Balls and Brats

Dan
Darling Betty's is a little gastropub embedded between a pop-up gallery and the stupid of an up and coming ceramicist, across the street from a headshop and a high end clothing boutique that only carries sizes in prime, single-digit numbers, so goodluck finding something to fit your ordinary sized assed.  Tonight the whole street is alive.  Still early but everyone's staying up late.  There are trees and holiday trees and Yule trees and on and on in every window and kind of bustle in the air that makes everyone who senses it feel a little more brisk and a little more important.  Darling Betty's has a sign in the window promise JAZZ TONIGHT! until 1 a.m. but the JAZZ TONIGHT! hasn't started yet.  Not precisely a lull but dinner's a slow time for them on Wednesdays so the whole thing is a happy hour.  Deep fried stuffing is the featured app! promised by the blackboard out front, but a certain tall, tattooed guitarist has an order of sauerkraut balls on the table in front of him and a beer.

Grace
It's a cold night. Not cold by Denver winter standards, but cold to the Arizona transplant who's out in it. So she's got her coat on -- the sharp red thing that Kalen got her for Carnivale. The coat's been modded. Strips of blackish plastic adorn the sleeves and run down the front, but at least she's hidden the wires well -- they don't show.

It's also Christmastime, complete with those horrid trees and lights and holly and candy canes and whatever other symbols go along with the worship of Santa Claus.

The thing about Santa is that Saint Nicholas became that icon for giving toys to the poor children. Funny how meanings change over time, huh?

There's one place on the street that advertises jazz and deep fried stuffing and doesn't have a fat man in red painted on the window to taunt her, so that's where Grace heads, slipping in the door like she's not really there. To most in the place, she isn't. Her presence hasn't registered yet.

Dan
Some folks spend half their lives on their phones.  Any moment without stimulation is a moment that should be dedicated to half-dislocating thumbs.  Dan's alone just now or alone tonight and Darling Betty's isn't the sort of place festooned with flat screen television sets so you can keep up with the progress of the Beef O'Brady bowl (Northwest Arkansas versus Middle Tennessee, a real nailbiter for .00231% of the coutnry) while downing your food and your drink.  And he doesn't have his phone out.  He does have a little leather-bound volume open on the table beside him, which he sort of considers in between sips of his beer and glances - up and out of the warm, close, comfortable (alas, Grace - holiday atmosphere) - toward the street.

He's out of beer though and or nearly and reaches up to signal for another round.  He knows the bartender pretty well - she's one of Dee's fellow derby dolls, as tattooed as he himself is, and she's already drawing him another.  The signaling though, also has him looking up at just the right moment.  Catching sight of Grace.

Smiling.

Gesturing, too, if she looks his way.

She should join him.

Grace
She catches his eye, the familiar face. Dan. Grace should join him, yes. Dan who is Sera's friend. Dan who is cool.

There's some disappointment that the promised jazz has not yet begun, and that this -- like everywhere else -- seems to have been infected by green and red.  But she smiles at Dan. It's nice to see someone familiar.

She walks over, threading her way through the closeness of the place, to join him at his lonely table.

"Dan. Hey. What's up?"

Dan
So Grace consents to join him and Dan signals for two rather than one of whatever he is drinking.  Something seasonal - dark and spiced with the sort of body to it that stands up to winter.  He shuts the journal or whatever it is and shifts his position in the barstool, at once coiling and reclining somehow, shifting to include Grace in the space he had previously claimed entirely for himself.

There is a wry tug to his mouth as he takes in Grace in her sharp red coat.

"Grace."  Says her name with a presence and an absence, a deliberateness that names her and sketches her out in front of him.  Dan has crinkly blue eyes, the sort that were meant somehow to squint against the boundaries of the horizon and see something there and he gives Grace the same sort of smile one gives a horizon just then.  "Have a seat.  And a sauerkraut ball.  My ex is playing here tonight but I'm sitting in to play for a friend who broke her hand later.  So I figured I'd catch dinner and his first set, then head over to the V-Club.  What about you?"

Grace
"Sauerkraut? Is that what those things are? Looks like cheese balls or something," Grace says, and takes one of the deep-fried balls. Deep fried anything usually looks the same as any other deep-fried thing.

She listens as he explains his upcoming night to her, and she nods as if she actually understands things like exes and going to clubs. Well, she understands them as something other people might have or do. The only time nightclubs have ever shown up in Grace's life lately it was tragic.

"I like jazz, thought I'd come in from the cold? That's my night in a nutshell. I am also trying to escape Christmas. That's not going so well," Grace says, giving a fake pointed glare at a festive reindeer decoration.

Dan
"Sauerkraut and sausage," Dan explains, watching Grace a she takes and examines one of the balls, or maybe just eats it.  They're bigger than deep fried cheese usually is, closer to the size of a tennis ball or baseball than a golf ball.  "They're kind of known for 'em here.  wednesday is balls and brats night.  These things are a buck each, and the bratwurst is two bucks.  Can't beat it."

By now their beers have arrived, the tattooed waitress slips them onto the table, careful not to let the head spill over the edge of the frosty mugs.  The beers are dark and aromatic, heavy and perhaps a little bit sweet.  Dan gives the waitress a wink over Grace's shoulder, then returns his attention to Grace.

There's a beer each, and Dan reaches over to liberate his from the duo they make on the counter, holding it expertly by the rim as he lifts it to his mouth to sip.

"What's wrong with Christmas, then.  You have something against egg nog or presents?"

Grace
Grace takes a bite out of her ball, and then, mouth still full, says: "Balls and brats? Seriously? They had to do that on purpose. Phallic as the Washington Monument that."

He asks what she has against Christmas just as Grace lifts up her dark beer to eye level in order to inspect the bubbles. She shrugs. It will take a while for her to explain what the problem with Christmas is...

"Christmas is that lovely time of year where people would, and have, trampled each other to death in order to get a good deal on a shitty TV set, if the big stores hadn't come up with ways to corral people so that wouldn't happen. It's a holiday twisted from nice origins into a way to keep the economy lurching along. I don't see it as egg nog and happiness, I see it as the feast of the beast."

She takes a sip of beer to wash down the sauerkraut, the slight sweetness countering the tangy fried fermented cabbage.  Well, it's a good combo, isn't it? She nods at the beer, as if to say 'this is good...'

Dan
Oh, Grace.  She makes Dan choke a little bit on his beer.  Not enough that he is ever in danger of anything more than a supple spit-take but there's this way that his half-smile both hands on the edge of his mouth and curls and grows, understand.

"You noticed," is all he says, and mildly.  Of course balls and brats is on purpose, but trust Grace to make a point of noticing and remarking on it.  The half-smile attaches to and lingers in his eyes as he reaches for another sauerkraut ball.

Then he listens to her indictment of the holidays and chews on his sauerkraut ball and takes another sip of his beer and glances briefly away - someone passing outside the window lifting an arm to offer a wave that he returns - before returning to her, both thoughtful and aware.

He wonders if she is always so linear, if that is part of her magic, if that is what she saw when she opened her eyes.  If ones and zeros mean that sort of all or nothing.  Fuck, he has no idea how she sees the world.

"Well, I've always thought it was a little bit of all those things.  I mean, look how many meanings we attach to the most ordinary sort of words.  I don't see why Christmas couldn't be both a frantic, grasping season and something a little more charming and meaningful.  You know?  I like the lights, especially.  The lights and the darkness, the way it stretches.  And the drinks.  You ever had a Christmas bomb?"

Grace
"Yeah. I know. It has other meanings. Family, togetherness, giving..." Grace points her ball at Dan, spiking the air with it, and giving him a little smirk. "That's just what they use to make it sound all good and wholesome."

She doesn't sound particularly angry when going off on Christmas, really. Not upset, mind you. Just, she has a point and she's sticking to it, regardless of how unpopular it might be. And she pairs that unpopular stance with a wry smile to laugh at her own seriousness.

"Is that that thing Sera had last Christmas? I think I remember drinking something where you dropped a shotglass into another glass and then it went and did chemistry real quick so you had to chug..."

Dan
"That's it.  Rumchata and Christmas ale. Pretty sure they could throw one together for you here, if you were of a mind."  So he offered, with another grin verging on the lazy over the edge of his beer.  "So it's not that you object to family, togetherness, and giving, right?  Just to the fact that the ideas have been co-opted for other ends, like selling sequined boots and legos?

"Or do you just have a philosophical objection to whatever they say?"

Grace
"Yeah. Both," Grace says, and takes another bite out of her ball. "Corruption of good things always ticks me off. And they usually tick me off too."

She chews, eyes wandering the place, examining its borders, then shifting down to inspect her beer again. The bubbles are slower now.

"I remember that being really strong. And I'd probably throw up rumchata and sauerkraut, and that would be absolutely disgusting. But this beer is good. Goes well with the balls."

She pauses a bit, seemingly remembering something.

"Oh, and thanks for sharing."

Dan
(fade!)