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Taym had actually dozed off sitting up. He was never good at getting adequate sleep in the first place, and the past several days had been considerably worse.

Dozing outside in the sun against the wall of a building was old hat. It wasn't pleasant exactly, but it was familiar and it was sleep of a sort, and so when it was interrupted so violently by the music coming off the lawn he was immediately disinclined to friendly overtures. The split second it took him to take in the image that was the back of Jerry's head was enough to cement his opinion that whoever this a*****e was, he hated him. A lot.

"Bad place for ********' busking," he barked irritably. "No one has cash."

Really aside from the setting, this could have been lifted off nearly any busy city street: a guy whose clothes were falling apart, who was nursing a three-day beard and looked like he desperately needed a meal, heckling a nerdy-looking guy with a guitar. Heckling street performers was old hat too. All he needed was a dog, or a cardboard sign, or a cigarette. Scene complete.

He took a moment to consider this, a flat stare leveled at Jerry. It was uncannily like a slinking dog eyeing a pedestrian through a fence, hackles raised but silent.

"You can tell because I still have my entire face," he deadpanned pointedly.

Taym's thesis that everyone on Deus was insane was rapidly accruing new supporting evidence.

"One can only be so optimistic," he said. "Would throwing myself into a meat grinder help? Or did you get those from unhappy audiences? Probably best not to subject a crew of mentally unstable professional killers with enormous weapons to your warbling too frequently."

Taym delivered a sentence of raw blasphemy: "I was never much of a music fan."

He hesitated, though. And then closed his mouth.

By way of answer he obligingly lifted the bottom hem of his coat. Pair of scythes. Somehow he looked like a good fit for that. He looked... sneaky. And possibly as unstable as he was accusing everyone else of being. His hands moved in a strange and vaguely arachnid way.

"Lessons," he said, with a thread of incredulity in his voice. "What the hell's an uke?" And then a lifetime of crossword puzzles jogged him. "Short for ukelele. Right. Jesus Christ. I didn't know anyone actually played a ukelele outside of tourist traps in Hawaii." Poor ignorant b*****d had clearly never ventured very far into Youtube.

(Not that kind of uke. The other kind.)

Great dexterity. Now would have been a great time for his hand tremors to manifest, so naturally, they didn't. Steady as a rock, right up until he needed them to be.

He looked at Jerry's hand, looked at the coat he'd wiped it on that had probably just made it dirtier than it already was, and extracted a toothpick from his pocket instead of offering him a handshake.

"A little stir crazy," he repeated blandly. "You don't say. I'd never have noticed. I suppose your guitar and your ukelele keep you totally sane."

Sudden, creeping guilt. Couldn't fault a man for finding an alternative. Sure, Taym's alternative had been signing his life away to go get eaten by werewolves or something, but music was... valid. Whatever it takes, Jerry.

Taym suddenly leaned forward, looking to the left, looking to the right, searching ahead of both of them. There was no one around.

Conspiratorially, he said: "Do you know Year of the Cat?" Hastily, he added: "It's a yes or no question, not an invitation."