THAT’S WORTH NOTING. he knows the feeling. the system as a whole tends to be quieter in public. they say less. if you say something, people might start paying attention, and the best way to be invisible is to be quiet and give people no reason to look at you. sometimes they look anyway, in quick fleeting glances, but he figures those tend to be people like them. people who are also looking to not be seen, but who can’t help but look back. who maybe can’t bear to see themselves in mirrors or in other reflective surfaces, who may not even recognize their own face and body if asked to identify them in a lineup, but who are inherently interested in other people. pearl isn’t quite like that. that’s part, he decides, of what the other two find so interesting. to be both alike and yet dissimilar.
❝ good for you, ❞ he says. ❝ most people don’t even think about the shit they say aloud. don’t think of phones being tapped, or people around them listening in. jesus. it’s all been downhill since we passed the patriot act and it’s going to get worse. the surveillance state is now, not hypothetical. ❞
this really isn’t the time, he knows, but he can’t really help himself. someone has to fucking say it, since most people are unwilling to.
there’s a pause. then he cracks a smile despite himself. ❝ i grew up, ❞ he says mildly, ❝ in a small town in new jersey. i know i don’t really seem like the type. lived in new york for ten years now, so i don’t really fucking… feel anything about where i’m from. but i do know people loved to talk. so i guess if you don’t have to worry about mass surveillance because you’re living in the middle of fucking nowhere, your neighbors’ll keep an eye on you for them. ❞ he sounds just as dismissive of washington township as it deserves. nothing good there. sure, they saved it from nuclear meltdown, but that wasn’t because they particularly loved it. it was just the right thing to do, no matter what had happened to them there.
a pause. he nods after a moment. some people can go from career to career. most people, in fact, are more indecisive about their life path than the system is.
❝ jesus. whoever named you two definitely managed to hit the nail on the head, huh? ❞ red hair for rose. color and brightness. meanwhile, pearl, more neutral in everything – her outfits, her tone, her opinions. maybe by _you two would get along_, pearl really just means they’re both opinionated bastards. that would fit. elliot and sam get along with pearl; he gets along with rose. that’s just how he goes. he knows his presence is something of an acquired taste for many people. he usually points out something along the lines of the fact that if they have trouble with him, they’re going to have a real fucking problem with darlene. ❝ guess i’ll keep a look out, then. not likely, but you never fucking know what’s going to happen.❞
she only HALF knows what he’s talking about. acts and surveillance. things that pearl perhaps should know and should care about, but that have long ago faded to the periphery. there have always been eyes in the trees, in the telephone poles, in the windows and walls around them. something is always watching and waiting. the stars, maybe. pearl isn’t unusued to being watched - by herself, by others, by the government and the shah and a camera lens.
fingers twitch idly in her lap as he speaks about where he’s from. it’s the sort of information pearl never thought elliot would give up willingly. it’s private - personal - something that could, she supposes, be used against him. pearl wonders if he has noted her LACK of hometown. perhaps he assumes she is from the city; maybe she IS. she has been here four generations in a row, though pearl does not remember them in that order. there had been a knight in between two of them, a scullery maid between the next. winding up here is not unusual, though. she is more often in a city than outside of one, in this time, and more often in new york than any other. it hadn’t been a lie to say she likes it here. getting lost in the never - ending SOUND helps her find some sleep at night.
“i didn’t know that about you,” voice drifts, only tinged with unease, “you seem like the sort of person who has lived here all your life. maybe that’s just because i never knew you in another context.” it’s easier to imagine someone elsewhere when you have already seen them outside of the norm. elliot has always been HERE. not in jersey. not in a forest, or the seaside, or a mansion full of thick, stale air. perhaps that’s part of the reason she likes these meetings - there is something cyclical about them. this one excluded, where he is speaking differently and holding himself differently and asking questions, offering up bits and pieces of the past willingly.
it’s odd to think about - pearl isn’t sure who named them. she does not remember any parents. it was her and rose to start with, and will be the two of them at the end, and there was never a third or fourth presence that began them. perhaps they were spun out of starstuff. maybe it was brimstone instead. head tips to one side, only a little, and pearl gives her empty sort of smile. “they must have,” words lilt, drifting away, distant from her. PEARL WHITE AND ROSE RED. like the story - like THEIR story. is she the little girl in that tale - SNOW WHITE? she may be. maybe that was before or after. “you might. we tend to run in the same circles,” she laughs, a little, a quiet private joke, “wherever one of us goes, the other is often close to follow. i think i tend to be places first; she comes to me.”
