Repose

[Public]

After the little letters episode, I wonder who the most notorious town resident might have been and what they would do to make their fame. But most people here seem to be transplants. What would you go down in town infamy for, darlings?

Who: Julia L & Nishka Bariss
Where: The Cat, late evening.
Warnings: Nada.

The week was coming to its end. There would be a large, expensive car waiting at the edge of town tomorrow evening. Dusk would come and with it the car and back to a city that smoked Julia's senses ash-black and scorched white. The week was at a close and she left the sugar-pink trailer behind her and the quiet hush of the woods. Snap-black twigs under faded primrose sneakers that were older than cars and cities and suits that hung in climate-controlled closets, but had never been worn for longer than a summer in eight years. In the trailer was a blush-colored skirt and a cream sweater loose at the cuffs and tight at the throat and a pair of perfectly beige shoes with lipstick-red soles. There were a number of items of clothes tucked away in the wire-mesh cupboards that belonged to the city, and Julia wore one now. A cashmere coat in navy, and underneath she wore Walmart yellow and cream cardigan that dangled around the knees of worn denim.

If the week was going to end it was better to go out knowing something instead of nothing. She had hidden in the woods for a week until the clenched-fist feeling faded. She had hidden in the woods because she was hiding and once upon a time she hid from nothing, walked toward it open-armed. It was deliberate, the walk from the woods until the lights of the town were a fairy-net and then they were windows and doors and a late night in a place small enough people knew the gossip. Julia's smile was summer's last gleam as she caught the glimmer of music on a door's open-and-slam.

The familiar sensation wrapped a casual hand around her nerve-endings and squeezed but this late at night, the pressure was lesser. She had worse, and Julia walked through the door to the music and the tiny place full of people and lingered by the door for a full minute taking it in as she unbuttoned the coat, wraith-wild hair and a smile that turned up by degrees and the only flicker was the lights very briefly before they were consistent. Good. She just couldn't get good and drunk, the way she wished she could. Not without taking a black-out to a town that would notice.

She sat at the bar, where her elbows were jammed against her sides and she spread cashmere over her knee and put Walmart-yellow elbows on the bar-top, wrists twined in leather and ordered whatever was nearest and on tap.