Help Wanted, [Open]

[Rebecca Byron]

On paper, Becca's job title had been General Manager of the Fourth Horseman night club. Her actual job had been far, far more complicated, of course, but one must appease the tax man and so all the paperwork had listed her that way. She even had business cards, not that she'd ever used them. And along with the title came a salary, appropriate to the position but not excessive. She'd never really done anything with it, the money deposited directly into a personal savings account but she rarely even touched it. Her clothing budget was expensed, her car had been a gift from William, most everything else she billed to the club one way or another. She used the money in that savings account primarly for gifts to her loved ones, the rest of the time she had ignored it and let it accrue interest.

But she had reason to be glad for that little nest egg now. Some combination of pride and outrage had prevented Becca from exploiting any of the resources of the club or Court when she left; she'd taken only one bag of clothes, the few pieces of jewelry that had been personal gifts from William to her, her laptop, and not much else. All the credit cards and checkbooks for the Court's accounts had been left neatly on her desk, she'd even left her cell phone as it was part of a group account under the Horseman's name. She'd debated long and hard on whether to take her car with her, but had eventually decided that since it had specifically been a gift from William she was entitled to keep it, it belonged to her.

So the contents of that almost-forgotten savings account were doing very well by Rebecca at the moment. It had allowed her to check in to the hotel suite that she and Charlie were staying at for the moment, and had put down a deposit on the two-bedroom apartment on the edge of the vampire district that they would be moving to in two days, as soon as the furniture she'd ordered could be delivered.

With the costs of setting up the apartment, restocking both their wardrobes, Charlie's school tuition, bills and food and such things, Becca figured that they could probably live quite comfortably for at least a year on the contents of the account, but for a girl used to working 20 and even 22 hour days the idea of going a year with nothing to do was unthinkable. And so on the first day of Charlie's attendance at his new school, Becca dropped him off with hugs, a packed lunch from a deli they'd stopped at on the way there, and a brand new Spiderman cell phone with her own new number programmed in, and then headed to a cafe with a newspaper to search the job listings.

She sat at a round table on the patio, enjoying the late-morning sunshine on the back of her neck and sipping a cafe au lait as she skimmed the classifieds. With nobody around to impress and no need to make a statement with her appearance, Becca was dressed to her own fashion tastes, in jeans and a Jack Skellington tee shirt, her hair up in a ponytail and looking very much like the carefree teenager that she was not. She had a red felt-tipped pen for circling any jobs that caught her eye, a slice of banana bread on a plate to nibble on, and nobody looking at her as she read, and sipped, and occasionally circled an ad would think that her heart was ripping into a thousand jangling shards every moment of every day. Some things about the life she had led just could not be discarded, and her ability to wear a mask and make it look good was sticking with her just fine.

[Matilda Hemming]

Matilda was out of the office and pretending to be busy but really she just wanted some air. It got like that sometimes at the newspaper. You wouldn't think it would. On tv, the world of a journalist seemed so exciting and romantic. But in reality it was hard work and sometimes you needed air.
Especially when your working for the man you are desperately in love with, who is practically married to a man and has a kid with another woman. And couldn't care less about you as long as you got your story in on time.

Yeap, those situations definitely needed air. And coffee.

Mattie walked out of the cafe, and that was when she spotted Rebecca. She almost missed the girl in her plain outfit and the casual hair style. "Can I sit?" she asked. "In non reporter mode I promise." she added with a smile.

[Rebecca Byron]

Becca glanced up and smiled ruefully when she saw Mattie. "Do you even have a non-reporter mode, Mattie?" Still, she folded up the paper and set it away, gesturing toward the other chair. "How are you doing? I haven't seen you in a while, the paper been keeping you chained to a desk lately?" It seemed to go in phases, not that she really understood how the industry worked.

[Matilda Hemming]

Mattie grinned, seeming the eternal teenager, like Rebecca often portrayed, except Rebecca's was more literal. Matilda was just a state of mind. "Well I can promise I won't quote you directly." she winked, adding sugar to her coffee before stiring it slowly. "Besides wishing a certain mister would chain me to his desk... no not really." she said with a smile and a shrug of shoulders. "Pity and self doubt don't keep you to social. But I am working on hiding it better these days." she joked... kind of.

[Rebecca Byron]

Laughing a bit as she picked up her coffee cup in both hands and settled back on her chair, Becca admitted, "I just don't see it with Greg. I mean, I get that it must be there, but he's just too...Greglike." She grinned and shook her head. "But best of luck, as always. He does watch, that's got to count for something."

[Matilda Hemming]

"Well I am glad you don't see the things I see in Greg, coz I really wouldn't like to be in competition with you." the girl joked as she sipped her coffee carefully, experimenting as to how hot is was. She made a satisfied sound and went for a second sip. "I don't want him to watch. I want him to touch. Guys have affairs all the time." she played argued.

[Rebecca Byron]

A harsh laugh. "Tell me about it. I don't know, Mattie. We're talking about a guy who let some chick blow him at my wedding with his pregnant teenaged girlfriend ten yards away. I don't know when he came down with rampant morality. Maybe it's the dead girlfriend thing?"

[Matilda Hemming]

"Wanna get married again?' she said with a mock hopefulness. "I'll make a fake Randy, and stand the puppet about ten yards away." she joked, laughing lightly with the thought. "I know I should move on, but when I fall, I fall hard. And working so close to him is only making it worse. Hence the coffee. Trying to clear my head and get control of the hormones before I get back to the office."

[Rebecca Byron]

"Have you in fact tried getting him drunk and just sticking your hand down his pants?" She wasn't inciting, Becca lied to herself. Just curious.

[Matilda Hemming]

"No. Because I don't trust Criss." She admitted. "He scares me. He has these scary eyes." she leant in close as she spoke to Rebecca. "Like seriously, have you ever really looked into his eyes. He looks crazy. To much brain damage due to lack of oxygen during those fake stunt of his." she leant back, nodding slowly. "So I'm trying to be more subtle, so Greg doesn't go home and complain about office sexual harassment."

[Rebecca Byron]

Becca thought about it, Criss wasn't anyone she'd much paid attention to beyond the basics. She and Randy had been close, in a way, back when they were the two teenaged girls in the monster community; they'd go shopping together, giggle over dumb movies, but it was always buddies rather than good friends. Criss and Greg were peripheral, in all ways. "Yeah, okay, maybe I can see it. But I don't think he'd come kill you. More like come cry at you and remind you how he was tortured once and then shake his ass and say how you may have gotten into Greg's pants you'll never get into his heart or something cheesy like that."

[Matilda Hemming]

"I don't know which is worse?" she said with a snicker. "Sleeping with one eye open and waiting for the magic daggers. Or finding the ultimate emo boy curled up in the corner, sucking his thumb and hugging Randy and Greg's shirts." She shrugged, sipping her coffee. "We can go on about the debate. Or we can talk about the paper you just shoved away. I'm a reporter. I noticed the red circles." she said, leaving it open for Becca

[Rebecca Byron]

Becca laughed and shook her head. "What happened to non-reporter mode?" But she didn't try to dodge it, exactly. "For a whole lot of complicated vampirey reasons, I'm living away from the Horseman for a while. Don't know how long it'll be, but I do know that if it's longer than about a week I'll go stark raving mad with nothing to do with my time. So I'm thinking about trying to pick up some kind of work. Anything, working in a shop or something, long as it's not a monster business. Or waiting tables. I hate waiting tables."

[Matilda Hemming]

Matilda shrugged, unashamed. "Well you can't help who you are." she said with a smile. "But I can promise that no matter what, there won't be a 'downsizing at the horseman' headlines." she promised the girl. "We can always need someone to go run for coffee." She offered. "Just sorta do all the odd jobs that no one wants to do you know?" she sipped her coffee, letting Rebecca consider it. "And its a job you can walk away from if things settle at the Horseman."

[Rebecca Byron]

Becca pursed her lips, thinking about it. "Higher-profile than I was thinking, just 'cause of all the reporters around, but it could be fun. There is nothing I'm better at than bringing order to complicated chaos. Would the hours be pretty stable?" She needed to be able to be home for Charlie at the same time every night, or at least nearly so. He'd had enough uncertainty in his life.