The Place of James Pain

Over the past few days, I’ve been RP’ing with a randomer over email as an audition for…something.

I’m playing Peter, a mid-life travelling (let’s say) salesman. The randomer is the story teller, and will be put in italics.

The story follows.

The stillness of the coffee shop shattered with the glass of the door, and the young man’s hand punched into the shop moments before he fell through. A gasp went up among the shop’s patrons as he landed on his hands and knees in the newly scattered glass.
For a few seconds there was silence. Trails of steam drifted up from paper cups and ceramic mugs on the tables in front of the readers and talkers in the room, but nothing else so much as flinched while cars hummed by and pedestrians on the street paused to look at the ruined entrance.
And then the man moved. He looked over his shoulder at the empty wooden frame of the door he had just come through, and with a low growl he pushed to his feet, seemingly unaware of the blood that dripped from his hands and forearms and the tear on the knee of his pants.
His eyes blazed with fury, and every person in the shop was given a taste of his anger as his gaze swept the room searchingly, his bleeding hands curling into fists as he took a step towards the frozen barista behind the counter.
“Where is she?” he roared.

Peter, after recovering from the shock of someone destroying a perfectly nice entrance, looked back down at his coffee and gave it another sip. He can’t stand nutters like this but guesses that there’s no helping them, especially in this bloody town.
He calmly looks up at the clearly injured man yelling at the shop barrister. He felt sorry for being put though such an ordeal, the least he could do is buy another coffee after this thing gets wrapped up.

The silence that met him only fuelled the man’s anger. “Where is she?! I know she’s in here!” And he advanced on the barista, stopping just short of pushing his way behind the counter. “Are you hiding her?”
“Sir… I’m sorry… I have no idea who you’re talking about,” she stammered, wide eyed and scared.
His roar left him red faced as blood spattered onto the floor, fists clenched tightly. “MY WIFE!”

Peter wonders where he could have misplaced his headache tablets as he fumbles around in his pocket. Looking down at his empty coffee cup, he wonders if this loony will take any longer.
Annoyed at the excess noise and lack of coffee service, he feels he needs to step in and try to get this guy to stop disrupting his break.
“Excuse me” Peter said loudly in a gap of vocal rage. “This wife, 5 foot 9? Brown hair? Sleek shoulders?” He said, reciting what he remembers seeing in some statistic thing in the newspaper while stabbing in the dark about the sleek shoulders.

“Yes!” He grabbed the man by the shoulders, and his grip was hard, fingers digging in, eyes fevered with hope. Blood dripped from his hand onto the man’s shirt, but he was oblivious to it. “You’ve seen her. Have you seen her? That fucking bitch,” he swore. “She’s in the back, isn’t she. I knew it.”
He let go abruptly and whirled around to shout at the opening to the back rooms. “I know you’re in there, you whore! Get the hell out here before I come after you!”

At this moment, Peter didn’t care how long it would take to clean this shirt, he just wanted another coffee and silence.
“Hold your horses, she’s not back there.”
Peter got up and walked to the counter to put his coffee cup on and to get closer to Mr. Vocal.
“She was in here for a bit, flirting with someone…

“Who? Who was it?” He ripped his gaze around the room, pinning every single person - and settling on some handsome businessman. “You? Was it you?”
“No… No, man, I don’t know your wife.” The guy blinked.
“Fucking bitch… If I catch her…” He paced in the tight space he had, whirling back around to face the man who’d given the description. “Which way did she go, then?”

Peter tried to indicate he wanted a refill but throwing a look to the barrister and placing his cup on the counter but failing to catch her attention. He went back to the man at hand. He considered pinning some blame on the businessman but quickly concluded that it wouldn’t get him out of the shop any faster. He instead opted for another plan and discreetly dropped an old business card from his pocket onto the floor.
“She left here not too long ago with the guy, was in quite a rush. Saying something about the Airport.” Peter shook his head. “I wasn’t really listening but I think the guy dropped something as he ordered here.”
Peter slightly put his foot over the dropped business card for added effect.

The young man’s eyes narrowed and his eyes snatched down to the ground. “I bet she was in a rush. When I came home and found-…” Like a hawk, he swooped down. “This? Was it this?” The card came up in the man’s hand, and even though it might’ve been clear evidence of his wife’s wrongdoings, he swept a hard, cold gaze around the room again.
“You bastards all knew, didn’t you. Go back to your coffees,” he spat at them in disgust, and then he examined the card to see what it said.

Peter leaned over slightly to look at which card he dropped. Durham & Son was an odd job mechanic shop he stopped off at to get his car cleaned up.
His thought was broken when another drop of blood dripped off the man’s hands.
Peter wondered if he could try to reason with this man, but swept it aside knowing it would probably fail. He hasn’t had this kind of situation for years, a little playing about with it couldn’t hurt.
“The way I see it, you have a few options, aside from blaming everyone in this room…” Peter leaned on the counter and continued. “Most of them involve going away from this place. You’re not going to catch up with your wife by just yelling your lungs out here. Feel free to do so though, we’ll just simmer in the fact that you’ll never catch her.”
Just in case, Peter braced for impact.

The man was scrutinizing every inch of the card, whipping it over to read its back, whipping it frontways again… He seemed stunned.
“A mechanic? A fucking mechanic?” He looked up from the card to the man, mouth opening and closing while his brain tried to wrap itself around that fact. “She threw it all away for a mechanic?”
He slid into a nearby seat and the girl that had been at the table scrambled to leave her chair as fast as she could. But the young man had put his head in his hands, the blood streaking in his sandy-brown hair.
“I have to find her,” he mumbled. Then he looked up. “Which way did they go?”

“You got me there”. Peter took a chair at the same table. “I was facing away from the street at the time.” Before the man could get another word out; “And I believe everyone else was too.”
Peter sighed. “Is there a mobile number you could call her at? You could use my phone if she’s ignoring you.” Peter leaned forward and makes eye contact. “If there’s busy echoed noise in the background then she’s at the airport she mentioned. Heck, I’ll even drive you there”.
‘Sure’ Peter thought ‘I’ve got nothing better to do today but drive round a nutter to open doors for him before he smashes them and to stop him harassing others. More importantly,’ Peter considered ‘to stop him blowing up that airport.’

We stopped the stop there, we both quite enjoyed this. The randomer even remarked that my responses were ‘clever’ which I was quite happy about.