Roleplay

There were impressions to be made.

The morning he was supposed to go to Liddy Oakley's, he woke up at 5AM for the first time since the investigation started, brushed his teeth, went for a run, returned home, only stared at his vodka before closing the door, and made his way to his bedroom, where he pulled out a black, collared shirt, and its matching T-shirt. The collared shirt had white flowers imprinted on its collar, with a pearl placed in the center where the stigma was to be and the petals wrapped around said pearl. There were thin, dull green stems coming from the flowers and when he pulled on the matching T-shirt, it appeared as though the stems disappeared beneath the sweater, or into his shirt, as if the flowers were growing out of him. The T-shirt did not have the pearls on them, but still had pressed white petals and dull green stems, though this time the stems all traveled around, in a circle, as if he had placed a wreath on them. He picked through his hair, doing his best to let it stand to its fullest, before turning to his pants to face the more difficult decision; beige, pressed dress pants; grey paper-bag pants, or white, linen pants. In the end, he decided to wear the white pants, as it didn't call much attention to itself and therefore let the shirt speak for itself. To elevate the look and to look more professional, he wore polished brown oxfords (from his time at Hermes' Wings. He breathed in deeply as he put them on-- but Liddy didn't need to know about that).

Work was a slog as it had been the past few days; Noelle's forehead was pinched, Ollie kept casting worried glances at Noah and some sort of unreadable-probably-negative look at Roderick, and Noah looked tired, dark circles under his eyes and a beard that was beginning to look perhaps unkept. Tanya was eyeing all of them with some sort of goddamnit-how-am-I-stuck-with-these-people sort of expression that she somehow could exacerbate when the moment called for it.

Not helping was Mason, who appeared to be garnering grey hairs over Blue Ocean. Not for unjust reasons; they had just had two more hits by people with blue die dangling by their mirrors and the guy they got wouldn't crack. He knew nothing, he said, eyes wide and hands shaking. He knew nothing, could provide us nothing, he thought he wouldn't get caught. It was an interesting stream of words, one that made everyone feel as though something was wrong, that they had missed something crucial (they probably had).

By the time Roderick looked at his phone and realized he was late to meet Liddy Oakley, his eyes were watering from staring at the screen, he had watched Noelle and Tanya argue, genuinely argue over the information they had gotten from the suspect, Noah had gone to the bathroom and returned with red-rimmed eyes, and Ollie had disappeared and come back smelling like smoke at least three times that day. Mason, meanwhile, hadn't been seen since three in the afternoon, putting everyone on his team into a fouler and fouler mood as their in-charge didn't return. It turned out he was chasing down another lead and thought he had told everyone, but it turned out the message was still in his outbox, or whatever.

Needless to say, tensions were ratcheting up and Roderick was relieved to find Tacos Leo where it was supposed to be. They had only a few types of food; tacos al pastor and alambres al pastor, and they served them with a slice of pineapple from the spinning cutlet of meat that they used to fill their tacos. Hoping that Liddy actually liked Mexican food, Roderick ordered twenty, grateful that each was barely over a dollar in price, and scarfed down five while sitting in his car, having skipped lunch because something or another was on fire and he was needed to help analyze.

Finally making it to Liddy's at nearly an hour later than he intended, he finally sent an apologetic text message to Liddy that he was finally, finally there.