The Snowasis isn't particularly busy this night, which could be why Jo is entering and making a beeline for the bar counter. Some of her Glacier wingmates can be seen playing darts with some of the Savannah riders, and there looks to be an intense card game being played by cavern workers at a table towards the back. Making herself comfortable on a stool, the black leathered woman looks over who's running behind the counter this night as if she's seeking someone in particular. "Oy!"
Off at the other end of the bar, a familiar face. Well, slightly familiar, at this stage, anyway, and not so much of a face as a side of a head. Everett has a rag in one hand and is clearly supposed to be doing some cleaning-up, but instead he's got his eye on that card game, even at a distance, half wistful and half a sort of concentrating squint like he might possibly get the right angle to see somebody's hand if he just cranes his neck the right away. He should be paying attention to the arrival of new patrons, but it does take the shout to jerk his head back in the appropriate direction. He doesn't have the grace to look flustered by it, as he heads over, dragging the rag along the bar-top and around a few people's glasses in the process. "'Oy' yourself. If this is how the staff are treated around here, I'm not surprised they had an opening." But he's smiling.
"Do I get free drinks for gettin' ya this gig?" Jo greets in this manner, turning slightly to eye that card game she notes him looking towards. "Cuz, ya know, ya could be workin' in the latrines if not for me. Or somethin'. I should get somethin' for that. What's up with the card game?" She can switch topics like a harper, propping up an elbow as she leans against the counter towards him.
An exaggerated look around. "I think that warrants at least a drink." Surely there have to be a few perks to being the guy back there with all the bottles, right? Well, if he ends up losing this job because he's being too free with it, there's always that latrine thing. "They're all very into it, but I think the fellow in the blue is sitting on a good hand and I can't figure out why. He does have about half a bottle of bad whiskey in him at this point, but still, I didn't think it was enough for him to go blind." Voice kept down there, might as well not ruin it for the other players.
"Stingy," is what Jo calls him without breath, but he may notice that she doesn't turn down that single drink offer. Instead, she takes idle study of the card game table at play running a hand through her hair as Everett speaks. "I take it that's yer vice?" she asks for his observations, turning an amused eye on him. "A gambled a few too many times'n ended up in our family's house?" 'Family's house' being Greenfields since they're surrounded. To the game at hand, "He could be cheatin'," she gives with nonchalance. "He's probably playin' off bein' an old drunk."
"If I end up unemployed again," Everett observes, "then all the effort's wasted, isn't it? Anyway, what do you like?" He finally tosses the rag back into the bucket of soapy water behind the bar, and leans against the bar with a more relaxed posture. "I wouldn't call it a vice. Give me a deck of cards and I'll never be bored or lonely. Putting a little more skin in the game than that does keep one on one's toes, but I don't want you thinking I'm the sort of layabout needed family to pay my debts. I pay my own debts." Just a slight pause. "Might make it two. Since you're such a sweetheart."
"Y'all never be that, here," Jo notes on unemployment in her bantering. "There's always some dirty job to be done. Granted, yer talents would be wasted cleanin' latrines all day, though I'd imagine many would gab in the latrines, too." Pause. "Straight whiskey," is her drink order with a smile. "I'll go easy on ya. Yer are a gambler." She seems to be making observations on Everett, too, now as she looks him over. "Ya look like a gambler, anyway. Two drinks'll getcha a pat on the back with me, darlin'," she adds in thanks to the last. "How's this place treatin' ya, anyway?"
The real token of esteem, here, is that free drink or no, Everett doesn't pour it from the worst bottle on hand. He pushes the glass across the bar to her. "That begs the question of what three would get me." Look, it's just curiosity, which may have killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back. "I'm a lot of things," he finally muses, "but that's one of them, yes. Getting settled in. Getting to know people. Getting to know things. All this business with Igen. I hadn't even imagined. Folks seem tense, at least until the first couple drinks. Then, well."
Drawing up the glass with a waggle of brows, "Three gets yer foot in the door," Jo answers after a beat before taking a drink. "It's a gamble from there, but, yer a gamblin' young man I reckon. What 'bout this business in Igen? What folks yer been meetin' up in here?" She's pumping Everett for information, of course. She doesn't seem to be hiding that fact. At least she asks, belatedly, "'N the Weyr? How ya holdin' here? Our uncles want a good report to see yer well settled, see."
There's gambling as in poker, and then there's gambling as in Russian roulette. Still, she's still on the first drink, and Everett doesn't show any overt sign of whether he's pleased with that answer. "Duly noted," blandly, then on to other things: "Various people seem to think Igen's got some sort of designs on High Reaches. Farideh's from Igen, turns out. Pretty. Defensive. Lot of pretty around here." His eyes drift, there, not to his compatriot but to a clutch of younger people laughing at one of the tables. "You can tell them I'm pleased as the proverbial pig. Strangest thing, though, walk out on the patio, sky's full of dragons. Go out for a little fresh air, feel like you stepped into a teaching ballad. Wheel and turn, all that."
"So's the Weyrwoman," Jo adds on Igen transplants. "Irianke. Designs on the Reaches, eh?" That seems to give the convict rider some pause as she looks over those in the bar. "Mm. Could be," she muses aloud slowly. "At least one of'em's the ambitious type. The other's shown anythin' to suggest so. Have folks been expressin' their opinion on either of them?" she asks Everett now, the question not an idle one as she drains her glass and sets it audibly down. She nods on him being fine in the Weyr, seeming pleased to hear it. "Try bein' here durin' a matin' flight," is all she says to the last as she nudges her glass forward.
"Irianke. I haven't met her. Even Farideh, I was half afraid I'd forget how to use actual words. I didn't think someone like that would end up sitting right there just like anyone else." A nod indicates the spot Jo currently occupies. With her glass empty, he obligingly pours a second time. Maybe he just feels the need to fight back against this whole "stingy" thing. "I've heard a lot of opinions, but most of them not too coherent. Really need to get better at finding that sweet spot where folks talk but they aren't quite to gibbering." He smiles, there. "Going out and watching a mating flight seems like it would be a bit voyeuristic."
"Ya should," Jo advises casually on meeting Irianke, nodding her thanks for the refill. "I'd be interested in yer opinion of her. If the notions Igen takin' over have some merit." Something he says though draws a knowing smile from her and a, "Ya think she's hot." Farideh. "Ya'll learn it here," she goes on to say, turning more on her stool towards him. "The skill of gettin' folks to talk. Good a place as any, I'd wager. Get'em in that moment where they're too drunk to remember what they told'ja, but not drunk enough where they won' be spoutin' off silliness. Ya'll find that sweet spot faster'n I can, by the looks of ya." On mating flights, there's laughter as she takes a drink before she notes, "Ain' no need to watch it. Once one starts up, ya'll be in it whether ya want to or not."
"I think she's attractive, but I'm not sure talking to an unattractive weyrwoman would have been markedly easier. I don't have trouble having a normal conversation with women I find attractive in any other case." A smile, there, but it gets less certain after a moment, as Everett glances out at the bowl again. "Is that so? Seems like that would get distracting, and there's an awful lot of greens. Wonder anybody manages to get anything done."
"Some how I doubt ya'd let somethin' like attractiveness deter ya from a chat, anyway," muses Jo with a soft snort. "In either case, it wouldn' hurt to get close to Farideh, too. I took her to a dirty bar sometime ago'n she managed to survive it intact, so she must have balls somewhere. Perhaps she's more than a pretty face after all. As for matin' flights," she pauses on that one with a look. "At least they all don' go up at once, or day after day," she explains, shaking her head. "If ya find yerself saddled with a chasin' dragon someday, y'all see how exhaustin' that can get. 'Course, ya could end up Impressed to a green...." and Everett gets a studying look. In jest, surely.
For all he's young, male, presumably red-blooded, certainly Holdbred, Everett does not get all peevish about this suggestion. "I could," he says, instead. "It'd be one way to ensure I didn't ever want for female attention again. But I suspect something else might be a little better for holding a goldrider's attention." This latter, added thoughtfully. "So she managed to survive dirty, huh? As in she didn't actually have the vapors, or did she actually have a good time?"
With a short chuckle, "Ya can ride green and get all the female attention ya want," Jo notes in amusement. "I knew a few male ones that only got it on with men should their dragon get caught by a male rider. Or some swing both ways, like I do." There's a grin before she adds on the bartrip, "She didn' have a good time. I had us fleece some men of their marks at cards'n then had to knock one of'em around a bit." Standard day fare, by the tone of her voice. "Some don' appreciate the details of an adventure in this place," and it's enough to have her shaking her head at it. "But, reckon ya'll have better with her than I seem to be doin'. Ya have a pretty face'n yer a boy. That's of value 'round here." It's given with a knowing look. "Like me, I've got all these scars'n shit so I have to work hard at this," and she gestures towards herself. "Likely why I wouldn' make a good bartender."
"So she doesn't have any idea how to have a good time, and you want me stuck with her? Ouch. Wounded. I really am." Hand over his heart--right there! Not too much pain to be smiling. "But whatever I have to do for the family, even if she's too delicate a flower for a properly good time. And what you do matters more than what I do... a pretty face is only a pretty face." Everett, here, finally has to break to pour a couple more refills, and while he's at it he puts two fingers of whiskey into a glass for himself, or maybe more like one and a half. Then, he holds out the bottle, an offer.
"You can show her a good time," Jo encourages with a look. "Not like, fuckin' but...I mean, if she wanted to. Just, get close to her." Sip. "What I do only matters when it's useful," she's neutral in saying. "We all have our parts to play, darlin'." She watches him as he works, also keeping an eye on those that should enter and leave the bar with a casual air. It's only when she sees him come back with that bottle, she straightens up with a winsome smile just for him as she reaches for it. "Workin' hard to get on my good side, are we?" she drawls to him, pleased with a nod. "Right move, Everett. We'll get along yet." She tosses a wink his way as she rises, briefly raising the bottle his way as she prepares to depart.
"Working hard, or hardly working." So, so trite, but he seems aware enough of it. Everett has a drink out of his own glass, gives Jo a look, but not an over-long one. "I know my lines. I don't know if it'll be enough, but we'll see. If only I could buy everyone's good opinion so easily." The smile there, barely a smile; knowledge in it, that of course it's not that simple. "Go, have a good time, stop slowing down everyone else's orders." But that only once she's already obviously going, and then he's off to actually do his job.
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