19380828 01:40:32

19380828 01:40:32

QH-N-5448

Her deliberation in opening the door and removing the key from the lock and her shoes from her feet was more for concern of her afflicted stability rather than ensuring that she didn't make too much noise. John was indeed audibly asleep, and his snores echoed from the upstairs bedroom down the stairwell with enough volume and contrast against the otherwise silent house to shock her senses into higher functionality. Other days, she would have become angry at having to endure such loudness, but today she merely softly laughed to herself as it reverberated in the foyer. Her ticket out of here had indeed arrived, though the date wasn't quite settled yet.
Helen walked over to the kitchen faucet in her bare feet and poured herself some water in a white coffee mug, then brought it to the table. She pinched the top of a seat with two fingers and lightly pulled it away so that she could finally sit down and stretch her legs out while finally being off of her feet.
This gave her time to recollect everything that had happened at the cast party.
Davenport. Carl Davenport was his name. The owner of Arcadia, where they were playing, and a few others. Did he say he had the new Aurora on O and 60th as well? She knew it to be a huge hall, and didn't recall anyone else's name being mentioned as the owner. Whatever. Carl was who got Peter Mullins into the business. Carl held these places because he had an eye for the talent - so why shouldn't he have taken notice of herself? There was a gold band on his right hand, but he rarely kept it out in the open and it was plain. So that means that he's probably had it a while - well, that or it's something that was handed down from a prior generation to him for his use. Hopefully the latter was the case, though taking care of the former probably wouldn't be too much of an issue. Especially with how he kept looking over to her when she broke off to take trips to the bathroom. He didn't seem to do that with anyone else there, not that she thought that there really was much of an arguable better choice. No, it seemed pretty clear that she'd be able to get him tamed if she wanted, but that would have to wait. She wasn't going to succumb to the will of some senior, even if he wasn't that bad looking, just to become an easy lay and yet another whore earmarked in his book for him to recall once in a blue moon. Carl owned property. Carl owned people. Now was no better chance for her to become not merely another item marked as owned on his list - it was time for her to become a co-owner. How soon? Well, probably some time after the play ends its first week or half-month run, hopefully enough profit is shown that she can catch him on his good graces. As long as that happens, all she'd have to do is play up how it was all possible thanks to him. It would be as simple as stroking the ego. Otherwise, she'd have to have a plan in place if things happen to go south with the production. Maybe she'll get someone fired on the pretense that it was that person's poor work which held it all down.  She mused at the thought of using that lien of logic to be about to oust Elisa from the production.
After making that contemplation, she looked around the kitchen and noticed that she began to feel a bit of pity for John. As far as she could tell, he was as faithful to her as he was supportive, and he was able to maintain this small house on his own earnings before she moved in, so it's not like he was a complete bum. She could easily think of worse people to be with and places to be. But she had now considered that this station in her life had served its purpose and that it was time to move on. The thought of settling down with a daily laborer like John, someone who suffered in the daily grind only to wake up and come home and drink a few beers and repeat the next day, someone who really didn't have the eye or ear for the finer arts, someone who had no desire for or understanding of a night life; she felt that these were all fine things for a woman who was less than her. That's the kind of man who might be a halfway decent father to a few children, and that's the kind of man that she had no interest in remaining with for the rest of her life. If she had any doubt about it, all she had to do was close her eyes and listen to the snoring.