For ashyperfume

[trainwrecked]

It took a while, before he dialed the phone on the card. Weeks, he thought, he wasn't very good at keeping up with the dates. Or, rather, he didn't care that much.

But time had passed since the party. He'd memorized the information, then burned the card - in his experience already, anything after the last wipe wasn't going away, so he was using what part of his memory he could. Extensively.

In the end, though, he just picked a street phone and punched the number.

"Ms. Fukuyama?" Yes, she'd told him to call her Fuu. He couldn't be sure she'd pick up the phone herself. "This is James Banes."

That was how normal conversations went, wasn't it?

Comments

[ashyperfume]

Slight amusement flickered through the tone -- though it was genuine amusement. He might have caught the click of her heels against the floor in the background as she rose, clicked the lock on the door. "You crash a party, take my card, and call from overseas to ask how I've been after several weeks."

More quietly, "Maybe I should be asking that question of you."

[trainwrecked]

His response was quick, and there was something. More defensiveness than anger. "I don't know better questions."

No, that wasn't quite true.

"I don't know when to use the questions that I do know."

He also wasn't answering her not-quite-question. He paused for a moment, then pointed out quietly, "I didn't take you card. You gave it to me."

[ashyperfume]

"You accepted it." There was no defensiveness in her tone; it receded back into statement of quiet fact. She wanted to know why, but there was no point in such a question . . . not when she suspected he didn't know any more than she did.

His defensiveness was a reminder . . . whatever conversation lay between them, she couldn't approach it in the usual ways. He didn't work in the usual ways. For the moment there was no use in being flippant, light. He wouldn't understand.

She leaned back in her chair, moistening her lips. "Where are you?"

[trainwrecked]

"Zimbabwe." The answer was almost absent-minded. Yes, the phone connection was good, but who knew how long that would last?

"I'll not be staying here much longer, though."

Which was why he wasn't worried about revealing the fact over a phone line.

[ashyperfume]

"Zimbabwe." Her eyebrows shifted upward. "I suppose that brings to mind two questions: One, why, and two, how can a man who obviously is unnerved by crowds and people in general bear to spent however many hours in place inescapably crammed with them?"

The lightest of pauses. "Not to mention the issue of ID."

[trainwrecked]

Of all things, the last part amused him.

"I had a valid ID that convinced your staff when we met," he reminded her. "Why would you doubt that part?"

The traces of humor faded from his voice, however. "I'm here for the same reason I was there. Learning." In this case, it was verifying details on a very, very vague memory that had swum up in his head. "For more answers, I think asking not on the phone will be better."

Safer.

[ashyperfume]

Fuu's eyebrows shifted again, wry this time as she twisted back towards her computer and touched the pad to awaken the screen. "I doubt that part because my staff would have been checking more if you were legal to drink rather than of legal existence." The corner of her mouth lifted. "You passed, by the way."

She was quiet a moment, the only sound from her the soft tapping of her keyboard. "Oh?"

[trainwrecked]

There was a short silence on his end of the line. Where silence meant, possibly, making her aware of all the background noise there. He really was in an African country. Privacy and phones weren't things that coexisted.

It wasn't that anything was wrong.

He just. Sort of remembered the first time he drank. He shouldn't have, for so many reasons. And he certainly hadn't had to present an ID.

"Sixteen hours, or later. Where would you like to meet?"

No, just. Not talking about things over the phone was easier. Safer. Better.

[ashyperfume]

And yet on her end, without commentary, Fuu was doing what she could to tighten down the security of the line. The soft tapping of her fingers against the keys continued; her lips pressed together.

"Are you in trouble, James?" There was no judgment in the question. It was just the question, bare and open.

It was something that she needed to know, deserved to know, before this went any further.

[trainwrecked]

"Nothing remarkable recently."

No, I didn't make a mess of things in Zimbabwe, in other words. But that wasn't saying that he wasn't in trouble. That was who he was, anymore.

"Besides, serious things shouldn't be discussed over the phone."

[ashyperfume]

"I've taken care of that." She finished up work on the phone line with a last flick of the fingers, typing going still. "While I don't expect a story, if you hope for me to meet you, I believe that I at least deserve an honest yes or a no."

"Especially since although you've protected yourself on this phone line, if you are as concerned about it as you seem . . . you've certainly compromised me."

[trainwrecked]

"So long as there's no reason to connect the person you're talking to with certain things, there's nothing about you that's compromised. But the answer is nowhere near as simple as yes or no. And explaining why would connect you to those things, on the phone."

He sounded tired, for a moment.

"You don't want to get caught up in what will follow if I answer truthfully here. But I guess it's closer to 'yes' than 'no.'" Beat. "Just not the kind of 'yes' in which people might open fire at me at a random moment."

Unless he slipped. Where they could catch him.

[ashyperfume]

She was silent at that. In all probability, the answer surprised her -- not so much that there was danger involved with him; she'd expected that -- but at the degree and force of his honesty . . . what she'd asked for, but never expected to receive.

An unusual sort of man.

"Aaron's." She named a bar downtown. "It's a dive bar. I trust you can find it."

[trainwrecked]

He didn't even have to think much, when it came to time zones conversion.

"Twenty-one hundred?"

[ashyperfume]

"9:00." The response was almost idle, but no doubt that she'd made the quick calculation in her head. "Fine. Will you be the one in the mustache?"

It was Fuu. Wryness couldn't resist creeping in, if only a little.

[trainwrecked]

He wasn't sure what she was talking about for a moment, she did know what he looked like, after all...

... and then he put it together. His mouth twitched, behind the phone receiver, but his voice was as serious as when he was mentioning the hour.

"The very one." Yes, he was, in fact, capable both of thinking fast... and of traces of humor. It just wasn't something that occurred to him easily, these days, the latter one.

[ashyperfume]

Was that a joke? Had he actually played back? In full honesty, she couldn't be sure. On the one hand, the idea was absurd; on the other, he maintained such deadpan composure, even in this, that it was challenging to tell without seeing the tell-tale quirks of the mouth. She very nearly laughed outright. As it was, the wisps of humor emerged in her voice.

"9:00, then, Mr. Banes. Safe flight."