Matthew Murphy
Matt left the scene as soon as he realized Goldie did not intend to retreat.
Several
hours have passed since the encounter in the alleyway that he only
witnessed as one who was present when the vanquisher emerged with a
strange breed of gray matter on her arms and chest and neck. It was not
blood. The color and consistency of it made the young man frown but
since she was not hurt and she was talking of cleansing and disposal as
if it were a matter of course he conceded that it was not his matter to
mind.
Their house is a single-story two-bedroom house on West 33rd
Avenue. It is a twenty-minute bus ride from the corridor where two
different bars employ Matthew based on their staffing needs. He has an
offer from a higher-end establishment further north. Someone gave him a
business card some Friday night when he was covering for a coworker
whose wife went into labor and he hasn't called and set up an interview
yet.
When she arrives home from recruiting and escorting a
spirit-talker Goldie can hear the sounds of a violent video game on the
other side of the door. Cannot smell pot but then she never smells pot
when she first comes home because Matt doesn't smoke pot in the house.
That would nullify their right to the return of the security deposit. He
does smoke pot outside in the backyard though. She's seen him out there
some nights just sitting in a lawn chair looking up at the sky or
reading a book or entertaining some human woman who was probably on two
different types of birth control before the condom.
He's consumed
three bottles of beer since she last saw him if the empties on the
coffee table are any indication. The corner of the living room where the
breakfast bar demarcates the kitchen is no longer empty. In nothing's
place stands a small hardwood table with two stools flanking it. Two low
shelves that could be used to house alcohol or mixer bottles empty for
the new owner's not having properly christened it yet.
Not until the front door opens and Goldie steps through it does her kinsman pause the game and look over at her.
Goldie Lennox
Goldie
had parted ways with Matthew as soon as she'd finished speaking with
him at the mouth of the alley. She'd left the remains of that formor
shoved up against the wall, propped in a corner created between it and a
full set of trash cans. Police could find it and make assumptions
later. She didn't show it, but she was nervous to the core of becoming
infected. Having something grow under your skin and travel beneath it
was a sensation she very much wanted to avoid (a movie had given her a
terrible fear of the concept when she was a younger sort of teenager).
At
the Sept she'd introduced herself brightly and pleasantly and found her
way up to where Garou roamed the halls instead. A few 'Excuse me's and
'Could you direct me to's later, and Goldie had found a Theurge woman
to listen to her tale and help her cleanse the terrible stuff from her
skin and clothes.
When she came back through the front door,
Goldie was wearing her hair up in a knot on top of her head-- it had
been thoroughly washed along with the rest of her in the cleansing
process. Rather than the cropped top and shorts she'd been wearing
earlier, she now dressed in a pair of athletic shorts that she'd rolled
down at the hips, along with a yellow T-shirt that promoted some local
Italian restaurant in black text. She was barefooted-- from the sound
of an engine starting up someone had been good enough to give her a ride
home. Hadn't she earned it, after all?
When she stepped in,
Goldie paused in the entryway to look over at Matthew as well; the fact
that the game he was playing having been paused didn't escape her. The
make-up she'd worn was all washed away, and her clothes were probably
what she was carrying in that plastic Target bag tied closed. After a
moment of looking at him (she looked tired there, but that could just be
because she wasn't wearing make-up and she usually did), Goldie smiled
and turned to make her way into the kitchen.
A low whistle emitted from the space when she spied the table and chairs.
"Good pick! I wanna paint them turquoise."
Matthew Murphy
If
Matt were troubled by what happened this afternoon he would not be sat
on the couch killing zombies with a controller. He would have changed
into shorts and a wife beater and running shoes and if she saw him again
tonight it would be when he came through the backdoor sweat-drenched
and shower-bound.
He is not troubled or if he is troubled he does not feel the trouble.
That
he pauses the game may mean nothing. She smiles and as she enters the
house Matt sets the controller aside on the sofa and prepares himself to
stand up though he does not stand up yet.
Plenty of girls look
vibrant and youthful with makeup and tired and ten years older without.
Matt has seen Goldie without makeup before though. He can remember what
she looked like when she and his sister could barely hold up their
heads. When they both stood no higher than Ma's hip and needed a mother.
When Goldie's mother was dead and Ma could not hoist herself out of bed
and Robert and Rachel and Matt together could barely do with their best
efforts and a few hairs of the dog what she did just by brushing her
teeth and pulling on a pair of jeans.
He knows what she looks like
without makeup same as he knows what she looks like blackout drunk and
high off her ass. This is a different kind of tired and this is the only
tenderness she knows from him. That brief silent inquiry into her
mental health before they start busting each others' balls.
She wants to paint the table and chairs turquoise.
"Ugh," he says. Picks up the controller and unpauses the game. "What's wrong with not painting them turquoise?"
Goldie Lennox
The
fact that Goldie could ever pull any kind of wool over Matthew's eyes
had little to do with how much he knew her. He'd been a fixture in her
world since consciousness began-- one of many older siblings to her very
best of friends, a member of a household that she spent a lot of time
in during her more recent and person-shaping years.
She might
still be able to sleuth around and rig his room to dangle a diploma over
his head, but he could tell the kind of tired that Goldie carried was
the stort that rode a body after the adrenaline fades and reality has
time to settle along with the dust. You could shave hours off your
previous night's sleep with the kind of exhaustion that pondering the
impending end of your walk through mortality brought.
But she was
good at smiling and pressing on, and Matt was comfortable with the fact
that they could go back to co-existing without having to have some
Serious Talk or something like that.
"The fact that not painting
them turquoise is boring as fuck. And I really like the color." She
opened the fridge and jangled around inside for a minute, then pulled
together supplies to make herself a sandwich. A beer was cracked open
to get started on while she put her fixings together and spoke from the
kitchen counter.
"Or we could do coral. Or bright yellow."
A pause, and then.
"The homeless around here are pretty fucked up. I mean, I knew there was a homeless problem, but not, like, a homeless problem."
Matthew Murphy
"You never wondered why we didn't have any homeless people back home?"
It
sounds like a typical Matt retort but the man speaks in a bored tone so
often that it's hard to tell if he's just heavily settled in the
territory populated by older siblings and disaffected twenty-somethings
or if he's heavily self-medicated or if this is a lingering aftereffect
of the episode that had him coming home from New York in the first
place.
As a teenager Matt was rebellious in the same way all
Fianna boys are rebellious. Started drinking and smoking cigarettes as
soon as he realized booze and cigarettes existed and became the
designated driver for his brother and his brother's friends and his own
friends as soon as he got his fucking license and he got his fucking
license early compared to his classmates because he was smarter and
sharper than his classmates.
Rebellion doesn't get a man through
law school though. Something in him tried to serve the Nation and then
changed its mind and flipped the Nation the bird.
Whether or not
she wondered isn't the question. Matt blows out a breath and pauses the
game again. Takes a quaff off his beer and turns towards her.
"You alright?"
Goldie Lennox
"Eh?"
The question about her status-- are you alright?--
was met with a look that was forcibly confused. She pulled her upper
lip up and scrunched her eyes when she looked at him. Even went so far
as cocking her head to the side a little. Then, with a shrug, she
gestured lazily through the air with a butter knife she was previously
using to spread mayonnaise on her bread.
"Oh sure. I mean, the
smell kind of lingers and I'm really hoping I don't get it in my
sheets. And it was really fucking gross to have it gushed all over me
in the first place." And that Sept tower was very large and glass
and it's a little intimidating because it feels so serious up there and I
have no honest idea what the fuck I'm even doing.
Once her
sandwich was slapped together she started cleaning up after herself.
"But that aside, yeah man. I tickled his chin and the bastard tried to
bite me, but that Big Brown Beaver couldn't even do that right.
"Hey, ya wanna come out back with me?"
'Out back' had become synonymous with 'go smoke something'.
Matthew Murphy
She
receives the same amount of attention after the question launches into
the air as Margaret would receive. Say that much about Matt. Even if
Goldie is not his blood-sister he would do as much for her as he would
do for his blood-sister. Could have as much to do with how he was raised
as it has to do with his natural disposition. Could have to do with how
much Goldie resembles his sister in terms of build and coloration.
But
if Meghan told him he was fine and followed up with a joke he would
assume she was telling the truth. So he doesn't press the issue.
It
takes her a minute to fix the sandwich. Matt keeps the refrigerator
stocked even if he himself doesn't fix much. She knows his habits. A
beer when he wakes up and an omelet when he gets back from his run or
another beer if he hasn't gone for a run and then whatever he eats at
work. Pizza or noodles or some other sort of takeout food when he gets
home at night. Drunk or stoned by the time he goes to bed. Yet he buys
staples and condiments and treats when he does go shopping. He's used to
buying groceries for someone other than himself.
He pulls a face
to match the grossness of having something smelly and gray splashed over
a person. Short-lived empathy. Goldie isn't any more open about her
feelings than any other full-blooded Irishwoman is.
Hey, ya wanna come out back with me?
"Yeah, alright," Matt says. "Gimme a minute."
He
has to shut off the console and go get his weed out of his room. That
gives her time to eat her sandwich or decide to save the sandwich for
later and just drink her beer. When Matt joins her outside he's pulled
on a ski cap and a Carhartt even though it isn't supposed to drop down
into the fifties until the sun goes down.
They don't get a lot of sun in their yard.
As
he comes through the door and shuts it behind him Goldie can see he has
two fresh beers in one hand and his pipe in the other. He takes a seat
in the unoccupied lawn chair and starts to pack a bowl. He doesn't
repeat his earlier question. The topic they discuss will be Goldie's
choice.
Goldie Lennox
Outside Goldie made sure
they had something to serve as a patio table between the couple of lawn
chairs that were becoming a stationary set of furniture in the
backyard. She left her sandwich and plate both on that table, along
with the beer she was still working on. Matt was going to go get his
pipe, so she'd sit outside and wait.
By the time the back door
swings open, Matthew would find Goldie settled in, still in the same
clothes she'd come home in but with a black zip-up hoodie pulled on over
for the same of warmth.
She was chipping away at old nail polish
on her fingers, and glanced up when he joined. For a minute there is
silence, but they'd been spending enough time in one another's company
to be past the discomfort that conversationless company could sometimes
bring. Matthew packed the bowl and left the ball in Goldie's court, so
she batted at it aimlessly as a lazy cat would yarn.
"So I'm
thinking that I'll start a service instead of a pack. I'll be like the
Sept's hit man. When they need the job done more quietly than what a
Full Moon nutjob will do in the middle of a plaza. If I do it for
Glasswalkers they may even make me some kind of salary so I can stop
slinging lattes." She complained about working even though she'd only
been at it for a couple of weeks.
Matthew Murphy
His
hands make quick work of packing a bowl from the contents of a plastic
baggie. He can find seeds and stems even in the dark and he flicks them
into the grass. Though he isn't looking at her Matt looks over at Goldie
about as often as he flicks aside cannabis trimmings.
"What, you mean learning the fine art of foaming milk isn't giving you a sense of purpose?"
This
deadpan as much as anything else ever is. In the darkness she can read
the thinness of his fingers. They are calloused as are the pads of his
hands because he does practice with his handgun on the range as often as
he can but more because he spends thirty to forty hours a week mixing
drinks and washing dishes in caustic water and breaking down boxes.
It isn't exactly manual labor but when most of his calories come from alcohol it doesn't leave his body much to work with.
"Did you get bit by a spider today? What's with the Glass Walker love all of a sudden?"
Matt
doesn't believe in the superstition clung to white lighters. The cheap
Bic he pulls out of his lighter is white and he hands it to Goldie along
with the packed bowl. She gets the first hit.
Goldie Lennox
"No real love for them in particular, necessarily. But their pocketbooks sure are nice. That lady was driving a Jaguar,"
she informed Matthew conspiratorially. While he was flicking seeds and
stems away into grass that Goldie liked to keep neat and cut ("because I
like to live in cute places," she explained when called out on actually
doing labor), Goldie undid the top-knot that contained her hair so that
mostly-dry tendrils of straw-brown could hang around her shoulders and
back again.
When he passed the pipe and lighter, Goldie put her
big brown eyes to use in giving the Kinsman the best doe-eyed expression
of gratitude that she could muster. "Matty Murphy, you sweetheart."
Flick-flick-drag.
When
she passed it back, she held the smoke in her lungs for a few moments
before letting it curl out from her lips along with her words at a slow
and controlled pace. "I found out when and where the Moots are, at
least. So I can get to the next one and put my ear to the ground better
on what's going on." She blew the rest of the smoke into a plume out
before her and turned her head to look at Matt and raise her eyebrows.
"There. That's my To-Do list. What about yours?"
Matthew Murphy
As he's taking back the pipe and lighter from Goldie she's asking what is on his to-do list.
He
doesn't mean to make it into a sight-based gag but that's what ends up
happening. Matt takes the pipe and the lighter from her and he has to
kill some time in order to bring the pipe to his lips and coerce the
thing into flicking a flame. To sweep it around the contents of the bowl
and fill his lungs with smoke and hold it there.
So what about his.
Matt
flicks his eyebrows slow and lets the gray-tinged breath out slow and
considers the bowl. Considers the course of this conversation. Takes
another hit off the bowl before handing the pipe and lighter back to
her.
In time he lets that breath out. That appears to be his answer since he hasn't given her any other words yet.
Goldie Lennox
"Oh
come onnnnnn," Goldie whined in response to his blowing smoke rather
than using words to answer her. She accepted the pipe and lighter back
and held it in her lap for a moment. Her bare feet were hooked onto the
edge of her seat, so her knees were pulled up into the air. She was
leaned quite far back into the chair as a result of this, fairly well
slouched down.
She could scramble up to pry and press the issue,
but not yet. A good New Moon made sure that their tactics were
well-paced as well. So she was still and kept those big doe eyes big
and watery as she went on.
"It's not fair that I have to put on big kid britches and start doing shit. You're supposed to be involved here too, you know."
Matthew Murphy
After
passing off the pipe his forearms hanging off the lawn chair's arms so
his hands are limp against his lap Matt does her the favor of looking
over at her. It means he can see the expression on her face meant to
match the whining of her tone. Her insolence amuses him but he doesn't
burst into laughter so much as blow it out like he would a breath of
smoke.
It's not fair.
He's got three beers in his system
already and two hits off a pipe but Matt isn't a lightweight. The Murphy
kids can hold their liquor. Some would say they can't function without
it. It's hard for even their mother to recall the last time Robert
showed up someplace without pounding down a beer first. Rachel spikes
most of her beverages with vodka and if she can't spike them then that's
why flasks exist.
Moral of the story is: Matt isn't sober but he's not shit-hammered either.
"I'm
sorry," he says as he pulls his pack of cigarettes out of his coat
pocket in preparation to light one, "I must've replaced my itinerary."
Goldie Lennox
"You
don't pay mind to such things anyways," she reminded him when he
commented about an itinerary. She squiggled her shoulders and pushed
with her heels so that she could sit more upright in the chair. Her
knees were folded down so that they were crossed indian-style in the
lawn chair, propped up against the chair arms. The plate and sandwich
were transported into her lap.
As she gathered the
bread-meat-condiment combo up to prepare to eat, she gave Matt another
eyeballing look, this one somewhat skeptical and very much curious.
"I suppose what I mean is-- aren't you bored?"
He knew full well that she mean in the bigger, more general, broader scope of life.
Matthew Murphy
Her
retort to his question about the itinerary elicits no response from
him. Four years of family and friends reminding him that he threw away a
bright and limitless future have a tendency to inure a man to criticism
whether it's pointed or blunt.
But isn't he bored.
Matt
sighs the most long-suffering of sighs and chooses not to hit the bowl
again. It doesn't pay to argue with Garou. They can recover easy from a
battering and on their moons are their insatiable and unpredictable even
if their family and friends and lovers know the crux of their moon's
pull on their personalities and this moon has just pulled away from
nothing blossoming into a scythe.
Of course she's needling him. That's what she does.
"What makes you think I'm bored?" he asks.
Goldie Lennox
Above
the dusk was settling into night, darkness had come but the warmth of
the day's passing hadn't been sucked from the air entirely. Goldie was
comfortable with her hoodie left unzipped and her legs left bare. She
and Matthew hadn't been there long, but she had settled into the house
and yard as her home turf pretty easily. The yard was maintained and
mowed, and she had hung some windchimes and lanterns up in the branches
of a tree out back as well. One of her favorite things was coming out
back, getting stoned, and just resting while listening to the
windchimes. She could always expect the peace to be short lived, so she
soaked it up when she could.
"The fact that I would be bored off
my fucking gourd, personally. And an unstimulated mind and soul is
precisely that-- unstimulated. Same thing as bored, right? I mean,
content is okay, but it's just a nicer version of bored."
She bit
into her sandwich and washed it down with her beer. Matthew had passed
on the second hit, but Goldie happily invited herself to another. She
had the pipe to her lips and lighter poised ready when she explained:
"We're too young and healthy and full of fuckin' fire to be bored,
Matty."
Flick-flick-drag.
Matthew Murphy
"So... let me make sure I'm following you."
Matt
never learned how to lie. This is speculated to be a contributing
factor to the depressive episode that had the kinsman refusing to get
out of bed to do much more than empty his bladder. When he would gain
consciousness during this period of darkness that threatened to claim
his life he would light a cigarette and sit in the gloom of his
light-choked apartment and think about nothing more than how pointless
life is and how much better it would be to have himself shut of the
whole thing.
Rachel never said what state he was in when she went
to get him from Bellevue. Only that she did have to go get him from
Bellevue. Bellevue is the oldest public hospital in the country. It
established the first ambulance service and the first maternity ward but
is most known for its psychiatric services.
Yet nobody talks
about the two weeks Matt spent in Bellevue. Nobody talks about what
brought Matt to Bellevue. He won't talk about it so that makes it
difficult for anyone else to.
"You're young," he says. "Some of us are almost thirty."
Gimme the pipe, Goldie.
Goldie Lennox
When
Goldie got stoned her eyes didn't go incredible shades of pink, but
they did glass over. That exaggerated how wide-eyed an expression she
constantly had to begin with, and now she was hunting for a crescent of
Luna up above in the sky with that glossed over gaze. Relaxed, content,
mind voided effectively enough that she could ponder the here-and-now
conversation rather than recall the stomach-wrench that came when she
thought some of that fungal goop had found its way between her teeth.
He
gestured for the pipe and she passed it over without argument. Her
arms were left to settle into her lap, hands folded together for the
time being.
Ultimately, his comeback was dismissed.
"And
thirty doesn't qualify as old either. The average American isn't really
getting their shit together until they're closer to thirty than not
these days anyways. Me?" She rolled her head to look back at him and
smiled that trademark sweetheart smile of hers-- how she pulled off a
mouth that big to be endearing was some sort of genetic trickery. "I'm
just a kid, in scope."
Matthew Murphy
"Nah, man, in scope you're practically eligible for Social Security benefits."
A
poor joke for someone who wasn't brought up in the public school system
or doesn't know what human beings have to do to get by in order to
survive. Who doesn't know anyone who has ever used food stamps or
Medicaid or spent half their afternoon at the unemployment office. Their
community was an insulated community and none of the Garou or Kinfolk
children in that community had to take the bus or sit in a crowded
schoolhouse in order to receive an education.
Matt's classmates
were Kinfolk and trueborn nowhere near their First Change. By the time
they reached the age of graduation though only two trueborn kids were
left in his cohort. They had had their First Change by the time those of
them who went off to college finished their first year.
It doesn't matter. Comparing oneself to one's peers only leads to heartache.
Hard to sound like a sage as one is hitting the pipe but Matt makes a valiant effort.
"Don't compare yourself to the average American, Lennox. You ain't either of those things."
Goldie Lennox
"Mmm."
All he gets is a humming sound from her at first, and it sounds
apprehensive and suspicious both. Her brow furrowed down some as she
studied his profile, and then Goldie took another swig of her beer and
returned her attention to her sandwich again.
When she spoke next
she'd finished the sandwich completely and was plucking crumbs off her
plate to nibble at. When washing this all down with the last from her
brown glass bottle, she finally agreed.
"Fine. So long as you don't either."
A
pause, and then she asked with a small, albeit abrupt burst of energy:
"Hey! Do you think they're doing a Samhain celebration around these
parts?"
Matthew Murphy
Matt has a fine profile.
His features are narrow and thin but when viewed from the side he seems
like a creature of great empathy and understanding. Almost Roman in his
bone structure like a reminder that the Celts as the world knows them
today first came to root from European plunderers and rapists. The
Fianna have deeper roots than those put down by the Scots and the Irish.
The greatest of them are more Saxon than they would care to admit.
This is irrelevant.
Goldie
watches his profile since she has lost hold of her sandwich and as she
watches he takes his third hit off of the pipe deeper than his previous
two. Doesn't hold it in quite as long.
It takes him a moment after he exhales to decide how to answer her.
"We're
having something down at the pub," he says. Speaking at the Pints Pub
where he works morning shifts. The bar where he tends to work doubles is
on the other side of the park and hosts a bouncer on weekends. It isn't
nearly quite as classy. "But... it's not, you know. Proper. I'm not
sure where you'd find something Old World."
Goldie Lennox
He
mentioned there was a celebration down at the pub, but Goldie wrinkled
up her nose at that and looked back up at the sky. If the pipe was
offered back her way she would decline-- content for now with what she
had imbibed thus far. Maybe a part of her wanted to stay alert enough
to keep something at bay were it to come barreling through their fence.
She was beginning to wonder, but who could blame her so soon after
walking upon a would-be ambush?
"I meant one with the Nation. Maybe out at the Caern-Sept that's in the sticks, I'd imagine?"
Goldie
adjusted how she was sitting so that her legs were no longer bunched up
on the chair, and instead stretched out so toes touched patio stones.
Her arms draped over the arm rests, and she leaned back in the chair as
comfortably as she could. Matt's caught her napping out here in
afternoon shade twice before already, she'd probably do it again if left
to her own devices.
"If there is one, with Garou and Kin, will
you come with me?" Unable to resist the opening, she turned her head to
bat eyelashes at him. "As my da-aaaate?"
Matthew Murphy
Of
course he looks over when she does. Catches the expression on her face
and can get the most out of the tone of her voice. When Matt scowls and
looks vaguely sick to his stomach Goldie can see it and read it and know
what it means.
"Dude," he says.
But he doesn't hit
the bowl right away. The roll of his eyes is enough of an indication of
how he feels about the notion of going as her date. Of course that's
what the Nation would expect and what plenty of folks back home expect
but between the age difference and her nearness to her sister during the
girls' formative years Matt entrenched in the Garou Nation as he is
cannot see Goldie as anything other than his sister.
Only after he has taken and released a hit off of the pipe does he give her an answer.
"If you can't find anyone else to go with you, yeah. I'll go."
Goldie Lennox
Oh
Goldie knew full well the conversations that went on when people hoped
they'd be safe from her prying ears. Some folks never quite learned
their lessons when it came to living with a Ragabash in your life.
She'd
heard some of the Garou back home make the joke to her dad-- some would
clap him on the shoulder and others would look at him gravely and
apologetically for whatever may come of such a union. She'd also heard
speculation that she was Matthew's punishment in precisely that sense--
that sending them out into unfamiliar territory together would
ultimately land them together in another sense. Then Matthew would be
doomed to this destructive thing as a Mate, and more than that his
breeding would be doomed to waste on this muddy-blooded mutt (in
comparison, at least).
Matthew saw her as a sister, though.
Goldie knew that full well, she was essentially an extension of Maggie
in his world. Not only did he have a baby sister whose age he could
draw upon as a comparison, but he watched Goldie grow up at the same
pace that the baby sister had as well.
Goldie? Well, she liked to
thread gossip along for the sake of her own entertainment, so she never
said a peep on the matter. Instead she made a gleeful "Yaay!" to his
agreement to step in as her last resort and stretched her arms wide up
toward the sky along with the exclamation. This turned to a full-blown
stretch, then she clapped her hands down on the tops of her bare thighs.
"Welp.
I'm about to go back inside and take a shower better than the one that
lady gave me-- I might still have some of that shit behind my ears."
She grabbed the edges of the lawn chair arms and made as though to pull
herself up, but paused as a thought occurred to her and looked sideways
and earnestly at Matt for confirmation. "I'm not going to, like, miss
out on any ladies of the night when I go to the bathroom, am I? Because
I'll be pretty pissed off if I do."
Matthew Murphy
The
problem with girls like Goldie is that girls like Goldie aren't girls
at all. They're New Moons. Girls like Goldie were born under a darkened
sky and when their bodies did as all those true bodies are destined to
do the elders of her tribe and her Nation put her through a gauntlet
meant to harden her resolve and mold her into the basest approximation
of her moon.
A Ragabash has the most freedom of any of the
auspices and yet she is judged the harshest. As if she has to atone for
her freedom by excelling at criterion the other auspices can only expect
to satisfy.
Few Kinfolk ever manage to excel in anything let
alone to an extent that warrants retelling by their trueborn brethren.
No one tells tales of Matthew Murphy's deeds and even if they did he
wouldn't give a shit. He lights the bowl again and blows it back out as
Goldie says she's going back inside.
Her question has him scowling.
"What,"
he asks as he packs down the contents of the bowl with the butt of his
lighter, eyes on his task and not her, "you jealous?"
Goldie Lennox
"Maybe,"
she said without even a trace of embarrassment. If anything, Goldie
sounded like she was taking a moment to be introspective. She even went
so far as to tap a fingernail against her slightly exaggerated front
teeth to make a show of it. When she came to her conclusion, she
shrugged one shoulder and stood up, then grinned down at Matthew where
he was still sitting.
"I mean, I can't very well ask to borrow
money to buy hookers, can I? Shoes, sure, but gigolos? Not exactly
something anyone will wire me money for."
The athletic shorts she was wearing were re-situated around her waist, and Goldie snatched up her beer bottle and plate both.
"But hey, maybe I can start a piggy bank?"
Matthew Murphy
It
isn't a conscious decision but in instances like this Matt's brain
tends to map Goldie in where Meghan ought to be. So when Goldie is
speaking of borrowing money to buy hookers and starting a piggy bank
under the same auspices as he had attempted to stop from reaching his
ears the kinsman takes a breath and rolls his head on his shoulders to
look over at her.
Self-respect is a rough thing for Kinfolk to
come by. He was about to turn fourteen years old when his older sister
learned she was pregnant by her mate and didn't he learn that year that
he wasn't to raise a voice in favor or discredit of the male who had
chosen his sister. A kinsman cannot win a fight against a Fostern
Philodox unless the kinsman has been training in the ring his entire
life and even then is no guarantee. Kinsmen cannot switch forms.
If
anyone had ever said to him at any point that it would be in his best
interests to start thinking of Goldie as a potential mate and not just
as a gaoler the trajectory of their stay might veer to one side or the
other. As of now it continues on as if Matt is unaware of the
insinuations or the alternate reality or whatever the fuck is going on
back east to which he might not be privy.
"Ugh," he says as he prepares to light the pipe again. He gives it up a second later. Looks straight at her. "The fuck, Lennox?"
Goldie Lennox
The
way that Matt's face wrinkled up with disgust, and the fact that it
took him a second for the impact to take effect enough to derail his
efforts to keep going at the pipe's bowl all brought joy to the
Ragabash. You could tell because of how satisfied the grin that spread
across her face was.
"Oh don't worry, I'll budget for a motel room
too," she reassured him, waggling her empty beer bottle in an 'Oh, you'
kind of gesture.
She didn't bid him goodnight, because it was too
early for her to want to go to bed anytime soon. She was only headed
back in for the shower, and would no doubt locate him back on the couch
or perhaps still enjoying the air in the backyard by the time she'd
finished scrubbing her skin to pink satisfaction.
If she ever
considered pursuing Matthew as a kinsman, the intention never showed.
If anyone were to ask her to think hard about it chances were she
wouldn't mention their mutual upbringing, but would rather focus on the
drastic different in breeding-- shouldn't someone from a family like the
Murphy line be lined up with a family with similarly strong genes? It
seemed the most logical use of resources.
But then, Goldie never
spent any time gossiping with Maggie about matchmakers that still
floated around from time to time. The eight-year-old version of herself
stuck her tongue out at the idea. She wouldn't have time to worry
about that kind of stuff, she was going to grow up to be a ninja after
all.
None of that was focused on now, though. Goldie just carried
herself inside through the back door with a beer-bottle-finger-wriggle
to substitute as a wave instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment