Your Tribe

[Imogen] Her phone vibrates slowly making its way off the balcony chair's armrest. She is seated there, her hair damp from a shower, her body hidden by a terry cloth robe, her skin chilled by the outdoors, her stomach warmed by a fresh swallow of scotch.

She looks down at it a moment, before leaning forward to set down her cigarette, her tumbler still in hand as she pushes a button to activate the receiver.

"Slaughter," she says, answering an unfamiliar number with a professional reply. Her eyes trial to the view from her balcony, bright city lights, Chicago's familiar buildings.

[Cell] "Imogen - " first his voice is far away, speaker phone. Then, abruptly, it is as close as if his mouth were against her ear. In between, she will hear the clatter plastic against metal or god knows what as he reaches for the handset and tucks it against his shoulder. " - hey. It's JB. Question."

There's music in the background, which fades when he picks up the phone.

"I had some visitors tonight. Want to know if one of them is what they said she is." There's a certain tension in his voice, a hint of irritation, though that is thinned by wires and distance. "Though you might be able to help."

[Imogen] There is a pause on the other side of the phone, filled with ambient sounds. He can hear the air whistle, the far away sounds of traffic. He knows she is outside.

Imogen's jaw draws briefly tight, then loosens as she lifts a hand to her hair, pushing the heavy, damp weight back from her face, over her shoulders.

"Alright," she says. "Go ahead."

[Cell] "A girl named Rory. Red hair, pale skin." He begins, then closes his eyes. The fucking music box is on is desk, the note somewhere. "Something's wrong with her, too. Some mental thing."

"I don't know any other names for her. After, though, I got a note. From The Bogeymen., right?"

There's a hint of disbelief there. Gods only know what leads Garou to pick such bizarre names for themselves. Somewhere in the background, a door clicks shut.

[Imogen] A pause. "Spoonerism," she says, "She speaks in spoonerisms. Tends t'mix up sounds right? Says 'I'm hery vappy' not 'I'm very happy', fer example.

"She's Garou," she says, "Fianna, I believe, though I'm not familiar wi' what the 'Bogeymen' are. I don't much mind pack names.

"Why?"

[Cell] "Yeah, that's it - " he confirm, distant before his voice shifts back to the receiver, his tone quiet, confidential. Even with the pantry door shut, the sounds of the kitchen. "Feels like a - like a serial killer, acts like a Catholic school-girl in a - well, in a movie." He tells he, thinking better of saying in a fucking porno to Imogen, even over the phone. "And acts like Rain Man - or like she's austic or schizophrenic or something. Just sat there half-hiding all night. Kept insisting she would work for me. Then snuck into the kitchen last night and left a fucking music box sitting on my counter with a goddamn note for my - " Maybe his resolution not to curse has deserted him.

Maybe he just wanted to vent. " - baker to find, bright and early this morning. I just - " he stops, pauses, arrests the deluge. "Listen, sorry. I didn't mean to unload. Just wanted to make sure she was who they said she was. Not something - else.

"Given the rest."

[Imogen] JB unloads, as he puts it, and Imogen is silent through it, listening, though it is hard to say if it is with empathy or simply absorption.

"For better or worse," she says when he's finished and redirected his purpose, he can hear the shift in her breathing over invisible lines as she fills her lungs with cigarette smoke, speaking with words choked in poison, "she's exactly what she says she is.

"Last I checked, she's also the only full-blooded representative o' yer tribe." Her exhale, emptying her lungs of the last coils of smoke punctuates her words. There is something in her tone that intimates what she does not say aloud - that is: Unfortunately.

[Cell] There's a silence on the other end of the line, then this eruption of air. It sounds like a fan being supercharged into the receiver, but he's really just breathing open. Someone on the other end interrupts - a door opens, and half-a-conversation is held off-screen. One of those three or four sentence things that suggests the familiar rhythm of an ordinary question, the movement of a workday.

Then his voice is back, deep, right against the receiver. " - my tribe?"

[Imogen] There is a pause.

"Fianna," she clarifies, though it may well not be what he's asking.

[Cell] That earns her a brief, sharp retort of a laugh, the sort that sounds like a gunshot and has very little humor in the substrates of the sound, underneath. It's just an exclamation, a sort of give-in that opens out. "I know the name," he says, with an irony that is anything but subtle.

It's quiet, though. The irony in his voice, the tone, the volume - they have this baritone resonance he never had as a younger man. He takes another breath, one of those long inhales that sounds like a sigh, whistling through the nostrils, just filling his long, followed by a brief, bullish burst of air, another sharp sound of dry humor.

"Imogen," he says. A moment's pause follows. Then, "Thanks for the ear."

[Imogen] There's a brief pause.

"This may sound like a foolish suggestion," she says, "but yeh may want t'ask her not to do it again. The Garou 'ere - a lot o' them are, shall we say, non-traditional. Whether she'll listen t'yeh or not, yeh'll get away with it here."

A beat.

"Goodnight, JB."

[Cell] "I'll keep that in mind." Another pause, not entirely empty. The ring of something metal against metal in the background. "We've got the beer and wine license, now. Come by sometime."

Then, a shout in the background, the noises yawning open as a door moves somewhere. "'Night."

Click!