john_ofdarkness

There are strong, familiar chords coming from the piano in the church--something both bombastic and moody, a musical tantrum in a minor key; perhaps it's Tchaikovsky or Moussorgsky, but more likely it only has the sound of a long-dead Russian composer.

The woman at the piano pauses every so often to brush back her long hair, her lips pursed in deep annoyance.

In a hallway in some part of the mansion, there is an ornately decorated black pysanka--lying in pieces on the floor.

Typist: Borrowing an old crackplot.

At first glance, the room is like any other--a door that opens off to the second-floor hall, another door set into the right wall, a window with the curtains drawn almost completely together. In his perennial search for cigarettes, the room appears to bear little consideration.

The gap between the curtains catches John's eye, and he draws in a slow and shaking breath.

He closes the door behind him, then throws the curtains wide open; he half-expects to see the grounds, the trees, the walls of the Mansion curving in on themselves ... but instead, he sees a neat little chain-link fence and a line of identical two-story houses. The sight makes him laugh, that startled, honest laugh that sounds half-foreign on his lips. "Jesus Christ," he says to himself, low; "I'm in suburbia."

John swings open the second door, taking note of the address as he goes. Wherever he is, there's got to be a convenience store somewhere in the area--and he's dying for a few cartons of cigarettes.

It startles him, when he realizes that Buzz is gone. There's the basic, expected level of startlement; he'd always been certain (somehow, subconsciously) that Buzz would be a permanent fixture of his life, and so the absence is like discovering that a part of himself is missing ... but there's also a deeper, troubling level, and he's trying to sort that out at the lakeshore.

Buzz has apparently been gone for a while, and John hadn't noticed. (A stone, thrown into the water.) At least a few weeks--long enough that it can't be a vacation or a trip out to fetch medication. (Another stone, this one skipping across the surface of the lake.) Of course, saying that they had been friendly would be an overstatement (and the next stone skips six times before it sinks), but there had been a day when he could play the opening notes to 'Everything's Coming Up Roses' and expect to hear someone jump in with an Ethel Merman impression--

--but all of that is a kind of subtext, really. His head is aching, his chest is tight, and he's humming 'The Carousel Waltz' as he searches out smooth stones for skipping.

John's managed to cadge a script from one of Cyrano's actors, and he's currently got it propped up on a music stand near the piano. Atop the piano itself, he has his own book of blank staff paper, onto which he occasionally transcribes a particularly good bit of improvisation. He's been in need of a new project lately, and there are very few comedies that wouldn't benefit from a little incidental music.

John wants to be left alone. He's left a bundle of medicines (liberated from an Australian pharmacy) at Buzz's and James's door, he's done a shift cooking breakfast, and he's taken a long shower. Now, he's finishing his last pack of cigarettes, chain-smoking them on the porch with one hand cupping his elbow, the other hand held poised by his mouth. You really oughtn't bother him. If he speaks to you at all, it's bound to be unpleasant.

*this is not a song that anyone in the mansion might know--it's a song of John's composing, the overture to his musical about Houdini. he's trying to make a key change work, and having only partial success*