This sort of thing must happen every day.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

It's not the first time Bossuet has wandered into a bar after getting hit on the head. And it's probably not the first time someone has wandered into this bar after getting hit on the head. But here we are.

He had been walking towards the sound of gunfire. The unfamiliarity of that particular experience--or perhaps the still-tender lump on the back of his head--had given everything a dizzy dreamlike feel. Terribly exciting, but a bit nauseating as well. The sort of sensation that can get a person lost in a half-familiar set of streets and alleys, and make a person think it might be wise to step indoors just for a minute. Just to ask directions, just to get out of the July evening heat. Of course most doors were shut. There was a riot on, possibly even a revolution. But this particular door had opened and--right, here we are.

The new arrival is a dusty young man with a dented hat in his hand and a green-and-gold cravat wound around his head. His coat might have been fashionable in Europe of the early 1820s, back when it had its full set of matching buttons. His tricolor cockade, at least, is new and clean: a festive splash of blue-white-red pinned over his heart. Vive la République. And hello?

((OOC - new player, new character! Bossuet/Lesgle is coming in from the beginning of France's July Revolution in 1830; his friends might remember that he fell to friendly fire (...someone dropped something on him from a second-story window, good work) and went missing for a bit at the time.))

((--and I'm out for the night, will try to get back to the threads tomorrow. Back for slow-times but I don't think I can juggle any new threads unless we've talked about it already? Thank you all!))

Comments

[cook_the_rude]

"No, this is a different place, and a different time," the gentleman says. "This is Milliways, the bar at the end of the universe. Please refer to the serving rats and that observation window showing the end of the world for proof."

The window that the man indicates shows some completely nonsensical display that seems like fireworks dissipating slowly like ink in water, with stars, clouds, rising phoenixes and shattering church windows thrown in.


[[OOC: Find other Milliways muns online on AIM at chatroom 'crackinthewall' for more answers or general socialising.]]

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Ah. Yes. The observation window, the one that looks like an opium dream. Lesgle swallows down a wave of headachey nausea and tries to keep smiling. "Everyone complains that Parisians think the world ends beyond the faubourgs. I didn't think anyone meant it literally."

Speaking of opium dreams, he wonders whether his medical student friends had dosed him with anything when they were wrapping up his head. It would explain so much.

((Thank you!))

[cook_the_rude]

"The world ends here," the gentleman says. "I do understand that it's hard to grasp on your first visit. Everything will seem rather unreal. Coming back a second time usually convinces people it's real."

Pause.

"Would you like some wine?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Always. The most reliable support in uncertain times." Or at least, a good start for sorting out the impossible.

[cook_the_rude]

The gentleman gets another glass from a rat scurrying by, fills it, and offers it to Bossuet.

"À votre santé," he says.

Bossuet will find the wine to be a much finer vintage than he is probably used to.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Et à la vôtre." Yes, it is a good vintage, the sort of thing he'd usually collect a friend or two to enjoy if he chanced across a bottle. Bossuet closes his eyes appreciatively. Which helps with the rats. (Yes, the gentleman had mentioned rats. No, the wine isn't helping him process it all yet.)

"...I am trying, just now, to imagine the people that consider themselves regular customers here."

[cook_the_rude]

"Very varied," the gentleman says. "A magical not-cat, a dead Ostrogoth, a number of people from around your time, several vampires, some people with superhuman powers -- beware the mind-reader! -- enough plain and ordinary folks from many different times, one or two anthropomorphic personifications, gods both Greek and Norse, a few doctors and police people, cowboys, and possible the best baker ever."

Pause.

"Oh, and there's a mermaid in the lake. She very much likes men, even though they're all sailors to her."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"The police? Et in Arcadia..." Vampires, gods, cats(?) and mind-readers, cowboys. Naturally. "Does the mermaid drown people? It seems like a thing one should know."

[cook_the_rude]

"I hear she's been very sternly told by the Security forces here that she shouldn't eat any sailors, or indeed other people," the gentleman says. "But she'd like to, as far as I can tell."

Pause.

"And yes, the police. You know, in other countries and other times as yours, the police and other professional crime-fighters are regarded very highly and are sometimes considered heroes. France is quite unique in the disdain and ridicule in which the public holds the flics. The roman policier never caught on the way it did in other countries, and that persists to my time -- which is the year 2013, by the way."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"What a frustrating life she must lead." Bossuet lifts a half-full glass to the mermaid (which he only half believes in anyway). "--Oh, I don't deny that there are heroes among the National Guard. Many of them, having been dismissed by the king for respecting their country more than his person, are on the barricade now. Other police, of one kind and another, are firing upon them quite indiscriminately. I assume. I should be there myself."

Oh, hell. He closes his eyes again. "2013. That is the future. Are your police more perfect, then?"

[cook_the_rude]

"Your police isn't that bad, it's just that they're disliked by their own people," the gentleman says. "In my time, yes, police are better, and they have some scientific methods at their command that make their findings more reliable. Some are very good and deeply dedicated to their job. There are always corrupt cops, anywhere, of course."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"As an institution, my police is every bit that bad. If the police are widely disliked by their own people, there must be something very wrong. In France--I don't argue beyond her borders, mind, my knowledge extends only so far--in France, nearly everything is wrong, and the police are men who have chosen to make themselves the eyes and feet and fingertips of a body of laws so profoundly corrupt that--"

He breaks off and laughs. "--But let me guess. You work with the police yourself, monsieur? Come from a family of long proud service, that I have just insulted beyond any chance of apology while sharing a glass of excellent wine wit you? It would be my luck."

Bossuet's aware that showing up in a dusty coat, with a bandaged head and an entirely illegal tricolor cockade, may give him a biased air in this discussion.

[cook_the_rude]

The gentleman laughs. "No, I'm a psychiatrist -- a doctor specialising in mental illness and emotional issues," he says. "I do consult with the FBI, the federal police in America in my time, on psychologically disturbed killers, and sincerely respect the high skills of the people I sometimes work with."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"You've lost me," he says frankly. "You are...a doctor of murderers? Or of the police?" 1830 wasn't a very sophisticated time for psychiatric medicine. Bossuet fights the impulse to probe at the swelling lump on his head. He isn't a, a "psychologically disturbed killer."

He leans forward with as mentally balanced a look as he can muster. "Let me apologize as far as I can, at least, to the reputations of your respected colleagues. And introduce myself? My name is Lègle--formerly of Meaux."

[cook_the_rude]

"I'm Dr. Hannibal Lecter, currently of Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States," the doctor says, offering his hand to shake. "And no, I'm a doctor of the mind, but I sometimes consult with the police about the minds of murderers, which helps to get them caught."

Pause.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Monsieur Lègle."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Enchanté." They shake hands. Bossuet tries not to think about murderers. Or insanity. Or the fact that he's seeing rats with serving-trays and talking about the future and the end of the world. Dr. Lecter probably gets that from a lot of people. "I am enrolled as a law student, unless they've struck my name off the lists again."

[cook_the_rude]

"Why would they do that?" Dr. Lecter asks.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Oh, I never attend classes. Or only often enough to find out I've been struck off. Occasionally I pass a course but never on purpose--I think the learned professors confuse me with someone else sometimes."

He's not in any rush to practice law.

[cook_the_rude]

"Let me guess," the doctor says. "While you are studying, some legacy, older maiden aunt, lenient parent or the like is supporting you?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Bossuet laughs delightedly. "God, no! If only that were the case! No--my remaining inheritance goes so far as to pay the enrollment fees, and to feed me...oh, it comes to ten good dinners, twenty indifferent, forty bad, every year. I usually feed all my friends at once and then...oh, well. One learns to improvise. Mostly I sell stories of no literary merit to people who print them under other names."

[cook_the_rude]

"You seem to have found a way to not starve," Dr. Lecter says, "and why leave Paris behind and return to Meaux to take a place in society that must be as boring as it is safe?"

Pause.

"Feeding your friends -- there we have something in common."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"I love nothing better--setting aside the political--than a good meal with my friends. My only good luck is that my friends feel the same way. We all owe one another so many meals by now that there's no keeping track. Though I am sadly behind in the ledgers, as my pockets are usually empty. --And Meaux is a deadly place. Have you been there? I have no desire to make my life there, not by arguing some gentleman's case against the old woman who picks up firewood at the edge of his woods."

Yes, so much in common!

[cook_the_rude]

"It's still dreary, a cute little dead town whose inhabitants commute to Paris for work every day, a 'nice' part of the suburban wasteland around the metropolis," Dr. Lecter says. "A place where one would rather not hang dead over a fence."

Pause.

"Good meals is something you can find here, and friends to share them with. At least that is my experience."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

It's hard to imagine making the trip from Meaux to Paris every day, and back again. But Bossuet is too pleased with that turn of phrase, a place where one would rather not hang dead over a fence, to question it. "You understand quite well. My father kept the post office, which I think completes the picture."

A wistful look comes over his face. "Really? I have nothing to buy a meal with, but..." He coughs delicately. "And good company of course cannot be bought. Or so people like to say."

[cook_the_rude]

"I very much enjoy cooking, and sharing meals with friends," the doctor says. "Allow me?"