The garage dwindled in hours, trash and blankets crumpled on the floor. Things thrown away and eventually folded, vanishing acts every time he looked for someone else to say goodbye. Goodbyes were a luxury when it was time to get while the getting was good. There was no telling when he'd see his siblings again, and that had never been a worry when Joey had been young. But now nothing was permanent, the hotel scrambled people around like dice on diesel-slick sidewalk. The Alexanders were a game of alleyway craps, a quick five bucks or a meager loss that nobody got too worked up over.
Love was there, laughter and liquor in the Wayne mansion. Loss, too. Everything was transient and temporary, just like the fits thrown by the toddler hitched in his arm. Beth chewed on his keys as he walked out into the Gotham sunlight for the first time in days. It was impossible not to feel a little optimistic, even with the sludge in the streets and the abandoned cars wrecked or ran out of gas. Clean-up crews were pulling trashcans down the street, sweeping up the broken glass from storefronts and the looting reminders. Beth garbled in a toddler's attempt at conversation, chubby fingers pointing wildly at big trucks.
Breakfast was a stale honeybun from a corner store with boarded up windows, open sign glowing red in the window like the worries were over. But shit wasn't ever over, and it didn't matter what universe he was in. Gotham or Vegas or another planet. Good was a transitory experience between one shitty location and the next. Did that mean he was just supposed to accept it? Just because thats how it'd always been, thats how it always was gonna be? Fuck that.
He'd followed the rules, he'd done good, he'd kept his head down and his hands in his pockets… what good had it done him? Everything was a mess, and his family was scrambling on the dirt side of like just like they always had been. Joey wasn't an envious person, it wasn't about what other people had, it was about what was deserved. In this life, and in this city, you either got out of the way or got stomped on. You either stood tall or got pushed aside. If you didn't take what you needed, it wasn't going to be handed out like favors at a children's birthday party.
He'd been trying to do good by his sisters and the few people in his life that could be called friends. But when the hotel kicked you around like a busted can, when you could just as well be in a zombie jail or a penthouse high rise from one day to the next, what was the fucking difference?
Beth drank from a plastic bottle of orange juice, half of which ended up on Joey's cotton shirt while he cased the storefronts and the highrises on the seven block walk to the door to the hotel.