[open] a friend in need's a friend indeed

[nedofpies]

Who: Ned and OPEN
What: Random encounters & fallout from dream-walking tomfoolery
Where: House 20, the garden, anywhere around town
When: Day 89

It's been a long week. A long, mostly-sleepless, weird week during which Ned has seen far more of his friends' and neighbors' subconsciouses than he would have liked to. Plus, a creepy city made of crystals that everyone seems to have seen, but no one will claim as their own. Shady stuff. Today, he is determined to wear himself out. Perhaps if he's tired enough, whatever mojo the men behind the curtain have put on him won't be strong enough to stir him out of a deep and dreamless sleep.

It's probably a futile tactic, but he can't just do nothing.

So he is a bustle of activity - cleaning the house, walking around town, checking on the crops to see if they are holding up well (carefully, with an eye for any enterprising tigers roaming too close to the edge of the forest), keeping an eye out for new faces and an ear out for rumors of missing ones.

Comments

[nedofpies]

Ned is probably happier not knowing about the contract killing, and particularly not about the blackmail. Not when he knows how terrible it can be, when you have secrets to keep and other people in possession of them. Just distribution must come with its share of peril and violence, he recognizes, but that's not so much Meyer or Charlie's fault. It's Prohibition. It's the times. It's a way to make their living, in a country that was not then particularly kind to poor kids born in other countries just trying to make their way in the world.

"Probably better if you mix it with something," Ned theorizes, getting up and rifling around behind the bar, looking at his options. He's never worked as a bartender, but he's not exactly averse to trying his hand with a bit of experimentation. There's a single can of lemon-lime soda behind the counter, and a half-empty bottle of grenadine. He sets out two bigger glasses, splits the soda between the two, adds a splash of the grenadine and an amount of the cotton candy vodka. He swirls his around, sips, adds a bit more vodka, sips again.

"Better this way," he says, tipping a bit more vodka into Charlie's, mixing it, and sliding it over to him.

"So what're speakeasys like? Is it all secret back rooms and passwords and flappers, like in the movies?"

[dowhatisays]

"They ain't so different from a bar before they got rid of the booze. Depending where yous are, some places don't even bother hiding its. 'sides, the bosses been running card games for fucking years, now they just added booze to its, too." He remembers being twelve and his father sending him to run drinks at Joe Masseria's game. 'As a favour' he said. Cheap fucker was probably using him as free labour to pay off a gambling debt.

"Back rooms of stores it were, mostly. And more full a people you really don't wants to fucking piss off."

[nedofpies]

Ned's surprised to hear that some places served drinks openly - that wasn't really the way that he'd imagined it, but upon reflection it makes sense. Everyone must have known that few people were really obeying the law when it came to the ban on alcohol.

He drinks some more of the vodka mixture, thinking that it's not nearly so noxious, when it's a mixed with a few other things. Part of him wishes he could have seen it: the speakeasies, the old cars, the glamor of that era. But he has seen it - at least, glimpsed it - in those few dreams of Meyer's. And what he'd seen had been exciting, yes, but also terrifying. There's a very real chance, he supposes, that that last nightmare of Meyer's will come true, that he and Charlie will end up on their knees in some squalid warehouse, surrounded by men with guns and very few compunctions about using them.

"I don't know what people were thinking, with the whole Prohibition thing. It was never going to work in the long term. I don't even drink that often and even I know that." He's starting to feel the effects of the alcohol, now, a hint of heat in his cheeks.

[dowhatisays]

"According to AR, there was a bunch of guys, crooked politicians and shit, they gots it pushed through 'cause they wanted in on the liquor business." Makes sense to him. Even a child could have predicted that banning alcohol was going to just give the bosses more power, more product to sell to more people. Fuck, half the guys he knew were throwing parties the night it got passed. "Surprised to know it even lasted 13 years, though. Even with the fucked up political bullshit."

[nedofpies]

"Was there? I didn't know that, but it doesn't surprise me." Ned's not exactly got a rosy view when it comes to politicians and their motivations. He's never really been a bit fan of authority, even if he doesn't kick up a fuss about it. Fuss comes with trouble and confrontation and the possibility of violence, so it's easier to keep his mouth shut and his head down, but that doesn't mean he doesn't see and hear things.

"So this guy you work for, AR. What's he like?" This isn't the first time Charlie's mentioned him, and Ned is curious to hear more about the life that he and Meyer left behind when they were brought here. Then, because he knows Charlie might not really be used to people asking questions about his boss, he adds, "I mean, telling me can't do any harm, can it, it's not like I'm even from the same century."

[dowhatisays]

"Were we comes from, most people in New York city still heard of AR." The hint of pride in his voice is unmistakeable, and he takes another swig of his horrifyingly sweet drink.

"He's a gambler, mostly. Best fucking gambler you ever fucking seen, you know. Ain't never won a pool game against him he weren't letting me win." He rolls the glass in his fingers, staring morosely. "He fixed the 1919 world series."

[nedofpies]

Ned hears that pride in Charlie's voice, takes note of it. It's funny, but he'd never really given all that much thought to what it really must be like as a profession, what he and Meyer do. But now that he does turn his mind to it, what with all the cut-throat competition and violence, needing to stay out of the way of the police, it probably forges some fairly strong bonds between people. That would explain, in part, why Meyer and Charlie are as close as they seem to be, and why Charlie speaks of this 'AR' character with so much pride.

When Charlie says he fixed the world series Ned goes still a moment, a furrow forming between his brows. "Actually you know I think... maybe I've heard of him, too. At least, that sounds familiar."

He interprets Charlie's new rather melancholy bent to merely missing his boss, so he asks, "How does one even go about doing something like that? Fixing a spots game, I mean. Did he just... pay the players?"

haha I guess Ned has read The Great Gatsby

[dowhatisays]

"I never asked too many of the details." Well, he knows a little more about how it all went down. But he's not going to let on.

"I mainly just do as he says, y'know? But he's a billion fucking times better to work for than those fucking Mustache Pete bosses run the other half of New York. Arrogant pieces of shit think they God's gift to the fucking Earth, y'know?"

YEP

[nedofpies]

"Of course," Ned says, nodding his understanding. Need to know basis. He should have realized that is how things would work. That that would be the safest, both for Charlie and the people he worked for. It's all so intricate, so unlike any of the jobs that he had worked over the years (and there had been a fair few of them).

"Mustache Pete?" Is that a phrase he should know? Somehow he expects that Charlie isn't just talking about a guy named Pete who happened to have a particularly remarkable mustache. Charlie might be ignorant about the future and uneasy about that, but in some ways Ned is just as ignorant, in the opposite direction. There are phrases and pieces of information that Charlie takes for granted that are completely foreign to Ned.

He has another drink of the bubblegum mix and thinks that the taste isn't so bad, once you start to get used to it. He's at that perfect buzz point, now, feeling loose-limbed and flushed in the face and less worried about the future, about things that are past his control.

good on ya, Ned

[dowhatisays]

"Them old school Italian bosses. Won't do business anyone ain't from there part of the world. Fuck, some of thems want yous to be from the same fucking village 'fore they even speaks to yous." It might be clear from Charlie's tone that he's not a fan of them. There's a reason he works for Rothstein, after all.

"Rothstein ain't old fashioned like that. He understands about opportunities, you know?"

[nedofpies]

"Oh, right. Got it."

That, at least, is not something reserved to Meyer and Charlie's line of work, though it is perhaps more crystallized in it, and in their time for that matter. "I do know. People are always making that mistake and that can't be good for business. Better to work with the people who are good at what they do than only work with the people who look like you or sound like you."

Ned forces himself to set down the glass, wants to give Charlie a chance to catch up with him, particularly since it seems his alcohol tolerance is considerably higher.

"Glad to hear the guy you're working for is a bit more forward-thinking."