[Closed] Fetch the Bolt Cutters

[Chrysanthe Palmifer]

Even Later, 7 Bethas, 2720
Pargeter and Sons Flat Glass Factory, Old Rose Harbor

Chrysanthe flexed her fingers out and grimaced; something hurt rather awfully in the midst of her hand, a sharp, stinging sort of pain. It was that, oddly enough, which threatened to push her over the edge; it rather welled up somewhere in her chest, and for a brief, horrible moment she thought it might spill over into her eyes.

She absolutely refused to cry in front of Charlie Ewing, Chrysanthe told herself, and quite firmly. She was not in the least given to crying; she preferred to save it for truly awful situations, not irritating mechanics with an oddly cruel streak to their humor, no matter how late at night she was forced to deal with them. She took a deep breath, studying her hands; her nails were ragged and rather awful, but that, at least, was nothing new; it had been a struggle to keep them neat ever since she started at the glass factory. She tried to touch them up herself before she saw Amaryllis, at least; somehow the fact that her nails were generally messy was something she wished, badly, to keep from her sister.

Along with some of the rest. There was nothing Amaryllis could do; Chrysanthe saw no sense in worrying her sister with the behavior of Howie Pargeter.

The pain had gone, a bit; her hand ached, rather, but Chrysanthe found it manageable, and she had at least curbed her desire to cry. She could at least be thankful it had been as fleeting as it had been intense.

Chrysanthe found she had precisely nothing to say in response to Ewing’s little comment. She did not bother to look at him, though nor did she pick the wrench back up just yet. Her hand still ached, and it seemed to hurt worse at the prospect of continuing. She was, still, crouched uncomfortably on the ground, but neither did she think she could bear lowering herself back down if she rose, so she simply held there.

She held no particular ill-will towards Mr. Grangerton; neither did she much care to defend him against what she supposed was an insult. Nor, frankly, could she bother to be insulted by his sarcastic compliment regarding her personality. That he did not like her was clear – had been, from the first few moments of their interaction, for whatever reasons of his own. Likely, Chrysanthe thought, sourly, because he was a malignant little toad, overenamored of his own eyelashes.

Thus bolstered, Chrysanthe picked the wrench back up, and set back to it, aching hands and all. She felt as if – perhaps the last half hour for the first time all night – as if they were coming around the bend. The floor, finally, seemed to be getting less messy rather than more; they were putting things together, rather than taking them apart. A bit longer, Chrysanthe told herself, and she could bid this wretched night farewell. She did not glance at the windows to see whether the sky was beginning to lighten – whether the choice might be taken from her – but rather chose, instead, to hold out hope, just a little longer.

[Charlie Ewing]

Bethas 7, 2720 - Wee Hours
Pargeter and Sons Flat Glass Factory, ORH

To his latest comment, Ms. Palmifer said nothing at all. Well that was just perfectly boring.

Really? Charlie usually preferred to work alone. Tippy wasn't much of a conversationalist, so Charlie had developed a habit of talking to himself just to hear a voice at all. Ms. Palmifer was mostly the victim of this particular habit more than any malice on Charlie's part. He just didn't know what to say when someone else was around to hear him, and being an absolute prick was something of a default mode. It worked, usually, to get someone to talk back. Not, like, pleasantly. But they usually responded. It was tragically juvenile, and depressingly effective.

Charlie clicked his tongue in irritation and kept at his work. Fine, that was fine. She didn't want to talk about the machine, didn't want him to make jokes about his own fucking face, couldn't take a joke about not being such great company herself. For all that she seemed perfectly willing to tell him he was a dick; at least he knew it. At least he had been doing it on purpose. He had rather thought she could take it a bit better than it seemed. Disappointing.

At least she had put the wrench down. She was going to hurt herself in her stubbornness--and for what? It wasn't like she had any aspirations of adding "mechanic" to her resume that Charlie could see. A misguided sense of responsibility, possibly, or just some weird kind of pride. Ms. Palmifer picked the wrench back up and Charlie had to stop. Something about watching her do it annoyed him.

"Look," he said, turning to her with a frown. How did you even talk to a woman about this? How did you talk to women at all, for that matter? Charlie didn't exactly have a lot of female friends. Scratch that, Charlie didn't have a lot of friends period. He considered briefly how he would have said any of this to Laur, but while Ms. Palmifer was equally as humorless as his younger sister could be, that was about where the similarities ended. He stopped and his lip curled into a frustrated sneer. His bright blue eyes narrowed.

"Ms. Palmifer, you are going to fuck up your hands if you keep at it like you are." Ah, fuck! What did he care? It was just so stupid. So stupid it was distracting, to watch her wince her way through something he could finish on his own. Not quite as fast, sure, but he could do it now. There wasn't much left. Charlie glanced at the window and back. It didn't matter to him if it was done by sunrise; nor had anyone told him it mattered for the job.

"I don't know if you're trying to prove some shit, or what, but the only other person here is me, and I don't give a fuck if you keep battering against this or not. So you might as well not, and just let me do it, because it's my godsdamn job, and I'm used to it." This was ridiculous. Just absolutely fucking ridiculous. If she got in his case for his language, he thought he would lose his mind, but he really didn't care. Charlie resisted the urge to scrub his hands through his hair, then thought--sack it, whatever. He would wash when he got home, right? Which wouldn't be too long now.

"You know what? Nevermind. Forget it. Be ridiculous if you want." His irritation and his tiredness were rapidly outstripping whatever energy he'd had when he arrived; without something to keep him distracted (which had been, up until a moment ago, trying to get a rise out of Ms. Palmifer) he was just aggravated. It was her fault, somehow. Probably. She was the only one here, after all.

[Chrysanthe Palmifer]

Even Later, 7 Bethas, 2720
Pargeter and Sons Flat Glass Factory, Old Rose Harbor

Chrysanthe stopped.

She glanced over at Ewing, frowning; she looked down at her aching hands, and then back at the mechanic. “I…” Chrysanthe began, but he did not hesitate; he went straight through, cursing steadily, climbing to the peak of his point, and rapidly scaling down the other side. She had not much minded the plethora of curses let loose in her general vicinity, aimed, as they were, at the machine. These felt rather more personal; he was not cursing her, not quite, but she found them much harder to ignore.

Chryanthe swallowed, unevenly; she set the wrench down, and curled her hands together in the lap of her apron. She felt oddly chastised; she could not even have said what it was he was criticizing. Her wrench technique? Her work ethic? She didn’t think he’d have spoken to a man so, but she couldn’t quite summon up the anger she was sure she ought to feel.

“It’s my project; I only meant to help,” Chrysanthe said. Her voice sounded oddly small to her own ears, half-swallowed; it sounded soft, and rather distressingly feminine. She did not say anything else; she could think of a variety of things she might have said, but she did not think that any of them would strength her position. In fact, she rather thought she had worsened it already, and she did not wish to do so further.

Chrysanthe sat, a moment more; she rose, then, unevenly, her legs shaking with the effort of it, and made her way away from the rollers. She went back to the table, and sat on the chair next to it, long blonde braids resting against her back. She rubbed at her hands with one of the cleaner rags, and set it down; she picked up the cup of cold tea. The sugar had somewhat congealed at the bottom; she titled the cup, and watched a bit of it run from side to side.

Carefully, slowly, she swirled it around, as if whatever energy she could make with the motion might be enough to coax the sugar to dissolved once more. She watched it, intently, as if the experiment were of great import; some of the white grains at the edge yielded, slowly, whisking away into the cold, bitter liquid.

Chrysanthe stopped; she set the tea cup down on the table, and curled her filthy hands together in her lap once more. She looked down at them, and then up at the windows, and then she turned her gaze to the enormous Fourcault machine stretching up from the floor of the factory, some of its heart laid bare where she had removed the rollers – where, still, Chrysanthe thought, tiredly, they needed to be replaced – and all the bricks around it. She thought, too, of the foreman’s careful concerns, and only then did she look away.

[Charlie Ewing]

Bethas 7, 2720 - Wee Hours
Pargeter and Sons Flat Glass Factory, ORH

Charlie frowned when she set the wrench down. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she looked... She looked like, he didn't know, oddly--like she had listened to him? Then she spoke in the tiniest voice he had heard from her yet; a far cry from the biting way she'd been speaking to him all night. Charlie felt strangely embarrassed and he cleared his throat, scratching at a space above his eyebrow.

Well, shit. She had taken that a lot harder than he'd expected. Charlie had half imagined she would just tell him to go fuck himself, or however she would have put that same sentiment anyway, and continued as she had been. He liked being listened to, but maybe not quite in this way.

"Yeah, well. Uh." Maybe he'd been too harsh. No, wait, what? He didn't care. She had been a real bitch all night. Admittedly, he was provoking her. But still! Charlie Ewing only cared about one person's feelings, and those were his own. Usually. Most of the time. A vast majority of the time. His frowned deepened. This was deeply unpleasant.

Ms. Palmifer got up and Charlie sort of stood there and watched her do it, halfway between turning back to the work and not. He wanted a cigarette, but couldn't quite bring himself to fish them out of his pocket. Whatever she was attempting with the dregs of her cold tea didn't seem to work, although she concentrated on it quite fiercely.

Charlie looked up at the ceiling, then down to his boots. He felt itchy in his own skin. He looked at her again; Ms. Palmifer had her hands folded neatly in her lap. He swore again, but directed at nothing in particular. This was infuriating.

"Alioe's tits, I need another smoke. Do you..." Charlie squinted at her from where he stood. "Do you want one?"

He didn't feel bad. He didn't feel bad, so he wasn't apologizing. This was not an apology cigarette, he was just being polite. If she wanted to take what he said to heart so strongly, that was fine. It was all true. The idiot was going to hurt herself for no reason. He fished his cigarette case from his pocket again; there were only two of them left.

"You have been helping," he added without looking at her. Because he was busy concentrating on getting his cigarette lit, of course. No other reason at all. He struck a match and managed to burn himself slightly in the process. "Shit!" Irritatedly, he tried again. This time he managed, and he looked at her with an eyebrow raised.

[Chrysanthe Palmifer]

Even Later, 7 Bethas, 2720
Pargeter and Sons Flat Glass Factory, Old Rose Harbor

Chrysanthe had thought he would gloat. She had not looked at Ewing, thinking that to do so would be to see him smirking. She was not quite sure why he would have laughed – but, then, very few of the things he had said to amuse himself tonight had seemed to her funny. He had been in earnest with his warnings, or at least she had thought so when she had listened to them; nonetheless, she expected him to count it as a victory, and to be pleased by it.

Nothing came from him; she did not look for it. There was a muttered curse, and Chrysanthe waited for the sound of his wrench once more.

Instead, there was a quiet sort of fumbling noise, and then an offer for a cigarette. Chrysanthe glanced over. His rather sharp sort of face was set in an uncomfortable frown. She glanced down at the case, looking at the cigarette rolled inside. He was fumbling with a match; he cursed once more at the lick of flame against his fingers.

“Sure,” Chrysanthe said, quietly, after a moment.

She got up; it wasn’t quite as hard as she had expected. She came over, hand extended; she didn’t reach into the case, but waited for him to hand her the cigarette as he had before. “Thanks,” Chrysanthe said; she tried something like a smile, and it wasn't as hard as she'd expected.

She took it back to the table; she leaned her hip against the edge once more, and lit another match, breathing in the first of the awful smoke. She exhaled it out; she glanced away, and then back over at Ewing, who was determinedly looking at nothing in particular.

Chrysanthe lowered the cigarette from her mouth, holding it, letting a little curl of smoke drift; the glow in the other end cooled, in the break. She shifted, slightly, doing her best to find a comfortable position against the edge of the table. Good Lady, but she was filthy, exhausted, and utterly demoralized.

Chrysanthe sighed. “Is there any chance,” she began, slowly; she glanced up at the windows again, half-expecting to see the sky outside lightening at any moment. It was surprisingly dark; she felt as if the night had lasted a whole’s day worth of houses, already. It scarcely seemed possible for it still to be dark. She looked back at Ewing. “Is there any chance that we can finish by morning?” She asked. “The shift starts round nine. I’d rather it be done well than rushed poorly, but –”

Chrysanthe’s teeth felt awful; her tongue, too, thick and coated with the dregs of sugary tea, and the grime of the tobacco smoke. She grimaced at the taste of them, and went on. “It was my overconfidence,” she admitted, “to think this could be done in a night. The foreman will be blamed, I suspect, if the day’s quota isn’t met, even if the fault is mine. I’ll be blamed, too, but I don’t care so much about that.” She sighed; she took another drag on the cigarette.

She had not asked; she had not asked because the only thing worse than a late start was to have installed the machinery incorrectly. That could, Chrysanthe knew, ruin the entire day’s production – maybe more than one, if the glass grew brittle slowly, and the damage not known until too late. She had not asked, too, because to hear that the answer was no felt rather as if it would drain the last of what little energy she had. Now, though – she braced herself for it, but with nothing left to give, it seemed as if it mattered very little indeed to know.

[Charlie Ewing]

Bethas 7, 2720 - Wee Hours
Pargeter and Sons Flat Glass Factory, ORH

Well she took the cigarette, and that was something. Charlie shifted his weight; hearing Ms. Palmifer thank him for anything at all made him itch between his shoulder blades. Like she had misinterpreted his politeness as an apology after all, or something. The cigarettes were cheap, so it didn't matter that he'd given two away now. Charlie took a contemplative drag, and didn't think about anything particularly hard. His specialties: mechanics, looking pretty, and not thinking too deeply about anything he said or did.

He glanced at the window as well when she asked. He couldn't decide if it looked lighter than it had before, or if that was just a trick of the eye. Exhaustion did funny things to the brain. Charlie found that he was tempted, sorely, to tell her to go fuck herself and that the work would be done when it was done. That probably would undo anything the cigarette had done, which would be a waste of having given it to her. Which, again, he had just done to be polite. Still, even he knew there was a difference between being hilariously cutting and just being mean for no reason. Usually.

Charlie looked at the work that remained. He had no idea what time it was currently, or how far away morning was. It was an amount of work he could complete alone; he was less confident in the timeframe. He rolled his head around on his neck, which made a truly ghastly kind of clicking noise, and he thought about it. It would be difficult, and likely not possible.

"Ms. Palmifer, I think I'm insulted. You sound like you doubt my skills." He gestured at her sternly with the still-lit cigarette; ash dumped itself on the floor. "I will have you know that not only am I charming and stunningly pretty, I am also a genius." The self-satisfied smirk had returned to his face. He tossed his hair dramatically; the motion made two of his earrings clink together softly, and also reminded him that his shoulders were bothering him. Nothing a hard day's sleep couldn't cure.

"I'll get it done," he promised, then mentally kicked himself for it. "But I'm charging extra for the rush," he added, for good measure. If she thought he was joking, she would find out how deadly serious he was in the morning.

"Since I don't want you over here getting your grubby little hands all over everything," nevermind of course that his own were almost as vile by now, and possibly also smaller given she was generally speaking bigger than he was, "help me out: keep me entertained. Or I will fall asleep on these godsdamned rollers."

[Chrysanthe Palmifer]

Unfortunately Early, 7 Bethas, 2720
Pargeter and Sons Flat Glass Factory, Old Rose Harbor

This time – Chrysanthe couldn’t have said what was changed – Ewing’s rather dramatic self-promotion made her smile. She smiled; she took a long drag on the cigarette to try and stifle it, but didn’t quite succeed. She nodded when Ewing said he’d charge extra, glancing up; it was out of the company’s pocket, and not her own, and she rather felt he would deserve it, if he could truly get the Fourcault machine back together by nine.

Chrysanthe’s smile twitched wider at the mention of her grubby little hands. She glanced down at them, her long fingers and scuffed and dirty nails, then down at his own hands, which were rapidly becoming just as filthy. She shifted slightly at the request for entertainment, taking a deep breath.

“All right,” Chrysanthe reached up to adjust her headband, and grimaced – but it was too late, and she had smudged lady-knew-what on her forehead and the thin wisps of hair not quite contained. “Tocks,” she groaned, lowering her hands. Her braids swished behind her, catching on her elbow, and, giving up, Chrysanthe reached and gathered them up, winding them into a sort of bun on her back of her head. She had only just washed it the day before; she had hoped to go another few days at least without having to wash it and brush it dry for what felt like hours in front of the fire.

But – too late now; she would never get this wretched filth out of it without washing it entirely, and so she thought she might as well get it out of her way. She had wished, all night, rather desperately, to have it put up; she had regretted not thinking of it before she had started working for at least a house.

“Let me put some more tea on,” Chrysanthe said, lowering her hands from her now-grease-smudged hair. She put more water from the canister, and turned the flame on once more. “Uh – entertainment. Have you read the novel Francoschietto, Mr. Ewing?”

At Mr. Ewing’s rather skeptical comment that he had not, Chrysanthe nodded and kept on. “It is the story of Vittorio Francoschietto, and the terrible monster that he creates, which haunts him for all his days. The story is told in the form of letters from former AAF Captain Robertson Waltoning to his sister in Vienda, Margaret Waltoning Savillant. He begins with a discussion of his exploratory party and their attempts to explore Anhau, which are going rather poorly. He writes to his sister that, in the mist, he and his men saw a kenser cart driven by what looked like a man, and yet was far larger than any man had ever been. Some hours later, they stumble upon a man wounded by hatchers, emaciated and travel-worn, lying in the woods – this is Francoschietto, who tells them the story of his own misguided life.”

Chrysanthe went on; the tea kettle whistled, and she made another round of tea, and went on still. Her voice grew hoarse and evened out, and she wound through the story – through Francoschietto’s terrible history, and the Creature he made.

“A living conversation spell written by Francoschietto himself,” Chrysanthe said, half-hoarse; she sipped her tea again, cleared her throat, and went on, “in which he pleaded with the mona, and exhorted them to his cause; he says that he cast for what seemed hours, describing to them in every way he could think of life, building together reanimation spell after reanimation spell. At last he felt the spell take hold; and at last, too, he doubted what he had set out to do, and his will faltered. He claims that the mona took out their humor on him for his weakness, for upon its animation the creature, which he had built to be beautiful, was impossibly hideous…”

Chrysanthe had read Francoschietto for the first time at perhaps age ten, when she had been tall enough to reach the top shelves where some well-meaning governess had long-ago stored the books she considered inappropriate for a young girl. She remembered reading the first few pages of it and liking it, well enough that she had hidden it in the window seat outside her room, where she had discovered she could pry off one of the boards and set things inside. She had read it then, herself, in whatever hours she had, and found it terrifying and delightful; she had half-glimpsed an enormous shadowy figure in the mist outside for weeks.

She had read Francoschietto perhaps once a summer for the next few years; that copy was, of course, gone now. She had picked it up again a few years later – when in search of books to take to Gior – and she was not quite sure, now, how many times she had finished it. Enough, Chrysanthe thought, that the story had the feel of a treasured friend.

“Waltoning watches,” Chrysanthe said, her throat rather aching; she did not dare look at the windows, but she could feel the world lightening. She watched Ewing, instead, standing on the ladder and replacing another roller, “as the Creature disappears into the mists of Anhau, surrendering himself to the Hatchers; soon, he is lost in darkness and distance, and never to be seen again.”

[Charlie Ewing]

Bethas 7, 2720 - Wee Hours
Pargeter and Sons Flat Glass Factory, ORH

At last, he thought. She had smiled; Charlie couldn't have said what part did it. Maybe she was just finally acknowledging what was true all along: he was extremely delightful. Took her long enough, if so. Perhaps she was playing at hard-to-get, so to speak. A respectable game, if not one Charlie ever bothered to play in the usual sense.

He snickered a little as she groaned, adjusting her headband. He had done just the same not moments before, and while he was in fact laughing at her misfortune there was very little personal malice in it. Sweet clocking Lady though Ms. Palmifer had quite a lot of hair. Charlie's hair had barely grown long enough to tie back into what he thought of as a rather rakishly handsome ponytail and already he was tired of dealing with it. He never had understood quite how women managed it, and it seemed somewhat incongruous on the ruthlessly joyless Ms. Palmifer. Not joyless, Charlie corrected himself, but certainly uptight. His opinion on her hair changed not a whit by this correction.

She put more tea on, and then asked him if he had read some novel. Charlie turned to her, his expression a mask of perfect horror. "A novel, Ms. Palmifer? Perish the thought. I would never sully my mind with such frivolity." He did smile, or smirk rather, at the end of his expression of scandal. This was enough to reassure Ms. Palmifer of his meaning, and she continued on.

Ms. Palmifer could have said anything, and Charlie would have been fine with it. Shit, she could have read the dictionary and it possibly would have been equally as useful for his purpose. Really all Charlie needed was the sound of another human voice, something to carry on in the background while he got on with the work. It sharpened his focus and kept him on task.

Leave it to her to pick a story so particularly grim though as this Franschoschietto. For all that he had just intended to let her voice wash over him as he carried about his work, Charlie found himself at least a little entertained by the story itself. She had to pause for tea, and to soothe her throat; the work slowed down then, although only a little. Where she had read this story and why, he could not quite imagine. Although thinking on it, he would not have been overly surprised to learn that she was rather a swot in school. She seemed the type. Serious and overly self-righteous.

He commented, here and there, as she spoke, although all of his comments were pithy and more designed to show that he was listening and she should continue than to add anything to the conversation. He fell into a sort of rhythm, carrying him through the work and driven by the sound of her voice. It was almost peaceful in a strange, horrible way. As she approached the end of her story, light started to come in through the windows. So, too, was the end of the work in sight. Charlie grinned viciously at each tightening twist of his wrench. That's right, you godsdamned bastard son of a bastard of a machine; I will be done with this by morning after all.

He replaced the roller as she finished her tale. Looking down, he saw there was only one more left to go. Charlie let out a loud whoop of victory and turned on his ladder to grin at Ms. Palmifer over his shoulder. Shadows had smudged themselves under his eyes and he teetered a little where he stood, but he would make it, as promised.

"That," he declared, "was a perfectly grim story and I am not sorry to not have read it myself. That said..." Charlie gestured at the last remaining bit of work with no small amount of pride. He looked a bit like a cat that had dragged in some bedraggled corpse of an animal for his master's inspection--pleased and just a little disgusting.

[Chrysanthe Palmifer]

Just After Dawn, 7 Bethas, 2720
Pargeter and Sons Flat Glass Factory, Old Rose Harbor

Chrysanthe’s throat was sore; she could not think of the last time she had spoken so much. Every inch of her head itched, and she was unfathomably desperate to undo her braids, bathe, and then collapse into bed. Her skin felt oddly dry, and she was sure her face looked as sallow and bruised as Ewing’s, which had acquired rather an odd cast, and was looking thoroughly smudged beneath the eyes.

He gestured down at the last roller, and grinned at her, holding to the ladder with one hand.

Chrysanthe grinned back. “I’m sure – ” her voice came out as a squeak. She cleared her throat. “If you require further distraction, I’m sure I could remember the content of an improving tract or two – something more wholesome, perhaps. I recall a rather interesting pamphlet I came across some years ago regarding Alioe’s Deep Spring as a metaphor for the bottomless well of goodness and generosity which lies in each of our hearts. To unsully your mind, of course.” Her tone was rather more amused than she had expected; this time, it was her turn to grin at him, almost teasingly.

She didn’t think he would take her up on it; she rather hoped he wouldn’t. It had been rather drivel, and, in fact, the argument had not been much more complex than the summary. Chrysanthe attended church, of course, regularly. She went most weeks, or, well, many weeks. She went, at least, on the important occasions, and she always made sure to be out of the boarding house on those times when Ms. Burbright through that a young lady of her station ought to be attending church; it was simply easier that way.

“Thank you,” Chrysanthe added, quietly. She smiled; it was less of a grin, this time, and it didn’t quite last. She had given up entirely on the subject of her hair; she adjusted her headband, pushing the wisps which had come free out of the way, and retreated to fetch a pushbroom from the wall. As Ewing took up the last roller, Chrysanthe swept up the evidence of his cigarettes, pushing it vigorously against the floor – no one who wished to have a clean floor lived in Gior without learning to use a broom – and gathering up the butts and what ash had not smeared irreparably into the concrete floor.

The stains Chrysanthe could do little enough for; if the routines of the Viendan factory were anything to judge by, the floor would be cleaned more thoroughly once a week. The smudges from the rollers and all the rest would simply have to wait. She stacked the cups where the used ones went during the day, and busied herself with tidying up. Her hands were shaking, lightly; Chrysanthe was thoroughly grateful she did not have long to travel to her guest house. Naturally, she would need to come in in the afternoon to check on the progress of things; she only prayed, and rather desperately, that there would not be any issues as would require her presence before that.

[Charlie Ewing]

Bethas 8, 2720 - Sunrise
Pargeter and Sons Flat Glass Factory, ORH

Victorious, that's what he was. He had gestured to the work before him, nearly complete, and Ms. Palmifer had seemed almost as pleased as he was. That hadn't even been a small smile, but a proper grin. It suited her, Charlie thought. Not that he'd ever tell her that, of course. She'd probably interpret it in some strange way and start scowling again. That had been his last cigarette, so best to avoid the scowling if he could help it. Aggravating her now didn't seem quite as much fun as it had at the start of the evening.

Ticks, he was going soft in the head.

Charlie looked at her when she mentioned the improving tracts and made a face. Alioe's Deep Spring--Circle save him, there was nothing he wanted to hear about less on Vita than "the bottomless well of goodness and generosity in our hearts". This was writ large in his expression, even before he said anything. Which, of course, he did.

"Alas, I fear I might be a lost cause on that regard. Rotten inside and out, I'm afraid. At least the outside is very good-looking." Charlie couldn't even remember the last time he'd been to church. Not since he'd moved to the Rose, he thought, though he'd very dutifully lied when his mother asked in any letters from home. When he still answered letters from home, instead of leaving them to gather dust on his kitchen counter. There had, he thought, been very little hope for his soul long before that at any rate.

The thanks that followed was quiet, and so was the smile. Charlie felt oddly uncomfortable; he cleared his throat. "Yes, well. I am a genius after all." His mouth quirked in a smile that he thought was disturbingly genuine and not at all disdainful. Revolting. He resolved to stop doing it immediately. The smile remained.

Ms. Palmifer set about cleaning the floor; Charlie could have protested, but he rather thought she'd rested long enough by now that it was likely good for her to get up and do something. Perhaps he should have felt apologetic for how much of the mess of the floor was cigarette butts he had just sort of tossed to the ground as he worked; he did not. It was still a factory, he thought. A spotless floor was a fool's errand. Charlie turned back to the last roller. Not much longer now, but he still couldn't abide silence.

"Tell me something else," he demanded as he took up the last roller and moved it into place. "Anything you'd like--but not," he cautioned, with as much horror as he could muster up in his voice, "the plot of another novel. We haven't the time." He grunted as the thing was heaved into place, then set about the last of the work. .