Eddie and Julia: the Arcade Who: Eddie and Julia When: Fuzzy-now. Warnings: Nada, apart from the tragic death of electronics
They dropped her at the edge of town this time. Her head was full of static, swept up and put down in the center of the city riding out a wave of small-town whimsy: Julia felt like herself and then she wasn't herself. Wine and white silk, a benefit, applause polite and thick as her head rang with cellphones and TV cameras, coverage. Smile, press a hand, look up at the slice of Nick's jawline above a black tie and crisp white collar. She spent the night in the lead-thick room until the dark pressed in, lush with nightmare. It was a day and a night and she felt like the moment after the storm when the sky cracked open and ozone flooded in, petrichor-thick. They dropped her at the edge of town and it was a walk through from the mouth of the road to the jutting edge of the forest. Punishment, for the muzzy-headed lack of conversation at the benefit, at not being adoring enough.
Julia had ditched adoring. Adoring hadn't done her any favors and the in-between she occupied didn't draw clean lines between There (black scrawl, capital letters there) and here. Here was emptier, it didn't burn as hot and it didn't pound inside her temples but on a city-choked set of sensation, Julia wore Nick's memory under soft canary-yellow silk dress with bare feet and her heels in her hands and she walked the length of Main like that. She was circuits white-hot under her skin and her head filled with the clamor of electricity and she didn't think. She didn't decide. There was no decision, there was overload and system shutdown and the ping-ping-ping of the arcade from within the air-conditioned pit behind the signage went dead. Dead quiet. The A/C cut out, the machines died one after the other in an exhaled breath and Julia paused, head-spun dizzy at the relief.