around nighthawks

Who: Maddy and Roy
Where: Outside of Nighthawk's
When: Morning

She'd left Dodge's after the storms let up because even if things sorta seemed to be on the upswing, she needed to get out of there otherwise drama might start up again and she couldn't really handle any more. Maddy was pretty damn proud of herself for walking straight back to the theater too. No detours to bridges or other high places. She'd thought about going to Pepper's but figured she was probably at work and so Maddy had headed home. She'd worked like a maniac on those Peter Pan paintings before downing some cough syrup and crashing for the rest of the night that was thankfully free of dreams. She woke up with the dawn with a new outlook. One that she was forcing a bit but it was positive.

Maddy was going to be happy.

There wasn't going to be any ifs ands or buts about it. She was going to stop feeling like the worst person in the world and do something about it. She was going to put finishing touches on the paintings and give them to the director. She was going to get a new job that didn't involve her in heels, and she was going to be the best friend that she could possibly be. Maddy was going to stop worrying about the Dodge things. He needed a friend. She was going to be a friend. She was going to eventually talk to Ethan about him being weird... and then maybe she could fix things with everyone.

So she got into the nice, blue plaid dress that Elle bought her and found some not too bad scuffed shoes and the gloves that Dodge had given her and brushed her hair and went to Nighthawks ready to ask for a job. It was a total shot in the basket, right? She didn't look like a street kid so much who'd steal money out of the register. Sure she couldn't get rid of that starving look in her face, but it was all about the overall picture. That's what Maddy was sticking with.

So why she was standing down the block balancing on a fire hydrant trying to pep talk herself into going in there was completely and one hundred percent beyond her. Maddy had this and yet she couldn't close those last few yards to walk into the door.

Grady was out and about, wandering the city again. He'd sort of made a point to wander past Nighthawk's, but Marian didn't seem to be working. So, he didn't go inside, sort of not hungry enough to head in when his cousin wasn't there. He was disappointed, but not crushingly so. He'd find her again eventually, probably. He did stop to sit on a bench outside of the place, a pang in his chest slowing him down. He didn't make any outward signs that he was in pain, here merely sat, and hunched a little bit, drawing in slow, deep breaths as he waited for the pain to ebb. Breathe in, breathe out, it's not the last breath. he told himself as he did so.

Maddy was busy doing her own breathing although for her it wasn't pain related just nerves. Her own distraction though didn't mean that she didn't notice the guy slumped there on the bench not far from her. She watched him sit there taking some deep breaths and she pursed her lips, wondering if she knew him or not. He looked vaguely familiar. Then again, it could be just 'one of those faces'. "You okay?" she called over to him. She didn't get any closer. Not yet anyway. You tried not to take too many chances around people who looked like they might be sick when you got sick easily yourself.

He didn't really recognize that he was being spoken to immediately. He heard the words, of course, but he didn't really connect them with himself. Partially that had to do with the fact that one of the the last people who asked him that had eaten about sixteen bullets before all was said and done and was pretty goddamn dead. He sat up straighter though when the pain finally subsided and he could relax a little, figuring he wasn't quite checking out yet. That was when he noticed the girl looking at him, and he mentally connected the question and her. "I--yes, I'm alright." he said. "Am I in your way?" he asked, moving to stand again.

She looked down at her feet, still balanced on top of the fire hydrant and back at him with a bit of an amused smile. "I don't think I can jump that far if I tried," she admitted, waving him back to sit down. "You sick?" He didn't look all that homeless, but then maybe he hadn't been homeless for long. His clothes were a little worn and he had one of those jackets on she'd seen some guys wearing around the city. Against her better judgment she hopped off the hydrant and came a bit closer, still keeping enough distance in case he either tried to grab her or started coughing.

"No." he answered. Technically, he wasn't. He was just not put together in the best manner possible anymore. They were different things. "Why are you wandering around standing on fire hydrants?" he asked. And much like she just did, he assessed her, noting that she looked like she was thinner than she should be. There was a quality about her that seemed to point to either someone who was borderline homeless, or was. The streets were pretty full of those people.

Maddy sighed heavily and dramatically and looked at the door of Nighthawks. "It's one of the things I do to pass the time, although right now it's what I was doing because for some reason I'm too chicken to go in and ask for a job." She shrugged and gave him a genuine smile. It all went into the whole 'Maddy is going to be fucking happy' thing. Closer now, Maddy was able to get a better look at him and she cocked her head, trying to place features. He seemed a little familiar. "I was also waiting to see if one of my friends was here. She works here and I was hoping she might help me out too but she's not here yet." Which was weird, since Marian was always working.

He looked at the place then back to her. "Oh. I came by to see someone too, see if she was working but she isn't. I guess we're both out of luck." he suggested, giving a light smile. "Go in and ask anyway. You never know til you do, and standing out here won't get you employment, but it might make you cold, and less on top of your game when you speak to someone." he said. "So go in as fresh as possible."

"Yeah... well, I figure maybe I should wait for Marian to see if it's okay if I put her as a reference. She's here all the time so she'd be a good reference, right?" It was rhetorical, thinking out loud and Maddy sat down on the other side of the bench and leaned back. "And it's a nice day and everything and I've met someone new." She smiled at him again and stuck out a hand. "I'm Maddy."

"Oh, that was who I was here to see." he said. "And are you actually filling out an application? Couldn't you just talk to someone, and say if they've got questions they can ask her?" he suggested. He knew a lot of places pretty much just went on a 'go in and talk to someone' thing. Not everything had paperwork, especially since there were a ton of people in the world who couldn't actually read or write, but that didn't mean they couldn't work. Then he looked at her hand, and after a moment shook it. "Grady." he greeted in turn.

Maddy continued to smile at him through the handshake, the use of the last name not going by her and she looked thoughtful when she pulled her hand back. "I don't think I'd be filling anything out, but I wanted to ask Marian before I gave her name. We're not like friend-friends." Her and Marian weren't close at all, really, which maybe was why she was nervous. What if Marian thought she was selfish and self-absorbed too and didn't want her around either? "I didn't want to put her in a position where she doesn't want me to work but her boss would be saying 'well she put you down as a reference' and then things not going good." Maddy tugged at the cuffs of her gloves. They were a good fit, but a little big nonetheless. "I'm guessing you're either a brother or cousin to Marian?" she asked him, since he'd only given the last name.

"I don't think she'd mind." he said. "She's nice like that." Or, she was before and he didn't see any reason why she wouldn't be now. Definitely not in the way that she wouldn't help a little girl get a job if she needed one, and he was assuming it was pretty required. "Cousin." he confirmed for her. "My name's Roy, but I don't really go by it much these days. Kind of fell out of the habit." he admitted. "So it's possible that if someone called me that that I'd kind of miss it? So I just don't bother with it."

"Name changes, I can get that." She leaned her head forward a bit when a glint caught her eye. Dog tags. "Were you in the service?" she asked. That would make sense of him just going by his last name, right? Then again, the only thing she had to go on with that assumption is from the plays. "And Marian is really sweet, I've just been... I guess it's a me thing right now. I'm not usually this nervous about things."

Nodding, he confirmed that. "Yes, I was in the service." he said. "Just got back, actually." he told her, though didn't get into why. "Nerves don't help. Ignore them. Just go in, talk to people, make sure you smile, and it should be fine." he said, a sort of natural little drift of confidence he put out there for her. Sometimes you just needed to tell someone it was going to be alright. He'd seen that more than enough over there, and hell, he knew he'd even had it done to him.

That little dose of someone's confidence was what she needed. Something she really hadn't gotten in awhile. "There's no reason to be nervous. the worst thing they can do is say that no, they don't need someone and I would just go find another place. There's plenty of places to go get work." Her mind went to contemplating the art thievery she talked about with Dodge. All that art. "Were you overseas? Boat? Ground Force? If you don't mind me asking."

"Right." he told her, nodding. "Yeah, I was overseas. And ground force. Sort of. I was in the Airborne. So...jumped out of a plane to be on the ground." he explained, since it was kinda new and all, and not everyone had even heard of it. What with the sort of inherent insanity of it in the first place. "You going to go get your job?" he asked, glancing at the establishment behind them.

Maddy's eyes went wide when he said that he'd jumped out of planes. She saw a newsreel about it but to actually meet someone who had done that? "That's wicked amazing," she said in total awe. She could do that. She liked doing things that could be classified as stupid (the adrenaline rush was awesome). "If they let girls in the army, I think I'd want to do that." At his last question she looked over her shoulder too. She was also wondering if maybe he didn't want to talk either. "I probably should. Can I get you anything? Have you had lunch? I've got a few bucks." She offered him a smile.

He gave a light little smile, but there was something mildly off about it. Probably because he remembered what it was like to jump out of a plane, to be just plummeting towards the ground, bullets flying through the air as the enemy on the ground took shots and you couldn't actually do anything, just pray you weren't hit. But that wasn't the kind of thing you shared with young girls on the street. You just smiled, and nodded, and were comforted by the fact that women weren't ever going to be in the military. "I haven't had anything, but you wouldn't have to pay for me. I could pay for you, though." he offered.

Having someone pay for her meant she could save the money but the girl shook her head. "No, I can pay for myself but thanks. I just like having company." Although what they would talk about, Maddy wasn't sure, because he didn't say anything more about the airplane jumping. There was that little strain on his smile and Maddy figured that maybe for him, jumping out of planes wasn't all that cool. He still seemed to want to have lunch with her though, so she must not have offended him too bad. "If you don't want breakfast, they serve burgers all day too." As if on cue, her stomach gave a loud rumble and Maddy couldn't remember when she'd last ate.

The first thing that occurred to him was that if she ran around not taking charity where she found it, she was probably either very very stupid, or she hadn't been at a loss for very long. It was just purely unintelligent not to take a free meal when you could, especially if you weren't well off. He knew, he had done it before he'd left for the armed forces. Their family hadn't been well off by any means, they'd been struggling to keep everyone fed. Who the hell said no, they had it when they might not have money tomorrow? He hoped she got the job, but his opinion was definitely colored by the words coming out of her. First 'yay, cool to jump out of planes' and now this. Maybe it was just she lacked anything like forethought. Or she'd already picked his pocket and he hadn't noticed. He didn't know, but either way, it wasn't anything resembling bright. Or maybe she was just dressing down and making herself look like she might not have all the luxuries of a better life, and that was why she wasn't taking a perfectly good offer, and instead wasting her money on something she could get free. At the sound of her stomach, he shook his head a little, and glanced at the diner. "Right." he said. "Look, I'm probably just going to get in your way, what with you trying to get a job and all. You should do that without a stranger tagging along."

That was definitely confusing, and the 'Right' he'd started with didn't sit well with her (should she have been offended by that?) as did the sudden shift from 'sure, I'll have something to eat with you' to 'no maybe not'. Paying for herself when she could was important to her and if she knew Grady a bit better, she might feel more comfortable letting him pay for her, but she didn't and she didn't know what kind of person he was. He certainly seemed nice enough, but there were plenty of nice people out there that had twisted logic on paying someone back. "Like I said, I'm waiting for Marian to make sure it's okay and you're looking for her too. You won't get in my way. If you were, I wouldn't have asked you if you wanted to eat with me. I'm sorry if I rubbed you the wrong way about the airplane jumping. I didn't mean what I said to hurt you." That was the only thing she could think of that made sense to have his intention shift suddenly like that.

"I probably shouldn't have bothered her at work in the first place. Now that I'm thinking about it, it might get her into trouble." he said. "You've got a different case, you're here to check with her about a reference for working in the same place, I'd just be around bugging." he added, because he didn't want her changing her mind about asking Marian for something he felt comfortable saying he thought she would do without question. He also shook his head. "You didn't hurt me, don't worry about it." he said, also not wanting her to think that. She hadn't. There was pretty little that did hurt him these days. Or, that was the trend so far--he was kind of hoping that stuck.

Maddy eyed him for a moment. She was still a little confused but he said he wasn't hurt by it so she gave him a smile. "Sometimes I say stuff without thinking them through so I wasn't sure. Do you want me to pass a message along for you? Or just let her know you were looking for her?" She really hoped that he was okay about things. He was kind of intimidating actually, what with being a soldier and going through all that and Maddy wasn't sure what she'd be able to bring to the table there. She was still smarting over what his cousin had said to her the other day and what had gone on with Dodge.

"If you think to. But if you don't remember or she isn't in for a while, then don't worry about it. I'm sure I'll see her around soon enough." he told her, not wanting her to feel like she had to play messenger girl for him. It wasn't her responsibility or anything so he didn't want her to feel like it was. He gave her a little smile though. "I hope you get the job, though." he said. "So, Good luck."

Maddy was still going to make a point of remembering and letting Marian know. She wasn't going to be forgetting about Grady any time soon. "Well, I hope she isn't too long," Maddy said with a little laugh and got up, returning his smile. "Thanks. I can use all the luck I can get, I guess. It was nice to meet you. Maybe we can have something to eat another time." She wondered if he'd want her company. He'd seemed all for the idea before and Maddy's own self-doubts were starting to get in the way and she shook them off. Happy, dammit. This person doesn't even know you. He doesn't know about mistakes you've made.

"I'll see you around, Maddy." he said, nodding to her and then heading off. He figured he'd check out whatever the noise was about downtown. He didn't figure he'd see the girl again, though he guessed if she got a job there he might. He just knew people in this city sometimes passed through your life like ghosts. Or maybe that was just something he was re-learning. He didn't know.