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He gripes about it every time assignments come out, but Norton enjoys traveling for work. The way he sees it, it’s the closest thing in this life that he'll ever get to a vacation, so he tries to put a positive, if pitiable, spin on it to keep him company through the long hours traveling and longer hours underground.
Sure, he's still drinking himself senseless at a seedy bar, but now he's in Dallas, so it feels higher class, if only marginally.
He’s on his third glass of gin, and he’s feeling it, too. The grating pair of pick miners he’s been stuck with for a while now are howling in the corner over something he doesn’t need to be aware of to know it’s not funny, and if he gets roped into another one of their drunken dares or failed attempts at soliciting one of the bar girls he’s going to snap, and he can’t afford to lose this job just yet.
This job. This damn, fucking job. The one that killed his pop and is killing his uncle and just about every other man he’s ever known. The one that’s going to kill him soon if the shit he coughs up every morning is any indication. This job that’s tantamount to addiction—how badly he needs it even as it harms him.
But he’s almost free, and he’s certain now that he’s going to be the one to do it, to break through the oppressive yolk of poverty and see what new life looks like on the other side.
Every time he closes his eyes, he sees the map he built up from Benny’s list. Mine locations dotted across the South with no rhyme or reason, darts haphazardly thrown at an aging piece of paper tacked to a hollow wall. For all Norton knows, that could be all this is—a random assortment of nothing. Maybe Benny is really using his last years of life just to fuck Norton over. Wouldn’t be all that surprising.
He starts to laugh at that miserable thought, his stomach quivering with it, but the laughter shakes his lungs enough to trigger some coughing, and he works hard to calm it to avoid drawing too much attention. All this trouble, and still the black lung comes for him, quick as lightning and just as deadly.
Another rowdy round of laughter erupts from the other side of the room, and he catches a glance from one of the bar girls, who rolls her eyes at the commotion and then smiles invitingly at him, and the shock that sends to his system is enough to knock sense and shame into him alike.
What a sorry excuse of a man he's being right now. Paid lodging in a new city, a whole day off tomorrow, and a beautiful woman eyeing him like he's a cool glass of water on a summer day, and he isn’t moved by any of it.
He’s about to go up to her for a chat and another round of that bottom shelf gin he’s been guzzling when the front doors fling themselves open, and a man too young and too wealthy looking to be here for any good reason dashes into the bar. He looks frazzled, nervously glancing over his shoulder out the window as he tucks most of his body behind the adjacent wall.
Trouble, Norton thinks immediately, and he sits himself back down to watch as whatever this is unfolds.
The man stands there like a fool for the better part of a minute, and when nothing of any note occurs, he abandons his post at the door and turns to take in the many inhabitants of the run-down, little bar he’s found himself in. Norton suppresses a laugh when his face drops. It’s always amusing watching rich folk take stock of the lowly masses whenever they stumble upon them.
The man recovers from his initial shock and begins to straighten his rumpled waist coat and smooth the sleeves of his coat jacket—deep, blood red, devilishly complementary to his dark hair—before rapidly scanning the room for something and evidently finding it when he meets Norton’s eyes. Everything happens so quickly he hardly has a chance to straighten in surprise before the man is sitting in the chair across from him and giving him a subdued, polite nod.
“Hello.” By the single word, it's evident that he is frantically breathless still, and Norton watches as he continues to throw the occasional glance over his shoulder at the door and adjacent windows. “I'm avoiding someone, may I sit here?” He’s got a strange accent, one Norton can’t place and immediately doesn’t trust.
“No.”
“Oh—uh.” He doesn't move, but now he eyes Norton with the same hesitance he gives the door. “Can I ask you to reconsider?”
“I’d really rather you didn’t talk to me at all, but I guess I can’t do much about it unless I wanna cause a scene.” And normally he would get up and leave, but the weight of the three glasses of gin is feeling awfully heavy right now, and this man is currently less annoying than the idea of moving—but only by a bit.
“No, I suppose not.” He gives Norton a moment of his full attention, then cracks the slightest of smiles, a little uneven and showing just enough of his teeth that Norton can see an offensively crooked canine among the otherwise neat rows. Teeth like that look expensive. This man definitely has money, and when men with money start to get nervous, the rest of them are usually well passed fucked.
“The name’s Luca Balsa.” He holds out his hand. Norton doesn't take it.
“You trouble, Balsa? Cuz I ain't taking on trouble. You can find yourself another seat real quick.”
“What? That?” He gestures to the door. “Oh, no, it's not so serious. I'm going to get heavily reprimanded by my mentor, but we haven't tried to kill each other yet. As for the other gentleman I pissed off…” He glances back again. “Well, I’m sure he’ll be less angry when he isn’t so drunk, but I don’t want to find out just yet.”
That’s a lot to take in, but the first thing that catches Norton’s attention is—“Your mentor?”
He takes a break from surveilling the front to take stock of Norton in all his tipsy, miserable glory. He feels studied, comparatively underdressed and, for a hot flash of a second, something like shame shoots through him, then someone slams a tankard down so hard beer sloshes out and the raucous laughter of some of the other miners fills the room and Norton remembers that no, this man is the one out of place. He belongs here. He’s fine.
“Yes, my mentor. I'm an inventor.”
Norton leans back, comfortable now in his drunken numbness and reassured in his cohesion with the world around him.
“Uh huh.” He laughs, a little cruelly. An inventor, an idealist, the town quack. Norton knows men like this. “Sureee thing. Luca, the inventor. And what's a rich boy like you doin’ in a place like this?”
“We’re displaying our work at the International Exhibition.” Norton raises a brow. “The World's Fair?”
“Ah.” That’s right. He’s seen the signs, had heard the town was a bit heavier than usual. “That’s where all the snobby people are coming from, then.”
Luca laughs loud, then curbs it into something smaller, something restrained and polite. Just the right amount. Acceptable. It is ill-suited and uncomfortable on him, like a too-small pair of shoes. If Norton were rich, if he had the means and desire to know this person, he’d buy him a drink just to see him unravel a little. “You didn’t know? It’s quite a big deal. I figured everyone in town would know about it.”
“I ain’t a local. I’m just here for work.”
An unfounded smile splits his face. “Same as me.”
There’s nothing about the two of them Norton would ever describe as “the same.”
“Sure.”
Luca slips further into his chair. He’s getting comfortable—not a good sign for Norton’s chances of being unburdened by his presence any time soon. “Who do I have the pleasure of sharing my evening with?”
“The name’s Campbell.”
He hums thoughtfully. “Last name only?”
“You’re lucky you got that.”
He laughs, “I suppose,” and throws another look back at the door, an opportunity Norton takes to give him a proper once over. He’s slim, but doesn’t look like he’s starving, so he’s probably not a conman about to try and cheat him out of something. If he were a conman, Norton doesn’t think he’d be a very good one. He possesses a strange eagerness, and he’s distractingly distinct with his long hair, angular features, and the strong hook of his nose all lending to a striking profile. Norton could pick him out of a crowd easily.
Luca’s focus returns to him, but Norton doesn’t try to hide the fact that he’s staring, and his new companion’s eyes flare with satisfaction in response. Norton decides then that he doesn’t mind looking at him. He’s had much worse sights to keep him company to the bottom of the bottle.
“Where’re you from, Balsa?”
“New York City—” city boy, shocker—“Europe before that.”
“You're a long way from home, then.”
He shrugs distantly, subdued again, but in a way that feels truer than it did before. “I always am.”
Something in Norton quakes faintly, and it shakes loose some of his resolve.
“Y’know,” he says. “It’d look more natural if you had a drink of your own.” Their eyes meet. “If you’re trying to blend in and all that. Maybe lose the fancy coat, too.”
Luca smiles, broad and blinding and real, and slips free of his coat before making his way to the bar, oddly accommodating of a stranger’s suggestions. Norton gets a better look at that fine patterned waistcoat underneath, the kind that’s laced up tight in the back and looks like a hassle to get on and off by himself, and while it does nothing to help Luca “fit in” better, he appreciates the view.
It would be smart to leave now while he still can. Maybe he can salvage some of this night by sulking alone at a different bar or by falling face-first into his shitty temporary housing accommodations and getting some sleep before the other men get back and keep him up all night with their violent coughing fits, but Luca returns before he can firmly make a choice, and Norton was here first, anyway, so he’s holding his ground.
He prefers his drinking partners taciturn, but it quickly becomes clear Luca is anything but that, and before he knows it, he’s learning a lot about things he doesn’t really care about and probably wouldn’t have conceived much of before tonight.
Luca’s a drifter in his speech; he meanders fluidly back and forth from tangent to tangent, but he always returns to his center of gravity, to this machine of his that Norton thinks sounds like a load of horseshit. If it is real, though, this endless, energy-generating contraption, then the way he and his family have lived for generations, however miserable it may have been, are in danger of extinction.
“This is the future,” Luca says wildly, gesticulating with his nearly empty glass to emphasize the point and bouncing his leg rapidly and obnoxiously under the table as continues. “We’re on the cusp of a technological revolution.”
Despite his earlier acquiescence, Norton can feel his well of patience drying up once again. He really doesn’t care for rich men and their genius ideas to change the world. In his opinion, you need to be of the world to change it, and men like Balsa, who’ve never done a hard day’s work in their lives, are not of it the way he is.
“You’re real excited about this thing that’s gonna put me out of a job,” he says, open in his hostility.
Luca recoils, stunned into blissful silence for a beat before he regains his composure. “What? No. Not at all. It–it would be an adaptation. A change, is all,” he insists. “Energy production with less casualties.”
“Uh huh.”
“I mean it. Career options would pivot, uh, power-line installation, facility maintenance, electricians,” he lists off on his fingers. “The workforce will reshape to fit the new schema, but it’s not—it won’t—” he takes a breath, the heat of the alcohol and his excitement on display in the bloom of red on his face. “It’s a good thing.” He sounds less confident than he did before. “It would be good.”
“Ok. Sure. Folks round here ain’t too fond of change, though. They change the slop they serve for lunch a few days early and these men get ready to riot. What’s your big plan for that?”
“Well, I think they’ll agree once it starts happening. Why would anyone object to progress like this?”
Norton scoffs. The combination of gin and this irritant of a man is making him feel mean.
“Y’know, I ain’t convinced that you know a thing about the world at all. None of you people do. And how’re you gonna change it if you don’t know it?”
Luca scowls. “I know the world.”
“No. You know your world, maybe, but you’ve got a real wide-eyed understanding of how things work round these parts. Hang around the folks I run with, and you’ll see how quick that gets crushed outta a man. You ain’t got a clue what you’re gettin’ yourself into.”
Luca stares at him for a long time, a growing resignation clear in his eyes, and Norton, damn his heart, begins to feel a little sorry for him. It’s not easy to have your worldview refuted so swiftly, to have a little bit of your hope for the world crushed, especially when you’ve had a drink or two.
Norton sighs. “Look, I’m just tellin’ you the truth. You walk around here talkin’ about how you're gonna save all these men from the only life they’ve ever known with your magic machine, and you're gettin’ laughed outta town.” And possibly his ass kicked, but he already looks dismayed enough that Norton’s not sure he needs to add that.
A disarming and uncomfortable silence settles upon them. Luca fumbles mindlessly with his glass, and while Norton doesn’t feel great about squandering this man’s enthusiasm for the night, he hopes it knocks some sense into him, though he’s doubtful.
“Alright,” Luca says suddenly. “I understand your point. What about you, then?”
“What about me?”
“What do you believe in?”
Norton snorts. “The gold standard.”
That gets a hint of a smile. “You must believe in something.”
He shrugs halfheartedly. “Welcome to the real world, Balsa. Dreamers and mystics don't survive here very long.”
He leans forward, a curious glint in his eyes. “Tell me about it, then. Your world.”
“Oh, come on, now.”
“No, really. I want to learn. Tell me about yourself.”
They go back and forth on this until Luca just starts asking him questions about himself, of which he only answers a handful. Most people find him an off-putting and hostile acquaintance with walls that rival that of the stone coffins he's spent the majority of his life excavating, but Luca doesn’t seem to mind trying to climb up over them.
The conversation begins to interest him when he mentions his family is from Mexico, and he discovers that Luca knows enough Spanish to introduce himself and ask him about the weather, but his dialect is full Spaniard, and he grows embarrassed when Norton starts to poke fun at him for it, and that’s enough to get a real laugh out of him.
They slip further into inebriation as the night drags on, everything becoming hazy and pleasant and numb, and Norton is starting to think he doesn't mind the company so much when there's a commotion outside. Nothing serious, just the kind of scuffle and frenzy of muted shouting that accompanies a fight spilling out into the streets. Certainly nothing that's out of the norm in an area with so many bars, but Luca stiffens and slides closer to Norton, hunching over the table and making himself look more conspicuous in his attempt to do the opposite.
Someone outside hollers, then bangs into the door, and the bar girl up at her station groans in annoyance. Just another Saturday night, Norton thinks with fond humor. Before he can do a thing about it, Luca reaches forward and steals the cap from atop his head and is pressing it down on his own in what he must think is an attempt to blend in. It looks stupid on him, and now Norton's head is cold, and he thinks, were he sober, he would've broken this man's wrist for taking anything off his person.
“You are testin’ my patience, Balsa.”
He glances up at Norton from where he’s bowed over the table with pleading eyes and a guilty smile. “I’ll cover your tab for your trouble.”
“Yeah. You’re damn right, you will.” The commotion tumbles off further down the street, and Luca sighs and sheepishly returns Norton's hat. “What the hell’d you even do to warrant all the fuss?”
“Ohhh, you know,” he says cheekily as he swirls the remaining drink in his cup. He seems lighter already with the perceived threat moved along and somewhat giddy with his new proximity to Norton. “I said some rather improper things to a competitor. I’ve been known to take a—hm, I believe my mentor called it ‘childish and uncouth’—tone with people.”
Norton laughs under his breath. “Uh huh. That mouth of yours get you in trouble often?”
Luca grins wickedly at this, eyes rife with mischief and face flushed. He is sitting so close to Norton now that he can smell his cologne. “Oh sure,” he hums. “Into trouble, out of trouble.” He sips at his drink, slow and stupid, eyes locked on Norton with an unbecoming intensity as he swallows hard. “It does a lot for me, actually.”
Norton surprises himself with another laugh, this one a full bark that leaps out of him. The audacity. The confidence. This man is ridiculous, but Norton would be lying if he said it wasn’t a little bit enticing. Stumbling into a random bar in this part of the city and flirting with the first man that catches your eye is a bit of a death wish, but luckily for him, Norton is amused and obliging.
“Is that so?”
This is a dangerous thing to say, but everything Luca's said so far has been dangerous. The layers of plausible deniability are being peeled back further and further. Soon they won’t be able to pretend they aren’t talking about what Norton’s 95% sure they’re talking about, and then what?
Luca taps his knee to Norton’s thigh, just for a second, and Norton’s jaw slackens in surprise. How the fuck is he so sure about this? If Norton weren’t the type of man Luca’s pegged him for, he’d be well within his right to beat the hell out of him.
“Oh, yes. It is.” He smiles, leans forward, and slightly raises his brows to make his eyes look bigger. He should put a stop to this. Norton knows flirting when he sees it, he just never expects it to come so flagrantly from another man. Perhaps it’s true that homosexuality is less of a burden on the elites, but if any of the other men in this bar spot them and pick up on what’s happening, they’re in trouble
Luca is watching expectantly, a curious tilt of his head, a slight hitch of his eyebrow. He’s asking a question, and all Norton can think about is how pretty his brown eyes look in the amber glow of the bar. It seems they do share a commonality of some sort.
“You’re a liar.”
He blinks, but doesn’t look fazed. “About what?”
“You are trouble.”
Luca chuckles. “And you are an invigorating drinking partner, Mr. Campbell. And an excellent accomplice.” Norton opens his mouth to push back on that, when Luca says, “How can I thank you?”
“Buy me another drink.”
“Ok!” He stands quickly, then smacks a hand flat against the table to steady himself, and Norton instinctively catches him by the elbow, then releases him as soon as he’s certain that Luca’s steady. The last thing he needs is this man falling onto his table and hurting himself.
He spares a self-conscious glance for the other miners, but they're thankfully all far too sloshed to care what he and his new friend are up to. Luca leans heavily on the bar counter and says something that makes the bar girl giggle. When Norton sidles up next to him, he throws a beaming smile over at him and says, “Whatever he wants,” to the woman.
Norton rewards him with a smirk and proceeds to order a glass of bourbon from the top shelf. Luca looks briefly offended, then he dissolves into loose laughter that he tries to bury in the back of his hand. “Well, I suppose that’s fair,” he mutters.
“He'll be pickin’ up the rest of my tab, too, Miss.” Luca rolls his eyes, but nods in reluctant assent.
The night bleeds on hastily after that, ushered on by the liquor haze of that strong, fine bourbon and the shockingly pleasant company of the man it’s courtesy of. Norton is just starting to wonder how they’ll both fare on the stumble back to their respective lodging quarters later when Luca says, “I should go. I’m sure I’ll get what I’m owed tomorrow, but I think it’s likely everyone’s temperaments have cooled by now.”
Norton’s about to ask him what the hell he’s talking about when he remembers that Luca’s only here because Norton was convenient for him, and that leaves his mouth bitter.
“Right. Sure.”
Luca steps away to settle their bill while Norton taps his fingers on the worn wood of the table below him. He’s thinking about how he’s going to spend tomorrow morning recovering from his hangover, and the rest of his day mourning the fact that he only gets to be above ground for a full 24 hours once a week, and that’s enough to send the depressing reality of his situation crashing back into him. Fuck. It’s either give up and succumb now or get drunk to try and forget a little longer.
“Have you been to the World's Fair?”
He jumps at the sound of Luca’s voice, having convinced himself he had left already.
“Technology the likes of which you've never seen, et cetera, et cetera? Maybe a breakthrough or two for a miner such as yourself. I hear they're developing some other safety improvements. Something that'll make the job a little easier on you for the time being.” He has a curious, pensive look about him, that naive optimism manifesting in a new way, and Norton scoffs. He can't imagine a world in which the coal barons care about safety enough to spend undue cash.
“Nope. Sounds expensive.”
Luca digs around in his pocket and, after sifting through some crumpled bills and a few spare bolts he abandons on the table—so strange—hands Norton a folded ticket. “I'll say I lost mine. Come see me. I'll show you what I'm working on.”
He does not wait for an answer. Norton watches him go, and he does not feel fine about it.
He catches the last lingering glance Luca tosses back over his shoulder, and as soon as the door swings shut behind him, Norton questions if he was ever really there. The ticket in his hand is real though, however thin-papered and flimsy it may be, and he wonders briefly if he could resell it for a higher price than it’s worth.
He’ll consider it. He’ll think about it.
Or maybe he’ll go. Maybe there’s more benefit to be found in the technology he’ll see than there is in the coin he’ll make off this thing, if any at all. Maybe that strange man and the fire in his eyes and voice could light something in Norton, spark a new idea, a way out of this life for good.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Norton finishes the last of his drink off slow and tries to see into Luca’s world, where everything grows easy as the world spins on, and he doesn’t have to betray his uncle and sneak into a dozen, dilapidated mines just for a shot at something beyond this life.
Foolish, maybe. Naive, definitely, but who knows? Stranger things have happened.