narrative ✫ the last word of two great coquettes.
Norman Daniels, 2nd Baronet of Dorset is the man whose voice she heard on the radio - and it's quite a voice, deep and sonorous, with perfect diction and a knack for making everything he says sound like the most important words you've ever heard. It doesn't quite match his exterior, which features a face a little like a farmer's and a wiry build, but his charisma is cold like iron and demonstrated mostly in his fierce piety. Hasibe thinks he's a bit of a throwback, but there are worse things, and to be perfectly honest, she likes anachronistic people. Even, on occasion, ones she ought to find perfectly reprehensible (and knows it).
This is something else, she's pretty sure.
She sits tucked against a bay window in the upstairs of Alkahest and studies his picture in the paper, folding it neatly so that the article on his investigations into London's elite club scene are at the forefront. The print smudges ink onto her hands, dry and not very telling; she doesn't want to know what's in the papers, she wants to know what they aren't saying, but that's par for the course where she's concerned. It's nothing pressing, but she'd thought she'd left this kind of evangelical thinking at home in the Americas. That was a foolish idea, maybe, but...the movement seems to be picking up speed so quickly in this country.
Bethany comes through the front door, sleek blonde ponytail swinging, gum snapping, and settles down next to Hasibe at the window-seat. They're the only girls who showed up that day, mostly out of habit and to reassure the bartenders they haven't gone for good. With Almos gone, they're all left at a loss, hoping something will come together for them--"Norea," as Bethany knows her dark-haired companion, doesn't need the work as much as some of the others, having acquired outside sources of income to accommodate for her lifestyle, but they're so used to one another now, even when they fight in bursts and flares of the comfortable irritation that builds up after hours and hours spent with the same handful of people. No one wants Alkahest to end, but the spectre of their murdered employer hangs over the building--there are a lot of people who would like to see this club gone, with its reputation for sin and indulgence spreading all across London and beyond. Poisonous, Mr. Daniels calls it, and special mention was made of a young lady at one 'Pagan-themed' club who dances with fire.
Hasi is trying not to take it personally.
"Oh, is that sod in the papers again? He's a righteous one," Bethany comments, eying the photo with skepticism and disregarding the article. She passes over the drinks she's brought for the both of them (cognac brandy, Petite Champagne eaux de vie), and they sit together in their shimmering dresses, silver for the blonde and gold for the brunette, shoulder-to-shoulder, each barefoot under the bright dressing room lights, surrounded by mirrors and rows and rows of old vanity tables.
"Pious," Hasibe agrees, rueful.
"Nosy, more like. My mum goes on and on about him--not positively, mind you, she's been Anglican since 1955 and thinks that lot's ruining her religious experience."
Hasibe tilts her head back against the frame of the window, lashes half-lowered over pale eyes, and there is something reserved in her expression--as though a curtain has been drawn over her thoughts. Bethany nudges her, gently, after observing this for a few moments.
"You all right?"
"Yeah--" Hasi shakes her head, smile rising forward out of the dark of whatever was just occupying her. "Yes, always. It's been a long month is all--for all of us."
In more ways for her than she'll really admit, what with the quick trip back to Boston for her dead husband's father's funeral and all of the painful emotional baggage that had entailed. Her heart still hurts at moments, as though it's in a vise and she's not yet chipped away at the castle of memory she'd built around herself while living in Istanbul--what with having avoided, for so long, really dealing with what she'd lost, and what she misses so badly. Nothing will ever again happen as fast as it did with Henry, Hasibe knows, because what are the chances of ever finding something that crazy and dangerous a second time? Lightning doesn't work that way.
She should avoid crazy and dangerous, actually but Hasibe is beginning to suspect that she was built for it on multiple levels. Much like how she and Bethany were built for earning a living off of performance, the negligible permanence of which is what plagues their concerns now.
"Mmmn. And the last thing we need is some fire and brimstone fuck who just really needs to get laid poking around." Bethany screws up her face and adopts a somberly faux-masculine voice, which is deliberately awkward but extremely entertaining for Hasibe, given Bethany's entire visual scheme is based around looking as much like an eighteen-year-old cheerleader as is physically possible for an English girl from a very proper neighborhood in Surrey. "'And I hear there are drugs at these nightclubs, and people intending to fornicate with members of the same sex--' Fuck me, I can't even finish it."
But by now, Hasibe is laughing, although it's the quiet, brushed-velvet soft kind that comes after a very long day, when the required sparkle of being one of Alkahest's best girls fades to more of a candle's glow. "Nor should you! That was spooky. You ought to work it into your act."
"Ugh." Bethany snickers, too, but sombers up after a second of thinking it over. "If I still have an act."
Hasibe tucks an arm around her coworker, and they rest their heads together, blonde and black. They weren't close friends before the ritual murders and Almos's death, but things have changed. "We'll figure something out. This place is famous, someone will want to get a hold of it and keep it as is--and hell with the 'Concerned Christian Citizens' organization or whatever they're called. They're after celebrities and making up stupid 80s Satanic Panic stories, not girls like us."
Bethany leans away a little so she can regard Hasi sidelong.
"I'm not too worried--not about them, anyway. Just keeping my job. But you're doing the acting thing..."
"Short films," Hasibe says, in a tone of reassuring certainty, "Foreign language films. Nothing that's going to get me into the tabloids. I'm not Marilyn Manson; what would they want with someone like me? I'm not a big fish. I don't want to be one, either."
They look at each other, and with a muted kind of concern Bethany reaches out, thumbing the strap of Hasibe's dress. They both know what could happen, but it does seem unlikely. It's the fact that it remains a possibility in the first place that's sort of depressing, and while these are very different women, they both have an intimate understanding of the risks of showing yourself to the world without shame and with pride in your own body.
"All I'm saying is--even if it's not you, Norea--when somebody's on the warpath about sinfulness...they usually blame the first woman they notice." The first woman who meets certain physical approximations, especially. "You know that. And you are good at being noticed."
Hasibe can't argue that, and so with her expression carefully neutral, she glances back down at the paper, and the stern eyes waiting for her there.
"This is really good cognac, by the way," she says, instead.
"Well, I figured since you took the Arcana, I ought to take the L'Voyage," Bethany tells Hasibe, tone of voice a little smug. For good reason: this makes Hasi pause, and slowly turn to look at her companion with wide, bright eyes. When she laughs this time, it's got that bright-diamond sparkle back to it, which is as much the alcohol as it is her genuine surprise. Bethany is one of the few people who truly manages that anymore, and she's learned to appreciate that quality.
"Are...we drinking eight thousand dollar brandy right now?"
"We certainly are. Thank our esteemed and recently deceased employer."
Hasi would ordinarily have a bit more pause at the cavalier tone, but: she's been sad, and frankly, Almos didn't care that much about any of them. She'll be wistful on his behalf later. For now, she giggles with her friend, the pair of them as peaceful as they get, and with one deft flick of her wrist Hasibe tosses the article featuring Norman Daniels' disapproving face behind the both of them, abandoning the tattered, dog-eared newspaper where it falls.
(Face-up--like he's still watching, even as they pay him no mind.)