Gathering: Summer Party

[concierge]

Outside of the Nexus Hotel, waiters and hotel staff had begun to set up the umbrellas and the tables in the middle of the day. Soon, it became clear that something was happening in the shadow of the Nexus. White tablecloths were draped on the tables and drinks and food were brought out with the help of several waiters and servers, staffing tables with hot and cold foods beside bartending stations. Summery drinks in bright, neon colors are laid out one by one and soon, the afternoon light casts a radiant look on the scene.

Music plays faintly in the background and a note at the front desk invites all the Nexus guests to head outside and join in on the summer party, which promises to continue going as long as there are people to stay and continue keeping the warm atmosphere rolling.

On the lawn, social games had been set out -- lawn bowling, croquet, and tables were set up with chairs for anyone who didn't quite have the will or the spirit to get into such games. Soon, a small number of people had begun to mill around, but as with all parties, there's always room for more.

Comments

[beretta_70]

The haze with which she had walked between the dust and the blood of the island and the sumptuousness of the hotel had done nothing to obscure the conversation she had had with him. No more than it had erased the details with which she built her image of those around her, those small luxuries and favored tastes she filed away automatically for later use. It had amazed her once how pliable or, if not that, then at least more amenable a body became with their favorite dish or drink at hand, eased into a state a touch less razor-edged for what might otherwise be so easily overlooked.

Her offering was not entirely unattached of motives, but she doubted he would be so naive as to believe anything in life (or apparently death) came free. It was not borne of fear, or of concern that he might otherwise strike out at her, for all that she could read the blood on his hands and the coarse note of violence and fury past in the rough and rasp turn of his voice. Instead it was almost friendly, but for the fact that the idea of the niceties of life being offered simply because one could was too foreign for the confines of her skull.

There was much that required her attention if she had any intention of walking back into the world she had come from. Much ugliness that would need to be attended to. Tempting though it was to remain within the hotel and step no further than the doors to other strange places, all that had been left undone behind her was an itch she could not quite shake.

"I thought I might like some company," she told him, the wealth of all that was left unsaid coloring the edges of her words. The marvel of the weight of the door and the locks that could be operated only by her. Of the suggestion that she might for the first have a degree of privacy within at least her room. No guards at her back with hands read for the holsters kept hidden beneath their jackets, or ready to pull back a hand to deliver a message where it would be hidden beneath her clothes from their marks. "Unless you would rather be alone in your observation, and I would take my leave?"