[Of all the tea houses in all the world, he had to walk into this one...]

_________________________ //.etro: Toronto by Night _________________________
//.etro-logical Data
______________________________________________________________________________

It is 20:13 on Tuesday the 07. day of April 2009.

Sunrise: 5:25 Sunset: 18:34
Moonrise: 03:20 Moonset: 13:27
It is week 1 of the month and the waning crescent moon is not up.
The tide is high and rising.
A cool breeze blows from the west, driving dark clouds before it which blot
out the stars in patches overhead. Elsewhere they glitter brightly in the dark sapphire sky.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Rose Tearoom(#1214RlJM)


A renovated older building on the corner hosts a cosy little tea house. A
small sign hanging over the door proclaims it to be 'The Rose Tearoom'.

You open the door and enter the tearoom.
The Rose Tearoom(#1214RlJM)

Upon entering this tea room, it's evident that either the establishment was named for the decor, or decorated to match the name. Though there's nothing gaudy or glaring, roses do seem to be a major theme in the style of the room. Small tables seem to be the norm here, though there are several places where larger groups can be seated. The tables themselves are masterpieces of creation, having the look of handmade quality. Oak surfaces glow from frequent polishings, the legs of each carved to depict roses on trailing vines that circle the leg all the way to the floor. The chairs surrounding the tables are also of oak, though soft cushions have been placed upon the seats, making them comfortable. The floor itself is also hardwood, though woven rugs placed here and there give it a comfortable, warm feeling. The walls have been painted a soft shade of dusty rose, with a wallpaper trim running along the top, where wall meets ceiling, decorated with white roses against a wine-red background. Large windows face the street, of beautiful stained glass, depicting vivid red, white, and pink roses. Towards the back, a long counter runs along the length of the room, where people can sit, or simply place orders, though waitresses also circle the room. Behind the counter are two doors, one of which leads into the kitchen, the other to a staircase leading to the second floor, though this door is locked, with a sign that reads: Private. Music plays constantly, though at a soft volume, ranging from classical to soft jazz, though it's always instrumental, and never vocal. Decorating every table is a vase, with a single, freshcut rose.
Flames burn brightly, encased within hurricane lamps at the center of every table, providing more illumination than one might expect. Discreet overhead lighting also sheds it's glow onto the room, so that the light level remains soft and diffuse, but ample enough to see clearly.
Looking outside, you can see it's fair and mild, with a few clouds in the sky.

** Places and +views present **

Obvious exits:
Private Door U Out O

Tom enters from the street.
Tom has arrived.

It's a pleasant walk from Union Station and the lake is gorgeous. Tom is back in Toronto after his prolonged absence fighting the good fight on the island of Rhodes where against some incredible Globalization-Struggle-Rioting backdrop he did do ferocious battle against some hidden conspiracy of Nazi financiers/media conglomerate owners wherein he defeated, once more, the excesses of the foul advertising industry coupled with the unthinking excesses of global money-power, in so doing, vindicating the righteous power of the mass media to do good and righteous service to the global citizens of Starship Earth...

Man. If only that were true, he wouldn't look so beatdown. There's something about Tom that looks beat like a drum - his hangdog face, the general lack of focus and clarity in his often energized eyes, the 'I simply do not give a fuck' adjustment of his tie, the knot falling quite short of tidy. His amble into the room is aimless, his gaze simply a skitter of sight against rose, red, red red rose, his posture is stooped, his hands clammy. One holds a travelling briefcase. The other tenses... untenses. Tonight is one of those nights. Going to be a tough one to get through. Sweat beads on his forehead. His internal biochemistry is gone haywire. Tom is coming undone at the seams.

On nights like this, the tea room loses most of its patrons.
Warm nights, no traffic.

They should have outside seating; a place where people talk, enjoy a lull, leave change, move on. As it happens, as it so often is the case, the interior mimicks the exterior - very little traffic, warm and pleasant. Certain dialogues exist on certain levels but it's white noise. Impossible to zero in on one particular conversation, insane to discern the nuance of laungages. There's only so much french you can listen to until it becomes a boring nasal drone.

Of course, there's Penny. Strikingly gaunt and towheaded against the muted mauves. Headphones on her table, jacket slung back across the chair. Scarves of steam rise up from the cup of tea in front of her, a little to the left. Threading her fingers together, she watches Tom-the-antithesis-of-calm with her head canted.

And, of course, travel will do this to you. A trans-Atlantic flight is a very
long time in a very uncomfortable environment that absolutely no evolutionary
mechanisms prepare you for.

A night, a week, sometimes even a month is not enough to recover after a particularly strenuous odyssey from home. Especially not when you find yourself, just for instance, waking up at five in the morning because where you were, it's noon. /Especially/ not if you find yourself in the very real situation of being up and moving at eight thirty six pm when it is to you three in the morning.

This is how Tom finds himself here, his eyes blind, ears deaf, even his nose blocked to the rich exchange of information in the form of hand-jive, the patois of invisibly evolving underground linguistic structures, even the careful cryptography of chemical precursors to amino acids that float in specially prepared tea. The entire universe is information, and it offers up a bounty to those willing to open themselves to cosmic patternings. But Tom just can't be fucked to do it, just now, sorry. Instead, the world washes over him in a wave, meaningless, senseless. Arbitrary, imagined, just as it is, as it always has been - without interpretation or the imposition of personal meaning on the recognition of structures. A pair of quarreling lovers don't remind him of a girl in Budapest he nearly married -- instead, they are strangers and it is none of his business. It is a frightful state to be in, and Tom is aware of it, only this, how out of character he is, how utterly not himself he feels, how distant and dissociated he feels from his ordinary self (or even his extraordinary self which is largely something of a secret and especially from his extraextraordinary self which today is given to napping and the occasional emergence in a clumsy, crabby moment).
Tom sits without art or technique in an elegantly carved oak chair perilously close to the secret friend whose name he's never known, the girl who has always been here and yet who he has always been unaware of. He puts the briefcase down carelessly - as a result, it topples with a loudish bang - he doesn't even start. He just opens the front of his jacket and slumps, giving himself over to a hyperfocused study of the rose on his table, vibrant and full.

That one face in a swell of unknowns. Any other soldier home from the war would go running. Would move with the tide of humanity, know his place in it and understand the destination as home, as safe, as terra firma. A place of rest.
Like magnetic north draws all compass points, the seat with its back to Penny is the only obvious stopping point. She behaves as a long-term fixture, the way old men feeding birds in the park do. Moving minimally, making adjustments only with two fingers here. Two fingers there. To her shirt, the jacket. Shoving cup and saucer gently toward the center of the table. Her arrangement is methodical - the very slow and organized taking stock of herself. It's the point of all good neighbors to be only as involved as necessary; to keep all things hers beyond the point of interruption. That side of the fence.
Moving deeper into the zone, Penny peels off a sticker from her headphones and seals it to the table, pulls out a marker and chews on the cap. For a little while this mutual silence evolves in a sequence of sighs and shifting. Taptaping. Spoon drummed on the china.

"Ave," Penny says, subvocalized.

Isn't this the sort of thing that Tom gets all fucking worked out of shape over? Or he's supposed to, anyway. That's what he gets paid this respectable little salary (with benefits and vacation days and plenty of life insure) to do. To get worked up over things that aren't any of his business. To bust heads for holding thoughts that are, really, none of his business.

The peeping tom brigade. The sacrosanct order of reality puritans. Big BrXXXXXXXXXX you. (Classified for security reasons -- your eyes only.) Well, not tonight. Either Tom doesn't care -- or more likely -- he hasn't the energy or desire to notice whatever shenanigan is going on. Society will manage itself nicely without him for an evening. Society always does, always has, always will. Society is an organism. An organism that isn't properly maintained will collapse. An organism at the point of collapse is a danger not to itself but to the organisms immediately bordering it... death, putrefaction, corruption of the flesh, infection, pockets of bile, pus, poison all result.

Tom takes a bottle of poison from his pocket and opens it up. Now, he needs poison to function. He taps two pills into his palm, and swallows them dry. One, first. Into the mouth, over the tongue, down the throat with a grimace. The second, into the mouth, can't get it down, waitwaitwait saliva corrodes the time-release capsule the foul taste on his tongue and down it goes. He dabs the corners of his eyes with the napkin, and hardly notices even that he's done it.

Whales, dolphins, and humans are the only mammals with salt-water secreting ducts at the corners of the eye. They say that humans evolved into whales and dolphins -- they spent so much time in warm, seasonable water that they went native, they evolved to fit it, they left the whole poisonous clusterfuck of human interaction for the embrace of the seas where a whole other show was going on, involving poetry, love, and brotherhood. That's what they say.

Radiating a monday after-work turmoil so deep into a Tuesday keeps everyone else minding their own business or minding Tom's. That couple twice removed in the scheme of things now take turns with a furtive glance. Is he? Isn't he. Homicidal? Derranged. Assumptions scribed in the lines of downturned mouths, twists in a napkin, crowsfeet crinkling in squints; Pill-popping power broker. Fired. On a bender. They look at his hands and take the imagined story further. Bachelor. Lives in a studio. Never seen the inside of a gym.

Penny doesn't look. Can't very well turn around and offer conversation. Not yet. the atmosphere is thick, tension bouncing off the normally tranquil setting walls. Even the tiny lights in the hurricane lamps flare and spark. Working fingers away from the goetia surrounding her, Penny tips two out toward the room. The universal signal to a waitress. Two.

Without much delay a small woman wearing a small apron, stooped low to the ground by arthritis and poor nutrition in her better days, shuffles into the room (her way around the counter was a journey bracketed by cracking bones and gutteral grunts) with a cup and a pot of hot water. She makes her way toward Penny, smiling toothless, her eyes lost dots in the crinkled lattice of puffy eye skin and jowl. In broken english, the waitress coughs "Water, yes. Yes," pleasant, happy to be useful and doing something, not shored up in the network of socialist homes for the aging "other cup? you?"

Penny shakes her head, nods backward indicating Tom. The waitress nods like she knows the score and sets it and the saucer down. Gruff "Meelk, shoogar" pointing a bony finger at the accoutrements on the table. The tiny tin can of milk. The lidded bowl with the tiny spoon of sugar.

The waitress pours water from her one-shot tea pot, shuffles away and it's almost like you can feel the heat warming the thin walls of the porcelin. The sensation is not startling so much as it feels like the atmosphere of the tea room is finally seeping in. Into your bones and behind your eyes, a tranquil, easy feeling.

The drugs, perhaps. They kicked in sometime after the refugee from the People's States of Europe set down the tea Tom didn't ask for but didn't have any goddamn energy at all to send back -- too busy getting the childproof cap back on, too busy keeping the bile down, too busy ignoring the pointed stares, the accusatory glances from people who are here by design of the Universe specifically to pry into his business. There is a somehow appropriate inversion of values and status here.

But Tom, well. He's already looking up, bottle in jacket pocket, contemplating with much more weight than necessary the not-quite-tranquil surface of the tea. Invisible eddies of air stir the liquid. Convection currents within the cup echo the stirring motion of the faint breeze, and make with their own answering distortions of the hot tea, liquid joined by surface tension. As above, so below. In the world, there is pain and hurt. Now, Tom, who has put himself into step with the world, is filled with pain and hurt. But Tom wants the world to be filled with love and knowledge -- so he lets the love and knowledge regenerate within him. He is too busy contemplating drinking the tea to vomit -- he is too busy enjoying the perverse satisfaction of his penance, to be snooped upon, to bother to snoop on the snoopers. Let them stare! Tom will drink his tea.

And he does. Tom lifts the cup and holds it in his cupped palms. The Chinese have a saying -- too hot to hold, too hot to drink. And it is, but still, he does. Only a little, a sip, and it goes down easy... and he sips a bit more, just a bit, not enough to be really hot, to do a lot of damage... but to remind him he is, you know, alive. And for now, Tom does not question where this tea came from (indeed, to his mind, the salvation has the face of a wrinkled, shrunken woman in advanced stages of collapse), or how or why... in fact, he doesn't question at all. He sips. Relaxed. Content. Evolutionarily satisfied.

Better.
Everything, it seems, will be alright. This sensation permeates, changes perception and things begin to slow down. It's warm and pleasant and certain dialogues have begun to disappear; like so much vapor. The door has performed its function, swinging open and closed time and again. People, customers and off-shift waitresses, leave the tea room. It's not a hurried leave-taking but an amiable parting. Perhaps they overtip. Maybe they kiss and make-up. Behind the bar at the back, there's a kind of cleaning up happening. Neatening, straightening, wiping down. A younger waitress thumps her way down the little aisle in thick-heeled shoes. Quick swipes across both occupied tables; she even rights the fallen comrade briefcase.

Penny moves for the first time since the waitress left, her wrist, elbow, vertebrae cracking loudly - protesting the sudden flexing. There are not the noises of a body that wants to move. Like a stick-figure pulled reluctantly off the page, Penny shifts. The chair creaks, rivets in the wood carving released from incidental weight; she was never part of the tree it came from. Never had to bear the pressure of the wind, the pull of the root, the fall of the axe.

Somewhere a clock ticks. The inner workings loud, suddenly.

She touches her teacup, stirring the hot water inside, with a sugar-crusted spoon. Her mouth makes a long slurping sound when she sips and slouches further in the chair. Further in the background are the noises of plates being stacked.

Like so much vapor, the tea disappears into Tom. Warm and flowing, it floats down into the digestive system and out into the capillaries and veins and arteries and other mechanisms of irrigation. Warm water and Lord knows what else reinvigorate a damaged system. The organism was damaged - now, the damage seems put at bay if not addressed completely.

The room empties out, molecules spinning off and away. Like a vapor, like a gas, humanity in the tea room dissipates. Tom serenely sips, some weary office buddha who has found his contentment. Who knows what thoughts boil through that head? Who knows what plans, what misty-eyed schemes for global brotherhood are being rewound, given a second try, in this rare moment of harmony and all-togetherness. The sweat has dried, the hair is matted. Tom will live.

And he goes. He stands up without weariness, without complaint -- the mind/body dichotomy has been subdued, and his body no longer serves the mind unwillingly like a put-upon serf, but rather in the uncomplaining manner of a lover fetching a lost item of his beloved. Each task is performed with uncomplaining devotion - why should it not be so? The two are one!

Tom leaves a generous tip for the waitstaff on his table, and stoops to grasp the once-fallen, now-righted briefcase. The two have much in common -- the universe is a swarm of symbolic relationships and occulted meanings. With a clearer mind and an easier step, he walks back out into the luxuriously warm night to do things unguessed at.

through the line and orders fries and a coke, then settles in a seat near the counter and begins to survey name badges.

To those who know her from her party persona, Daisy would be virtually unrecognizable: she's wearing a garish red and yellow polo, and her Bettie Page bob is piled up underneath a baseball cap on top of her cab. At the moment, she's the only one working the McDonald's counter.

Perhaps "working" is an exaggeration: she's listlessly daubing at it with a dingy grey cloth while staring across the mall.

Name tag? No dice.

Daisy's reads 'Sandra'.

What, you thought 'Daisy Inscrutable' was her real name?

Darke looks around for the obvious, then it seems to fail. He gets up and heads back into the mall to the nearby Hallmark card store...

Darke comes back in and settles in the back of the place. He begins to fill out an assortment of cards - Mother's Day, Valentine's, Birthday, etc. He seals each one and labels the outside with the same name.

A number of raver kids -- big pants, candy jewelry -- cluster around a table in front of the McDonalds. One of them, possibly the elder, grins over at the mall McDonalds' single apparent employee.

Daisy just scowls back.

Daisy sorts through the cards one by one, dragging her thumbnail along each seam to open the envelope. With each card, her expression of consternation grows deeper. "Really, now?", she asks. "Someone left all them cards all over the back table?"

Her deft fingers pluck out one at random. 'Happy 50th Anniversary!', the card cheerily declares.

"I dunno how they knew it was me an' Charlie's fiftieth," she adds.

Darke shrugs as he looks at the woman. "Maybe they were just being thorough.. shotgun approach or something like that." he points at the Happy Halloween card and the hand written inscription 'Do you dream?' "Looks like some of them are even personalized."
"Personalized," Daisy echoes. She thumbs open the Happy Halloween card, and she frowns. "And no. I don't dream, on account of I don't sleep."

She means it. The shadows underneath her eyes are deep and bruise-coloured.

Darke flips through the cards to the condolences card in the stack. Written inside is the phrase, 'I need the help of the dream speaker'. He slides he card over to you. "All or nothing time I guess."

Daisy's eyes narrow. Daisy's lips press together into a thin colourless line. Daisy's nostrils flare.

"Okay," she says, "rule number one that this is my day job, and you don't ask me about what I do at night while I'm at my day job. When I'm here, I'm just the girl what cleans the counter, dig? That's all I do."

The expression doesn't fade, though she adds: "I don't know you from Adam. You got ten seconds to explain why you're buggin' me here. Clock starts ... now."

Darke looks around, "There is something fucking with dreams, and I have only started to grasp the basics. I need a teacher... I was told you might be able to help. I was getting the run-around on the streets and would have tried to contact you at a social event, but I don't tolerate being jerked around."

"Riiiiight," Daisy says flatly. The expression fades from anger into trademark inscrutability. "I'll tell you what: I'll see what I can do, but I got to get together the entire College. There ain't no way I'm gonna do freelancing without my homies."

Darke nods a bit as he looks around. "On the streets, I go by Grave Robber. Next time we meet, you can call the place and time. I am looking to either earn your trust, or hire you outright. You and the rest of your homies can talk it through, just don't leave me hanging. if you are not interested, let me know as well. Lives are in the balance."

"Dig," Daisy repeats, rubbing at the corner of her mouth with her thumb. "We'll see what we can do."

Darke nods a bit. "Works for me..."

"I'm daisy@junkho.org, if you've got a net connection," Daisy says, "and you can catch up to any of us at our parties. We got a roster of future map points on junkho, too."

Darke ahs and nods. "I wander the digital world under the name Prometheus. prometheus@maildump.com. Send it there and I wil catch it in transit"

Daisy bobs her head sharply, perhaps in affirmation, perhaps because she's falling asleep.

Darke slides his coat on "Hope to hear from you soon." is all he offers before he pulls the cliche arcane-induced vanishing into the crowd stunt

[Eddie's arrival. Late afternoon. April 4. It's no way to remember Martin Luther King Jr.]

Side Street

Buildings line the street on both sides. It seems this is a mix of commercial and residential zoning. There are a couple of cars that bring to term the word heaps along the side street. The average clean cut useful member of society would be scared to enter this area. That especially holds true if there were a group of young punks hanging out by their vehicle smoking pot and drinking cheap booze. What are those two doing at the end of the street? Was that the sound of glass breaking? Perhaps it is best not to linger too long in this wasteland. The thought that the Mayor was right, Urban Blight needs to be halted, comes to mind.

Contents:
Eddie
Obvious exits:
Basketball Court Cross Street Large Door

So it's the afternoon and there's these kids out in the street.

It's warm and pleasant - they're talkin'trash and rolling down the street with a graffitied basketball. It makes that hollow noise echoing off the walls of the nearby tenaments. On the steps of one of those buildings, Penny's leaning into the afternoon. The building isn't important, is generic, is always
falling apart; has overflowing metal garbage cans and rats moving in and out of the shade. A cigarette, unlit, rests in the fleshy part of her thumb - a balancing act. She's casual, slouched, has the look of the perpetually stoned; half-lidded and loose-limbed. Doesn't mind the locals and they don't seem to mind her.

A new games for the kids, offered by a gold toothed interloper. But no one's playing it seems. Either the younglings' about are too young this brand of chance, or they've got street smarts enough to smell a hook. Fortunately, there's always a sucker in the bunch. No matter how small the street traffic, no matter how savvy the audience, there's always someone who thinks they can
beat the game.

When Eddie comes to a halt a building over; he's found such a mook. He's young, black, and cocky. But he's got time to learn. The cards are simple playing cards, shuffled with a shark's touch. Eddie sets up on top of a small newspaper dispenser. It's flat enough to run the grift. "Ees called, find da' queen, right." And her highness is offered up for inspection in her red hearted glory. The boy nods, sure he can finger her amongst the other two cards.

Penny knows it when she sees it. Can mark the marker in the blink of an eye. From her slouch, that particular vantage ponit between the twisted iron slats, Penny watches the newcomer reel them in. His big show seems someting exciting and new. She gets up on a higher step, the concrete crumbling below even as she moves. She pockets the cigarette, pushing her sleeves up. But it isn't good enough, the view.

And those kids? They got goin'the minute their friend laid his money down. It's all "Bullshit" this and "You're gonna lose" that. But this kid, he's got confidence. Or dumb luck. Penny's just a step, a half. Then she's there staring over the tops of their heads at the game.

"Hi," her voice sending a shiver through the line-up so that they move, almost as one, turning then stepping back.

"How ju' doin." His accent's thick, and that was more of a statement than a question. Despite the momentary pause to pass on the pleasantries, Eddie's hands never stop handling the cards. The young black kid with his crooked 'Blue Jays' hat pays no heed to P. No, he's focused on her highness as she lays down with the other two cards. Then there's movement, fast fingers shuffling the three cards between three respective spots upon the newspaper dispenser. The Brazilian doesn't need to watch what he's doing; it's second nature to him. And besides, some white girl's talking to him out of the blue.

"Come on man, yer neva gonna win, yo." The kid's pals interject. But that doesn't phase the cocky street boy's intensity. Eddie finally looks down at the mark, hands still moving. "So den, hijo, jer gonna fin' de queen, right." She's flashed up from the middle position so the boy can get his bearings again. "No problem." He says confidently, placing his five spot on the make-shift table.

The kid's pals are so right about that. He'll never win. Poor and stupid are bad odds. He's the kind of kid that'll play chicken in a shitty car down a blind alley in a few years. He'll never even see that dumpster coming. He's the kind that doesn't take advice; not even from a white girl when she says "Don't you have a tournament to practice for?" Just like the poster says. King of the Courts. April 5.

"Yeah c'mon man," one shoves.
"Yeah yeah, let's go already."
"Man," the third complains "this shit's old."

But they don't really move. Hard to walk away from five-maybe-ten dollars in the middle of the day. Penny still hovers, glancing from time to time from Eddie's hands to his face. She's got a look on her face while no one's paying attention to her. Like she's asking a favor. Just don't.

//.etro: Penny rolls "3" privately to Eddie at diff 5.
For a total of 1 success(es).

Dumb AND lucky.

Penny moves up again, positioning herself between the kid, his money and the game. Now that she and Eddie are facing him, he starts to tilt his head a little. He starts to lose his cool, confident intensity "Nah man that ain't right," eyeballing your jacket and hair. Your teeth and tats. He backs off with his friends catcalling "Told you man, told you." He starts to make a grab for his money. But it's already in Penny's hand. She holds it up and back, has the height advantage. "You fuck off out of here right now and stop shitting your mother's dope money away, hey?" She chucks the balled-up bill and watches him go running.

Far from satisfied, Penny profiles, lip curled "Don't they teach you not to shit where you eat?"

Golden smile turned to neutral watch. The boy's are out of sight, more important now is the girl who fucked his grift. But the cards don't stop, even though the mark's been run off. Maybe a nervous habit. Eddie keeps shuffling.

"Da' was dinner money ju' jus spooked." *flap, flip, flap,* Fingers work the trio. The queen remains hidden under cover, and Eddie's mood runs sour. He wants to see what's next, he wants to recoup that five spot, and his stomach audibly wants some McNuggets. But he's not letting on like he's sniffed her yet. Nothin' in his body language shows his hand. Dude's got one helluva poker face.

"Josiah Michael Stevens isn't your meal ticket" Penny watches the cards. Flip flip, tick tick, stab. Her thumb interrupts the flow, the pink of her nail going white with pressure of her frame behind it. Speaking from the pencil-thin lines, her mouth and eyes transformed, possessive "He's mine."

She stands there still wanting to make something of it but her eyes are a give-away, red and veiny. All bark and no bite, clearly not at the moment. She steps back and swipes at her nose "So."

So, some foreign language. "Olhe a menina, mim no sabem que tipo do modelo voc pensa que eu sou, mas eu vi o que voc apenas l. E eu no penso que engraado... ou atrativo." Whatever that means.

The card's flipped over, Penny isn't a winner. But she shoudn't feel bad, like he says. "Don' feel bad, hija." See. Eddie holds up the King of Diamonds. "Nobody wins when I play. But ju'... ju' owe Eddie a cheesburger, eh."
(In Portuguese "Look girl, I don't know what kind of idiot you think I am, but I saw what you just did there. And I don't think it's funny... or cute.)

You say "How about we call it even and you go make chumps of the tourists," nodding up the block during the departure from the english language, coming back around with "y'know that way, Eddie." The name spoken like a taunt. Whatever you said it didn't register on her radar of things to get offended by and she's on a tear all her own. "I got a business here, shit" all pissed off "and you think you can just stealth your way in? What the fuck?"

"Business? Dat what ju' call fuckin' with those kids lil' brains, eh?" A glance towards their departing forms. With a single swipe, he's plucked up the trio and returned them to random slots in his deck. That get's lost in his valet's uniform, and patted with his grimy fingers. Somewhere a nail-clipper is missing him. Eddie's working on one hell of a coke pinky. Planting both hands on the newspaper dispenser, he leans in to speak real quiet like.

"Next time ju' fuck with Voodoo Duarte's game, ju be nice about it hija." Having said his piece, the dark dude backs and preps to bail.

Penny, too, leans in real close like and slides her hands up on the empty newspaper stand, grabs the trailing hand. Presses something into it. Smallish. Dime-ish "I know who you are," she grins white and wide "I just wanted to see for myself if it was true."

As she walks off into traffic you can hear her say "He talks about you in his sleep all the time."