“I figure you really wanted me you'd say. Like now, maybe, if you dig. I'll fuckin carry you down your place on a run, you tell me aye, get you on your back afore the next word comes out your mouth. But you oughta have yourself certain, causen I ain't lookin for charity, an I ain't lettin you go after. Once...once ain't enough for me, dig?”
“I sink you, that I will not be sunk by you.”
“You ain’t know nothing,” a man scoffed. “How I’m supposed to trust some junkie Churchwitch-”
The words sliced through her like razor-sharp fangs. Her face flooded with shame, so hot she imagined it steamed in the icy air. At least it wasn’t difficult to identify the speaker. All she had to do was look for the man with Terrible’s fist locked around his neck.
“Ain’t think I hear you right,” Terrible said in a calm, quiet voice. “Wanna louden up?” The man shook his head His eyes bulged. He looked like a bug, with his hands clenching into tiny useless fists. “You sure? You got else to say, you best say it now, instead of later. Now we got us watchers. Later might not be true, dig?” The man dug.”
“Shit. I want you, Chess. Make no mistake on that one, dig? Want you bad. So bad I ain’t even can think of any else sometimes, ’cept gettin you under me. Ain’t give a fuck what pills you swallow get you through the day or what happens you ain’t got em, aye? Still want you.”
“Nobody spoiled for a fight like a group of Downside hookers around the corpse of one of their own.”
“See I keep thinking you smart, you keep proving me right.”
“What the hell was the matter with these people? How did they not see that of all the people on the planet, she was probably the least qualified to help them with their emotional problems? It was like asking a dog to do algebra.”
“Her hands fisted his jacket as she pressed her face to his chest. He didn't touch her in return, stood unmoving, his body tense. "It's not like that," she managed. "I'm not...it's not like I'm... I'm not a whore. I'm not. That's not what... please, please..."
She didn't bother to finish. She was crying to hard to finish anyway, couldn't even bring herself to complete the lie. No, she wasn't whoring herself to Lex for drugs. Technically.
But the drugs were payment for her false loyalty, weren't they? For her betrayal. And she kept seeing him, kept spending the night with him, because he gave them to her. It might not have been the only reason, but it was one of them. She thought she was going to be sick. The one thing she'd sworn she would never do, the one place she'd always said she had too much self respect to go, and here she was. She'd done it.
And she hadn't even noticed.
More gently than she would have expected, his hands found hers and disentangled them from his jacket. He pushed her away, his gaze focused on the ground. He wouldn't even look at her. She was glad. She didn't want him to see her like this.
"Naw," he said. "Naw, Chess, you ain't a whore. A whores's honest.”
“Ego vos mergam, nec merger a vobis. I sink you, that I will not be sunk by you.”
“Meaning to ask, where'd all them scratches come from? Lookin like you had yourself a knife fight with a dwarf, aye?”
“She was here, and she was stronger than this, harder than this. They could make her hate herself, make her doubt herself, but they couldn’t take away her deepest instinct. Not just the need to survive, but the need to survive long enough and strong enough to tell them to go fuck themselves.”
“When had being an addict gotten so fucking hard? So exhausting? It had been so easy for so long; she had a steady supply, she kept to herself, nobody bothered her. Now she was constantly up to her ears in intrigue and complications, being torn in every direction but her own, all thanks to her need for those pills”
“She settled for patting him vaguely on the back and wishing she was anywhere but there. Although he did smell good.”
“The penalty for summoning the dead back to earth is death; if the summoned spirit does not kill its summoner, be assured the Church will.”
“He leaned over her, rested his head on her shoulder, and clung to her, his tears soaking into her shirt.
What the fuck was she supposed to do with this? Hug him and say something comforting? He was blackmailing her and now she was supposed to take care of him like some kind of fucking nanny or something? She didn't know how to do that. What did people do to comfort each other?”
“She wasn’t considering it, not really….but he did have a point. It was her job. Save the cold, and the disgusting suggestion that she might actually turn a trick or two wasn’t a half bad idea. That was the problem with Bump. Despite the fact that he was practically a textbook villain – she expected him to grow a mustache to twirl any day- his ideas made sense.”
“Instead of more money she ended up with more drugs. Something told her that was probably not healthy. Something else in her didn’t give a shit. And the rest of her was realistic enough to know it didn’t matter.”
“She doubted he'd take too kindly to her fighting with them, no matter how much he liked having her in his bed.”
“Smart to avoid being with anyone she might actually really feel something for, who might actually really feel something for her. Smart to avoid getting involved with people she knew she could -”
“It shouldn’t have surprised her. Didn’t she know better than almost anyone what sort of filth humans were capable of? But it did, every time, a sort of weary, miserable surprise that someone out there had found a new way to create pain. She”
“She stayed out there, staring into the snow until the chevelle's engine noise faded into the distance. He was gone, and she was alone up there, alone and apart from the city so peaceful under it's snowy blanket. The buildings spreading from the edge of her roof were full of people, full of lives. Inside them lovers huddled together against the cold. Inside them families laughed or fought or whatever it was families did together. And here she stood, invisible, trapped, alone. And for the first she can remember alone didn't feel very good. And that was the scariest thing of all.”
“It was like digging for gold in a garbage pile. And if that little analogy didn't tell her something, she didn't know what could.”
“HOw did you tell someone the truth when you weren't even sure what that was?”
“Oh shit, she'd done that wrong, hadn't she? She'd said that wrong, he didn't understand what she meant. She'd thought he would know, that he'd be able to read between the lines and understand, but what if he hadn't? SHould she say more? But how much more?”
“Not that she’d have a choice in the matter, but it made her feel a little better to pretend she would. To pretend she’d tell him to fuck off instead of agreeing to almost anything he wanted because she needed her drugs. And fuck, she didn’t just need those now. She needed protection. Needed this sleazy drug-dealing pimp with his pornographic decor and his appalling pajamas.”
“...it occurs to me that one day was never meant to hold so much.”
“There's an amazing world out there for you to discover, Henry Denton, but you have to be willing to discover yourself first.”
“We were something, but history isn’t enough to keep something alive forever.”
“Crime is a rigid, unbending master, against whom no one can be strong except by total rebellion”
“Education is not confined to books, and the finest characters often graduate from no college, but make experience their master, and life their book. [Some care] only for the mental culture, and [are] in danger of over-studying, under the delusion . . . that learning must be had at all costs, forgetting that health and real wisdom are better.”
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