It's another slow morning at Klio's. The new owners, a couple from B.C., have been trying to spice things up and clean them up. They've tried, somewhat desperately, to overhaul the image. They changed a letter of the name. They painted the walls a cheering shade of maroon. They fixed the wiring and replaced the light fixtures with some shiny stainless steel IKEA numbers. They got sandalwood incense instead of opium.

Nothing seems to do anything, though. The shop remains in its usual (probably drug-induced) stupour. The staff are still negligent, and they still have attitude problems. The music is still loud and dubious, and the Rammstein, Bob Dylan, Immortal Technique and other assorted posters are hiding the paint job. They've been renting out wallspace to some artist whose work consists mostly of interesting acrylics of imaginatively copulating faeries.

Behind the counter, Tatters is reading a worn out copy of The Inferno that someone had left lying on one of the tables. There are some customers, crowding in to the store, getting out of the cold, and more outside smoking, but none of them seem to want anything just now. They're leaving Tatters in peace, with his book and his Triple Turtle Brownie bar.

Saibel found herself wandering into Klio's at about three p.m., freezing cold and in need of a warm drink. She had been told previously by tatters about this place, earlier that morning. They had met up at a gas-station, but Saibel always found it best to take leads from unknown sources. Ooh she felt so detective-y- thinking in that way.

As she had planned, she painted her nails after arriving home that morning. Now they were a rich brown. It made her feel warmer somehow in the winter months. She had always been prone to color-vibes.

Entering Klios, she noticed the maroon immediately, before the posters and, well, the scent. Saibel removed her beanie cap and went up to the counter. "Could I have a cup of hot-chocolate please?" She asked, not even looking to see who it was she was talking to. She was too busy fumbling in her pockets for a bit of change.

"What size? You want whipped cream with that?"

Tatters doesn't even both putting his book down. He doesn't even look up. His eyes stay on his book, scanning the words. He licks his forefinger and his thumb and turns the page, waiting for her to answer his queries. Possibly he's not feeling particularly social right now, or maybe he's just feeling really bored. Or he's messing with her head, because deep down inside he wishes he was Clint Eastwood. Who knows.

((OOC: Clint eastwood? of all people?!? O+O lol))

IC:


"Uhhm..." She thought for a minute, having found in her pocket a couple of bucks. "Medium, and with... no... yeah, with whipped cream. Marshmallows? Do they have marshmallows in it here?" She placed a finger on her chin, more thinking out loud than actually ordering.

Her ice green eyes rested on the page of his book. She was, once again, curious. Of course, she has to be curious for at least one reason or another at any time. ever. What was he reading? She noticed the, now pressumably chipped, orange nail varnish. Oh yeah, that guy... "I met you this morning." She stated quickly. Oh, her social skills...

"Three dollars and fifteen cents."

He puts down the book, folding over the corner of one pages in that criminal, unforgivable way that gets people sent to Librarian Hell, and holds out his hand to take her money. "Yeah, there are marshmallows." They're kind of dubious, pink cloud shaped vegan marshmallows, but whatever.

"I know you did. You painted your nails since then. Caramel brownie. Delicious."

Taking her money - it disappears without a trace, presumably into the cash register - he gets up to make her chocolate.

Saibel watched him take her money and was insanely curious as to where it went. She was studying the law, and was keen on demanding where her three dollars and fifteen cents disappeared to. She didn't know a lot about people, but she did know that it was rude to accuse people of things without proof. A Lawyer wouldn't dream of it, but she thought a detective might! if she was suspicious enough...

Only, after thinking it over, she realized a detective wouldn't even accuse someone of something to begin with. Someone else did the accusing, and a detective finds the evidence, and helps link one event to another.

Daydreaming again, she realized he had commented something or another. "Sorry, what?" She said, snapping out of her little logical world.

The money, of course, went into the cash register. Tatters may have many character flaws and many sins, but theft is not usaully one of them. He was into shop-lifting in his teenage years, but he outgrew it in favour of other, more socially acceptable vices.

Tatters is used to people being completely out of it. He cracks a sympathetic smile, and repeats, slowly and clearly. "You painted your nails since this morning." He is looking under the counter for the marshmallows, which tend to get lost or eaten because no one ever really wants them.

"Brown," he adds, "approximately the colour of a delicious Turtle Brownie."

"Oh, yeah." Saibel smiled and looked at her nails, then at the brownie, "Yeah they are." She said. She was very thirsty, and she was still thawing from the cold. She looked around the room at all the posters, "They must spark a lot of conversation..." She said, meaninglessly.

She really didn't know why she was talking. Probably just to pass the time once more, but still. Saibel was usually the quiet one. However, she did find being quiet kinda boring sometimes. She sighed and leaned against the wall.

"Uhm, I guess."

Tatters hands her a paper cup of hot chocolate, the whipped cream studded with small pink marshmallows. "Here you go. There's cinnamon and vanilla powder and stuff over there..." He gestures towards the table that houses the milk and sugar and other accessories.

"Some girl once tried to pull the Dylan poster," he adds, conversationally. "If you look closely you can see the smudge from her lipstick."

Saibel laughed, "Really?" She took the hot chocolate gratefully and took a gulp. She burned her tongue but put up with it. After wiping her upper lip with a napkin, she went over to the table and sprinkled in some cinnamon powder and sugar into the cup, ignoring the vanilla completely. She had nothing against vanilla, she just didn't think it tasted good with chocolate. It was a personal thing.
She stirred it with a tiny dark-brown straw used for coffee.

She went over to the poster and found the reddish pink smudge. It just made her laugh more. "Well, that must have been something to see... Did you see her do it? or was it just word of mouth that you know?" She wondered lightly.

"No, I swear she seriously did." Tatters laughs, sitting back down. He breaks off another piece of the brownie and eats it, absently. "It was last week, Friday or something. She was really wasted and she was just like, "Bob, Bob, you came for me" and she flung herself at him."

He's not even joking. All sorts of entertaining things happen in Klio's. And sometimes nothing at all happens, which seems to be the order of the day on that particular day.

"Oh god that was only last friday?" She smiled, "That's actually hilarious. I'd love to actually go up to him and call him Bob. It would be so utterly strange." She looked over to the poster again. "You know, he doesn't look much like a bob. He looks more like a Peter, or a Jeffrey."

Tatters hums a couple bars of Gotta Serve Somebody, underneath the Bob Marley that's being blasted from the cafe's sound system.

"You may call him Terry, you may call him Timmy... You may call him Bobby, you may call him Zimmy."

Without apologising for the slightly random outburst of song (if you want to call Dylan music), Tatters shrugs. "I don't know. You'd think he'd define what it means to look like a Bob. But he seems pretty happy with his lipstick smudge, don't you think?"