Mutual French Aquantinces

Who: Amy and Mathias
Where: Lamplighter Motel
When: Late morning

Sitting on her (new and temporary) bed did nothing but make her a gloomy gus, and Amy was not going to be a gloomy gus. Not when the day was so nice and Pandect had brought her muffins from Jamie the Adorable baker who just wanted to be friends, but that was okay because he was a really great guy. And also adorable. Pandect had wandered off to do whatever tall, dark and muttering thing he did (she was pretty sure he had hurt himself somehow, she just wasn't sure what the how was to go with the some). So Amy was sitting at the front desk of the Lamplighter Motel humming that song about lumberjacks she had stuck in her head and gluing back together her collected china knick knacks.

It wouldn't be a great loss to just toss them, they weren't the real expensive ones you could get in the city. But it was the principle of the thing.

Mathias had caught a few hours sleep and showered - both things which made him feel less like he reeked of smoke and more like a normal person. What would make him even more like a normal person, however, would be not having to share a family room with his two brothers. When they'd checked in in the middle of the night, none of them had been in the mood to debate room allocation, but in the cold light of day, Mathias made his way to the desk to see what else they had. He spotted the girl behind the counter and smiled - this shouldn't be that hard. "Hi," he said, giving her a natural and appreciative smile as he leant on the desk. If there was one thing about Mathias, it was that he was good with people.

Amy stopped mid-hum and gave him her best 'HELLO! AND WELCOME TO THE LAMPLIGHTER!' smile. It was also best to start things off with a smile. "Hi there," she said, sliding her blue turtle to the side. "What can I do for you sir?" He had a nice and friendly smile, although not as adorable as Jamie's sort of dazed grin, and she could appreciate that.

"Math," Mathias told her, hearing the 'sir' in that. "I don't really go in for formalities," he explained, giving her another winning smile. "Myself and my brothers checked in overnight - had a slight problem with a house fire, but we're sharing a family room and, really - there's only so close a guy can get to his siblings, y'know? Anyway, I was wondering if I could ask about more rooms? There's three of us, so another couple would be just great, if you have them going spare..."

"Oh, your poor house, it seems like everything was catching on fire last night. Let me see," Amy woke up the computer and scrolled through the notations, the place had really opened up now that Pandect had fixed the roof. Pandect lived in number seven and then there was the room with the man with the funny eyes, and room two still smelled like dogs for some reason that no one could figure out, and then the lovely woman with the very nice boots. And the toliet didn't work in eleven. "Five is open Math," she said with a smile pulling out the shoebox full of roomkeys. "The TV may or may not need a bit of abuse to get working."

"If you have any problems just dial zero and I'll get Pandect to come take care of it."

Mathias took the key, grimacing a little. "You only have the one room going free?" he asked, looking a little pained, but he sighed. "Well, I guess - I mean, Dorian's already kinda talking about leaving town - we had a house fire overnight, it was his place and, well - it's ashes now and I think he's kinda taking it badly, so I don't think he'll be sticking around. And myself and my other brother, we're only gonna be here for a day or two - talking of which, do you know any place maybe I could look for rentals?" Mathias asked, playing the open, friendly and honest card that often went down well in these circumstances.

"You poor boys," Amy said, not that Math was a boy. He was a very nice looking man. With a very nice smile. "My apartment almost burnt down last night too." She fiddled around the shoe box a little more, "How much does your brother like hot water? The only other room that still has a roof overhead smells like dog. And for rentals..." Amy pulled out a small sized business card book and flipped it open. "Here, everything in Marquette. Have you three had something to eat yet?"

"Eat? No, well - Caleb, maybe, but he left for school before I woke up. Dorian's still sleeping, but I think that's for the best. He was kinda traumatized when we brought him in last night," Mathias said, laying it on thick. Oh, the trauma. Like he really gave a damn about property. Still, every little helped. "We lost everything - I saw there were loads of fires last night, and really - well, I guess the fire department was really stretched. Is you place okay?" he checked, seemingly putting his concern for her above anything else, including hot water and a room that smelled like dog. His eyes dropped down to the things she was gluing back together, then her looked back at her. "That... That's not because of the fire, right?" he checked.

"These?" Amy had a moment of gloominess before she turned her frown upside down. There was no bad situation that moping made any better. She thought happy thoughts about Jamie's ruffled hair. "Yeah, but its nothing that a little glue and hard work can't fix. Pandect got most of my stuff out, Pandect's like the caretaker. He also provides the daily requirement of baked goods from downtown."

She turned on the bar stool Mr. Andrew was too cheap to replace and grabbed the white paper box from Just a Bakery. "Pandect always has a secret stash of muffins around, they're like his crack. You can go ahead and take the box, he'll probably mutter about it, but that's about as bad as his bark gets."

Mathias took the box with a suppressed smirk, wondering if she also had a thing for this 'Pandect', the way she dropped his name in there a couple of times in a sentence. He doubted she'd even realized that she'd done it. "Well, thank Pandect for the muffins then - they're gratefully appreciated." He considered offering her money for them, but decided against it - he hadn't been looking for her to offer, after all. "And, okay - I can live without dog and with hot water. I'll just be going to find somewhere slightly more permanent to stay. I'm sorry - I didn't catch you name..." he said, trailing off and giving her the opportunity to provide it.

"Oh! Sorry! I'm Amy! Usually I'm the night manager but with things how they are now someone had to man the counter so to speak. And its a whole lot better than just sitting in my room," she waved one hand, "Sorry expositioning, I'm sure this isn't at all interesting. On a slightly more pertinent note," she liked the word pertinent, it sounded smart. "The two circled realitors are the super good reliable ones. They're sisters that grew up here so they know all the good spots."

"Okay - thanks for that, Amy," he said, stressing the word to indicate he'd remember it. "I don't suppose you happen to have their number - or, is there a book in the room with it?" he checked, since she'd indicated they were circulated. He was just a little short handed right now, what with only having the clothes he was stood up in and all.

Amy tsked at herself, "Sorry, I'm all flustered, I've got bits of china all over the place! Here," she grabbed the little black book with the little plastic pages with slots for business cards and held it out to him. "Things are a bit of mess right now. You could probably find them in the phone book, but this is much quicker. Just get it back to me eventually."

Math seemed like a bit of smooth customer, he had (as her mother used to say) that certain smile and certain way of leaning in that said quite clearly if he wasn't already a good friend, he wanted to be. But it wasn't like Amy minded, friendly was what friend did and she had to admire a man that was able to grin after his house burnt down. "Just flip through those tabs, there's just about everything in there. Food, clothes, religious experiences if they've got a business card they're in the book," she smiled big at him.

"Why, thank you - you're very kind," Math said, taking the book and starting to flip through it, though he was only half paying attention - the other half of his attention remaining on her. "So, what happened with your near miss last night then?" he asked, interested. he knew now from talking to Dorian that his brother was convinced that their ghost had started the fire and Mathias was giving him the benefit of the doubt on that - Dorian knew far more about spirits than he did and if his brother said that a ghost burned down their house, then as far as Mathias was concerned, a ghost burned down their house - as implausible as that may seem.

"Well usually I work the night shift," Amy began to arrange figurines in degrees of being put back together, she was good at telling stories. It also tended to put people in mind of a small child dramatizing her exploits. "And every morning I got home my window would be busted in and my poor mouse Buster would be traumatized, and fancy mice are drama queens, or I guess in his case a drama king, so it took all day to get him back up to snuff. Well I had had about enough of that and even though the nice sheriff had been patrolling past he hadn't seen anyone. And Pandect, he really can't help it, but he's like this big, tall," she kept in mind she was a little on the short side so she held up her hand beside her to indicate his height, "muttering big brother. He complains a lot and gives people pointed looks but then he pats me on the head and gives me a cookie so I don't think it counts. So Pandect went to do the big brother thing and save my mouse and picture window only then BOOM!" she made a motion with her hands to demonstrate something going boom.

"Or probably some sort of electric sound first. Because it was an electric fire. And Pandect was like 'oh drat!' only probably worse language if you catch my drift and he put out the fire super fast like only a handyman can. And rescued my broken china and swept my floor and then swore extensively in French. For two whole hours," she held up two fingers in case he didn't understand English. "He was even more vague irritated than normal. And I didn't even get an baked goods!" she took a moment to contemplate Jamie. Sigh. Jamie. Just friends Jamie, she reminded herself. She leaned in conspiratorially, but not so conspiratorially Math could see down her dress, "I think it was a ghost. I do not like that. The only person I've ticked off lately is the day manager, but he's still alive moaning about his cold at home. I don't even know anyone who's died lately!"

She did not like the ghost thing, it made her very uncomfortable. And judging from the way Pandect was swearing last night while he helped her pack up her stuff to move to the hotel he wasn't comfortable with it either.

"My brother says that our fire was started by a ghost, so maybe we've got some dead arsonists in town or something," Math suggested, starting to feel that twitchy need for nicotine, though he suppressed it. Somehow he didn't think that it would be acceptable around here, and he was playing nice today - so nice that he didn't even make the slightest move to look down the dress that wasn't quite being presented to him. "So, your Pandect is French then? He's not related to a guy called Rey, is he? About so high, shaven head?" he checked, knowing that Rey had said that he'd got a brother, but not remembering if there'd ever been a name put to that.

Amy leaned on a fist, "I don't think he has any family. But I don't know, he might be. Is Rey's last name Garnier?"

Mathias shrugged. "I don't know - he's just a guy I met in a bar, but he was French and you don't get many of those around here," he explained. "Plus, I know he has a brother, so it seemed a decent assumption." Then again, there seemed to be a whole lot of people in Marquette who weren't from Marquette.

"Might be, I don't know a lot of the new people in town. In fact he probably is, how many French guys can there be in town? I don't know why he wouldn't want to talk about his family though." But then Pandect didn't take about his past, so probably she shouldn't either, Math seemed like a nice guy, but it wasn't cool to talk about other people behind their backs when they didn't even talk about themselves in front of their fronts... to something like that, especially when they gave her cookies and introduced her to Adorable Bakers. Amy zipped her lip, metaphorically speaking of course.

"Is Rey a nice guy?" her dodging skills sucked. They sucked like a giant sucky thing.

Well, wasn't that the question? "He seemed alright," Math hedged. It was actually the truth, but from Mathias' point of view. Generally, the eldest Lockwood didn't actually ever lie - generally speaking, he never actually needed to, tending to phrase responses to questions in such a way that made it sound like people were getting full answers when they never actually were. Like the fact that Rey had seemed alright - but then again, Mathias was a half-demon and his standards for 'alright-ness' weren't necessarily the same as those for a human. "he was definitely interesting, we spent some time talking. And if your guy is his borther, well - some people sometimes don't mention family for one reason or another." he knew he tended not to do that, he'd only been as open as he had here because she could get all their details anyhow from their check in documentation.

"I know how that goes," Amy told half a pink hippo before putting on her best smile. "Pandect should be back eventually, he's probably more the one to ask."

Mathias smiled a little and took that as a dismisal. He pushed up off the counter, slipping a card out of the book as he did so. "Well, maybe I'll ask him if I see him around. And - I'll bring this back, okay?" he checked, gesturing a little with the business card.

"Okey dokey," she gave him a little wave bye. "Have a good rest of the day!"