The woman across the table stared into her coffee cup, feeling a mixture of revulsion at her own openness and, suddenly, hope at Ashleigh's change of demeanor.  Her dark eyes narrowed as she recomposed herself, and she sipped her steaming coffee.  "Sometimes staying alive is all we got," she said with a slight nod.  "I wish i could say that I know the answer for that one... how to make it so you never have to fall back to 'just staying alive', but I don't."  They are interrupted or a moment  when a bleary-eyed waitress, wisps of grey escaping her ponytail, delivers two plates of hot foot.  The mixture of smells is tantalizing for an empty stomach.<br/><br/>The waitress departs, and the dark-haired woman shrugs gently, leans a bit forward.  "Ashleigh... why I bring this to you isn't important.  I see a lot in you, and that's enough. It's what I'm gonna say now, okay?"  She looked at her fork and knife, not touching them yet, then focused again on Ashleigh's eyes, her face softening to reflect some strange emotion that is not pity and is not admiration, but is somewhere in the realm of hope.  "We make our own way, like you already know.  Some people can't do the straight life, whatever the reason.  But if you're like me?"  She smiled, her eyes glinting with a little danger... a tinge of pride maybe, excitement lingering there.  "if you're like me, the straight and narrow isn't gonna happen.  Ever.  So you need to find a way to make the other route pay off."<br/><br/>She decided to let that sink in... she wasn't being vague, but she wasn't being specific yet.  Why was she taking this risk... was she trying to impress the girl?  Scare her straight..?<br/><br/>No, she was trying to recruit her.  She wanted a pupil, a squire, an apprentice... maybe even a partner.  Oh this complicated bundle of wants... she had to hope that she could keep it all together.<br/><br/>"I'm Isadora," she said quietly, then turned her fine-featured face away from Ashleigh to look over her shoulder, around the booth's corner. "You can call me Izzy if you like." When she turned back, her dark eyes looked over Ashleigh once more, and her mouth did that wicked little crooked smile gain-- heart-melting and teasingly vulnerable, but rakishly cocky.  "I'm a professional thief."<br/><br/>She tapped at her plate gently, forking up some of the fresh tomatoes and scrambled eggs.  "You could turn me in right now-- grab that cop at the booth over there--" she shrugged toward the opposite corner where a uniformed officer was, without ceremony, being seated by the same waitress.  He had nothing in his face to indicate anything other than relief at a late dinner, and he hadn't even glanced Ashleigh and Izzy's way.  "But there's no evidence at my place, nothing illegal on me-- nobody could prove anything."  She held her long-fingered hands out on the table, the fork poised delicately in one, and grinned.  "But I have all the money I need, and I do work that I really, really enjoy."  She smiled pleasantly, waiting to see how Ashleigh would spin off this detail.