Chapter Text
When Svlad Cjelli would set his mind to something, he'd set it quite like Great Value crazy glue, solidly… mostly solidly, pretty sort of solidly. At 13:47 in the heart, the very life blood of New York City, that is to say within the subway tunnels beneath Grand Central station, Svlad Cjelli finds his mind set on two things: The first being that from this day forth he would actually enforce people's usage of the name Dirk Gently; if they wished to refer to him as Svlad he simply wouldn't respond, respectability be damned. The second is that he is done listening to The Universe, at least for the day, it can be damned too. And with the nihilistically defiant vigor that so many in their mid-twenties find themselves full of, Dirk Gently steps onto the downtown 6 train. See what The Universe thinks about that.
The Universe seemed to have a great many thoughts about that, which is why at 17:14 Dirk finds himself only four stops further than where he started. He stays put, legs rattling away, tucked into the corner seat he'd somehow managed to find. He couldn't shake the feeling that The Universe had been mocking him with that one: Here, have a seat, you won't want to be standing if you're planning on waiting this out.
But wait this out he will; he’d already decided it. So, he sits and rattles and lists. Dirk lists all of the New York City monuments he could call to mind—things like that one exit in that one park in the in the bottom rightish part of the city where you just end up having re-entered unless you're particularly vigilant, and The Museum of Sex that in all of its unabashedness was quite an inspiration. He lists his least favorite colors in order and ranks the finest pizza establishments he'd encountered thus far. And by god, were there some fine establishments. Bagels as well. He misses London, certainly—New York’s particular brand of stench and misery is exhausting—but he worries that he'll miss bagels just as much when he returns. The bread-goods status of this city is really quite incredible; if nothing else it will probably make the whole trip worth while.
It seems that the power of a long bagel rumination is mightier than that of wayward adrenaline, Dirk notes when he realizes he'd stopped rattling. But peace is a short-lived thing and an announcement crackles to life over the car’s PA. The train had run into the amorphous and terrifyingly vague concept of “trouble”.
Dirk's stomach sinks and chews with the word; with the very real potential of something horrific having happened. Project Icarus, courting death and disaster where ever he goes. No, he’s going to hold firm. His nerves are nothing more than an overreaction to some imagined threat. He will not get off the train.
Anxiety roils in him. Had something truly terrible happened, an ill-begotten trip and unceremonious fall, it would be nobody's fault but his and his stubbornness. Against his will and best judgment, he thinks of a life cut short. What if something’s happened to a child? Dirk vaguely registers that he's begun rattling again; finger pads playing the pianos of his palms and both legs tapping frantically to their own rhythms. Now that he's thought it, it's out there. What if that's what comes next? Being unable to remove himself from his thoughts, he finally does remove himself from the train. Moments later the train, coincidentally, finds its troubles resolved and removes itself from the station.
Dirk sighs. He can't go down that easily, not if he’s going to prove to himself that he has any agency. Not if he's to show himself and The Universe alike, and he looks begrudgingly to the space around him for emphasis, that he is a person and not a pawn. The fact is that the train had been a ruse; No one had actually been hurt. He takes all of five steps and sits down one of the subway’s benches.
He can feel what he's supposed to do. No, no no. It's not what he's supposed to do, it's what he's wanted to do by a questionably conscious external force. He's not going to keep conflating the two.
Still, he can feel the push and pull of it all. It nips at his limbs like some reversal of executive dysfunction. Executive hyper-function perhaps? He runs his hands through his hair and cradles his head. Sure, he may not be able to convince his body to move when it means doing something like cooking (just fine, delivery exists and is better than anything he would make for himself anyway) or standing (overrated), but when The Universe needs something it's suddenly like pulling teeth—or the opposite rather, maybe it's more like one of those dreams where your teeth just fall out willy nilly, he thinks—to keep his body from just hauling off to where it's needed…
Dirk sits on that bench of the downtown 6, twenty-odd blocks and three and a half hours from where he'd started, and stews, and waits. He'll take ten trains if that's what he has to do to end up anywhere but where he's supposed to be.
He releases his head with the thought, and as he looks up he sees someone trip. They hook their foot over their heel and fall in that slow motion dance of not quite being resigned to their fate but also seeing no way out of it. Dirk thinks it rather poetic and reflexive to his own situation. That is until the inevitable climax of the of the fall which lands the contents of a thirty two ounce cup, if you could really call something which holds thirty two ounces just a cup, unceremoniously across his person. The sweet slightly sticky lime-ness of it makes Dirk think it must have been sprite. Look at that, good detective work in even the grimmest of circumstances.
Well, Cand esti la Roma poarta-te ca romanii. Dirk is in New York and in a subway tunnel no less where the only manners to be found were from musicians, the homeless thanking people for their petty cash and kindnesses, and the automated voice asking you to mind the gap and allow the passengers who are trying to leave, to actually leave.
So, Dirk decides to hell with it. Well, less decides, and more recoils.
"What the fuck?" Rips with a sort of frenzied distress from Dirk’s very core; a place located somewhere beneath the middle of his newly sprite drenched shirt. "Sorry"s pour from the stranger as they regather themself and Dirk, more shocked than appalled, waves them off.
How could he actually bring himself to berate someone who had, clearly, just been a convenient play by The Universe to get Dirk moving? He ends up muttering to himself in Romanian, cantankerously preaching to his audience of one about having inadvertently saved that person from the vast and varied horrors that that trough of soda surely would have brought with it. Dirk begrudgingly peels himself from the bench and skulks through the exit gate. Universe one, Dirk zero. He didn’t expect that he’d finally have to leave on account of being drenched, sticky, and faintly sweet smelling. That was an underhanded and foul tactic.
Dirk tries to hollow his body away from his clothes as he heads up the stairs. He doesn’t succeed. When he finally looks up he's met with that distinct sense of being lost that accompanies emerging from underground onto an unfamiliar corner: It seems the entire world had upended leaving him with neither hope nor prayer to find his way through this new and uncharitable land.
Damn. Dirk thinks. That puts him in an incredibly compromised position. If he doesn't know where he is, then there's no way of him knowing where he's definitely not supposed to go. Whichever way he chooses will inevitably be the right way. Dirk presses himself to the railing at the subway's entrance. He glances left. He looks far down the street to the left. He glances right for a moment only to look left again. He really stares the bustling avenue down, and then turns right.
He regrets the choice immediately. Right is such an awful direction. One only to be taken in absolute desperation. His stomach flips and churns in that neon sign way that lets him know, "Hey you’ve messed up!"
So he turns right again.
Dirk heads across the nearest street in it’s imposing gloom, stark in contrast to the bright and living avenues that bookend it. A breeze cuts between the high columns of concrete and steel and dances around hollow bars of scaffolding. Dirk feels thankful that it isn't too hot of a day or the sprite he’s wearing would be even more unbearable. He pulls the damp hem of his shirt and thinks, there must be a clothing store or shops around here somewhere. The wide sunlit welcome of 5th avenue invites Dirk forward and immediately into the dense dark un-welcome of— Oh God.
In what Dirk could only think of as a multi-colored herd, dozens of clip board holders blockade the sidewalk. Each individual foraging for different signatures to draw attention to their wonderfully intentioned causes. They bob and amble like a parade of the most well meaning, longest of fuse, and kindest hearted bovine.
God, there are so many. Dirk feels his heart tense as he presses himself tight to the wall of the building beside him; maybe he could blend in with it and make it around them… He's existentially worn enough to be attempting to defy The Universe, he can't handle this too.
As he shimmies down the buildings length, two from different groups spot him. They approach him at once. Dirk thinks he understands the fear that those poor souls plowed down in The Running of the Bulls feel in the moments before they meet their fate. Fine! Fine fine fine! I'll go back! Every fibre of his body yells. Left it is.
The wash of rightness almost bowls Dirk over as he turns back on himself. The feeling of moving with the current of The Universe, the relief of being on the right path. Not knowing what it is, sure, but knowing that it's right.
“No. No.” Dirk says to himself. “I’m not doing that.” And stops. He’s back at the subway entrance.
There are three ways he could go, he's in wet clothes, and he has to make a choice... Or maybe he doesn't. He's supposed to go to a store. Get something. Probably new clothes… That would make sense.
"Fine, you want to play it that way?" Dirk says a little too loudly to the empty air. Much to his surprise, no one takes notice. He drifts a bit in the 'right' direction and then ducks into a shop.
He looks around, it's musty and dank in that way that shops filled with old and abandoned things are. He scans through its short, slight isles, made of wracks packed with every possibly genre of clothing imaginable. Dirk makes a point of being seen by the woman behind the counter and the one other person that he thinks may be working there. He walks, and pointedly picks up something gaudy, an outer layer of sorts. It’s hideous; A truly heinous insult to entire textile industry. Dirk loves it instantly. The subway might not have worked, but this should definitely hinder him. And, throwing the Monstrosity lavishly over his shoulder, Dirk walks out of the store.
He stops just outside of the door and waits. And waits. And when met with the onset of absolutely nothing, he turns around and looks in through the window. He looks at the woman behind the counter. She seems to be caught in a very heated one way argument with a computer screen. The person who he thought was working stops by her, says something, laughs and then heads towards the door picking up their phone. Good! They’ll definitely notice. They make their way out, look back at the 'cameras, shop lifters will be persecuted' sign in the window, and laugh, coughing out a “Hey boss, camera’s are down again and Melinda is losing her shit.”
Dirk stares at the shop tender, mouth caught open in his devastation. They eventually notice and stare back, then say, “Hold on. Hey asshole got a problem?”
Dirk keeps staring, then looks to the Creature draped over his shoulder, then looks back to the terrible employee and shakes his head in disbelief. He considers telling them that he had just, very obviously, stolen the incredibly loud item in his possession from their shop. That he had done so right in front of their very eyes! But he thinks better of it. Dirk still has some sense of self preservation. He’s afraid of being brought into police custody too many times, particularly now that he’s back in the U.S., and while generally no one can actually prove he’s done anything wrong, he assumes the CIA will only cover him for so many offenses. Moreover, if he were to end up in jail, something horrific would probably just happen to some clueless innocent who doesn't deserve incarceration so that Dirk would be in their orbit, or, even less agreeably, someone that Dirk would need to be aware of, someone who very much does deserve to be incarcerated, would wind up there instead. Neither option is too appealing.
He turns, brows pulling together, and whispers to the sky, “You’re just fucking with me now aren’t you?” As soon as the words leave his lips, something falls out of the Monstrosity’s pocket. Dirk’s eyes follow its motion as it flutters to the ground: A drop off laundry ticket. Dirk tips his head back and bemoans his good fortune. Well, there is his answer.