that charming bastard

[fioredaisy]

It had been a successful show. The theater was packed that night and Daisy met a lot of people at the stage door which was always fun. To see all the people being so enthusiastic and interested in the story they just saw made Daisy love her job even more. She always wanted to be an actress but movies weren’t her cup of tea. Too much attention from the media and too little contact with the characters. Acting in front of a camera gave you more chances to re-do a scene. Acting on stage was raw. You could never break character. It was her own escape. A chance to live a different life somewhere else without her own worries or problems.

Daisy opened the front door of the theater and was greeted with the booming sounds of the New York streets which were lit brightly. She said her goodbye’s to her colleagues and stepped on the sidewalk to grab a cab. Most of the time she walked home. It took her thrity minutes and she enjoyed it but today she felt tired and didn’t mind spending a few dollars on that ride. A bus drove past her and stopped at the theater bus station but Daisy hadn’t payed muched attention to it. After all a cab just stopped a few feet away from her.

With a fast pace she walked towards it and that’s when she noticed a man approaching it as well. She could feel the cold sweat. She hated those situations. Most of them ended in her being totally awkward but she couldn’t help it. With a sigh she kept up the pace and stopped in front of the cab. 

“I’m sure another one will be here any minute.” Her tone was friendly, somehow respectful but it was obvious that she felt insecure. 

[adamxwagner-blog]

Had the woman not been as pretty as she was, he would probably have insisted immediately that the cab was his, and that she would find another one easily a few blocks away if she didn’t want to wait in front of the theater. He’d never had a thing for blondes, and she was more than different from his ex-fiancées, but something about her caught his attention. Her voice was soft, one he wouldn’t mind listening to for much longer than just a few minutes---even if they were merely fighting about a cab.

Her tone didn’t hide her insecurity, though she did seem dislike that exact fact. Now, that would be a nice little game to him, but the games he liked to play might scare her off just too quickly for him to get at least her name. So instead, he did what he did best: behaving like one of the children he taught at elementary school. His journey had clearly been much longer than hers, and getting his cab stolen right in front of him wasn’t something he planned to let happen.

“I’m sure about that, too, Miss,” he replied, his eyebrows raised, “but you see, I’ve had a really long day---not to mention I had to cross three states just to stand here---so I guess this cab’s actually mine. You know, besides the fact that I was the one that hailed the cab, anyway.” His power of persuasion normally wasn’t persuasive at all, but his constant complaints usually did the trick. Tell someone you had a heart attack six years ago and they’ll believe just about anything. “Do you live far from here, or do you want to ride a cab for the fun of it?” What might have sounded rude to some was cleverly neutralized by a tone that implied genuine interest, followed by a crooked smile.

[adamxwagner-blog]

Whenever Adam Wagner made his way to New York City, it was for the very same reason each time--not to enjoy the city life, that was for sure. During the last few years when he visited the city to make his younger cousin’s life just a bit more unbearable, he’d learned that using more or less public transportation was the only way to actually get to one’s destination before the day was over. Only reluctantly had he left his car back home, but hey, with the rising gas prices this “vacation” might just be more useful than expected. Besides the fact that he lived off of his cousin’s misery, of course. Phillip Wagner, that grumpy kid that was never happy with anyone or anything. He truly had barely changed within the last twenty years.

Neither had Adam, but at least he had learned his lessons in life--one of which had taught him how to survive a day in NYC without being broke before the sun set. He’d taken the bus from the train station on through all of Queens before it entered Brooklyn, the borough the small apartment he’d rented years ago was located in, as well as his favorite victim to annoy. The bus stopped in front of a theater, and Adam left through the front door, barely able to refrain from complimenting the bus driver on her reliable driving skills. Outside, the first thing he saw was a cab approaching, causing him to raise his arm to get the driver’s attention. It stopped a few feet away from him, and he started making his way towards it--just to see that someone else was approaching it in a dangerously fast pace.