November 10 2007

Amy Gustufson

Preferred PB: Greta Salpeter

The 'night manager' at the Lamplighter Motel, (it turns out that majors in Indo-European Linguistics with a minor in Romantic Poetry really don't offer a broad range of career choices, who knew?)Amy mostly tries to stay out of the way of Mr. Andrew. She's young, just out of college and still enthusiasticly in touch with her inner child. Sometimes a little too much, she can be easily overwhelmed by Mr. Andrew's rants or the plethora of repairs the motel needs.

Who: Oz and Pandect
Where: Lamplighter Motel
When: afternoon

Pandect adjusted the flashing against the vent carefully before lining up the soldering iron. The day manager was standing on the ground below him and Pandect had the sudden uncharitable urge to kick a bundle of shingles down on his head. Mr. Andrew had made a big deal about how since ‘some kid with no concept of effective business processes’ (his words, not Pandect’s) had hired him he expected Pandect to work extra hard to prove himself.

He had barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes at Mr. Andrew.

who: dean and thia
where: over the wire
when: evening

Who: Kaysen and Isaac
When: afternoon
Where: mostly in the van

It was Saturday, and Isaac felt like he owed his sister some time. Like ... big time. She hadn't said much about her breakup with Chance, something that he hadn't really pushed. He knew that breakups sucked, and he knew how dramatic Kaysen was. He didn't have anything going on that afternoon, as the band practice had been postponed, so he decided to sister-nap her and do something. Coming out of his room, Isaac finished pulling a long-sleeved shirt down over his head and banged on her door. "Hey!" he called through it, grinning a little and already expecting to get yelled at.

Kaysen was in there, doing some homework on her bed though really, that was a loose description. Mostly she had her history book open, and she was doodling on her notebook as opposed to say, reading the words in the book and taking any notes which had been her goal. She was distracted, and she really didn't give a shit about whatever happened to some dudes way back in the day that no one really cared about in the first place. When the bang came on her door, she was happy for it, and grinned, even if she snapped out a response that sounded annoyed. "Oh my god, what the fuck do you want?!" she called. "And what're you trying to do, break the door down?"

Who: Seph and Eris, then Seph and a Babylon girl
When: late night
Where: Babylon

It had taken Seph a long time -- almost two full days -- to actually walk out of the Martens' house and go searching for Babylon. He'd given himself time. He'd given himself space. He'd lain on the floor of the attic for hours, just feeling the cold seep in and trying not to focus on any thoughts at all. The mental shadow-movements he'd gotten from his sister the day before, when she'd been with him again ... hadn't helped matters. He'd tried to turn his back, so to speak, do something else, but he kept feeling it, like a presence at his back. Beating the shit out of the heavy bag hadn't helped much. Neither had the meeting, and after being in the same room with so many people for that long ... yeah, he had to do something.

An idea had occurred to him. Something that might help, if only for a little while. Something to drown in, maybe let off a little tension. Doc had done it, why couldn't he? It was with those thoughts continually running through his head -- along with the tiny, cruel one that said he could drop walls at the right moment and let her feel it -- that he'd broken down and actually decided to do it. He'd waited until everyone had cleared out, tucked the wad of money he'd withdrawn into his pocket, taken the keys, and left the house without a word to anyone.

Who: Tad and Dean
Where: Tad's house
When: afternoon

Tad had spent most of the morning trying to clean up his room while at the same time trying to keep it from looking like an IKEA ad. Kaysen's off-hand comment from the day before had made him anxious about the giant mess he had floating about, but he wasn't sure how impressed Dean would be with a completely spic and span room. Dean was a guy afterall. Plus Tad had a lot of stuff and it didn't all seem to fit in proper places.

Who: Pandect and Rafe
When: afternoon
Where: in the park

Despite the cold, Rafe had gone out wandering again. He took his sketchbook along, hoping in a very vague way that some fresh air would do him some good. Get his mind off of the bottle of perfume he'd found in his bathroom that morning. The perfume that smelled exactly like Chelo. He actually remembered to put a coat on, which was something relatively new. As he started to walk the town, he'd frowned a bit at what looked like creatures of various shapes and sizes that were made of snow. As he went into the park, he found more of them, some with people still working on them. He'd found a place to sit and watch, opening his sketchbook to a fresh page and starting to draw them. In a twisted, different way than they were being made.

When some people had started to build one near his bench, he'd watched avidly. It was a young father and a couple of his children. They started to build the same old shit, however, that bulbous sort of man-figure that Rafe had seen a couple hundred times already. All it had taken was the right sort of criticism, and there was a shouting match. Already edgy, Rafe had pushed the guy, and the next thing he knew, his nose had exploded in pain and he was looking up at the sky. He heard the crunching of boots hurrying away through the snow, and then everything fuzzed into gray.

Who: Ash and Nic
Where: Ash's shop
When: early afternoon

So maybe she'd overstated the severity of the car she was bringing to Ash; it still ran after all. Nic didn't mind, she figured that with her efforts to tone down her aggression and all, she was entitled to be a little over the top in exchange. Swinging Caleb's car around a bend and off of 4th Street, her eyes fixed on the sign ahead advertising Ash's shop. Really, she'd lucked out with the job. How many people had a boss so cool that they could just call and demand this sort of thing? Did she, even? He hadn't called back to say no, which Nic was counting as a plus.

Slowing down and cranking the wheel, Nic grit her teeth as the car lurched a little going up the driveway's incline and into the garage. "Fucking shocks," she muttered, cutting the engine and preemptively popping the hood latch. This was going to take a while, likely her entire weekend, but on the same note? She liked hanging out with Ash, she didn't feel like she was screwing up around him like she did with Caleb, and there was never a bad time to learn more tricks of the mechanic's trade. "Gonna miss my paychecks for a few weeks, though," she muttered to herself, firing a cigarette to life and hopping out.

Who: Doc, open to Grayson, Jocelyn, Kurt, Seph, and Syn
Where: The Martens residence
When: Evening

In the end, Doc had opted against Chinese for dinner, though he hadn't strayed far. Thai worked just as well, and he had a procession of cartons and plates laid out on the coffee table next to a cooler of beers and sodas. He'd made the necessary round of calls earlier, cluing the others into the when and where, but it all felt so odd.

who: everyone at the club
when: evening
where: babylon

The place was decorated as intricately as it had been for the Masquerade. Lights mostly lit the dance floor, projected images on the floor and across the ceiling, though the edges of the place was left in heavy shadows. Enough that those who wanted to dance and listen to the band they could...but strangely the noise dropped off some once you walked off the floor and hit up the shadows. It was almost like someone turned the volume down on reality there...

Who: Nic, open to Caleb
Where: via texts
When: morning

You sleeping? Did you know you can send texts from a PC? Shit's TIGHT. I'd call but I don't want to interrupt your morning whatever. So I'm gonna come steal your car now.

Who: Doc
Where: His room
When: early afternoon

As always, the sunrise hadn't failed to impress Doc, but it never did. He could get lost in a single vein of changing color, watching it bleed from deep blues and purples to softer reds for the whole duration of the dawn. There was just something about the promise of a new day, or maybe the end of the night. Or maybe neither.

I've got a lot of shit on my mind lately, and I don't know. I know I need a sounding board, but don't know where I want to go for that. Dean I know I've talked to a ton, but sometimes...he's got his own shit. Dor and I never saw eye to eye by any stretch of the imagination. Math...well he's got his own shit too. Nic I can talk to, but half of what's on my mind lately is about her. Which leaves me shit out of luck, basically.

Who: Pandect and open
When: early morning
Where: the woods by the Lamplighter Motel

who: medea and reiz
where: mshs side yard
when: morning

Medea had to admit, she thought the idea of the snow sculptures thing was interesting. She was generally artistic by nature, so it appealed to certain parts of her. The ones that had popped up in the side yard were interesting, though she thought they said more about the mentality of the average high school student rather than anything else. Things were telling. For her own creation, she'd done something she knew would appeal to Porter.

She hadn't done a superhero theme or anything, but she'd taken a classic story. Since she'd gotten a spot by a huge plowed snowbank, she'd carved into the side of it. It had taken her since they'd announced the idea in the first place, but she was alright with that. It meant she hadn't gotten time to catch up with her sister much if at all, but Isabelle was busy with her own things anyhow. Medea was busy on her own track.

She'd carved out a little 'cave' in the side of the bank, and had done basically a dark version of the little mermaid. The mermaid was out in front of the cave, sitting on a 'rock' with bones scattered around the base of it, and there were many inside the 'cave' as well. It wasn't as detailed as she would have wanted it to be, but it was at the very least halfways decent, in her own opinion. She was of course, working off of mermaid lore she'd dug up in the library that said they were flesh eaters. (Well, that and supposedly if you ate their flesh you became immortal, but that was a harder theme to put into a snow sculpture.)

Perhaps her own sculpture spoke more of her own psyche as well. Standing back, she surveyed the scene once again, like she did every day when she got out there, before she started to work at it again.