A Day in the Park
"This is something I fail to understand," Hannah announced to the world at large.

Millennium Park was abuzz with afternoon activity. The pleasant weather had coaxed people outside; they hovered near the fountains, milled about on the plaza, and sat on the grass under the shading trees. Hannah was just as excited to see the sun as anybody else, and felt like a freed jailbird when she fibbed her way out of a diner shift. She dressed for mild weather: a tshirt, jeans, a thin cardigan, and tennis shoes. All was well until the chewed gum incident.

Walking alongside the enormous, silver Bean sculpture, she had been admiring the distorted city reflections when she stepped right in it. It was no ordinary gum. It was purple and warm and massive, like a kid had gnawed three or four pieces for the express purpose of spitting it on the concrete. She didn't notice it until a few steps later, when a page out of the Sun-Times blew under her foot. Now it was stuck there.

Hannah balanced like an ostrich and inspected the damage.

Tseng was one of the people sat on the grass, long legs folded and face overally hidden by the hair he'd left loose for a change. It was unusual but at the same time reassuring, people couldn't see him if his hair was in the way. He had a book in his lap, glasses perched on the very end of his nose and eyesight narrowed as the sun sometimes caught the page wrong and made reading difficult.

Even out in the sunny wide open space that was Millennium Park he stuck out like a sore thumb, he was wearing the wrong sort of clothes for the good weather and he was the only sole figure in what appeared to be a mass of coupledom.

"I'd suggest peanut butter and a scrubbing brush for that," Tseng offered to the blonde who was dealing with a gum on the shoe incident. "But I don't think that's at all feasible right now." He offered a quirky smile and a lift of his shoulders before clearing his throat, turning his attention back to his book.

Hannah balled up her fists and placed them on her hips. "You know," she said contemplatively. "Halfway here, I thought to myself, darnit! I forgot my jar of Skippy." With the paper still flapping from her shoe sole, she walked in the dark-haired man's direction. On her way, she realized it was the classified section. Washer and dryer, super capacity, clean with warranty! Call Brian at...' It was a little bit of distance from the Bean to him. As she got closer, she saw he had glasses on, pinched to the tip of his nose like a clothespin. "Maybe I could steal it out of somebody's sack lunch," she mused, and looked around as if scoping for an unsuspecting eater.

"Where'd you learn the peanut butter thing?" she asked. "Does it really work?"

Tseng blinked owlishly at Hannah, trying to make the racing thoughts in his head translate into words. "I, uh, read a lot? And surf youtube a lot, some guy did it and it really worked."

He folded the corner of the page he was reading and eased the book shut, taking a look around himself. "Pretty sure you could grab anything off the coupled up people without them noticing. They're acting out the stereotypical roles as dictated by popular movies and overexaggerated romance novels."

And then he caught his babbling and cleared his throat, subconsciously pushing his glasses back up on his nose.

Surprised, the blonde raised her eyebrows. "Yikes." Her hair was down. One gust of warm air, and there was lift-off. The pieces of it were a mixture of light and dark golds, a few inches past her shoulders. She pried them out of her eyes. She was considering scissors lately; on windy days like this, it was like trying to fight her way through billowing sheets on a clothesline. "You got something against romanticism?" she asked. The newspaper page rattled and began to tear.

Tseng lifted his shoulders and dropped his gaze to the book in his lap, smoothing his callused palm over the embossed front. "Sometimes," he admitted. "Mostly on days like this." He chewed on his lower lip and then looked up at the blonde through panes of clear glass. "Besides it's not like real life ever actually meets the expectations that the stories you read or the movies you watch set." No, real life was... complicated, confusing and disorientating. One moment everything was great and things were good, really good, and the next things were different and awkward.

Maybe he should just call Jessica and get that inevitable 'it was great but' conversation out of the way.

"Sorry," he muttered after a few moments. "I say things sometimes, they just come out, and I don't always mean them to sound the way that they do." His gaze seemed to fixate on the paper still stuck to the bottom of her shoe and rather impulsively (for him) he leaned over to close his hand around her ankle to lift her foot and pull it free. He even managed to get it off without shredding or leave behind bits.

He squinted up at her. "Better."

Since weight had been on that foot, Hannah hopped to keep herself upright. "Thanks," she said, a bit uncertain whether she meant it. She rested her shoe on the ground and felt it adhese again. Viscous purple. She was curious about him. He reminded her of a comic book geek, but she wasn't sure why, especially since he was a grown man. At least there was no tape on the bridge of his glasses. Being non-cool herself (if for different reasons), she didn't judge him for it.

"I've been in love twice," she said. "Once, it was like a storybook. The second time, it was..." Hannah twisted her mouth while she pictured Oliver and herself. Oliver who didn't call when he found out his girlfriend came back from the dead. Humph. "I guess it was comfort." She shrugged. "But... now I know you've at least tried it, you know why?"

"Welcome." Tseng placed the book to one side, the spine was weathered, obviously it was a book he'd read and then re-read over and over again. He swept his fingers through his hair as a gust of wind attempted to make off with it and he decided he couldn't let that happen.

"How do you know?" Tseng asked, genuinely curious.

"Because!" she said simply. "Otherwise, you wouldn't know whether real life meets expectations or not." Uninvited but too naturally open to think twice on it, Hannah sat down opposite Tseng. She noticed his book, but couldn't make out the title. A few times, Hannah had decided she'd like to be an Avid Reader of Novels. Unfortunately, she got a few chapters in and became distracted by courtroom shows on TV, or back episodes of COPS. It was so difficult to sit still very long; watching those shows hardly counted, since she shouted and threw pillows at the television set.

"Maybe I'm just a cynic," Tseng suggested. He looked visibly uncomfortable when Hannah sat down until he seemed to settle into the idea, naturally uncomfortable around new people. It was extraordinarily frustrating to say the least. "Or maybe I'm tired of hearing the 'you're a great guy and we work really well together but' conversation." Why he was sharing this with a complete stranger was beyond him but the other him - the more confident one - talked to other people all the time time so why couldn't he?

He shifted and cleared his throat, working up the courage to offer his hand. "I'm Tseng."

She straightened her posture up and shook it, quite business-like. "Hannah." Belatedly, she remembered it was bad to sit cross-legged. She gasped and stuck her leg out to the side. Luckily, no gum was on her jeans, one of three pairs she had to her name. "Do you get the friends thing a lot?" she asked. "I give off the 'you're like a little sister' vibe. It's like a health condition." Though growing her hair out helped, and not wearing flip-flops with giant, plastic flowers on them, she couldn't help being how she was.

Tseng nodded his head. "It's, um, nice to meet you." And it was, it wasn't often he talked to strangers. Not often enough. He dropped his hand and curled the weathered tips around his knee. "Yeah, I get the friends thing a lot. Have for as long as I can remember." Unlike the other him if that redhead he'd seen on her way out in the morning had been any indication. He still hadn't worked out how to tell Jessica about that. Why was his life so complicated? Oh, yeah, because he was crazy.

"But you did the love thing twice, right? So you must not give it off all the time."

"Well." Hannah took a giant breath and considered the sky. It was crowded with marshmallow clouds, their undersides grayish, like it might eventually rain. "Sure, I'll concede the point on Love Number One. The other time, I had kind-of an..." Lord, how did she describe it? She figured 'I was dead' wouldn't work. "Untouchable vibe going on, temporarily. Men like that. Apparently it's more fun to want what you can't 100% have. Personally, I find that stressful. I like having stuff."

Tseng couldn't help but smile at that last comment. "Yeah, I think having is definitely better than not." He chewed on the edge of his nail, nervously. "Not sure I see the appeal of wanting something you can't have. It sounds... torturous to me, but that's just me." Tseng caught his habit before he ended up making himself bleed and he dropped his hand into his lap where he could do no further harm to himself.

"It's probably hot for a little while," Hannah admitted. "Okay, okay... it is. But after a while, you either get it or you move on, I say. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for a life of longing, and wondering, and paranoid lines of mental questioning." A thought occurred to her. Oliver had paintings he'd done of her, back when she was a spirit. She wondered where those were now. Were they still on easels? Stacked in storage with drapes covering her face? In somebody's naked-themed parlor? Man. Would that be weird to know.

"What are you reading?" Hannah had decided to go for a change of thoughts.

"Never fun," Tseng said in comment to the mental questioning. He did it enough to know just how not fun it was.

He glanced at his book and did that nervous shift thing again. "It's, uh, called Dimensions Of Japanese Society. It talks about the society and the behaviour of the Japanese people. I've had it a long time." He may or may not have indulged in it in the vain hope of understanding his family.

"Really?" Hannah's lips puckered. "Hmph. I have to say, I wasn't expecting that." So what had she been expecting? J.R.R. Tolkien? She reached over and touched a page that had been dog-eared several times. There were multiple creases in it. Then she retreated. "I know like zilch about Japanese society, except what I learned watching Ninja Warrior and Karate Kid II. I tried to like tea because of that movie."

She left out the part about putting on a robe and imitating the fan-dance in front of her TV with a homemade, paper one. And how that was only like... five years ago.

And he couldn't have known it at the time, but he asked her the exact same thing she'd been asking herself, "What were you expecting?"

The book was placed to one side and his lips quirked in the corner. "It does take someone unique to enjoy Japanese tea. I could never warm to it, much to my mother's dismay." He looked to his right as he heard the loud laughter of a blonde nearby and tilted his head to watch the light playful shove the man she was with seemed to give, it elicited an odd response from the woman herself. He would never understand human behaviour.

"Hmm." Hannah nodded sympathetically. "That's how I feel about collard greens." When the wind blew again, she pulled an elastic band off her wrist and tied her hair in a knot. "My grandma -- that's who I grew up with -- she always boiled these collard greens, sometimes with chunks of ham. Then she'd dump vinegar on top and eat it. Have you ever smelled boiling collard greens?" Hannah's mouth flipped upside down in an eww face. "No thank you."

She considered it a moment longer. "I think it was the texture, too. It was slippery when she didn't mince it, and when she did mince it, it looked like mowed grass." Because the very idea of the vegetable revolted Hannah, she shook her shoulders out. A few quiet seconds passed. Then she added, "As for what you're reading, I wasn't sure, but I thought it might be The Hobbit. I like travel books."

Tseng was silent for a moment before he wet his lower lip and took the metaphorical plunge. "What are... collard greens?" He thought he knew practically everything there was to know about America, but collard greens had apparently slipped his notice. "My problem with Japanese tea was the taste. I could never work out why people liked it so much."

The mention of The Hobbit brought about a twitch of his lips, just in the very corners. "I do like that book but I wasn't in the right mood for fantasy." He swept his hair behind one ear and regarded Hannah closely. "You ever done any traveling yourself?"

"Collard greens are big, leafy, dark green things that look like seaweed. Like kale?" Hannah couldn't give much more explanation than that. She bent her legs to the side and held her ankles. "I drove all around the American southwest... I went to Maine once. By air," she qualified. Since those were the only places she spent much time, even as a spirit, she left it at that. It didn't count to pop in on a funeral home in Florida if she couldn't even wander around. "I want to go everywhere, though. I'm saving up money to pay off my debts, and after that, I'm putting it all in a travel fund. I'm itching to see someplace tropic."

Tseng squinted for a moment as he conjured images to mind with Hannah's description. "Ahh, I understand." And he did, he knew what seaweed was after all. He pulled his glasses off and fiddled with them for a moment, trying to clean a smear off the glass. "I think I'd like to travel. Don't think I'd go back to Japan though." Too many bad memories.

"It's great for tourists though."

"Really?" Hannah thought it over. Japan wasn't a place that landed on her list of Must-Sees, alongside Alaska, Niagara Falls, Hawaii, Italy, London, and Africa. Maybe she should add it. But if she did, thought Hannah, she maybe would dye her hair first, so she didn't stand out so much. "What would they think about me in Japan?" she asked. "According to your book, anyway." Shadows flitted across Tseng's face. When she looked up, Hannah saw a flock of birds diving this way and that. One hovered in the air, almost motionless, just letting the wind keep it aloft.

"They'd probably go crazy for you," Tseng said with a nod of his head. "Blonde and pretty goes a long way in Japan." He slid his glasses back on and was glad he could see through them without a massive smear on the glass, it had been annoying to say the least. "But the Japanese people are very reserved, very quiet and there are a lot of things you can wear and a lot of things you can't. It all ties into traditions and the gender roles."

Gender roles? Uh-oh. That sounded like an opportunity for Hannah to accidentally step in it. Also, she was none too quiet and she liked skimpy shorts and halters in the summer. "So I should have a personality transplant before vacation," she said, staring at him with a dumbfounded look. Maybe they wouldn't go crazy for her. Hannah once took a personality quiz on what geographic location in the world she should've lived in. It came up with Iowa. For a woman that dreamed of travel, it was a tremendous disappointment.

"Maybe I better start with a Japanese restaurant," she suggested. "Ease myself in."

"If you plan on going to the more traditional places," Tseng said with a slanted smile and a lift of his shoulders. "And if you want to go to a good Japanese restaurant I know one, it's called Eastern Dreams. There's a map on the internet and everything." He sucked with directions, he'd gotten very lost when he'd first arrived in Chicago. Thankfully those days were long gone and he no longer played the 'I'm a dumb very lost tourist, can you help me?' card.

"Eastern dreams." Hannah had better luck remembering things when she repeated them. "Is it a sushi place or the kind where the chef sets your steak on fire and throws food at your face?" What were those called? Habachi grills? After seeing one on the Food Network, Hannah was afraid. It seemed like the chefs had a gift for selecting just the right customer to pick on, based on who'd react the strongest. Now she couldn't say for certain, because she'd never gone to one, but Hannah had a feeling that person was her.

"Didn't set anything on fire or throw food at me the last time I was there," Tseng said with a small reassuring smile. "It serves a lot of different food and there is sushi but it's not the only thing on the menu. The soft shell crab roll is really good." He eyed his book and then took a breath, holding it out to Hannah. "Here, you can have this, if you want? I have it memorised by word anyways so I'm just going over what I already know."

"Maybe I'll give reading The Hobbit another shot."

Hannah's eyes went wide. "Really? I could borrow it?" She tested its weight in her palm and opened it up. Lucky for her, it was in English, which made sense, because why would a book explaining Japan be in Japanese? She turned a couple of pages and read some random sentences. She liked learning about other places; knowing a lot about them almost made up for not going there. Perhaps she'd get so inspired, she would purchase Japanese lessons on disc, and buy herself thick paper and runny ink to write out the characters in the old-fashioned way.

Tseng nodded his head. "Yeah, you can. I work at a library anyways." He pulled his legs up and tucked his arms over his knees. "I suppose I oughta get back. I'm taking a long lunch, a really long lunch." He reached over and picked up his nearby rucksack and collected a few of his scattered belongings, glass case for one thing.

"Which library?" Hannah stood up and remembered the gum on her shoe. She made a few scrapes against the grass, figuring if she got dirt on the gum, it wouldn't stick to everything when she walked. "I could bring it back when I'm finished reading." When was the last time she went in a library? In Searchlight, there hadn't been one, just a book-mobile that made the trip from a bigger town. It carried a few hundred books, but it didn't have a travel section. She did notice spiritual self-help; it figured, with all the old ladies living in that town.

Hannah tucked the book under her arm and waited.

Tseng zipped up the rucksack and got to his feet, sliding the strap of the bag itself over his shoulder. "The public library? On 400 S State St." He'd been working there years and liked the quiet it had to offer when the city was crazy a lot of the time. "I'm usually there Monday to Friday and the occasional weekend."

Hannah thought that was quite a lot. Having spent her working years waiting tables, a diner seemed nice and quiet. And clean. And free of groping hands. Which reminded her that she needed to call Toby and find out how the coffee shop was coming along. "Okay. I'll return it. Hannah," she repeated for good measure, "Flynn. In case you're not there and I have to leave a note." She raised her hand and waved it. "I'll see you around. Thanks for the peanut butter suggestion!"

"Welcome," Tseng said with a small smile before he turned on his heel and tucked his hands into pockets, beginning in the direction of public transport. He'd met somebody new, that was always good. Tseng knew he could do with knowing more people, getting out more and maybe just maybe trying his hand at normal or whatever normal passed for these days.