in love with a (strict machine)

[star studded]

"So why are you here?"

"I said I'd meet someone."

"And you're drinking with me instead?"

"For now, I guess."

"How are things.

"They're.. things."

"There's a ring on your finger."

"Astute."

"Getting married?"

...getting married getting married you're twenty two and you're diving head first into this and you don't know what you're getting into and you can't help but still remember that your feet your feet are fucking freezing...

"I guess."

"You're still the same, chipper girl I remember."

"Mm. Go figure."

"Who is he?"

"No one you know."

"Not Marco?"

"Jesus Christ, no."

"Then who?"

"No one you know."

"You're drinking with me, that says a lot."

"What does it say?"

...it says the way the way you're leaning that speaks volumes because your body has always said what your mouth was too proud to and your head was too cloudy to and your tongue was too busy to so get your arms off the table and don't tip your head that way...

"Do you want to come for a walk with me after this?"

"A walk where?"

"Around. I'm only here for this weekend. I leave tomorrow morning. Back to Vegas and all that. It's been what. Two years? Three?"

"It's been awhile."

"Come with me."

"Come where?"

"I said."

"But you meant.."

"...yes. I did."

...this is a test you can see it you can see that this is a test and oh god he always had that stupid look on his face when he made those offers and the way he always had something for you when he visited the way marco hated that you saw him hated that you spent time with him hated that you wanted him and when you had him you were done and it was boring and now its here again and theres that thought that maybe maybe he has something and maybe maybe it wont be boring and maybe maybe things will change and maybe this is the path two roads diverged and where do your loyalties lie when it comes to decide the rest of your life?

"I can't."

"But do you want to?"

you know that you will wind up telling him everything regardless of the handles that will be flown off of or the volumes that vocal cords will reach because there is always resolution and there is always a place to sleep and there are always arms and because there are no secrets anymore and it is time to start saying what you mean.

"I... "

"Lucy?"

"...we'll just walk."

[star studded]

There was a dent in his pillow that neither of them left, but instead, was a rectangle. A white paperback with black ink printed on the soft cover. A copy of a 20th century classic, stuck with a piece of notebook paper. Her scrawled handwriting was looping over the lines, slanted, sloppy, wide.

Think of this as your wedding (?) present ------

"Our boy Holden says 'What scares me most is the other guy's face -- it wouldn't be so bad if you could both be blindfolded -- most of the time the faces we face are not the other guys', but our own faces. And it's the worst kind of yellowness to be so scared of yourself you put blindfolds on rather than deal with yourself.'

To face ourselves.
That's the hard thing." --John Guare

I've always thought of you as my own, personal Holden.

Thank you for helping me start to take off the blindfold.

Lucia.

[star studded]

you are the icing
on the cake
on the table
at my wake

Charlie had retreated. After long moments of assaulting the wall, screaming at her and refusing to listen, he had retreated, and she had remained still, her frame a shaking mess, her breath still launching in hiccups and gasps that she couldn't subside. Instead, she masked them with the roar of the bath-faucet, water pounding into the ancient porcelain tub. She pulled the hot end to full blast, a healthy layer of steam rising from the water. The silence, when she killed the steady stream, was unnerving. Stripped to skin and bones (because that was what she was, an unnaturally beautiful skeleton covered in scars and 'x' slashes), she sank into it, ignoring the fact that her pale skin roasted pink. Sliding her spine down the edge, she sank to her shoulders, her neck, her chin disappearing beneath the ledge of the water.

In one fluid motion, a deep breath was inhaled and she disappeaered beneath the water, the caps of her knees still protruding, her eyes eerily open, staring up at the bent, distorted world around her, a sea roaring in her ears.

If he was going to make her feel like Joselyn McDervish, shout at her without regard, and call her what she was... she might as well try to embody how the woman felt just moments before she bled dry and filled her lungs with water.

Even if it was only for sixty seconds before she shot herself to the surface, gasping for and choking on air.

[star studded]

there are catalysts to every tragic ending

Settling in for the night, the blonde clutched a bowl of cereal, stretched in a tank top and sweatpants, staring at the glow of her low-volumed television. Flipping through the channels and unamused by the knife infomercials, she clicked it off and decided to eat her cereal in blissful silence before bed. Footsteps on her stairs were nothing new, her door was always locked, despite the time of day. She simply didn't trust anyone. Not fucking anyone. She could make out the one pair of shoes that was ascending, and before she could turn the television back on to drown them out, there was a feeble knock at her door. No one knocked like that.

Standing up, she was almost startled when the knocking, polite and weak, turned to a vertiable pounding. Utilizing the peephole for all it was worth, her heart leaped in her throat, and she backed steps away. Marco had made good on his threats. He was here here to collect. The poor girl had been under the impression that they had no idea where she lived.

Trying to remain silent, she lifted her hand and attempted to twitch the chain lock across the door, but shaking hands made her fail. The knob was jiggling--that bastard was trying to pick her lock.

"I know you're in there, you little cunt!"

Keep your mouth shut, Lucy, keep your mouth shut!

"Fuck you, you fucking limp dicked asshole!"

Great, now her cover was blown--they worked faster. She bolted away from the door, struggling to grab her most important things and get out of there as fast as possible. Even if she had to descend six flights of fire escape stairs with barefeet.

In the kitchen, snagging her purse, she nearly shouted out when she heard the front door crack open. How were her nosy fucking neighbors keeping their heads out of her business when she wanted them to intervene?

"Where y'been, Lucy?"

She froze, whipping her head around to stare at the Portuguese pusher, clutching her purse tighter. He stood there, statuesque, waiting for an explanation.

"Out and about. What the fuck do you want."

"You know what I want."

"You're not getting it."

"I beg to fucking differ."

Grabbing the closest thing to her (a coffee mug) she lobbed it at the man's head like a pro-pitcher, but she lacked the aim and it crashed on the wall beside him. Maybe he would have been complacent if she hadn't done that, but now she was sure she was in for it. He lunged for her and she made a break for the kitchen door, intercepted by him because he was too goddamned fast. He seized her by the waist and she was kicking and flailing, her palms coming in forceful contact with his face. Tossed to the floor, it turned into a wrestling match, who could pin who down and force them into submission, Marco's palms attempting to latch onto twig-wrists.

"I don't have your fucking money!!"

"It's not money I want, sugar."

That sent a whole new sort of fear through her, and while his hands were abandoning the task of pinning her wrists and attempting to force away the elastic around her waist, she was using her nails to viciously attack his face, pressing painfully at his eyes. He rolled away and she scrambled to her feet, lobbing her coffee table on its side to clunk on him and send him spiraling into more pain. Speeding away she locked herself in her bedroom while he scrambled to claw after her, throwing open her window and rushing down the fire escape.

Sirens wailed, someone had the sense to notify the police. But when they got there, she was sure that all they'd find was a ransacked apartment. Marco was a slippery fucker.

Rounding the corner with her hair a mess and in bare feet, she fumbled for quarters in her purse by the light of a neon 7-11 sign, shoving them in the nearest payphone and dialing a number she had never used before. Her face ached and her spine was killing her from the contact with the floor--but she could bet that Marco was going to be seeing blurry vision for a few days.

"Goddamn you, Charlie.. pick up."

[star studded]

setting up glass to shatter

"Some guy's here to see you, Lucy. Skinny guy in the back."

The description made her immediately think she knew just who it was, and with a roll of her eyes and a flop of her cloth napkin used to wipe the tables down over her shoulder, she clicked her heels back through swinging doors, into the little stock room in the back, pressing the door closed behind her.

"Charlie?"

A palm slid over her mouth, a muffled squeak of protest as she battered palms and feeble fists at whoever this new assailant was. It was obvious that whoever it was, they wanted her to shut up, compressing a free arm around her throat to temporarily rob her of enough air to scream with.

"Hola, princessa.." The mouth near her ear made her sick and she thrashed and thrashed again, stopping only when there was the feel of the flat of something cold pressed against her side. "Shut up. Stop moving.. and if you scream, it'll be the last thing you ever do."

She obliged, grudgingly, letting herself just stand there, muffled by an unctuous, oily palm, and assaulted with a switchblade she had seen Marco Juarez brandish too many times before. "You're whoring yourself to that little Charlie fucker aren't you?" She didn't reply, because she knew any answer would get her the bad side of that knife.. pretty lips were painted shut. "I ought to cut your bleeding heart out just for pity-fucking him." Steel slithered against pale skin and she was wriggling away from it.

"You're fucking him so you can get off free, Lucy.. just like you did with me.. just like you'll do with every other halfway benevolent pusher you can wrap your skinny, whore-legs around." This incited her to bite down on his hand, and immediately the flinch forced him to graze her skin with a threatening weapon. A little red sliver, barely anything at all.. but it was all he needed, slashing a thin-thin line across the mark in a little harmless but forboding 'x'. Whirling her around, there was a pronounced slap to her face, and her shoulderblades met the wall--the kitchen was such a busy place that no one heard the thunk, and Lucy had stopped protesting moments ago.

"You're lucky that little waitress bitch saw me, or I'd have no problem with killing you right now.." But he couldn't run the risk of being identified.. and it was so much more fun to fuck with her before he decided whether or not she was really worth the risk of sending Ruben out to do his dirty work and end her. His hold loosened. "Fix your hair." It was out of place and it was going to give his presence away. Steady fingers pulled her hair back into the helter-skelter knot and she she stared slate eyes straight ahead. "I suggest you go in the bathroom.. put some makeup on that pretty new redmark on your face, and go back to work. And when you go home?" Dirty hands shifted their way over her thigh, before inciting a little barely-bleeding slash mark against her leg, beneath her skirt. Had to keep the customers, the employees oblivious.

"You tell Charlie.. Marco says hello."

<font color="#7F8190" size="1">[ April 05, 2004 06:19 PM: Message edited by: shipwrecked ]</font>

[star studded]

"What'd you want to see me for?" Lucy stood before her slim and shrewdish boss, arms folded, her hair in place, makeup applied to a brightened red mark. She prayed it was about Marco. She prayed that someone had said something and now they were going to ask her. Truth or lie, truth or lie...

"I need to ask you to do us here at the Del Raye a favor, Lucille."

"What?" Extra hours? A different shift?

"It's been brought to my attention that you may be indulging in things that we here at the Del Raye don't have a desire to promote. You're being requested to take a drug test. And if you refuse, to sign a resignation."

She was cracked.. frozen ice, her eyes wide. This wasn't legal. And this simply smelled and tasted just like Marco.

"You can't fire me on suspi.."

"No one's firing you. Unless the results come back positive, and then we'll have no other choice."

"You can't do this, it's fucking illegal." Good thing the back office door was closed.

"You're absolutely right, Ms. Hart. But.. in all honesty, what do you plan on doing about that?"

Something about that statement was so condescending that it stung. He knew she was broke, that she had no means to contact any sort of labor union or lawyer about anything.. and their suspicions were correct so it simply wouldn't do her any good. And Marco fucking Juarez had done it. He had slipped a good word (and possibly some fucking money) to her boss and the deal was done.

"What will it be, Ms. Hart?"

"I'll sign it.. I'll fucking sign it." A pen scrawled her name onto a piece of paper and she winced when she handed it back. She should have signed it in fucking blood, because she felt like she was dealing with the devil.

"You can go home now, Lucille. Your check from this week will be waiting here for you on payday. I'm sure you'll land on your feet. Perhaps this will force you to make wiser choices concerning what you tend to deal with and.. who you tend to associate yourself with." And now he was rubbing it in her face. She should have figured that Marco knew everyone in this city. There wasn't a string he couldn't pull.

Wandering onto the sidewalk, her stomach sunk. Charlie wouldn't be there to pick her up for another two hours, and she had no method of contacting him. Rather than wait, she walked home alone, trying to beat darkness to his apartment. She didn't seem to care that he was probably going to have a heart attack when he discovered she wasn't at work.. all that mattered to her was curling up on the couch and staring blankly at the television--after she loaded herself up and numbed it all away.

She was trying to think of what she had left for him to take.

[star studded]

"Hola princessa."

The words cut through the jangle of tinny department store pop music and perfume-reeking silence to crash down over her ears. The blouses she was folding were clenched with paranoid, tensed up fingers, and she refused to turn around. His face was the last thing she wanted to see. She'd rather stare at the scars he inflicted.

"Not even a hello anymore, mi amor?" His hand slithered down her shoulder, and she shrugged it off.

"I'll call for security."

"And I'll make sure you don't ever call for anyone else ever again."

Marco Juarez always made good on his promises. Lucy folded the last red blouse and stuck it on the stand with the rest, slowly edging on heel to stare eye to eye with him. Slate met brown, and she was immediately repulsed by his presence. "What do you want."

"Just the pleasure of your company."

"And what else?"

"Let's take a walk, shall we?"

"I'm not off the clock yet."

"They won't miss you. Get your things."

Gathering up her belongings from the little room in the back, she slung her purse over a bare, bony shoulder, clicking dress heels back to where he waited, his arm immediately draped over her, holding tight. Just in case she screamed. Just in case she ran.

"What do you want."

"I told you."

"You're a liar, though, Marco."

"And you're going to be a fucking cadaver if you don't stop asking questions. Una punta muerta, just like the rest."

Winding from the store and around the corner, he finally sat her down at a table at the nearest cafe, where he proceeded to smile and look completely normal, grinning like a cat that had just bagged himself a rat.

"Now, princessa. Hablemos."

Lucy took that opportunity to light herself a cigarette, staring at the grated table between them, looking oh so high and mighty. He petrified her, but of course.. she'd never let him see.

"I'm waiting."

"Lentamente, mi amor. Todo en el tiempo." He made her wait until they had ordered coffee, or rather, he ordered for both of them, grinning at her when the waitress walked away.

"How's Charlie?"

Her heart sank.

"He's just ducky."

"Good, that's good to hear. And how are you? I heard you're no longer a slave to the needle."

"Dandy, thanks. Not like you actually care.."

"Ohhh, but I do, I do. So.." His tone turned a bit more sinister, the sort of voice Lucy was used to hearing murmuring in her ear before he slid his hand beneath an article of her clothing. Before her stomach turned and her blood ran cold. "How long did it take you before you fucked him, Lucy? A week? A few days?"

"Fuck you."

"That's exactly what I'm here to talk to you about."

Things froze. The people beside her no longer moved, or spoke, or laughed. There was just an empty blackness, a hole occupied by Marco, herself, and the table and chairs.

"No."

"Relax. You haven't even heard my proposition yet."

"I don't want to."

"Well, you can stay and hear it, or you can go, and I can turn you and your new little boyfriend into chalk outlines."

Silence.

"Charlie-boy is selling to my customers. He got you. He got a few others. And he's beginning.. to irritate me. Now.. this does not make me a very peaceful, complacent man. And I think I've let you two live in your play world quite long enough."

"I can't make him stop, Marco." It wasn't her place. It wasn't her business.

"Ohhh. But you can do us all a great big favor, Lucy. See.. it'd be a shame. A real, real shame if Charlie wound up with a bad order. He'd test it, and you'd be the one to find him cold and dead on the bathroom floor, wouldn't you?"

"Someone else'll test it."

"And then I'll just shoot him myself."

"So.. so what the fuck do you want from me? I'm not involved with this anymore. I'm not a part of this circle, I don't know who he's selling to, or buying from.." She was helpless, she was naive, she was desperate to be left alone.

"You want Charlie to stay alive, don't you? You want to wake up every day to his smiling, ugly junkie face. Because it's better than waking up alone."

Or waking up to yours, you ugly, greasy prick fucker.

"Don't you?"

"Yeah. Yeah. What do you want."

"One night." For the satisfaction of taking her from Charlie if only for a few hours. It would put them both into their places. Beneath him.

She wanted to throw the table over and scream, she wanted to scald him with the coffee she wasn't going to touch, she wanted to claw his eyes out and spit in the sockets. But most of all, she wanted the satisfaction of making him hurt. The exact way he made her hurt.

"You.. you fucking.. I can't.. I can't believe you.." But had she expected any less from Marco? No. She knew he was capable of doing anything to get what he wanted. And what he wanted was everyone else's misery.

"It's really rather simple. You spend a night with me.. and he lives. You go back to him in the morning, and you two live your sickeningly happy lives, provided you don't fuck up and sing like a bird, maranita." A slow smile. "And if you refuse? I'll make sure you're the first one to find him after I'm done with him."

She wanted to scream and cry, and beat her palms against concrete until they bled.

"So.. just think about it." He continued, sliding the chair back and standing. "I'll keep in touch. You don't have to answer now, princessa." Winding over to her, he hunched down and pressed a delicate peck to her mouth. Small, but enough to make her want to retch. "Think about it. Long and hard."

And it took hours and hours of contemplation before she was resigned to her decision.

[star studded]

this is cooling
faster than i can


It was a preferred position, tangled and twisted at early morning hour. A mop of blonde was tangled around her head, pressed out of the way with creaking jointed fingers. She was used to this feeling, of there being something to press against, the way that Charlie was basket woven around her.

She could feel his hands. One planted between unfurling wing-span shoulderblades, the other printed at the hilt of her spine. They felt like normal. Warm, five fingers, not pulled taut but all joints gently unlocked and loose.

And they were the same hands that had killed Ruben. The same hands that she could only seem to imagine closing around his throat and squeezing until he couldn't breathe. The hands she could envision turning into fists and bashing into his jaw, the hands that were made out of concrete and cotton, whispering against her skin. It made her nervous. It made her shift against them. Out of concern. Paranoia.

They constricted. She felt her muscles tighten. Half of her wanted to get away from them. Not the rest of him. Just his hands.

Fingertips lifted and skidded across the ledge of his hairline, above eyes that she had always thought looked much older than the rest of him. They aged with experience while the rest of him aged with time. They saw too much and she didn't know the half of it.

She reached behind her, wary cautious fingers twining in his own, plucking them away from her skin and meshing his palm to her own. Hand to hand. Face to face.

He didn't mean it. He didn't. He'd never mean to do something like this. He'd never hurt the innocent. He'd never hurt her. He couldn't. And even though he was silent, unbearably so.. it felt like he was saying everything he couldn't when he was awake. So she replied, a feathered whisper against him.

"I know."

<font color="#7F8190" size="1">[ April 05, 2004 06:31 PM: Message edited by: shipwrecked ]</font>

[star studded]

"Judas! Darling! My one and only.."

"What do you want, Lucy." The voice on the other end of the phone was groggy. He had been disturbed from his afternoon nap, and the sound of him rolling over on his couch was evident.

"Mama needs a favor."

"..what."

"You know that giant-ass room above the Red Room?"

"The ballroom?"

"That's the one. I need to rent it." A hand reached down to pick up a pen, abstractly scribbling on the pad of paper in front of her, a purring kitten situated by her side.

"Sweetheart. You can't afford to rent that room."

Now this presented her with a challenge, her hand fanning her collar as she gasped in shock. "I'm sorry, you must not have understood me. When I said I wanted to rent it? I meant I wanted you to let me use it with no monetary exchange on my behalf."

"You have balls of steel, Lucy."

"Darling, I'm a married woman, flattery will get you nowhere."

"When do you need it?"

"Three Saturdays from now."

"For what?"

"For shits and giggles. No, really, for a fashion extravaganza of sorts. Black tie. Lani's helping me out. Bringing some business moguls. It'll be fab. So, eight o'clock?"

"You got models?"

".. pfft. Yeah?"

"Who?

"Lani. And.. and Asher."

"Have you asked them?"

"..... no!? So!? Quit trying to piss on my parade, Eden!"

"Three Saturdays from now. Eight o'clock. I guess I can do you a favor. If you do me one."

"I told you, I'm not accepting propositions."

"I need a babysitter next weekend. Overnight."

".... ha!"

"You want this for free or do you wanna drop the cash to rent it?"

"... you're a hard bargain. Don't tell Charlie 'til Friday night when you bring them by, I wanna watch him freak out."

"Sick."

"You know it."

[star studded]

notebook paper in her scrawled handwriting, tucked in a sneaker, as all secrets were

I'm terrible at thank you's, so I'll let someone else say it for me:

Wine comes in at the mouth ?
And love comes in at the eye; ?
That’s all we shall know for truth ?
Before we grow old and die. ?
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
--WB Yeats

Thank you.

-Lucia