Judgement – You're Stepping On My Toes
by Lieutenant Bridget Stapleton & (G) Arrain - Lieutenant Arrienye t'Merek & Alderman Yolanthe Ibalin
Post Details
::ON::
"I would like to play this program," Bridget said, holding it out to the holodeck attendant.
Vedra nodded, with more confidence than she felt. With Klia gone, and no replacement in the offing, all the wait staff were taking in turns to man the holospa, and keep things ticking over. Plus, sometimes there were good tips in it, if the spa was busy and people had plenty of time to drink first. "I'll just go set this up." The Risian waitress took the isolinear rod, and headed into what used to be Klia's office. "I'll put you into suite five? When the green light shows, you can go in."
Bridget heard the woman's instructions from the open office door, and nodded; then realized she wouldn't have been observed. "Right, okay." She led Ai'lani toward the other end of the hall, where suite five was located.
"How's your jitterbug?" she asked Ai'lani, with a wide grin. Anticipation showed in her eyes; it had been awhile since she'd used this program.
"My what?" Ai'lani asked, his eyebrows coming together in confusion.
"Jitterbug. It's the name of a dance that was popular on Earth back in this era. Don't worry, I'll show you."
As she spoke, the doors to the holosuite opened and they found themselves stepping onto a broad sidewalk, across the street from a row of cement buildings. It was night, and the street lamps gave an orange-ish glow to everything.
A brown and tan striped awning extended from the building they were facing. The words 'Cotton Club' were painted in white letters on it. As they watched, a limousine stopped in front of the awning, and a black doorman in livery approached it to open the passenger door.
"Computer, appropriate costume changes for myself and my companion," Bridget said. Holographic overlays were added to their clothing. For Ai'lani, there was a black tuxedo with pearl buttons on his shirt and white spats on his shoes. Bridget was given a gold sequined flapper dress and matching headband with feather.
Looking at him approvingly, she said, "C'mon. I want you to meet someone." She grabbed his hand as she stepped off the curb. Traffic was light and they had no problem making their way across the street.
She approached the doorman, waiting as he let the guests from the limousine into the building. "Good evening, George."
"Why, Miss Vera! We's been wonderin' where you gots off to!" His grin was fatherly and his accent decidedly Harlem. Then he looked at Ai'lani. His expression clouded as he noted the color of the Deltan's skin. "You know, Miss Vera, we don't allow none of them in here. Ain't my rules. Buts I gots ta enforce 'em."
"He's with me, George. Owney won't mind." Her voice brooked no objection.
The doorman hesitated, looking from one to the other. With a sigh, he said, "Alright, Miss Vera. Alright. Buts you gots ta tell Mister Madden that you done overruled me. I don't wants ta lose my job." It was the 1930's and jobs were scarce, especially ones that paid well and had tip benefits.
"Of course I will," she said, her expression brightening once more. She leaned in to kiss the doorman's cheek, which elicited an abashed smile.
He hustled over to the door and opened it, coming to attention. "Go on right in, Miss Vera. You gonna sing tonight?"
Bridget glanced at Ai'lani before saying, "I don't know, George. Maybe if Owney asks me."
They walked through the door and past a heavy red velvet curtain that was drawn aside to reveal a flight of stairs going up. The noise level was high, even at the first floor. Someone was playing a coronet solo in an upbeat, jazzy tune.
As they started to climb the flight of stairs, Bridget raised her voice and said, "I'm sorry about that, Ai'lani. This is a time in Earth's history when some parts of society still held racial prejudices."
"What do you mean? I still get this today," Ai'lani said back, following Bridget up the stairs. "And by the way, what's with the 'Vera' thing? And why wouldn't you filter out the racial prejudices?" Apparently, Ai'lani wasn't much of a 'let's pretend' kind of guy. He didn't sound argumentative though, just curious.
"You can think of this as being cast in a historical stage play. In order to stay true to history, I didn't filter the racial prejudices, because they are a part of the story. I also pretend to be a character associated with the club. Vera was the girlfriend of a mobster named Dutch Schultz, but she was actually in love with that coronet player," Bridget pointed toward the stage as they reached the landing at the top of the stairs.
An orchestra was playing and her finger indicated a man standing up in the horn section. He put his instrument to his lips and played to the the song. A wide catwalk jutted out from the stage into the audience, where chorus girls dressed in identical feathered outfits danced in choreographed unison to the music.
The room was the size of a shuttle bay, with tables and booths set on different terraced levels, ending at the top in private boxes with heavy draperies that could be left open or closed for privacy. Cigarette smoke filtered up from most tables, creating a haze near the vaulted ceiling.
Bridget led the way down the broad, carpeted steps and as she did so, people at various tables either called out to her or waved. She responded with smiles and returned the waves, but didn't accept invitations. Instead, she paused to let Ai'lani catch up to her; when he did, she slid her arm around his elbow possessively, and turned left at the landing of the third terrace, about midway up the side of the room. She walked past half a dozen tables, and stopped in front of one that held a single occupant: a middle-aged man with thinning dark hair, dressed in a tuxedo and doodling on a piece of paper.
He caught their approach out of the corner of his eye, and stood. He had a smile for Bridget, which only slightly dimmed as he looked up at the taller man she was with. "Vera! My God, woman, where have you been?" He came out from around the table and embraced her, giving her a peck on the cheek.
"Owney, it's great to see you!" She returned the embrace, and then made introductions. "Owney, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine, Ai'lani. Ai'lani, Owney. He runs the Cotton Club," she explained to the Deltan.
"Nice to meet you," Ai'lani said, deciding to play along and held his hand out.
"A friend of Vera's is a friend of mine," the solid looking man replied smoothly, before turning and pulling out a chair for Vera. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, George asked me to tell you that I muscled him to let Ai'lani in here, and he don't wanna lose his job," Bridget said with a chuckle. "Other than that, can you get us a table? The place is jumpin' and I don't wanna spend all night looking for a spot, just to get stuck in a corner."
She was surreptitiously looking for Dutch, too, as she scanned the room for an open table. He was so jealous that he'd take one look at Ai'lani, swing first and ask questions later.
"Sure thing, sweetheart." Owney signaled a dark skinned man in a waiter's uniform. "Skip, take Miss Vera to table nine."
The waiter nodded, and gestured for them to follow. Bridget was so busy looking out for the gangster boyfriend of her character that she didn't pay full attention to where she was going, and bumped into another man altogether. Tall and debonair, with slicked hair and a pencil mustache. Dixie Dwyer.
"Oh! Dix!" Her exclamation was followed by a nervous laugh. "Hello there. We just caught the tail end of your last set. It sounded great." She turned to Ai'lani and said, "I'd like you to meet the hottest horn player in all of Harlem, the great Dixie Dwyer. Dix, this is my friend, Ai'lani."
"Hi," Ai'lani said simply, holding his hand out to the man. "It's a pleasure to meet you," he said, a big part of him wondering just where Bridget was going with introducing him to this program.
Dix shook it, "Do you play? Perhaps we can persuade Vera to come up and sing with us?"
Ai'lani couldn't help but let out a small laugh. "Um...no, I'm afraid I lack any and all musical talent. It's just by the grace of the gods that I can actually follow a beat while dancing," he admitted with a bright smile.
"I'm gonna take you up on that," Bridget told Ai'lani with a wink, and caught Dixie's raised eyebrow, though thankfully he didn't say anything. "Dix, we were just on our way to a table. I want to do some dancing, but you talk to Owney about me doing a song. It's his club. He wouldn't come into my place and just assume he had permission to do a soft shoe. Although..." she paused and tapped her chin with a finger playfully, "I'd pay good money to see that."
"I'll ask him. You never know," Dix laughed. "And I'll also ask about whether you can sing," he added with a grin.
"Thanks. And have you seen Dutch tonight?" She came right out and asked the question that had been burning at the back of her mind. She knew Dix was well aware of why she was asking.
The grin vanished. "Not yet. But Frenchy says he comes in most nights now."
Dutch had once offered Vera anything she wanted - he had been that infatuated with her. She'd told him she wanted her own night club. And he agreed - which was why she stayed with him. Well, that and she was afraid to leave him, too. He had a temper something terrible. Killed a man right in front of her and Dixie and a room full of people. Stabbed the guy in a fit of rage, just because the hood insulted his Jewish heritage. The vivid memory of the grisly murder scene, of blood dripping off a chandelier and landing on Vera's cheek, still gave Bridget shivers.
Shaking it off, she smiled nervously and grabbed Ai'lani's hand. She was getting used to the surge of sensations the physical contact caused, and it was oddly comforting. "Let's not keep Skip waiting," she told him, and turned to give their guide a smile. As they began moving again, she said to Dix over her shoulder, "Come join us in a bit, willya?"
He gave her a nod - a bit curt she thought - and he flicked a glance at Ai'lani. Mentally she rolled her eyes at Vera's life. It must have been extremely complicated. The contrast made Bridget happy for her long-standing marriage with Edward. Things weren't so great right at the moment, but they'd weather it together. Vera, on the other hand... well, things didn't get better for quite some time.
"So what do you think of all this?" She waved a hand in the air as she asked Ai'lnai the question.
"I still have no idea what the point of it all is," Ai'lani admitted honestly.
They stopped at a table on the second tier as Ai'lani finished speaking, and before she could reply Skip said, "Here you go, Miss Vera. I'm very glad y'all is with us tonight."
She thanked Skip, and as she took her seat, she replied to Ai'lani. "The point is to have fun. To step into a pretend world and just lose yourself into it for awhile. Don't you have theatrical plays on Delta?"
"Yeah, we do, but the people playing usually know what's going to happen in the play. They're not just thrown into it and told to adapt. I really have no idea what's going on here. I mean, I'd be happy to play along if I knew what the plan was," Ai'lani explained, very happy that Kaelin hadn't been invited. The other Deltan would've hated it.
"Okay, I can see where you're coming from," she settled herself and got ready for a miniature history lesson. "This program isn't your average holo-novel. It's sophisticated and adaptive. It has about fifty different scenarios within it's framework that it can run, and it chooses one at random when the program is initiated; but it can also vary the interaction based on what the players do. Think of it as if it were a game. I don't know which scenario the program chose for tonight, because I haven't played them all. But the basic background of the game goes something like this:
"The night club we're in is in Harlem, New York. That's on Earth, in the United States. It's in the 1930's, a time between two global wars where a depression has befallen the world's economies. Organized crime was rampant, which gave rise to a social cry of moral outrage. The result was legislation that prohibited the sale, transport, and distribution of alcoholic beverages. The purpose was to try to stem the tide of criminal activity, blaming drunkenness and alcoholic addiction as a reason why people were turning to crime.
"It was horribly ineffective, and clubs like this one were a prime example. Owney is a big time mobster. He's pays off the local authorities so they don't raid his club. Vera's club, same thing, and a dozen or so other clubs that are backed by big mob money. Guys like Owney, they're using the club as a front for what they're really into: gambling, running drugs, booze, laundering money - you name it. He's been to prison at least once, and he'll be headed back there again soon. All of which is a bit too bad, because for a bad guy, he's a pretty decent person. I don't agree morally with what he's doing, but at least he tries to do it like it were a business, with a minimum of bloodshed and grief. He preys on people's weaknesses like a shark. But he's a nice, polite shark.
"Dutch Shultz, on the other hand - he was a perfect example of the worst kind of hoodlum. I'm sure the program will bring that character into play sometime soon, and it will be more or less confrontational, because the character has a chip on his shoulder the size of a Buick. There's a love-hate relationship he has with Vera. He's obsessed with her. His wife will know, if she doesn't already; and there will be a blow-out here at the Cotton Club between the two of them. I don't know if that scenario has been included in the play tonight or not, but I've played one of the scenarios where it did happen.
"Vera isn't in love with Dutch; she despises him. But she's afraid of him, so she doesn't tell him she no longer wants to be his girlfriend. Besides, if she did, he'd take away her night club, and she really wants to keep it. She's actually in love with that Dixie Dwyer character, who will become not only a very popular part of the orchestra, but also a film star - ironically, he plays a big-time mobster that he characterizes after Dutch Shultz. Doesn't engender any fond feelings in Dutch, lemme tell you. Their rivalry for Vera ends up in Dixie inviting her to go to Hollywood with him, and she finally stands up to Dutch and tells him off. Eventually the other mob families get together and have Dutch assassinated, because he's stepping up the criminal activity in the city so much that it's bringing heat on the rest of the club owners.
"Owney goes back to prison, with his right-hand man Frenchy running the club for him. But even in prison, Owney is treated like a prince. The warden lets the club put on a show once a week for him so he can watch the acts, and basically run the club from his cell. Bizarre." Bridget shook her head, though she had an appreciative smile on her face. She'd grown oddly fond of those two characters, Owney and Frenchy.
"Alright, so there's your framework for the program. I won't urge you to stay if you don't like it; I'll be perfectly happy here by myself so you wouldn't need to feel as if you were abandoning me. But if you want to stick around and see what happens, I'd like that."
"Okay, I think I understand the general idea here, but you have a role. You're Vera. Who the hell am I?" he asked her.
"You said you could dance, right?" She had a mischievous look on her face.
"Yeah, I'm okay," Ai'lani nodded, meeting her eyes with his own.
"You don't have to be a character if you feel uncomfortable with it. You could pretend to be one of the extras and the program will adapt to you as a customer at the club.
"But there are a couple characters that you might have fun with, if you're interested. One of them is the Sandman - Sandman Williams. He and his brother, Clay, were top dancers here at the club. He was an extremely talented an sweet guy. Sandman was in love with Lila, who was one of the singers here. He got pretty frustrated over the racial tensions, and he didn't want to be treated any different because he was black. He gets a little bit upset with Lila because she's of mixed heritage and she looks like she could be white. She pretends that she is, so that she can take advantage of the privileges white people had that blacks didn't. But they work things out in the end, and get married.
"Or, you could play Dixie's younger brother, Vinnie. That kid thought he was one tough customer, but he had a pretty messed up head, and gets to working for Dutch, doing some pretty rotten things - killing people, and holding Frenchy hostage for fifty grand. He ends up getting killed over the hostage situation.
"There's also Cab Calloway, one of the orchestra conductors. He sang, he danced - he was quite the showman. Cute guy, too," Bridget observed with a smile. "All you have to do is choose one and I tell the computer to put you in that role. From then on, the other characters will treat you as if you were that character in the story."
"I think I'll go for Sandman," Ai'lani decided easily enough. "I mean, racial discrimination, love and dancing. How could I resist?" he asked rhetorically with a bright grin.
"I was hoping you would! Alright. Computer," she raised her voice, "Apply character Sandman Williams to player Ai'lani Elley." A momentary shimmer engulfed Ai'lani, but other than that, Bridget saw him the same as he had been before.
The response of the characters around him was a different story. A chorus of exclamations could be heard from nearby tables, and it rippled across the room. Sandman was in the house.
With a grin, Bridget said, "Your character has a fan base among the women who come here. The Sandman is a bit of an object of desire, so you can have a lot of fun with this, as long as Lila doesn't see you flirting with the customers." She stood and offered her hand as the orchestra began a song. "Care to dance?"
"I'd love to," Ai'lani replied, standing up and offering her his hand with a mischievous smile.
She led the way to the dance floor, which was off to one side of the room so as not to distract viewers from the stage. A sultry, mournful oboe and tense violins set the mood of the music, and a woman's soprano voice sang of passion in the Louisiana heat. As he took Bridget into his arms, she was surprised by his natural grace and confident grasp. "I had the mistaken impression that you could barely dance." She raised an eyebrow, but grinned appreciatively as he began a much more than passable tango. He was good.
"Didn't I tell you impressions could be misleading?" he asked, a flirty tone creeping into his voice as he slid with her across the dance floor. The tango was actually his favorite Terran dance. The passion the music carried always gave him a thrill. "I can't play any instruments or sing, but I am very good with my body," he said, continuing to flirt shamelessly. Then he smiled at her. "Don't worry, I'm just playing," he assured her. "Don't get me wrong, you're a gorgeous woman, but I know you don't see me that way. But it's fun to flirt."
Her mouth hung open in surprise, suspended there momentarily as she performed her ocho, crossing back and forth over his extended foot; and then when she returned to his grasp she said, "Oh my goodness. You're shameless." But it was with a throaty voice that she said it, in spite of herself.
"Don't pretend you don't like it," he said with a laugh, speeding up their pace a little as the music picked up.
Her cheeks flushed as he led her in a quick but complicated traveling step. She was being led backwards around the circumference of the floor, but wasn't concerned about bumping into anyone because he'd already demonstrated an excellent grasp of the dance and it's variations. Regarding his flirtation, Her grin said it all, though she wouldn't verbally admit to enjoying it. She guessed he knew already anyway, being empathic. She wondered what Deltans felt about that - about beings from other races being drawn to them so intensely.
Ai'lani continued to lead her across the dance floor gracefully, his eyes rarely leaving hers to look around. As the tango ended, he stopped before leaning forward and giving her cheek a small, chaste kiss. "Thank you for a lovely dance," he told her with a smile.
Before Bridget could say anything, a meaty hand grabbed her left arm and yanked her away for Ai'lani, sending her spinning and tumbling across the dance floor. A sallow, thin faced man stepped over and landed a brutal punch to Ai'lani's delicate cheek bones so hard the crunch cut over the final tones of the orchestra, and smashed the Deltan to the floor....
To Be Continued
Ensign Bridget Stapleton
Doctor (General Practitioner), DS5
&
Ai'lani Elley
Freelance photojournalist (PNPC by Maja)
&
Vedra and a cast of thousands
NPCs by Notty
Shall we split this up before we post?
OOC (Charlene): I'm totally okay with that. :)
by Lieutenant Bridget Stapleton & (G) Arrain - Lieutenant Arrienye t'Merek & Alderman Yolanthe Ibalin
Post Details
| Title | You're Stepping On My Toes | |
| Mission | Judgement | |
| Author(s) | Lieutenant Bridget Stapleton & (G) Arrain - Lieutenant Arrienye t'Merek & Alderman Yolanthe Ibalin | |
| Posted | Fri Apr 08, 2011 @ 6:07pm | |
| Location | Holodeck 6, Box Of Delights | |
| Timeline | from SD37: 2022 to SD38: 0230 |
"I would like to play this program," Bridget said, holding it out to the holodeck attendant.
Vedra nodded, with more confidence than she felt. With Klia gone, and no replacement in the offing, all the wait staff were taking in turns to man the holospa, and keep things ticking over. Plus, sometimes there were good tips in it, if the spa was busy and people had plenty of time to drink first. "I'll just go set this up." The Risian waitress took the isolinear rod, and headed into what used to be Klia's office. "I'll put you into suite five? When the green light shows, you can go in."
Bridget heard the woman's instructions from the open office door, and nodded; then realized she wouldn't have been observed. "Right, okay." She led Ai'lani toward the other end of the hall, where suite five was located.
"How's your jitterbug?" she asked Ai'lani, with a wide grin. Anticipation showed in her eyes; it had been awhile since she'd used this program.
"My what?" Ai'lani asked, his eyebrows coming together in confusion.
"Jitterbug. It's the name of a dance that was popular on Earth back in this era. Don't worry, I'll show you."
As she spoke, the doors to the holosuite opened and they found themselves stepping onto a broad sidewalk, across the street from a row of cement buildings. It was night, and the street lamps gave an orange-ish glow to everything.
A brown and tan striped awning extended from the building they were facing. The words 'Cotton Club' were painted in white letters on it. As they watched, a limousine stopped in front of the awning, and a black doorman in livery approached it to open the passenger door.
"Computer, appropriate costume changes for myself and my companion," Bridget said. Holographic overlays were added to their clothing. For Ai'lani, there was a black tuxedo with pearl buttons on his shirt and white spats on his shoes. Bridget was given a gold sequined flapper dress and matching headband with feather.
Looking at him approvingly, she said, "C'mon. I want you to meet someone." She grabbed his hand as she stepped off the curb. Traffic was light and they had no problem making their way across the street.
She approached the doorman, waiting as he let the guests from the limousine into the building. "Good evening, George."
"Why, Miss Vera! We's been wonderin' where you gots off to!" His grin was fatherly and his accent decidedly Harlem. Then he looked at Ai'lani. His expression clouded as he noted the color of the Deltan's skin. "You know, Miss Vera, we don't allow none of them in here. Ain't my rules. Buts I gots ta enforce 'em."
"He's with me, George. Owney won't mind." Her voice brooked no objection.
The doorman hesitated, looking from one to the other. With a sigh, he said, "Alright, Miss Vera. Alright. Buts you gots ta tell Mister Madden that you done overruled me. I don't wants ta lose my job." It was the 1930's and jobs were scarce, especially ones that paid well and had tip benefits.
"Of course I will," she said, her expression brightening once more. She leaned in to kiss the doorman's cheek, which elicited an abashed smile.
He hustled over to the door and opened it, coming to attention. "Go on right in, Miss Vera. You gonna sing tonight?"
Bridget glanced at Ai'lani before saying, "I don't know, George. Maybe if Owney asks me."
They walked through the door and past a heavy red velvet curtain that was drawn aside to reveal a flight of stairs going up. The noise level was high, even at the first floor. Someone was playing a coronet solo in an upbeat, jazzy tune.
As they started to climb the flight of stairs, Bridget raised her voice and said, "I'm sorry about that, Ai'lani. This is a time in Earth's history when some parts of society still held racial prejudices."
"What do you mean? I still get this today," Ai'lani said back, following Bridget up the stairs. "And by the way, what's with the 'Vera' thing? And why wouldn't you filter out the racial prejudices?" Apparently, Ai'lani wasn't much of a 'let's pretend' kind of guy. He didn't sound argumentative though, just curious.
"You can think of this as being cast in a historical stage play. In order to stay true to history, I didn't filter the racial prejudices, because they are a part of the story. I also pretend to be a character associated with the club. Vera was the girlfriend of a mobster named Dutch Schultz, but she was actually in love with that coronet player," Bridget pointed toward the stage as they reached the landing at the top of the stairs.
An orchestra was playing and her finger indicated a man standing up in the horn section. He put his instrument to his lips and played to the the song. A wide catwalk jutted out from the stage into the audience, where chorus girls dressed in identical feathered outfits danced in choreographed unison to the music.
The room was the size of a shuttle bay, with tables and booths set on different terraced levels, ending at the top in private boxes with heavy draperies that could be left open or closed for privacy. Cigarette smoke filtered up from most tables, creating a haze near the vaulted ceiling.
Bridget led the way down the broad, carpeted steps and as she did so, people at various tables either called out to her or waved. She responded with smiles and returned the waves, but didn't accept invitations. Instead, she paused to let Ai'lani catch up to her; when he did, she slid her arm around his elbow possessively, and turned left at the landing of the third terrace, about midway up the side of the room. She walked past half a dozen tables, and stopped in front of one that held a single occupant: a middle-aged man with thinning dark hair, dressed in a tuxedo and doodling on a piece of paper.
He caught their approach out of the corner of his eye, and stood. He had a smile for Bridget, which only slightly dimmed as he looked up at the taller man she was with. "Vera! My God, woman, where have you been?" He came out from around the table and embraced her, giving her a peck on the cheek.
"Owney, it's great to see you!" She returned the embrace, and then made introductions. "Owney, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine, Ai'lani. Ai'lani, Owney. He runs the Cotton Club," she explained to the Deltan.
"Nice to meet you," Ai'lani said, deciding to play along and held his hand out.
"A friend of Vera's is a friend of mine," the solid looking man replied smoothly, before turning and pulling out a chair for Vera. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, George asked me to tell you that I muscled him to let Ai'lani in here, and he don't wanna lose his job," Bridget said with a chuckle. "Other than that, can you get us a table? The place is jumpin' and I don't wanna spend all night looking for a spot, just to get stuck in a corner."
She was surreptitiously looking for Dutch, too, as she scanned the room for an open table. He was so jealous that he'd take one look at Ai'lani, swing first and ask questions later.
"Sure thing, sweetheart." Owney signaled a dark skinned man in a waiter's uniform. "Skip, take Miss Vera to table nine."
The waiter nodded, and gestured for them to follow. Bridget was so busy looking out for the gangster boyfriend of her character that she didn't pay full attention to where she was going, and bumped into another man altogether. Tall and debonair, with slicked hair and a pencil mustache. Dixie Dwyer.
"Oh! Dix!" Her exclamation was followed by a nervous laugh. "Hello there. We just caught the tail end of your last set. It sounded great." She turned to Ai'lani and said, "I'd like you to meet the hottest horn player in all of Harlem, the great Dixie Dwyer. Dix, this is my friend, Ai'lani."
"Hi," Ai'lani said simply, holding his hand out to the man. "It's a pleasure to meet you," he said, a big part of him wondering just where Bridget was going with introducing him to this program.
Dix shook it, "Do you play? Perhaps we can persuade Vera to come up and sing with us?"
Ai'lani couldn't help but let out a small laugh. "Um...no, I'm afraid I lack any and all musical talent. It's just by the grace of the gods that I can actually follow a beat while dancing," he admitted with a bright smile.
"I'm gonna take you up on that," Bridget told Ai'lani with a wink, and caught Dixie's raised eyebrow, though thankfully he didn't say anything. "Dix, we were just on our way to a table. I want to do some dancing, but you talk to Owney about me doing a song. It's his club. He wouldn't come into my place and just assume he had permission to do a soft shoe. Although..." she paused and tapped her chin with a finger playfully, "I'd pay good money to see that."
"I'll ask him. You never know," Dix laughed. "And I'll also ask about whether you can sing," he added with a grin.
"Thanks. And have you seen Dutch tonight?" She came right out and asked the question that had been burning at the back of her mind. She knew Dix was well aware of why she was asking.
The grin vanished. "Not yet. But Frenchy says he comes in most nights now."
Dutch had once offered Vera anything she wanted - he had been that infatuated with her. She'd told him she wanted her own night club. And he agreed - which was why she stayed with him. Well, that and she was afraid to leave him, too. He had a temper something terrible. Killed a man right in front of her and Dixie and a room full of people. Stabbed the guy in a fit of rage, just because the hood insulted his Jewish heritage. The vivid memory of the grisly murder scene, of blood dripping off a chandelier and landing on Vera's cheek, still gave Bridget shivers.
Shaking it off, she smiled nervously and grabbed Ai'lani's hand. She was getting used to the surge of sensations the physical contact caused, and it was oddly comforting. "Let's not keep Skip waiting," she told him, and turned to give their guide a smile. As they began moving again, she said to Dix over her shoulder, "Come join us in a bit, willya?"
He gave her a nod - a bit curt she thought - and he flicked a glance at Ai'lani. Mentally she rolled her eyes at Vera's life. It must have been extremely complicated. The contrast made Bridget happy for her long-standing marriage with Edward. Things weren't so great right at the moment, but they'd weather it together. Vera, on the other hand... well, things didn't get better for quite some time.
"So what do you think of all this?" She waved a hand in the air as she asked Ai'lnai the question.
"I still have no idea what the point of it all is," Ai'lani admitted honestly.
They stopped at a table on the second tier as Ai'lani finished speaking, and before she could reply Skip said, "Here you go, Miss Vera. I'm very glad y'all is with us tonight."
She thanked Skip, and as she took her seat, she replied to Ai'lani. "The point is to have fun. To step into a pretend world and just lose yourself into it for awhile. Don't you have theatrical plays on Delta?"
"Yeah, we do, but the people playing usually know what's going to happen in the play. They're not just thrown into it and told to adapt. I really have no idea what's going on here. I mean, I'd be happy to play along if I knew what the plan was," Ai'lani explained, very happy that Kaelin hadn't been invited. The other Deltan would've hated it.
"Okay, I can see where you're coming from," she settled herself and got ready for a miniature history lesson. "This program isn't your average holo-novel. It's sophisticated and adaptive. It has about fifty different scenarios within it's framework that it can run, and it chooses one at random when the program is initiated; but it can also vary the interaction based on what the players do. Think of it as if it were a game. I don't know which scenario the program chose for tonight, because I haven't played them all. But the basic background of the game goes something like this:
"The night club we're in is in Harlem, New York. That's on Earth, in the United States. It's in the 1930's, a time between two global wars where a depression has befallen the world's economies. Organized crime was rampant, which gave rise to a social cry of moral outrage. The result was legislation that prohibited the sale, transport, and distribution of alcoholic beverages. The purpose was to try to stem the tide of criminal activity, blaming drunkenness and alcoholic addiction as a reason why people were turning to crime.
"It was horribly ineffective, and clubs like this one were a prime example. Owney is a big time mobster. He's pays off the local authorities so they don't raid his club. Vera's club, same thing, and a dozen or so other clubs that are backed by big mob money. Guys like Owney, they're using the club as a front for what they're really into: gambling, running drugs, booze, laundering money - you name it. He's been to prison at least once, and he'll be headed back there again soon. All of which is a bit too bad, because for a bad guy, he's a pretty decent person. I don't agree morally with what he's doing, but at least he tries to do it like it were a business, with a minimum of bloodshed and grief. He preys on people's weaknesses like a shark. But he's a nice, polite shark.
"Dutch Shultz, on the other hand - he was a perfect example of the worst kind of hoodlum. I'm sure the program will bring that character into play sometime soon, and it will be more or less confrontational, because the character has a chip on his shoulder the size of a Buick. There's a love-hate relationship he has with Vera. He's obsessed with her. His wife will know, if she doesn't already; and there will be a blow-out here at the Cotton Club between the two of them. I don't know if that scenario has been included in the play tonight or not, but I've played one of the scenarios where it did happen.
"Vera isn't in love with Dutch; she despises him. But she's afraid of him, so she doesn't tell him she no longer wants to be his girlfriend. Besides, if she did, he'd take away her night club, and she really wants to keep it. She's actually in love with that Dixie Dwyer character, who will become not only a very popular part of the orchestra, but also a film star - ironically, he plays a big-time mobster that he characterizes after Dutch Shultz. Doesn't engender any fond feelings in Dutch, lemme tell you. Their rivalry for Vera ends up in Dixie inviting her to go to Hollywood with him, and she finally stands up to Dutch and tells him off. Eventually the other mob families get together and have Dutch assassinated, because he's stepping up the criminal activity in the city so much that it's bringing heat on the rest of the club owners.
"Owney goes back to prison, with his right-hand man Frenchy running the club for him. But even in prison, Owney is treated like a prince. The warden lets the club put on a show once a week for him so he can watch the acts, and basically run the club from his cell. Bizarre." Bridget shook her head, though she had an appreciative smile on her face. She'd grown oddly fond of those two characters, Owney and Frenchy.
"Alright, so there's your framework for the program. I won't urge you to stay if you don't like it; I'll be perfectly happy here by myself so you wouldn't need to feel as if you were abandoning me. But if you want to stick around and see what happens, I'd like that."
"Okay, I think I understand the general idea here, but you have a role. You're Vera. Who the hell am I?" he asked her.
"You said you could dance, right?" She had a mischievous look on her face.
"Yeah, I'm okay," Ai'lani nodded, meeting her eyes with his own.
"You don't have to be a character if you feel uncomfortable with it. You could pretend to be one of the extras and the program will adapt to you as a customer at the club.
"But there are a couple characters that you might have fun with, if you're interested. One of them is the Sandman - Sandman Williams. He and his brother, Clay, were top dancers here at the club. He was an extremely talented an sweet guy. Sandman was in love with Lila, who was one of the singers here. He got pretty frustrated over the racial tensions, and he didn't want to be treated any different because he was black. He gets a little bit upset with Lila because she's of mixed heritage and she looks like she could be white. She pretends that she is, so that she can take advantage of the privileges white people had that blacks didn't. But they work things out in the end, and get married.
"Or, you could play Dixie's younger brother, Vinnie. That kid thought he was one tough customer, but he had a pretty messed up head, and gets to working for Dutch, doing some pretty rotten things - killing people, and holding Frenchy hostage for fifty grand. He ends up getting killed over the hostage situation.
"There's also Cab Calloway, one of the orchestra conductors. He sang, he danced - he was quite the showman. Cute guy, too," Bridget observed with a smile. "All you have to do is choose one and I tell the computer to put you in that role. From then on, the other characters will treat you as if you were that character in the story."
"I think I'll go for Sandman," Ai'lani decided easily enough. "I mean, racial discrimination, love and dancing. How could I resist?" he asked rhetorically with a bright grin.
"I was hoping you would! Alright. Computer," she raised her voice, "Apply character Sandman Williams to player Ai'lani Elley." A momentary shimmer engulfed Ai'lani, but other than that, Bridget saw him the same as he had been before.
The response of the characters around him was a different story. A chorus of exclamations could be heard from nearby tables, and it rippled across the room. Sandman was in the house.
With a grin, Bridget said, "Your character has a fan base among the women who come here. The Sandman is a bit of an object of desire, so you can have a lot of fun with this, as long as Lila doesn't see you flirting with the customers." She stood and offered her hand as the orchestra began a song. "Care to dance?"
"I'd love to," Ai'lani replied, standing up and offering her his hand with a mischievous smile.
She led the way to the dance floor, which was off to one side of the room so as not to distract viewers from the stage. A sultry, mournful oboe and tense violins set the mood of the music, and a woman's soprano voice sang of passion in the Louisiana heat. As he took Bridget into his arms, she was surprised by his natural grace and confident grasp. "I had the mistaken impression that you could barely dance." She raised an eyebrow, but grinned appreciatively as he began a much more than passable tango. He was good.
"Didn't I tell you impressions could be misleading?" he asked, a flirty tone creeping into his voice as he slid with her across the dance floor. The tango was actually his favorite Terran dance. The passion the music carried always gave him a thrill. "I can't play any instruments or sing, but I am very good with my body," he said, continuing to flirt shamelessly. Then he smiled at her. "Don't worry, I'm just playing," he assured her. "Don't get me wrong, you're a gorgeous woman, but I know you don't see me that way. But it's fun to flirt."
Her mouth hung open in surprise, suspended there momentarily as she performed her ocho, crossing back and forth over his extended foot; and then when she returned to his grasp she said, "Oh my goodness. You're shameless." But it was with a throaty voice that she said it, in spite of herself.
"Don't pretend you don't like it," he said with a laugh, speeding up their pace a little as the music picked up.
Her cheeks flushed as he led her in a quick but complicated traveling step. She was being led backwards around the circumference of the floor, but wasn't concerned about bumping into anyone because he'd already demonstrated an excellent grasp of the dance and it's variations. Regarding his flirtation, Her grin said it all, though she wouldn't verbally admit to enjoying it. She guessed he knew already anyway, being empathic. She wondered what Deltans felt about that - about beings from other races being drawn to them so intensely.
Ai'lani continued to lead her across the dance floor gracefully, his eyes rarely leaving hers to look around. As the tango ended, he stopped before leaning forward and giving her cheek a small, chaste kiss. "Thank you for a lovely dance," he told her with a smile.
Before Bridget could say anything, a meaty hand grabbed her left arm and yanked her away for Ai'lani, sending her spinning and tumbling across the dance floor. A sallow, thin faced man stepped over and landed a brutal punch to Ai'lani's delicate cheek bones so hard the crunch cut over the final tones of the orchestra, and smashed the Deltan to the floor....
To Be Continued
Ensign Bridget Stapleton
Doctor (General Practitioner), DS5
&
Ai'lani Elley
Freelance photojournalist (PNPC by Maja)
&
Vedra and a cast of thousands
NPCs by Notty
Shall we split this up before we post?
OOC (Charlene): I'm totally okay with that. :)