afternoon tea

[walk_ins]

Janet's apartment is a studio, but it takes the casual visitor a moment to realize that; she's set up almost-ceiling-high bookshelves to create the semblance of internal walls, partitioning off a closet-sized "bedroom" from the only slightly larger "living room" next to the kitchen. They've had full meetings here before, but not often; the abridged space can seat twelve people, but not comfortably.

When Greg arrives, stamping snow off his boots in the hallway, Tara's already ensconced on the couch with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea. "Todd can't make it," Janet says apologetically as she stands aside to let Greg in. "He called about a half-hour ago."

Comments

[walk_ins]

"We're meeting next on what, the twentieth?" Janet peers at the calendar precariously tacked to the side of one of the bookshelves.

"Think so," says Tara. "And yeah, let's add it to the list. Did you want to add that other house book too, Janet?"

She nods. "We haven't got a lot on the agenda right now, I don't think. Aside from phase two of the Minnesota lakes project."

"And the perennial," Tara adds with a sigh.

[walk_ins]

"And our new career as pirates," he says. Six.

"Oh, hey, in probably-not-related-but-really-freaky news," he adds. "Did you guys see in the paper that they found that Mafia guy who missed his courtdate?"

"Maggio? Yeah?"

"Yeah," Greg says. A Vincent Price beat. "Well. Most of him."

[walk_ins]

Janet looks slightly nauseated.

"...If I ask very nicely, can you not tell me which bits were missing?"

[walk_ins]

"Way ahead of you," Greg says. Tara smacks him on the arm, although she looks like she's sitting on a line of her own. "Oh, and the It movie," he adds, as if it jogged his memory.

[walk_ins]

Janet nods. "The new one, yeah. I read where they're setting the adult sequence today, instead of in the eighties?"

"How is that even going to work?" Tara sounds dubious.

[walk_ins]

"Well, they'll have to move the rest of it forward, too, right?" He shrugs. "Maybe there'll be more information by then."

[walk_ins]

"Hope so." Janet puts down her mug and absently gathers the cat into her lap, scratching behind his ears. "Maybe it's significant, the time change."

[walk_ins]

"Something to do with Insomnia," Greg agrees. "And Patrick Danville, and the time cycle and everything. And what was it--Dreamcatcher?--had that Pennywise Lives."

He sighs. "I know it's thematic and all, but sometimes it seems like--"

"What?" Tara says.

"Number one superfan talking again, remember," he says, gripping his mug. (Seven is a nice round number.) "It seems like everything is either a rehash of the old days or... not quite real. Not quite as solid. Anybody else getting that?"

"You talking about the books?" Tara says. "Or... everything?"

"What do you think?" he says glumly.

[walk_ins]

Nobody needs to answer that.




"So I've got an interview with this temp agency next week," Janet says, apparently to the cat in her lap.

[walk_ins]

"Oh, hey, great," Greg says. "I, um. I haven't gotten any nibbles yet." He hasn't been trying as hard as he should, he knows.

[walk_ins]

"Yeah, I'm still temping off the books in my mom's office," says Tara with a smile and a shrug, in a voice that's meant to sound easy and almost makes it. "It'll keep me in groceries till I find something better."

Rent is another story, but not one she's about to get into.

[walk_ins]

Silence puddles around them again.


"So I was looking at the High Speech database this morning," Greg says eventually. "And I realized we don't have the taheen names broken down and included. Did we have a discussion about that or was it just an oversight, I can't remember?"

"That was my call," Tara says, bristling, but only minorly. (She's the only one with any linguistics background--an oversight, in retrospect.) "Why?"

The truth is, even Janet welcomes the ensuing argument, despite her attempts to broker the peace and eventual retreat into the kitchen. It--

Well, it feels like old times.