citylogs | [ open ] kaveh's permanent catch-all

[ well, he's here.

also by means of an old conversational callback, he is holding a coat rack. or, to put it precisely, kaveh has the coat rack slung over his shoulder much in the way of a spear of faith. the reason for that becomes apparent when he puts down the tote bag at the foot of the door and the entire container structure within seems to sag with the sheer weight of it.

the tote had bitten into his hand. kaveh flexes it as he considers first the door, and then the surroundings attached to the door proper, and then, deciding on propriety, kaveh puts down the coat rack, which had been carefully and somewhat stubbornly shaped to resemble the silhouette of a tree, and knocks. ]

There's you.

[She gets the place as tidied up as she can, in the admittedly short amount of time she's got to do it. She usually keeps her pack in the main room, equidistant from the couch where she lives and the door to the outside, perfectly situated so that she could pick it up and take it with her on her way from the couch to the door, or drop it off on her way from the door to the couch. She moves her boots from the middle of the floor to the wall, at least. Cleans the remnants of packaged food containers and takeout trays off the coffee table and stuffs them into a nearby garbage can. Takes it from lived-in-messy to just lived-in — but that's not the problem Kaveh is going to have with it, she knows.

She's in stocking feet when she opens the door to the sound of the knock, looking much the same as ever, albeit with a few changes for being clearly at home; she's traded her work pants and jacket for soft sweatpants and a long-sleeved fleece, though her hair is still tied up and there's a pen unthinkingly jammed through it as if for safekeeping.]

Hi. Come on in — what can I carry?

[She holds open the door, keeping her features carefully schooled against a cringe. Because inside —

Inside, but for the very obviously temporary lived-in bits, her bag and her journals and her boots and her refuse, the entire apartment is precisely the way that someone else had left it, before their untimely disappearance from the city. The furniture is all the same. The walls are bare but for someone else's framed photographs. The level surfaces are essentially barren, where they're not covered with notebooks; there are no knickknacks, no picture frames, no interesting lights, no personality. Nothing added to make it anything other than what it was when she found it, save for the bits of herself that could be carried away on a moment's notice. A hermit crab that found an abandoned shell and decided to huddle inside without actually taking it for its own.

She keeps her expression blank. She offers her hands for something to carry.]

Thanks for this. I'll stick it — somewhere.

[ this isn't a home, kaveh thinks.

to be entirely fair, kaveh would have difficulty classifying anything in this city as a home. no matter how loved or beloved the structures become to those whose days here lengthen with time and shadow and grief, they are homes. perhaps to those who came before, the ones that left behind traces of their passing like a lingering note - but even then, kaveh would have his doubts. four walls and a roof, and kaveh, master architect of the kshahrewar, knows that a home isn't just that, a structure superimposed onto reality delineating the difference between outdoors and in. a home is a place that one makes for oneself. everyone in this city belongs somewhere else. there are no homes here.

kaveh looks. kaveh may as well have been looking at a closed door. there is nothing there, kaveh thinks, of ghost save for ghost herself, standing at the doorway with an expression also much in the way of a closed door. kaveh can walk into any apartment down the hall and otherwise and see much the same thing. it must show on kaveh's face; it must show in the soft intake of breath as it settles. kaveh thinks - there had been a choice between bitter and bitter after all. in walking away from alhaitham, he walks into the reminder of him: alhaitham had been much the same way, and kaveh does not like the parallels that he has begun to draw in the shifting sand. ]

Near the doorway. [ kaveh corrects, after a beat, because ghost had warned him, which means ghost had warned herself, and kaveh is nothing if not honest. and right now, as of the beginning of this month, he has become nothing. he had asked ghost if she was happy using her talents. what he should have asked her is who she was when she wasn't using them. ] I should have asked you for measurements, actually. I was thinking of a slightly different apartment plan, the ones that have a little alcove to the left or right of the door. Yours is a straight hallway, so this coat rack will jut out a bit. But it's also meant to pair with a bench so that you can sit while you put on your shoes. That will create shape in your entranceway.

[ kaveh picks up the tote. he brandishes it gently. ] Can I put this on your table? Do you have a pot? A pan?

Edited 2023-11-06 00:02 (UTC)

I'll stick it near the doorway. Where it, y'know. Where it's designed to go.

[Because Kaveh is to interior design what she is to the Oxford comma — the sort of person who says where the thing belongs, and you could ignore their expert opinion, but you'd look like an idiot for not paying attention to it. It'll jut out a bit, but that's probably fine. Probably he'll just break into her house and modify it when she's not paying attention, until it's the way he wants it. That's a Kaveh thing to do.

She motions in the direction of the kitchen, doing a quick and hasty check of the floor just to make sure she hasn't left stacks of paperwork around like a minefield to navigate. It's thankfully a straight shot, this time. It isn't always, but no one has to know how she lives her life when there's no one around, finding it easier to just weave around piles of things than to actually bother tidying them up.]

I have both a pot and a pan, and I'll have you know I even sometimes run them through the dishwasher, which I've also figured out how to use. Are you staying for dinner? There are beers and soda in the fridge. In bottles, so you don't have to look for a glass.

[ kaveh, who had been half-expecting piles of books or papers to have to wend around, looks at the straight path to the kitchen and almost wishes there were. you could tell a lot about someone from the way they furnish or don't furnish their abode. habits, tells, preferences, the things they care about and the things they don't. ghost doesn't care about a lot of things. kaveh can't quite breathe.

still, he follows. the kitchen is the exact way the kitchen would have been left had someone moved in the day before. he puts down the tote. it thuds, thunderously. ]

Do you have glasses? That was a rhetorical question. Yes, I'm staying for dinner, since you should have realised by now that this is a barely veiled attempt to check in on you. I'm asking for a pot or a pan because the containers have kept the stew merely warm, when it's best piping hot. [ with implicit permission, kaveh begins to make himself, well, at home. he finds the pan, rinses it, and sets to re-heating the food. ] Now that I think about it, I should have brought the test shutters. I could have installed them on your windows.

...Okay, you know what? Look. Come and look.

[She says, as she gets the coatrack righted and follows his path into the kitchen, and makes sure that taking him by the arm isn't going to cause him to upend the food onto the floor somehow via a careless tousle of limbs, and when the dinner is safe and the stove isn't hot enough yet to pose a hazard and she's got him by the elbow, she drags him out of the kitchen and across the second little hallway in the apartment, clearly in the direction of her bedroom.

It's admittedly not much better, but there are tiny embers of improvement flickering. Her work clothes and jacket are laid out across the foot of what's clearly her bed. On the table, propped against the lamp, is a sketch of an endearingly fat dragon that looks conspicuously like Netzach's style. And in the otherwise barren closet, a green dress is hanging by courtesy loops sewn into the otherwise delicate bodice, with a pendant necklace looped around the hanger and dangling against the fabric as if the two are designed to go together.

She sighs. She motions. It's still terrible, but it's something.]

I know what you're thinking. It's not as though I'm completely useless, all right?

[ kaveh is summarily, and very willingly, dragged. he leaves the pot on simmer. the stew is thick; the scent of meat and herbs begin to permeate, trailing after them as kaveh is led into ghost's bedroom. what kaveh sees: a recognisable set of clothing, a jacket, a sketch, a dress in a closet. single pinpoints of colour in an otherwise colourless bedroom. ghost, kaveh thinks, is the sort who keeps the little sparks close to her heart. they are cloistered. they are not on display. but she likes looking at it all the same.

an author who can change anything in reality lives without changing her reality. but you don't have to change your own reality for it to be changed. ]

Actually, what I'm thinking is that Netzach isn't completely useless. [ kaveh says, because he recognises the brushstrokes - because he recognises netzach, who leaves a bit of his gentle kindness in everything he touches. the dragon is a rotund one. it is perfectly at peace. kaveh's eyes linger before it flickers over to the dress. ] And to begin with, I didn't think you were useless at all. Hopeless, perhaps, but only in two of the several senses of the word.

[ the dress is beautiful. ] ... this is beautiful. May I?

I'd say you could have it, but I'd get in trouble for giving it away. Probably it'd look better on you than it would on me, though.

[She positions herself in the doorway, more out than in, letting Kaveh have the run of the room while situating herself so that she can hear down the hallway in case something sounds like it's just caught fire or started to boil over. That's the reason she justifies to herself, at least, and when she glances down she sees that her feet are half in and half out of the doorway, toes on the carpet and heels in the hall, and she pushes her thoughts away from that before she can get to thinking too hard about it.]

Netzach did a good job with him. That's Perry, my pet dragon. I'm sort of used to having him clunking around the house or my shop; it's strange not having him underfoot.

Perry seemed well-cared for. [ as in, well, fat, much in the way of a very happy cat. kaveh has seen those. sumeru doesn't lack in happy cats, and people happy to spoil them. ] I had an assistant of a sorts - Mehrak. He was made from a core of a piece of technology I'd brought back from the desert; he couldn't speak, but he had his own personality. I miss the way he would follow me around. It's strange, what you don't realise you'd miss.

[ kaveh's fingers run themselves over the fine fabric of the dress. it is beautiful. it's heartbreaking that it isn't being worn. ]

And please - I don't have the body shape for the dress. [ kaveh's gaze is contemplative as it flits back to ghost. ] But you'll need something for your hair. A mere ponytail wouldn't do, and you'll need your back bare for how low it's cut. You can leave that up to me, though. I wouldn't trust you with an iron.

Oh, not you too. Isn't it enough that I — hey, what do you mean you wouldn't trust me with an iron?

[As distractions go, it's a good one; whatever justifications and rationalizations might've been turning revolutions in her mind and just waiting to be offered up in defense, they all quickly go by the wayside in favor of her just sputtering.]

Who says I'm even wearing it, anyway? Maybe I just have it here to look at. Or — or under protest, or something.

It's your dress - why wouldn't you wear it? You'll agree that it's too beautiful not to be worn. Besides, didn't you commission me to make fashionable the dimming of lights?

[ with a pleased lilt: ]

If a venue is to be decorated and shown to the public, then there must be people to attend and make merry. You would be dressed perfectly for it. After all, you'll need fashion to promote something fashionable.

You'll recall I also made the salient point that the project would need a representative to act as its focal point. And I very decidedly made that person not me. I go to venues to work, not to —

[She falters, just for a second, not fast enough to catch the rest of her sentence before it leaves her mouth, but fast enough that she already knows it's a stupid thing to say to begin with.]

— be a part of them.

[Oof.]

I'm sure there's a girl somewhere in some world and some circumstances who's meant for a dress like that, but it isn't me. Things like that just...aren't.

[ kaveh goes very still. he looks. ghost is at the doorway to her own bedroom. she straddles the jamb as if she is a half-existence on the eve of the day of ancestors, a fata morgana never quite destined to be.

kaveh's low heels click across the wood of her floor. he stands before her. ]

Says who? You?

...There's a term, in chess. Zugzwang. It's a word for being in a position where it would be better not to move than to do anything else, except you're forced to move anyway. No matter what you do, the situation gets worse.

[It's a good word, tailored for a very particular meaning and a very particular situation. The kinds of words you could build a whole chapter on, from the strength of them. Breathtakingly efficient, to have such a vast array of meaning wrapped up into two easy syllables.

She stares at her toes. It's not a good thing to do, but it's easier than looking at Kaveh.]

Any way I answer that question will only make things worse, won't it.

Yes, but not in the way that you think. Did you know, Ghost, that whenever you're not particularly happy with what you have to say for yourself, you look down at your toes?

[ kaveh says, and he says this softly, as soft as dust. as soft as a tale told at beneath the evening light tucked in against the long line of a well-worn blanket. ghost ought not be looking down the way she does. kaveh's heart aches at it. it reminds him a little of a third floor of an ill-fated party, the pulled hood of a self-made cavern. ghost seeks to make herself so small and so invisible that she becomes her namesake.

kaveh puts his hands on her shoulders. he turns her bodily around. ]

Right. Luckily for me, and possibly not for you, my usual partner for senseless arguing is not on speaking terms with me. So you'll have to do instead. Argue with me, Ghost. Present your arguments as to why that dress isn't for you, and I shall argue against it. But we'll do this in the kitchen while I'm making sure the stew doesn't turn into some kind of weird bread.

[She sputters again, easily-turned, but goes along gamely as he frog-marches her back in the direction of the kitchen. She's not particularly thrilled at having one of her tells so brazenly aired to the open, but there's far more than just that uncomfortable revelation to latch onto, in what Kaveh says.]

You're not on speaking terms with — I assume it's Alhaitham? I suppose it could be anyone but he strikes me as the likeliest suspect. Also the most obnoxious.

[SHE SAYS, WITH AFFECTION, PROBABLY.]

Point of order, Mister Chairman, can't we argue about something else instead?

Oh, obnoxious is only a grace note of a word when it comes to him. If there is a city ranking for obnoxiousness, he would top it. Though nowadays, the second-highest ranker isn't too far behind.

[ the stew is heating nicely. kaveh sniffs as he gives it a cursory stir. then, he unpacks the rice from an equally hefty container. the tote bag sags further, but only by half. ]

But certainly - we can argue about why we ought not argue about your insistence that you don't belong in something that clearly someone somewhere picked out for you, knowing precisely who you are and having seen that you belong in it.

That was an absolute disaster of a sentence. How much food did you make?

[The sheer amount of food he appears to be producing out of his tote speaks volumes about just what Kaveh had meant by "made too much" — largely because she suspects she's not the only one he's made this offer to.

Or it's all a farce and a way of checking up on her. Or both. It could be both.

She finds her way into a dining room chair, turning it around so she can fold her arms across the back rail and rest her chin atop them while she watches him.]

But fine. First point: we should not argue about it because it's emotionally imbalanced. This topic of conversation puts me into a position of vulnerability that you aren't subject to.

Counterpoint: the most powerful tool at my disposal to make clear my empathy and sympathy and to potentially influence your thinking is to share my own emotional discomfort. By entering this discussion with you, I am implicitly opening myself up to be vulnerable. Now explicitly, I suppose.

[ kaveh winces. it's the first sign of chagrin. the rice goes into the microwave. sacrilegious, yes, but he only needs to heat it up a little, and the texture ought to be fine. he wets a paper towel just in case. ]

And I wasn't exaggerating when I said 'a lot'? There are maybe three more containers of these. I'm really running out of people to foist it all on, so if you have names, I have extra food.

...I probably don't know anyone that you haven't already thought of.

[Speaking of vulnerability, there's some in that remark, too. Not overtly, not significantly, but there in the way that a house with no personality is there, in the way that a few scattered objects are supposed to make it better when everyone already knows they won't.]

Second point. Your stated intention is to influence my thinking, which presumes my perceptions can and are available to be changed to begin with.

Counterpoint: I've gone the coward's way out by using the word 'potentially'. You are making your perception available to me through discussion; whether it can or cannot be changed is irrelevant since the meaning of the discussion lies in having it.

[ the microwave beeps. kaveh removes it, still-steaming, from its container. he fusses about in the cabinet for plates. ]

You said you had beers in the fridge?

And sodas. I keep wanting to try a cocktail but I don't know any bartenders, except the one who doesn't like me. Plates are in the next one over.

[She picks idly at her sleeve, because the way she's sitting in the chair means that it would be gawky and uncomfortable to try to look at her toes, and she's going to be doing everything she can to break that habit anyway, now that it's been pointed out to her.]

Third point: you're clearly inciting this conversation as a way of not talking about whatever happened between you and Alhaitham, which makes your motives inherently suspect.

Who doesn't like you? Daan? [ kaveh retrieves two plates. he brings them over first, then returns for the pot. ] He only seems like he doesn't like anyone. I think he gets a lot of joy out of being the most sarcastic man alive.

[ because it couldn't possibly be midnight, who likes and loves everyone equally. kaveh pauses over the stove. then, with an impressive show of strength, he lugs the entire pot of stew over and drops the towel from his hand before setting the pot onto it. ]

And no, I don't want to talk about Alhaitham. You were building up to this point, weren't you. If arguing you about this means I don't have to talk about Alhaitham, and it has the potential of getting you to see that you are a character in the stories that you write, then isn't this a win all around?

Mmhmm. Either he's remarkably thin-skinned or he's got it out for me for some reason. I called him a doofus and he hung up on me, which is a fairly disproportionate reaction for what amounts to a playground insult.

[It's somewhere around the point when Kaveh starts hefting the actual food over that the feeling of being waited on seems to reach critical mass for Ghost; though she doesn't move to help him specifically, since he seems to have things balanced well enough for himself, she swings herself up and out of her chair and goes looking for something to bring over — plates, if he hasn't yet; silverware, if it's still needed; drinks if she's got a hand to spare.]

Counterpoint: I'm not a character in the stories I write. The fact that I'm not is quite significantly the point. I was made to be different. I'm supposed to be. You can't fault me for being what I am.

[ kaveh looks. ghost brings back the silverware, a set of drinks. kaveh takes the time to serve the rice. a bed of white, ghormeh sabzi layered on top, meat and beans and the pungent scent of herbs. because he is kaveh, he wipes the edges of the plates down for presentation, and then looks. ]

I think I'm going about this the wrong way. Have you ever wanted to be a character in your story?

[ open ] kaveh's permanent catch-all

closed. @ghost

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