Dorothy Bell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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birthright_rpg2014-03-12 11:55 am
dori_bell) wrote in birthright_rpg2014-03-12 11:55 am
Quiet Death
The blonde girl sat on the top step outside the Guardian Angel cathedral. She wore mourning blue, dark and conservative: a pleated skirt, a clean blouse with a tailored jacket buttoned too high, a wide-brimmed hat. She had pinned a wilted mum to her lapel. She tilted her face to the church with its stained glass windows illuminated from within. A night service carried on. She heard singing, an organ. It was a place of grief strangely juxtaposed against a celebratory city. On the high stone steps, people often remarked about the general lack of respect shown by tourists as they motored past the sanctuary. Dori smoked a cigarette and watched traffic crawl by. Her knees were pressed together but there was a view up her skirt if you got the right angle. White panties worn with no hose. Someone honked. Her gaze darted and flickered like a bird’s, but she didn’t adjust her ankles.
Sometimes she came to these things. People asked her how she knew so-and-such and vague answers sufficed. Dori knew them from the neighborhood, from school, from volunteering at the hospital… she could pick up all sorts of life details from an obit. She looked nonthreatening and half the time, people tuned out her answers because they had only asked to be polite, to show some semblance of proper decorum.
It was warm tonight. She considered peeling off her jacket and blouse and sitting there in a thin undershirt, where she would be mistaken for a half-dressed drunk. Someone would offer to walk her home, and maybe they’d be decent and do so, or maybe they’d steer her into a gritty corner to take advantage. Once she had taken a life that way… let him feel her up, exclaim over her innocence, and then –
Pffft
– she crumpled her fist and his life sifted away like dirt through her fingers. Quietly.
Dori scraped her shoe against the concrete and listened to the music from a car's open windows.
[Thread: Open to Anyone]
Sometimes she came to these things. People asked her how she knew so-and-such and vague answers sufficed. Dori knew them from the neighborhood, from school, from volunteering at the hospital… she could pick up all sorts of life details from an obit. She looked nonthreatening and half the time, people tuned out her answers because they had only asked to be polite, to show some semblance of proper decorum.
It was warm tonight. She considered peeling off her jacket and blouse and sitting there in a thin undershirt, where she would be mistaken for a half-dressed drunk. Someone would offer to walk her home, and maybe they’d be decent and do so, or maybe they’d steer her into a gritty corner to take advantage. Once she had taken a life that way… let him feel her up, exclaim over her innocence, and then –
Pffft
– she crumpled her fist and his life sifted away like dirt through her fingers. Quietly.
Dori scraped her shoe against the concrete and listened to the music from a car's open windows.
[Thread: Open to Anyone]
no subject
The war had changed his views on religion, and after he returned home from Vietnam he dabbled in other faiths and explored their belief systems. Looking for something to make the world make sense again. With therapy and the help of friends and family, he'd gradually re-discovered his balance in life. Church was part of that.
Besides, he liked the hymns.
The funeral was for Dean Cayhall, who'd operated a gas station near the gym. He and Virgil had known one another casually, talking over the occasional beer after work and getting together with other people for basketball on weekends. They'd been roughly the same age, so the death had left the veteran a bit shaken and wanting to pay his respects. A heart attack, for the Lord's sake.
The family had filled the first two pews, Dean's wife and three kids lined up like ducks on the unpadded bench. The minister had clearly known the deceased well, and he'd spoken warmly to the bereaved. As the people attending the gathering rose to their feet when the service ended, Virgil adjusted his coat on his broad shoulders and went to speak to Rachel and her children.
He was relieved to be out in the open air once people began to disperse, and he rubbed the back of his neck. An elderly couple were shuffling ahead of him, and he waited patiently while they navigated their way down the stairs. There was a blonde sitting nearby and puffing on a cigarette. Friend? Family member?
"Evenin'," Virgil said. "I guessed I missed giving you my condolences."
no subject
Whatever it was, it appealed to her.
She exhaled a silvery breath.
“There’s still time.”
Dori got to her feet.
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"Time for what?"
The old couple on the steps had finally made their way onto the sidewalk, and now they were talking in low voices about the service. They were probably waiting for their younger, and more sprightly, ride. Virgil smelled the faint aroma of flowers, and he looked over his shoulder. He couldn't place the scent.
"Was Dean a friend of yours?"
no subject
Dori’s head cocked a bit. In her face was a peculiar wisdom, a stillness most people of her age group did not have. A petal broke away from the mum on her lapel and caught on her blouse.
“And… there’s still time to offer your condolences. But I think you may need mine instead. You seem…” she assessed him in search of a suitable descriptor. “Crestfallen.” Dori dropped her cigarette and ground her shoe onto the ignited end. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so frank.”
no subject
"He was my age, only a coupla years older. I guess I feel a little bit like the Lord drew straws about who to take and picked him instead of me."
He watched her cigarette be extinguished, the sparks dying out against the concrete step, and the smell of flowers wafted past again. Was that carnations? The petal on her blouse caught his eye. He resisted the urge to pluck it off.
"You got another smoke?"
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Dori reached into the pocket of her small blazer, which contained a pewter cigarette case. She flipped the lid and offered him his pick of the contents and a book of matches. “I don’t think it’s so random,” she said, sniffing and looking at the dark sky. The clouds were tinted a putrid orange from light pollution. Her hat began to slip so she took it off and let it drift to the top step. “I don’t know if it’s God’s plan, but it is someone’s.”
The mum was held in place by a thick pin with a pearl head. The sharp end of it looked lethal poking out of her clothes.
no subject
He said it around the cigarette in his mouth, his dark face illuminated in the orange glow of the match as he inhaled. The tip of the white cylinder flared bright red, then turned a more muted color. The sensation of smoke in his lungs relaxed his shoulders.
"You over at the college?"
He'd taken some classes at UNLV when he'd decided to open the gym, focusing on business management and how to keep the books in order. Doing his own accounting was cheaper than hiring someone, and he'd never had troubles with the IRS over it.Virgil squinted through the thin stream of smoke at the old couple, who were shuffling towards a huge, ancient Caddy in the church lot. A man of about fifty had joined them. The nearest streetlight glinted off the car keys in his hand.
"Or do you work in the city?"
no subject
’Dorothy killed my pet turtle!’
‘That little girl keeps a rat in her pocket…’
‘Mrs. Banks, there are spiders in her hair!’
‘The cupcakes she brought made everyone sick.’
-- and so she had been home-schooled and tutored until receiving a general education diploma.
“My legal guardians were protective,” she offered softly, a reasonable lie. “Not cult members, if that’s what you were thinking. Do you work in the city?”
no subject
It was a non-committal sound, the noise polite strangers made at chit-chat. The night was warm. Virgil unbuttoned his suit jacket, exposing the white shirt beneath. His tie was navy blue.
"I've got my own business," he said with a touch of pride. On any other occasion, he'd have produced a card, but shilling for customers at a funeral seemed classless. The cigarette in his mouth burned on.
"I was a cop for a while, but law enforcement turned out to be not my thing, so I put in my papers and went civilian again."
no subject
The man’s gesture with the jacket made Dori think of her over-warm wardrobe again. She took off her jacket and set it alongside her hat. The pair stood in stodgy outfits of white and navy blue, like matching flight attendants.
no subject
"I teach self-defense on some weeknights and weekends," he added. "Girls...ladies about your size and teenagers. You never know when you might have to take down a mugger in this city."
In the parking lot, a car backfired. People were filing out of the church now, and Virgil stepped to the side to remove his bulk from the path of foot traffic. He acknowledged Rachel with a grave nod. He wondered if ghosts hovered during funerals, the spirit paying a visit to the earthly plane before returning to whatever waited on the other side of the veil. The morbidity of the thought made him frown.
"How did you know Dean?"
no subject
Dean.
Dean died suddenly. Dean was Catholic. Dean was self-employed. Dean was survived by a wife and three children. Dori knew these facts and yet she did not know the man. What Dori knew was the last word he uttered before slipping into the void. She knew how long he lingered before turning away. These were items of true substance and importance, and yet they were nothing a friend should know.
“He did me a favor once,” she said. Briefly she considered concocting a story. Lies were complicated, but she suffered no guilt for telling them and there was no consequence if she was caught. “I didn’t have enough money to pay a bill.”
no subject
Virgil had smoked the cigarette down to the filter, and he dropped it next to her extinguished butt and put it out with the toe of one dark shoe. His head had gotten a little swimmy from the nicotine. He'd quit for a reason, but lighting up on certain occasions was a habit.
"Will you be at the grave site?" he asked the blonde.
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“It’s strange, don’t you think?” Dori asked solemnly. “To stay and watch the body being lowered into the earth?” She had seen plenty of funerals and how they tore at people, how that final image of a disappearing coffin made fathers shake in their folding chairs and mothers claw at the dirt, as if angry that the ground had stolen a person from them. “I prefer ashes. It’s more natural than embalming fluids, boxes and buckles and satin. No one likes holes anyway.”
no subject
"I'll probably just stop by for a minute myself," he said a little absently. He was slapping his pockets, looking for his keys. "There's gonna be a thing at the house afterwards, but that's for family and close friends. I won't be there."
Virgil found his key ring, re-buttoned his jacket. The dull metal glinted against his broad brown palm. "I'm sorry for your loss," he told the blonde. "Dean was a good guy."
no subject
“I said what I did because he’s not there,” she said with a light shrug. “In the ground, in the wind,” her fingers flitted, “The body is only a vessel, and his is empty now. He’ll be somewhere else.”
no subject
It was roughly the same thing he'd been thinking, and he was remembering his first few visits to the Stateside V.A. hospitals to see fellow soldiers who'd been wounded in country. Men without limbs, those who'd been blinded or disfigured, and the ones who didn't come home at all. Once the fragile vessel was damaged, the only thing holding it together was the spirit within.
Virgil looked up at the night sky, tried to pick out the stars beyond the clouds. "You take care now," he said to the blonde, and his hard-soled shoes made noise on the stairs as he descended to the sidewalk. He might not go to the burial after all. He'd paid his respects, and there'd been enough death for one day.