YOU!

[maddy_ricks]

The year was 1945. Through a radio in the corner, Doris Day cooed the lyrics to Sentimental Journey. Blades of a fan twirled lazily in the summer air and the light of a dying afternoon slipped amber-yellow through the window shades. The air smelled of oak and whisky, tobacco and perfume.

It was all a bit of strange juxtaposition, considering the blood spewing from the crown of a man’s head as he toppled from his bar stool onto the slatted floor. Madeleine stood over him, a silver key swinging from her neck and a broken bottle in her hand. The lines up the backside of her pantyhose were crooked and perspiration stuck strands of hair to her neck. “That’s what you get for not calling.”

She crouched next to him and raised her cigarette over the wound for the sole purpose of ashing it at the first opportunity. “And that… is for sticking your Johnson in my roommate,” she hissed.

People were staring. Strike that, men were staring, regulars she knew from the bar, each of them with their own string of conquests. She wiped her forehead and yelled, “What?!”

A row of hats slowly pivoted back to the bar.

The memory of that moment – and all those faces – was as fresh today as it had been in 1945. So when Maddy saw the profile sitting at the bar, she stopped throwing darts and elbowed her way through a crowd of drunk people shouting at the Celtics game. “Hey! Hey, you!”

Comments

[maddy_ricks]

“Try because I live here,” Maddy said. “I’m not a transient. I’ve been here six years now.”

Not a transient, no, and not a squatter, not the way she used to be. But she sure felt like a hooker in this dress. Maddy picked at the fabric. Seriously, what had possessed her to trade in jeans for this get-up? She supposed it had its advantages; no one wanted to run into an ex dressed like a hobo.

“Anyway, I don’t think you’re exhausted. My bet's on bored. Maybe the old immortality is wearing thin.” She reached over the touched the slight graying of hair at his ears, just visible under his hat.

[whistlersmum]

"When have you known me to get bored?"

[maddy_ricks]

“Really?” Maddy deadpanned. "You're asking me that?"

[whistlersmum]

"Says the woman in the dress." Whistler put extra emphasis on the last word. Even back in the 1940s she refused to dress the part.

"What would you suggest? I fiddle while Searchlight burns?"

[maddy_ricks]

“I wore a dress the day I bashed your head in,” she reminded him. Gave him one heck of a view up the backside when she waltzed across the room and climbed on somebody else’s lap, too. “But let’s see, what do I suggest.” She flicked her cigarette at an ashtray, missing entirely. “I suggest that you’re a shit for claiming my wardrobe is to blame for your wandering prick, and I suggest you watch your ass, because there are darker things playing this hand than you or me. We’re rats in a maze.”

Her fingers went up his sleeve. "Skitter skitter."

[whistlersmum]

"I don't know what that means."

It didn't stop him from shivering, however.

"And if there's something else at play, something worse, that's all the more reason to fight back."