Currently the moon is in the waning Half Moon phase (51% full).

Interstate 90 runs east-west while, further west along it, Highway 82 branches off to the south.

It's an ugly car. A battered station-wagon thing that seems to be a shade of light blue. Closer inspection reveals its "color" to instead be the faded gray of generic car undercoating (not that it's helped much considering the ugly blossoms of rust that dot its surface). That such a vehicle has broken down should come to no surprise. Steam (or smoke, or something) is pouring out from under the hood, and the dopey-looking guy in front of it looks completely lost, dividing his attention between the moderately alarming smoke and the cars zooming past without paying him the slightest heed.

Another set of headlights veers past, the small dark truck to which they belong flicking on its emergency flashers as it draws even with the wreck. The truck's driver slows and pulls over to the shoulder some forty or so yards farther on, the white reverse lights brightening. A few moment's careful backwards navigation brings the vehicle close enough so that when the door pops open and a figure steps out, it's easily identifiable as female in the compartment's overhead light. "Need a hand?" she calls, hesitating at the side of the truck, her hands tucked into the pockets of a leather bomber.

Charlie turns at her voice with a smile of gratitude -- a smile that sloughs right off his face when he sees her. He freezes. It's hard to tell in the dim lighting, but it looks almost like he's suddenly gone a shade whiter (not an easy thing to do when you're as pale as he is). He takes a step back right into his car's hood. His car's hot hood. "Ow...!" He takes a step forward and just... stands there. Staring. Somewhat fearfully.

There's not a lot going for this guy. He's on the short side and kind of puny -- fair game for even a high-school bully. His clothes don't improve the outlook, consisting of a plain blue button-up shirt -- untucked -- over a pair of wrinkled khakis. And the face just reinforces the rest of the "motif." His curly red hair sits tight against the skull, and it's recession places him somewhere in his mid-thirties. Charlie's eyes are very light blue, but somewhat bugged, giving him a vaguely surprised look, and a pensive mouth sits above a relatively weak chin (made more so by a prominent adam's apple). Charlie would be decent enough to look at if he tried -- but apparently he doesn't.

Natalie winces at the recoil, managing to hide most of a smirk within a sympathetic grimace. "Hey, take it easy. I'm not gonna bite. Just wondering if you need any help." The woman doesn't approach, and when she pulls a cell phone out of her pocket, she announces what she's doing first. "--Crappy place to break down, huh?" All very polite, all horribly reasonable as she stands there, phone in one hand and the other still hidden in her pocket.

The seconds stretch on awkwardly. Finally Charlie's head jerks down. Once. It looks like he blew a fuse. Then he does it again, but better. It finally resolves into a nod of sorts. "Y-yeah." His voice is amplified to talk over the cars wooshing past, but it still sounds a little high-pitched. He tries on a smile; it doesn't fit very well. "R-real, real shitty..."

"Yeah, well," Nat says with a smile probably meant to be disarming, "If I didn't know any better I'd swear they plotted amongst themselves. Cars, I mean. And when to break down." She pulls her other hand from her pocket so she can rest the arm on the edge of the truck bed - see? Nobody here but us helpful people - and hoists her phone at him. "So. You want me to call, or do you have it under control?"

Charlie laughs then, a really kind of sad, semi-hysterical sound that no man should utter. "No," he finally replies, that same, poorly applied smile on his face. "I would say... quite the opposite..." He swallows, his adam's apple bobbing precariously. "...about the control, I mean." He looks all around, suddenly, as if he expects ninjas to suddenly materialize. A massive eighteen wheeler blows by with a loud rumble. He turns back. "So... um. Who were you gonna call?"

Natalie laughs outright at him. "There's a hell of a straight line. --911. Unless you've got Triple A, or something? I figure I'll stick around until help shows up. They're less likely to try and take on two, than one. One person by himself's just asking to get mugged." Politely, she doesn't say anything about the body language of prey, though her own is supremely self-assured. "So 911, or Triple A, or someone else?"

"T-they...?" Charlie asks hesitantly, "What do you mean by that?" He does another quick glance. He's definitely getting better, and his tone sounds almost normal -- if extremely anxious. "Is there a big crime problem around here?"

Natalie glances around casually, as unruffled by his anxiety as she is by the cars zooming past at 60 miles per hour - or frequently faster - mere feet away. "Ah, this section of town isn't too bad. If you'd been lucky enough to break down about half-mile to the east and a couple of blocks south, your car'd be up on blocks and the only thing left of you would be a nice chalk line." Turning back to him, she shrugs, as indifferent to this idea as to the others. "My name's Nat, by the way. If it'll help you chill."

"Charlie." It's delivered like an automatic response: years of doing the give-me-your-name-I'll-give-you-mine ritual. He's staring at her intently, and suddenly there's a shift. Just like that. In the blink of an eye -- the instant it takes a grimy Jaguar to zip by. A tectonic plate shifts somewhere in Charlie himself and he stares back, looking more like a cornered badger than now injured chipmunk. "Probably right." he agrees suddenly, "But I'd have made damn sure my outline wouldn't have been the only one." He blinks. ROOOAR. Another truck, this one hauling massive drainage pipes, and it's over. Like it didn't happen. The injured chipmunk blinks and rubs his eyes. "Fuck it," he murmurs, though loud enough for her to hear. He stares back at her blearily. "This bitch is done for. Could you just drop me off near a hotel or something?" Pause. "Somewhere safe?"

Natalie barks out an amused 'heh' at his final words, only that little smirk acknowledging the badger's words. Chalking it up to male bravado, perhaps? "Sure," is what she says, re-pocketing the unwelcome phone. "Go ahead and toss whatever you've got in the back." A head jerk toward the truck bed, though she doesn't turn her back on him. "You can call from your room, or wherever."

Charlie nods again. "I appreciate it, really. Who, uh, says hospitality is... dead." A short laugh emanates from him almost involuntarily at that and he shakes his head, trying to maintain a straight face. Personal joke apparently. "I just have one or two things to grab. Be a second." He awkwardly takes several steps back, seems to realize how paranoid -- and ludicrous -- this looks, and turns around, scurrying to the back of the wagon. After a few moments the rear door pops upward, revealing little more than the fact that his interior light is apparently out.

Free from Charlie's nervous laugh and anxiety-laden body language, Nat steals a moment to roll her eyes before moving over to the tailgate and dropping it open. Within are a few plastic bags, their handles snapping in the wind, and a few lengths of wood, perhaps 2" square and six feet long. These she shifts over, then turns back to face the man whose body language screams "MUG ME NOW!", squinting into the too-bright lights of an SUV as it *thu-thumps* by, bass all but rattling its windows.

Charlie continues to rummage around for almost a minute before finally emerging with a battered canvas duffel bag that would make Bruce Banner proud. He walks forward and is briefly illuminated by a streak of light. Much better. The man's apparently used his "me-time" to compose himself. "Actually," he gestures at the truck bed, "I'm not taking much. Just going to carry this up front." He takes a few more steps and smiles at her. A bit forced, but at least it looks like it might be in the ballpark of genuine this time. "Let me close that up for you." He slings the bag and reaches out to the tailgate.

Natalie eyes him dubiously, but shrugs and moves out of his way back to the driver's side. "If you want. 'S a pretty damn small cab, though. Gonna be cramped with the three of us in it." A nod for his duffel marks the third 'person'. "But whatever makes you happy. Charlie, you said it was?"

"Charlie." He repeats, not quite so robotically this time. The tailgate closes with a muted clang and he turns back to her with a friendly air. "I've had this bag since... college, and it means a lot to me." He heads around to the passenger side without saying more.

Natalie shrugs again - clearly, he gets to deal with the extra squishing - and hangs back as another semi blares past, too close to the shoulder for comfort. Once it's passed she heads for the cab, adding a nodded, "It's open," for her passenger's sake.

Charlie opens the door and slides in, resting the bag awkwardly on his lap. He gives her a sidelong glance as he reaches for the seatbelt. CLICK.

The slavering monster in disguise goes through all the comforting pre-drive rituals - seat belt, turning on the engine, flicking the heater from defrost to blow directly into the cab. "So where're you headed?" she wonders conversationally as she checks out traffic in the driver's side mirror and the truck begins to ease forward.

Charlie looks fully at Natalie now, taking the time to really stare while she's focused on traffic. "It's not really where I'm going to," he answers, at last looking back towards the road, "as much as where I'm finally leaving." He pauses for a moment, then answers the question whether it would have been asked or not. "L.A."

Natalie says, "La-la land," in the tone of one who's heard it said but never visited. "Well, welcome to St. Claire, then. Hell of a welcome, huh?" Attention still mostly on her driving and the traffic, she accelerates enough to pull back onto the freeway, leaving Charlie's car derelict behind them. "There's a Super-8 on the far side of town, a Holiday Inn a couple of miles from here. Any preference?"

"Holiday Inn will be fine," the man answers easily (at least, easily compared to his earlier behavior). He's quiet for a few moments, then broaches a subject strangers have relied on for years to break up awkward silences: "So, do you guys get a lot of rain up here?"

Natalie chuckles again, sparing enough of her brain to glance sidelong at him. "--Enough, I guess. More than I'm used to, anyway. Winters are squat-all compared to Minnesota, but I'm still waiting for summer. --You wanna call Highway Patrol now, as long as we're on the way?" She reaches out automatically for the radio, but clicks it off again as soon as she's punched the power button.

Charlie shakes his head, almost distractedly. "Nah... if they tow it..." He shrugs. "All that'll happen is I won't get my thirty dollar scrap payment." He suddenly breaths in, like he just thought of something. He glances over. "Any good food places around here?"

Natalie drives competently - not like a maniac, but neither is she a traffic hazard waiting to happen. Perhaps a bit more sensibly than a woman her age 'ought' to drive, but that's it. "Sure," she says, sounding surprised. "Depends on what you want. There's a Denny's... well. If by 'good' you mean 'open at this hour of night'. I think there's a restaurant in the Holiday Inn, too. Nearby, anyway. Why? You got a jones for something, or just pumping the semi-local?"

Charlie smiles, staring straight ahead. His expression is unreadable in the play of lights. "Well, it seems that locals always have a favorite place to eat... depending on their tastes, of course." Another shrug. "I might be here for a few days, so..." He scratches his head. "Truth be told, I'm pretty easy-going food-wise, I just like to know any potential rat-holes to avoid."

Natalie, momentarily baffled, grunts and flicks on her turn signal well before the exit. (More proof that she's not human!) "Well, crap. I dunno. I'll eat pretty much anything. Um... oh. If you're at Charlie's Bar, stay away from the fried food." A glance into the rear-view mirror and she veers off, slowing down on the exit-ramp. "There's nothing really notorious that I know of, save for the hospital cafeteria and other places like that. Give me a neighborhood and I'll be able to fill in a few holes, you know?"

Charlie nods. "I'd have to fill in a few neighborhoods first," he answers with a rueful smirk. "But thanks for the overview." He glances towards the exit, and suddenly stifles a yawn. "I dunno," he murmurs, watching the scenery whisk by, "maybe my car breaking down was a sign." He turns back to her. "This a nice place to live, er, Nat?"

Natalie signals again at the stop sign at the bottom of the ramp, though she treats it more like a comma than a period. A quick glance left and right and she's turning onto a wide street with auto dealerships on either side - during the day it's probably quite busy, but at this time of night, not so much. "Nice enough. I've been here not quite a year, and I've really put down roots." The familiar green and white neon of the motel is only a couple of blocks ahead, a beacon to weary travelers. "Don't run when we get there - lemme give you my cell number. You don't have to use it, but knowing that someone else knows you're alive in a new place can be a lifeline sometimes."

Charlie nods, and then gives another of those tight, yet seemingly real smiles. "That- That would be great. Thanks." He looks towards the motel sign gleaming in the distance. His fingers lightly drum on the faded fabric of the bag.

The rest of the drive passes quickly, and within two minutes Nat's little green truck has pulled up in the No Parking zone in front of the lobby doors. "Here you go." She has to lean way over, invading his personal space, to get at the glove box and the pen within. "Good luck with whatever, Charlie."

Charlie mashes himself flat against the seat to give her access. Yeah. That's the reason. A moment later he pops open the door and steps out into the brisk air, waiting while Natalie writes down the number. "You never can tell what might happen," he replies to her comment, "there are more things in heaven and earth, right?"

Natalie grins toothily at him - it's a friendly grin, but probably displays too many of her pearly whites for his comfort - as she holds out the bit of paper with a number scrawled on it. "That's Hamlet, right? I never paid attention in English."

Charlie smiles. "Not sure. I wasn't much of a scholar myself." He takes the paper, folds it carefully, and stows it in his shirt pocket. His manner has just about done a complete 180. "Take it easy, Nat. Thanks for... everything." He closes the door, flips a brief wave, and heads for the doors.

"Welcome!" she calls after him. The little truck waits until he's actually entered the lobby before driving off, turning right at the next stoplight and disappearing.

[End of log]