Erica had a favourite spot in Jacobson's. She hadn't lived in the area for long enough to call herself a local and yet the casual way in which her mind referred to the musty-smelling cove made her feel like she belonged. From her special nook she could read, remain relatively unobserved and spy on everyone pottering about the store, passing silent judgement on them in her head. Had anyone accused her of such an act, however, she would deny it strenuously and claim that she never saw fit to pass judgement. It wasn't a lie if nobody knew the truth.

On this particular day, however, someone had left a smattering of dusty books lying across her spot. Today was a cranky day, and the diminuitive redhead was not in the mood for moving around heavy, stinky books that probably had bugs or whatever crawling all through them. Blowing a frizzy curl out of her blue-grey eyes, Erica swore heartily under her breath. Using the tip of a pencil she prodded the offending books until they were lying in a position that allowed her to read the titles. No glory - they were all particularly boring in appearance. She sighed melodramatically and leaned back against a bookshelf, rubbing her stomach in the mode of a recently-aquired habit and doing her very best not to think about all the dust that would be on her jeans and cardigan when she stood up straight again.

She crinkled her freckled nose and gazed critically at the assorted other nooks around the store, finding a problem with each one. That one got too much light. That one not enough. That one wasn't cosy enough. That one was too cramped.

She came to the conclusion that the only solution was to sit on the floor beside her spot and wait until someone moved the books. The young woman, for all appearances in her late teens, scuttled down the wall so she was resting up against the bookcase, her legs sticking out in the corridor. People who wanted to not trip down the hall or who wanted to browse the books behind her would have to make do. Serves them right for being so inconsiderate as to leave books in her spot, after all.

Erica should know better than to stick her legs out where preoccupied young men might trip over them. Which Dave has just done, with a muffled curse and a rather awkward moment of trying not to knock over any bookshelves or land on his face. He yelped, as his flailing broken arm made painful contact with one of those bookshelves, and cursed again.

He's not a terribly remarkable guy, except for the cast that covers nearly his entire left arm--funny how there aren't really any signatures on it, inn't? The almost-black hair has been growing, lately, and starting to look wavy again. The brown eyes are maybe a touch more worried than usual, and the jeans are as ratty as usual and spattered with paint, as is the worn black t-shirt that doesn't exactly show off the fact that he's rather athletic, but doesn't hide it either.

And then he looked at the person over whom he'd tripped and tried to look apologetic.

"Sorry 'bout that. Didn't see you." The corner of his mouth turned up in a tentative, almost shy sort of smile, which still didn't reach his eyes.

Ow.

In the books the tripper always escapes unscathed, but in real life being tripped over hurts quite a bit. Like being kicked real hard, about three times. Erica's first thought was just that - someone had kicked her. A red flush of anger exploded into her cheeks and she scrambled onto her feet, ready to give a self-righteous speech. Upon realising that the stranger had actually tripped over her, and not viciously kicked her, the crimson anger faded to pink embarrassment.

"I shouldn't've been sitting there, you know?" She probably seemed very inconsiderate. "Somebody put books in my spot, you see?" When anxious, Erica tended to speak entirely in questions. "I, uhm..." her eyes alighted upon the cast and she felt the first twinges of guilt for tripping the stranger. "I hope you didn't hit your arm because of me? It was silly of me to be sitting there, wasn't it?" When she frowned it could be tricky to remember how charming she looked when she smiled. Although not unattractive, she was decidedly plain when she declined to smile.

"I'm Erica." She was calmer now, and smiled broadly, hoping to encourage him to smile with his eyes and ease her anxiety. She didn't like when others didn't smile.

"'s okay," he answered, though yes, he had hit his arm because of her--indirectly. If he'd been paying attention he would have stepped over her as everyone else would have been doing and he wouldn't have hit his arm. It really does make sense when you look at it that way, honest--and shrugged.

"Wasn't watching where I was going." Dave tends to leave out the subject of his sentences when he's got his mind on things other than the conversation at hand. Like his current girlfriend troubles.

"Not your fault." He smiled a little more certainly, though his eyes still held that vague, preoccupied look. "'m Dave."

"Tch," she rolled her eyes and made a gestural movement with her hands. "The whole point of shops is to not look where you're going. If you're looking where you're going you're not looking at the merchandise and the shop doesn't sell anything and then it goes broke. So you see," she slowed down from the super-hyped speed of speech she had been using, "you had to trip over me in order to support the economy. Simple logic, Dave, simple logic."

She was rather pleased with that little reasoning gem, and her smile grew broader and toothier as she reflected on its loveliness. She wasn't one prone to self-congratulation, but managing to reason tripping over as saving the economy was rather a job well done, in her books.

Switching subjects abruptly, she tilted her head and scrutinised his cast. "How'd you do your arm in? And," she bit her lower lip, anxious at the over-familiarity she was about to display, "can I sign the cast?" Signing casts was a joy she carried over from childhood. Her older sister had required casts on 5 seperate occasions when Erica was growing up, and Erica and her brother had always had a grand time filling the casts with quotes, doodles and rude jokes.

He actually chuckled at her display of 'logic,' if it can really be called that, and shook his head slightly. "I stand rebuked. Still sorry I tripped over you..." Mostly because tripping over someone seems automatically rude, to him, and because he didn't mean to kick her and all that.

Her smile was nice, he decided, somewhere in the back of his mind. Made her look very... And then he stopped that before it went anywhere. Just because Violet was furious with him for his supposed indiscretions didn't mean that he had any right to start thinking about actually commiting them.

He blinked. "I wiped out. On my motorbike." With his girlfriend. Funny how he didn't mention that this time. "... I guess, if you want."

He probably should have had Vi sign it, awhile ago...

Erica opened her mouth to comment on the motorbike but closed it before she had time to say something rude. There was a time when a motorbike made a man sound dangerous and exciting. Now it just made them sound like jerks. Her last boyfriend had a motorbike, and that had been her first impression of him. Guys with motorbikes were jerks.

"Groovy!" She took no notice of the ambiguous, almost reluctant wording of Dave's acquiescence, and began shuffling through her polka-dot backpack with great flourish. "I'm sure I've got a pen in here somewhere... aha!" She emerged victorious, clutching a pink permanent marker. It had taken her a lot of searching to find one in pink, and for a long time she had to do without a permanent marker because for some reason she simply could not bring herself to write in anything but pink pen.

"Hold out your arm," she ordered haughtily, crooking a finger. "It's good luck to be the first person to sign a cast, you know?" Actually, she'd made that up when she was ten, but Dave need never know that it wasn't some age-old tradition.

Dave is neither dangerous and exciting, nor a jerk. (Stupid occasionally, but not a jerk.) He's just somewhat immature and enjoys fast things and risking his neck. (Only not completely, because he wears a helmet.)

"Groovy?" He lifted an eyebrow, slightly. "I thought that word dropped out of use in the seventies."

But he held out his arm bemusedly, and waited for her to sign it. In pink marker. Pink. Why pink?

(Oh well, Vi probably would have signed it in purple. That seemed to be the kind of thing she'd do...)

"No way," she responded, uncapping her pen. "My kids use it all the time." It only ocurred to her after the statement had left her mouth that it probably sounded as though she meant she had actual children that she had birthed. "Well, not MY kids, per sé, but the kids I teach. I guess retro's in with the littlies or something."

She signed the cast in large, rounded letters. "This is Dave's cast and I don't know him much but he's pretty alright. Love from Erica." The whole scrawled mess was surrounded by a variety of what had started out as pink clouds, but had been transformed into sheep as an afterthought. She had managed to fit this onto the top of the forearm - prime signing territory - and although the sheep were kind of mutated, overall Erica was pleased with it. It was actually a great woe of hers that she had never managed to break a bone, despite her best efforts. She'd always planned to just get random people in the street to sign her cast in the event of her having one. Signing the casts of other people she didn't know was a poor substitute for what she had planned.

"I guess." He looked at the flock of pink sheep frolicking across his arm and wondered vaguely if she'd be offended if he didn't say he liked them. He decided that it would be best to keep his mouth shut on the subject, due to the fact that his mouth had a tendency to run away with him anyway.

"Um... thanks."

And now Dave has little or nothing left to say...

"What d'you teach?"

She stifled a giggle at the look on his face as Dave examined her handiwork. So she wasn't an artist, he'd live. At least now he didn't look all sad and friendless with his blank cast.

"Oh, everything really. I've got the littlies so there's not really any specialisation. Grade 3's. Terrible little monsters that get away with everything by looking adorable." This was always the awkward part of meeting someone. Once you got over the initial chitchat, the introduction bit where you talked about work, family and blah blah blah was incredibly boring. "So what do you do?"

"'m a techie." Pause. "Well, when I don't have a broken arm. I do lights and sound, down at the Bay Street Theatre."

He had to stifle a roll of his eyes as he thought of another terrible little monster who got away with nearly anything by looking adorable. (Though that one is considerably older than any third-grader...)

He shrugged. "Right now 'm kinda between shows, and the arm makes work a pain in the a... arse."

Techie work sounded incredibly boring to Erica. She liked to work with people, not equipment and always had trouble comprehending that people could really enjoy that sort of career.

"Is relying on other people's schedules a problem for techies? Like, having to rely on when other people want to put on plays and stuff, and not having regular work all the time? I've always wondered what a techie would do if suddenly nobody wanted to put on a play for like 3 months or something." She had visions of masses of techies moving into cardboard boxes until someone decided to put on a play and then emerging, unshaven and underfed, to return to their former lives. Melodramatic? Of course not.

((Apologies for the lateness of the post. I had to ask around a little to answer.))

"Nah. There's always something to do, 's long as you actually work for the theatre and not for the people who do the plays. More'n one company uses the Bay Street, f'r example, and I do lights for all of 'em. Plays tend to overlap each other, too, so one finishes and another moves in right away."

Techie work is anything but boring to Dave; he loves it. But she's suffering from a misconception that techies usually work all alone; there are actors and directors and other techies, you know.