9th Opportunity :: Action/Video

[recognize_an_opportunity]

[Meyer doesn't always take a day off work. In fact, this is his first day off since the casino opened. That's why, on this lovely afternoon, he's wandering a little aimlessly now, cigarette in hand, looking for something to pass the time that isn't work.

For awhile, he wanders around the area by the fountain, occasionally stopping to sit down and write something down in a tiny spiral bound notebook, then standing up and wandering again. After awhile, though, he seems to get bored, and turns on the video to ask a question -- or rather, make a proposition.]

I'm going for drinks. Does anyone want to come?

[It may be a bit early in the day for drinking, but it's his day off -- this is what people do on their days off, right? With that question posed to the entire City, he strolls off in search of a bar that has relatively inexpensive and plentiful alcohol.]

Comments

[recognize_an_opportunity]

I didn't say I hadn't been shot at before.

[He looks at the bottle, pours the tiny bit that's left into his own glass, and then gestures for another to be brought to the table. He's undeniably feeling the effects of the alcohol now, and he can't say it's unpleasant. Maybe this day off thing is better than he thought.]

[spotlighted]

Have you ever actually been shot, though?

[Oh good, more wine. She's feeling a little rosy already, but she'll keep on drinking as long as he will.]

[recognize_an_opportunity]

[And he'll keep drinking forever until he's very drunk.]

Once. Not badly.

[spotlighted]

I'm not even going to ask the other question, of course. I don't think I want to know the answer.

[Which would be how many people he's shot.]

[recognize_an_opportunity]

[Not as many as people might think.]

I prefer to solve my problems in a more diplomatic manner.

[spotlighted]

[When her main image of gangsters is the Valentine's Day Massacre, she's increasingly worried about both the shooting and the being shot at.]

That's the smart way to do it. You're a smart guy.

[recognize_an_opportunity]

I try. I have friends who...

[He shrugs, nearly spilling some of the wine as he pours some more.]

... are impulsive.

[spotlighted]

I bet you end up cleaning up after them a lot.

[recognize_an_opportunity]

That's an understatement.

[spotlighted]

So you want to learn how to say "clean up after yourself" in Italian?

[recognize_an_opportunity]

That's one of the first things I learned. Right after "go fuck yourself."

[Apparently he's now inebriated enough not to mind swearing in front of her, which he'd generally consider somewhat impolite.]

[spotlighted]

[She starts giggling at hearing him swear, it's something she doesn't associate with him at all. And then she can't stop giggling for a minute or two because of the alcohol.]

That's one I still remember in French. "Va te faire foutre!" I think one of my life goals will be to tell people to go fuck themselves in every language.

[recognize_an_opportunity]

It's "vaffanculo" in Italian, if you were wondering.

[He'll have to remember that French one. Not that he has a huge purpose for speaking French, but it's useful knowledge.]

[spotlighted]

Vaff-- vaffanculo?

[She repeats it a couple of times to make sure she's saying it properly, then starts giggling again.]

I sure hope there are no Italians at the next table.

[recognize_an_opportunity]

[He looks around surreptitiously, as though looking for hidden Italians, then nods, smiling.]

Or French people.

[spotlighted]

Yeah, we pretty much insulted half of Europe there, huh?

[She takes another large swallow and refills both their glasses. She's completely lost track of how much she's drank by this point, and is fairly certain she's drunk. It's been a good while since it's been to this extent.]

[recognize_an_opportunity]

If we want to get most of the rest of Europe, we can always insult the Russians.

[He's pretty sure he should stop drinking at some point soon, but he's not sure why he thinks that. Maybe it's the fact that he has to really concentrate on not knocking over the glass as he picks it up for another sip. He doesn't normally drink to excess -- he's too much of a control freak to do so.]

[spotlighted]

I'm pretty sure my very existence is an insult to the Russians.

[recognize_an_opportunity]

How do you figure that?

[His very existence is probably an insult to the Russians, too.]

[spotlighted]

Oh, right. I keep forgetting that I'm from the future with you.

[She makes a strange gesture with her hands as she says 'the future' as though it's some mystical thing. She's so used to being fifty years behind most of the people here, it's still quite a novelty to her.

It's also the first time she's had to explain the cold war, and she's doing it while completely drunk.

She sits up a little, getting into storytelling position.]

So after the war-- There was another war, the one I was involved with, in the 40s. And Russia was on our side, but after the war there was us and them as the big military powers. And Russia's completely communist, so that was kind of a problem, especially when you've got most of Europe having been ravaged by the Nazis and Russia like right there next to it. They got most of Eastern Europe, and we gave as much aid to Western Europe as we could to try and contain the spread of communism, and we've been in a war with North Korea for the last two years and everyone in the States is scared that everyone else is secretly a communist and so we're all checking for reds under the bed and the government seems to think it's fun to harass citizens and accuse them of being Soviets for no reason.

[She sounds rather bitter there. She also realises she's not making much sense.]

The whole idea of the free market and American capitalism is an insult to them. I'd like to think not only do I support that, but I'm a damn good example of individual freedom you only get in my country.

[recognize_an_opportunity]

[It takes him a couple seconds to process all of that. Really, she'd done a good job of explaining it, for someone who'd had quite a bit to drink. And he understood most of it, except...]

The Nazis did what to Europe?

[spotlighted]

[She refills her glass, thumping the bottle on the table rather hard having to think about it.]

They completely fucked it over. Like, things had been really bad in Germany after-- [after Jimmy's war, she's about to say, and stops herself. It's strange how quickly she's adopted that mentality, his war and hers, but they do seem to be the only people here that had gone through those wars, experiences unlike any other that had ever been fought, and really understood them.] --after the first war. There's pictures of people taking wheelbarrows full of money just to buy a loaf of bread because inflation was that out of control, it was crazy. And I guess when it's that crazy people jump to extremes in a way that they otherwise wouldn't, and I guess they did get the economy under control and stuff because they were so damn efficient but--

[She pauses, suddenly feeling extremely awkward as she remembers that she's explaining this to a Jew. It's almost as though she's completely sobered up. As flippantly as she's talked about both World War II and the Cold War so far, she really can't with this.]

They built death camps. And they rounded up and killed six million Jews.

[She's silent for a moment, staring at her hands.]

We got 'em in the end, but... it never should have happened.

[recognize_an_opportunity]

[Her explanation had been easy enough to follow, despite her drunkenness -- perhaps because they were both similarly drunk -- but that doesn't mean that the end of her explanation doesn't still feel like a slap in the face, its effect almost instantly sobering for a minute. His eyes narrow, but the expression on his face is carefully contained, little emotion passing over it as he processes what she'd said.]

I see.

[For a few more moments, he's quiet, pouring himself another glass of wine, taking a long sip from it, lighting another cigarette from the remnants of the one he'd just been smoking, and then he looks up at her. His expression is almost completely blank.]

And here I thought things were already bad enough in Russia.

[spotlighted]

[If she wasn't completely drunk, she wouldn't throw herself at him in an attempt to hug him, the table wobbling and wine spilling from their glasses as she puts her arms around him, not so much as to comfort him as that she needs it herself.]

The pictures that came out of those places... Whatever you think hell is like, it's worse. And I know things were bad in Russia then, and I don't mean to trivialise anything your family went through either. ...Or mine.

[She adds that almost as an afterthought, the Flint side of the family is still something quite distant to her, although since she'd been forced to confront other aspects of it thanks to the House Committee, she'd been thinking about it a lot more again. The Fleigs - they'd changed it to Flint on arriving at Ellis Island - escaping the pogroms in Lithuania, the hopeful immigrants to America. She wished she could identify with it more.]

[recognize_an_opportunity]

[Very few people feel inclined to hug him, and he's somewhat taken aback when she does, although he doesn't back away from it as he might if he weren't drunk and not thinking clearly. In fact, he doesn't even notice the fact that some of the spilled wine has dripped from the table onto his pants, something that would hugely irritate him were he sober.]

I'll see it all for myself soon enough.

[Truthfully, he has no idea whether he'll be alive in twenty years to see the next war and the devastation that comes out of it. That's not something he thinks about, or at least, tries not to. Being confronted with the future does force you to consider where you'll be when that future happens, however.]

What my family went through was no better or worse than what any other family went through in that time and place. Yours included, I'm sure.

[He can afford to be stoic about it now. New York hadn't been ideal, not by a longshot, but it had been far, far better than Grodno ever had; even when he'd been very young he'd known that.]