(open) you're gonna need a heap of glue when they all catch up with you

[helloneighbor]

Who: Chief of Police Dale Harding and YOU
When: January 16th — February 1st
Where: Throughout town
What: Santa Rosita's very dignified chief of police makes some very dignified appearances around town, meeting and greeting some very undignified people.
Warnings: Language, alcohol abuse, one man's poor life choices.



[Interesting fact: Approximately 25-30% of drinkers are resistant to hangover symptoms.

Dale Harding is not in that percentage.

Santa Rosita's chief of police is certainly an elusive figure. Many of you likely haven't seen him since the Christmas gala. In fact, as you go about your business today, running errands throughout Shadyside and Santa Rosita, you might even miss him altogether. But once you notice the 5'7 man with his unbuttoned sleeve cuffs and distinct lack of service jacket or hat that would mark him as an officer, save for the shiny silver badge pinned to his belt along with the holstered handgun, it's difficult to ignore him. He doesn't look like the other police officers you've seen around town with their plastic smiles and neatly pressed suits. For starters, he doesn't smile at all — and that's not likely to change no matter what he's doing and where you see him.

Harding doesn't keep morning hours, so you're more likely to spot him in the afternoon and at night. Most of the time, you'll see him slowly driving through Shadyside in his police cruiser. Occasionally, he'll be parked in front of Santa Rosita Elementary, always at lunchtime, watching the kids play at recess with his flask to his lips. Other times, you'll see him parked in Rose Garden Park, lying back in the front seat with his sunglasses on. You don't realize it yet, but this will all make sense when you get closer and notice, perhaps not inconspicuously, the string of drool trailing from his lips.

And yet, rarest of all, you'll see him on foot in North Santa Rosita. In the morning and at night, he'll go to the Blue Moon Diner, the bell over the door jingling as he walks in and takes a seat at the counter. Ordering a cheeseburger and coffee, he'll sit silently waiting for his food with his elbows on the table, his fingers laced, pressing his forehead into his hands.

Surely this is the best time to say hello!

ooc: The mods will respond to tags for Harding until February 1st. Please try to keep your interactions with him brief! He is a busy man, after all.]

Comments

[m1895]

[ The kind of person Harding is is becoming rapidly clear: aloof, even toward those he recognizes as his own. These are the men who are truly dangerous—little of the human desire to socialize, no desire to be regarded with fondness. The ones who decline drinks after a long shift, who don't laugh at jokes, who just show up and impassively administer beatings. That having been said, he doesn't doubt that some of this is undoubtedly context: he's tired, his shifts are probably long, and American political establishments are Rightist and anti-Soviet and he's presently sitting next to someone who might as well be a goddamn leper.

Pushing this kind of person will get him nowhere. Hell, he always hated it when civilians tried to strike up conversation with him on the metro after a long shift—so he lapses into silence, thanks the waitress for his coffee, takes a careful sip and determines that it's not scalding or anything.

He lets several minutes pass like that before offhandedly noting, ]

Probably police have been as busy as hospital lately.

[ It's a deliberate, gentle reminder, seeing as they haven't ever crossed paths in uniform: he plays a supporting, albeit gunless role as an emergency medical worker. ]

[helloneighbor]

[You wouldn't know by the look on his face, but Harding's enjoying the silence. When Vasiliy speaks up again, he exhales silently. There are worse ways to make small talk.]

Well, we get paid more than they do. So. [He studies his coffee, his lips thin.] Could be worse.

[m1895]

[ Vasiliy actually laughs at that, even if it's only an under-his-breath chuckle. The irony of having once said the same about men in Harding's position isn't lost on him (though even while he was thinking that of ordinary policemen, others in the Secret Police were undoubtedly saying the same of himself and his fellow interrogators). The snake eats its own tail, et cetera, et cetera. ]

You are correct. [ A shrug. ] And hospital janitors less than us.

[ He's drinking because of burnout, then. Vasiliy's seen it enough to recognize the signs and enough to block out much in the way of empathy.

This man, he thinks, could simply leave if he chose to. ]

[helloneighbor]

[Harding snorts lightly as he reaches into his pocket. He takes out a silver flask, uncaps it, and begins to pour the contents into his coffee.]

Yeah, well. Welcome to America. Land of opportunity. [He caps the flask and pockets it again.] Enjoy it. It doesn't get any better than this.

[m1895]

[ There's something there, a level of sincerity in that last sentence that could play out in his favor at some point—Harding's not class-conscious, none of these people are, but he seems to have a trace of recognition of how abysmal the system he lives under is. It's something, like the faint glimmer of intelligence and lucidity occasionally present in a dog's eyes.

And, more importantly, he seems to be easing up enough to do what he just reprimanded Vasiliy for. Not that alcoholics are ever particularly subtle (at least from his experience), but he wasn't openly spiking his coffee before the revelation that they occupy adjacent fields. Vasiliy takes notice of the fact that he doesn't offer any to him, though half of that's probably just the American stinginess with cigarettes and drinks.

He shrugs. ]

Better than Soviet Union. [ It's not. ] Warmer.

[ He knows better than to ask Harding where he's from; it's the kind of meaningless small talk anyone who's conducted an interrogation could see right through—and he has no doubt the man's been involved in several. Instead he opts for a question about as sincere as he can muster in a conversation with the enemy. ]

You always want to be police officer?

[ And then he chooses not to dwell on why that's the first question that comes to mind. ]

[helloneighbor]

Yep. Would've quit a long time ago if I didn't.

[The answer feels like a rehearsed one, like his go-to anytime he's asked this question. He takes a sip of his coffee, followed by another longer one. His posture is noticeably less tense, but no less tired.]

[m1895]

[ Vasiliy registers it when his shoulders relax—the reaction he's been aiming for since the beginning. They're getting somewhere, especially considering how the rest of these people react to the presence of someone like him.

It's hard to imagine a child Dale Harding, but he has to wonder if this theoretical shrunken-down version of the man sitting beside him was the schoolyard bully. That tends to be the type of personality drawn into this, or at least those at the top of the childhood pecking order. It's easier to make people believe you have power over them when you already believe it yourself. ]

Your shifts, they are long, aren't they? Twelve hours, fourteen?

[ Residual fatigue sinks into his bones at the very thought of long shifts, the remembered exhaustion of fourteen-hour days and the vivid recollection of the way the early sunlight in the Red Square sliced into his retinas after more than half the day underground. He can, on some level, relate to the apparent exhaustion. ]

[helloneighbor]

You ask a lotta questions. [Harding's tone is matter-of-fact, not cruel. He swirls his cup a bit, looking down at it.] Are you that bored?

[m1895]

[ Vasiliy shrugs, equally nonchalant. ]

Maybe. I am EMT with one hour before shift.

[ But at least he's not fearful, now that he's eased himself into a position in which he maintains some level of control. He's establishing himself with this guy, with the powers that are, and that's going to be critical in the coming months. The fact that this man, enemy though he may be, has been superficially more pleasant to him than any of the civilians in this shitty little microcosm of a Capitalist oligarchy doesn't hurt, either—Harding's brusque and antisocial, but the vague decency that he does show seems to be genuine. He looks too tired to pretend, and like the kind of person pretending would take enormous effort for.

Vasiliy ashes what's left of his cigarette and goes for a second, pausing when he starts to habitually return his cigarette case to the breast pocket of his button-down. ]

You smoke?

[helloneighbor]

[Harding sighs.]

It's Vasiliy, right? [He says this in a tone that says he's asking himself, not Visily.] Look, you're a nice guy, but... Word of advice?

[He takes another drink of coffee, a bit longer than the first sip.]

Just go home. Go home and go to sleep. Or clean your bathroom. [With a flippant tilt of his chin:] Whatever you do at night.

[m1895]

[ Taking that as a no, Vasiliy slips the cigarette case back into his breast pocket and speaks around the one in his mouth, turning the wheel of the butane lighter in his other hand with a faintly yellowed fingernail. ] Work, mostly. Hospitals are always busy.

[ But he gets the general drift. After that first drag, he removes his cigarette for a moment and takes several sips from his own coffee in rapid succession, then gets out his wallet and puts a few coins on the counter: payment for both of their drinks and a pretty decent tip for a place that doesn't require them.

The poor girls need it, working in a job like that in the United States. ]

I hope you get sleep too, Mr. Harding. You have tiring job.

[helloneighbor]

[Vasiliy leaves, sweeping by like none of this is the least bit surprising. It's the best outcome Harding could hope for. The longer Vasiliy sticks around, the harder it'll get to talk to him. That could've gone worse, but it could have gone better, Harding decides as as he turns back to his coffee.

But at least there's one silver lining in his shitty cloud: Vasiliy didn't ask how Harding knew his name.]