[pirate witch]: 524.Novels.NaNoWriMo 2007 chapter 7

The apartment was a little less impressive than Livia had imagined. To her credit, she hadn’t been expecting a warehouse of drugs and druggies with chained up dogs and smelly sweatshirts, but she had expected it to look more...imposing. This building was not too overly imposing, in fact it almost looked inviting. A window was open on the top floor, and lace curtains fluttered out with a strange melody that seemed to come from a gramophone or something equally antique. 

The door opened and an elderly woman walked out, humming to herself along with the faint music. The song reminded Livia of something from her childhood, something from a movie that she used to watch, hiding behind the couch from where her parents looked at the television set. She had later learned that they knew that she watched that movie, but at the time it had seemed so exciting, breaking the rules. Now Livia would be breaking more rules that were enforced by her father, but these ones would get her more than a shake of the head. She stopped outside the building and took the sight in. 

The sweating, the panic, the nausea
and the splitting headache slammed into her like a block of solid ice, forcing her to her knees. Her cheekbone slammed against the concrete and some blood splattered onto the white stone ground. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, a smear of blood slashing across her arm. 

By the time she had regained her composure, Livia was getting very nervous about the whole talking to notorious drug dealer thing that she was about to do. Not wanting to seem like a tourist or someone untrustworthy, she pulled the slip of paper out of her pocket. It would have to go, she decided, so she threw the receipt into the trash bin that was next to the door. The smudge on her hand would have to do as a navigation tool for now, since she needed to be impressive.

“Impressive,” Livia whispered to herself, “Be impressive. You are a hardened drug addict. You want these drugs. Don’t drop the act,” She rolled her shoulders back and was about to go through the door when someone walked straight into her.

Livia noticed that she had been seeing the close up view of floors far to many times today as she hit the cement for the second time in a few minutes. The person in front of her managed to stay upright, but he did seem a wee bit surprised. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said to her, “are you alright?”

She wasn’t quite alright, but she replied, “Yes I’m alright. You should watch where you’re going, though, I could have been an old woman or something!” Livia stood up on her own, not wanting help. Her dignity wasn’t so defeated that she needed help getting up.

The guy who had knocked into her was quite ruggedly handsome, and in normal situations Livia would have found herself quite attracted to him. In this instance she was suspicious, however, since handsome guys often interrupted missions.

“Lucky for me you weren’t then, eh?” The man asked. 

Livia noticed a faint accent when he spoke, it sounded British or Scottish, or something like that. She couldn’t be sure. Getting a closer look at him, she saw that he couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than her. She realized that she must have looked like a fright with blood on her mouth and arm. 

The boy was giving her the look that an appraiser at dog shows gives to pride poodles, and Livia blushed slightly. She was used to getting that look from audition judges but never from people on the street. “Do you need help finding someone?” he asked, the friendly smile still stretched across his face, “I haven’t seen you here before.”

After a cautious pause, she decided to trust him based on the simple fact that he was the first friendly person she had come across all day. “Actually, yes. I’m looking for a...” Livia checked her hand. She did her best to make out the words and hoped that the guy would recognize the name. Why did she listen to her pride and throw away that blasted slip of paper? “David Mountcastle, I was told he lives here.” 

Not seeing any immediate recognition on his face, she began to get a bit nervous. “Unless I got the address wrong and this isn’t 43 Willow street,” she looked up from the ink stain on her palm. “Is it? Do you know him?” she asked, praying for a good reaction.

He didn’t look amused, or as though he believed whatever act he thought she was trying to pull. Livia’s once hopeful face fell. If she wasn’t at the right place right now, she would just go back to the hotel room and give up. It had been a horribly trying day. His eyes ran over her neck, and she shivered. What was he looking for? She wondered to herself. 

A look of comprehension dawned on his face and Livia released the breath that she had been holding. There was something else mixed in comprehension, something that looked like pity or kindness. “Yeah, he does live here,” he said, “and yes, this is 43 Willow, but I was just up to visit him and he seems to be out.” He shook his head, which made his hair fall over his face. Livia’s blush deepened, and she hoped that he would just think that she was suffering from withdrawal. Blushing wasn’t something that she normally did. “The bastard told me he’d be here today, but no. Anyway, perhaps you should come back later.”

Livia couldn’t come back later, not now, not since she had finally found someone who knew someone who could help her, someone who knew about that blasted powder. The moment she could make coherent sentences in her mind, she spoke. “You know him?” she asked, “Personally? How much do you know about him? Please, I need information.” It sounded dreadfully unrehearsed, the firing of questions, the begged request for information, but Livia was becoming increasingly desperate.

For some reason, a barely perceptible and amused smirk flickered across his face, but it was gone with an instant, and his voice was casual. “Yeah, we’ve been buddies since way back. I guess I know more about him than anyone.”

Livia waited for him to say more. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was expecting him to say, but that wasn’t enough. 

“If you give me your name I can tell him you came...” he started to say, but Livia cut him off. 

“Oh, I’m Livia!” she exclaimed, wondering the moment the words left her lips why she had told him her name. It wasn’t a good idea at all. “But don’t bother telling him. I’ll corner him eventually.” She would do that, if it was the last thing she ever did. Now that she knew the address and the name of this mysterious Mr. Mountcastle, nothing was going to stand in her way.

“Okay. Well, I gotta go. Bye, Livia!” he said quite cheerily, tipping his hat to her as though he were a jaunty gentleman passing a lady. It made her giggle to herself, this man certainly was a character. Just as Livia was about to ask him his name, he spoke again. “I’m David McKirney, by the way,” He fixed an exaggerated judgmental look upon her. “And yes, I know that David and I have the same name. No need to comment on it,”

Livia wasn’t going to comment on it, partially because she hadn’t noticed, and partially because it wasn’t an uncommon thing to be named David. He seemed to find this terrifically funny, though, and she smiled at his expression. 

As David McKirney began to leave, an idea found Livia and inhabited her mind within an instant. She liked this idea, it was a good one, and she patted it on its head while it purred inside her brain. Her arm shot out, grabbing him by the elbow the way the man in the bookstore had grabbed her.

“I’m coming with you,” she declared, feeling quite proud of herself for concocting such a wonderful and detective-worthy idea in such a short time. “If you’re friends with him, you’ll lead me to him eventually, and I can’t afford to spend any more extra time hunting.” It was true, she had spent far too much time searching the streets for this man, and she wasn’t going to waste any more time if she didn’t have to.

He looked either confused or annoyed when he smiled this way, and Livia had to resist taking a bow in the middle of the street. She was immensely pleased with this idea. “Don’t you think you should check and make sure that’s ok with me first?” he asked. 

Livia didn’t think so at all. “Well, I could,” she said, “But it wouldn’t make any difference what you said, I’d follow you anyway. So I thought I’d just skip that step and save time.” 

He blinked several times, and Livia watched and waited for his reaction. As she had said, it wouldn’t really matter what it would be. No matter what, she would be sticking to him like velcro super glued to a chinchilla. “Okay, follow me for as long as you want,” he said, “But I’m not gonna wait if you can’t catch up. And you might not like some of the places that I’m going,”

Livia was a little concerned about where he could be going, wondering briefly if he was part of a gang or a religious cult, but her need to find out about gold dust surpassed her desire for personal safety. 

They walked down the street to a café and she stayed behind him as he ordered some food and a coffee. Livia didn’t order anything, she just walked to his table with him. He didn’t look at her at all the entire time that he ate. The table that he sat at was small, and he had spread his lunch out in order to fill up all of the space, so she sat down at the table across from him and fixed her brown eyes on his face. This was her attempt to unnerve him into telling her everything, but he seemed to happily ignore her and ate his food with vigor.

By the time he left the café his walk had become much more like a swagger, and the Scottish accent was becoming more and more pronounced. Livia guessed that it was at least partially fake, since she could almost measure in increments how thick it was becoming. She would have believed that he was part Scottish, but now he was starting to sound like a tourist from the country, which wasn’t believable at all. She smiled to herself, enjoying the show.

They ended up at the park, and Livia wished that she had worn a hat and gloves. The sound of rusty chains made her turn around to see a group of teenagers in very odd clothing swinging on the swings that were far too small for them. One of them had fairy wings on her back and was wearing green makeup and sparkles. The other two were dressed in completely black with handkerchiefs tied over their noses and mouths and hoods pulled low over their faces. It was an odd sight, to be sure, but there were other strange people around. 

There was one young woman looking at David slightly strangely, and Livia watched her. She was quite pretty, but stood out in the playground in a gold sequined halter top. Livia looked to David, wondering what his reaction would be, but she couldn’t see his face. He was staring at the girl, that much was obvious, and within a few seconds he strode to her side and got down on one knee. 

It was all very dramatic, what with the kneeling down on one knee, the proclamations of undying love, the romantic and poetic flourish with which he spoke to her. The girl looked slightly startled but more than slightly entranced with the man by her feet swearing to the moon that she was the most beautiful thing to ever grace the earth with her presence.

My the time he had grabbed her hand, Livia had to turn her head. It was too much, and although she didn’t really have a problem with intruding on such a person’s personal life, she didn’t really want to see any of the spectacle that was being enacted by the monkey bars. Her attention wandered to the teenagers on the swings. The girl was swinging higher and higher, forcing children and parents to move far around her if they wanted to get by unscathed.

Livia’s mind wandered, lulled into thought by the pendulum of the swing that swung in and out of her vision. What was she doing following a stranger around, hoping for information on a drug that had quite suddenly taken over her life? Moreover, why was she getting more than a little annoyed by the intense romance that this David and whomever the girl in the gold was? It was quite a predicament, but as she was scoffing out loud at the display of chivalry and charm that David was putting to use, the girl leapt off of the swing with a great flourish of limbs and shouts that mingled with the chilly air.

“Oh crap!” One of the ninja boys shouted and ran to the spot where the faery girl had fallen on the newly spread mulch in a dreadful accident of misjudged distance. She staggered up before he could help her, though, and adjusted her wings, which were quite lopsided. 

“What were you thinking?” The other boy asked her, pulling one of her shoes out of a nearby shrubbery. “You can’t really fly, you know!”

“That’s what you think,” the girl replied, and shoved the shoe onto her foot. “We can debate about physics later, though. For now, to the chairs!”

Livia couldn’t help laughing, but her eyes fell upon David, who was now walking away from the girl with a self-satisfied smirk on his otherwise nondescript face. By the time she found the teenagers again they were walking up the hill that led to the street with the appearance of purpose.

Livia wished that David McKirney had put up more of a fight when she had started following him. His uninterested ease with her presence put her off a bit, and made her unsure if she was doing the right thing. Someone who would lead her to notorious drugs or sneaky people should have disagreed quite intently with the prospect of being tailed by a girl he didn’t know.

They walked along the street, Livia watching David closely. There were a lot of cop cars out, which wasn’t unusual, but she had to admire the extreme and creative measures that he went to in order to avoid recognition. She had been trying to avoid detection as well, but just because she didn’t want to see anyone that she knew and have to make up a good excuse on the spot. Excuses had not been coming easily to Livia lately.

It was highly unlikely that David needed to sneeze so much in reality, or that he was at all interested in a display of woman’s shoe horns in a store that he passed. It worked though, and as many times as Livia wasn’t recognized, neither was David as far as she could tell. They walked through streets that Livia didn’t recognize in the night until they became streets that she was sure she had never been on before.

A folded slip of paper blew into Livia’s hood and she took it out. The folds were crisp and new, and she opened up the letter.  In cramped handwriting was written the letter;

My dear Morgan,
How are things where you are? I know it hasn’t been long since we saw each other, but I really miss you. I miss how things don’t seem to matter to you, I miss how all these problems can just brush off of your shoulders. I need to be like you right now, but I guess that’s both obvious and impossible. Things haven’t been so hot around here. I mean, yes, it’s cold, but lots of problems have been stirring up, and lately some of them have had to do with me. These problems don’t actually matter, of course, they’re just stupid issues with my friends, but I am ill-equipped to handle whatever is coming my way. The drama never has to do with me, Morgan, it always has to do with me and we stand to the side and laugh at it. All this has made me think that I’m above it, and now I’m just doing stupid stupid stupid things that are messing up the shaky life that has constructed itself around me. I want to be you so badly right now, I want to dance around and not have worries. You fix me somehow. When are you coming back? Please come back soon. How about tomorrow, or next week? How about right now? I know that you always were the crazy one, the one to watch out for, but now that I’m going crazy I understand why you and Isil keep your distance. It’s something that I should have picked up on before hand.
Please come back.
Sarah.


The letter made Livia sad, and she dropped it the moment the final word had been read. The wind carried it away. She wondered if that letter would ever find this Morgan person, or if it had not been sent at all. It could have been delivered to Morgan already, and she could have thrown it out the window in disgust. Or maybe Sarah had decided against sending the letter and just let it drift along the street like a vagrant dog. By the time it was swept up by the tires of a passing eighteen wheeler, Livia had forgotten about the message of the words and only one sentence remained in her memory, “I need to be like you right now, but that’s both obvious and impossible,” She wasn’t sure what this had meant, but it reminded her of her need to be her father, to be a police man, and to find out what was going on.

As the sun was just barely visible over the horizon and huge shadows were cast across the cloudy sky, Wren abruptly turned around to face her. “I think I should probably warn you, today I will be going to the red light district,” he said. Livia nodded and he continued, “It’s not necessarily the safest place for a girl as pretty as you to be. I will be going to several lowlife bars and a strip club. Also a karaoke place.” 

Livia stifled a snort. She had a hard time imagining that this David fellow was too good at karaoke, but when he raised his eyebrows she shut up and allowed him to continue.

“If you get harassed, I will not protect you,” Livia wasn’t surprised, she was stalking him after all, and he probably wanted her far away from him. “If you get dragged off I will. However, up to the point where you are physically assaulted, I’m not going to help, so come at your own risk. That said, may I take you to dinner?”

Livia was much more surprised by the invitation to eat than the news that she would have to be going to a disreputable part of town. She allowed what he had really said to process in her brain, and once she was actually sure that he was asking her out to dinner instead of threatening her, she accepted his offer.

The Italian restaurant that Wren led Livia to was one that she had never heard of before. There weren’t many places like that in the city, the DiMarias prided themselves on knowing pretty much all of the Italians around. The atmosphere of the eatery was comforting with the music that came from the small boom box on the counter. There were only a few tables and the kitchen was easily viewable from the white swinging door next to the refrigerator with drinks inside. Livia relaxed almost immediately as she sank into the folding chair that Wren pulled out for her to sit in.

“Don’t complain that I didn’t act like a gentleman,” he said to her with a wink as he sat down across from her and put his napkin on his lap with a flourish. Livia followed suit.

“And why would I ever do that?” she asked, looking at the menu.

“You never know,” David said, “Some people find my irresistible good looks and charms quite unnerving and even a little overpowering.” He leaned over and scrutinized Livia’s face, “Am I being overbearing?” He asked.

Livia giggled a little bit and put her menu down. “I haven’t passed judgement yet,” she replied with a little smirk that made her chapped lips bleed. “We’ll have to see, won’t we?”

“We will indeed,” he replied and picked up his own menu. “Order whatever you like, pretty girl, for I will be picking up the tab.”

Livia slapped her hand onto the table. “No, you aren’t,” she said, “I am paying for my own food.”

“No, you aren’t,” David said, putting his menu down and staring right back at her. Livia guessed that he had spent a lot of his childhood participating in staring contests that lasted for hours. 

“Yes, I am. I’m the Italian here, I’m the one who is stalking you, and I’m the one who could probably be believed by the officers of the law. Therefore, I am paying for my own meal, and you are paying for yours.”

After a few more minutes of icy stares he sat back up in his chair and returned his gaze to the list of food that he could order for himself. This minor victory brightened up Livia’s spirits and she decided to get mushroom ravioli for dinner, something that she had only started to love when she was a teenager. As a child she hadn’t cared for mushrooms one bit, but on her fourteenth birthday her father had forced a bite on her and she had loved it. 

When the waiter asked for their drink orders, she ordered a coke on principle. Her dance choreographer always scolded her for drinking so much soda, but she could never give it up. When it came, without ice as had been specified, she gulped half of it down at once. The bubbles made her wrinkle her nose and she exhaled loudly.

“What?” Livia asked David. He was staring at her over his can of Pepsi and had choked slightly.

“The way you drank that,” he said. His voice shook slightly and he coughed. “You drink soda the way my friend does,”

“Fantastic,” Livia said and drank the rest of it.