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Thursday night at the cop bar and things are fairly quiet. The city has been almost peaceful, the summer means a lot more people are out on patios, not in low, dark pubs, and it's not the weekend yet anyway. Everyone's saving their going out money for tomorrow — just as Sharon likes it. She's come into the place for a few and to be mostly alone with her thoughts. She looks far different than the night at the Lux — this isn't an assigned, purposeful, trying to go out for the night on the town. This is the bar you stumble past and decide beer looks good after work. So, she's in her jeans and a black tank top, her light leather jacket across the back of the barchair she's perched on. A lucky strike is smoking itself out in the tray near her hand and she's nursing something amber and harsh.
The door opens, and a lanky fellow in a rumpled white dress shirt walks in. He is carrying his jacket over his arm, and his tie is hanging out of a pocket. He looks tired and hot. He wanders up to the bar, smoothly pulling a cigarette out and lighting it, the movements so smoth and choreographed that you get the feeling that he has done this so many times before, it is just muscle memory. He takesup a seat two down from Sharon at the bar. He looks over once, then again. He knows her. He recognizes her scent. He turns and gives a nod and a smile. "We met before. I'm Gene Fuchs."
And she is, again, carrying a gun on her. This time down the small of her back, hidden in a modified holster down the back of her slacks, tank top pulled over it. There's another, smaller one on her ankle too. Beneath that, she smells like some fresh, feminine soap and just a hint of vanilla mingled in with her Lucky Strike cigarettes and mid-shelf, high-rye bourbon. Blue eyes flicker up from her drink and she arches a single brow, studying his face for but a heartbeat before memory kicks in. A sly smile tugs across her lips. "I remember. I was going to teach you what you do with a cigarette. Though… I suspect you have a talented enough mouth, clearly you picked it up quick."
Gene blows out a cloud of smoke, "Sister. I've been been smoking since I was nine. I don't think I need you to show me what to do with a cigarette." His eyes show amusement. He is armed in his usual fashion. In the summer, he wears his weapon in an ankle holster, his grey slacks falling over it. "I appreciate you recognizing my talented mouth, though. " She smells nice and not too strong. "I ain't seen you here before." He leans against the bar and get a pint of the draft lager.
"Only been back in the country a few weeks… felt like coming somewhere no one would stare if I dressed like an actual person instead of some stage doll…" Sharon admits with a little shrug of too-toned, bare shoulders. Despite commenting about the country, her voice has no accent. Utterly no accent. No New York rounding, or Jersey nose. She's the completely neutral dialect of someone who's been trained to blend in so well it's become second nature. Just like breathing, and her cigarette which she had been neglecting, but now scoops up to take a long drag from.
Gene takes this all in curiously. He has a Michigan accent…more Detroit, not Upper Peninsula. "I can't imagine how you could look less like a person. " He taps the ash from his cigarette. "You're prety human looking. YOu were the other night, too. What country were you visiting? I traveled a little in my day. Not anymore."
"Most recently? Morocco. Really just a stop over, but Kashmir is lovely this time of year." Sharon offers casually, like most people take random business trips to Morocco in the middle of summer. She takes one last drag of her cigarette and then kills it in the ash tray below her hand, already burning through the filter. Once that's done, she orients her frame a bit more to face him, giving him the full look up and down. That same sectional, detailed gaze. Taking in each bump and bit, possible weapons, any old injuries he guards in his stance, the confidence of his body language. "Now you set up shop in New York? I suppose there are worst places to end up… even if you're not from here. Michigan…if I had to guess. Not upper, though… Detriot, probably. Originally."
Gene smirks. He lets her look himover as though he can feel her gaze like gentle fingers. He pays atention to what she focuses on. He's not hiding anything, though, and it's been a while since anyone has really looked at him, so he enjoys the attention in his own way. "Not Detroit, but not too far. I been here a while, though. I just moved offices. " He got kicked out of his old one, but no reason to bring that up. "I can't say I have ever been to Morocco. I have more expereince in Asia…when I was in the army. So, I'll take your word that it's a nice place." He shrugs and sort of doubts it. "This is a big city. It's sorta weird to see you again…you following me?" He smiles and winks, but pays attention to her answer.
"Spent a few years in Vietnam…never went much deeper in Asia. That was deep enough." To a layperson, it probably doesn't mean much of anything. To someone who knows their stuff, someone who carries a gun, there's probably a quickly narrowing window of guesses as to what Sharon does. She's not bothering to hide it, really. Hide in plain sight might be the method she's using. She takes one last, deep sip of her bourbon and sets it down before digging out her pack of crumpled Luckies from her back pocket. She laughs huskily at the following comment, "If I am, I'm damn good at it, considering I was in here a whole cigarette and half a drink ahead of you…"
Gene's dark eye brow rises slightly as he listens. He's got an idea. At her comment about following him, he remarks, "Best way to follow somebody. Keeps them guess ing if you are there first, right?" He looks to see how close she is to finishing her drink. He asks, "Can I get you another?" Sure it sounds sketchy, but what can he say. He's got a limited how-to-talk-to-women-in-bars vocabulary, though he is so much mroe comfortable here than the artsy fartsy bar. It shows. He owns his space rather than renting it. "And, smoking and drinking isn't a competitive sport, sister," he flashes a quick grin. "They just give your mouth something to do so you don't put your foot in it."
"I disagree. Smoking and drinking can be wonderfully competitive sports. See which'll kill you first. But then… something else might beat them to the finish line, you never know." Sharon really was almost finished with her bourbon, and her cheeks aren't high enough with color that she pounded it, so she'd probably been here at least a half an hour. She nods towards the glass. "Sure, I'll take another. Won't ever complain about a drink from a handsome man. Even if he's a little on the paranoid side…" Sharon tosses him a bit of a wink, a sardonic tone behind her husky words. There is something quite ironic in her calling HIM paranoid. Especially the way she always keeps her chest slightly open to the door, and bar mirror in her sights. She's the sort who makes certain she can always see entirely around herself.
Sure Gene is paranoid. With his enhanced senses, though, he is comfortable that no one can sneak up on his very easily. He get the bartender's attentions, "Another one for the lady." He still has his beer that he will nurse for a while. "You should be careful calling men handsome, doll-face. We start believing it, then you can't get rid of us. So…you really hear just to get a drink? Or do you have other things in mind?"
The woman cocks a brow quietly, "…what other things do you do at a bar? I dunno about you, shamus… But I'm off work." Maybe she pegged him right, maybe he is actually a PI. Maybe she got it totally wrong, but Sharon doesn't often get things wrong, so she watches him a bit closer when she uses that old fashioned title for his assumed profession. "And I just call it like I see it. Good to have a friendly, nice lookin' face around…" She shrugs, scooping up her fresh two fingers, two rocks of bourbon. "Or maybe it's the bourbon." She raises the glass to him in a silent toast and knocks back a good sip.
He laughs a little dryly. "Yeah, I have had women tell me I look better after a couple of bourbons." The smile spreads a little. "Other things like picking up information on people. You seem like a lady with a mission. " He raises his glass of beer and takes a drink followed by another puff of smoke. "But I guess everybody's entitled to the day off. I'm thinking we're a lot alike, you and me."
A husky chuckle. "No mission now. Off work. Nothing but enough drink to maybe sleep. I guess you could call that a mission." Sharon shrugs, trying to make it sound like a joke, but it isn't, not really. There are too many ghosts behind her eyes. Her head then tilts casually, giving him a once over again, but this isn't the pick apart his weapons kind. It's both deeper and somehow less intrusive. Almost like the caress of a gaze instead of a bodily search. "…A lot alike? How so?"
Gene rubs his hand down his face then staires at a small puddle of beer on the bar as he tries to put words to it that make sense. "We watch and notice things, especially about people. We both carry." He pauses. "We're both tired." He turns slowly to look into her gaze as though checking to see if he has it right. There's not question in his eyes, however. He's pretty confident he has it right. "But there's other ways we're not. "I'm running after two-bit fraudsters and cheating spouse…the slime. I have a feeling you deal with a different level of garbage." His lips twitch into a smile around his smoke, then he puts it out. "They just found out these things cause cancer, you know?"
When he calls her tired — well, both of them tired — he'll see the smallest twitch around her eyes which pretty much says he nailed it. For a moment, she looks a decade older than her thirty something years. Sharon doesn't speak for a long time, she just takes a deeper, long breath of her cigarette and then unfolds from the bar, finishing up her bourbon with a long gulp. "I somehow doubt it'll be the cigarettes that get me. Nice… seein' you again. Thanks for the bourbon." ANd then she's moving for the door. He hit too close to him… nailed her right good, and so, of course, she has to run. Can't let anyone beneath the callouses, then she might just care again.
Gene watches her leave with a little bit of a sigh. He will drink his beer, then pay up. "Way to go, Fuchs. " He says to himself. He goes to put himself to bed…or to couch, actually.