shock and awe
The river roars dully in the background, as crowds push and fight their way across the bridge. Most are traveling from Alphabet City to Mainland, because if and when one reaches Mainland, the idea of going back to Alphabet City is disgusting. So wide a gap between the two, it seems absurd for just one river to separate the sectors.
It is fitting, then, that this is where they find each other.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Beast says, and she knows.
“I need the money.” Silhouette is, apparently, in no mood for teasing today. She’s standing determinedly in the middle of the bridge, straddling the invisible line separating the sectors.
Beast shrugs. He is further to the left, closer to Alphabet City, and leaning against the railing, daring the cold river winds to push him into the water below. They are the only two to have stopped, the crowds rush around them, speaking in white noise. Beast is grateful, it keeps their conversation muffled from reaching the ears of policemen in riot gear emblazoned, ‘THE YESTER’ who stand at preordained points along the bridge in case of violence. “We’ve got a job, but you’re outta luck, sweet thing, we don’t get much for now.” He digs a yellowed envelope out of his inside coat pocket and hands it to her.
She snatches it up, scowling at the lousy contents. “Is this it?” Silhouette asks, pocketing the money.
“Hey, hey, hey! Half’a that’s mine!”
Silhouette gives him a look, sweetly pleading through her eyelashes as she bites her bottom lip. “I need it,” is her confession.
Beast rolls his eyes. “Like fuck you do.” He’s annoyed, sure, conned out of his pay by a pretty girl just when that itch in his veins is starting to become a stinging, aching want. Beast won’t do anything about it, though, he’s gotten used to going hungry for her.
A gust of wind makes Silhouette’s dark hair blow across her face, she pushes it away, irritated. “When?” she asks, “And who?”
Beast does not turn around, the ache in his stomach is distracting him. “Day after tomorrow, we have a room reserved. Same name as last, unless the Yester catches on between now and then.” His eyes flicker towards a policeman standing sentinel some ways away. “Supposed to be an easy job, target’s in the room next to ours. Thinkin’ we’ll sneak over once he’s asleep. Bring your knife.”
A bang and a yell go up from the middle of the rushing people. Some debris flies and Beast ducks instinctively curling away from the explosion. “Fecking shit,” he curses, rushing his words to finish telling Silhouette, “Meet you ‘round the corner same as usual, check in at ten and then we wait. Bring your knife,” and then he’s running left, just one in a stampede of panicked people. There’s a woman beside him clutching at her temple as blood screams red down her face, she was by the blast. Silhouette has disappeared, as she is prone to do. Must have gone the other way, towards Mainland.
- - -
Same name as last, unless the Yester catches on.
Oh and this terrifies her, so much more than the explosion as she gets shoved along by the crowd down and off the bridge. The river rushes beneath them, seems louder than usual, but maybe that’s the echo of the bomb ringing in her ears. People are yelling, crying, screaming and bleeding and pushing her along, in fear that there will be another explosion, that this time it will be them with their faces blown off.
This is something Silhouette knows can happen, knows it from when she used to attend the Uni and volunteered at a free clinic down by where Alphabet City met the river met Havoc. There was a bomb on a railtrain that went off, sending scraps of metal sharp as the teeth of hell flying. The man that Silhouette had scene had gotten his face scrapped off from the bridge of his nose down by a piece. His eyes screamed, but no noise escaped him but a sickly gurgle from the hole where his throat opened, jaw completely gone.
Silhouette is not afraid of that, though. What makes her run along with the rest, getting her hair pulled and her feet stepped on and her body shoved, is the idea of Clarissa King and a mugshot showing up on records that relate to a murder.
- - -
The wedding is a black-tie affair, planned by her mother. And when her mother says ‘black-tie affair’ she means it without any trace of irony whatsoever, but Marlene laughs just the same: she’s both colorblind and cheating.
If the sky hadn’t been so blue that day, Marlene would have insisted that the world was trying to make her feel at home, the rest of her life was spent in shades of gray, so it would have been nice to think her wedding day would have the certainty of black or white with no in-betweens. But the sky had other plans and showed up to this black-tie affair to ruin that dream, to remind Marlene of what it would be like to see in color.
When it comes down to that final question, however, the do you or do you not? Marlene pulls her eyes down from the sky, a shade of gray all it’s own in her colorless life, and fixes them demurely on the white silk of her dress. She does, she insists, and that is when the clouds roll in.
- - -
The wind is trying to take your hat.
For an hour you’ve been standing here, leaned up against the chalky brick of your apartment building wearing the same thing you wear most days (gray-black jeans, mostly-white shirt) except for with a surprisingly pristine dinner jacket thrown over. It matches your hat, both black like the jeans, only more so. And the felt of your fedora is desperately trying to escape.
Fuck it. You’re a coward, did you know? Hold her hat down more firmly on your head so it doesn’t get away.
You were never really going to go, were you? With the hand not holding the hat, rub your temples. You’ve got such a headache. That’s what you’ll tell her, if she asks, your head hurt too bad to be able to go and watch her marry him without that awful sick-violent feeling clawing up your throat. It’s like throwing up, only backwards.
Sigh, a long low note that turns into a curse at the end. Fuck.
Light a cigarette if you can through this wind. Breathe in, deep, sucking rat poison and tar and nicotine up into your lungs and hold it for a moment. Exhale and put your hat back on. If the wind takes it, you’ll be better off.
Wait until you finish smoking. Or the wind puts it out, whichever happens first. Then stop, think about it, and ask yourself, are you up for attending a black-tie affair?