2024.04.13: A night at the Taproom

Lizzy has a rare night off! And she's spending it at New Albion Brewery Taproom, a polished space where people can enjoy local craft beer, occasional live music, and arts and crafts workshops with beer! Tonight, it's a stitch and bitch! On the outdoor patio along the sidewalk, over-eager hipsters with enough facial piercings to give Grandma a heart attack are facilitating folks of all (drinking) ages. Guests can either learn how to knit or crochet, or choose from the wide selection of donated yarns, needles, and hooks to start a project of their own. Printed patterns from an AI who had digested a wide variety of knitting patterns are available for people to try. The line "go home, pattern, you're drunk!" is thrown out there at random from someone new about every ten minutes. Lizzy is sitting nearby with her own project, which looks a bit more advanced, but every now and then, she helps some helpless neophyte nearby untangle their yarn and make sense of their stitches. Well, if the poor neophyte was sober.

Apparently, Balcésar missed the event calendar and various other announcements about crafts, as he looks very confused upon entering a watering hole in which he had expected to manage some quality be-boozled brooding for an hour or two.

There's really no doubt it's him. The whole red-tinted shades thing and dark hair with a few shocks of gray dangling over a perpetually gruff look of scruffy dissatisfaction is a hard aesthetic to sincerely replicate.

Lizzy looks up from her knitting to grab her beer, and her eyebrows immediately shoot upward when she sees a familiar face. Fortunately, she hadn't yet taken a sip, or her yarn would have gotten suddenly sprayed with the stuff. Then again, it shouldn't be terribly surprising; this was listed as one of Jason's watering holes in the file she gave him. "...huh." She grins, then resettles in her seat. She's in a black top with a wide boatneck, almost off the shoulder, and snug pants with white and black vertical stripes. A pair of Doc Martens complete the look.

It doesn't take long for the professional observer to settle his gaze on Lizzy, at whom he upnods but makes no grand presentation of waving to. He's wearing a dark leather jacket that exists entirely for the sake of aesthetic and works with his worn jeans and brown suede lace-up shoes to give him that world-weary and misunderstood ruffian look.

He parks his ass at the bar and orders an expensive stout while trying to pretend he's not surrounded by a loud rainbow of yarn.

Lizzy smirks and waves at him; a subtle gesture of fanned fingers that aren't occupied with yarn. She at least lets him sit and brood long enough to finish her current row of stitches and her current beer, then gets up and heads toward the bar with her project bag and dead soldier.

He's about halfway through his beer and smells faintly of something woodsy and fresh. While he doesn't always smell of whiskey, he certainly has the past couple of times Lizzy's seen him. Maybe this is a good day? In any event, he's tapping something on his phone as she approaches, at which point his pale eyes flick upwards as he says, "Hey," because he's not a complete tool.

Nope. Just most of one. "Hey there. How's it going?" She offers him a smile that's still a little worn around the edges.

The exercise of small talk isn't one to which the man is well-practiced (or at least, he's a bit rusty), so he clears his throat and shifts his weight and tries not to look too obviously anxious about it. "Good," he says, lamely. "I... don't have much to report yet." And then, perhaps remembering that not everyone just talks about business, he quickly adds, "And, uh, how are you?"

Lizzy chuckles. "I'm holding up. The funeral is tomorrow, though, so I'm preparing to be a bit of a snotty, sniveling mess. I also have to go back to his apartment that night and pack up everything that the police didn't take away as evidence. It's... it's gonna be rough." She sighs, then orders another beer. "Might be good to tag along if you're not busy. You might spot something I'd miss."

The man very emphatically keeps his irreverence to himself on this one. "I'm sorry," he says, as a sort of round-up of the full collection of support and comfort he's presently able to give. "Yeah, I'd be happy to go with you. Checking out his place is actually next down on my list. I need to learn more about him and the club before I gussy myself up to look like their kind of client."

"For sure. Gussied up but just-been-fucked seems to be the aesthetic." She looks Bal over and doesn't say a damn thing. Nope. Nothing.

"Oh, so I don't need to change anything, then." He looks down at himself and straitens his v-neck a little. See, you didn't even need to say anything! "Maybe I'll add in a crucifix necklace or something. Get in that 'I'm a bad boy but give me a hug,' vibe." He turns back to his beer and takes a few sips, then frowns the more he thinks on it. "Maybe not."

Lizzy's arched eyebrow would look just as much at home on Doris' face. "Maybe a smidge classier than your usual."

"I know, it's really departing from my malcontent mystique." Sip. Pause. "Are you gonna sit or just keep making me look like a boorish shit?" His tone isn't mean-spirited. She IS just standing there, after all.

The beer arrives, and she smirks. "I would say you don't need the help, but I am paying you to do something kinda important for me, so I should probably be nice." That said, the be-manbunned dude in the next stool over gets the hint and vacates his stool with a grunt. Lizzy's eyebrows go up and her lips purse. "...yikes..." she murmurs softly as she takes the abandoned seat.

The hipster is widely ignored by the investigator, who indicates to the bartender with a few taps that he's covering Lizzy's tab. "Guy smelled like overstewed kombucha," he grunts into his beer, takes another sip, and then a deep breath. "So you tend bar and knit. Any other useful skills I should make note of?"

Lizzy furrows her brow. "Dude..." But that is about the extent of her protest on the matter. She tries to smile, but it turns out more like a grimace. "Thanks." She then takes a sip of her beer. "I also have a cosmetologist license, just in case the bartending doesn't pan out. Still, between the huge tips and people not letting me spend them, I think the bartending is panning out. I've always been a bit of an artsy kid."

The man doesn't apologize for being a grouchbeast. The guy smelled! "Yeah? What's your poison?" He orders another stout for himself, which Lizzy may note is not of the frat boy scrape-the-barrel get-me-drunk bruh varieties, but one of the malt-cocoa-coffee varieties with a paragraph flavor profile and dubious pretensions.

The stout put in front of Balcésar is the exact same stout that is in front of Lizzy. "...looks like you're about to find out! The mocha milkshake stout here is kind of amazing."

The man swivels on his stool so he's more directly facing the woman, one elbow up on the bar. He lifts his glass with a dexterous swoop and then makes a production of taking a sip. He sets down the glass, rolling the taste over in his mouth. "It's tolerable." High praise. "Now what's this about your art?"

Lizzy chuckles. "Nothing fancy. I just like playing with color and chemicals, mixing shit until cool things happen. I was gonna do art school, but the money never shook out. I went the cosmetology route because it meant I could make people pretty, and started bartending to make sure even community college wouldn't break the bank. And of course, because I don't do anything by halves, I got good at the bartending too. As far as the knitting, my grandma taught me how, and it's a good way to relax without staring at a screen. "

"Some unsolicited advice," Balcésar says, momentarily looking away, and a mite distant at that. "Keep playing." He places strong emphasis on that second word, and then takes a long sip. "Sounds you've got it otherwise figured out."

"Hadn't really planned on stopping. I'm lucky that I get to do that as part of my job. Of course, there's also dealing with people under the influence there, but, well, I learned that too, so..." She shrugs. "What's your outlet, other than drinking and brooding?"

Collectively, he responds, "Good." And sip. "Work is pretty consuming," he says, without really answering the question. "What do normal people do? Go on walks? See movies? Netflix and chill? I do that." Sometimes. Rarely. Enough to not be a lie.

"I do not picture you as the Netflix and chill type." Lizzy grins wryly. "Not quiiiite sleazy enough for that."

"Well that's something, at least," he says, lifting his glass to her. And then sipping again. "I read," he says more honestly. "Film. Television. Concerts. I can appreciate good art. Sometimes I go to the beach and watch the water while night-dreaming of the moon in explosions of small poetry."

She takes another sip. "So an avid consumer of art. I can live with that."

"That's good, because I'm bad at poetry," he says, setting down his glass. "Oh, that reminds me." He quickly checks his phone. "Don't want to miss my reruns of RuPaul's Drag Race."

Lizzy raises an eyebrows. "...huh. Would not have pictured you as a drag connoisseur either." A beat. "...well, there was the possibility, but it was, like, super vague."

"Well, I'm up-to-date on all the telenovelas, so it feeds my consumer need for wholesome drama." He sips. "Besides, 'eyebrows on fleek.' What can I say? It's an art."

Lizzy narrows her eyes, looking just above Balcésar's eyes. "...not quite. Give me five minutes with some hot wax and some tweezers, though, and you can have it. You've got a good base to start from."

The man glances upward, and then vigorously rubs his forehead with the back of a hand. "Que mierda carajo, I didn't mean mine." But, not unlike an unexpected, leaping unicorn, the man laughs. And he smiles. And it's nice. "You did say cosmetologist."

Lizzy beams as he smiles. "Holy shit, he can smile! Doris won't believe me when I tell her, but hey, little miracles happen every day, right?"

Without getting suddenly serious, as he's not so dedicated to his grumpkins persona to force it, he says, with a snort, "She'll probably ask if you drugged me."

"Well..." She looks down at the beer. "But to be fair, that is entirely self-inflicted."

"Cultivated," he corrects. "Call it objective distance." He tosses back the rest of his beer. "Or misanthropy. Whichever. Both."

"Still a drug. Maybe it was the moodlifters in the chocolate. Yeah. That's it. Now we just need to feed you more chocolate." Lizzy grins.

The man gives Lizzy a single-browed look. "I'm not going to trash the merits of chocolate, but sour is just as rich a flavor. Once you get past the tart." He does have a lot of that.

"I meant more the mood lifters in chocolate, not the flavor, but sure. Salt is a flavor too."

"I know what you meant," he says, without animus and slightly less grumpitude. "I'm just saying I don't need fixing." He fetches his wallet and then overpays by throwing some large bills on the bar. "I've got some work to do; enjoy the brew." He nods at her and slips off the stool to head out. Apparently, the conversation's over.

Lizzy blinks at the abrupt departure. "...uh... didn't say you... okay." She looks at the bartender and shrugs, finishing her beer and going back to knitting.