Library

Verna
The library has free wifi. Admission to the library is free. Free is a beautiful word for someone who hasn't started work yet, and whose grant money hasn't hit.

It's late. In the night, the library's normal hush quiets even further, sinking books into their dust. There's few people around at this hour, except for those desperate for study time or just somewhere to be. Verna's desperate to make sure everything's perfect for Monday, working at her laptop on one of the larger tables in the place. Class starts so very soon.

It's been a hard time for her lately, and the tension rides on her shoulders. First, the lab and the loss therein. Then Jon Marc and his altercation. And now, she's having to face teaching again, and doing so alone. Most of the time, it's okay as long as she has some kind of distraction, but most nights she lies awake thinking of how everything would be fine if only Doctor Andrássy were there.

Today, she's got on a navy skirt with matching (sensible) heels and a polka-dotted peach peasant blouse. It's the picture of perfect good little girl, with crisp lines. Her nails are even a soft shade of peach, clicking on her laptop keys. But even though she's working, that nervous tension has her looking around every so often. Somebody could break into the place. Jon Marc could always find her again -- though the library seems an unlikely target.

That's partly why she's here, is it not? Home just seems so unsafe.

Lázaro
Well look who it is.

She's alone in the library for nearly an hour before she sees anyone come wandering past. It's the end of the summer and the undergraduates are beginning to stream back in and the grad students have all claimed their spaces already. This is where they will live until their degrees are completed. This is going to be Verna's new home.

The young man into whom she bumped at the food festival whose path crossed hers at the aquarium to whom she has spoken few words and glimpsed quick comes down the center aisle. His pace is unhurried and his eyes are not on where his feet are taking him but flicking up and across and up and across as he reads the signs on the sides of the stacks.

Plenty of short Hispanic guys in Denver. Nothing special about him. If she doesn't recognize him it won't be the strangest thing that happens tonight.

Verna
It's hard to recognize someone you've never really met. But there is something vaguely familiar about this someone. Verna's seen him around, and it's that which sets her overly paranoid mind in motion. She has enemies after all. Nebulous, resourceful enemies. Plural. Enemies who might just send someone to watch her (after all, they have before). And when did her life become so strange?

The man will find Verna paying a bit of undue attention his way, as if trying to figure him out, and if he catches her eyes, she just gives a nerve-ridden smile back.

It could just be that she keeps running into this guy quite accidentally. It could be that.

Lázaro
When life ceases to make sense and most strangers come into a person's life prove themselves to be trouble if not an outright danger a little paranoia isn't unhealthy. The attention Verna pays the young man is not undue even if it is attention born of repeated and accidental sightings.

It isn't until he's drawn nearer that he becomes aware of her presence. Eyes abandon their searching and he glimpses her. Would have stayed a glimpse were not for the fact that they meet eyes and she smiles at him.

That's about as bad as inviting them in according to popular mythology. He gives a flinch of a smile back to her and alters his course.

[auspex 2: ENGAGE.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lázaro
[4 successes good job Empathy spec]

Verna
Oh, he's seen her. And as he peers deep within the psyche of Verna, he'll see the silvery sheen of her -- some deep mourning lies within, and like snow on a television screen, that silver picks up background radiation and noise, sputtering out random anxiety.

She isn't a calm thing, but she doesn't seem that skittish on the surface, or that sad. Whatever he sees in her aura, she's been keeping on a tight leash.

There's a swallow, and a glance, and Verna sees he's walking towards her. "Hi... I'm sorry. I was just trying to remember where I've seen you before. You look familiar."

Lázaro
Tonight the young man is dressed in the same utilitarian punk aesthetic as he was the first night they ran into each other. Thick-soled black boots and sturdy jeans and a dark t-shirt underneath a leather jacket. He hasn't shaved his face in a few days and his hair is the same overgrown shag as it was. Hard to tell if his hair grows fast or slow. It threatens to flop into his face either way.

The light in here is much better than it was on Santa Fe Boulevard. It brings out the green in his eyes. Easy for her to tell what color they are when he's looking straight at her like this. He pauses just beyond arm's reach and rests the fingertips of one hand on the tabletop. The other is tucked into the pocket of his jacket.

At the confession that he looks familiar the young man cants his head and frowns. Trying to conjure up a location.

"Oh?" he asks. A Spanish accent lingers on his tongue. The frown evaporates and he gives a quick shrug before smiling again. Maybe this is one of those guys who doesn't know how to talk to women. Maybe he's shy too. "One of those faces, I think." A different frown this time. Pensive more than searching. "Oh, no, you know what it is?" He takes his hand off the tabletop to point at her. His finger is not sharp and he does not jab. "I remember now, that night at the, ah, the..." Snap snap snap go his fingers eyes lifted to the ceiling come on what the fuck was it called. "In the arts district." Close enough. He looks back at her and gives another of those nervous smiles as he scratches at his temple and pushes the hair back from his brow. "I almost took you out. Sorry, again, for that."

Verna
"Oh, yes, the art walk. I remember," she says, and cants her head to the side. "No need to be sorry. Unless you're really following me around, trying to run me over."

She smiles again, and she's been shooting him one nervous smile after another. Somebody's trying too hard. But she's just not quite sure what to do with him, or what to say.

"It's just... We just keep... uh... running into each other, don't we?" she says, making light of their seeming magnetism.

Lázaro
She makes what sounds like a joke and he laughs a shy laugh and shakes his head no no like it really needs to be said. If he were following her around he would have to be more subtle about it. A mark isn't ever supposed to see her tail and she sure as shit isn't supposed to recognize him.

It's just. Light made and he considers the situation with a flick of a frown.

"I guess we do," he says with a note of curiosity rung in his voice. Takes his right hand out of his pocket and extends it to her. "Lázaro. If we're gonna keep running into each other."

Magdalena
The herald to her arrival is a sound. A terrible, distinct sound like the theme from Jaws to the ears of anyone who was familiar with fabrics.

Fwee-fweep. Fwee-fweep-fwee-fweep

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of a Juicy Coutoure tracksuit making its way down a corridor. There are other sounds, of course, that come with her. the sound of carefully clicking fingernails on a blackberry keyboard, because Maggie could not be bothered to have a touch screen phone, and the sigh of a woman who realizes she is going to have to call a cab to get home because she missed her bus. She liked the library. Liked it a fair bit, and her backpack loaded up with art history books so full that it makes her seem like a turtle with a Jansport shell on her back.

She's not nearly as glamorous at the library. Her hair is in a ponytail with a baseball cap on with some kind of design on the front that may have just been the result of maggie getting bored and having too much time to play with the acrylic paints. She continues her way through the library, waiting for a text message that isn't going to come, but she hopes it will. He'll pick up this time, she knew it.

Fwee-fweep. Fwee-fweep-fwee-fweep

Verna
She takes his hand, and hers is warm. Perhaps not the most confident and firm of grip, but she meets his green eyes when they shake hands. "I'm Verna. Nice to meet you."

Lázaro. A Spanish form of Lazarus? The spring garden meets the risen dead, then. Names are such strange things, and you never get to choose them. Verna should know. Hers is an old name, taken from a great-grandmother. It never seemed quite right.

The track-suit noise catches her attention then, and she looks past Lázaro down the stacks.

"Maggie?"

She is meeting everyone tonight, it seems.

Lázaro
His hand is not warm.

It isn't as cold as the hand of a corpse. Blame it on the air conditioning or poor circulation. She has felt a hand this cold before but the man to whom the hand belonged was her boss. That man was a scientist and a brilliant one and she fell in love with him that night.

This man is nothing like that man. She has no way of knowing that. They've only just met and they've only just given each other their names and she trusts that that is his real name because she has no way of knowing that it isn't. But his hand is cold in hers. He has the rough palms of a laborer.

Here comes a velour tracksuit. He glances over his shoulder when Verna says the other woman's name and when he looks back amusement stains his features.

"You're alright?" he asks.

Magdalena
Maggie?

She perks up at the sound of her name, looking down the way to see- "Verna!" - pronounced like Vair-nah. Pronounced with delight and she turned to hone in on her new target. She looks left, then right, then surreptitiously slips her phone back into her bra, where its presence is not at all noticeable, and she continues on with her gigantic backpack to meet with Verna and this new person that she does not know. She makes her way over double-time fweefweepfweefweepfweepfweepfweep and she stops.

"You are preparing for classes, yes?"

Maggie looks different without her makeup on, less unapproachable, less glamorous. Softer with her perfectly sculpted and symmetrical eyebrows and her pretty blue eyes and her perfectly naturally curled eyelashes god dammit it was easy to want to hate her because those sorts of eyelashes only came with a fake eyelash package and everyone knew it! Damn you, Poland!

"Did I interrupt?"

Verna
His hand is cold, like Dr. Andrássy's -- resting on her elbow on a night of dreams made real. That night, everything was wonderful. It's a night she wants to live in, and forget about the rest.

Verna's dark eyes go distant. She's living in that past, for spare seconds. Everything seems to remind her of him. Everything.

-- You're alright?

"Oh, I'm fine! Fine. Ah, this is Maggie. Maggie, Lázaro. Lázaro, Maggie."

It seems everyone is mispronouncing names here, because Verna cannot roll her r's. Lázaro comes out all wrong, though you can tell she's trying.

"And oh... Classes. Tomorrow, Maggie! Tomorrow," she says, and her head drops to her chest as if to say that those classes are just going to kill her.

Lázaro
Some people can practically feel other people's suffering. She may think she has her emotions on lockdown but that distance in her eyes and the insistence that she's fine don't go together. The young man paused at her table does not cant his head to announce his disbelief but there's a softness to his gaze that gives them both away anyway.

It's the best time for an interruption. Maggie joins them and the young man turns his head to acknowledge her. He is short despite the best efforts of his footwear but his shortness does nothing to impact his presence. Something about the way he looks at a person when they're talking. His interest is an obvious thing. Attentive even as there is so much to attend to.

Introductions then. Lázaro gives a winsome smile to the blond woman and offers her his hand to shake. It has grown no warmer since grasping Verna's.

"Hi, Maggie," he says.

Classes tomorrow. Woe.

Magdalena
 "Hi, Lázaro," she doesn't quite say th Z as a Z. More like an S, but she does roll her R, more like a flip and she is more than comfortable saying a name that sounds foreign. You would think she would be able to pronounce Verna, but it seems like that one was just a little too much for Maggie. "It is nice to meet you, how do you know Verna?"

She smiles, all bright white teeth and contentment when she shakes his hand, unphased by his hand being cold because, maybe he just had bad circulation or something of the sort. We digress. Maggie turned her attention to her friend (yes, friend, because Maggie thinks so many people are her friend, naive darling). "You will be fine, you are strong and confident woman who knows more than people who are taking remedial math."

Verna
The way he looks at her, he must have noticed. And it almost breaks her again that she is that transparent. "We don't really know each other. We just keep bumping into one another," Verna says with a shrug. "Sometimes quite literally."

So, much like the friendship she and Maggie have cobbled together over random meetings, although Maggie is so outgoing, isn't she? It's hard to imagine a person like that not having 'friends' by the bucketload.

"I wouldn't say that I know more... More about math, yes. Otherwise I would be the most horrible teacher," she says, and laughs.

Strength and confidence? Well yes, perhaps she has that. And what will happen when she shows up for her first class, has to face the students, and Jon Marc is sitting in the back row? There's just so many things to be worried about, aren't there?

Lázaro
Because otherwise the conversation is going to split even worse than it already has and his player's brain can't handle simultaneous threads Lázaro just gives another smile and pulls a face that says Yeah...

And time marches on. So does the conversation. They're onto math and Verna being a teacher. His eyebrows lift once and brief but it's not because he never would have guessed. They've only just met and this is a university library. They both have to assume that he goes here himself.

"What is your subject?" he asks. He looks down to try and glean the title of the book she was reading before he came her way.

Verna
"I'm going to be studying physics, and teaching some introductory classes. They give people like me the classes the real professors don't want to touch, you know?

"But, it'll be good. For me. I hope," she says, and smiles. The smile is dimmed, but it's up there anyway. "I have been rather excited about getting back to the.. to the research."

To his research. If there is a bright spot in all of this, it's that she kept her boss's notes notes and their papers and the beginnings of calculations. She will see it done, in remembrance.

Magdalena
"What were you researching?" she asks curiously, as though the concept of physics would not go right over her little blonde hair.

Magdalena
(head. Not hair)

Lázaro
No. He doesn't know. But he doesn't have to let on that he doesn't know. That would be too telling too soon. He nods and it's a sympathetic nod. Understanding.

Details she can pick out about him the longer they speak: no visible jewelry. Sideburns. He doesn't stand still even when he is stood still. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other like having to be in one place longer than five seconds is a great burden.

Okay. Fuck standing up. He hauls a chair from the table and spins it around. Straddles it and wraps his arms around its back so he can rest his chin on the back of a wrist. Must be it's story time.

Verna
Oh, one of these days, people will find out that displaying any interest at all in what she studies is the way to get Verna to open up even more than most people want her to.

But these two aren't most people are they?

"I was doing some amazing work this year with an independent laboratory. We were working with diamonds, though not the jewelry kind. More trying to harness the stability of the diamond matrix for quantum computing."

As she talks, Verna brightens up considerably. These memories are fond ones. That it all ended in ruin? Well, she can forget that for the time being.

"Quantum computers are tricky. You have to isolate individual particles from everything else for long periods of time. Otherwise, they lose coherence, and you have to start over again. So you have to find a way to sort of... imprison the particles, right? Diamond works because the carbon atoms are all bound so tightly. But you also have to hollow out little cells for the particles to live in.

"We were working on a way to chip away those tiny little individual atoms off of a diamond's surface, so that the compartments could be used to house quantum computer parts. Essentially. Nanolithography. Etching on a very very tiny scale."

Magdalena
Now, there was something to be said about Maggie. She wasn't stupid by any means. She listened, and her eyes were bright and suddenly her backpack started to feel heavier and she started to lean backwards a little, like her knees weren't quite ready to support the full force of whatever it was that she was studying and then there was mention of quantum computers and-

Nope.

Maggie smiled the smile of a very lost person, her English completely failing her in this particular subject matter.

"And that is… good?"

Lázaro
"It sounds like it?" Lázaro says. His English is impeccable and it may well be his first language but science is a language all its own and quantum physics is one of the newest of the disciplines. He doesn't have a goddamn clue what Verna just said.

Verna
"It was good," she nods. And there is where the sadness comes from. It was good. While it lasted.

"I plan on continuing that research this year," she starts, and then realizes by the confused faces in the room that everything's gone sideways. "I'm sorry. I guess I get a little carried away. It's just... Well, I really love it. you know? Picking away at the universe until it tells you what you need to know? And then getting it to... Muahahaa! Bend to your will!"

She raises a fist in mock mad-scientist fashion. 'Evil' laughter comes easily.

"There's really nothing like it."

Magdalena
"Oh, no no! No, that is good, you have passion for your work and it makes you happy so do why makes you happiest. Just-"

At about this time, Maggie's left breast started ringing some Mariah Carey song. Something about butterflies and it was about to get to the point where Mariah was going to hit her characteristic high note before Maggie immediately went to her left breast and tried to cover up the sound.

"I am sorry, may I take this?" like she wouldn't if they told her she couldn't.

Lázaro
Before Maggie can finish her thought the phone tucked into her shirt goes off. The young man sat backwards in the chair lifts his eyebrows and looks over at her as she presses a hand to her breast and asks for permission to leave.

"Yes," he says. Like he's used to people not acting if he tells them they can't. "Go."

Verna
Maggie's breasts sing Mariah Carey songs. Well, that is a talent, is it not? Verna is about to wave Maggie along when Lázaro orders it. That gets the slightest tick of an eyebrow raise.

"Oh, I'll see you around, Maggie. I'm sure," she says and waves.

She turns to Lázaro, and perhaps the glow of Science has yet to work its way off of her face. Soon she'll be back to timid, but for now? "What about you? What brings you to the university?"

Magdalena
"Thank you, good night! It was nice seeing you both!"

Reaching for her cell phone was a practiced, fluid sort of motion that only came from a great deal of practice. She moved with the speed of Clark Kent to a phone booth, and sure enough the phone was to her ear and what came out of her mouth next was  stream of words in mildly aggravated Polish to whomever happened to be on the receiving end of that phone call.

Exit, one blonde- stage left.

Lázaro
"I..."

The pronoun draws itself out as he puts together the answer before releasing it. Thinks to think before he opens his mouth only after he already has and if Verna hadn't thought he was the same kind of shy as she was before she may not think he is now either. He doesn't look like someone who hasn't had much attention from others before. Not a handsome thing like him. He's used to attention and he may even thrive off of the attention and yet he is humming with unspent energy.

Not nerves then.

His eyes move around the library aisle as he lets the vowel live out the full course of its life and they find her again he frowns and laughs a quiet laugh at the same time.

"... haven't heard it worded like that before. What brings anyone here?"

Verna
He... intended to say something else. Probably. Verna's mouth twitches into a smirk.

"Usually? The only thing that brings people here at this time of night is because they are those poor students who lack the time to sleep. It was my roundabout way of asking you what you study. Or perhaps you are just here for the quiet? Or to appreciate the architecture... in the middle of the night, okay, that sounds ridiculous."

Because obviously, people do not go to the library to do much else but to find books and quiet.

Lázaro
There's something intimate about the way he's sitting. Chairs are meant to support the sitter's back and his is exposed to the rest of the building. No one is in here right now and Verna could see if anyone was approaching. Most of the students here don't live their lives as if danger is always just out of sight.

He's in the borderland between young adulthood and maturity that most students hover in. Boyish though he looks as if he's lived quite a bit of life already. Something in his eyes that's almost wise even if he isn't the most intelligent person with whom she's ever spoken. As she explains what she meant L zaro rests his chin on his forearm. They're still wrapped around the chair's back.

"Can you keep a secret?" A beat. A grimace. Theatrics. "I don't actually go to school here. Yet. It's..." He holds his hands up in a shrug even though his shoulders stay still and his chin doesn't leave his arm. They flop back down over his elbows again and then he starts to straighten up like he's preparing to leave. "I don't wanna bore you. It's a long story. I should let you get back to work."

Verna
There's something starched about the way Verna's sitting -- like certain rules about good posture haven't actually gone out of style. She holds herself apart from intimacy, even though her words aren't intended to drive anyone away. On the contrary. Now that there's another person here, it feels safer. She isn't alone in the library at night anymore.

That should scare her more than it does. But she's decided that Lázaro is not some minion of horrid enemies. If he were, he would seem fouler, wouldn't he?

"Oh, I'm not likely to sleep tonight. If I try, I'd likely just lie there with my eyes open thinking about class tomorrow. I don't mind listening, if you don't mind telling."

Lázaro
Something in her tone stops him before her words do. At least that's what it looks like. She has no notion of what he sees or what he knew about her before she had even opened her mouth. That he can see her sadness clung around her like smoke.

Verna does not look like she smokes. Women from the era she reminds him of smoked. It wasn't considered unladylike or rude to smoke in mixed company back when ladylike behavior and manners were cornerstones of society's order.

She has no idea who or what she just invited to drink up her time.

"Sleep's the best thing for nerves, though," he says. "You don't want to teach your first class feeling like you were out partying all night if you didn't even go out, do you?"

Verna
He's right. She should be trying to sleep. That distracted look comes over her again, her eyes wandering off to look into memories. The real thing she'd be thinking about all night is that Dr. Andrássy is no longer around to help her prepare for her first day of teaching. And if she thinks that cold hands and the color blue reminds her of him, how will it be going through her physics classes?

She turns and looks at her laptop, its screen gone black from its own version of sleep. "I suppose not."

"Perhaps some other time, you can tell me your long story? If we keep running into each other, there's bound to be some other time."

Again, she jokes about their shared habits, but she's also slowly pulling the laptop closed. He's going to be leaving. Maggie's already left. It's too late. She should be asleep. There are so many reasons not to be here anymore.

Lázaro
It can be a disconcerting thing to have a person you've just met look at you as if they understand you. To see compassion in the eyes of a complete stranger. Verna has said so little about herself that he could just see her as a blankness onto which he can paint his own version of a personality. Yet he's seen something in the few minutes they've been in each other's company. He'd seen something before they even spoke to each other.

At the joke he smiles. Teeth sheathed and the humor of it barely meeting his eyes. Maybe he's sad too. Missing someone too. Hard to tell sometimes. It isn't as if strangers introduce themselves by telling each other their stories.

"Let me walk you to your car," he says, "and maybe I can get through the prologue."

Verna
[Perception + Subterfuge = Why offer to walk me to my car, strange dude I've just met?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Lázaro
[manip + subt: maybe she'll win this one]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )

Verna
Verna pauses during the collection of her things when he asks to walk her to her car. She just met the man, after all. He's nothing to her, and she nothing to him.

She looks over to him, appraising him for whatever it is that he wants out of her for such a kindness. There is an internal war between politeness and caution that plagues so many, and Verna has much experience with such battles. We're having one now.

In the end, politeness wins out. He gets a smile, as she hefts her laptop bag over her shoulder. "Why not? It's late, I shouldn't be out by myself. Let's go."

Lázaro
They're nothing to each other and yet young people finding other young people to whom they can speak and in whose presence they enjoy being have the tendency to try and prolong the time spent together and maybe he just doesn't realize the implication this could have or the alarm this could set off in a young woman like Verna. No way for him to. He's a man. Even short as he is he does not have to worry about other people abducting him from a parking lot just because he's weak and has something they want. Becoming a statistic.

Caution is a necessary thing. Fear even more so. It has kept the species alive since all its members had to stave off the darkness was flint and tinder. And Verna does not fear this man because she does not know what he wants from her.

He doesn't want to abduct her. He doesn't want to rape her. He doesn't want to kill her. With those ruled out it stands to reason he's lonely too. He's sad too. He just wants company and maybe to be able to leave here tonight knowing Verna made it safe to her vehicle.

It should shock no one that Verna opts for politeness. It does not shock Lázaro.

So they go.

---

It isn't until they're outside he having held the door for her that he begins to speak. And it isn't a prologue. At least it doesn't sound like a prologue.

"When you were growing up," he asks, "did you know you wanted to be a scientist, or did that come to you later? It's a passion for you, yeah?"

Verna
This is the third time he's deflected telling her anything about himself. She notices how that story of his refuses to be told. Instead, he asks for hers. It's always a bit flattering, isn't it? Having someone try to know who you are?

"My father is a science teacher, so of course I wanted nothing to do with it growing up. I didn't want to be like my dad, eww," she says, with a little laugh. "But there is something about growing up with someone who is a good teacher, you know? You learn in spite of yourself. He didn't try to push it on me or anything, just... I'd get bored and find myself reading his textbooks. One day, I stopped saying I wanted to be a princess when I grew up, and decided I wanted to be an astronaut instead."

She walks through the opened door, looks up at the stars. Astronaut never happened, but neither did a lot of other dreams. Doors close, others open.

Lázaro
The library door sighs as it closes. Lázaro keeps his hands in his pockets as he walks beside her.

"Kids and their dreams..." he says. Lets himself trail off. That's telling. A tinge of sadness to the thought and yet he catches himself. He's too young to sound so sad. It fades quickly. "I can't remember what I wanted to be when I grew up. My parents, you know. 'This is America, you can be whatever you want, go be a doctor.' I didn't want to be a doctor."

It's going to take them a few minutes to get to the student parking lot from the library. It's a nice night to walk.

"I'm a dancer, now. An instructor, actually. Lately I've been thinking I should come back to school, I thought if I got into the library and soaked it in, a bit, I'd have some... epiphany, figure out what I really wanted."

Verna
"A dance instructor? Well, that's light years beyond me. I couldn't dance if my life depended on it," Verna says. "Do you not like dancing?"

As she walks, she keeps an eye out, looking around in the darkness for... whoever. She's a wary thing. Perhaps not wary enough, considering.

"What do you really enjoy, if not dancing?"