“You’ll see it when you close your eyes,” says Louis. “We’re almost there, cherie. Look.”
Ella’s eyes are a slice of iris. “La vie–” she whispers. “So–the scent–la vie–”
“One thing left,” says Louis. His voice is richer than shadows. “I promise to care for you. Heart and soul.”
Ella’s hands are spotted and callow. Her nightgown pools around her little form. “Yes,” she gasps. “Yes, Louis.”
She dies. Roses burst through her lips, her ribs, her sex. She arches to Louis’s laugh, a flare of trumpets–but shouldn’t they be silver?
Why, she barely wonders, are these brass?
It’s a strange kind of anonymous intimacy, thinks Ishmael, like old-style confession, or purchased sex. They’ve got maybe two feet of space between them. They’re each engaged in a very private activity, each pretending he can’t hear.
There’s the contest of patience, too: who’s going to stand first? Ishmael was here earlier, but his opponent may not even know he’s competing. If Ishmael gives up, not only will the other man hear him cleaning himself, he could well walk out before Ishmael’s gone. The anonymity would shatter.
He settles down, puts elbows to knees and prepares for the long wait.
7:32 and the drugstore’s not open yet. Angel thumps her head on the glass door. “Of all the days to start,” she sighs.
“There’s a… a diner down the block,” Faith says, squinting. “I bet they have one of those machines in the restroom.”
“Good call. You guys want to wait at the corner?”
“Yeah. Need some change?” says Charity, digging in a pocket.
Angel laughs. “I won all your money last night, remember?”
Inside, she ducks back toward LADS ‘N’ LASSES. She unhooks the payphone, drops in Charity’s fifty cents and dials. She counts to five and hangs up.
“C’mon, big boy,” says Faith. She’s grinning; he’s red. She slaps him again. “Want to try something?” Slap.
“You’re wasting time,” mutters Clementine.
“Not every day–” says Faith, turning, and the teller swings an awkward punch.
“HEY!” snaps Angel.
“You fucking,” snarls Faith, but her shot’s wild. He grabs his hand and screams. Sudden blood, noise and the drop men walk in. 7:49–they’re early. Two long duffels on a dolly.
Faith feels Angel tackling her behind the counter just as she registers their guns. Why do they have guns? Something’s wrong. She knows, then, that they won’t be alone.
They cross at the light, wearing sweaters and jeans, dyed ponytails under ball caps–no leather catsuits. Their masks are still damp.
In the lobby, Glory flips on the old incandescent sign, the bank’s public all-clear signal. She unlocks the door. There’s a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s only twenty of, Glory,” frowns her boss. “We don’t open until the Palms boys make their drop, remember?”
Glory smiles.
Then they’re in. Faith hits the guard in the throat. Charity shoots out the cameras. Angel and Clementine cover the tellers, caught in shock near the door.
“Nobody touch anything,” Glory purrs.
Tuesday night, Charity’s place. Clementine scrubs off in the bathroom while Glory smooths plaster over Faith’s nose. Margaritas and Bob Seger; penny poker.
“There’s still Vaseline in my eyebrows.” Angel grimaces and raises a dime.
“No,” says Glory, “they just feel weird afterward. I’ve made a million of these, they’re perfect for the job. They’ll melt in water.”
“And I won’t have pantyhose over my eyes,” says Charity. “See a quarter, raise a quarter, call.”
Angel drops queens over eights.
“You weren’t bluffing!” Charity stares. “You had to be–”
“Nobody sees through this, sweetie.” Angel grins and rakes in the change.
Clementine falls and blood just dumps out of her, mostly on Glory.
The casino men put bullets in the counter; the tellers are screaming as Faith hunches along behind it. This way, she thinks, yeah, keep turning–
Charity kills one; the other dives away when his gun clicks. Faith gets his bag and half the bricks falls out of it, who cares, she shoves Charity out the door as the alarm begins howling.
Together they scramble into the car Angel’s already got running. Faith looks down at the bag: stacks of blank green paper.
“Glory,” she whispers. “Glory sold us out.”
The tower’s three stories, ten butts in diameter, which means–what, thinks Alder. Seventy-fiveish cigarettes a level? Seventy-five square, or hexagonal–whatever.
There’s enough carbon monoxide in this hallway to make passersby stumble. Unless that’s exhaustion: halfway through the reunion and they’re all lumped together to sleep, or sneaking off to not; she and Sid and Lacey smoke and stack.
What would five hundred kids who weren’t “gifted” do differently? Break more windows, she thinks. Maybe that’s why Alder and everyone are here: because even with the waste of their addictions, they have to build and build and build.
“Take me out drinking,” Zubrette smiles. “You’ll see it when I wake up.”
“That’s the point! Once we see each others’ ugliest faces we won’t worry about mornings anymore, right?”
“Okay,” says Zubrette. “Okay.”
Belfast turns around and pulls down his lower eyelids, pushes up his nose and hooks back the sides of his mouth. He turns back.
Zubrette’s face is still. A single roach bursts from her left eye, leaving a sucking hole, and skitters over her brow.
Belfast only flinches a little. He lets go of his eyelids. She blinks; it’s gone.
“Got you,” she says dully. “Didn’t I?”
Cobb snatches his Strat and dodges behind the old Moog, but Lannet’s not so fast: the white noise knocks him into a stack of amps.
“I wanted an amicable split!” Fitzhugh’s shouting. “You’d still get royalties!”
“I want sheet reprint rights!” Cobb yells back.
“Then you’ll get nothing!” Fitzhugh cuts loose a feedback-heavy C5 into the monitor–or would, if Cobb wasn’t matching it exactly. They cancel.
In the weird silence, Lannet’s bloody hand thrusts out of the amps and grabs his Fender Jazz.
“No!” gasp Cobb and Fitzhugh.
He breaks the knob off at eleven, then pops low E.