Snippet #1955640

Only way to feel the noise is when it's good and loud...so good you can't believe it's screamin' with the crowd...

To say that Izzie Nakani-Maisuradze liked her music 'turned to eleven' was the understatement of the ages. The sound of Motörhead's speed metal masterpiece Overkill could be heard for just about miles around, more than rivalling even the tremendous roar of the gas-guzzling metal beast Izzie sat astride as she tentatively watched the street light overhead, waiting with rising irritation for it to shift from a persistent red to green. Around her, she was well aware of heads turning from within the cars gathered in the vicinity, casting baleful glares at the crazy woman attired in dreadlocks, leather, spikes, and tattoos, blasting this horrendous racket at obscene volumes. Which nearly made Izzie want to break out into a cruel smirk. Motörhead was easy listening as far as she was concerned. Were she in a genuinely angry mood at this point, there was no doubt the entire damn town would be entreated to some of the more...violent selections of Izzie's extensive musical repertoire.

At the moment, however, Izzie wasn't genuinely angry. Just angry, which was the typical state of being for Izzie, and most of it was currently deriving from this goddamn street light refusing to just turn fucking green already, even though there wasn't a single damn car crossing the intersection before her. Ah, fuck it. I'm gonna be late at this rate. To hell with that goddamn streetlight and to hell with everyone here. The irascible woman pushed off with one steel-toed boot, and without the slightest hesitation, the massive motorcycle roared forward, leaving the mass of cars still waiting for the green light in the metaphorical dust. Suckers. Ah, how Izzie pitied those who felt the need to enclose themselves within the suffocating chokehold of nonsense lawmaking. Truly, she did.

"Rock'n'roll ain't worth the name if it don't make you strut..." Izzie mouthed along with the words as the cruiser surged forward. Everything about her, the uncouth, rough singing, the spike-studded leather jacket, the way she navigated the bike through the streets loosely, almost lazily, lit cigarette jutting from her thin lips--all screamed "I don't give a shit". Just something in the way everything about her aligned perfectly to project an image of a careless, carefree person, someone devoid of physical and emotional baggage, someone who simply didn't have a damn thing to worry about, to fear, to regret in the world. And how lovely it would have been if that were true.

It had been maybe two months since Izzie had returned. She hadn't seen Rosemary, but then, she hadn't been looking--no, she'd done her best to actively avoid anywhere she thought Rosie might be found, which wasn't hard, because there were about two places Izzie could be consistently found at. The local bar, and the cheap, low-run tenement she was currently renting out on the outskirts of Provincetown, which was very nearly all she could afford at this point. And unless it had changed in the past seven years--Izzie was well aware of the possibility--Rosie had never been one for alcohol, and therefore would probably not be encountered at the nearby watering hole, and Izzie was fairly certain she wasn't gonna come home one day and find Rosemary there or something.

How did I go back to thinking about this shit? She gritted her teeth angrily. No, her explicit instructions (to herself) were that she was not to think of anything or anyone from...those years. Least of all her, the heinous little weasel. No, the mere thought of her was enough to get Izzie's blood boiling with the recollections of how she had led Izzie on for years, fucked with Izzie's mind and emotional state, and then ultimately played her bullshit victim card and dropped Izzie like a sack of potatoes at the side of the road...

Her hand suddenly twisted sharply on the throttle, and the motorcycle gunned forward, narrowly missing some pedestrian that Izzie did not give a shit about. And with that, Izzie forgot all about not thinking about it in favour of seething with rage over her skewed perception of those years old events.



When she arrived at the bar, he was already there, of course. Izzie had gotten used to the fact that he was invariably either early, or right on time--she'd later figured that that was because he had nothing better to do than be punctual, though the same could not be said for Izzie. She couldn't tell if he'd been early or right on the mark this particular time, because by the time Izzie pushed open the door leading into the little bar, it was nearly half an hour past the agreed time. And of course, despite that, he was still sitting alone at the bar, a slender ponytail of dark brown waves vaguely visible against the black fabric armouring his back. Wordlessly Izzie approached, and then plopped her considerable bulk down on the stool beside him.

"You're kinda late," the man remarked, in a subdued tone of voice--as though he very clearly could have sounded more alive and emotive than those three words came out as. But Izzie's retort nearly cut right across them. "Can it, Kollias," she grunted as she motioned for the bartender to bring her her usual drink. And then she turned to face her companion. "Not everyone is blessed with your magnanimous skill of having absolutely nothing whatsoever better to do in life than be on time."

"Except you, but sans the 'being on time' part," Jack ventured a bit of humour. Always a dangerous risk where Izzie was involved, except the older woman merely laughed roughly, tossing stray dreadlocks over her shoulder as she knocked back a generous swig of the potent alcohol she had just been provided with. "'least I'm honest about it," she shrugged, the brief smile that had flitted across her face in the advent of the laugh quickly disappearing once more into the void of her dark, angry face.

Jack couldn't say exactly how he'd ended up associating with a woman like Izzie. Friendship was not quite the proper term to describe their relationship--for were they friends, Jack would not have felt the need to repress himself, his friendlier, good-natured tendencies, in her presence, for the well-placed fear that she would cruelly squash them down, armed with her brutal brand of sarcasm and intermixed bluntness. But prior to meeting Izzie, soon after she'd arrived in Provincetown, at a local record shop where they had been pretty much the only two people browsing the metal section, Jack had very nearly forgotten what it felt like to actually associate with people beyond mere formalities and necessities. At the very least, as long as he was hanging out with Izzie, even if she remained an enigmatic, irascible delinquent who refused to tell him the slightest thing about her life prior to the last two months, he wasn't alone. It wasn't anything like how things had been back when Jack had had someone with whom he could genuinely enjoy spending time with, but at least he wasn't alone.

He had to fill that void somehow.