burning bridges.
Annamaria Kelsingham
Tue 10:54PM EST
It's an early Tuesday for their kind, though late for many of the kine who patronize the place. Tuesday: no live act in the saloon, and there's a break in the open mike (more white kids born in privilege, trying to find their souls). Alvin Youngblood Hart's playing over the speaker system.
I'm gonna get me a leather vest
Gun on my hip and star on my chest
I'll be the tale of the golden west
In a pair of cowboy boots
Oh give me a home
Where the swimmin' pools roll on
Where the money grows on trees
And the gals just wanna be squeezed.
Her fingers - nails cropped short, polished just so that they shine with clear lacquer in the shifting light - dance over the bartop. She is not particularly out of place, in her pinstripped pantsuit (DKNY, of course), with its sharp, tailored lines remniscent of menswear. She is far from out of place, in fact, for a fair number of patrons are similarly dressed. Young professionals, out for a drink or three after a late night at the office, beginning now to trickle out of the bar in the general direction of home. Fine blonde hair drawn back from her features, twisted into a casual knot just loose enough to avoid the appearance of severity, crowns her head, the light color framing pale features and dark blue eyes that linger here and there on the crowd. There's a glass of something - martini glass, red liquid, with a twist of lemon floating in the center of the dark drink - which she holds between the casual fingers of one outflung arm, a negligent gesture at odds with her posture, inimitably upright.
Red Eric
Tue 11:15PM EST
"Annamaria?"
The query of a greeting comes from a young man trampling down the stairs from the private (read: VAMPIRES ONLY) area up above. When he gets the nod, his face relaxes into an easy grin as he hops down the last few stairs and strides across to her. Fish outta water, is he, distinctly underdressed in a jacket, t-shirt and jeans, but he doesn't care. The confidence implicit in his movement shouts that.
"Thanks for coming. Thought you'd be upstairs, though." He slides up on a barstool, shucks his jacket and sets it on the stool next to him. Looks around. "Nice place, huh? Not my bowl of god-damned cherries, but I can see how it appeals. If you're an art fag." He glances at her, up and down. There's a smirk at the corner of his mouth: he's cracking himself up - "You haven't changed a bit."
Annamaria Kelsingham
Tue 11:26PM EST
"That was clever." The smirk is mirrored in the quirk of her own mouth. Or rather, half of it, for only the right corner pulls up in response to his amusement. "Art fag, hmm? I'll have to remember that one. Have someone writing your lines?"
She replies quietly, her voice a cool, cultured murmur with just the tainting suggestion of an upper-crust British accent, the sort of thing that Madonna and every other would-be starlet attempts to ape when giving speeches at awards shows, and imperfectly at that. The reply precedes the glance that follows by several seconds at least, the slow twist of her head, the casual regard, the up and down glance returned.
"Neither have you," she pronounces at last, as the left corner of her mouth joins the right, just lifted in the sketch of a smirk. Pale brow rising above the glimmer of a dark eye, she follows the turn of her head with a turn of her body - military in its precision, except for the languid trail of the drink behind. Lifting the drink to her pale mouth as if to drink, hiding the curl of her smirk behind the edge of the glass, she continues, "The trouble is, I'm not sure whether that's necessarily a good thing."
Red Eric
Tue 11:38PM EST
"Yeah," counters Eric - Red Eric, at that, like the Viking, only worse - "the same one that quit your entourage last year. Heard that Bristol scandal still has 'em all abuzz." He sits a little straighter, peering down at her drink, "Can I have a sip?"
Can. Not may. Can. Who knows? Stranger things have happened. Once Eric passed through a city where the Prince had the hottest goth club serving bloody marys made from blood, not tomato juice. The goths, would-be vampires that they all were, dug it. They were all sick as dogs the next day, but Eric's boys didn't have that problem.
Relaxing back, the sinewy Brujah (more corded strength than bulging, more wiry speed than flowing) watches a pretty young thing go by with an appreciative eye. Mmm. Brunette. O-type, he'd bet his right foot on it. After a while he swears he could smell the difference. "Oh hell," laughing, "don't get maudlin on me. 'Course it's a good thing. Next thing I know you'll be walking west to watch the sunrise. Just like one of those art fags. So," conversation topics change quick as that as he arches his hips to dig his wallet out, "meet anyone yet?"
Annamaria Kelsingham
Tue 11:53PM EST
"No." The smirk remains, lingers at the corners of her mouth, as her gaze follows his, tracking down to the deep red drink. "I'm afraid you can't. It wouldn't appeal to you, anyway," pale lashes lower to shade and shield her eyes, which follow the gleaming trail of the ruby drink from just before her mouth to the bar, where she places it with a precise sort of care. "It's rather girly. One might even say art-faggy, if one were inclined to use such terms." The priggishness of the distancing pronoun one is offset and undercut by the archness of tone, so that the statement becomes (to the discerning, and only such) a mockery of mockery.
Some dismissive shrug - the curling rise of slender shoulders beneath the sharp lines of the suit. The collar brushes the loose coil of her hair, but not a strand is dislodged in the process. "That was hardly maudlin. I would prefer to think of it as cutting - I'm practicing, you see - but if that didn't come through, I suppose I'll have to replace my line-writer again. So fucking tedious. And - " the faint, bemused blink at the lightning topic changes. " - no. I haven't met anyone else yet. Should I?"
Red Eric
Wed 12:04AM EST
"Huhm." Some dismissive shrug in return, for something else, his eyes (blue, are they? shocking, electric blue.) tracking her drink to the bar. "Too bad. It looked good."
He scrubs a hand through his hair, mussing it up into a haphazard field of spikes - sends her a brief, startled, then amused glance - laughs. "Harpies are never gonna let you in among 'em as long as you keep spewing out obscenities like that, you know. Christ, with an accent like that, you should know better. Sound like you're right outta some A&E literary fuckudrama - or have they let you in the club already?" - quick, suspicious glance, and then he's sliding athletically off the stool, snapping his jacket up. Dismissing the notion just as easy, "Fuckit. Whatever. Never knew what the hell you saw in those artfag Zsa Zsa Gabor wannabes, anyway. Hey, you wanna come over to my place?"
Annamaria Kelsingham
Wed 12:12AM EST
"I know." What? She doesn't clarify. Instead, she sends him a coolly amused glance as her gaze rises from her abandoned - and barely touched - drink, which catches and refracts the light in a dizzying array of colors and textures (the deep ruby core, the gleaming glass, the halo just beneath the rim where the liquid clings after the jostling movement) to settle (almost, never quite. She's more cautious than that.) on his eyes. "That's one of the differences between us. I prefer not to burn any bridges until its time to blow them the hell up. More interesting that way."
And then she rises from the stool with a brief shrug, grabbing her own winter coat and tossing it over her arm. "As to the invitation, sure," a look, punctuated by the brief lift of a brow and the faint quirk of a smile, dry as a fucking martini. "Just don't get the wrong idea."
