meaning to the means - julia singer.

[secondhand_stars]

<center>I'll lay down my glasses
I'll lay down in houses
If things come alive
I'll subtract pain by ounces
Yeah, I will start painting houses
If things come alive
I promise to commit no acts of violence
Either physical or otherwise
If things come alive
I'll say it now
I'll say it now
Say it now
Oh I'll say it now
Cause I want it now

When personality is scar tissue
We travel south with this use
I'm subtle like a lion's cage
Such a cautious display
Remember take hold of your time here
Give some meanings to the means
To your end
Not even jail

Not Even Jail - Interpol.</center>


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A ticking time-bomb with a fastly decreasing deadline clicking down upon a twitching LCD-screen, she was without a certain escape route. Instead, all those wires wrapped in various shades of plastic spilled out like a war injury and dared one to test their luck. Her game was far more simple than the sophisticated package it came in. It was a street game of three card monty. There was no winning, no breath of relief after a quiet snipping of the wire-of-your-choice. Instead, she was inevitable explosion. Her temper was legendary. It was the stuff of ancient stories full of vengeful, green-eyed goddesses.

Life had proven to be more difficult than the shadowy underworld that psyche had been conditioned for. Julia found that not everything could be obtained through the various methods kept up her sleeve. She could not always buy, borrow, barter, or force her way. Instead, daily, she was brought to her knees not by the hulking figure of some druglord's steroid-and-PCP-infused bodyguard, but by a frail preteen with a stubbornly set jaw and disposition much too similar to her own. The CIA had taught her plenty about injecting instability into governments and the various ways of dismantling both life and weapon. However, somewhere along the way, she was forgotten the basics. Now, in trial and error, she learned the necessity of removing the crust from white-bread sandwiches and the proper length for a plaid uniform skirt.

[secondhand_stars]

I haven't seen him since he slipped into the coma. I should. I should go to him and hold a quiet vigil at his bedside. What a picture I'd paint in my black suit and drawn expression with my mouth set and eyes hooded. The bored nurses in their cutesy scrubs and white sneakers would peek in, but wait just five more minutes before disturbing us to change out Grim's bags or monitor his vitals. I wonder if they'd think I was his sister or his wife. I really could be either with my coloring and my resentful look. The more romantic ones would say wife and look at the way that I gripped the railing of his bed. They'd swear they hear me whispering sweet nothings in his ear as I bent close. Little would they realize what I was actually saying. What I'd actually say is this --

You know better than to die, Grim Maxwell. There's no place in heaven for our kind and you could scarce stand the heat of India. Not that I believe in heaven or hell, but you would. You were the ridiculous one, afterall. If you do die, I hope you rot in the lowest level of hell with a picture of me nailed to the wall of your cell. I hope you're miserable and lost there. At least until I die and find myself shackled at the ankle to you. That's how it goes, you know. Then, I'll spend an eternity tearing into you for doing this to me.

I hate you so much. You couldn't even begin to understand the level of disgust and anger I am holding around for you. How could you be so selfish and so very, very stupid. Were you trying to protect me by not saying anything? How noble. Yes, you're just such a prince. Scratch that. Everyone knows you're a fairy, fairy princess complete with fussy wings and a little glittering tiara. Oh god, you son-of-a-bitch. You let this all happen and never said a word. You should have prepared me. If you really did love me, you would have. Because I'm alone now. And I promised myself I'd never be in this place again.

I've changed my mind. You better hope you die, Grim. You'd better slip in a morphine-laced euphoria into whatever happens after this with a final sigh and cessation of heartbeat. If you don't, as soon as you're better, I'm going to kick your ass so hard that you'll swear it's 1996 and we're back in the godawful slums of Calcutta. I won't leave bruises. I'll leave scars. Awful ones. On your face. You'll spend six months in a Swiss hospital having them prodded and babied by expensive plastic surgeons with funny names. I will kick your ass and then I'll leave you. You'll hobble into the house one last time to pack up all your shit and take it downstairs to a cab. Go to a Hotel. Go to London. Go, wherever. I'm done. I'm never letting myself be in this position again. Especially not for you, you socially retarded, emotionally vacant Betty Crocker.

The only hard part about this decision is Kate. I can't even begin to think of how she'll react to all of this. I don't know what I'm going to tell her .She doesn't see you like I see you. In fact, she sees more of you. She knows you. I only know of you. Whatever--

That's what I'd say to him. And then I'd take my lipstick out of my purse and proceed to fill in your mouth with a bit of color. Color meaning whore-red rather than a soft whimsical pink, of course. I know how much you hate it. In my way, it's a sort of retaliation. Just you wait, I'd say after I found a tissue and wiped off the color. There's no need to get banned altogether from the hospital -- at least not yet.

[secondhand_stars]

She waited in the narrow vein of an alleyway. With her spine pressed to the heavy dumpster with its peeling green paint crackling and flaking off bits of color upon the otherwise colorless concrete, she felt the muscles and nervework that filled and covered vertebrae begin to snap and pull with irritation. Patience had never been her virtue.

This was the restaurant district. Smashed together with little room to breathe or distinguish the smells of one cuisine to the next. Julia was pressed between an East and West. The combined powers turned her stomach: the greasy, crackling grill of the American diner to her left collided with the syrupy, molasses and subtle refinement of the Chinese Restaurant to her right with its crumbling brick facade painted in proud red characters and a mismatch of graffitti.

He appeared at the mouth of the alleyway as a simple pedestrian in his light pullover and battered sneakers. Streetlight illuminated the sharps of his face and turned pale hair bright. Those were the only distinguishing features that lasted as he stepped through into their makeshift office. A smudge of a shadow, he was a gaping mouth and eyes that only glittered randomly. The point of his nose and feathered crown of his hair, however gave her something to examine. "Hey," he murmured. There was a rattle of information in his pocket: paper, a receipt maybe, something easily destroyed but precious to her.

"Do you have it?" Julia rarely, if ever, made time for greetings or casual small talk. Already, she was reaching into her overcoat. Within the side pocket payment and the outline of her gun stood waiting for choice. Pale eyes dropped now, to the pocket where noise had first filtered in from. He was reaching for it, and so she, did likewise. Paper-trade was always far more clean than the sort made from gunmetal and knifepoint.

"Yeah, sure. Of course. You got the money?"

"Yeah, sure. Of course," she mimicked as chin lifted in a nod.

Later, she'd discover that he had wrote down the location on the crumpled back of a liquor store receipt. Crowne Liquors, 52nd and Pine. It was a poor choice on his part. Any misstep or underhandedness on his part could be punished. He, might disappear from the grid, but a cheap bottle of wine at an even cheaper discount dealer would be his downfall. People -- even herself -- were creatures of habit. He'd return and she'd find him. This was the worse case scenario, however. Best case was that the information would lead to the dealer, to the one who could help Julia.

She lifted out the first wad of money from her pocket and held it out for greedy fingers to snatch up. He was too quick, too wild-eyed about the money. A good sign. Rather than have him discover as he began to count out the money with thick fingers full of yellowed stain and broken nail, she cleared her throat. "Half. It's half. Once I've determined that this -- location isn't a bunch of bullshit on your part, you'll receive the other and a bonus of four thousand dollars for the wait. A thousand a day. Good deal?"

He thought about it a moment, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. Then, hand lifting, it swiped against his ruined face full of broken capillaries and hollowed out spots. He had been someone once, Julia thought as eyes still clever skittered around to find some sort of clarity in his brilliant, ruined mind. He could have been the best.

"Tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"Why are you doing this?"

"It's --" She squinted, scrunching her features up at him and then past into the gap of the alleyway where people loitered past unaware of their dealings. Why? It was impossible to lay out everything and then, to dive deeper and explain reasons and intent. "Long story. I just need to. I need to visit her."

"Picking up another charity case, are we?" He cackled.

She grimaced, her insides filled with something not quite pity nor rage, but a curious blend. He was a grotesque creature with spittle flinging out in bands from his mouth and hands pressed to an emaciated belly. "Shut up," Julia hissed back as a hand grabbed a fistful of material and feet began to pedal him back a step. "Shut up or I'll end you here. I have no use anymore."

Though expression remained trapped in that mad hyena appearance, all sound had been lost. Gaping like a Jack O'Lantern with his crooked little teeth and squint-eyes, the man stared mutely and waited for her to grunt with disgust and shove him away. When she did, he folded into the brickwall with a sigh. "You love him, don't you?"

"Who?" Julia spat back over her shoulder as feet began to make their way towards the opening of the alleyway.

[secondhand_stars]

Two weeks later.


The news had come in the early hours of the morning long after codes had been called and all electronic bleeping-beeping machines had been turned off. The persistant roll of a jagged green lifeline had become a blank television screen only to be so impersonally plugged into the next person who lingered between the living and the dead. After so years spent attempting to kill Grim Maxwell, and another handful filled with the idle threats of carrying out a long ago cancelled assassination, she was at a loss of how exactly he had been allowed to pass without her permission.

Rather than take calls and casserole dishes from the handful of people who both knew and truly cared about the pair, Julia locked the front door of the apartment she had leased out, closed all blinds, and unplugged the telephone. Having played widow once, she couldn't bear the thought of a second go around. Instead, Kate and she subsisted on frozen television dinners and a silence that gnawed like a secondary hunger in their bellies.

A quiet strike began the day after the call and stretched out over thirteen more. During that time, neither spoke and any tears that were shed were done so privately. It was a sort-of ceremony that Grim would have appreciated, both assumed: no fuss, no dramatics, no frills.

The fourteenth day, Julia surfaced from the cave of her bedroom and through the mazes of unpacked boxes brightly decorated in international shipping stamps and color bands. In the past weeks, only Kate had unearthed her Indian life. She filled her small bedroom with brightly dyed and bronze-cast trinkets. Good-luck elephants and tiny bracelets dripping with bells cluttered her windowsill and along the baseboards. Upon the mattress to a bed not yet put together, batik and gauzy cloth tangled together to create an impressive tent of circus-color and hazy filtered-in light. As her mother filled the doorway of her bedroom, she arranged intricate gold bangles into the spaces of her carved wood jewelry box.

When Julia spoke it was in a low, almost animal sound. Her voice was hoarse and waterlogged, but she didn't bother to try and conceal her tone into something fresh and unaffected. Instead, grief was worn openly in pink-rimmed eyes and a mouth that suddenly seemed very old to her daughter. "We need to discuss our options."

Kate reluctantly agreed with a nod.

[secondhand_stars]

A headache of perfect ringing pitch and clarity. Were it a diamond or fine wine, it would have been priceless. Yet, contained within her head, it was a slow agony that Julia found fitting for the day. The florescent lights above made her stomach turn as she watched the seamstress adjust the blue plaid skirt upon Kate's waist. With pins and a fabric pin, she indicated where darts should be placed and where to hem the skirt exactly above knees. Rather than complain and rally for a longer length, she slouched deeper. Fingers picked through the contents of her purse in search of a stick of gum or mint or something equally distracting.

"So where are you going to school in the fall?"

"St. Catherine's," Kate replied brightly to her reflection in the tri-mirror. Twelve-soon-to-be-thirteen, adolescence had yet to touch her. She was still wiry and boyish with a clear face and hair stripped of the dark inky shades of India. All that remained of their time in Goa was the perfect caramelized color of her skin and the stack of bangles upon a wrist. Upon her ankle, a small henna flower had been painted on with a fine brush from her kit.

"I've never heard of that school. Where is it? Connecticut?"

"No, no. Switzerland."

The seamstress nearly swallowed a pin as her eyes rolled over to Julia, who remained green-cast and unaffected by the news. A dulled over glance was returned to the woman briefly before she returned to her purse. Fingers scraped over the shell of her cellphone and in response, it illuminated and flashed an unknown number. Foreign, she decided as it was silenced and lifted to eye level. After a moment of deliberation, thumb flipped open the lid and the device was placed to her ear. "Julia Singer," she mumbled. At the other end was a static, nervous silence. She heard a shuffling and gulp, but couldn't identify anything other than a presence at the other end by them. Growing impatient, she tapped a foot against the tiled floor and rolled eyes away from the fitting. "...Hello? Who is it?"

"Julia --"

"Oh god. David?" She groaned with another turn of pale eyes before they nailed to the ceiling. She didn't break her stare with the tiled panels, not even when Kate gasped audibly.

"Uncle David! Let me talk to him! Where is he?"

Mouthing a stern 'no' for Kate, she shifted the phone to her other ear and rolled up from padded seat. Her purse was left behind as she stalked out of the dressing room. "David, David, David... I should kill you, you know. For never letting me in on what happened with G--him. I could strangle you right now. I could smash your head into the pavement. Speak quick, asshole. Kate is getting fitted for her new school uniform. I don't have time for people like you."

David twittered and whinnied with a nervous laugh as he struggled to find something to say after the string of threats and violent imagery. "A-a-about that. Julia -- are you sitting down? You should really be sitting down. You know how things can be surprising and then you're like, Whoa? What happened there? Did that just... I think I need to sit." Another giggle. "In fact, I need to sit. Julia are you there?"

"Cut the shit," she growled.

"Okay. Shit. I'm cutting the shit. No more here. The facts. These are the facts: Grim -- Please don't kill me Julia. Please, I have a girlfriend and an apartment and okay, okay-- Grim is here in Moscow. He's alive. He's uh, rehabilitat--"

Whatever else David had to stutter out was lost as Julia pitched her cellphone at the wall of the tailor's shop. In a spectacular mess that sent the seamstress and Kate jogging from the back, the plastic case cracked and internal machinery splintered into little pieces. An electronic confetti of pieces, the demolished cellphone decorated the floor. She stepped over her mess with a fragile, twitching grin as she approached the pair. With a careless, unhinged laugh, Julia flipped back her hair with one hand and gestured towards Kate with the other. "Business," she explained to the wide-eyed tailor. "You know how it is, hm? Katie-love, go put on your street clothes while Mummy pays the bill."

"Oh-okay," Kate mumbled as she wheeled back to the dressing room. In a flash, she saw her academic hopes and social dreams deflate in the wake of some new upheaval. As starched whites and blue plaids were peeled from her skinny frame, she wondered where they'd go next: Portugal, the Ukraine, Cambodia, the Philippines? A strange pang of loneliness filtered up from her confusion and crushed her chest. The tip of her nose and cheeks turned rosy as tears welled up in her eyes. All of the sudden, she missed her Uncle Grim. Her mind wandered to the box of ashes kept upon her mother's dresser.

When they returned home, Julia lifted that box of dust. The lid was unscrewed to reveal someone else's ashes: flecks of bone and curious fuzzed pieces amongst the ruin. As Kate begged and edged into hysterics with hands clinging at her mother's strong arms and waist, she dumped the ashes into the kitchen garbage bin.

"I hate you! I hate you so much! That was Uncle Grim!" Kate shrieked in a complete state of undone. All the calm and silent mending had been for nothing. She was tangle-haired and sticky with tears again. Tremoring with rage, she couldn't even stomp away. "How could you? How --" Before Julia could get a word in edgewise or arch up arms defensively, Kate had leapt forward. Though small, her fist was efficient and built for destruction.

A steady left-hook sent Julia wheeling with surprise into the counter. A gasp tore from her lungs as hands pressed to cheekbone. She stared round-eyed and stunned towards her hiccuping daughter. Kate now dug through the trash to find the metal box where it had sank beneath cardboard boxes and plastic wrap. "Kate --" She rasped.

"Fuck you Julia," Kate snarled over a shoulder. She had never looked more like her mother, but the disgust in her eyes was pure Grim even if he had no biological involvement in her making.

Anyone else would have been promptly torn apart, but under Kate's disapproval, she only withered. A hand fluttered from her cheek to fan over eyes. What burned and turned her eyes heavy was kept in. She swallowed back a knot of salt that had risen in her throat. "He's not dead. He's alive and in Moscow. He's -- I don't know. That's why David called."

"What?" The garbage dig was abandoned as Kate wheeled around in horror. The entire sequence of events prior to this discovery ran in a frantic, spinning newsreel in front of her eyes. Suddenly her rage was replaced with embarrassment. She had been impulsive and out-of-line. She had hit her own mother and cursed at her.

"I'm flying out tonight. You'll stay with the Kellys."

"No!" She begged. "No, I want to go with you. I want to see Uncle Grim."

"Kate," Julia snapped, "he's been sick. Who knows what shape he's in. Or where? Or in what company? It's too dangerous. You're staying here. You're going to your second fitting and ballet classes and swimming. Act normal. Call me if anything seems off. It'll be just like before. When I come back, we'll talk about you visiting him."

Kate sighed. Sidestepping her mother, she buried her arms into the sink and twisted on the water. Hands and arms were lathered up their elbows in an attempt to wash away the contents of the trash. Her head turned in silent agreement. Another question burned the inside of her mouth. "Can I still go to school in the fall?"

"Do you want to?"

"Yes."

Julia sighed, a hand smearing over the sharp of her features. She was equally deflated and glad for Kate's insistence. She wasn't trying to get out of the house now that Grim was gone, but, because she wanted to either way. "Then, yes."

"And what about Uncle Grim?"

"Oh, I'll deal with him later."