Taliesin gave Niamh one of his ‘Yes, Mrs. Nixon, I take your words very seriously’ faces. "I would never disappoint you.”
He suddenly realized that he hadn’t fully calculated on the Wes story actually getting back to him, but perhaps he had a little deniability since Wes had dated Niamh’s sister. Maybe? Probably not. “I’m assuming no one did because it would have made the rounds by now.” The New Romantics hadn’t fully developed the cultural cache they had now back then. (He suspected his emergence in the group may have helped with that in some way, but not for ego reasons. More, somehow the stoner is able to stay in honors classes even though his grades must be shit. Must be pressure from his friends’ parents or something when it was actually that his grades were decidedly not shit.) “But if you’re working on a documentary or whatever, I bet Rumi would be willing to support a re-enactment if it wasn’t the same cast.” It was a funny image, and it made him feel better after this nightmare of a day.
Two stories. God fucking damn it. “…I did say that, didn’t I.” Taliesin agreed, unable to hide his weariness at a certain point. He was losing his ability to be quick on the draw already, and he still had to be Lou’s well behaved arm candy tonight. “I’ll think through my options. So you get the best possible story.”
“I don’t want to–” He gave up before he finished the thought. Her assumption was small potatoes compared to his clients’ parents and what he endured less than forty minutes before from Cricket, so he was forcing himself to see past it. He swallowed. “Good thinking. Thanks for looking out.”
Before he could recover from whatever that was, Niamh was upstairs and gone. He had to admit he hadn’t always believed poor people could afford two floors in West Ham. But he’d also always known nobody seemed quite as poor as the Mauks. And that “so poor you can’t afford the stairs” was a joke Nuala Woolfe would tell.
"The olden days were so boring," she whined. Niamh thought it was a general rule to film all that stuff. Because what if Wes got famous for music one day? He needed videos of his talent shows to show his fans where he started. Oh well. At least she had the visual. And oh! That was actually a very good idea, Taliesin. "I am. I'll request a meeting with councillor Rumi immediately."
Niamh smiled and nodded at him. He looked very sad about his apparent slip of the tongue, but that wasn't her problem. Maybe he should have thought before he spoke and he wouldn't have to give her more material. "Yes, you did. Thank you, I appreciate the effort."
Once upstairs she grabbed her laptop, external harddrive, extension cord and laptop charger (her battery was on 2%). Niamh walked much slower on her way back, both to give him time to think and stop herself from falling down the stairs. She had done that more times than she was willing to admit.
She made her way to Tal, placing her laptop on the coffee table in desperate need of a new coat of paint. But paint was expensive apparently so it stayed that way. She plugged her laptop in to the extension cord and then walked to the far side of the room. "This is the only free socket in here," she explained. The extension cord was necessary unless she wanted to sit by the shoe rack Niamh got for free on the side of the road.
Once they were all set she went and knelt on the floor in front of her laptop. Better control that way. She opened her folder of 256 imported clips and looked at Tal. "What do you want to see first?"
