Diana is being maudlin.

It is a Thursday evening a few days after Thanksgiving, and two days after Election Day. Diane has just gotten off working one of several part-time jobs and she's spent all afternoon listening to middle-aged men of a sleazy, unemployed, liberal disposition bitching about the government. The afternoon shift is the worst because all the custom is from the kind of people who drink before five o'clock. She is dirty with their stares and exhausted, mentally and emotionally, because the sky is heavy with clouds and because she seems to be living a dead-end life that's all about working crap jobs to pay the rent on her drafty apartment.

She slouches on the park bench, a cup of Tim's warming one hand and tilts her face up to catch the rain. It's falling in large, sploshy drops that turn her make-up into a watercolour of pink and black and white. Her hair is dark with water and clinging to her face. The bench is wet, was wet before she sat down, but she's pretty much soaked anyway. It's too cold to be getting that wet and to not have a coat, really. She'll get hypothermia, or a cold at least. But it's the perfect setting for a fit of self-pity, so she's taking advantage of it.

A couple of pigeons are drying themselves out in the safety of the gazebo, and they give her a mournful look, which might be interpreted as sympathy or maybe just disgust.

Tam spent this morning being a jerk. It wasn't that he had left the seat up, or one of his cigarette butts burnt through the carpet. He didn't spend it in the state of unintentional jerkishness that makes up his semi-employed life. He was a jerk because somebody had heard that he was wiry and hard to put down and had given him $50 to tell a kid that if he didn't cough up the money soon, there would be problems.

He thinks that maybe transforming himself into a knight in shining armour will rebalance his jerkish karma.

The small black brolly he's holding as he trudges through the park is broken in one corner. Brollies found on the corner of the street in the middle of a downpour tend to have minor defects like that. This one, though its current owner is trying his hardest not to let it, is letting down a steady dribble that's soaked through the denim of his left trouser leg. His bomber jacket has a hole in it where the stuffing is coming out, and his nose is pink with cold.

When he's in viewing distance of the park bench he stops his slouching and nods his head up sharply, though keeping his shoulders hunched and one hand in his pocket. Closer up he nods his head again. "Awright Diane?" As usual, she's not wearing nearly enough clothes.

The sound of an almost familiar voice jerks Diane out of her sulk.

"Oh, hey, Tam," she says, looking over at him. He is slightly comical with his broken umbrella spilling water down the leg of his jeans, but on the whole he's drier than she is. "Yeah, I'm fine." She gives him a wry smile. "Just out enjoying the weather. I thought it was just me and the pigeons but apparently not."

She is torn between being happy to see him and really wishing that he hadn't shown up just then. She's pretty sure she looks a right mess, make-up everywhere, ripped jeans, duct-taped boots, tee-shirt clinging damply to a figure that's gotten somewhat more detailed with the cold. She wipes the back of her hand across one cheek to get some of the water off, and it comes away black.

"So where are you going?"

It's fairly safe to assume that no one else would be purposefully visiting the park just now.

"Heya." He sniffles. With any luck it's just the cold and he won't spend the entirety of this conversation with a runny nose, which seeing as how he is a charmer and a gentleman he wipes with the corner of his hand. Billy has better manners.

Diane could look a lot worse. Tam grew up in Glasgow, and until Diane emulates it in the early hours of a Sunday morning, she will still maintain her air of class in Tam's eyes. The boots, jeans and shirt are slightly alternative which he never understood very well but is still happy enough to appreciate. At least she's not looking like a fourteen year old going to youth club.

"Ah, jes' on my way home right now. Are yez waitin' fer someone?"

He swivels the brolly to try and dislodge the pool of water that's contributing to the waterfall which would have been aimed at Diane.

Diane shakes her head. "Nope. I was coming home too, from work," she explains, "and then I stopped to have some coffee and uh..."

And sit in the rain and be sad, honestly. But she's not about to say that.

"..and enjoy the weather," she finishes, with a lame dose of sarcasm. "Do you want some of this? It's kind of weak but it's still hot." She offers the coffee in his direction, because she's been using it as a hand warmer and not actually drinking it. There is too much milk and sugar in it, because she wasn't really thinking about how weak Tim Horten's coffee is.

Hand warmer or no, it's getting fairly late and dark and therefore colder. She wraps her free arm across her chest and supresses a shiver.

"Nice umbrella you've got there."

He takes the coffee, sips it and wrinkles his wonky nose. It tastes like baby spit.

Tam doesn't press the question of why Diane is sitting on a sopping park bench with make up running down her face any further. Arty types sometimes get weird like that. He briefly entertains that she was waiting for her dealer, but this is a nice park in a nice neighbourhood and they'd probably meet under the gazeebo anyway.

"I'll walk yeh home, if you like." He rolls his shoulders forward in a movement that's almost a shrug, trying to pretend he doesn't care if Diane wants to sit on a park bench in the rain.

"It's a bit out of your way, isn't it?"

Diane lives over by the water on the other side of town. She's fairly sure that no one has ever had a reason to go there unless it was to visit someone whole lives in that neighbourhood. But she's not about to complain of his offer, so she pulls herself to her feet. There is a squishing sensation in her boots because the duct tape hasn't really been keeping the water out properly. She makes a vague attempt to wring her hair out, which is futile because it's still raining.

"But if you like." She smiles at Tam and offers him her arm, which shows up luminescent white in the darkening evening. "Don't feel obliged to drink the coffee either. I know it's nasty. So what were you coming home from?"

"Prob'ly." He raises a corner of his mouth. It's either a sneer or half a smile. When Diane stands up, he rushes forward with the umbrella; when she offers her arm, he takes it. Her hair is dripping down her back but the dye seems to be staying in quite well. When Tatters gets wet the purple manages to get everywhere. This is yet another example of Diane being a classy bird.

It's not the tea, which is far too weak to give him the jitters, but something is making Tam feel on edge. With the arm he's given Diane he pulls a matchstick out of his jacket pocket and ducks down his head to put it in his mouth. It obstructs his talking but makes him feel more secure.

"Oh, y'know, jus' some work, same as you," he says. It's doubtful their work is actually all that similar. "Are we going t'be goin' pas' Jessie's, y'reck'? 'Cos if we are ah can get my bike and drive you down."

Diane's hair is in fact mostly natural which is maybe why the colour isn't running down her back Except for the streaks of black (which are fairly half-hearted at this point) the light brown (which she would describe, corners of her mouth turning down, as mousey) is all hers. But she's had her fair share of experience with running hair dye, either her own (she remembers having pool blue hair, and that was a bitch) and with Tatters' (his last apartment had purple splotches on the towels, and the couch, and the linoleum).

Rain, on the hand, is running under her shirt, under the band of her bra, and down her back in a nasty cold way. She shudders slightly, and then has to smile at the matchstick. Tam has this annoying way of doing random, adorable things, and she's trying to ignore it.

"If we go around by the Loblaws," she tells him, after a moment's thought, "we go by Jessie's."

Loblaws is maybe not her favourite place in the world, but it's not like she has to in.

"Let's do tha', then." He shifts the matchstick pensively from one corner of his mouth to the other. His bike is not a roaring machine with skulls and flames across the body. It's a robin's egg blue vespa he took as payment for a job a while back. He doesn't have a helmet for it, but that's OK, because it only goes slightly above walking speed anyway.

"So how was work for you today?" He's trying to make conversation without even knowing what Diane does. He has the vague idea it's bar work, but that might just be because she hangs round a lot in bars.

Leaning slightly into his shoulder (with a vague sense of deja vu) on the pretense that she's stealing body heat or maybe trying to fit the both of them under the umbrella, Diane shrugs.

"You know, work. As long as I'm getting paid I guess I don't really have any call to complain. But on some level, I really should have finished high school." She looks over at him and grins. "It was a very long day, and very full of bitching, unemployed liberals. Not that I have anything against liberals, mind, but seriously. I bet none of them actually voted."

Yeah, okay. So she hates the customers. But like she said, money is money. And it's not like she's sleeping with them, whatever her neighbours might say about her. She just makes the drinks.

"So how was your day?"

Tam's views on politics were always doomed to be conflicted. He got 'God loves everyone but the rich who will always try to beat you down' from his mother and 'damn immigrants coming here and stealing our jobs' from his father. "No'sure I'm the one to talk there," he replies, leaning back in to Diane and carefully positioning the umbrella so the two of them are staying as dry as possible. He smiles worriedly with too much tooth. "Wha'with no' being registered to vote." Or to live in this country.

"Ch," he continues when asked about his day, "no' so good. You know," he continues, doing a very bad impression of Diane's accent, "work," and he grins. Today was not a particularly good day. Exhibit A: Tam's nose, which as well as being snotty is starting to bubble with pinkish blood.

Diane also can't really talk about politics. She's mostly perpetually confused about them. It always seems like everyone is saying whatever and then doing them same thing. She's Canadian anyway. It doesn't make a difference who wins the election and it's not like anyone was voting. Star Trek re-runs on Space are much more interesting.

"Yeah, me neither," Diane tells him. Her disinterest in government is paired with a lack of respect for it, and illegal immigration is perfectly fine with her. Especially if it means she has someone willing to walk her home through the downpour.

She has to laugh at his attempt at an American accent, which is cute but awful. "I can do your accent better than you can do mine," she taunts, grinning. "And your nose is bleeding, I think." She rummages around the pocket of her jeans and comes up with a slightly damp tissue. "It's clean, just a bit linty..."

It's the American election that's getting everyone fired up. Canada will remain a bubble of politeness and pot that people run to when the going gets tough down south. Tam has managed to stay for a very long time because the police are too polite to put out an arrest warrant for him. (There is in fact one out there, but executing it would rely upon Tam having contact with the police, and he is trying to avoid that as much as possible.)

"Fuck!" he swears, taking the tissue gratefully and rubbing it across his nose. "Thanks Di." The damp tissue is screwed up and shoved deep in the recesses of his bomber pocket. Tam was just about the challenge Diane to do Glasge, but he's preoccupied with his nose, which he shouldn't have wrinkled so much. "Who won, then?"

Man is a political animal but Tam is not a political man.

Diane's mother calls her up every once in a while and says nasty thing about Sarah Palin, but that's about as in touch with American politics as Diane is gonna get. She has a peripheral idea of who's running but she certainly doesn't care. The plummeting economy is also not bothering her. It's not like she has any money to loose anyway.

"The Tories," she tells Tam, steering him around a corner. She can see the dreaded Loblaws ahead, its bright sign glowing into the darkness like a beacon. "Again. A minority, I think. Nothing exciting. Very predictable. Bleh. I fucking hate that place." She gives the supermarket a look that's worthy of Medusa. "Which is probably why I never go shopping and don't have any food and will probably end up getting Chinese."

If she can be bothered to eat, otherwise she'll probably just have pop and a fag.

Tam follows her gaze. Since his diet consists of whatever Jessie brings home from work and whatever takeout he can persuade people to split with him (when he's not taking the Diane route and smoking his appetite away), he's puzzled that a supermarket could inspire such hatred.

"Couldn't you just... go somewhere else?" he suggests, shaking the umbrella to stop it pooling water again.

Mentally cursing Tam for his failures - he ought have volunteered to help her eat General Tso's Chicken or whatever - Diane laughs. "Not really. Everything else is posh and thus waaay out of my league. I think I may just hate supermarkets in general. It's probably a phobia that'll take years of extensive, expensive therapy to cure."

She clearly needs a boyfriend to do the shopping for her. Or she needs a job that actually pays real money, but that's not about to happen. Being devoid of any skills, she's stuck serving drinks. Maybe, she thinks, she should marry rich.

But then she looks at Tam and realises that she has a taste for penniless stoners, so the marrying money thing isn't about to happen.

Tam laughs too. He would never be the rich boyfriend doing the shopping. At best, he'll be the inventive boyfriend doing the dumpster diving, bartering and - in worst case scenarios - shoplifting. He's quite good at the latter. His first English girlfriend, some girl he met when he went to London chasing Jessie down, compared him favourably to Renton in the first scene of Trainspotting when he ran down Bluewaters with his arms full of less than legal electronics.

"Well, y'seem ta be doing awright," he replies, and shoves her gently with his shoulder, "were it no'you who got all that stuff for Thanksgiving?"

Jessie is still feeding Tam on leftover turkey and pumpkin when he crashes out at her place. He doesn't mind, but he's suspicious of how much of it there seems to be.

He's right, of course. She did manage to acquire lots of food for Thanksgiving.

"You just don't know me very well," Diane tells Tam. "Doubtless after a while my inherent instability will become apparent."

She's joking, of course. Mostly.

"Yeah, that was me," she admits. "Employee discount and all that. I can make sacrifices if national holidays are at stake." So yes, she does go shopping every once and a while. Just not often, not with pleasure and not if she can help it. You can get milk and sweets at the pharmacy and that's all the groceries that are really important anyway.

"But mostly I like Chinese. And cigarettes."

All art fags are unstable. It comes with the hair-dyed unsuitably-pierced Plath-quoting territory. It's not a large leap on Tam's part to think that weird girls dress weirdly.

"Oh aye," he agrees, "both healthy for you." He's teasing. He knows that smoking is not good for you, and it is only being young and fairly in shape that enables him to run like a bat out of hell while smoking half a pack a day. (Not literally. Smoking while running leads to embers in the eyeball, and as destructive as Tam is he's not quite that stupid.)

"Yez work at Loblaws?" he asks, indicating back towards it sharply.

Diane is faggy and unstable, but she doesn't per se like Plath (too whiny, domestic, predictable, depressing, repressed) and is in fact fairly inartistic. But that's all right. She has dyed hair and tattoos and duct taped boots, and that's what counts. Duct taped boots, which are leaking like mad, so that her feet are cold and numb and squishing with every step. It's not an enjoyable experience.

"How do think I get my gorgeous figure," Diane asks, jokingly running a hand down across her breasts and down her stomach. She's lost some weight, mostly due to being broke, but she's still definitely on the plump side. "And yes, I work at Loblaw's." She hates to admit it. Especially given the horrid blouse she has to wear when she's working. "And at that bar on James Street, the really sleazy one with Christmas tree... And I do housekeeping."

By nature, Tam is a shirker. He does not work more that the absolute minimum and he discovered fairly young that the absolute minimum is, really, not all that much. He works enough to keep himself in drugs and Jessie in pretty things for the babby. He is slightly scared at how far above and beyond Diane goes in her duties. He would rather spend lots of time drinking with the money he gets from the relatively little time he spends getting hit in the nose. And the stomach. And wherever else he's getting hit.

"Naw," he concedes, "it's good fer you that you're working so hard. Means you'll be able to go to college or whatever." Tam's life can be summed up in the 'whatever'.

The rain's still going but they've passed the dreaded Loblaw's and have made it to Jessie's. On the pavement outside is Tam's bike, under a tarp and chained tightly to a railing. Tam pulls the tarp off like David Blaine at the end of a trick. Except David Blaine would have safety helmets. He takes the matchstick out of his mouth and looks Diane up and down thoughtfully. "Ah haven't got a sidecar so you can sit on the back and hold on. If yez like ah've gottae cycling jacket upstairs you can borrow." If he was by himself he'd be perfectly happy to whizz about with nothing more on than a shirt and shorts, but he's learnt that girls sometimes prefer something a bit safer.

Diane doesn't view herself as going over and beyond any responsibilities. She's just trying to pay rent and bills and still have enough money left over for food and booze and all that stuff.

"University's a bit beyond me," she tells him, "I kind of dropped out of highschool. Looking back, that was maybe a bit retarded of me. But there you go, here I am." She shrugs. She just wants enough money to be able to do what she wants with herself. Some day she'd like a place that's actually hers. But that's not about to happen just now.

Diane's eyes flicker across the bike. She's slightly jealous, but not really, because paying for gas would suck. "Nah, I'm fine," she tells him, smiling just a little dangerously. She used to get reprimanded for 'not giving a flying fuck about her life' when she would go around on her old bike, sans helmet, but the point clearly never stuck.

Tam raises his shoulders right back at her. For him paying bills would be above and beyond. Of course, paying bills would mean providing proof of identification and he's a little short of that.

He drops the matchstick down on the floor and pulls his keys out of his pocket. Really, the bike doesn't go fast enough to warrant a helmet. It would be like wearing a helmet on the bumper cars. Tam unlocks the chain and throws it round his chest, where he's fortunately protected from the weight of it by his bomber jacket. Since he has no bag he shakes the umbrella, folds it up and gives it to Diane - "hold this for me".

The paint is chipped and it sputters when he starts it up. But it's his, so he's allowed to give Diane a devil-may-care smile and say: "c'mon, hop aboard".