[Barrister] This might not be Lonna's usual kind of place.

It's a pub, first off, not a bar. It's a ways from the hottest, trendiest areas of the Mile (though there are those that would argue that the trendiest nightspots were actually away from the Loop, buried behind the facades of warehouses and block-buildings), a tiny nook in a wall that bears a faux-faded sign with some Noun & Noun name. Fox and Feather, Goose and Arrow: something to make the Americans think it sounded British.

The interior is dark wood and polished brass, green felt. This is the sort of place with live bands on a saturday night; with pool tables and hot food well into the night, and the regulars are a bit, or a lot older than the usual 20-something 30-something barhopping crowd. That said, there are plenty of those, too. It's Friday, after all.

Barrister is at one of the pool tables. It's hard to miss him. The man is enormous, towering at six feet four. His shoulders look like bowling balls; he's so deepchested it might be better termed a drum than a barrel -- as in, 55-gal drum. He's laughing, though, having just sunk the eight-ball. There were no stakes on the game. His opponent claps him on the shoulder before taking his leave: the sound is somewhat akin to slapping a side of beef.

Alone now, still keen for another game, Barrister takes a gulp of his beer before setting the bottle on the side of the table and chalking up his cue. His hair is dark; the hair dusting the backs of his hands are dark, too, and his skin is weathered, tanned. Against all this swarthiness, the gold of his wedding band glints visibly.

[Lonna Larson] Bars. Bars she did. They were places where the music was too loud, where assholes in too-expensive clothing tried to stare down her shirt, or tried to figure out hold long her legs were, or thought it charming to guess what color her underwear was or inform her that the average D-cup weighed about ten pounds.

Lonna Larson, at a bar, attracted assholes. And, while she didn't have to buy the drinks, it came with the price of the idiots.

What was nice about the Noun and Noun pseudo British pub was this: she could get down to what she had come to do- drink. It had been the kind of evening, the kind of week, the kind of month that demanded cold drinks with uncomplicated names. And she didn't want to go to a place that she would be too horribly tempted to order amaretto sours until memories faded or became clearer [whichever one happened first. It didn't matter to her, really]

Point number two that was good about this place, as opposed to bars, was this: pool tables. Somewhere with actual, honest-to-god pool tables. She slipped in. She had showered, she had re-dressed, and she had hit the town. Attire was something comfortable- jeans. Flats. a light sweater- Lonna looked nice in green, she should wear it more often.

The lady paused at the bar, ordering a beer [Something that isn't domestic... bottle, not draft] and glanced at one of the tables. She was looking for an opening.

Where's the harm, right?

[Barrister] There are three tables here; two of them had games in progress. At one, a group of twenty-somethings are drunk and getting drunker, casting balls sloppily over the table on wild, careening tangents. Lonna watches them for three or four strokes without seeing a single one of them pocket a ball. That game's going to go on a while.

At another, a flat-eyed, lean fellow is playing for money. His opponent is an increasingly irritated redhead -- a man, not a woman, and nearly as large as --

-- well, as Barrister, who, standing beside the third table, has finished tipping his cue with the small block of blue chalk. He sets it on the mahogany edge of the table. There are ceiling lamps hanging low over each table, making the rich wine-red felt glow. The big kinsman starts to go around his table, fishing balls out of the pockets as he circles it. He catches Lonna watching as he comes around the corner, and when he smiles the corners of his eyes crinkle.

"Looking for a game?" And he fishes another three balls out of the corner pocket, letting them thump gently to the felt.

[Lonna Larson] She seemed to think about this for awhile. Seemed, ,of course, being the operative word, as that she did make a show of it. She grinned a little, then nodded, finally. Lonna took a pull off of her beer- something imported, bottle not draft- and then walked around the edge of the table to help gather up the balls there.

Looking for a game?
"Yeah, haven't played in awhile. Trying to decide whether or not I'm any good while I'm sober," she said.

Though, realistically, she knew she wasn't going to stay sober for long. She knew herself, she knew how much she enjoyed being out, and she knew that she didn't have half the tolerence that she used to. John was huge. John was huge in comparison to Lonna, and that was saying something because Lonna Larson was damned near an amazon. He was a good six inches taller than her and proportionally larger.

Besides, he was a married man. And it was just pool. And she wasn't drunk yet. Overall, seemed like a good recipe.

"Do you mind if I grab this next game?"

[Barrister] "I always play better after a couple drinks," John Barrister replies. His smile is a grin now, showing white teeth, something that might've been a dimple under his two-day beard.

It's not an two-day beard, actually. It's not even an eighteen-hour beard. He just has a five-o-clock shadow that shows up by noon. She asks if she can join the next game and, by way of reply, he grabs another cue off the rack. Hefts it at her easily, as carefully as a cue might be tossed -- sideways, not javelin-like. The block of chalk follows.

While she chalks up, he sets his cue aside and racks up the balls. Swaps a few solids and stripes, makes sure the black eight ball is where it belongs. Then he shakes the pyramid of balls back and forth a few times to pack them, then lifts the rack deftly away, hangs it beneath the table.

"Care to break?" He holds the cue ball out at her.

[Lonna Larson] He had a two day beard by the end of a long day; something about that, one could say, was vaguely appealing. The man was built like a linebacker; she was built like the girl next door. Well, maybe not the literal girl next door, but the idealized version. the one that had blonde hair and clear eyes and chewed on the end of her pencil while she was nervous.

That girl next door.

He hefts her a poor cue- not like a javelin- and for her part she's actually a decent catch. Who would have guessed that not being intoxicated has improved her hand/eye coordination. She wasn't aching, she wasn't tired- not yet, anyways- and she looked at the cue ball. The lady took it in her hand, letting a slight grin cross her face.

"Don't laugh," she said. Probably in reference to her implied inability to break well. She set it down, she lined it up, and for the time being she seemed content to think about this- how was she going to pull this off, where would hte balls end up? Was she ever any good at pool?

Lonna bent down, having decided that breaking was a good idea. That she knew what she was doing, and that if she didn't, she could always order another beer. And? Well, she lined up her shot.

Fire away, Ms. Larson.

[Lonna Larson] (Dex+science: because this bitch took physics for some ungodly reason...)

[Barrister] Ms. Larson, who claims not to be any good at this, who claims to possibly be unable to play while sober...

...leans down, lines the shot up, and breaks like a pro. Stripes and solids scatter every which way. Two, three, four of them thunk into pockets. Barrister leans on his cue, his dark eyes everywhere at once on the table. He doesn't have to check the pockets to tell her, "Three stripes and a solid. Looks like you're stripes. Still your shot."

And, picking up his beer, he knocks it back and smirks at her: a sort of easy, conspiratorial quirk of his mouth. "Not any good while you're sober, huh?"

[Lonna Larson] "Well, aparently I had something before i got here," she said with a quiet degree of amazement.

she took a drink of her beer, still unaware of what, precisely, it was called and went back to the table to try and line up another shot. She looked at him; it is a quiet sort of conspiracy there. She might have been hustling him; then again, there was no money involved. None of that. Just, well, a blonde and a very large man playing pool

"Think about it this way, if I was trying to hustle you, I would have said that the loser buys the next round of drinks," and with that, she shot again.

Corner pocket.

[Barrister]

[Barrister] The tip of the cue strikes too low this time, chips the cue ball right off the table. It flies right at Barrister's face. The kinsman -- not that Lonna knows he's kin, not that he knows she's kin, not that they're anything to each other right now except friendly strangers sharing a game of pool -- brings his hand up in an instinctive arc, catches the flying ball out of the air. Slick.

Or it would be, if he didn't offer her a self-deprecating smile as he comes around to set the ball behind the headstring.

"You know, if you wanted to buy me a drink so badly," Barrister says, leaning down to line up his shot -- and there's a long, long way to lean from his height, "you could've just said so."

He has some experience at this. It's in the way his left hand open-bridges right and sturdy; it's in the smooth, rail-like glide of the pool cue, the wrist loose, the most of the energy coming from the snap of the hand rather than the forearm.

The cueball shoots across the table. Barrister is already straightening up and circling, confident of his shot, by the time the solid sinks into the corner. The cueball rolls to a stop, lined up against a solid teetering on the edge of a side pocket. A skimming, tangential shot nudges that in, and the cueball rolls to a stop again, this time lined up for a cross-table shot into the far corner.

A third solid drops into the pocket, bringing his total up to four against her three. Worse, the cueball's parked behind an impenetrable mass of solids and stripes now, no clear shot in sight. Apparently, no one ever taught Barrister to let a lady win.

[Lonna Larson] (let's see if she succeeds this time. No clear shot)

[Lonna Larson] Who was she kidding, that was slick. It was damned slick at that. He caught the ball before it had the chance to hit the floor, or hit him in his face. She looked in quiet, building horror when she thought Oh fuck, I'm going to break this guy's nice with a pool ball. This is really not my week.

He caught it, though: crisis averted.

If she really wanted to buy him a drink so badly, she couldn't just said so.
"But where's the fun in that? No allure, no awkward almost-hitting-someone-with-a-ball, no names," she looked at her shot.

None open. Nothing obvious. So, instead, she was going to go through with dumb luck and showmanship. She paused, she hoped, and she managed to get her ball somwhere and that somewhere happened to be a pocket.

"What is your name? And what-"

and there goes another ball into a pocket.

"Do you drink?"

Not so much luck with that last shot, though. She left it open for him. No one ever told John that he was supposed to let a lady win; no one ever told Lonna that she was supposed to give up when things looked crappy.

[Lonna Larson] (*nose, not nice. Ugh, firefox I miss you.)

[Barrister]

[Barrister] "John," he replies to the first question, "and ... anything, really. I'm a fan of a good smoky Scotch."

This time Barrister doesn't fare so well. It's a shot across the table, the solid ball squarely in the center; the cueball strikes a little off-center and by the time the solid rolls near the pocket, it's off by two or three inches. It thumps off the cushions and rolls to a stop.

Barrister doesn't seem particularly perturbed, though. He straightens up, leans on his cue, and continues, "What about you? Name and drink."

[Lonna Larson]

[Lonna Larson] "Lonna," she said. and she shot once more.

And the rather attractive girl-next-door got to lining up her shots. She claimed that she wasn't very good; obviously, she was either playing with pool sharks or she was one herself. Each ball sunk is done with nothing more than a resouncing click, and then a thump.

One.
After the other.
Again.
And again.

"And normally, amaretto sours... but tonight, I'll take anything."

Eight ball, side pocket. Landed, sunk without a problem. She looked at John, and for the moment she offered him a bright smile; it lit up her face, made her seem more real than she had before. Lonna pushed some of those blonde curls over her shoulder and looked back at the Fenrir.

"But, I trust your judgment."

[Barrister] For what it's worth, Barrister is a gracious loser. He leans on his cue, waiting, as Lonna sinks ball after ball after ball, until she calls the pocket on the eight and sinks it without hesitation. When she looks over at Barrister, he's biting the insides of his lips to keep from laughing.

"You," he accuses, "are either not sober, or damn good while sober."

He straightens up and holds his hand out to her, a friendly shake. The gold band on his ring finger is warmed from his skin, body temperature. "Thanks for the game. Do you only drink mixed drinks? I'm not even sure they'll mix them here. This is sort of a whiskey-and-brandy joint."