Re: Roof, Hell's Kitchen: Clem, Bucky & Matt
[James, he was real helpful. He said friends of the bad folks would come, and she figured he was right, because she wasn't fool enough to think this wasn't going to ripple all the Hell over her life.] Friends'll come, sugar, but I ain't going to hide for the rest of my life. My kin, he'll make it safe plenty, and I'm on a dispatch line, firefighters are right out my window all night, all day. I'm not letting some thugs control me any. [Maybe that was a whole lot of dangerous bravado, but she'd lived with the rotting for near a year, and she'd done her daddy in, and she'd survived that Tower and all them nazis inside. She'd survive this too, and maybe she wasn't realizing it wasn't near the same, folks breaking in, criminals when you weren't expecting and her not bad on the eyes. But she didn't like thinking 'bout being controlled by fear, and she wasn't showing any just then.
But James said he was willing to stay with Matt, and he helped him up easy, and that won Clementine over, even if the man didn't have a lick of charm to him. Time with Matt might fix that right up, because even looking like his face was some real beat-up steak, the man was still trying to charm her, and she wasn't no fool; she could tell.
Still, she let him go on doing it.] "The Clementine" is going to be just fine. She's got firefighters, and she's got boys that wear plaid regular, and she's got her own damn gun. James is going to take care of you, honey, not me. Least for now.
[She waited for James to hand his coat on over, and she looked on over the edge of the roof, looking for any dangerous seeming folks below.] Matt, sugar, how far we going? Whether we can make it unseen or not, that depends on how far we got to go. I can borrow us a car across the way, if it's far. [She considered.] I got a place we can go in Queens if need be, but that's real far. I don't want you moving that far, Matt, even if you swear up and down I don't got to worry any over that gurgle.
[Truth was, she really just wanted to get the man cleaned up and laid out, so she could stitch and listen better than she could up on this roof with the thin air and germs all over.]