you're writing a book and if you can't drink when you're writing you might as well chain smoke.

"I'm surprised you don't have a room just for your books," he says. Says it the way he says everything else. In a tired deadpan makes it sound like he just woke up. Same bruises under his eyes as have always been there. Consistency is key in a relationship. He ordered a hot fudge sundae because fuck it. It's not like his waistline is in danger of expanding. "The rate you're going you're gonna have to get rid of your bed. Your apartment isn't getting any bigger."

They walk past Maggie as they exit the creamery. He met her once before. That was months ago though. Laurel was there.

[int + alert: DO I REMEMBER YOU BLONDIE]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Lux
[a phonecall! entertain without me for a few rounds :< :<]

Maggie Smith
[Do I remember you? Int+alert]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Molly Toombs
"Well there's only the one bedroom in that apartment, you know.  And I'm already sharing my room with three upright bookshelves as it is-- it's taking over my closet wall."

Molly had never met Maggie Smith before, so she wouldn't recognize her even if she was being keen-eyed and sharp-minded tonight.  The woman walking beside Nathan (who Maggie did recognize) was voluptuous and well put together, with her red hair twisted into an up-do, bangs swept neatly to one side.  Her make-up was subtle, save for the wings of eyeliner that existed specifically to add drama to an ensemble that would teeter on the edge of 'public school teacher' were it not for how she stood with an unbent back and didn't appear frazzled from a long day of teaching kids.

"It isn't.  Maybe I'll start stashing the books in that storage closet I rented after...," she trailed off, let the sentence finish itself.  Nate knew, she wasn't lying to him about the fact that she was keeping a broken and deep-sleeping Nosferatu hidden away until he woke.  He was still there, she checked regularly, and the fact was starting to become as routine as walking the dog felt.  At least when she walked the dog she didn't have to do so with a handkerchief pressed firm to her nose and mouth-- Florence's smell didn't make her nerves tremble and strong will try to cave like even the stagnant smell of vampire blood still did.  That little tidbit she'd never mentioned to Nate.  It was a dirty little secret, you see, a shameful little addiction.

That was another story, though, and not the one she was letting tell itself through the unfinished end of a sentence.  Molly smiled politely to Maggie when they crossed paths going in-and-out of the same shop, but did not extend a greeting herself.  Perfect strangers after all.  Instead, she licked at her ice cream cone.

Maggie Smith
She was waiting for Lux, and there was the quiet in between waiting time and she looked up in time to see a familiar… ish face. She'd met him once, but Maggie was good with faces. Terrible with directions, yes, but wonderful with faces. With faces and contours and shapes and lines and this shape called himself Nate.

And he helped her find the complete wrong professor, but she was grateful anyway.

"Nate?" she asked, and she cocked her head to the side curiously. The woman he was with was pretty and curvaceous and colorful, colorful enough that the bleached blonde with the immovable cleavage (either a good bra or a better plastic surgeon) looked at her and smiled big and bright and perhaps a little too eagerly. Like a tourist.

"Thank you again!" she tells him, because she recognizes him, or at least she thinks she does, "for the directions? On campus?"

In case he didn't remember.

Nathan Amherst
Even if he doesn't jump with the shock of hearing his name come from someone who wasn't standing right next to him Nate always looked a bit startled. The curse of having dark eyes set into a pale face. Of not blinking very often. Not blinking is supposed to be a sign of mental disturbance.

The woman standing right next to him knows of some of the disturbances he's weathered in the last year alone. That he doesn't ever truly feel alone. Hard to feel alone when he's staying late at the office or out at a gastropub or standing in line someplace and he hears something cold and dead whisper in his ear. When he and his friends become witnesses to a haunting and rather than running the fuck away he wants to barrel in and confront the spirit causing it. When he can't even lie in a hospital bed without disembodied visitors coming to chatter at him.

So he doesn't jump but Nate does look startled when he turns towards Maggie. His eyes search her face and it takes him a second but no longer.

"Hey," he says with as much brightness in his tone as any stranger can ever claim to hear and stops walking. Maybe they were on their way to a bench or a table anyway. Some of the places around here are stubborn in their refusal to bring in their patio furniture just because the Halloween decorations are already popping up. "Yeah, no problem. How's class going?"

Where the fuck are his manners.

"Molly, this is, uh, Maggie, she goes to DU."

Molly Toombs
Molly's left hand (with no ring to stake a claim of marriage) was the designated ice cream hand, so it was preoccupied with holding on to a waffle cone through a napkin to avoid sticky fingers as much as possible.  Even though the fingers on her right hand weren't sticky at all yet, she still dusted them on the thigh of her pants to be sure before extending her hand to the blond woman introduced as Maggie.

"Nice to meet you," Molly said with a smile that was completely polite and pleasant (but just didn't seem to quite shine from behind the eyes) but didn't have the same sparkling bright enthusiasm that the college student had displayed when spying Nate.  It was hard to shine from the eyes when everything behind them was cluttered with the dark and unreal anyways.

The place had three mini wire tables, precisely, for customers to use.  There were a few extra chairs pressed directly up against the store's front wall as well, but the sidewalk only allowed for so much room.  Thankfully Wednesday evenings in October weren't the busiest, so the tables were all clear (save for the one Maggie herself was at?).  Molly didn't move to sit, but her right hand slipped into her jacket pocket and her weight dispersed between her feet to indicate she was content to stand and chat for a while.  After another lick of her ice cream, she glanced briefly to Nate, then to Maggie once more.

"DU?  I graduated from there."  Of course you did, Molly.  Many people in Denver did.  "What are you studying?"

Verna
How does she even have time for this sort of thing? It's a mystery, truly. Perhaps Verna is burning the candle at both ends, spending time she should be sleeping in a quest for ice cream. It looks that way, at least. She might seem sick if it weren't for the makeup disguising dark circles under her eyes. Everything is a disguise really. The makeup, the clothes, the amount of effort she puts in to appear nice.

But one has to live a little, don't they? Treat themselves once in a while?

Maggie's the only one she recognizes upon walking out of the place, double-chocolate cone in hand. There is a bright smile. There is the sense of familiarity at noticing who her friend is talking to. Hasn't she seen them before somewhere?

Maggie Smith
Molly was a graduate of DU. Maggie smiled that bright- too bright- smile and her features lit up lovely and the ring on her hand was the size of Kansas and her nails were bright red and either fake or very well manicured. She has a nice, firm handshake, like she is conducting a business deal. Like she practiced shaking hands and knew precisely what she was doing. Magdalena shined, it was simply what she did.

"I am graduate student? In art history?" everything sounded a little like a question when she said it, her inflection rising in the wrong places and her accent thick and dripping with the lilt of a non-native English speaker. " But not with concentration in museum studies. I studied at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw before I moved here? It is lovely."

A little longing, perhaps?

Lux
Lux is in black tonight. Lux is sheathed in it: midnight's darling, an inescapably lovely young woman. Her throat is bare. Her arms, too. The dress is modern [haute], deceptive in its simplicity: thin black straps, a razor's edge of thread, scoop neck, swath of black silk against an asymmetrical swath of more black silk down to just the top of her thighs, little black shorts a silver safety pin gleaming and then over the whole fucking thing this veiled half-transparent shadow-gauz, wrapping 'round her thighs then flaring out at her calves in darkness-edged sweeps, an elegant torrent of night which she'd step on if Lux weren't wearing heels (black and spindling, but quite without ridiculousness), weren't also sharped up by virtue of being Other into a thing which exceeds the measure of grace allotted most souls.

Lux is in black. Lux's nails are polished pearl-silver, the colour of the gates of Heaven (y'know, those things we're going to tear down -- what fucking fun!), and Lux's hair is pinned back and she has a wrap she's not wearing because it's only sixty out tonight anyway and she always bums a jacket from somebody else anyway so the wrap is technically folded up in her little box purse and she glitters in the light sparkles we might even say around the eyes because to counteract the severe suggestiveness of the outfit itself she has little sequined stars by her eyes around her eyes and glistering shadow and she looks very casually elegant as hell

and

she is late.

She is late for reasons she will likely share with nobody, but that is life in Denver; one must occasionally circle 'round, take a different route, be discrete. Lux is not discrete and Lux is not good at hiding; frankly my dear, she refuses to change herself in certain ways, because nights unenjoyed mean everything (the blood, the years, everything, everything) is a waste.

The only thing to do is party, get it?

And look, a party! A strange and ecclectic party still in proto-party phase, but surely, a party nonetheless. Maybe. The ultimate Toreador challenge, perhaps: make this a party.

(Is Lux a good little Toreador?)

Here she is, cutting across the street, not lifting her voice or her hand until she is near enough to catch Maggie's eye or perhaps Nathan's or hell why not Molly's one of those people where she was heading directly so she can wave. Which she does. And who's to say why she opens her bag and finds a cigarette case, and the first person she actually speaks to is the one who's still outside of the group being descended upon,

Doesn't she sound surprised and warm?

"Why, Verna! Is that chocolate? I would have guessed strawberry!"

Lux
[ooc: aka, boom! I'm back.]

Nathan Amherst
There must be a god somewhere. Verna doesn't recognize Nathan and Nate couldn't testify to what Verna looks like anyway. That may change as she comes closer and figures out this is the drunk creep she'd managed to avoid twice last spring but for now they can enjoy their ignorance a while longer.

Nate has to use two hands to put a hurt on his sundae but he's just holding it in one for now. This creamery doesn't believe in styrofoam containers. The cardboard dish is a poor insulator but Nate has cold hands anyway.

He isn't going to be the first one to decide if they were sitting or standing or scraping themselves free of the conversation and continuing on. He shifts his weight between his feet and puts his empty left hand behind his back. Looks like he's standing at half-assed ease but really he's pushing his knuckles into the small of his back.

Of course his is one of the sets of eyes that finds Lux as she steps up onto the sidewalk. He acknowledges her with a glance and then looks back to Maggie.

"I had a layover in Warsaw once," he says. "The airport was nice."

Conversationalist of the year, over here.

Molly Toombs
"Poland is a pretty beautiful part of the world," Molly agreed.  "You're from there originally, I'm guessing?"  She didn't need to specify why she was guessing, Maggie's English was great but the accent was a red flag in a sea of white.  "Makes sense that you're studying art, then."

The red-haired woman smiled appropriately, it pushed up her freckled cheeks and touched the corners of her eyes and all.  The warmth that should be geniuine to go with a comment like that-- speaking of the beauty of someone's home and how it may have impacted their interests-- was just a bit lacking though.  She licked again at her ice cream and let her eyes creep a scan about their surroundings.

In doing so, she spied Lux and Verna both.  Lux she knew, and recognized both for who and what she was (equally to some degree but not to any full extent, oh no).  Verna was someone she recognized vaguely, a tickle in the corner of her mind of 'I've seen you someplace before', but without a solid identity to tack down on to it.  The most memorable occasion was some time ago, and then they hadn't spoken a word to one another let alone shared names and shaken hands.  But recognition?  A little, enough that Molly furrowed coppery-ginger brows in thought.

What she actually commented on when she opened her mouth to speak-- her tone of voice was more relaxed and familiar than a moment ago, so she was probably directing it more toward Nathan than Magdelena, but she was looking at neither and the statement was open.

"It is by some supernatural gift of grace that that woman hasn't fallen directly on her face yet."  Speaking specifically of Lux, and the skirt about her ankles.

"By some supernatural grace or another that woman has managed no

Molly Toombs
[Well I don't know what happened with that last line there but y'all can ignore it.]

Verna
Lux is always a feast for the eyes, isn't she? A walking piece of art that Verna has casually appraised now and again as worth a great deal. It always makes one feel a little ragged, doesn't it? Outmatched? But jealousy doesn't erase the fact that Lux is good people.

"Oh but I needed chocolate, Lux. Bad day," she says, a little smile in order to say that the day wasn't that bad really. Nobody died. "It's good to see you."

Maggie Smith
Was she originally from poland? She nodded, and that bright light stayed on her face for Lux and Verna- (Vair-Nah).

"The airport is lovely? Has a very nice Barnes and Noble? It is more pleasant than Berlin," she replied to that particular notion.

But there was Molly to talk to. Molly who was lovely and curved and red and perfectly shadeable. Something sculptable. She wondered about that, if it would be strange to say. Something made her smile, laugh a little, "it takes practice? And very good ankles."

Lux
"You need company," and thus is Verna whisked off to Molly, Nathan, and Maggie. Cigarette acquired from case, and wouldn't you know she taps it out with the air of long habit although her fingertips aren't stained. "But poor strawberry, so maligned! If I were a flavor, I'd despise chocolate because of how quickly it is loved, how swiftly it gets into the mix of things,"

and now, the whisking is accomplished. "Why hey there, guys. Do any of you know Verna here? She's the cleverest person I know when it comes to Natural Laws and being noticing. Verna, this is Nathan, who's a brave writer of crime stories and other more important things, and this is Molly, who -- let's see, Molly, how should I describe you? Molly's a darling, quick on her feet, a nurse too, and don't big hearts come with that? Hey, Maggie, I'm truly sorry I'm late. The contritest. D'you really like my ankles? Did I hear that right? I will blush."

Nathan Amherst
Oh great. More introductions. Now's the perfect time to shovel sundae into your mouth Nathan good job. Maybe that will keep your foot out of it.

Nathan, who's a brave writer of crime stories and other more important things--

He's making sure he doesn't have melted dairy product on his mouth before he inserts himself into the conversation. Dabs at his lips with the back of his thumb and turns out yeah okay he's fine. Buries the spoon up to the hilt in his ice cream and sets the dish down on one of the empty tables.

Once his hands are freed he lifts the right one in a motionless wave and tucks both hands into the pockets of his leather jacket.

"Sup," he says.

Writers. So eloquent when they don't have pens and keyboards in front of them.

Molly Toombs
Molly Toombs of the red hair and va-va-voom that this bright-smiled bright-haired lady wanted to shade, maybe sculpt, stood beside and a couple of inches shorter than Nathan.  Since you can't set a waffle cone down to rest for a while, she kept a hold of her frozen treat and licked to keep it from melting into a mess before she could enjoy it.  Lux had ushered Verna on over and started with introductions right off the bat.

Blue eyes met Verna's, and she smiled but waited for introductions to be completed before speaking up herself.  When Lux said Verna's name, Molly kept that smile up and nodded.  When Nate was described as a brave writer, Molly cast a glance his way.  When she heard her own name, that smile turned to more of a grin ("how should I describe you?") and she at last extended the right hand, free of chocolate ice cream drips and drops, to shake.

"I think I've seen you here or there.  It's nice to meet you, Verna."

Again, as was the trend this evening, Molly is pleasant but there's too much noise from the gears whirling in her head for her to seem especially focused on niceties.  Already, she had cast a glance to Maggie-- largely because Lux expressed that she was keeping the woman late, they were meeting there by arrangement.  Molly liked Lux, don't get her wrong, but there was a particular suspicion and caution that still sank into her bones and ticked away at her rib bones from inside the cage of her chest.

These poor women probably had no idea what they were in for.

Verna
Verna's whisking away has her uncomfortably shuffled down the sidewalk to mingle with people. She's introduced as the cleverest person with the natural laws, and this has her recalling events she'd rather not. A pang of a thought. She wasn't always the person Lux knew who was the cleverest.

She puts on a smile anyway, and extends her free hand to Nathan and Molly in turn. "Oh, a writer -- and a nurse? What an honorable profession, truly."

Small talk. Social scripts. The grease that runs the world really.

"And Maggie. I didn't know you knew Lux! Small world."

Truth, Molly. Verna has no idea what she is in for. None. She doesn't have an idea what she was in for.

Maggie Smith
"Verna!" she says, pronounces her name incorrectly even though she knows that she can say it Ver-nah and not Vair-nah, but for some reason the name does not ever seem to come out right, but she smiles all the same, all bright and my must she get tired of beaming so damnably often?

"And I do like your ankles," she admits, though there is no real admission in it. Just a statement of fact and unabashed appreciation the way that an artist would appreciate anatomy, before she could say anything, though, her phone rang. Her phone rang and Maggie looked- not distressed, but her sunlight dimmed for a moment and she sighed. He didn't always make her sigh, she didn't always feel a sense of impending dread when she had to talk to her husband but her stomach felt weak and her heart felt heavy and.

"I am sorry, I must take this call," she apologizes, genuine and sincere. As though her phone call would inconvenience anyone.

Nathan Amherst
Seems as if he wasn't going to shake Verna's hand until she offered it up herself. She extends it to him and he flinches as if he hadn't been expecting it. A self-reprimanding frown stains his brow and he overdoes it trying to smile to seem friendly. He looks distracted.

Hell for all Verna can tell context lacking and Lux being so complimentary as she is Molly is a psych nurse and Nathan is her fucking client. He hadn't exactly been behaving himself that day she spied them all at the bar and grill at noon.

Small world.

"Heh," Nate says before he can convince himself not to.

Lux
Maggie did not look distressed. But what did Maggie look, then, if not distressed; dimmed? Lux considers this, cut of a glance a sidelong sort-of-thing in response to that sigh.

"If you must, don't do it," she says, immediately; "Doing things because one must is a terrible way to run your night," and she means it, too, means it with ardency, but by the end of the sentence, see, her expression is an understanding one, and the cant of her head meant to indicate she won't follow Maggie off into privacy land. Doesn't she look regretful?

Back to socializing, socializing, socializing; contained vibrance. Lux reaches on over to fix something that needed fixing on Nathan. Look at him and take your pick.

"Who's got a lighter? Anyone? And what's the noblest profession of all? There is a correct answer, I'm curious to see whether you know," and there; edge of a half-smile, just surfacing.

"I want you two to entertain me," she tells Molly and Nathan, up-front. "Where are you headed after this? There's a thing going on a street over..."

Invitation for all. 

Molly Toombs
Being a nurse meant you heard all kinds of things.  Sometimes it was requests to come home and play nurse with a real man, because she wore her scrubs walking home.  Occasionally she'd been accused of being outright evil for refusing some demand or another from an admitted patient.  In nice company like this, though, you got to hear things like compliments and being called honorable and a lifesaver.  Molly wasn't sure if she would call herself so honorable anymore, but that wasn't the kind of thing you pondered aloud when meeting new people.

"Thank you," she sufficed to say instead, and even looked a little bit modest over the compliment made.  "It's a way to make a living, in a few ways I suppose you could even say."  Ha, medicine joke.

Her attention pulled toward Maggie when the phone buzzed and rang, and the heart-heaviness that dragged a curtain over the sun-filled windows that were the blonde woman's brightness didn't go unnoticed.  There was a faint sympathetic crease to the brow, but Molly had only just barely met the woman.  She liked her enough, as much as you could after being just introduced, but she was precisely that-- just introduced.  So she made no suggestions to buck the chains of obligation and just nodded her understanding instead.

Ah, but who had a lighter for that cigarette in Lux's hand?  Molly shook her head apologetically, then took to looking humored instead when the gorgeous and magnetic (undead! do not forget!) woman next explained that she wanted her to keep her entertained.  Between ice cream licks, she chuckled and conversed.

"Oh do you, now?"  Of course she did.  Molly looked past her shoulder to Nate, searching his face for answer to the silent question of 'well?'.

"We....," she started, dragging the word a little because she started talking while still looking up at Nate and asking silent questions about what they were doing and what he was up to later and if they should stay for that thing or or or...

"...hadn't really gotten farther than 'ice cream'.  What's the thing?"

Maggie Smith
(running away, thank you all lovelies for the play!)

Verna
Verna waves off Maggie's departure with sadness. Now the crowd is dwindling down to people she barely knows.

"Hmm. Well, I suppose by one definition, an emperor is the noblest profession. But then, emperors are so rarely noble," Verna says, and oh, there's chocolate ice cream dripping down her hand. How noble.

She catches up to it, of course. Oh, chocolate. It's a substitute for something she can't quite place...

Lux tells Molly and Nathan that they will entertain her. This does not exactly include Verna, and that is a good thing. She has homework. To grade and to do. What life is there to have, really? Still, there is the whole 'being left out' thing to consider. Wallflower as she is, she makes no comment either way.

Nathan Amherst
Of course he has a lighter. He's off the nicotine wagon again. He fishes a small silver Zippo out of his pocket and hands it to Lux before picking up his ice cream again.

Then the question of the thing and the going to it or the not going to it. Nate is looking over at Molly as she's looking up at him and her expression is one of overt questioning while his is bland. Only way to tell that he's thinking is the fact that he sets his lips into a line as he does it.

They seem to be in agreement. They hadn't planned out the rest of their night and it depends on what the thing is. Nate glances over at Verna to see if she's coming along.

Being a medium supposedly means you have an excuse to walk up to anybody. He barely uses it as an excuse to talk to people.

Lux
"The thing, oh. Don'tcha like surprises?"

This is how Lux collects lighters. Somebody gives her one, and she doesn't quite remember to give it back once she lights her cigarette, stands back (aloof and alone [never! far too present for that]) so the wind won't wash the smoke over the ice-cream lickers and flavor their treats acrid. Smoking suits Lux; she does it with such an offhand air that the rest of what she's doing, the attention she is paying, becomes sharped up.

"The kind that don't come at the end of a scary story, that is," and see, she sounds as if she's thinking of something else for a moment; pause. Remember oneself; glance down, then up through her lashes, regard the living things through the veil of 'em, a hopeful cant.

"Come to the thing, and find out. I will be just devastated if mysteriousness which doesn't involve me trumps mysteriousness I've got in my hand."

Her gaze wanders over to the platinum blonde sunshine (Saint) talking on the phone, and stays. She is loathe to let Verna go, as Verna will no doubt find out as soon as she tries to make her mouse-polite neat-neat-neat way off. Loathe, suddenly, to let anybody go; it causes the corner of her mouth to quirk up, impulse.

Molly Toombs
"I used to."  Like surprises, that is.  Molly had gotten to the point on her ice cream where she could begin crunching away on the edges of the waffle cone, and after she'd taken the first crunchy bite and come away with ice cream on her nose, she wiped it free with the inside of her left wrist.  Maggie was off, up the sidewalk, talking and Molly had no idea what the call was about or where she was going but, well, there she went.

That left four:  two others that Molly knew plenty well, well enough to have gone on ghost-hunting expeditions (well, one).  The third, Verna, was an unknown, but Molly had spied her here and there before, and Lux knew her well enough to use names and pull into conversations at least.  Even if she didn't know it yet, chances were that this poor Verna woman would become as solidly aware of Truth as the rest of them, and before long no doubt.

"Not so much these days.  But, that could just be that the last few were sour and spoiled it for the rest."  Another quick-lick of the ice cream cone to catch a dribble trying to creep its way toward her fingers.  "And it would be callous for me to just leave you devastated, wouldn't it?"

A glance back toward Verna, and Molly raised her eyebrows curiously.  "How about you Verna?  Up for adventure?"

Nathan Amherst
"Oh, yeah," Nate says in a deadpan. "I fuckin' love surprises."

Verna
"Oh, I can't," she says, in response to Molly. "I have so much work I need to do. Grading papers. I really wish I could be doing anything else with my night but figuring out how someone managed to live for eighteen years and not learn how to add."

There is a thing about teaching remedial math courses for college students. It will put you off your dinner. Make you crave chocolate.

"Honestly, I do not know if they realize how much money they're throwing away by not taking their classes seriously," she shakes her head.

Verna knows. That ice cream was saved up for.

Nathan Amherst
At some point he picks up his paper dish and starts carving away at it with the spoon. Maybe while Molly is talking. It gives him time to eat and he eats as if this is the first solid food he's had all afternoon. Then Verna has an excuse to deliver. He's put a decent sized dent in the dish by the time she gets to:

Honestly, I do not know if they realize how much money they're throwing away by not taking their classes seriously.

He's smearing the fudge and whatever the hell else goes on a sundae around as he says, "They don't."

This coming from the guy who went to school on the G.I. Bill. No bias at all.

Lux
[ooc: okay, y'all. I am fading super fast. Who is up for a long haul? I'm debating bringing us towards a wrappy thing! Whoever goes do thing in one direction the others in another.]

Verna
[I am not up! I have to leave! It is why Verna is bowing out, hah]

Molly Toombs
[I'm so down with a wrappy end, I'm fading out here soon myself]

Nathan Amherst
[It's like hanging out at the nursing home, with you people.]

Molly Toombs
[I won't deny it.]

Verna
[:P]

Lux
[*wiggles fingers* *dives into SPEEDWRAPPYTHINGmaybe*]

Lux
"But don't reward tedium with your time," Lux says, just for starters, and she proceeds to lay a lure, a come-with-me sort of how-can-you-say-no?, for Verna the scientist who she is reluctant to lose at the moment.

Maybe Verna can be tugged along (caught [in orbit]), maybe she can't. If she can't, Lux asks Molly whether or not she thinks Verna seems sad. There's a point to this line of conversation; there always is, even if it's just to keep herself occupied. Didn'tcha know, Lux would want to know, you guys had somebody in common?

Maybe Verna stays just a little longer, finishing her ice cream, and it's not until Maggie regretful and full of apologies has to take her leave that Molly and Nate and Lux go to the thing, the thing a street away, (but c'mon, Verna, stay, do), which turns out to be a zombie crawl party-cum-art show-cum movie night movie night for charity sort of deal.

Maybe Lux looks at Nate with muted -- longing, or maybe that's Verna, or, Hell, maybe Maggie stays, maybe it's Maggie; maybe Lux is just a wistful young woman, whenever her personality gives her a chance at introspection.

Maybe it's nothing.

Maybe some of the zombie crawl practice-costumes aftermath costumes are pretty fucking fabulous; maybe the movie is good. Wednesday isn't a big party night but it's a dark world:

Gotta remind yourself you're alive one way or another, make all the best mistakes.

Molly Toombs
[Ahwrap.  Thanks for playing you guys!]

Verna
[<3]

Verna
[Verna totally goes to the zombie crawl party movie thing. Just so you know.]

Verna
[I just have to go to bed right now.]

Molly Toombs
[YAY]