milliways_bar | (no subject)

"She's not being any trouble is she? I'm not using 147 at the moment so you could always put her in there if she's taking up your space."

Plus being next door, it's nice and handy.

"Like I said, my old room. I've got plenty of space of my own now. Heck, I don't even have to keep a path clear to the door- there's bookshelves and things..." Ray grins. "It's all good, Guppy, don't worry about it. How're you?"

"Overworked, underslept, worried about half a dozen people and coming to terms with the fact that there have now been fourteen deaths in my department in nineteen years and that somewhere people watched it. But putting all of that aside,I'm okay thanks." Guppy replies, managing a smile as he lies through his teeth. He's getting a bit better at it now. Sooner or later he might even be able to say it with eye contact.

"That's good," Ray says. "You know, I have this bridge I was thinking of putting on the open market. I figured I'd offer you first right of refusal, though. Interested?"

"A bridge? You mean like one over a river? Where?"

"Brooklyn. Well- Manhattan to Brooklyn, really, but it's called the Brooklyn Bridge. Ever heard of it?"

"I think so yeah. How come you're selling it? I can't afford it by the way but thanks for the offer."

Ray sighs. "It's an American saying, Guppy. 'Yeah, right, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you' is the equivalent of-" He thinks for a bit. "'Pull the other one, it's got bells on'? Is that it?"

~~The mun, who hadn't heard this expression either, laughs her head off at her own stupidity~~

Head, meet table.

Guppy smiles, and refrains from swearing.

"Well how the hell was I supposed to know? You could have been given it as a reward for saving the city."

"A bridge?" Ray shakes his head. "Guppy, 'saving the city' usually translates out to 'fifty thousand dollars a pop'. A private citizen controlling one of the bridges that allows access to Manhattan would be completely unthinkable. There's only so many of them."

"Yes, okay Ray I think I feel stupid enough now. What were we talking about before you baffled me with bizarre American expressions?"

"Sorry. Um, I think I asked how you were doing, and you said you were all right. Does that sound about right to you?"

All this architectural talk has completely destroyed Guppy's train of thought.

"Yes, I think."

Beat.

"I haven't yet become convincing then?"

"Not really," Ray says. "But you're getting there. You're way better than I am, at any rate."

"I don't really like lying to people. But I don't like worrying them either."

He sips his tea.

Ray nods. "I'm just no good at it, myself," he says conversationally. "Things are tense again back home, huh?"

Guppy nods.

"One of my colleagues has MRSA, another drove her car into the sea the day before yesterday, taking two others with her. She drowned and they got out, but one is still in intensive care. The whole department is still in shock, as well as severely short-staffed.
"On top of that I have destroyed any chance I had of rebuilding some sort of relationship with my father by shopping him to my boss after finding out he was involved in a very dodgy drugs trial."

He sips his tea.

"The writers must have had a field day."

"Ooooh," Ray says, wincing. "Yeah, that sounds nasty. I wonder if you could apply for a transfer to a soap-opera hospital and have your problems involve gorgeous women instead."

"...that was really an incredibly insensitive thing for me to say, wasn't it? I'm sorry, Guppy."

Guppy puts his head in his hands. He'd only just managed to convince himself it wasn't a soap after his conversation with Peter yesterday.

"It's okay." he says after a moment. "Peter's reaction was more or less the same yesterday."

"Well, for what it's worth, I really don't think it's a case of writers making things happen anyway," says Ray. "And I'll tell you why..."

He nods to the rest of the Bar.

"If it were, there'd have to be some kind of collaborative agreement between all the writers and producers of all of the people here. There is no possible way to get that many copyrights straightened out. If you ask me, those of us who appear in movies and television are just being remembered by people in these other worlds as a sort of inspiration at a distance. We determine what happens to their writing, not the other way around."

"That wasn't exactly what I meant. But thank you for that theory, it is rather reassuring."

He sips his tea.

"What I meant was with that amount of plot going on in Holby, the writers must have thought they'd come up with some really great TV. Watching my friend die must have been very entertaining."

His voice sounds a little tight. He fiddles with his hair.

"Ah." Ray wrinkles his nose. "Yeah... yeah, I can see that being an uncomfortable thought. Although it kind of makes me wonder- have you talked to Eska Smith lately? There was something she told me..."

Guppy shakes his head. "No, I haven't seen her since the birth. And then we didn't have much time for a chat. What did she say?"

"Oh, she said in her world there's a mineral called narrativium. It apparently has the effect of warping reality around it to make people's actions conform to what would constitute a good story, unless they know enough to either fight back or subvert the story to their own ends."

"Good as in entertaining or good as in happy ending?"

Guppy doesn't really like the sound of that.

[ooc: mun has to go for dinner. Back around tennish, three and a half hours or so]

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gone_byebye - 2005-08-22 17:32 (UTC) - Expand

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guppy_sandhu - 2005-08-22 21:26 (UTC) - Expand