The bar is empty.  Harry has just finished pushing the last few drunks out the door, waiting patiently on the curb as the taxi pulls along to pick them up.  Shaking his head, with a bemused smirk on his face, he walks back down into the basement club, locking the door behind him.

Downstairs, Deirdre still leans over the bar, her legs swinging from the stool.  He notices she hasn't touched the Guinness he poured for her over an hour ago.  Harry sighs and walks behind the bar, flicking off the switches for the neon sign over the door outside and the strobe lights and lasers that pulse above the stage and dance floor.  He flicks up the brighter house lights, and the place is flooded in a pale amber light that seems bright compared to the gloomy darkness the club is normally shrouded in during operating hours.

He usually let's Deirdre hang around while he cleans up.  Over the time that she's been here, he's come to think of her as something of a co-manager, even if her name isn't on any legal documents and she really doesn't do any typical managerial work.  More than that though, she's a friend.  Maybe something more.

He's used to her melancholia, so the sight of her sitting staring at nothing isn't particularly new to him.  He still worries though.  He worries about people -- as a bartender he has all the long nights to watch people and observe their problems and indiosyncracies.  He's come to know his patrons, by sight if not by name, and even if they never say a word to him beyond a drink order, he's perceptive enough to figure out the general story of their lives.  Like the girl who walks in, holding loosely on to the arm of her guy, trying to hid the bruises on her own arm and turning her face away every time he looks at her.  Or the thin, pock-marked young kid who always sits in the same table in the corner, orders the same single drink, and just watches everyone else as he taps a coin on the tabletop.  This might be a goth bar, but people aren't anti-social, contrary to stereotypes.  One night that kid didn't show up, and Morris knew something had happened to him.  The next day he saw the kid's picture in the newspaper.  He'd jumped off an overpass in front of an eighteen-wheeler.

But Deirdre worries him in a different way.  Or maybe he cares about her differently, and that's what worries him.  He's seen plenty of acts walk through those doors, some became big-name stars (the picture of a young, up-and-coming Trent Reznor playing on the stage sits above the back of the bar); some come in nameless, leave nameless, and no one ever remembers them afterwards except for the names in the scrapbook Morris keeps in the back.  And then are some like Deirdre...the talented ones who seem to drown in their own incomprehensible morass.  Something brings them down, but you can't know what it is.  Maybe that's why he's so fascinated by her, why he is so fond of her.  There's a mystery to her -- moreso than anyone else he's ever seen -- and he wants to know it.  Because knowing that mystery will mean knowing her.

He pulls out a cloth and runs it under the warm water of the sink in the back.  Pulling out the cleaner he begins wiping down the bar.  "So who was that big guy earlier?" he asks casually, as if he doesn't really care.

"No one; just some guy."  She taps the edge of the business card on the counter.  "He just wanted to talk politics," she smirks.  She looks at the glass of Guinness, wishing she could pick it up and take a drink.  Not that she really needs to hammer one down, but it would be nice to do some moderately mundane action like that.  It was funny.  She didn't really miss the sunlight, or breathing, or feeling her heart beat.  The things she missed the most were little things, like yawning or blushing taking a random sip of a drink.

He nods, but doesn't believe her at all.  As far as he knows, Deirdre isn't the "political" type.  Besides, no one walks in to a bar, walks up to a girl like Deirdre, and starts talking about politics.  "You know if you ever need help with anything -- anything -- you just have to ask."  It's not that he thinks she can't handle herself, if anything he knows she's a lot tougher than she looks, but he also knows Deirdre is the sort to get in over her head without realizing it or quite intending to do so.

"Thanks," she says noncommittally.  She's used to Harry poking and prodding at her...that was just his style.  And unlike with most people, she really didn't mind it.  She didn't cave in, but she didn't avoid him either.  At least she tried not to.

She stares at the rag swirling across the counter and thinks about what the Tremere had said.  She thinks his whole reasoning is a little off -- protect yourself from the plans of elders by enmeshing yourself in their system of politics and alliances?  So far she'd managed to keep herself out of it.  She hadn't managed to do much good on her own, but at least she'd kept herself alive for the twenty years since she'd met this transformation.  It hadn't brought her fame and fortune, but she could at least call herself self-sufficient and independent.

So why does she feel such foreboding?  

"Its alright," she says to Harry.  

--Last edited by Tara532 on 2008-05-14 20:39:09 --

He doesn't believe her, but he doesn't say anything.  He just keep wiping everything down.  "You were good tonight.  I think they really liked it.  When are you thinking about getting out of this joint and making something out of all that talent?"

She makes a sarcastic snort.  "As soon as you plan on retiring."  By that she means not any time soon.  She knows Harry and knows this bar is his life.  He's spent enough of his time, energy, and fortunes keeping this place afloat.  He'll probably die of a heart attack while serving drinks, and won't let the paramedics cart him away.  And even then, no doubt his ghost would pop up back in here hours after he was dead.  No, Harry would hang on for a long while.

Harry raises his eyes and looks up at her, a strange smile on his lips:  part paternal adoration, part wry cynicism.  "I'm serious.  You have a way about you.  It's not just that you play good music -- I don't know why you stick to playing covers, I've heard your original stuff and its fantastic.  Anyway, you don't just play good...play well," he corrects himself, "you have real stage presence.  I've seen plenty of blokes that play great, but they don't have.  It's not just something you come up with...you have it or you don't.  And you have got it."

"Well thanks for the vote of confidence," she says with a weak smirk.  "I've tried to make it...I've told ye that before.  I tried it back home in Ireland, and when that didn't work, around in Britain.  It didn't work."  It didn't just not work though, that was the thing.  She'd been literally blocked, each attempt circumvented every step of the way.  She'd pick herself up, move to another town:  Dublin, Belfast, Manchester, London...no luck.  And she'd hopped the pond, so to speak, to make a new life here in America.  And it hadn't been all that much better.

"Well that was the UK -- its fucked up, I should know, I lived there for twenty-seven years.  Not that I want to sound like a turn of the century immigrant, calling this the land of milk and honey, but this was supposed to be a new start for you, right?  Make it such."  He shakes his head and sighs as he walks to the back store room and gets out the mop and roller bucket, filling it with water and cleaning solution.  He pushes it out from around the bar and begins mopping up the floor, flipping the chairs up on top of the tables.    "Really, you can make something of yourself.  You should make something of yourself.  Go off to LA or New York.  You're just wasting your potential in a dump like this."

Deirdre can't help but chuckle at Harry's self-deprecation.  He loved the bar like his child, but he always called it a "dump."  But it was his baby, and if anyone else ever said a bad word of it, he'd punch 'em in the jaw.

But, he is right, isn't he?  She came here to get away from the balls and chains of her life in Ireland and England.  She should have picked up and started anew.  But the same nameless thing which weighted her down in the UK was pressing down on her now.  What?  It wasn't Mark.  She hadn't felt his hand in some time, and she was pretty certain that he'd finally given up on her when she crossed the Atlantic.  No, it was something all of her own making.  So did that mean it was all of her own fault?

"I haven't written anything new in a six months.  That's not likely to impress anyone, now is it?  Even if I did get out of here, and went somewhere else, what would I do there?  New York or LA have to be swarmin' with people just like me wantin' to make it big.  What makes me any different?  Even if I do have the talent and such as you say, what'll make me stand out compared to the rest of the rabble?"  

--Last edited by Tara532 on 2008-05-15 20:30:02 --

Harry shrugs.  "I know a few guys.  Not big record-label execs, mind you, but they have their own connections.  I could try to pull some strings."  He looks up at her.  It's not that he wants her to leave.  She's almost single-handedly saved the bar from tanking.  But he also knows she has a long life ahead of her, and she can't spend it in a dive like this.  She does have a real future ahead of her, if she only tried at it.

She nods.  Not sure how to answer him.  What to answer.  It's not that she doesn't want to.  It's not exactly that she doesn't think she can do it.  It's not really any of those things.  Its the weight, again.  Like the weight which has always kept her away from associating with her own kind.  That conversation with Kara the other night was the longest, deepest conversation she'd ever had with a fellow Kindred...well, aside from her own sire.  But those weren't really conversations.  And anyways that was close to twenty years ago.

And now that Tremere had shown up.  Try as she might, it didn't look like she could isolate herself for long.  He spoke of war and alliances...things she'd heard plenty of times from plenty of other vampires trying to drag her into their web of intrigue.  But this one had seemed sincere, at least as far as she could tell.  So maybe there was something to his talk about combining forces.  

"Oh, by the way," Harry says suddenly perking up.  "Someone dropped something off for you while you were playing that last set.  Almost forgot about it..."  He reaches under the bar and pushes an envelope over to her.  "You're quite the popular one tonight, aren't you?"  He chuckles grimly.  But he didn't like the look of the guy who gave him the envelope.  Something about him just didn't sit well with Harry.  And this, coming from a guy who'd ran a bar for fifteen years that catered to all manner of punks, goths, and self-styled weirdos.  He'd given the man a critical eye before slipping the envelope under the bar.  He wasn't about to criticize Deirdre for the sorts she ran around with -- God knew he'd befriended his fair share of ne'er-do-wells -- but really he didn't like that guy.  Again the old worries come back up.

Deirdre picks up the envelope.  Her brow creases when she sees the waxen seal on it, embedded with a stylized rose.  She tears it open and unfolds the letter inside.  It is neatly typewritten.  Terse.  Simple.  There is a signature.  Thomas Arturo.  She's familiar with the name, though she doesn't know it intimately.  

And the webs wrap ever tighter, she thinks to herself.  Funny how these things seem to be conspiring at the same time.  Meeting Kara...the Tremere apprentice's visit...now this letter.  She doesn't believe in God, and she probably doesn't have much of a thought for fate.  But a less skeptical, cynical person might think a cosmic hand had orchestrated it all.  Not to say that there wasn't someone pulling the strings...

She folds up the note and slips it back into the envelope.  "There's blood on the horizon," she says flatly, green eyes on the scarred wooden bartop.  

--Last edited by Tara532 on 2008-05-16 21:00:01 --

Harry's brow furrows.  Now he really is worried.  "Are you Ok?"

Deirdre shakes her head.  Try as she might...try as she might...It would seem, like everything else in her life, that her attempts at independence and neutrality have all been for naught.  Like so much else, powers beyond her control have somehow configured to rob her of a real free will.  What choice does she have now?

Finally she pushes away from the bar and stands up.  She sighs, forcibly pushing air out of breathless lungs.  It's an odd feeling, making yourself breathe.  "Harry..." she starts.  She's not quite sure what to say to him.  She can see the look of anxiety on his face.  She realizes, for a split second, how much he cares about her.  And then as quickly, she discards that revelation.  She's never been comfortable with people caring about her.  "Harry, I have something to do.  If I'm not back in three nights," she shrugs again.  "Then don't expect me back again, not for a long time."

Deirdre shoves her hands in her pockets and walks up the stairs out into the night, leaving Harry staring.