A fair portion of his target demographic already set out into the streets - stay-at-home individuals from a well-furnished household often trawled swap-meets and other market locations for newly-stocked goods before more competition snaps up the bargains. Pawn shops didn’t often rank at the forefronts of their minds for special deals, but the owner knew that careful advertisement and persistence would soon remedy his dearth of business. Marketing schemes certainly wouldn’t hurt, either - if those pearl-laden princesses knew that his shop sported select price cuts on jewelry until 11AM, then they might hustle to his door instead.
Grand opening would occur in a week, he knew, and had already coordinated that established date with the local newspapers. Meticulous consideration was lent to the type of products he wanted to price cut to jumpstart business, and he managed a considerable amount of scouting to other businesses for confirmation of popular buys. A handful of deals were struck with noncompetitive shops to post flyers or otherwise advertise his store when opening day struck.
Overall, he felt fairly good about his preparation.
He felt even better about the type of business he could find here.
Oh Destiny City, the man thought while his gaze combed the myriad faces forming the morning crowd. I quite like your climate. Crime and mortality entail desperation, and desperation makes for my favorite type of deal. It’ll be a hard and fast few years, but hopefully some of the best spent. If it steals my mind away for a moment…
He frowned, and turned his attentions to the store’s current condition: a few of the display cases remained empty, with others sparsely filled. Several boxes in varying states of open or disintegrated sat on the floor near their projected areas. Certain parts of the store looked complete enough - the instruments lining the walls, the guns arranged in their cases, the stretch of cameras and their paraphernalia - but he had much to do yet. In hopes of keeping spirits up, Isaiah blocked open the door enough for a breeze while he worked.
He set his coffee on one of the display cases, knowing that today marked another long day of shelf stocking.
s**t.
Matthew hunched his shoulders as he quickened his pace, hearing shoes in the alley behind him. His pack lay abandoned where he’d dropped it, full of its innocent cargo fresh bought from the store. Well, innocent now. Some would argue the use he put it to was not so innocent, though even that was less malicious and more for entertainment. He could be doing worse than spray painting designs on the backs of buildings, really. Like haunting the dark to drain the life out of those unlucky enough to be alone at night.
Voices raised behind him as their owners found the bag, the words sounding something like ‘Stop!’. s**t. He really didn’t need the cops to drag his a** home again today with another citation for Art to pay. At this rate, he was never going to get paid for working at the shop ever again… and that was on top of the lecture he was going to get, and the grounding. The teen darted around the corner of the building and broke out into a dead run, equally glad he was the type of kid to wear close fitting jeans with a decent belt and kind of pissed off he’d wasted what little money he did have on the paint he was never going to see again.
He counted the seconds in his head, gauging how long it would take someone running to round the corner and see him against finding a likely hiding place. He needed to disappear, and quick like.
Steel toe boots hit the concrete hard as he swept green eyes over the shop fronts, cataloguing and rejecting possible places. He needed something that looked unlikely… or might have a back exit. Too late now to think over much about it though, because they were going to see him at any moment and at that point, it would be his speed against theirs. A cracked open door beckoned and Matthew darted to it, turning sideways to slide through the opening. Forcing his feet to a much slower and more casual-seeming pace, the teen ran his hands through his hair and tried to calm his rapid breathing, casting about the interior to figure out what sort of place he’d just chosen for refuge.
Pawn shop? This hadn’t been here that long… he’d have noticed it, and the boxes confirmed it. Damn… if they were still unpacking, they were probably not open for customers, but hell if he was going back outside… Act like a curious passerby and maybe they wouldn’t toss him out on his a** rather than entertain his browsing about for a while. Turning his back to the windows in the front, Matthew gathered his bright hair over a shoulder and sidled down the side, his eyes training on what was put up without really seeing it. His ears strained for running footsteps, hands shoved deep into his pockets, as he made his way towards the back and less ease of seeing him from outside.
The sound of a hasty entrance was impossible to miss.
Isaiah raised his attention from a box packed full of clocks to see a young man, possibly legal but probably not, skidding to a casual walk inside his store. The heavy breathing and entrance to his store in particular spelled out some kind of escape, given that all signs posted outside the door and all context clues offered to the general public indicated that the store was not yet open. And were those not enough to flag the boy’s entrance, the hustling of police officers past the glass storefront offered the remainder of the story. Isaiah grinned to himself; this provided opportunity to advance at least one of his businesses.
He rose from his crouch and dusted himself off out of habit. He was dressed somewhere between industrial and gothic, with an industrial leather and mesh boat neck shirt beneath a blazer-style pinstripe jacket complete with skull buttons. It offered some business flair to the rest of his ensemble, being zippered and laced boots tucked up beneath boot-cut black pants that sported a host of eyelets and straps around the thighs. But Isaiah had no intention of opening that day, so there was no need to adopt the usual business style expected of respectable business owners.
Respectable? What a fun word.
“Whatever it was, I hope it was exciting. Unless, of course, the exciting part was the chase.” Isaiah seized the opportunity to postpone unpacking and went to retrieve his coffee. Rounding the taller shelves, he sighted the lone ‘customer’ nearing the instrument wall, where his collection of guitars, violins, trumpets, and other popular band instruments claimed their home. Don’t move, little one. You blend in perfectly right where you’re standing.
The owner continued his approach from behind at a leisurely pace, careful to avoid exacerbating already wired nerves. “As you can probably tell, I’m not open for business yet. Depending on what you did, the police might be by with a few questions about any suspicious-looking young men who were in the area. I don’t suppose there’s much harm in telling them that I haven’t seen a soul since I started unpacking.” Finally he drew to a stop beside the boy, mug still in hands, and gaze settled on some of the Fenders displayed proudly. A moment’s silence followed.
Finally he looked toward the boy, taking in the multicolored hair and punkish-eighties attire, but he ventured eye contact soon afterward. “Coffee?”
The teen stiffened, his spine ruler straight as he came to a stop and stared hard at the wall. Someone he hadn’t noticed had appeared out of the mess of boxes as the men in blue ran by outside, one set of eyes on him while the others searched nearby.
Okay. It was fine. He hadn’t been yelled at yet, which was one thing in his favor. He just had to handle this carefully and maybe he’d be tolerated for a while. Being personable was really not a skill he tended to foster… even while working, which had gotten him ‘talked to’ on more than one occasion. ********… how did people even do that? Like… talk about the weather or some s**t?
“Ah, yeah… sorry.” He said without turning, pushing his shoulders back so he wasn’t hunched up. People who acted suspicious were sure to get suspicion. Act casual… that was the key. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m harmless. Just a kid, being a kid. “They don’t appreciate budding artists, but waddaya going to do?”
Shoulders still growing into their width lifted and fell, warping the picture of a new punk band on the front. He could feel the body that came to stand beside him and Matthew glanced over with his forrest green eyes, catching a pair of golden ones below a fringe of black. For just a moment he felt a pain in his chest and he pressed his lips together at the memory, his brows drawn together as he gave the apparent shopkeeper a once over from top to bottom. He stood out in his black and silver, surprising the teen. People who owned shops tended to, as a rule, dress ‘normal’. Probably to put potential customers at ease. People who dressed like this guy tended to run more specialty places where the customers favored the same. Either he didn’t care about the comfort of his customers or he was confident his store would draw people in despite his appearance. Maybe both. Or maybe he just ran the books and left the interfacing to an employee.
Matthew’s fingers were blue tinted at the tips when he pulled his hands out of his pockets to tug his fishnet sleeves straight past the leather bracelets he wore. Really should wash those… they were a dead give away if anyone stopped him to ask awkward questions. Maybe a coffee shop bathroom would service on the way home. He glanced at the mug the other held and shook his head, fingertips running through the tail of green-tipped hair he’d pulled over his shoulder. Color was fading… he should fix that later tonight.
“Ah… no, thanks. I don’t drink coffee, really. I’ll get out of your hair in a moment and let you get back to unpacking. I’m sure you don’t need some punk a** kid getting in the way.”
”Budding artists like to pick the most exciting canvases and uses mediums that don’t often wash away in the rain. That is to say, I’ve never seen the police chase off a street artist using chalk. It’s mostly just the ones using spray paint.” How much were graffiti fines? Something exorbitant. He couldn’t remember.
“When I lived in Chicago, I knew one of those artist types. His favorite hobby was finding one of the largest buildings under construction that he could and leaving the largest tag possible. He was pretty good at it, too. Great runner.” He took a sip of coffee; it tasted bitter with the memory. “Stupidly, though, he started selling his services to gangs. He was good enough at outrunning the cops and leaving some high quality, legible tags, so I guess he figured it was easy money. Did one for the Latin Kings, I believe, but he didn’t know the turf boundaries too well so he put it in… Almighty Saints’ jurisdiction. Or someone, I don’t remember. It started some s**t between the two parties, and he became one of the first casualties. Just a little lesson on how being a budding artist can get dangerous.” Whether true or not was impossible to determine.
Isaiah’s gaze combed over his intruder for a second before he moved on from standing next to him. Fidgety one. I wonder if I make him nervous. How interesting. The cops had recently passed, though, and neither had yet doubled back to ask about youths coming through.
Nailed fingers tapped against the ceramic mug in a pattern as he returned to the box of clocks. Idly he wished the lot of them would tick in some kind of timeless cacophony. The mug found its place on one of the finished display counters and he set about lifting a handmade cuckoo clock from the Schwarzwald region. He could remember, already, the old woman who traded it in tears. “You can stay or leave at your discretion. It doesn’t bother me either way.
“What does bother me is coffee. Did you know a single cup of this cheap s**t coffee is eighty calories? Eighty. That’s about… half the calories of a vegetable barley soup. Of course, once you add cream and sugar, that puts it over a hundred. It’s not too far from Coke now.” Isaiah crossed the room to a display case sitting a few feet from an undecorated wall and laid the clock atop the new glass. While the clock gleamed, it looked slightly fingerprinted.
“But don’t let me ramble. If you intend to stay a minute, then tell me your name. If you’re feeling adventurous, maybe add why you thought it was such a good idea to dash into an empty storefront.”
Blue fingertips rubbed together before Matthew shoved them back into his pockets, tucking them down deep in the denim. What fun was something that washed away with the first rain? The fun was in leaving a mark that told others you’d been there, that you existed and you had a mind and opinions. The story of the artist in Chicago earned a face from the teen as he scrunched up his nose.
“I’m not interested in getting mixed up with a gang, even for easy money.” There was enough bullshit going on here already, the last thing he needed was clueless civilians with guns fighting over stupid s**t and getting him involved. He had bigger worries, bigger threats. People who could put their hands into your chest like sliding fingers through water and pull out the very soul of you to hold in their palm. They could shove chaos into you like breathing and change you… what did gangbangers have against that?
The owner moved away and Matthew slid a glance over to watch him go. He pulled a clock out of a box and fiddled with it before launching into a strange complaint about the caloric content of coffee, of all things.
“Matthew.” He offered when the bargain for staying was a name. Small price to pay. “If coffee has too many calories, why do you drink it?”
The concept had never been one he’d put much thought into… his family was naturally on the slim side and what genetics didn’t take care of, his adventures around the city took care of the rest. He drank coke when he wanted to and even had a donut when he wanted something sweet. None of it stuck around to be problematic. He shrugged as he turned to brace a hip against the counter, falling into a lazy sort of slouch in contrast to the way the toe of his boot bounced restlessly.
“The door was open, I wanted to get out of the sun. Why not come in here? Why didn’t you have the door locked, if you didn’t want people to come in?”
”Isaiah,” he offered back, and withdrew his business card from a small case that sat flush against his left thigh. Withdrawing the card, he ventured back to where the boy lingered and laid it upon the nearest display case. The question concerning coffee earned a wistful smile, but he started back toward his current project while he responded.
“That is always the question, isn’t it? There are other alternatives to coffee with less calories or better taste. Chicory is a comparable alternative with similar calories and benefits, but a different taste. Avitae makes caffeinated water to circumvent the caloric intake. So why coffee, if I don’t like its caloric content and I prefer tea for flavor? Two reasons: one, I have nothing else here to drink but shitty Folgers, and two, I need the calories to hit a specific balance.” The game of reaching calorie counts is a shitty one, but a game I play willingly.
Starving is an art, and I do it well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
Isaiah smiled to himself enigmatically. It’s about cheating your metabolism, but keeping it alive. Playing the slow burn to your advantage. Smolder just enough to keep warmth.
“I could talk for days about food.” The last of the clocks came out of the box and he lined them up in their respective cases. Some of the merchandise demanded restructuring to fit in an aesthetic manner, but he managed it. Many more boxes remained, expecting their own careful consideration for their contents. He loathed to consider the brunt of the work left to do.
“Refresh my memory, Matthew. At what point did I say that I didn’t want company?” The coffee was carried again, sipped reluctantly, and retired to a nearby shelf while he addressed another box. “It was stuffy in here, firstly. This place has been closed down for a count of years, door locked and never opened again, after the last lessee shot himself in the back office. Quite a mess, I suppose. Certainly created a fiasco for the leasing agent. No one’s bothered with the place until I moved in - and rightfully so, with a story like that and the plethora of openings in Destiny City thanks to the high mortality rate. Curious how all this talk of monsters and renegades hasn’t deterred anyone from the streets, but the stigma of a suicide would repel anyone who considered this place.
“Beyond that, it’s a nice day, and if people intended to walk in… Well, I could use hired help at some point. ‘Grand opening’ and all that implies need for more warm bodies. I don’t suppose you know anyone looking for a job, do you? If not, maybe you can do me a favor and spread the word. It could work out well for both of us.”
The teen’s eyebrow went up and he tilted his head. Did the guy have some kind of medical condition? It didn’t seem like something you should ask someone you’d just met, buuuuut he did bring up the whole thing. If it was supposed to be a secret, why mention it at all?
Foodie? He didn’t look the type, really… too thin and not nearly hipster enough. His eyes traveled over the clocks as they went onto their shelves. He could care less about the clocks, but it was interesting to watch in a vague sort of way.
“Is there a reason you’re trying to balance calories?” Matthew said as he shifted, darting a glance at the back room and away again. It… kind of gave him the creeps, thinking about a corpse sitting back there, but… also kind of cool at the same time. Or would have been if this hadn’t been an active shop. An abandoned building seemed more fitting and would have been something he’d be tempted to poke around in.
“I don’t know anyone, I’ve got a job, and I doubt you’d want any of my friends working here. They’re a bunch of punks and trouble makers, like me. Some of your stuff would probably walk away, for the fun of it.” He gave a lopsided grin as he straightened up and wandered closer to the front windows, sharp eyes scanning the outside. No cops in sight, but it was still a bit soon to break cover. “You should put a sign up in the window, you’d probably have better luck. Though… you might want to leave out that part about the old owner killing himself in the back.”
He turned back, in profile to the light from outside.
“No one here believes in monsters.” Matthew said, carefully nonchalant. “And the ‘renegades’ are more interested in fighting each other… if you stay out of their way, keep your eyes on your own s**t, you’re fine. And not wandering around at night, I guess. That helps, but I’ve heard there are areas of Chicago and New York that are pretty ******** dangerous too, so ya know, it’s whatever.”
Isaiah smiled. While not of happiness, or connection, his smile bespoke fascination and, as if leading Matthew down a particular path, approval. His smile spoke of come closer, of you’re interesting. It traveled to his eyes, a rare feat by Isaiah’s perspicacious nature, and there it lingered for a time as the smile itself began to fade.
Matthew asked if he had reason for counting calories, to which he answered, simply, “yes”. He allowed a couple seconds of silence to linger after his confirmation.
Isaiah paused, cocked his head to the side, and let his gaze fall to half-lidded while he watched the traffic reflected off the glass face of the clock on the wall. Cars passed as shadows over the otherwise seamlessly bright window reflection. “I suppose I misspoke, or gave the wrong impression. I don’t always look for traditional workers. You see, I could find many wheedling, destitute college kids to mind the register or clean up the displays. Work of that nature only takes a sign in the door, like you said. But, you see, I collect stories as much as I collect trinkets. Prized possessions peddling impossibly phenomenal and preposterous spiels.” His bony fingers laced together in a lattice that hovered in midair, just beyond his stomach. His pinkies jutted out, as if unable to bend. “But sometimes, those stories cannot be bought. Not with money.”
His gaze slowly transitioned from shadow traffic to Matthew himself, on whom his pupils lingered with unnatural interest. “People like to assume that I’m gifted with speech. People in my position might say that it’s a matter of knowing the right question to ask, or the right phrase to say. It is, if I can put it this way, exactly the opposite. Knowing what to keep to myself, what to hold back, in this case, is what has earned me that distinction. Now, you look like quite an astute young man. Surely you can understand the silent connotations here.”
So nobody believes in monsters. That is a lie, my little fugitive. “And about your comment on monsters… I believe you’re quite wrong.” Nailed fingers touched down on the display case and traced along the glass top as he paced the L-shaped fixture. “Everyone believes in monsters. The renegades are, in part, monsters. Paul Bundy, Charles Albright, David Carpenter, Christopher Wilder, Charles Manson… All monsters. Child molesters are monsters. Wife beaters. Women who abandon their young. Burglars, liars, cheaters… Me. You. We’re all monsters to someone. But that’s all tangential, isn’t it? We’re talking around the point of bona-fide mythological beasts roaming the streets. To that, I concede to your point.” A single nail tap on the glass punctuated the discussion.
The mention of New York soured his mood, but he tried to smother it in the dirty chore of politeness. He turned his back to the boy just then, and resumed unpacking the next box of odds and ends.
There was something about the man’s smile… maybe it was the combination of his singular reply with the way it spread across his face, but it did not feel the way normal people smiled. Matthew wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to know what Isaiah was thinking about while he smiled like that. It would probably creep him out. The teen’s chin lifted defiantly, but he chose not to comment, turning instead to reach for the business card that had been left for him. He flipped the card stock between long fingers as he looked it over.
The card’s flipping slowed to something more deliberate as he listened and it was a long moment before green eyes rose, holding a different expression now. It was more guarded and deeper this time, wary.
Stories, hmm? Stories about what, I wonder. The shopkeeper was hinting at something there, he said as much. It almost made him wonder if this man knew something about ‘renegades’ that were known as Senshi, or if it were something more mundane. Business secrets? Blackmail material? It was hard to say… he didn’t have much experience along those lines. Or, was it people with stories that he wanted to surround himself with and stock in his store?
“Well those kind of monsters are an everyday occurrence. You don’t have to look far for those. The other kind are just over active imaginations running wild.” Should he be finding out how much this man knew that he wasn’t supposed to know? Did he really care? It suggested effort being expended, both in the ferreting out and in the dealing with him if it turned out to be true. I’d rather believe he is what he appears to be and forget suspicions. Let someone higher in rank worry about him if they want to, it’s above my pay grade.
Matthew shrugged as he straightened up and tucked the card into his back pocket. He debated producing one of his own, but discarded that idea. A Florist shop didn’t fit well with the image he tried to put out and after the way the guy had smiled at him, on top of seeing him avoiding the police, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted him knowing where he lived and worked.
Huh… mentioning those cities bothered him. Bad history? Is that why he came to DC? People are stupid to come here, but the flow never seems to stop.
“There are lots of stories to be had here, so I suppose you won’t be disappointed. You’ll probably get hundreds of them as people come in with their grandmother’s priceless china ugly-a**-rabbit.” He said with a smarmy grin, tossing his head to get his bangs out of his eyes. “Good luck with that.”
”I did not move here for the quantity.” But explaining that I moved here to escape a quandary invites more questions than I’m interested in answering. He knew that, as with any locale, he needed to ferret through ceaseless tides of s**t and cheaters that intended to grab a better deal than what their wares were worth. The sentimental expected a pretty penny for the items that don’t matter to the general populace. The greedy and easily duped demanded high prices for worthless relics obtained through eBay. And then there were the shrewd, who argued prices down to a bare margin above his original purchase price. All of these challenges would be accounted for in time, beyond a teenager’s obvious and unsolicited suppositions.
When he looked back toward the teen, his interest had waned to cool politeness. “Your company was well received, Matthew, but I’m afraid it’s time to start unpacking the firearms. Federal laws are fairly strict on firearms licensing, and while it pains me to say this, you will need to return to the wide world of Destiny City and its monster stories for the time being. But, you have my card, and business should be open in a count of days, so if you find yourself at a loss for work or in possession of an item with quite a sordid past, then come see me.”
In time, he supposed, the police might circle around. If anything on the inventory list had disappeared in the interim, then it would determine the course of his conversation with them. Unless Matthew sought the rise out of being pursued by cops, he expected that everything should remain in its place - wrongdoers typically sought cooldown periods after a close call like this.
So he returned to his endless task, and proceeded to the front of the store so he might watch the teen be on his way.
Matthew felt the tone of the place change and he knew when it was time to move on. Isaiah’s patience had waned, there was no sense in testing the limits of his hospitality.
The teen saluted the shopkeeper with two fingers to his forehead, a roguish smile on his face as he slouched towards the front door. “If I hear something of interest, maybe I’ll bring it back for you. As thanks for letting me loiter in the shade. Good luck with your opening and whatnot, Isaiah.”
A careful glance around showed no authority figures waiting in ambush, so Matthew left the shop in more or less good spirits, heading cautiously back to where he’s left his paint. It was unlikely it’d still be there, but it didn’t hurt to scout the place and see. It wasn’t like paint, or money, grew on trees.
Whimsical Blue
