Slow day. Really slow day. The bar music wasn’t helping his case. He could have done without the slow jazz, careening from the jukebox stereo systems like a half-drunk tango. The notes were billowing, painstakingly rocking in a way that would make even a shipwreck jealous. This was really a drag, but he supposed he had to look on the bright side of the shot glass. At least he didn’t have to roll out the hospitality. Polishing his fifth glass, he nodded to himself. Yeah. Wouldn’t need to play nice if there were no customers to play nice to.
The usual tide of people were here. You had your driftwood, your seaweed, your ever-elusive seashells. Hell, he could even hear the usuals (in their burly, knuckle-headed blue and red) from where he was standing. There was nothing more relieving than the satisfaction of company. And no, not that kind of company. Not the kind that he had to factor himself into. Company, where everyone had someone else to preoccupy them was the best kind. He could be at ease, with the worst case of social loafing on this end of the bar counter.
Wait. What was she doing there?
Damn. He couldn’t help it. He shouldn’t have said a word, but the sight of her at Brass Bar was one that stuck out like a sore thumb. You know. The whole… uh. Periwinkle thing. Weeping myrtles kind of suited a family diner, over a bar. Granted, Brass Bar was way more of an eat-in than other bars, but it was still… well. Sea and foam, grit and sand. A strange place for wall flowers.
Was it weird to just– stop talking? Maybe he should have just taken the L and leave? But it was far too late for that. Sliding her a menu on based habits alone, he paused with his hands still pressed on the laminated edges. “Wait. Are you here for something? Or someone?” Had to make it clear, after all. It would have been easier on him if Chase could leave her to that mysterious ‘someone.’ Another person to tend to the flowers.
IT IS A SLOW DAY. But, she thinks, it is nothing atypical of the sleepy town of Castanet. Everything seems to move slower here, she thinks as knitting needle tucks beneath baby blue, Chenille yarn. She knits one, purls two. The clock hands spin slower and the day stretches on, endless, until she finds even she grows weary of sunshine.
Waves crash on shores slower and the people — she thinks, as she watches them pass her window by — the people move through the world with purpose but none hurried, as if certain the world would wait for them. Everything is slower here and it suits her just fine.
But, she knows it does not suit everyone — she knows so many who deserve so much more than what this coastal enclave has to offer them.
( She is certain the town’s finest mayor-in-training would weep at the mere implication that perhaps this place was not well-suited for all of them. )
Time in Castanet passes slowly.
It passes slower, she thinks, as she makes her way to the Brass Bar filled to the margins with its raucous guests. They mean her no ill will, but she cannot help the uneasiness that sits at the bottom of her stomach. They are not looking at her, but she feels like they are. It is reason enough she nearly stops in her uneasy gait across the wood-paneled floors, but not enough that she feels a need to flee the building entirely. Time passes slower when she finally seats herself at the bar, far in the corner away from any other guests. Far from attention.
It is uncommon for her to venture into the Brass Bar, a fact she is painfully aware of in spite of herself — she’s walked there many times. To only just the door, she should clarify to her chagrin. She’s never ventured inside without the accompaniment of Maya or Luna and she had, certainly, no reason to begin doing so until today when her grandmother gently reminded her that she had a Bridge game. Luna would not be back ‘til evening and so it is with this knowledge she braces herself for questioning but finds none.
Just the curious inquiry of her name.
Candace nods in reply, straightening her back a little as she watches Chase cross the space behind the bar and passes her a menu but never lets his fingers leave it. She peers upward from behind her bangs before dropping her gaze to the laminated menu again, thin fingers lifting her milk-bottle glasses to her eyes so she could read the menu more clearly. “No.” Candace answers. She pauses, then coughs quietly as she scans the menu. “I’m here alone, today.”
