Old people are nice. Sometimes. Anyway, Kendra had a nice enough opinion of them because they let her play cards on their chess tables. They had a pretty nice set up in the frontal area of the park--trees, chairs, tables, the trickle of the fountain a few feet away (or it could be that homeless guy).

The old people liked Kendra in return. She was nice for a youngin' and would join in their games if someone was short a partner. She didn't constantly have plugs in her ears that made her deaf to the world and she didn't normally prance around in those shockingly revealing fashions of the day. She even wore ribbons in her hair, actual ribbons, not the fake looking, glued-to-a-headband-because-it's-the-in-thing-to-do ribbons that were popping up everywhere. She wore a skirt that reached her knees and a polo that didn't have buttons halfway down to her stomach. She looked put together, not popping out at the seams. The old people had noticed that she sometimes kept to color themes. Today was green.

It was a nice out, or had at least begun to be, and somehow Kendra was unable to resist the pull of gentle winds and the modest perfume of lilies in the park. But seeing as she wasn't completely in love with nature walks, she brought her playing cards instead. Long live solitaire.

Wit wasn't very old - at least he didn't think so. He was just thirty-five. Far too young to be making and eating his own fudge and too young to spend his hours in the park, and far, far too young to just be going out into nature because he didn't have anything better to do. He was young, vivacious! He still got drunk simply because he could! He cheated people out of money and conned them into buying things they didn't need, so he was still quite clever! So why was he out in the park, just walking around, with nothing else to do in mind?

- well, he guessed it was because he was old.

He had to stop this soon, the curly-haired man reasoned. If all he did was waltz through the park, he would probably leave with a head covered in gray. There had to be something, somewhere in this park, that a young guy like him would be doing in the park. He pulled self-consciously at the collar of his light jacket, frowning as he peered around. Trees, trees, some squirrels, a young girl -

- maybe he wasn't so old after all.

Peering over a pair of new glasses, Wit found his reason for being the park. He carefully and slowly approached the green-clad girl, wondering vaguely if he had walked onto the scene of a Nancy Drew novel, and greeted, "You should probably move that queen to the second stack."

I won't say that the result of his suggestion was a fifty-two card pick up because really, it was more like eighteen card pick up. There she'd been, minding her own business, playing solitaire, getting ready to make just that move and then BAM! some dude says something in her ear, completely overloading her auditory reception in a manner so..so...sneaky. Her cards are on the ground, she's pretty sure she accidentally hit him when she jerked from surprise and now she's embarrassed because that undignified squeak definitely came from her.

"Damnit. Sorry."

Well at least the only thing disturbed was the discard pile.

Wit made a mental note not to sneak up on people again.

"Uh, uhm," the older man said, not entirely sure how to respond to the shooting pain in his stomach that her arm had caused and the cards she had dropped on the ground. After a moment or two of rubbing his stomach back into health and staring down stupidly at her he said, "Oh, uhm. It's okay. I shouldn't have snuck up on you like that." Knowing his luck, she probably thought he was a rapist or something. "Oh! Let me help you with those, sorry, sorry..."

He leaned over and started to pick up her cards for her, feeling more retarded than usual. He really, really needed to stop trying to validate his youth.

Kendra snorted, "Yeah, no kidding." Hello, she didn't even know him. And it would have been OK if he was a rapist or something because Louis, the portly gentlemen over there losing horribly, had a cane. Kendra was sure he'd let her borrow it if the need arose.

At least Mr. Stranger was helping.

Kendra's mass of curly hair fell in front of her face when she hunched down to grab her cards, so she really didn't get a good look at him. But seriously, what kind of person sneaks up on a complete stranger clearly engrossed in her game? If he was that desperate for attention he could have asked to join in.

Desperate for attention didn't even begin to describe Wit's age complex. "Uhm, yeah."

He grinned lamely, finally managing to procure a nice stack of her cards from the ground. He tried to wipe as much of the dirt off of them onto his pants, feeling a bit guilty for having startled her like that, and then handed the not-exactly-good-as-new stack of playing cards back to the younger girl. "Sorry about that," he said again, that trademark, geeky little grin of his flashing across his face again, "I was just wondering what a nice young girl was doing all by herself in the, uhm, park."

Oh God. Was this girl even legal? He was just about to get attacked by her father or something, wasn't he?

No, he was probably safe with a border and a few Great Lakes between himself and Kendra's father's 'boy proximity' radar. Probably. Who knows, overprotective parents all have their own ways of stalking their children.

And 'legal?' You know, it really wasn't her fault that she could shop in the kids' section if she wanted.

Wasn't Mr. Stranger being Mr. Bold just a moment ago? "This 'nice young girl' is playing Solitaire in the, uhm, park." Well of course she's going to make fun of him.

"Oh." Well, of course she was. He'd just given her advice less than five minutes ago. Was he retarded today? Probably - he was walking in the park when he was far, far too young to be doing anything of the sort, after all. He looked at her for a moment, looking quite befuddled, and then he said, "Really?" She had to be fairly young if he was suspicious of her legality, so unless she was retarded in the same way Wit was today that meant she was probably at the park with someone else.

A friend? A relative? A boyfriend? Oh God, what if she was a lesbian? "All by yourself?"

"Uh, yeah," what, are you stupid?

"All by yourself?"

Solitaire. SOL-I-TAIRE. Geez, was he retarded? If she was playing with someone, even if that someone was an imaginary friend named Becky Sue Hollingdale (who was quite a ways in the past), she'd have said she was playing Ducky and, unless she was very much mistaken, "solitaire" and "ducky" sounded nothing alike.

"Yes, all by myself. I can even cross the street without holding Mommy's hand."

So maybe he didn't really deserve that but he was acting weird and Kendra really wanted to just be taken seriously sometimes, hence playing Solitaire with the old people who enjoyed her company.

"Look, I can prove it if you're thinking of finding a policeman to take me home, so don't bother."

"That's very, uh, impressive and - oh."

It took a moment for it to completely get through Wit's thick skull what she had just told him, and his face immediately went a deep shade of red. He just needed to go home and drink some beer or something, or maybe get himself run over by a large truck so he could go into a coma for a few years. He heard that people who went into comas came out with different personalities, and maybe he'd get a personality that would get him laid.

It was probably a good thing she didn't tell him she was playing Ducky, anyways, since he didn't know what that was. "I - sorry, I didn't mean to sound... I wasn't going to call any police officers on you." He shrugged awkwardly, looking for the right words. "I just thought you looked lonely?" No, he hadn't - he had thought TARGET SPOTTED: YOUNG, VIVACIOUS GIRL but it was as good excuse as any.

Lonely?

Oh God.

It had just dawned on Kendra what he was actually doing. There he was, trying to be suave by helping her with her game and then there she goes being all, well, the only word to describe it would be 'bratty.' She had gotten snappy because she wanted to be taken seriously when, really, he'd been taking her seriously from the beginning!

Kendra felt like such a jerk. The snickers from octogenarians didn't help any. The absurdity of the entire situation just went to her head like helium and she had reacted. All that was left to do was laugh. That wouldn't make her seem any less weird at all.

There was really nothing like the feeling Wit got when he was trying to talk his way into a girl's pants and she started to giggle. It was usually the kind of giggle that indicated she thought he was a moron - which was probably not far from the truth - but Kendra's snickering fit didn't seem to be so much an Oh god this old man is such a retard as much as Oh god what?, he had absolutely no idea what to do. He stared at her for a moment, his face an unflattering shade of fire engine red, and started searching for something to say.

All he managed to say, however, was, "Oh, uhm, sorry. I guess you're... yeah." He thought about leaving. "Have fun with, uhm, your card game, then." Most people who 'thought about leaving' usually did it, but Wit wasn't most people (most people didn't hit on girls nearly half their age).

She couldn't stop laughing, really, and it was all in good humor. Mostly Kendra was laughing at herself for being so uptight.

"No, no, I'm sorry, please," snicker, snicker, giggle, giggle, "Here, sit down," Take a seat before you pass out.

She pulled all her cards together and reshuffled them, offering him the seat across from hers. He'd tried so hard and you had to hand it to him to persevere through Kendra's little fit. She couldn't just let him leave without giving him something for his energies. He didn't do a job well done but he tried, even while failing miserably.

"Play a game with me."

The CutCo. salesman stared at her a little bit more, and was suddenly unexplainably elated; had he not failed as horribly as he thought? He probably wasn't close to getting anywhere near her bra, but at least this was score one for the home team. He nodded and thanked her and took a seat opposite her at the chess table, and he looked warily at her deck of cards when he realized he didn't know any card games over than Go Fish. He thought about mentioning that to her, and then decided that might be a bad idea.

"Okay. What - what are we going to be playing?" He silently willed her to pick Go Fish.

"Ah, well, what do you know?" she knew some pretty obscure card games, thanks to her dad. It was hard for her to nail down which were and weren't common.

Propping her head up with her elbow on the table, Kendra's feet barely reaching the ground, she waited. He hadn't failed horribly, but I don't know if that's better than her taking pity on him.

"I'm Kendra, by the way."

"Go Fish?" Wit suggested lamely, only then remembering that playing Go Fish with two people was just about the dumbest idea ever. He hoped she wouldn't point this out, though - he was already a shade of strawberry from her little snickering fit.

He stretched his legs out underneath the table, slouching rather unimpressively. He wasn't exactly the best role model for a young lady like her, but he guessed it probably didn't matter. "Kendra," he repeated thoughtfully, despite knowing he'd forget it within twenty minutes. He extended his hand to her. "I'm Wit. It's nice to meet you."

With such a vast amount of card-playing prowess inherent in Kendra's body, it would seem a given that she would know the exact rules of "Go Fish." Were there exact rules? The general concept of the game was, thankfully, solid in her mind. The only thing really fuzzy was the details--five or seven cards? While shuffling, this thought fluttered between her ears. It didn't matter, she decided. Every card game could be altered and she was quite certain that a slight change in execution wouldn't shatter the space-time continuum of "Go Fish." Seven it was.

The sound of his feet shifting snagged Kendra's attention briefly to the underside of the table. Only enough, however, to give her time to notice how far his legs stretched and to silently curse the god she hoped was there for depriving her of height. Then she was over it and put the cards in their positions

"Likewise," she shook hands like a girl. A confident girl. She didn't need him to be a role model. Wit was his own person and she was hers. Depending on role models, Kendra believed, only held you back after a certain point and she was sure she'd passed it few years ago.

Setting the pick-up pile between them and sliding her seven cards into position, Kendra smirked.

"So what drew you to my card game?"

Wit didn't know the exact details when it came to Go Fish, thankfully for Kendra, so he didn't notice the difference between five or seven cards. He leaned over the table, his elbows propped up on the tabletop, and the hand that wasn't supporting his chin reached down to pick up his cards. He took the time out to rearrange them so that they were ordered from the lowest card number to the highest, though why he felt compelled to do so he had no idea. It wasn't as if Wit was a naturally organized person.

"Oh. Uhm." He'd been trying to pretend he was twenty again, but telling her that was probably not the best idea ever. Despite being a bad liar he knew he obviously couldn't tell her that, and his mind whirled for a good answer. "Like I said, you looked like you needed some company." He just shrugged and shuffled through his cards for a moment and, not seeing any pairs, waited for Kendra to take the lead in their game.

"I don't really have anything better to do right now, anyways, so..." Well, he could be out getting a real job, but real jobs were for other people.

"Oh right," she set a pair of sixes face down on the table, "I was lonely." What kind of a pick up line was that? Well, okay, he was shy, but lonely? Oh well. It had sort of worked for him, anyway, so Kendra didn't really have a right to knock it.

At the same time, though, she wasn't going to make this easy for him. After all, he had her playing "Go Fish." And it was really more fun to play drunk, anyway.

"You got any threes?"

He couldn't tell if she was making fun of him or not, so he dropped that part of the conversation. He looked down back at his nicely organized set of cards and handed Kendra a three of clubs. "Looks like you've got me, there," he said, offering her another one of his trademark lame little grins. He glanced back at his set of cards, still slouching lazily over the table, and inquired, "Do you have any queens?"

If Wit had known she was up for playing card games inebriated he would have brought some alcohol with him. The park was probably more interesting while wasted anyways.

As much fun as that would have been, Kendra has a personal rule about being drunk in wide open public places. Just don't. Her escapades were more usually confined to a small group of moderately rowdy friends.

Queen? Nope, "Go fish."

How riveting.

So...

"So...'Wit,' eh? Is that like a title? Are you the embodiment of all clever things pertaining to merriment?"

"Oh." Wit frowned, but picked up a card from the stack as per the rules. A five of hearts. Nothing he had a corresponding card to, so not without the worst poker face in the world he stuck it in the middle of his seemingly slowly-growing collection. He pouted at it for a second but then remembered he was talking to someone who was probably only a little more than half his age, so he quickly attempted to gather his composure.

The whole composure-gathering thing didn't work out so well, but he didn't seem to notice. He smiled at her, not without a bit of embarrassment. "Er, no," he said, although he really wished he was. "I'm not very clever, I guess." He lapsed into silence for a second, and then added, "Kendra is a nice name. Nice and short. I can barely spell my sister's name."

Hmm, not clever but did he pertain to merriment? Apparently not because his face looked a little dour. In actuality, Kendra should have known the answer to her first question based on his reaction to her before they sat down to their exhilarating game.

"Thanks," about her name, "my Mom gave it to me," among other things like life and stuff like that.

What pairs could she make now? None, unless she was going to play by the rules of the game and enlist Wit's aide.

"Have any nines?"

Ok, she caved.

"That's nice," Wit said, his father having had the bright idea to name him in the way most people name their dogs. He didn't really know why his parents had named his older sister Clandestine, but if they were still following the same naming rules he guessed they wanted her to die a virgin or something. He quickly glanced back to his his hands and shook his head. "Go fish," he told her, but he had the feeling that this was going to be the only time during their get he would get to say it.

"You must have a nice mother," he commented, his logic dictating that anyone smart enough to name their child something sensible must be nice. "Got any jacks?"

"Tsk," she tsked, "Yeah. Here you go, one Jack."

Nice? Kendra never really thought about it. It was such an ambiguous word. People could be nice one minute and then rude and mean the next just depending on who they were talking to. Generally, most of the time, she could say her mom was nice. But getting that from just her name was an odd conclusion.

She asked while inspecting her cards, "What makes you say that?"

"Thanks." Wit placed his two jacks in a neat, organized little pile that was also not entirely characteristic to him, mostly because he really, really wanted to get into Miss Nancy Drew Jr.'s pants. He thumbed over his cards for a moment, and asked, "What about any sevens?"

He frowned. It was kind of hard to explain to someone that hadn't been named like a well-liked pet that having a normal name wasn't so good. "Oh, uhm. Because she didn't name you Blanket Jermajesty Metallica?" he offered. His face seemed to be a permanently unflattering color this afternoon, and it was sadly not because he was drinking.

OOC: So I realized just a second ago that I totally mucked up the rules of Go Fish in an earlier post. =( Sorrrrry.

They were pretty hot pants, actually. Not often ventured into but, all around, pretty hot. Sometimes. When she felt like it, which was, appropriately, "sometimes." "Sometimes" said a lot about Kendra.

Blanket Jermajesty Metallica?

"Oh she did. She just gave me the stage name. "Kendra"'s what I go by at the strip club."

Sometimes.

Ok.

Never.

She handed him a seven.

Wit's face suddenly became a rather attractive shade of vermilion red as he accepted the seven, and he awkwardly shuffled his cards around. He had to stop being stupid, he reasoned - stupid people never got into the pants of someone half their age, and he had a mission to accomplish. Kendra seemed to be making it rather difficult for Wit to obtain his objective, however, and when he found his cards all in the right places, all he could come up with to say, "Oh." And then, "Really?" which was followed by, "got any nines?"

This 'having conversations with random strangers' thing was not working out so well.

"You getting excited there, Sparky? You didn't even let me have my turn yet," So she was being a little mean but, let's face it, this was fun. Kendra flipped her hair and stretched her lips into a grin, batting her lashes just a bit. She was only picking on him, after all, and if he could remember far back enough into his high school days, that was a good thing.

"You can compensate by giving me any," checking, checking, "Jacks you might have."

Oh, and 'Sparky?' Yeah, she just picked that straight out of nowhere.

"Oh." Wit fancied that this card game would be wholly less embarrassing to him if he was wasted, but he guessed he didn't want to get arrested for public drunkenness and he also guessed that it might be harder (if more enjoyable) to play a mildly coherent game of Go Fish whilst under the influence. "So - sorry," he mumbled, and he shuffled his cards around before he slid a jack of hearts across the table.

"Do you - do you play card games a lot? You know, here. In the park." Not a very good question, but Wit would be surprised if she hadn't figured out that he generally failed at life.

If Wit were drunk, the "Go Fish" would be a lot more interesting, especially because the girl he was with has a low alcohol tolerance. They might not have gotten very far into the game if that were so...

Kendra knuckled her fingers in the table and glanced over her cards to Wit, "Huh? Oh I can usually get a good Euchre game going when they're in the mood. Charlie decided he'd dazzle Ms. Owens with his chess prowess so I was left without a partner." I don't think that she thinks that he fails at life. I'm not sure she's aware they're being graded.

If Wit was drunk, their game of Go Fish wouldn't have gotten anywhere; he would have been dozing off by the end of his second turn, and he doubted that little missy here wanted to deal with a drunk, thirty-five-year-old man sleeping all over her cards.

He didn't know what Euchre was, so he just nodded and pretended that he did. He didn't know who Charlie or Ms. Owens were, either, but he guessed they were probably some of Kendra's old people friends. "Got any nines?" which was closely followed by a, if hesitant, "So you just... show up and hope someone'll play with you? Isn't that kind of... unorganized?" Wit wasn't a very organized person, but he usually didn't waste his time on things he didn't already have guarantees on.

Unorganized? Maybe. But Kendra had gotten used to spending time in the park when the weather was nice and in the back of her mind she pretty much knew that her old people friends had gotten used to having her there at least once a week. If nothing else, who was going to let them talk for an hour straight if not Kendra?

Did he think she was weird? People always thought she was weird! Even though it was their own fault for thinking so, it still annoyed her sometimes. "Go fish," she said airily while leaning back in her chair. She looked at her cards studiously, "Well," Kendra sighed, "I don't just come here with no backup plan. That's why I play Solitaire. I can still enjoy being here if they're all already busy."

Psh. Unorganized.

Psh.