Needful Things; Friday

[totalwildcard]

The windows of Needful Things were plastered with handmade signs saying things like "BIG SALE" and "EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!!" Which was not at all influenced by recent events, except for entirely.

Harley had spent a good chunk of the previous day trying to overhaul her entire apartment upstairs. Now her place was even more of a chaotic mess than it already had been, but at least nothing that wasn't bolted down was where it had started out. A lot of it now also wasn't anywhere it made any sense, and her bed was currently kind of wedged in a doorway but whatever, she'd deal with it later. Because that day, it was the store's turn.

Hence the attractive signage on the windows. Trying to reorganize the entire store seemed like a lot of work, so Harley's thinking was she could just try and and sell off as much as she humanly could, and then just restock the entire place until it no longer reminded her of coming home from things that hadn't been dates, or that one time just barely away from the view of the windows she'd --

Anyway!

Change was good, right? So good.

You could tell just how good by how a record player was blaring, and Harley was belting "Iiiiiiii AIN'T got noBOOOODY --!" right along with it.

(open!)

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

You know, Jack was due to head back home in an hour or so. It'd been a while since they'd had just-home-in-New-York-time with nothing going on; it'd be nice to mix it up with some new music.

The idea had only partially arrived in his brain due to the sheer volume of the sound coming out of Needful Things as he neared it on his walk, he swore.

... Anyway.

He pushed open the door. "Are you having a festival in here or something?"

[totalwildcard]

"Huh?" Harley called, over the music, from where she was dumping various knick knacks off the shelves into a box marked with 'JUST TAKE'. "Oh! Yeah! It's a 'buy everything you can carry' festival!"

[suitably_heroic]

"Where's your record collection?!"

Okay, look, she was raising her voice, it felt natural to raise his voice in response.

[totalwildcard]

It wasn't like Harley of all people was going to care. (Right now, anyway.) He did get a briefly confused, weirded out look, though. "... Upstairs?!"

Wait, right.

"Oh, the store's records! Over there!"

It was thankfully a part of the store as of yet undisturbed by all of her erratic efforts of the day, a little nook near the cash register with several shelves' worth of dusty and thoroughly moddable vinyl.

[suitably_heroic]

"Thanks!"

Jack threw her a salute he was pretty sure she'd barely notice, and walked towards that little nook. He was going to keep paging through them until he saw black or skulls or really ornate and unreadable lettering. That was always the ticket.

[totalwildcard]

Harley sent a bunch more stuff crashing into the box with one sweeping gesture - and caught a bit of the tail end of the song. First with a hum and then, predictably, with a, "And NOOOObody cares for meeee --!"

With feeling.

[suitably_heroic]

"Heard on the radio you were going through something," Jack called, flipping past a Black Sabbath record. "You doing okay?"

[totalwildcard]

"Great!" Harley called back. Sure, there was a distinct forced edge to that, but maybe it was just from raising her voice so much? "Just fantastic! Swell, even!"

Overdoing it.

[suitably_heroic]

"All right!" Jack yelled back, pulling a violently red sleeve out of the set. Mastodon, nice. "Well, if you decide you're swell enough to talk about it, I'm going to be here for the next twenty minutes!"

He was not going to go directly to the upset woman, what did you think he was, suicidal?

[totalwildcard]

"Nope, I'm a busy business lady," Harley hollered back, "just busy handlin' my... business, trying to purge all this --"

That song? Had been the last song on that side of the record. And as it ended, right in the middle of Harley's shouting, silence fell.

"-- shit." A beat. "You feel a little bit of a ringin' in your ear holes?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Only when I breathe," Jack assured her, looking up from the vinyl. "You want a replacement record?"

Admittedly he'd probably just give her one of the three separate copies of The Black Album that were in here, but...

[totalwildcard]

"Nah, I got my own," Harley said, considerably more subdued now that the noise had stopped so abruptly. "Secret stash," she added, shuffling over to the record player.

[suitably_heroic]

"Personally I always start to feel better after about fifty rounds of 'The Unforgiven', but you do you," Jack said. He fished a Chelsea Wolfe record out of the bin, too, and shoved it and the Mastodon one under his arm.

He turned, and headed towards Harley. Just for purely shopping related reasons, obviously.

[thatwaslucky]

Rey didn't think she and Harley were close or anything, but she liked her enough that after hearing a few days of radio, she kind of wanted to check in.

Which included her walking in and calling "Hello?" hopefully loud enough to be heard over the music.

[totalwildcard]

"Hello?" Harley's voice echoed back to her from past one of the many bookcases that made the store kind of a maze. Then her head actually appeared, poking past the side of it, eyebrows bouncing up as soon as she saw who it was. "Rey! Hi! Come on in, come on in, buy something!"

If she was coming off even more... energetic (big eyes, frenetic) than what could be considered her usual, it was just because she was.

[thatwaslucky]

"It's almost like you're having a big sale or something," Rey said teasingly, since it'd been pretty hard to miss.

Did she need anything? No. Would she buy something to help out? Yes.

[totalwildcard]

"Oh, the biggest!" Harley enthused, much too forcefully, as she stepped out from behind the bookcase in full, wiping her dusty hands against the thighs of her pants. Then she made a wide gesture, all around the store. "Everything, it's gotta go. I want it outta my sight!"

Way too big a grin for that way to phrase it.

[thatwaslucky]

"Sometimes you just need to purge it all," Rey said, because she got it. She didn't have much stuff to do it with, but she got it. "What are you planning to do with the things that don't go?"

[totalwildcard]

"Dump 'em out front and hope the rikshaw drivers take them?"

Translation:

Harley had not thought about that at all. Or the rest of the whole operation.

[thatwaslucky]

"Let me know if you need help," she said, and added a totally casual, "So how are you doing?"

Totally casual. Because while it was pretty obvious you should account for the case that someone might not want to talk.

[totalwildcard]

So totally casual. Like the way Harley's lips pulled into a plastered-on grin that showed way too many teeth. "Just great," she said, with that expression all tight across her face.

Then it relented just a little, like maybe the bluff was a little pointless to hold on to.

"It was the radio, wasn't it?"

[thatwaslucky]

"It was radio," Rey confirmed. "Sorry to hear about it."

[totalwildcard]

Harley's shoulders slumped a little, abruptly, like she was a marionette whose strings were suddenly not taut anymore.

"Figures," she said, wrinkling her nose but looking resigned more than anything. "Can't nobody on this rock get any privacy."

She kept forgetting about the rum, also.

[thatwaslucky]

"Been there," Rey told her. "And then you get well-meaning people checking up on you."

She could acknowledge her hypocrisy.

[totalwildcard]

Lucky for her, Harley didn't actually mind that aspect so much. You know, as a woman with some persistent struggles with loneliness.

In fact, she shrugged. "Well, I mean... I guess that ain't so bad."