Ella Dean is a (chanteuse) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-07-30 20:24:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, *log, clementine murphy, ella dean, shane alexander |
Gotham log - Ella D, Clem M
Who: Ella Dean & Clementine Murphy
What: Introductions & return of lost property
Where: Gotham
When: Recently
Gotham wasn’t nothing like Marvel New York and she knew it from the minute she opened the door and stepped out onto streets that weren’t magazine-shiny. Marvel was sticky with gloss, like someone had taken a city and papered over the cracks, found the mean places in New York and scrubbed them temporarily clean. Gotham echoed New York in the dull red brickwork of the apartment blocks, in the criss-cross chessboard layout of its buildings but it looked like a filter over the lens, like all that dirt swept out of Marvel to smile pretty for the picture had landed here. It reminded her of Vegas, of going behind backstage at shows, and at the club, where the tinsel and the lights rubbed off.
Gotham wasn’t like Marvel but it wasn’t Gatsby, syrup-trickle of people through the streets and slow. Gotham rushed, the same way New York back where superheroes lived in comic books rushed, the same tenor and the same sense some folks were going to be left behind in the backwash. Marvel tried to be perfect, and she liked that, she liked clean and bright and superheroes nearby, like a comfort blanket but Gotham didn’t look like it even tried to be perfect, and that was a truth that could be held onto, raw but certain.
Ella held tight to the jacket folded over one arm like an anchor, leather twisted into fingers and a yellow receipt folded twice over between finger and thumb pulled from the pocket. The piece of paper said nothing useful but a list of order items straight off a Chinese menu, and a scribbled signature at the bottom - but the address, written on the back in careful print - was somewhere in Gotham and maybe it was about returning the jacket and maybe she wanted to see where he’d ended up, after the panic and the fear and the death had settled like sediment to the bottom of the river. She’d stopped someone at the bus-stop, asked if they knew the street - and got a knowing kind of look, one she didn’t understand but passed over when they reeled off directions like it was a landmark, same as the Empire State Building back home.
Except - the closer she got, the more she realized it practically was. It didn’t look like Joey, chrome and glass and an entry-way with someone in livery. She nearly turned tail but the receipt was in the jacket pocket and the jacket was Joey and she was as far as she was going to go into Gotham at all. She stopped at the desk, meek as milk and asked for Joey Alexander, reading off the letters ‘PH’ from the top of the receipt, and she stood there, loose cotton shirt and Goodwill skirt and sneakers and nothing that said Penthouse when he rang up.