and I'll feast on the highway but I'll dream about the door

[selfmadman]

An oversized barrel-cherry red stripes zigzagging on daffodil yellow-rotates at the entrance to the funhouse, itself an arresting sight. The exterior’s been painted in a chaotic mishmash of styles (ornate, cartoonish, folksy, romantic, inept) and colors. On windy days the flags that bristle from the roof snap in the breeze

Comments

[opensadress]

Roger Sterling doesn't do carnivals. Even when his daughter was young and insisted on riding the ferris wheel, he was more than content to make up some excuse that involved working. The colors were too garish and there were too many horses that made a mess of things. If animals could be overrated, that was one of them. The horse.

This was a first time of sorts for Roger as he walked the carnival. He felt much more at ease about exploring the grounds when most of the sights and sounds were nonexistent.

As he walks at a leisurely pace with both hands in his pockets, Roger notices a familiar face. With a shrug he walks forward in greeting. "If I would have known you were coming I would have laid out the welcome mat."

[selfmadman]

Don sets the glass on a convenient railing--someone'll be around to clean it up--and fishes in his pocket for a cigarette. "Roger." As greetings go, it's unadorned--no relief, no excitement. This is what happens when you spend every day in someone's company: bump into them in an alternate dimension and scarcely bat an eyelash.

He flicks his lighter open, touches flame to cigarette. "You been in there?" he asks, streaming smoke in the direction of the funhouse. "I'll say this for it, the second floor does exist."

[opensadress]

"Nah." He looks in the direction of the funhouse and doesn't give it more than a passing glance. "I haven't been in this whole carnival thing before tonight. Too much yellow."

Roger rocks back on his right foot, unconsciously moving himself closer to the general area of the city. "So did you just get here or have you started making corkscrew slides a habit?"

[selfmadman]

"There's a staircase," Don says, sounding uninterested and yet twice as invested as Roger in this line of conversation.

Then the first half of that sentence sinks in. He gives Roger a hard look. "How long have you been here?"

[autumnrusset]

Laura is just walking, and she pauses, her cigarette balanced on the ends of her fingers. "Hey." It's so brief it might not even be a greeting.

[selfmadman]

"Evening," he says with a nod and a smile that has more to do with the chilly New York afternoon he just left behind than her presence. "You're out here alone?"

[autumnrusset]

"Yeah, that a problem?"

[selfmadman]

Don raises his eyebrows, directs a 'can you believe this?' look to the bottom of his glass. "Who will kiss you at the top of the ferris wheel?"