dahlia is a total (kayo) wrote in repose, @ 2017-02-25 16:38:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | *log, dahlia haight, jack penhaligon |
[The Capital: Dahlia & Jack]
Who: Dahlia & Jack
What: AA.
Where: the Capital.
When: Recently-ish.
Warnings/Rating: Swears, talk of drug abuse/recovery.
The ride to the Capital wasn’t as busy as the last time Jack had crossed the metaphorical Rubicon but the bus smelled the same. Like warm plastic and sour sweat and the heating was too high for comfort. He sat the ride over with his bag between his knees, and his arms slung in front of him, hands a knot around his knees, and the dribble of sweat down the back of his neck beneath the coat and the sweater.
He had been fine, until London. It had been done in increments until he’d lost the shame of the violent headache, a band of iron around his temples and the way his mouth had tasted like yesterday and his hands had shaken, which was the most disturbing indication all was not bloody alright. And he’d done it. Solo, with some degree of Bukowski’s own intervention given the cat once lodged on the bed at night would not be un-lodged without drawing blood. Shame and stubborn refusal had built a bridge back from the house that had fallen to foundations and the collection of empties in the wastepaper basket in the office. And London had knocked him back to the beginning.
So he sat. On the bus-ride and then the slow walk between the bus station and the church with a basement that smelled like mildew and old coffee with a milieu of people who looked simultaneously desperate and horrifically hopeful and at the same time beaten in by doubt. He sat in the back, the bag at his feet and christ, it was exactly as he’d dreaded. One name after another but there was this sort of public humiliation enmass, or there was Newt’s face delicately shaped along his mother’s own lines with the quiet but consistent belief in self-betterment. Of the two, he had a preference for what he’d face.
It was the gap between one and the next, where the urns of terrible coffee were wheeled out and plates of almost-stale donuts laid out that he fumbled with styrofoam cup and urn and sent a spill of oil-slick dark over the table and swore seven shades of expletive with cut-glass clarity without looking at the woman at his side.
Ever hear the one about the alcoholic who buys a bar? Look, okay. There was a really good joke in there. Dahlia just hadn't found the punchline yet. Bet she could workshop it here. If she could make this bunch of humorless fuckups laugh, then it was solid enough for standup, right? Damn. Maybe she picked the wrong career.
The aforementioned bar resembled one less and less every day, of course. There was metaphor, too, in gutting the place clean, 'til there was nothing left but brick and concrete. Fumes of ancient booze bled from every pore and crack in the building, and likely wouldn't ease up 'til she repainted. Dust was caked into the lines of her palms, smeared all over her jeans. She kept finding expensive surprises along the way, like the rat nest in the floorboards and the leaking pipes upstairs. But there was purging the place of beer-sticky stools and paraphernalia plastered with lovingly-rendered glasses of amber and, less successfully, this persistent thing that lived behind her ribs.
Purgatory, right? Unending labor, and constant reminders of how close she was to fucking up again, and nobody to blame for this shit but herself. Vegas was a million fucking years away in her head, but she knew the distance was coping. Dahlia knew--knew--recovery was nothing like the fucking straight arrow of sobriety the world expected from her. Recovery was messy and ugly and, like the scribble of whatever in her chest, she was starting to understand it would be like this forever. But she had nobody who got that, not anymore, and nobody she wanted to drag through that fucking quagmire. Quiet guilt, envy, and shame was acid wearing away at her bones every day 'til she collapsed in bed with a headache and shaking exhaustion in her hands.
And all that was probably what led her to the doorstep of this stupid church again.
Dahlia, too, sat as far from center as humanly goddamn possible, arms folded and glaring from 'neath hood of her sweatshirt like one particularly hostile wolverine from her burrow. Her stick-on hello, my name is badge declared her name to be ASSHOLE in sharpie'd, scrawling caps. But she'd given the name of Ivy when they went 'round. She always did. Her middle name (and parental sick sense of humor) was anonymity to comfortably hide behind, like the hoodie 'neath leather jacket that hid most of the ink. There, she sat quiet and did shit all, except get into one silent staredown with the organizer, some big burly guy, when he tried to get her to participate.
Mood, tanking. Starving. There was always free food at these things, even if coffee and donuts made a bad substitute for actual food. And she'd suffered through worse just to eat. She was real fond of bad coffee, in a nostalgic sort of way. Burnt grounds smelled of shelters and centers, temporary relief from the cold, borrowed energy for just one more day. And today? Pausing with the cup near nose, it scrubbed away the aroma memory of old booze in her nostrils and, well. It helped. Just a little.
Thanks, shitty coffee.
Then a clunk, and a string of curses almost as creative as some of her own, and she simply stepped back from the table as molten black splashed onto the floor like she knew it was coming. The organizer came running up, brandishing paper towels like a weapon. As the guy sopped up the mess, a hand holding cup and coffee, a hint of ink at the wrist, came in out of the peripheral of her neighbor's vision. Fingers trembled slight 'round styrofoam, but that shit were basically a badge of normalcy 'round here. "Here," followed a voice, brusque and muttered 'round cake donut held in mouth. There were other cups, and another pot, but dude here was clearly having a worse day with dexterity or whatever than her. One act of kindness for the day out of the way, Ivy-née-Dahlia set down the untouched cup in front of him and poured another for herself, no further spillage required.
Speaking of erstwhile careers to inspire cirrhosis of the liver, he could remember drinking days to night interchangeably and through time-zone changes that meant it was either always daylight - or preferably, always night. Point of fact, Jack could remember drinking under the faint cacophony of gunfire from the front, until the whiskey dulled the blade of excitement, anticipation and dread from being a wet-behind-the-ears reporter who someone had handed a flak jacket and an assignment to in expectation either the assignment or the cub would come back in a bodybag. He hadn’t thought about how long he’d been doing it. Alcoholic was a pejorative that applied when you were incapable of knowing the day from the week from the month, when you drank cheap gut-rot from the supermarket rather than from a glass and in a bar. Alcoholic was dying in a pub toilet, your skin yellowed and your nails cracked.
But he could remember his father in a tailored suit and with a heavy-silk tie knotted at his throat and his father had drunk one after the other without change or lack of sobriety a flicker on the surface at those boozy lunches with clients. Somehow, you transitioned from having shit together to the kind of lonely alcoholism that had you die in hock to a firm in Walthamstow and Jack didn’t want to give up to a purgatory of ice-water with lemon but there was no middle-ground in churches like this one.
He wasn’t in recovery. He wasn’t even in surgery ready to be wheeled out but he’d sat through sanctimony and pity until he longed for the taste of a glass and sick dismay at doing so prompted the hunt for the coffee. The coffee spilled in a black sheet from the table to the carpet and christ, he couldn’t do a damn thing today. The organizer fled towards him as if the carpet were capable of rescue and the cup held out beyond his nose, Jack registered seconds after it had arrived.
His own nametag? He’d run out of creativity and wore ‘Jack’ stuck loosely to the wool of his sweater. “Thanks.” His fingers brushed hers as he got a grip on cheap, soft white styrofoam and he looked at her a split-second later. And recognized her face, from some of the more regrettable places to drink in town.
“I think he’s fighting a losing battle.” The organizer, with the carpet.
Dahlia had eventually warmed up to addict the same way a feral cat warmed up to anything. That and alcoholic was so synonymous with fuckup in her head, because fuckup was all she had ever been. As a teenager, there were cans of beer stolen from behind convenience store doors. Young adult, pills chased with swallows of whiskey after a bad fight. Until recent, drinking cheap fifths alone in her trailer. There was some illusion of shit together in there, sometimes, but lately it looked like burnout, minimum wage and dead-end life.
But fuckup weren't denial, no. More the opposite, really--a sort of acceptance that she was a disaster, through and through. It made it easier to buy the roadhouse, really. Before Vegas, before savings were pissed away on distractions and whiskey--christ, so much whiskey--that had always been the plan: save up, buy a space, make something with her bullshit life. Just never in a million fucking years had she imagined it would be in fucking Repose, and that alone felt more like giving up than sobriety did. There was nothing else to be done, though. Still bullshit, but this was the way shit was. Just survival, 'til she decided to not.
Coffee catastrophe looked at her, and Dahlia resisted the kneejerk to look away, out of the spotlight. Nope, fuck you, dude, she stared right back. There was her near-six feet in boots, bulk 'neath clothes, and a face as pretty as a train wreck. Even dressed down and without the ink, girl like her still tended to stand out. This guy was dimly familiar, for some reason, but not in the way one was familiar with the usual merry band of fuckups here. Her gaze flicked to the name badge, but Jack could've been the John of anonymous meetings, for all she fucking knew. She didn't remember him as the guy she used to email--different context, different meetings, different era. Blame her lifelong career in taking blows to the head, but her memory just weren't great. Like the crowds at the bar or the revolving door at the gatehouse, his face was ultimately just one more middle-aged white dude in a sea of same.
So. Mostly stranger in her head, her response was real guarded, if guarded were indistinguishable between tired and disinterested. Broad shoulders shrugged off the thanks, and she sighed some as she glanced at the organizer on his knees. Small talk here was standing between her and food. Cup in hand, she plucked a second donut from the table, and wandered off without another word to sit in one of the chairs furthest from the bodies clustering 'round caffeine and baked goods.
There were empty chairs nearby her, but it were up to him where he decided to sit. Dahlia just got right down to the business of wolfing down her spoils from the refreshment table, dunking donut half into cup before shoving it into her mouth.
Jack remembered faces. Sober, he remembered them distinctly better than he did not-so sober and when they stared back at you, you had opportunity enough to dig out memory dim as the coffee was as bad. Anonymity in Repose was about as substantial and permanent as rice-paper in the rain. She looked at the organizer, trying to sop up black coffee with sodden tissue and Jack ignored the donuts, the queasy bilge of his gut determined against saccharine icing and stale pastry. He followed her instead, his little styrofoam cup between fingers.
He was just one among myriad, white middle-aged faces filled with the regret, the partial shame, the expectation that the tide would rise and rise until it was beyond breathing in - there were women, of course there were but this was, to casual observer, a slew of middle-aged crisis clutching cups of coffee and churning self-doubt written in their faces. It wasn’t a story, Jack didn’t see lines of newsprint here. He followed her because the seats were clogged and because she looked like she’d punch somebody if they offered her sympathy.
“Is this as terrible as I expect it to be?” The coffee. It was an opener.
Dahlia ate with the voracity of an animal starved, chewing noisily without tact or grace. Sat backwards on the metal folding chair, legs straddling the back, coffee dangling from one hand. Her attention only briefly shifted from prey to annoyance as the coffee guy sat down near her. From her perch, she aggressively radiated eau d'fuck off. Dahlia could count the number of marketable skills she had on one hand, but hostility was one finely-honed talent of hers. Practically did this shit in her sleep.
"S'fine," Dahlia replied, shortly, through a mouthful of donut. She hated small talk, and hated it even more in a place where she mostly just wanted to disappear into her hoodie. Even if she didn't say a damn thing before the round table dispersed, just being here was admitting defeat. In her head, it screamed hey, look at me, I'm a miserable fuck with no friends, 'cause she didn't, not really, not for this. Not since her one lifeline for this shit had fucked off into the wind.
Ugh.
A little self-awareness edged in shyly, as she glanced at the guy over the edge of styrofoam. She was still sore over that shit with Sam, yeah, so maybe she was being a little unfair to the guy. Dude just looked washed-up and a little green 'round gills, like every new card-carrying member of the shittiest club in the world. He was probably only following her 'round with his small talk 'cause she made the mistake of feeding him. Bit like kicking a puppy now. Yeah.
So Dahlia sighed, and tried not to roll her eyes, and bit back her bile. Her voice was still gravel, years of whiskey and getting punched in the throat evident. And with slightly less donut now. "So, uh," she mumbled, then swallowed. Tongue picked sticky pastry from her teeth. "This your first time, then?"
Hunger. One more nail in the coffin of his presence at this conclave of addicts. Jack didn’t feel hunger pinch at his gut, the greasy sweetness of the donuts turned him pale. She looked comfortable the woman whose name was not Ivy, either through practice or simply at ease in the damp, dim environment of the basement of the church. That set her apart from those whose shoulders were angled over the coffee cup, the magnetic south of it weighted in hands.
He didn’t know how to small-talk anymore. He was damned if Ivy turned disregard flecked on the chin with sugar-icing Jack’s way. But she slid a look over caffeine that made Jack think of standing in the front of the room, blandly pronouncing a diagnosis. Her voice when it came was crushed glass unsoftened by the sugar-pick of pastry and Jack curled his hands around the coffee more securely. If he wanted to die slowly, and by degrees without a modicum of small talk endured, now was the time.
“I’m doing a tour,” he said dry as paper and dust, “NA. Now AA.” It wasn’t an uncomfortable admittance of what was not supposed to be, according to literature, dread-weight guilt in his belly but it wasn’t outright denial.
It weren't really that Dahlia were comfortable here, nah. Feral cat, maybe. Guarded and defensive, walking in like she was too good for the place and spitting at anybody who got too close.
But, sure, she seemed a whole lot more comfortable draped over the shitty chair she had claimed as her own than this guy, who sorta looked like he wanted to climb into a fucking grave. Or throw up. Or do both. She watched him, remotely pensive, from her perch as she popped the rest of the donut into her mouth and sighed. "Dude," she said flat, mouth full, "relax. Just--drink the coffee and don't think much 'bout how s'like bein' at your own fuckin' funeral." 'Cause that's what she pegged him as, yeah? Recent. She could see the slimy sorta sickness that sobriety brought trying to force itself out of every pore. "If you're gonna puke, bathroom's 'round the corner. Not on my shoes." Worn work boots shifted back preemptively on carpet--camel color, heavy and hiding a steel toe.
But she blinked at the comment 'bout his tour, and then really looked at the guy, like she was seeing him for the first time.
"Oh, shit." Fuck. That's what it was. "Wait. I remember you. Uh." That tickle of familiarity sated, she scrubbed her eyes with a hand, and added a little awkwardly, "Hey." But only a little. They had emailed some, but it weren't like they had been sponsors or whatever, if that were the equivalent to besties for addicts.
"C'mon. You're a fuckin' vet, then," she continued, and with a grim sorta smile. A bad joke, from one career fuckup to supposed other. "I mean, with my luck? Gonna get drafted for SAA next, myself."
Jack didn’t have self-preservation instincts, not the kind that left you skirting bad ideas and bad news like a scared cat. The lack of them had towed him into situations that he got through on a prayer and a good smile and a careless regard for his own skin but the lack of them in the ordinary trudge through life didn’t bloody help. What he did have, he was in a meeting to overcome. It was ironic, except irony felt a lot like curdling in the pit of his stomach.
He wasn’t going to throw up. His pores didn’t leak sweet malodorous indication he had spent the past few days drinking. He hadn’t, there was something bloody-minded about not doing it in the B&B given Newt’s current occupation of the place. Why his brother, who was perfectly old enough to know drinking when he saw it, was a ring drawn firmly around the B&B, Jack didn’t know. Some damned determination to hold out a snatch of air to the candle-flame of brotherly approval.
“I’m not going to puke.” Although the greasy lap of the coffee against the styrofoam wall of the cup made him wonder. “You do?” Jack’s eyes squinted, and the smile was faint, restrained. Christ alone knew what he’d said in the past. He’d tried, once. Lodestones to keep him away from words.
“That isn’t my experience of drinking yourself insensible, although if you’ve got a list of the willing that will get you into SAA, be my bloody guest.” Dryly.
Dahlia--well, it was more complicated than that. Dahlia survived on instinct, but it was real territorial. Aggressive defense of stability, or the illusion of it. What little she had, she mistrusted that it'd all still be there tomorrow. But if she were good at being anything other than reckless, then she wouldn't fucking be here, right? There weren't nothing smart 'bout how she survived. Fuck, most of it was just dumbass mistakes and skirting by on sheer fucking luck. She didn't have the scars on her brow and the crooked nose and soft slur to her words from an easy life.
But she knew how to survive, yeah. Most days, that's all she ever did.
"Uh huh," Dahlia replied as the guy stared into coffee like the burnt grounds would tell his fortune, but she did not press it further. Her boots remained tucked defensively behind legs of the chair. Just in case. Dude didn't smell sickly sweet, but she knew withdrawal weren't that easy. "And yeah, dude. I think we, uh, we emailed some." Not that she remembered what about. Yeah, felt like ages ago. Before she fell real hard for the bottle, and didn't much wanna leave.
Dahlia put styrofoam to mouth as he spoke, watching him from over the rim. "Nah, man, I mean," and licked upper lip clean of coffee, "I'm here 'cause I clearly ain't allowed to have fun no more. Matter of fuckin' time 'til I gotta give up everythin' else." Man, shit was way less funny when she had to explain the joke. Whatever self-depreciating humor there was in her expression retreated back behind the wall of hostility, and she glanced elsewhere for a moment.
Jack didn’t mistrust what would be there tomorrow. He tore it down before it could be there and to spite its desire to leave. It wasn’t smart but it wasn’t reckless, either. It teetered on the imprecise edge of both. Most days, he endeavored to forget his own defense mechanisms but most days he wasn’t presented with so complete a view of another’s that he could. Gratefully, then, because Jack wasn’t survivor so much as passenger on grand rapids.
“We did.” He remembered, even if she barely did. He’d emailed her and a girl who he knew was now living with a baby and the ex-sheriff and art and then he’d packed in his pretension of holding an addiction at bay, one that could be neutered with twelve steps and contact, and folded in on the newspaper office. It was about the time he’d acquired a vengeful feline and a friend he’d trashed as thoroughly as the newspaper office itself. Jack slugged coffee at the aftermath of the thought. Christ, it was worse than he remembered.
“You stopped. Or I did.” She looked like she was winding up for someone to punch her or to punch someone else, and Jack looked reflexively for the source and found only himself.
“Isn’t the general rule you gave up everything else for this first?” Drawled inquiry, the lazy inclination of a question that was barely covered-up poor excuse for humor.
Dahlia rubbed the back of her neck 'neath hood, glancing elsewhere. "Uh, yeah," she mumbled, with a noncommittal shrug. "Shit happened, I guess." And that was all that she offered as an excuse for dropping the email chain. Yeah, shit did, in fact, happen. Survival, for her, weren't so much 'bout control over her life, as much as it were just treading water. And back then, 'round the time her emails stopped, most days all she did could tell herself was hey, good job, you didn't fucking drown today.
Not from lack of trying, though. Dahlia thought of the worst of it, with empties standing on every surface in her trailer like a tiny graveyard, and lifted her flat stare again. "What," she said, irritable, "you wanna talk 'bout rock bottom? I literally woke up in a ditch, dude." After losing months to those fields of rye, and the fear and the nightmares and the anger driving everybody away. "A fuckin' blessing, really, 'cause it weren't a holdin' cell this time. But sure, whatever. I gave up, 'cause there weren't shit else left to give. But you already know that. Or you wouldn't fuckin' be here, right?"
The words came out bitter, sharper than she really intended. Displacing, projecting. Dahlia didn't know shit 'bout none of that, but even she could recognize herself getting bitey at somebody for no reason. 'Cause she’d been doing it a lot, lately. Her mouth twisted into a line words could not cross, frowning into her coffee.
"Just--look," she said, after a long swallow. "I ain't here to tell you it gets better. Don't drink that bullshit koolaid they preach 'round here." And she motioned vaguely with coffee cup at the congregation of addicts, mingling like their lives depended on it. "Sobriety fuckin' sucks. Not just sucked worse."
Shit happened. An epitaph for a bloody age. One day he had been on the fringes of combat, not sure whether he was writing an anthem for doomed youth or a bloodily joyous tale of triumph of life over death. Then he’d been a man in an office staring at a blinking screen and nothing-stories of businesses and banks and a money-trail that had long gone cold, for corporate profit and a name on the masthead. Shit happened.
She stared death down her nose at him and he didn’t have room left to flinch, even if her rock-bottom sounded like the kind of story that brought alcoholics in and convinced them of the veracity of their own alcoholism. But he’d run down deliberately until he was here, coffee in hand and he didn’t know if that made him smarter or more of a sodding idiot.
“I didn’t think it did.” The faces were the same, irrespective of whether it was NA or AA. Not literally, but the lack of beatific peace was moderately convincing that this was not likely to be found in the denizens of an AA meeting. “Christ. I don’t know, you don’t have plausible deniability without it.”
This girl hiding under her hoodie--fighter, brawler, athlete in her prime. Had promise and aspirations and stability, once. Relatively. 'Cause then shit happened, and practically overnight, she wound up staring down narrow cell instead of a ring. Shit happened, and the door closed. Just like that.
She didn't think 'bout it much, right? Where it all really went to shit. Before Repose, before her second tour, before long hours working a lonely bar. Not unless she had to think 'bout it, and somebody would have to drag that outta her over her dead fucking body. There were lost months, years, gaping holes in her timeline where shit was buried deep and forgotten. 'Cause it made life easier, like swapping the needle for the bottle did. Sometimes she could even pretend she was just holding all that shit for somebody else.
No excuses without sobriety, huh. "So, what. That's why you're here?" she asked. "So you can say it was you who fucked all your shit up? Like, hey, it weren't ever the booze. It was just me, the asshole, all along. Yeah?" She smiled furtive, like that was a good joke. 'Cause that? That she got now.
He had no idea who she was, what she was. She had a face that looked like she’d picked a lot of fights, stubborn rebellion and the taste of piss and vinegar wasn’t very far away. Jack didn’t have the aspiration that every drunk in here had a story. The mind-numbingly dull part of it was that for the most part the stories were the same: piss-poor coping skills and a fundamental inability to translate that into wanting help for long enough to make a bloody difference. He thought Ivy might punch somebody who offered. Jack felt considerably more cheerful about that.
“Oh god yes. It’s some of my best work. If I can do it without the inspiration,” Jack’s smile was knife-thin but the coffee was terrible and her own was small, like a coin-toss that could be hidden on the way down, “I’m a bloody genius.” He looked over at the flank of folded chairs, thoughtful. He didn’t bother to hide it.
“I wasn’t listening when they told me why they were here.” The speakers. It was blunt honesty, but he didn’t imagine she minded. “I was too busy thinking how fucking depressing this place is.”
Dude weren't wrong. 'Bout a face that said no and her inclination toward punching her feelings rather than talking 'bout them. Dahlia didn't want help. Everybody called it pride or what-fucking-ever, like some demon to be exorcised outta her, when all she wanted was to do it herself, for once. Figure her shit out on her own. Was that so fucking bad? She already lived one life as somebody's burden. Already lived lives scraped together outta handouts and thrown bones, reliant on pity and acts of whatever. Been there, fucking done that. She was done with help.
So, yeah, she originally showed up to this shit solely with a card to get signed, under the watchful eye of her mentor or the court. Why she kept showing now? Schadenfreude, maybe. All these poor fucks waxing poetic 'bout their miserable fucking lives made her feel nominally better 'bout hers. Sobriety was unheard of in a small town with three (well, now two) bars, but leper like her still had friends. Friend. Whatever. And still got laid on the regular, despite everything.
Dahlia stared, distracted, into her half-empty cup. Dude spoke 'bout bullshit found at the bottom of a bottle and she sorta remembered why she felt like she could email the guy. Everybody at these meetings were always so fucking serious, but this guy could take a joke 'bout being a fuckup, sometimes. She snorted softly. "Ain't like they can hold it somewhere fun," she said, peeling lips back in mimicry of humor. More tooth than smile. "Pretty sure that's against the fuckin' rules." This musty ass church basement in a residential area was probably the only dry oasis in the whole fucking city. Far enough from the nightlife, the nearest bar or liquor store was a good ten blocks away. Not--like she ever checked. Nah. 'Course not.
"But, hey. If you wanna make a proposal, I mean--fuckin' go for it. I put down this place I worked at in the suggestion box, once. Yeah? Coulda got them a real choice hookup for live entertainment and all the depressed drunks in town. Fuckin' win-win, I figured." Dahlia sipped coffee and looked positively angelic for a moment, if innocence were named asshole, like it said on her sticker. "Sure, it was a strip joint. But dunno why they never took me up on it."
Jack had no desire for help. He had no willingness to ask for it either and being in the basement of a church cradled in among so many houses of people who lived perfectly ordinary lives, was about as bloody foreign as a new country, off the sodding map. It wasn’t pride, he would have agreed with her on that. It was sheer bloody-mindedness and a disbelief there was much translation that could be made between his own tongue and that of the world beyond it.
Not that he had her line in excuses. Jack was here because he had come himself, taken the bus from Repose to the Capital with no-one shanghai-ing him into it. He was going to need a better mode of transportation eventually, the bus would see off the best of intentions.
“I don’t like the implication that in the denial of anything approaching inebriation, we might suddenly catch God,” Jack observed. He hadn’t mapped out the local surrounds because he’d deliberately stuck to the locus of the college. He knew the location of the city’s paper, however. Masochism was something that didn’t go away willing.
“I think the nipples might have been a distraction from the examination of all the ways in which we’ve done ourselves damage.” This too, dry.
"Dunno 'bout you, but I got all my vaccinations for that shit as a kid." If her parents hadn't made her immune to Jesus at a young age, it woulda been all the organization-run shelters and soup kitchens in church basements just like this one. Another reason help had no appeal--God apparently had his shitty fingers in all of it, and that were never real welcoming to girls like her.
So she sat firm on the second step and didn't budge. This particular stoop was a spot on her own mental map of the city, which was skewed from walking it for so long. Dahlia knew where her favorite haunts were, sure, but also pinging like some broken radar in her head: the proximity to nearest parks and overpass bridges, the blocks where gangs butted up against one another, and which grocers were gonna dump their expired shit that day. All this dumb, useless knowledge nobody but another mess like her ever needed.
She downed the rest of her cup. "There's always pasties, dude," Dahlia said absently, into empty styrofoam, and one leg bounced restless for a few seconds. Maybe it were just all the coffee spiked with donut sugar, but she was done with this basement and its ennui, ready to get back to the roadhouse. She had shit to do, and this place was making her pine for untangling ancient electric wiring all chewed to shit by rats. Impressive, right? That was productive, and weren’t talking 'bout feelings.
Automatic, Dahlia climbed out of her chair to find trashcan and then door, in that order, but then paused, as if just remembering she was talking to somebody. She glanced back. "Uh," she started, awkward. Bye? See you next week? Christ. "I got a truck." Shit. The offer just fell out of her mouth, in lieu of anything else to say, "I mean, uh. If you wanna lift to a bus stop, or whatever."
God didn’t feature heavily in his childhood, which was where Jack supposed it needed to if it was going to take root. No familial tragedy had sent him to church, he didn’t believe in anything which was the problem. No doubt it was comforting to the people who came here looking for comfort, but in the absence of it there was no bloody meaning to the place other than it was drafty and smelled of mold. “Natural immunity.” Code for arsehole.
He didn’t have a mental map of the Capital, because he’d sunk himself into the small town until his pores rotted in saturation, hadn’t he? He had identified his locus, the points to revolve around in the unlikely event he felt like seeking salvation of the liquid or repetitious kind and that was that. Now, Jack wanted to know what was on every bloody corner. Did violence run under this city like blood or was it pockets, deep-rooted and long-set before housing went up and businesses were built?
“They’ve never done much to disguise the intent,” he said absently, as she began to wriggle in her seat towards movement. She began, and she stopped and Jack stared at her with his own hands loose. Something she wanted? He didn’t have a bloody thing to give, especially to a woman who looked like her left hook was better than his. When she stuttered out her statement, Jack’s mouth tugged.
“A lift to the bus stop.” Agreeable. “If you’re getting out of here now. If I sit too long, I think it will settle.”
At least the dude didn't make shit more awkward by turning the offer down. Standing, Dahlia fished her thin bundle of keys from belt loop, swinging it 'round idly by the carabiner. Everything surface 'bout her said city, from her leather and boots to her hostility to the hint of ink 'round wrists. But open her up, and her guts probably still looked small town. She blended in better with the wildlife 'round here, sure, but she was still a mutt. One life lived in hometown, another life lived here. Never fit neatly into either.
There were stats, sure. Violence had a body count, and the Capital packaged those numbers neat each quarter for the press. He could chase after homicide with a name, abusers and murderers and kingpins, but there weren't a story in the subtle, sickening radiation that coursed through this city like a feral heartbeat. It was in the smell of exhaust, the push of strangers. It was in urban blight, the bars on windows, the missing posters on street lamps. It was in cold winter nights huddled in a shelter for a bus that weren't gonna come. It was in the men in badges and blue who held the city by the scruff of its neck. It was in hunger, in smoking cigarettes, in addicts waiting for slow release. It was in shaking hands 'round an empty styrofoam cup.
It was in lost girls caught undertow. It was in fear and desperation and bad choices and apathy. For Dahlia, brutality was etched into every inch of muscle and skin. The fight threaded through her veins. Long before the liquor and opioids flooded through them. If he wanted to understand what this city's violence looked like? He needn't look far.
Dahlia pitched empty cup at a trashcan. Sunk it. Swish. "Alright. But no judgin' my ride," she said, as she started to walk and expected a follow. Not that he probably cared. The truck was a piece of shit rattling by on duct tape and prayers, yeah, but she still got a little defensive 'bout it. 'Cause it was hers. She climbed stairs, ready to put this hangover of a place behind her. If only 'til next week, or whatever.