Felicity Hardy is a very (luckygirl) wrote in repose, @ 2016-12-31 20:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | *narrative, felicity hardy |
Who: Felicity H
What: Christmas in the city
When: Earlier.
The buses in and out of town sucked. They smelled of unwashed bodies, sweat and sadness if sad was a cloying, sickly smell like cheap perfume from the register at the drug store. She hadn't caught one in months because the last time she had been in the Capital properly? It had been cab rides and bar fights all the way. But that little accident predated clones and Halloween and bleeding out and mind-wipes and Felicity boarded the back-row of the bus in a very expensive, only partly pre-owned black peacoat over the softest sweater in her bottom drawer saved for special occasions and maybe if she touched nothing, she wouldn't catch whatever it was it smelled like someone had died from.
The lights out of town danced and even if it was so small town it made her teeth hurt, she leaned into the glass to watch it go.
The plastic seats were deliberately uncomfortable. They smelled like pee and desperation and they had dragged long scuff marks over the linoleum which nobody gave enough of a shit about to scrub up. His nails looked gross. As long as she could remember? They'd been filed into smooth ovals, buffed. An artist's hands, if your definition of artist stretched out and made itself comfortable in the shades of gray. Now? His hands looked old and there were no manicurists on stand-by in jail. The beige? Didn't work on him even if he wasn't pre-winter ski-slop pale.
"I'll be out soon," they were probably, Felicity decided as she tilted her head deliberately to look at the sobbing woman with the small baby on her husband's beige-clad lap, having the exact same conversation. Only with fewer account freezes, probably. She smoothed a hand down the soft, pill-free front of rose-pink cashmere that predated theft and smiled a full-lipped look of approval into the cup of her palm.
"Of course you will." What exactly he'd do with freedom? They weren't exactly holding his old chalet vacant for the season. Skiing? Wasn't a federal convict thing. He hadn't asked, but of course he hadn't. There was a tiny, teeny little plastic tree on the station where the guard leaned. It sparkled, minutely and when she blinked (very carefully) the twinkling lights were soft-washed supernova.
"Have you been shopping?" He looked at her, beige and barely-scraped clean chin, like store-cards and accounts were maybe still a thing and she crinkled the Bergdorf bag at her foot. Old, but if you folded carefully and you didn't touch it, it looked practically new. And wasn't that what mattered?
"I found an eighteen carat nail file," she smiled generously, "But they wouldn't let me smuggle it in. Even if I asked nicely." He laughed, as she'd intended and expected, and he sat back, the brief close of his fingers - dry - over hers. Maybe next Christmas? It would be done. He'd be somewhere they served turkey whole, rather than mashed into slush.
"There's a contact you should have, while you're in town," and just like that, all Christmas goodwill and joy went flat, like day-old champagne. She studied her own nails - manicured, pale shell pink.
"What's your cut?" Business-like. She watched him bluster as the twinkle-lights blurred and focused and when she swept off, Chanel No.5 heavy over the smell of institution and sorrow, she didn't let herself feel relief. Nothing. There was another bus ahead.