What I Wanna Know [ST'd by Me: Nash]

[Monica Sullivan] Ring ring.... ring ring.... ring-
"Hello?"
"Hey, is this...--" Papers rustle, "Monica Sullivan?"
"This is her."
"Hey, this is Carroll Nash."
"Carroll..." A pause, brief, then: "Oh Jesus Fuck."
Click.

----------------

The following day, around eleven in the morning or so, give or take, the clouds clogged the sky as effectively as lunch hour traffic did the main highways in the belly of the city. Carroll had gotten all that he'd needed from that phone call, enough to warrant looking further into the name he'd found on one of many birth certificates. The address had been easy enough to find, Mr. Sullivan left his name in the white pages for the sake of customers that might be trying to find him-- he was never one to turn away a potential lucrative sale after all. That's probably where the nice house that Nash finds himself in front of comes from, that salesman's drive.

The neighborhood's a nice one, residential and tucked away at the northwestern edge of the city sprawl, where yards became a little more than just an alley and a back step and trees did a better job of lining the streets. The house with the number that matches what he was looking for is a pretty thing to look at even in the dreary wet and cold of Winter and Spring's meeting point-- one story tall but large anyways, with dark green siding and darker still shutters at the windows. A two car garage, windchimes hanging off the awning of the front porch, and a basketball hoop in the driveway. It was the perfect suburban home, a great place for a family to be raised.

The blinds were open, curtains drawn back to let the (albeit dim) natural light into the home, though the house's layout didn't allow full view into the house from that point, only the front sitting room. Who he was looking for was likely home, who he wanted to avoid probably wasn't. All he had to do was knock to find out.

[Carroll Nash] If he sits here too much longer in this battered blue truck that's older than the girl whose mere existence has brought him here in the first place, the engine idling because he's too chicken shit to take the key out of the ignition and walk up to the fucking door, then the neighbors are going to notice. There isn't a shred of sunlight today, nothing more than a pale gray haze over the world, which means he isn't wearing sunglasses.

He has a memorable face without them, hard lines and humored green eyes making him an easy target for people who try to dredge up details. Cutting his hair doesn't do a goddamn thing; the length of it, down to his scruffy jaw, makes it easier to lop it all off and hide. Somehow he looks younger with short hair.

When they'd met, that's how he'd worn it: short. It was little more than a dusting of blond on his scalp; there were no lines on his face but his eyes had hardened by the time he enlisted, let alone by the time he'd hit nineteen. Time and maturity has rubbed away some of the rougher edges in his gaze but the rest of him has been tempered.

All he'd have to do is just drive off, get on the freeway, and go back to Alabama. The lifestyle her parents have granted her isn't one he can meet, let alone exceed; and how is he supposed to explain how it is her parents are only half right, anyway? The illusion in which they've existed for nineteen years, maintained, would be worth just leaving. It would be easier than breathing, and yet he can't bring himself to do it. He's been holding his breath for almost a minute.

Rope-veined hand kills the engine, and he steps out of the truck.

Maybe she sees him coming. It's been twenty-four hours since her phone rang, and with every step he takes Nash is trying desperately to remember her face, the color of her hair, trying to parse out some detail he'd read in Gwen's bones. He's dressed conservatively, dress shoes and shirt and clean dark jeans, suit jacket instead of leather; no tie. Left the tie at the motel. Loaded holster's under the passenger seat and he feels naked without it.

This isn't a case for which he's been hired, or paid, yet his badge is on his hip anyway. It eliminates the question of how the hell he managed to find her.

Deep breath. One more. Knock on the fucking door. Knock--

Rap, rap, rap, rap.

[Monica Sullivan] The thing that dragged Carroll Nash to this city, the child whom he was made aware of by spirit speakers speaking their vague tongues-- giving him nothing to go off of but a city and a prophecy, had a handful of uncanny talents that set her apart from the rest of the crowd. They did not lie in strength of muscle or deftness of limb, she was not built to be a warrior any more than the natural weapons that Gaia had gifted all of her children with. No, one of the few talents that stood out was her memory. She could recall the most vivid details of every day she's lived if she sat and thought about it long enough. Every face was recalled forevermore, with name attached and all.

This was not genetic. Monica was not able to peek through the window and immediately recognize the man standing at her door. He looked like he might be trying to sell something, be it a vacuum or a religion. That or like he was about to take somebody out on a date. The neighborhood was nice, Monica had grown comfortable here, comfortable enough to open the door without feeling the need to have a weapon in her hand behind her back while doing so.

She's got rich brown hair that's thick and long, in half-curled waves that fall around her face and rest on her shoulders. Her eyes have a sleepy, hooded quality to them and are dark brown, she looks like she's in her late thirties but according to her license she's forty-two. The only make-up she wears is a hasty brush of mascara to her eyelashes, the rest is left in natural tones of brown and cream. She's dressed in a gray babydoll T-shirt and a pair of dark jeans and looks surprised but polite enough to greet Nash on her doorstep. Paranoia does not register on her face.

"Yes?"

[Carroll Nash] He was not expecting this woman.

Perhaps he had been anticipating a homely, sad sack of a housewife, her days wasted in front of the television with an overflowing ashtray and a bottomless martini glass, never leaving her bathrobe or tending to her physical appearance. All Gwen had said is that her parents didn't know what she was up to, that it was no concern of theirs what it was she was doing out on the street at night with no one looking out for her; she hadn't said anything about what they were like, what they knew about her.

Before he remembers how Monica looked back then, the name Curtis flashes into his cognition. It had been right on the damn birth certificate but he hadn't been looking at the fathers of these girls whose information he was scavenging in search of some nugget of truth.

He looks so very little like the teenager he had been in the early 1990s. There isn't a sane mind in this land who would expect her to remember the face of a man who had been, in the collective consciousness, a boy then. Monica was mature, had a husband and a son and a life when they met.

All he had had was a trail of bullshit that he fed women to keep them from finding out who he was. Back then he went by 'Carroll' because he looked young enough that it was fitting; he hasn't gone by 'Carroll' in over a decade.

He looks as though he's rapidly approaching her age, though, while she barely seems to have moved.

"Missus Sullivan?" he asks, and that goddamn drawl, that lazy Alabama sleepwalk, might trip her alarms before anything else does.

[Monica Sullivan] Monica has moved, but in small ways that aren't obvious in the least. She was pretty as a twenty-something, with those dark sleepy eyes and crooked smile that made her seem a little high and a lot amused all of the time. She wasn't showing hard wrinkles yet, but her skin wasn't quite as smooth and bright with life as it had been then. She remained hard at the core, but softer at the breasts hips and thighs now. She was more womanly, a second child had solidified that and nearly two decades had let it seem more a part of her than baby weight on a once-scrawny girl.

She wasn't ever the brightest mind available, she didn't get every joke told or understand all the underlying humor in the movies she saw. It took her a minute to catch up with fast-paced debate, but she typically got there in the end. Slow didn't always mean stupid, after all. The Alabama drawl was matched with the voice that had shocked her hard yesterday, the name matched from there, and only then does she recognize the vague shape of features that had matured and changed so greatly since then, the green eyes and the blond hair, they land a place in her memory and have her eyes flying wide.

The hand that lingered on the front door tightened, arm flexed. Her initial response was to slam the door in his face, but a chirp in the back of her mind prevented it. He'd stand there and knock again, ring the doorbell, maybe even loiter until she grew nervous that Curtis would be home and see him. It'd be faster and better to see him off herself and make sure she saw the shitty blue truck against the curb drive away with her own eyes.

"Christ," she hissed and glanced hastily up and down the street, apparently worried that someone would see him and gossip (though she certainly didn't look like she'd joined a neighborhood knitting circle, the girl he remembers never would have). "What do you want? Can't you take a hint?"

[Carroll Nash] "Apparently not."

There isn't anything funny about the situation. The kid she'd met nearly two decades ago didn't have much of a sense of humor. He didn't smile frequently, seemed keyed-up and nervous until he got a few beers in him, until he got to know the other person well enough that he could stop gritting his teeth and relax. His Navy buddies knew he was a wild man at heart, that he could be cajoled into doing some legitimate daredevil shit if he got drunk enough, and he wouldn't turn down a shot if they just kept pushing them at him.

This man, whoever the hell he is, has laugh lines around his eyes. He hasn't shaved his face all weekend, it looks like, and despite the fact that he's four or five years younger than she is, he already has white whiskers speckled in amongst the dark blond. His sarcasm is almost gentle, were not for the fact that he's no more thrilled about this reunion than she is.

That antiquated vehicle on the opposite curb has Alabama plates. He's a long fucking way from home.

As much as he wants to hold them behind his back the way he always did when he wound up standing still, or plunge them into his pockets to affect nonchalance, Nash's hands remain dangling at his side.

"I don't know about you, but I'm not a big fan'a neighbors knowin' my business. I'm here about Gwen." He should pause for longer than two seconds to give her a chance to digest, but he doesn't. "Now, the way I see it, either we can do this the easy way and talk inside where there ain't nobody listenin' in, or I can walk on outta here and find out what I wanna know the hard way."

[Monica Sullivan] There's a fair bit of Monica in Gwen. The hard stare that she sets him with is something that her daughter had inherited from her. Granted, now, Gwen's has a lot more push behind it because of what she was. Still, Monica's eyes did not waver an inch from Carroll's face, she didn't even blink she was so obstinately opposed to what she was hearing, to the very idea of letting him inside of her home.

"Fuck," she finally relents.

The door is held open still, and she steps back to allow the man enough room to step inside. He'll enter into a sitting room, squared away from the rest of the house with a narrow hall leading through an open door frame back into what is likely the kitchen, judging by the small glimpse that he can catch through the doorway. The walls are painted a dark taupe, the carpet is recently vacuumed and cream. There's a couch against the wall, two chairs and a coffee table. A stout little tuxedo cat is half-asleep in one of the chairs, eyeballing Nash lazily, curious but not nearly enough to actually get up.

Monica will close the door behind him, but not offer him a seat or a drink like a proper hostess might. Eighteen years ago she had been brash and to-the-point, more than happy to throw back drink after drink with him and challenge him for more. She was rough, she'd worn leather pants and a band T-shirt and cussed like the sailors in the bar she was sleazing about. She'd grown up some, but that way of speech hadn't changed at all.

"You've got nothing to do with Gwen, and there's no way in fucking hell you're going to try and come back off the boat and try and convince yourself that's different." There's no 'you're too late', no indication that she's bitter about him leaving, mad that he didn't stick around at all. More than anything she's anxious about him making complications. She wants him out and gone and never heard from again, and it shows in the tension in her shoulders and the scowl that adds an extra five years to her face.

[Carroll Nash] There was never any entitlement in him. He had hardly been a virgin when she took him to bed that night, or the night after that, or the night after that, yet Carroll hadn't been the sort of man who thought that there was anything in this world that he could simply take. That she was married was not something he disregarded so flagrantly as any one of his buddies might have.

To talk to him at the time, the entirety of his worth hinged on what he could do for other people. Rarely did he speak of what he was doing in the Navy in terms of what he was going to get out of it. His patriotism was almost painful, considering the fact that his peers were in it to dodge careers in the private sector, or to get out of inheriting a family business, or to chase a sense of adventure that wasn't exactly prominent in the Navy's law enforcement. He thought he would spend the rest of his damn life in the service.

He thought a lot of things back then.

Monica steps back to begrudgingly allow him in, and not much emotion comes across his face. This is not funny. His own livelihood and peace of mind, his familial security, are not at risk here. If he wasn't aware, though, if he didn't know damn well what life was like for a Trueborn whose parents were uneducated or unaware, he would not be here right now.

The wild woman he had known all those years ago has grown up. He cannot remember if she was this protective back then. All he knows is that she was, if not damaged, at least bruised and numbing the hurt of it with the whiskey that made his head swim and the rest of him last longer in bed than he would have otherwise.

Time and sobriety have thinned him out, eaten away at his baby fat.

She doesn't invite him to sit, doesn't offer him a drink, and he doesn't move any further into the house than is absolutely necessary. Now, finally, his hands go into the pockets of his suit jacket; it's as if he's sheathing weapons, trying to make himself seem less dangerous than he is well aware he looks. In adulthood, even without speaking, he is nearly magnetic. All he'd have to do is crack a smile or a joke, say the right thing, and Monica would find herself thrown off.

"Darlin'," he says, in that throwaway fashion the South perfected centuries ago, "so far as the great state of Illinois is concerned, you are absolutely right. I got nothin' to do with Gwen." Another barely-there pause. "You got any idea what your daughter's been up to lately?"

[Monica Sullivan] Monica's sniff is indignant, not nearly the same thing that it would be in a True, or possibly even in some of the more feral Kin. She isn't catching his scent, noting the soap or cologne or lack of either of those about him. She's just upset that he's here, resistant to the core, and clearly impatient with his questions. This shows in the snap of her words when she answers him.

"She's being a young adult and getting her crazy out of her bones. She's got her diploma so she kept her deal on that. We've all been that age before, and if I don't let her get out then she'll find a way out on her own and resent me in the process." That hard gaze hasn't budged an inch, her eyebrows (unpenciled, lighter than he recalls) furrowed down over hooded eyes in a persistent frown. Her arms have folded over her chest, manicured nails tapping impatiently at arms kept firm with a gym membership.

"My daughter's smart-- a lot smarter than I was. She's got a good head on her shoulders, she's doing fine and she drops in for dinner to let me know so."

Her lips twist in a sneer now. There it is, that roughness. As it turns out stripes don't change much, just the weeds they blended into.

"Now cut to the fucking chase. What business is it of yours? She's Curtis's."

[Carroll Nash] She keeps insisting on this. In the handful of sentences he has offered her, Monica has filled in the gaps and come up with the only plausible reason that he could be bothering her after all this time: he's somehow got it into his head that the eighteen-year-old who is scarcely a presence in their lives anymore is his. Not once has Nash said anything of the sort, but neither is he denying it, either.

That, there, is confirmation enough that that is why he's here. He hasn't come out and said what the fuck he wants despite having been asked more than once. Perhaps he's looking for a sign, something to tell him that his suspicions are wrong, that Monica and Curtis have a clue what it is their daughter is, what's happened to her.

His eyes are on her face, the same green-gray color they've always been, nothing like her husband's. If he didn't understand what Till Death Do Us Part meant back in 1991, Nash has a far goddamn better idea now. It's the rest of it he has trouble with.

It isn't patience, necessarily, or waiting that has Carroll watching her face as Monica goes on, at length, about what it is Gwen is doing with herself at night. A brief flicker of respect, admiration, something crosses his features when Monica tells him the girl got her diploma, the only thing keeping it from being brushed aside so quickly being the fact that the girl is a Half Moon.

His mother was a Half Moon.
They are the greatest liars of all the auspices, and yet they choose not to do it.

Maybe he was actually going to talk about this diplomatically. Maybe he's about to get his ass kicked on out of here. Nash lifts his eyebrows, briefly, gaze as gentle as it's going to get.

"You sure about that?" he asks. "What color are her eyes, Monica?"

[Monica Sullivan] Nash asks her what color her daughter's eyes are, and Monica's-- resolutely brown and unmistakable as anything else, narrow. In the fistful of days, almost able to be called two weeks that the pair had courted one another (if you could call it that), Nash had seen her get into a bar fight once. It was impossible to remember what it was about, something drunken and misunderstood, and she'd hauled off and cracked her fist into some civilian's throat. Now he couldn't be sure if that violence had only bubbled up because she was drunk, because she was young, or if there was a chance that she might repeat the maneuver onto him today.

He finds out that the latter isn't something to be concerned about. She's learned restraint or she respects the life she and her husband had worked for too much to diminish it with an assault charge on a ghost from the past. Rather than striking him, or screaming at him to get out, she rather coolly informs him: "You ever hear of a recessive trait, jackass?"

The sneer had traveled from her lips to crinkle up her nose and pinch the corners of her eyes. She's nodding her head and gesturing with one french-manicured fingertip both toward the door.

"You've overstayed your welcome, Carroll. It's time to move along, before Curtis comes home."

[Carroll Nash] Even as a teenager, young and idealistic and more than a little damaged though the details of what dinged him up so bad were lost to sobriety after a night or five of heavy drinking before the ravages of time got anywhere near them, he hadn't thought anything would come of a leather-wearing, whiskey-drinking, tattoo-bearing older woman showing an interest in him. He had scars on his body even back then, but she hadn't dug for stories; there was a tattoo on the inside of his upper right arm that looked like something a wild animal would claw into tree bark to mark its territory.

He told people it was Gaelic for 'Fuck Off.'

The memory of that fight had drifted away just as soon as they'd got back on that ship and headed out for what would end up being a two-year tour. Not for one second did he think he was going to desert the Navy for her; not for one second did he think she would leave the man she told stories about when the right song came on the jukebox.

At the time he was already a father. A two-year-old in Dauphin Island, Alabama was born with dark eyes and cornsilk hair. That child isn't alive anymore, but he doesn't know that. He suspects. The child underwent the Baptism of Fire before Nash went off to Illinois to begin boot camp, and he didn't think he'd leave another one behind to die.

If you ask just about anyone, Carroll James Nash does a lot of shit without thinking.

That said, he is a bit more forceful now than he was nineteen years ago. Monica sneers, Nash smirks, and the insinuation that he ought to get his scrawny ass on out of here before the girl's real father gets home isn't lost on him. He just chooses to ignore it.

Hefting up the right sleeve of his suit jacket, he perfunctorily eyes the face of his watch as he says, "If Curtis is home this early I think you got bigger problems'n me overstaying my welcome."

Sleeve is shucked back down, and he takes a step toward the door anyway.

"I ain't tryin' to take her from y'all." He takes another step back. "I sure as shit ain't tryin' to replace Curtis." And another; he illustrates the next sentence by pointing out the window into the world. "But that girl is out there doin' shit I couldn't even begin to tell you about, and she can't even talk to her goddamn parents." His hand disappears behind his back to retrieve his wallet. "I saw her birth certificate, Monica, either you broke the Guinness record for overdue deliveries or that ain't no goddamn recessive trait."

A nondescript business card is dropped on the table, and he doesn't say anything else before he turns to grab the door and let himself out.

[Monica Sullivan] Were this a dozen or so years back, Monica may well have chased Nash out of her home brandishing the lamp on the table at the corner of the room, or with a broom or pan or her fists alone. There would have been hollering and screaming where sentences would be lost to a string of cuss words. It would be dramatic, violent, senseless and something that the police would be called over.

But now Monica had two children, one an adult and the other thrust into a world where she had to be whether she was ready or not. She was at a stage where she was hassling her twenty-something son about whether she would get grandbabies before she gave up dying over the gray in her hair, where she decorated her house and had nice quiet dinners with her husband and thought up excellent vacations for an upcoming twentieth anniversary. She didn't want the hysteria or the dramatics. She didn't want the neighbors to call and to have police show up at her home because of disturbing the peace.

Instead she just held her teeth clenched hard when he spoke of Gwen as though he knew more about her own child than she did and shot daggers into his front and back both as he made for the door and dropped a card on the table, on top of a stack of paper advertisements for supermarkets and big box stores alike. Her arms are wrapped tightly over her chest and her blood pressure has spiked, she's having a rough time sorting her thoughts quickly enough for a snappy retort so she's opting for seething, searing silence instead.

The 'get out' was unspoken and as present in the room as the furniture was, and he was on his way out anyways. That's all she needed. She'd dispose of the evidence that he'd dropped by at all once she'd watched the blue Ford Ranger rumble away from the front window.