A quick meal

Shoshannah
It had been a long trip, getting to Denver had, and really that's an understatement - Shoshannah biked from her most recent legal residence when she was seventeen [and gone], and hadn't looked back.  Born of an Israeli socialite-diplomat's-daughter and quickly handed off to her American career military man father only to be shunted from this school to that, this state or base to that, it hadn't made sense to her to stay past a certain point, regardless of her father's promotion to a rank [and file] that allowed him the luxury of staying in one place for more than a year or three.

Bringing much with her hadn't been an option; Shoshannah could only bring what would fit in a backpack or the custom saddle bags of her bike, built specifically to help her transport her instruments (a cigar box banjo she'd made herself, a beautiful red Gibson acoustic electric, a Pacman uke, a jazz dulcimer, a mandolin) wouldn't hold much else, and so her clothes and keepsakes were minimal . . . not that she had much of sentimental value to begin with.  Shoshannah learned early not to get to attached to people or things, that the latter deciding there was something wrong with her was inevitable and the former being used against her was about as likely to happen.  The exception, of course, being those instruments that she cared for as impeccably and lovingly as possible on her long journey.

Now, though, the girl - because she is, as they say, barely legal - finds herself in one of the more interesting neighborhoods in Denver, her bike leaning against her hip as she considers the various restaurants and bars.  The savings she'd taken with her when she left Texas wasn't inconsiderable and she'd been able to work a few jobs here and there along the road, but her resources certainly aren't infinite.  First on the docket is getting something to eat.  Second is figuring out where to sleep (in a pinch, she can take the tent that's attached to her backpack and head for one of the numerous camping facilities near-but-not-in-the-city and sleep there) if she's staying here awhile and, for that matter, if she is staying.  Third, contingent on the second being yes, she's staying, is a job.

The thought pulls her face into a frown often called things like 'pissy', and she kicks at a rock  as she walks before finally deciding on a likely taquería as the best place to fill her complaining stomach.  She hadn't bothered with breakfast that morning and was starting to feel it.

This is what people see: a strange (in the most visceral, instinctive sense of the word, the sort that makes like cling to like and think things like 'safety in numbers' at best, and brings thugs with something to prove out to play at worst) young woman pushing a bike packed with many stringed instruments, wearing a backpack, torn and dirty jeans, a light army jacket open over colorful, mismatched and layered shirts.  Around her neck are an eclectic array of necklaces varying in length.  Her ears are pierced, dark curly-wavy hair is pulled back out of her face haphazardly.  She looks tough in a way that most of her youth and gender don't, tough in a way that hints at time served in some facility or another (but lies, not that she's disillusioning anyone).
The stand's attendant doesn't want to serve her; Shoshannah is used to this.  "Pendejo, estoy tratando de darle dinero para su probable alimentos llenos de enfermedades. Deja de ser un idiota y tomarlo.  Fucking douche."

Everything about her says 'badass' and also 'stay the fuck away'.  Very little about her makes most people want to look past any of it.  And something about her screams 'HERE I AM' in an utterly undeniable way.
PanOut in the world float proverbs and maxims about finding things for which one is not looking. Goes without saying that he wasn't out dowsing for lost souls today. Finds one anyway. If the One doesn't have a sense of humor the ones who believe sure as hell have to develop one to keep from striking out in search of a paradigm that doesn't test the limits of one's patience.

This is not her neighborhood. It may never be. The folks who live here are wary but accepting of those who are wary and accepting themselves. He lives here and walks as if he has lived here for some time. Stops to talk to a beanpole youth at the bus stop barely wearing sagging basketball shorts. Keeps walking.

Deja de ser un idiota y tomarlo.

Out of the nowhere beyond her periphery he comes, 6'2" before you factor in his shoes and dressed for warm weather. Khakis and a white shirt, tucked in with a belt. Takes off the sunglasses he was wearing and tucks them into the V of his button-down, comes right up to the attendant and starts talking to him in their native tongue. She knows enough of it to understand.

What's the problem.
Oh no problem Father I think she's just lost.
Is that so.

Something about her screams HERE I AM and here he is to answer it. First he looks over her bike. Doesn't look at her until he's taken in the tires and the chain and the heavy load on the back of the frame and even then he only looks at her eyes.

"What," he asks, "you hungry?"

ShoshannahShoshannah is reasonably tall - taller than average - at her 5'9-ish in flat soled, well worn Chucks, but this man who came out of nowhere

I don't need any fucking rescue

to smooth things over with the poor food service guy (who really kind of wishes this girl would go away because she's creeping him out and scaring away other customers) stands head and shoulders above her, easily.  An eyebrow creeps up over her very, very blue (piercing, cutting) eyes as they work their way up and over to finally land on his face.

It takes a longer moment than it should for her to finally say, "Yeah.  I am," in her bland, flat, nowhere-and-everywhere-at-once accent.  Money's slapped onto the counter with more vehemence than necessary, and a quick glance at the board has her ordering a combo meal that contains one of everything along with a generous side of beans and rice.  That she's at least half expecting her food to get spit in is obvious . . . as is the part where she's only half expecting to get food at all.

It's not just the neon sign over her head that makes people more interested and vaguely creeped out at the same time that results in this oddness, no.  It's the part where she's a throwback to every scary thing everyone's been told about strangers - no, not just strangers.

It's impossible not to think 'witch' (in the scary, stereotypical way, not the happy Wiccan way - no, no, hers is older magic than that) when one sees her.  It's difficult to not make warding signs against whatever evil she holds, even if one doesn't really know what the signs mean, or why they used to be used.
"You a priest, really?  My soul doesn't need saving."

PanHe's not scared. Even accounting for the fact that he's a big guy, solid underneath the fat that comes to claim the body once the metabolism starts to wind down, he could have the effect of a floodlight shone onto an escapee in the middle of an otherwise empty yard but for the fact that he, himself, isn't exactly subtle. Even if the vendor hadn't called him Padre he has that stolidness about him that all men of God have. As if his path is all laid out before him with all of its acts of charity and devotion and sacrifice staged if not known to him and he wakes up every morning assured of the fact that his feet will find the way.
People like that scare the shit out of the wayward and the wandering.

"Huh-uh," he says when she slaps down the money, picks it up and pushes it back into her hand, "put it away."

Age and experience and a common ancestry ensure that when the priest pays for her meal the vendor doesn't argue with him or accept any guff from the girl. So she orders and she scares everyone who passes by on the sidewalk behind them and they don't think anything of the fact that he stands beside her. Of course he stands behind her. If her soul doesn't need saving something about her does.

"Well that's one less thing to worry about." He looks at the bike, pointed, and goes on, "When's the last time you put air in them tires?"

ShoshannahIf Shoshannah were honest [a policy that she tends to avoid], she does find the priest's solidity (immovability) more than a little intimidating.  It is, to her, almost as unsettling as she seems to almost everyone else.
Obviously there's argument about the money.  This young woman hasn't gotten where she is by letting other people take care of her - or by having them offer, for that matter.  It's foreign to her, and there's barbed wire pride and razor temper and rock-hard stubbornness all in the long, thin frame of her.  So there's food, and finding a comfortable (enough) place to sit or stand and eat it.  She doesn't go far from her bike (by which we mean bicycle) and its precious load of hundreds - thousands - of dollars worth of musical instruments, but slumps and slouches with all the aplomb of a road weary (more literal than in most cases, to be fair) teenager.

"I don't know.  A week ago?  In Arizona, I think.  They're still treating me fine.  Chain could use some oiling, though.  Why, you a bike repairman too, Padre?"

PanFor the sake of putting her at ease he sits beyond arm's length of wherever she chooses to light while she has her meal. A small park nearby with benches and swings. Trees they can hide beneath to get out of the rain. It is raining. Light and intermittent but it's rain all the same. The skies are gray and the air sticks like a second skin.

Anyway: they sit. They stay out of the rain. She eats her food and keeps her bicycle nearer than she keeps other people. They'll be like this when Justin comes along.

If snorting is a show of emotion then that is the first sign of it the priest has given her since he showed up several minutes ago. It isn't amusement though that forces the air out of his sinuses. More like he had her pegged from the second he heard her voice floating along on the breeze and his surprise comes from being right.

It's worth mentioning that he doesn't have a booming voice. Maybe he does when he raises it, when he's standing at the pulpit with his collar on during Mass, but out here in public he talks at a respectable level. Not whisper-soft but quiet enough that his words don't carry too far.

"You could say that," he says. "More like you got your whole life on that little bike and it says on the side of the tires they aren't rated for more than seventy kilos each. We're at a higher altitude than Arizona. Be careful or they're gonna go soft on you."

JustinThe job at the church was finished.  Justin didn't need to be hanging around Federal, but he was, because the place had grown on him in the way that places like this usually did.  If someone had asked, he wouldn't have had a real explanation for it - only that the hum of life could exist in places other than the wilderness.  That other sense - that inexplicable urge toward guardianship that prickled somewhere at the back of his subconscious - would go unacknowledged.

Besides, the priest had invited him to visit, hadn't he?  It was as good an excuse as any.

He was also hungry.  Manual labor tended to do that to a person, and it was getting on toward meal time.  Justin had stopped by his apartment to shower and change before going out, so he looked a fair bit cleaner than he had the day before.  His jeans were nicer (newer; fitted,) and his white t-shirt had a crisp brightness to it that was marred only by a scattered mosaic of tiny rain droplets.  A brown leather cord was wrapped around his left wrist.

He ended up at the same food stand that Shoshannah had been standing near only moments earlier.  The attendant still held a watchful and suspicious eye toward the park where she sat with the priest.  Following his line of sight, Justin looked over his shoulder and spotted the two.  It would have been hard to miss them, frankly.  The girl Pan (Francisco) was with practically had a target on her back.

Justin wasn't a local, but he didn't stand out the way Shoshannah did.  He ordered his food and thanked the attendant, then approached the park where the other magi sat.  His progress was relaxed and purposeful, giving them time to notice his approach.  When he got there, he inclined his head toward Pan and then the girl.  "Good to see you again."

Whether or not he actually meant that or was just being polite wasn't clear, but it didn't really matter.  Justin seemed friendly enough, and people said these sorts of things when they ran into each other.

Shoshannah"Duly noted.  Thanks."  A target on her back and a chip on her shoulder; that smattering of words is so thick with attitude that a knife couldn't cut through, though she doesn't seem to hold any particular animosity or distrust toward the priest.  She'd only met him moments ago, after all, and he hadn't thrown signs against her or anything like that, which was a novelty more welcome than Shoshannah will admit.

With the priest that Justin knows is a stranger [in a strange land], of course - the girl is impossible not to notice, to stare at, to be intrigued and disgusted by.  She is a real life photoshop piece, surreal and disturbing and somehow off, made more so perhaps by the fact that in amongst all that there's a pretty face and startling but beautiful eyes.  There is nothing open about her, not really; Shoshannah's walls are miles high and her doors are all hidden, and barred behind their shield.  The newcomer approaches and she stills in the way that an animal might at the arrival of a hunter; comparing her to a deer is all wrong.  The instinct in that case would be flight, but in this girls case it's always, always fight.

"Friend of yours?"  It's a question, but there's nothing to indicate whether or not she actually cares.  (Nothing beyond the slight shift in posture, that is, the subtle change in stance.)

PanBefore Justin has come upon them the priest has scratched his hand through his hair to send the stray droplets of water back from whence they came and pushed himself to his feet, dusted off his trousers. He stands between the two of them for a moment and it isn't meant to be a protective gesture but he does block her from view while he greets the other man.

"Justin." He clasps the man's hand like he didn't just see him yesterday, in both of his like they're going to see each other again. "Hello."

Friend of yours? pipes up the girl and he steps aside then as if presenting the two of them to each other for inspection.

"We have a slight problem," he says, to Justin, as if she hadn't spoken at all. "I would gladly introduce the both of you, but I've only just made this young woman's acquaintance and I don't yet have her name, so I have to introduce myself first. Excuse me."

So he does. Offers her his hand and everything. Just the one, the right, and should she take it she'll find his grasp firm but not inescapable.

"Francisco Echeverría. I'm the rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd over on West Florida."

JustinJustin balanced the styrofoam plate with his food in one hand while he and Pan greeted each other.  When the priest turned to the girl, stepping aside to give Justin a better view, the Verbena fixed his gaze on her.  In the grey light, his eyes looked dark and colorless, and he watched her with an alert expression that might have been either attentive or wary.  He didn't attempt to start on his food.  Instead he stood and watched the two interact - waiting.

When Pan was done making his formal introduction, Justin gave a light gesture to indicate himself and added, "Justin."  Rather a bit less concerned with this sort of ritual.

ShoshannahShoshannah's face has a remarkable amount of elasticity, and her eyebrows do quite interesting things when she's surprised, startled . . . anything, really.  It could be quite comedic if she were to put any effort into it, but as things stand it's something between bland indifference and shock that not only one, but two people are talking to her in civil dialog, not throwing anything (signs or otherwise, and she hasn't decided which she prefers - stones and things leave obvious physical marks while 'god's eyes' and similar wards sting just as much without the reminder of why she's in pain) at her.

She can't remember the last time someone asked her for her name, and as she reaches for some experience to compare it to time lapses between Francisco offering his hand and her finally (somewhat tentatively) accepting.  Her grip is as strong and tough as her demeanor might lead one to expect, though her hand is smaller than one might expect, more delicate.  Her fingertips are well calloused by years of playing the instruments filling her bike's saddlebags, her palms lightly scarred by goodness knows what.

"Shoshannah.  Um.  Nice to meet you?"  There's a pause and then a remembrance.  "Thanks.  For dinner."
It's not that she hasn't been taught manners, because she has.  They're there, ingrained in a way that isn't evident in so many of her contemporaries, but it's clear that she's seldom had reason or opportunity to use them.  Like the reaching out to accept something so little and commonplace as a handshake, they're rusty and dusty.

PanAs unmoved by her shock as he is by most things - unmoved or accepting, depending on the language one speaks more fluently. She isn't the first runaway or orphan or straight-up social deviant he's ever come across in his life. Probably was a runaway or an orphan or a straight-up social deviant when he was her age. Most of them were.

"You're welcome," he says, and that's the end of it. He turns back to Justin and sees he's been to the same stand as they were at moments earlier. "I'm glad to see Ernesto getting so much business tonight. What brings you back to this side of town?"

JustinTruth be told, as laid-back as he might seem, it was telling that he hadn't started in on his food yet; hadn't made any motion to sit down.  Instead he kept his eyes on Shoshannah, watchful and measured, the way one might with a wild animal when you weren't entirely sure if it might try to bite you.  He didn't seem anxious, at least, or likely to assault her with an attempted exorcism (leave that sort of thing to the priest.)  But no one could ever accuse him of not being prepared for a threat.

When Pan spoke to him, Justin finally let his eyes shift away from the girl on the bench.  "I got used to the food," he admitted.  "Figured I'd come by for a quick meal.  Maybe stop by and say hello."

ShoshannahIf she were to think about it, Shoshannah would have to admit to not knowing what was going on right now, or how she actually should be reacting in this situation.  She would be forced to acknowledge that she's both terrified it will end badly and longing for it to continue.  This would lead to long thoughts about why she is this way, things that have happened over her relatively short years, words that have been said both to her and about her within her hearing, signs that have been made both subtly and not, and so on.

Perhaps it's needless to say, based on what little is known about her thus far, but Shoshannah doesn't do a lot of soul searching.

"It's not bad as far as not-in-Mexico Mexican gets.  There's better in SoCal and Texas, though."  This is actually a lot for her, and it's harder work than one might credit for her to even attempt to be in the conversation.

PanIf the priest is subscribing to the notion that in growing familiar with the devil one can more easily defeat it, secretly planning an exorcism for the girl, then he's keeping that information to himself. Same as he's keeping to himself whether she makes him ill at ease.

There isn't any way around the fact that she's weird but if the beacon of the community's faith wavers in the face of some weirdness then the devout ones have no reason to hold onto anything.

Maybe he thinks he can fix her. That's what he does, right, he's a priest. Gives people hope they can't find in the book on their own. Can't walk down the street in this part of town without running into someone who wants to thank him or tell him how much they appreciate something he did for them or someone they love in the last however many years. None of those folks is going to think twice about him hanging around this girl. They think he can fix people too.

He lets them speak for a time. Makes that barely-there snorting noise when she claims to possess knowledge of the location of superior Mexican food but he doesn't argue with her.

"Shoshannah," he says. "If you need a place to stay, you go to the church, talk to the secretary if I'm not there. Her name's Rosa. I can't promise someone will be there if you go after hours, though. So I'm heading there now." A glance to Justin serves as an unspoken invitation for him, too. Like the landscaper wasn't just over here because he missed the food. "If you want to get some oil for your chain, we can do that too."

JustinJustin wasn't even going to try to pretend that he knew where to get good Mexican food.  He was a Midwestern white guy through and through.  You could hear it in his voice.  Not the kind of over-the-top folksy accent you often heard in movies, but still unmistakably Great-Lakes-region.  There hadn't been a single Mexican food joint in the town where he was born, and while his second home had a much greater sense of cultural diversity, you still couldn't find a decent taqueria to save your life.

Speaking of which, his food was getting cold.  Justin folded up one of the tacos on his plate and took a large bite (evidently deciding that neglecting his dinner wasn't going to stave off any threat that the girl might pose - if she even was a threat - the jury was still out on that one.)  He took another bite quickly while the girl and the priest talked, and wiped a bit of food from the corner of his lips with the pad of his thumb.  When Pan turned back to him, Justin rolled his shoulders as though the priest had just suggested they go for drinks or something equally as innocuous.

"I suppose I may as well take you up on that offer."  By this, he meant the one from the day before.  The offer to talk.

Some of his kind took issue with spending time in churches.  If Justin was one of them, he didn't let on.

Shoshannah"Places of worship don't tend to like me much, Padre," Shoshannah answers wryly, dryly, and never mind that she means the people in them not the places themselves; perhaps this explains some of her reserve.  More likely, she doesn't need much in the way of explanation.  "But I'll keep it in mind if I don't find somewhere else for tonight, at least."

Her own dinner had been all but inhaled upon the two of them sitting down, regardless of Justin's addition to their party.  She hasn't spoken with her mouth full or made a mess of herself, but still her meal has been packed away with alacrity, leaving her an empty plate to dispose of in the nearest receptacle.
"Speaking of, now that I've eaten I'd better get looking.  This place seems to be about in my price range, so maybe I'll see you around.  Justin."  The younger man gets a nod as well as she rises to take care of the aforementioned plate and grab her bike.  "Have a good rest of the day."

Pan"Don't forget your helmet," he says to her, the last bit of unsolicited advice concerning the bicycle and her relationship with it before they part ways.

Which leaves Justin briefly alone with the priest, who stands watching Shoshannah as she gets herself packed away and starts off with the bike. Doesn't say anything once she's started off and doesn't say anything to Justin either, really, beyond clapping him on the shoulder and saying, "Alright."

-----

Those hoping to make confession after business hours take comfort in knowing that Padre Echeverría lives across the street from the church, that he's got a pager and the number is published with the church newsletter and they can get ahold of him in the event of emergencies. Even when he's not on the block he's not far enough away to escape reach.

The Church of the Good Shepherd doesn't advertise itself as such. Aside from the cross on the sign out front it looks like it could be a 1970s era recreation center. The main building is large and single-story and painted an unobtrusive colour somewhere between beige and yellow. Another smaller building guards its flank and a playground sits in the back.

A new sapling stands by the curb. The priest glances at it like he would if it were a person but he doesn't talk to it. He's not that crazy.

The walk didn't take long and aside from asking how long he's been in town and how he feels about the Rockies, as in the baseball team, as in if he doesn't have an opinion yet he will if he spends too much time around South Federal. Pan unlocks a side door once they reach the church and lets the younger man in first.