hot knife / zori

[goat]

birdie hope

Birdie Hope was a cool girl.

She didn’t go by Beatrice, just “Birdie”, and she looked with disdain on anybody who called her by her aforementioned given name. She didn’t dress up, and she rarely wore makeup, and she swore, and drank beer, and could throw a mean punch. She was palatable to men. Not like all those other women, those bitches, with their shrill voices and their ridiculous demands. They liked that she was cool, that she didn’t give a shit, or at least, that she seemed to not give a shit. The surface level was enough. She was easy to take home and drive into like a car crash, and you didn’t have to worry about her calling you up for days afterward. She was a puppet who had cut off her strings a long time ago.

When Leland had left the morning after they’d slept together, she didn’t push it. She didn’t even know if she wanted to. It wasn’t a mistake, per say—maybe just a bad decision. She had been emotional, they had just fought, he was acting soft, like maybe he was finally trying to understand her. However it had started, she had wanted it. Even if she shouldn’t have. Whatever. It didn’t even matter. He had left, because of course he had. Because he got himself into a situation he didn’t know how to deal with and fled instead of trying to figure it out.

She was proud of herself for not crying. It felt stupid, to be a grown woman proud of something like that, but sometimes she felt like she’d cried every day of her miserable life. There was so much sadness inside her. Some of it was earned, some inherited. She wondered if every woman in her family felt this way. She wondered if every woman in her family wished they could reach inside their chests and pull all the sadness out, dragging veins and muscle along with it. So what if it killed them. Maybe they would be freer in death.

Birdie wondered if she had passed that curse onto her daughter, or if she’d just been born with too big a heart to stand the suffering of the world.

Leland hadn’t reached out since. She hadn’t been expecting him to. It seemed like things could be different, but that was what he did. He acted like he was going to change and then backed out when he realized it would be hard. So she dealt with it— she went to bars, and drank disgusting hard liquor, and let men take her home, and let those men be unkind to her, because what, what else did she know?

She always went to their homes. The less time she was in her own, the better. Besides, Blackston was there more often than not now, seeing as his mother had deemed Birdie incompetent, needing a teenager to look after her. It was laughable, but she supposed it proved what her family thought of her. The baby of the family, so unlike her siblings, could barely keep herself alive, let alone her daughter. Well, Pierre had lost more children, but she kept that to herself lest she ruin another family reunion.

If she thought about it, she probably wouldn’t be invited to the next one anyway.

When she woke up on Friday, it was late— she had actually stayed home the night before, gotten a full night of sleep and then some. Blackston had left coffee in the pot for her. She made a mug and wandered around the house, Pistachio weaving around her ankles, purring as he went. It was quiet, soft sunlight streaming through the translucent curtains. She stuck her arm out and caught a beam of light across it. What is this? she thought. Happiness? No, that was silly.

A pile of mail waited on the living room table where her overdue bills usually sat. She had scraped together enough for this month, barely, but next month loomed too close overhead. There were no bills waiting, just some standard propaganda flyers and a letter addressed to her from Leland.

Oh, fuck.

She sat back on the couch and tore it open. Inside were the lyrics to a song, a song he said he wrote for her. He wanted to play it for her. He wanted her to come to a bar and see him.

Jesus fucking Christ, she thought. Really? He couldn’t have just swung by and had a mature conversation with her. It had to be a fucking ordeal, per usual. She had to get dressed up and go out to this bar and watch him sing some song for her, like they were sixteen again.

Which is how she ended up in said bar, face caked in makeup, denim jacket over black tank top. She was nursing her second shitty beer, leaning across the table and watching Leland on the tiny bar stage. He had neglected to mention until she got there that “the boys” would be there as well. The boys being his band, including Argyle, his roommate. She didn’t like his roommate. Maybe “didn’t like” was putting it lightly. He was rude, had probably never spoken to any woman besides her and his mother, and he called her Beatrice because he knew it got her riled up. You know, like a child would.

She wished she hadn’t come. If not for the poor decision making of seeing Leland again, then for the sheer embarrassment of having to watch his band perform.

Argyle stumbled toward the mic and she realized she was going to have to take matters into her own hands. “Hey! You suck!” she yelled, before leaning back in her chair and taking a long drink.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Vasco Izar

I spent a half hour staring out the window of my hotel room. Red neon flickered vacancy every now and again, bathing the whole of my little suite in light. A spring mattress screamed out when I’d thrown myself on top of the covers and the mothball smelling pillows. Wallpaper peeled off walls with a yellowed pattern, and the bathroom ran clear water from the tap after a few minutes. I couldn’t be sure the last time the carpets had been cleaned and hoped the stain to the left of the bed was just a coffee spill that’d set long ago.

My papers had been stamped for a work trip between districts. I’d set up a meeting with Pierre Hope to discuss ‘trade’, and he’d finally accepted my request to meet. It’d taken a few years to get the opportunity, and I wasn’t sure what to think about him. He’d lost so many, Hope a name that seemed to surface every few years. He’d led his district for years now, too. He had to be a reasonable man, like me. Putting in his years protecting his family, and his people, from the worst of the capitol’s abuses. Having to stand back and watch them take his family and nod along, a part of the machine.

And maybe like me, he was tired of it, too.

I’d thought about taking a beer from the little humming fridge in the corner and having a little drink to send myself off to sleep. The list of prices on the door had me think better of it. Night was settling in then, and I looked out at the street.

Eight reminded me of the block cities that Yani liked to arrange. Buildings wedged up against one another, with spaghetti roads and a great expanse of people hurrying along. Here and again they had their trees sprouting out of concrete, but even the sky seemed a paler blue that changed to gray the afternoon I’d arrived. Where Eleven had neat rows of fields, and a humidity that stuck with you, Eight felt as though folks had fought over a map to put buildings, each taller than the last, on top of each other.

There was a curious charm to how strange all of it was.

For the first time in a while, whether the change of scenery or the nervous energy knowing I’d be coming face to face with Pierre the following afternoon, I couldn’t sit still.

I made the decision to toss on my leather jacket and gather my things before I could give it a second thought.

It’d been four years since I’d gotten on a train to eight, and even then, we’d only stayed a few days to sell trinkets in the stalls of the market. None of the streets held names for me to recall, no one stopped to give a nod and ask about the family as they pushed past. Every step was new, every corner a crossroad holding paths I’d likely never walk down again. I made sure to memorize where I was going, distracted as I was by the shops (I’d have to ask Katelyn if she’d heard of jorts in the capitol).

The music drew me in. A couple of younger folks had opened the heavy wooden door and I could hear the sound of electric guitar and feedback echo out onto the street. Most of the folks were pressed closer to the little stage, with a few seated at the bar. I took a seat on one of the stools at the end and waved a hand to the bartender.

Eleven had the odd watering hole, but the few I’d seen were home to older folk there after a long day, or worse. Here the faces still shone under the light. As though there wasn’t a tomorrow to be thought about, just this moment, this dance, this song. I took a pale glass of beer and set about paying.

Emma bought me the little money pack for the trip. It clipped around my waist to make sure that whatever was inside would be safe at my hip. Money and my papers would be harder to steal, with a zipper for opening and my eyes on it. She’d gone with a soft denim with a white strap, and I’d tucked my wallet, along with a photo of all of us inside.

I smiled at the sight of their faces – my wife and children – before handing over a set of bills.

When the song changed and a pale, thin little man with his bulkier, dopier looking friend took the stage, it wasn’t long before a heckler started. Not that I disagreed with her, at first glance they seemed the sort of men that thought their personalities could outweigh whatever talent they might not have possessed.

‘Hey! You suck!’

She leaned back into her seat and I couldn’t help but stare. Maybe it was how the men on stage seemed to sweat a bit more just by the sight of her, or the certainty that she’d be yelling at them again. She had all the markings of someone that could have been a hurricane, just waiting to strike back when the time was right.

“Boo!” I joined her with a smile. What better was I to know how things were done around here? It felt good to give an honest opinion to the world about how lousy their guitar strokes were. I took a gulp of my beer and turned to my accomplice.

“You know, he has, uh, clumsy hands,” I cast a sidelong glance at the taller one. “That’s not how you treat a guitar. He’d be better suited on drums, banging out how he feels.”

I leaned against the bar and offered a hand. “Vasco. Can I, uh, not enjoy this show with you tonight?”

[goat]

A man’s voice echoed Birdie’s heckling. She jerked her head, curious to see who it was, almost impressed that a man finally agreed with something she had to say. He didn’t look like anyone she had seen before. He seemed older than she was, only by a few years, and he was smiling, like he thought it was a joke, like she wasn’t deathly serious about berating Argyle until he either got off the stage or cried. He already thought she was a shrill bitch, might as well solidify that fact in front of entire crowd of people.

She wanted to go home. She had established that coming out to this was a bad decision, now she just needed to do something about it. Finish up her beer, pay the tab, and sneak out when Leland seemed distracted. That last part probably wouldn’t be too hard. He had barely paid attention to her since he got there, caring too much about the set his stupid band was going to play. He could have at least bought her a drink.

“You know, he has, uh, clumsy hands.”

The man who had joined in her heckling was speaking to her. She stared him down, hoping the black eyeliner caked around her eyes made her look tough, like someone not to be fucked with. He didn’t seem like he was taking the piss, but she still found herself cautious. This usually wasn’t how she met men. It felt staged. Had somebody paid him?

He continued. “That’s not how you treat a guitar. He’d be better suited on drums, banging out how he feels.”

“I bet he could be good with his hands if he wanted to be,” she joked. “But he doesn’t seem like the type to give a fuck.”

What was that? A hint of bitterness? No, it couldn’t be. She tilted her head back and and finished the dregs of her beer.

The stranger leaned across the bar and held his hand out to her. “Vasco. Can I, uh, not enjoy this show with you tonight?”

She laughed. Finally, someone understood what she was about. “Only if you buy me another one of these,” she said, holding up her empty beer bottle. “I’m gonna need it to get through this. You’ll probably need another one too.”

She flagged the bartender down, a golden-haired girl with a floral tattoo that snaked halfway up her neck. She looked like she’d rather be anywhere else than where she was. Birdie knew the feeling. She ordered her beer and wasted no time telling the girl to put it on Vasco’s tab. Hey, he was the one who wanted to play nice. It wasn’t her fault for taking advantage of that.

“I’m Birdie. Nice to meet you, I guess. You, uh, don’t really look like you come to these types of places often.” She gestured to the money pack he wore around his hips. “What, you and your mom get into a fight or something?”

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Vasco Izar

The boys on stage struggled through another harmony while the woman next to me pointed out if they’d had any direction, they might’ve stood some sort of chance. A half-glance at the man in the beanie left me with the impression that he’d the passion part locked away. His sweaty face pressed closer to the microphone, and I watched his fingers pluck the guitar, struggling over a chord. Dedication had never lived here with him, at least, not for a long time. Bless his heart. Maybe someday he’d understand that all the passion in the world couldn’t replace hard work. Especially if he wanted to make something beautiful.

‘Only if you buy me another one of these,’ She curled her fingers around the necks of the beer bottles. Oh – well, I suppose it would’ve been unkind not to buy a lady a drink. She seemed more than capable of getting someone to offer her one, anyway. Maybe that was how it was in district eight? ‘I’m gonna need it to get through this. You’ll probably need another one too.’

“You’re telling me.” There was something to the swell of music and the crush of people that let me buzzing. Looking out at their faces, at the dark and cozy corners of the bar, I’d never imagined what it would feel like to be so unknown. All my life had been in eleven, in fields sowed by my parents and their parents. I could walk to the market with my eyes closed, backwards without missing a step. Sitting there, somewhere new, and different, felt as though I could be anyone. Someone different than the man who’d spent the last three months wandering through darkness.

She waved down the bartender to get another round of drinks. I watched the way she hung over the bar, certain of what she meant to say. The light flattered the way she’d set herself apart. A little bit of shadow to embrace, and hide in, until she felt ready to reveal herself.

‘I’m Birdie. Nice to meet you, I guess. You, uh, don’t really look like you come to these types of places often.’ I let out a little chuckle. I guess I’d never felt I needed to put a lot of thought into how I looked. Sofía had teased me all my shirts were from a decade ago or second hand. Emmanuel once pointed out that maybe a shirt from my high school days might be a little too frayed and worn to be considered "gently used". Maybe boots and faded jeans didn’t quite fit with the younger crowd, but then, who was I trying to impress? 

‘What, you and your mom get into a fight or something?’ She pointed to the fanny pack. Right. Perhaps we’d been a little overanxious as to how dangerous eight was. I pulled at the zipper and started to take out some cash when the bartender returned with the beer.

“Yeah, she wanted me to take her purse, but I wanted something that would let you all know I definitely wasn’t from here.” I counted out a few bills and placed them across the bar, before sliding another handful in a tip for the young woman. She paused, sliding back the picture of Raquel that must’ve gotten caught up underneath. I put a hand over her photo and leaned closer to the bar. “Gracias. Y dos – two tequilas, eh?”

“I’m… on vacation,” I said. In a manner of speaking, it was true. “From eleven. Here for a few days, to see someone I’ve been meaning to see for a long time.”

The bartender poured out the shots, complete with salt and a wedge of lime. I lifted the little glass and raised it in a toast. I couldn't help but smile again. 

“Care to join me? Eh? To a memorable evening.”

[goat]

It was easy to coerce men into paying for her drinks. She watched Vasco hand a few bills to the bartender, laughing along as he joked about his money pack. He had a sense of humor. That was good. She’d been around too many men who’d had a stick so far up their ass they were practically vomiting mulch. He ordered two shots of tequila before turning back to her, and she smirked and raised an eyebrow. Seemed he wanted to have more than a little fun tonight. Well, she wasn’t going to say no to a good time, especially if she didn’t have to pay for it.

“I’m… on vacation,” he said “From eleven. Here for a few days, to see someone I’ve been meaning to see for a long time.”

“Eleven,” she echoed, picking up her glass. He was a long way from home. She couldn’t imagine living somewhere else and willingly making a trip out to Eight. “Well, I’m sorry you had to come here. I hope our smog and child labor issue hasn’t offended you too much.”

She knew she had to be careful with what she said. One never knew when Peacekeeper plants were lurking around the corner, and even if there weren’t any, she was the mayor’s sister, and a tribute’s mother. Her reputation preceded her. Anything she said could be taken out of context and twisted to serve an agenda. This man didn’t know any of that. He had no idea who she was, he wasn’t even from the district.

It was perfect.

“Care to join me? Eh? To a memorable evening.”

“I already want to forget it.” She laughed and knocked back the shot. It burned going down, tasted the way rubbing alcohol smelt, and the salt and lime did nothing to help. It reminded her how old she was getting. In a year, she’d be forty. Forty. God, it seemed absurd. She was too far from her teenage years to still be yearning for the simplicity of them.

“Another one?” She asked the bartender, thanking the girl as she took the dirty glasses away. As she leaned across the bar to watch her pour out the alcohol, she noticed the photograph. Vasco had his hand half over it, so she couldn’t tell who it was, but there was a sickly pit forming in her stomach. Fuck, did he have a wife or something? Was she a homewrecker? Birdie Hope had been a lot of things, but she didn’t think she’d ever been a homewrecker.

The bartender came back with the shots. Birdie grabbed hers and downed it, abandoning the salt and lime. It went down as rough as it had the first time. Through the ringing in her ears, Leland’s band droned on. She couldn’t even watch. It was just pathetic at this point. She felt stupid that she came all the way out here just to be ignored, because he hadn’t actually wanted to see her, he just wanted an audience.

Whatever.

“Who’s that?” She asked, gesturing to the photo under Vasco’s hand with her empty glass.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Vasco Izar

‘I already want to forget it.’

Birdie was the sort of woman who laid out her feelings, raw as they were, and didn’t wait – or need – your approval before moving on. She was magnetic, the way she stared down the men on stage, or commanded the bartender. I wondered if she knew how she’d drawn me in, or if that was just a part of her charm. A life that collected strangers could be lonely, and hard, if they only ever stayed with us an evening.

I don’t think anyone wanted to give away pieces of their soul to folks only to find the other person had put them in their pocket and gone. Or worse, discarded them.

Comfort came from the warmth of the bar. Yellow lights cast shadows along the back of a brick wall decorated in faded black and white photos of years long ago. The song finished and folks lingered, intent on staking a claim on one another, or just a good time.

I smiled at Birdie in agreement, licked the salt from the curl of my thumb, hoisted the shot to my lips, and swallowed down whatever tequila the bartender had given us. The heat splashed back against my throat and I closed my eyes. I concentrated on the warmth flowing down through my chest to stomach. I chewed at the lime to stop the acrid aftertaste.

‘Another one?’ Birdie leaned closer.

Heavy eyes. It wasn’t the make-up that tipped me off, or the way the shadows played on her face. Maybe it was the years of having teenage daughters (though to be honest, my son Emmanuel had always been moodier than Raquel or Sofía). For a second, I wanted to tell her – you don’t need to rush, I’m not going anywhere – but maybe that would’ve been the exact wrong thing to say Birdie Hope.

She ripped through another shot, not waiting for a second to toast.

‘Who’s that?’

I pulled the photo closer, up from the bar so I could grasp the curled glossy paper between my fingers.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” I stayed looking at Raquel’s smile. The room grew warmer and I smiled back down at her. Mi cielito, eight years on and it was hard not to find a hole where there should’ve been joy. Looking down at a memory that could stay for a while, bittersweet, but not quite as painful as it’d been last year, or the year before that. “She was my daughter. Raquel. I liked this photo best because – that whole afternoon we'd been going back and forth about something. And she’d been so mad about something small, but then it was like, nothing at all had happened. Teenagers, you know? She always had a way of burning up whatever it was that bothered her and coming right back around.”

I didn’t just see Raquel smiling there. I could spend a week there in one evening recounting all the stubbed toes, shoulder rides – the time she’d cut her own hair and cried – staring at this photo.

“She taught me a lot about who I was. Who I should’ve been,” I offered the photo and waved for another round. “You ever have any of your own, Birdie?”

[goat]

“She was my daughter. Raquel.”

It was the “was” that tipped Birdie off, that made her realize, oh fuck, this is a photo of this poor guy’s dead daughter, and I just asked him about it in the middle of a bar. He didn’t seem upset, just spoke fondly about her and the day the photo had been taken. Birdie felt her stomach lurch at the way he could so easily talk about her with a stranger. He was stronger than she was. Three years had passed and she still couldn’t say her daughter’s name. The only person she could talk about her with was Leland, and even then, it was either short comments amidst a long silence or another one of their blowout arguments.

“I’m sorry,” she said, voice flat and fingernails finding grooves in the bar surface. It was all she could say. She remembered the things people had said to her, their words dull and empty. It had meant nothing. None of it had made her feel better, or made her feel like she could get through it. It was just so they could do their good deed for the day. None of them had bothered to check in on her since.

He offered her the photo and she took it. He was right, she was beautiful. Looking at it made Birdie think of her own daughter. Some days, she felt like she could barely remember what she had looked like. It scared her, the possibility that one day she’d forget, and Leland would forget, and then nobody would remember her daughter, not really. They couldn’t know who she was just through what they’d been shown on TV.

“You ever have any of your own, Birdie?”

It was something she hadn’t been asked in a very long time. The people who knew her knew the answer, and the people who didn’t know her didn’t care. They only wanted her around as a quick fuck or a punching bag. Any sob stories she had were none of their business.

“I— no, I mean— I did, I had—” Birdie watched as the bartender returned with the next round. She wanted to be her, somebody unaware of the conversation. She didn’t want to talk about this. She shouldn’t have asked. If she’d known this is where the conversation would have gone, she wouldn’t have asked.

She handed Vasco his photo back and reached for the drink. “She killed herself.”

The lie tumbled out of her mouth quicker than she could catch it. Somehow, it felt a thousand times worse than the truth.

She knocked the shot back and slammed the glass down on the bar. It stung worse going down than the first couple did. She knew it was too much, she was going to get sloppy if she kept going, but Leland’s band was still lingering on stage and this nice man hadn’t offered to take her back to his hotel yet. Was she going to have to do everything herself? “You know, there are other bars around here. Ones that have better music. We should go to one of those.”

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Vasco Izar

‘I’m sorry.’ Birdie tensed, fingers pressed to the wood counter, tips stark white and her body like a cat before a jump.

The moment was too intimate for a bar smelling of sour beer and cheap perfume.

Maybe that’s what made it all so perfect. Two strangers closer now that just a few minutes ago. Getting to share a piece of me that could’ve been painful, we risked throwing the whole mood in the rubbish bin. But she took the photo and I smiled wide thinking how Raquel would’ve probably liked a place so noisy and crammed full of people. Something far and away from the dustbowls of eleven.

“Thank you.” For a long time I’d thought getting apologies were supposed to forgive how senseless Raquel’s death had been. Somewhere along the way, after the whole district had told me and Emma that they were sorry, all the heartache would be wiped away, and I’d be able to start anew. You cling to thoughts like that when your head aches and you feel like crying; you think that seeing another sunrise somehow can clear away all the sadness.

I had to take the time to learn grief was more ferocious than death.

(Death made widows and stole our children, swallowed our friends and wiped away history, but it was certain. Raquel died once, and there’d been a single funeral).

Grief traveled on like a shade in the night, sprung out over your shoulder and tangled across your heart. I’d been foolish enough to think that I knew who grief was after burying my cousins, niece and nephews. I’d told myself on the first day that we thought we would lose Raquel, I’m ready to let go. I believed I could surrender to grief because my heart had already fractured so many times before.

No one prepared me for what it would feel like to bury my daughter.

Standing there, arm and arm with Emma, watching them lower a casket as though there hadn’t been a whole world inside of her? I collapsed inward a thousand times that day, a million more after. All the smiles and handshakes and thank yous I spoke came out of a hollow man. Afterward, you're just flesh and blood and grief smashed together to form a man that spent days just trying to get out of bed. Get out of bed, you tell yourself, get out of bed and your chest will stop hurting, you’ll stop thinking about all the stupid little memories that make you cry. You won’t blame yourself for not holding her tighter, for not thinking that this could happen to you.

‘I— no, I mean— I did, I had—’

Birdie’s face kept on the bartender. The voices around us kept to a dull roar as the music ended.

‘She killed herself.’ She finished with a shot and left me with my eye brows raised trying to figure out what to say. She breezed through all of it, readying for a change of scenery. I swallowed down my shot and set the glass back down on the table.

I was used to bad alcohol, and bad news.

I leaned forward and took her right hand in mine, and then placed my other hand on top of hers.

What did the world tell us? That death was such a natural thing, especially death we brought to each other. That we could make our own worlds, winners and losers, that history was a legacy and that names mattered so much as we could get other people to repeat them.

I brushed my fingers along the edges of her knuckles and shook my head.

There wasn’t anything to say. Nothing that I could give Birdie that would make her feel better. No silver lining that made getting out of bed easier, or words of wisdom that were just an old man spitting hot air.

But I could be present in that moment. I could offer myself to her, whatever that could mean. A shoulder, a drinking partner, or someone that she could storm out on for being a man she hardly knew. If it made her understand I’d tried to understand her, that would be enough. It’s all I’d ever wanted, was to know that there was someone there to help me think it through, and to feel. When grief came back, I'd be stronger alongside someone else's heart than just my own.

I’d been lucky enough that that’s all I’d ever been surrounded by, a family and a district that let me find my voice again and caught me when I’d stumbled.

‘Hey!’

I turned my head over my shoulder and looked up at the same towering lunkhead that had been poorly playing the guitar on stage. He was sweatier than he’d been before, and reeked of whiskey. Behind him, almost hidden by his bulk was the squirrely looking bassist, arms folded across his chest and eyes narrowed as though he was thinking too hard about what he needed to say.

‘Who the fuck is this guy, Birdie? One of the assholes you’re bagging? Could’ve at least picked someone taller than you.’  The smaller one let out a laugh and the bigger one smirked at his own attempt to cut me down.

‘He doesn’t look like he’s from around here. What, you spend all your time outside to get that tan, feeder?’ The smaller one spat out a slur against eleven.

“You could leave us alone, Ms. Birdie and I were doing well enough before you came. Boys, maybe put in some actual practice on those instruments before you get back up on stage again. Seems like a better use of your time.”

‘Oh really pal? Listen, she ain’t not missus, and you,’ He moved in between, pushing me back on my stool, and I almost slid off to the floor. He grabbed my collar to pull me back, his other hand on my money pack. ‘What’s this, your little bag of tricks, asshole?’

I moved to grab at his wrist to free his hand from my shirt, to which he gave a shove. I kicked back the stool and lurched forward, knocking into him, and he, rearing back, swung his fist hard into my face.

I was on the ground on all fours when my vision started to unblur. Blood dripped out of my nose and I coughed, both hands covered up my face.

[goat]

Vasco took her hand. Birdie bristled at the touch, a chill slowly sliding down each of her vertebrae. She wasn’t used to being touched so kindly. It had been a while, at least. Leland was capable of it— it was there in the way he let her rest her head on his shoulder, or how he cradled the side of her face. They just needed to stop screaming at each other long enough for things like that to happen, but they did happen. Sometimes.

He dragged his fingers across her knuckles and her breath caught in her throat. She was playing a dangerous game. She was sure there were plenty of other men in this bar who would’ve taken her at face value and followed her out before Leland’s band had even finished, but she had managed to accidentally find the one man who actually seemed to be a decent person. It wasn’t like she’d come out tonight with the intent of hooking up, either. She had come to see Leland. He had spent the entire time ignoring her so he could perform poorly with his roommate. If that was how he wanted to act, so be it. She wasn’t going to waste her night because he wanted to waste his.

“I—” she started, but was interrupted by a loud shout. Her and Vasco turned their heads to see Leland storming over and Arg panting at his heels like a lost puppy. Birdie pulled her hands back and cradled them in her lap, like nobody else had just been holding them.

“Who the fuck is this guy, Birdie? One of the assholes you’re bagging? Could’ve at least picked someone taller than you.”

She rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. Leland always said she acted like a hurricane, barging in and fucking everything up, as if he didn’t pull shit like this every time he felt his masculinity was threatened.

Arg chimed in, acting like the sheep he’d always been. “He doesn’t look like he’s from around here. What, you spend all your time outside to get that tan, feeder?”

“What’s the matter, Arg?” Birdie asked, feigning the sweetest voice she could. “Mad because nobody here will suck your dick? I think I saw a couple high schoolers leave after your set, maybe you can still catch ‘em.”

When Vasco spoke back to them, he was dignified, his digs subtle and disguised as friendly advice. She had to stifle a laugh, leaning onto the bar with her hand over her mouth. It stopped being funny when he lunged forward, his hand clutched in Vasco’s shirt, his mouth running ten miles ahead of his brain. Birdie jumped out of her chair. He had never been violent with her— she would have killed him before he even got the chance— but watching him drive his fist into Vasco’s face made her wonder if he had ever wanted to be.

The bar was silent. Vasco was on the ground, blood dripping down his front and collecting in the grooves of the wood floor. Birdie sucked in a breath and unstuck herself from where she’d been frozen, moving to put herself between him and Leland. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Her voice was low, almost a whisper, and she couldn’t help the way it was shaking. “Look at me. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me what the fuck is wrong with you.”

She stared Leland down, waiting for a response. He towered over her, but she wasn’t afraid of him, just like she wasn’t afraid of any stupid man in this district. They could run their mouths and swing their fists and treat her however they wanted— at the end of the day, they were still men, and that was a bigger shame than anything else.

He didn’t seem to have any answers for her. She choked back a laugh and bit down on the inside of her cheek. “Of course. What, are you going to hit me too?”

It hurt to think that the only thread that had kept them connected was their daughter, and now she was dead, but they were still grasping at the frayed edges as if there was anything left to hold onto.

This wasn’t worth salvaging.

She turned around and knelt down to help Vasco. “Come on,” she said, dragging him to his feet and patting him on the back. “You’re fine. I can fix you up at my place.”

She helped him out of the bar and didn’t bother to glare back at Leland

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Vasco Izar

I cupped a hand underneath my nose and let the blood collect in my palm. The tequila had helped to dull the pain, though I couldn’t say it benefited my balance all too well. That’s half the reason I decided to keep on the ground to collect myself, so as not to stand unsteady and topple all over again.

Violence had a way of making some people whole. Wasn’t an excuse for how we treated one another, but I was less surprised that this man had hit me than not. He’d removed any space I could’ve taken up here, aside from making me alien enough to attack (or in his mind, to defend Birdie from). I closed my left eye and squinted through the other to try to get a better look, but all I could see was his splotchy white face and the dazed look in his eyes. Too much alcohol and not enough going on between his ears to mean much.

If I’d had another minute to explain, maybe he wouldn’t have hit me. I could've walked away, too. Left him to whatever he wanted with Birdie, though I’d thought about defending her, too, as though she wasn’t strong enough to stand against whatever he had to throw at her. Wasn’t that just how I was raised, though? To not back down against someone I knew was wrong, or worse, that if there was someone that needed me, I’d be there for them, no matter the cost. So I’d tried to push back, only to wind up here on the floor, blinking away my double vision.

I sat up on my heels and wiped away the blood caked underneath my nose.

Maybe I should have been angry. I could’ve broken a bottle and caused a scene in front of all of these people. What could they have known about me? I wasn’t one of them, didn’t have to worry about every seeing anyone that might’ve known me. For once, I could’ve dug down into the machismo part of me that’d sat dormant and unleashed it like hell on this moonfaced idiot.

As Birdie laced into him with all the precision of a surgeon, I couldn’t find the anger hidden anywhere. I swear I looked for it while she dared to ask if he’d hit her, too. It should’ve been so easy. I’d every reason to want to tear him apart, and all I could muster looking at this man was a dopey grin with a fat lip. He felt a bit like a sad clown. The sort of man that’d never gotten what he’d wanted, and so he’d live the rest of his days trying to find a way to get it while bringing the rest of us down with him.

We left through the heavy oak door and out onto the street. She picked me up off the floor but I hardly remember the walk outside, aside from the chill that greeted me. I walked along the uneven pavement and tried not to swear at each stumble. It was a few minutes of walking before I realized that we’d left my cane back at the bar.

“Miss Birdie,” I leaned closer to hear, arm in arm, and steadied. I stopped, not so much to gain my balance, but to get a better look at the woman leading me home.

She radiated a sort of uneven beauty. You didn’t want to stare too long but couldn’t help getting lost in it.

“I didn’t mean to cause you so much trouble. Thank you.” I put my hand on top hers again. At least we could still be kind to one another. “There’s lots of men that think they’ve got to stand on someone else to be themselves. I hope you know no one’s got to do that to prove himself to you. I – I teach my daughter to be like you, to stand up and say how she feels. I don’t think enough people want to say how they really feel, whether they’re afraid of hurting someone else, or that they think they’re not allowed. We deserve to express who we are, you know?”

Looking at her, I couldn’t stop thinking about her daughter. The rawness of her words back in the bar, as fresh as it sounded. 'She killed herself.'

“Maybe it’s the head injury or the blood loss,” I smiled, even when I could feel the pain flare through the bridge of my nose, “But I don’t know if I want this night to end just yet.”