The record player jumps when an imperfection on the vinyl disrupts the music. Marsh anticipates the interruption of Nat King Cole’s crooning. She follows along as his singing picks up again. The steam from the shower dampens the high violin accompaniment. She scrubs her body in slow circles. She hits the shower wall with her elbow and decides the space is too cramped to shave her legs. When the recording finishes, Casey, her shadow for the day, resets the needle in the attached room, and
Unforgettable starts up again. It flows in from the open door and over her body like the water coming from the calcium clogged shower head. She sings some parts, hums or whistles others, but as the water starts to turn colder, she rests her hands against the green ceramic wall and watches the water drip down the drain.
She feels the hot, charred bricks from last night’s fire under her finger tips. Marsh was there when the front of the house gave away and spilled on to the sidewalk. The fire was contained due to the rain and then extinguished by a heavier downpour. Oh, the city appointed fire fighters helped a little, too. The full extent of the damage was still being assessed when she left early that morning to get some sleep.
No music comes from the other room. Casey snores. MK breathes in. Then out. And turns off the water. She wrings her hair and looks at her toes. She wiggles them as she stands naked in the shower. When she starts to shiver, she leaves the stall and scrubs her body down with a scruffy towel.
Casey’s slumped in a lounge chair next to the turning record. The sound of the needle scratching against the blank vinyl creates a soothing white noise. His newborn has troubles sleeping, thus so does Casey. The sun comes in from an open window. She can see the dust settling on her single wide bed. Her latest book open where she stopped reading when she got news of the fire. Her tablet and stylus rest on top to hold her place. Laid across her dresser is the clothing she picked out for her evening. Going to the Spit attracts enough attention, so she downplays her appearance. The skinny jeans squeeze her thighs. She looks in the mirror, gives the fat settling on her hips a squeeze before adjusting her pants so there is no visible muffin top. Her white sleeveless top dips. She likes how the fabric feels as it rustles against the tops of her breasts. She packs a pair of red platform high heels in a purse, shuffles on a black jacket, and gives Casey’s foot a kick.
Marsh promises herself a corned beef sandwich at Flannery’s before she heads to District 13 to pay a visit to her husband at the Spit. The house fire was his fault. He tripped out at Storehouse Joyce, one of the boltholes that D12’s gang, the Library, maintain to cache their sensitive goods. The result is the Tyro must clean up after this careless Librarian who enjoys gambling away the gang’s profits at District 13 rather than at Flannery's or the other gambling dens around D12. Disgust and fear roll over her.
Casey shuts off the record player. The humming of the needle against vinyl stops. He hands Marsh a piece of paper. It’s coded so only initiated members of the Library can read it. An offer about some digitized lecture notes came in from D15. A courier who sustained serious injuries while transporting some material woke from his comma. The Librarian was still sleeping off his high somewhere in 17. Someone was requesting music to used at Dead Cell’s private floor in D10 next week.
She nods once and asks, “You ready for a busy day?”
Casey grins and you can see where he lost a tooth in a bare knuckled fight.
“Damage reports here,” Casey says.
Marsh looks up from her manager's desk at Flannery’s.
Flogging Molly blares through the bar outside of her office. Someone drops a pot in the kitchen. They curse. She flinches.
“Let’s do this,” she says, straightening. Her spine cracks. She’s been going over inventory reports since she arrived in the early afternoon. Compared to her work with the Library, Flannery’s was straight forward albeit time consuming. Now, the city lays in its haze of light pollution and gray darkness of evening.
Casey gestures in Meghan, one of the four with the title Collection in the D12’s gang. The door is shut behind him, muffling some of the noise. She hears the smack of knuckles on skin. The fighting has started early. Casey goes back to to picking at the dirt under his fingernails. He leans against the wall, his shoulder resting against a replica of Edwin Hayes’
Marina.
“How’s the girlfriend?” Marsh asks before Meghan begins his report.
“Eh, didn’t work out so well between us.” Meghan shrugs, hands clasped behind his back and legs apart. She often imagined him in the blue uniforms of an NYPD officer. He would have looked handsome. Instead, his beard is patchy and his curling hair pushes against his paddy cap. He wears it because he’s embarrassed by his bald spot.
Marsh raises an eyebrow. “Did you sleep with another woman?”
Meghan looks away and mumbles, “I only entertained the thought.”
She smiles and gestures for him to take a seat across from her. He hesitates. Marsh takes a bite from her corned beef sandwich. The tang of rye and salt lingers on her lips. Her desk is covered in paper work. Budgets and balances with calculations scrawled in the margins. A notice from the police. Notes on a paper she’s been writing about the idealism behind anarchy. Crumbs. The desk has a large smudge of black paint from where a pen broke two years back.
“It would be much more comfortable if I was standing for this, MK,” he says.
Casey pauses, glancing over at his boss.
Marsh sighs. “That bad, huh?” She looks at her sandwich. “Let me at least have a full stomach before you start. You want anything?”
“A shot of Bushmills would make this a whole lot better,” he admits.
Marsh presses the call button on her intercom.
“Shoot, Tyro,” says the bartender on the other end. She hears a group of men taking up a chant of “come on you boys in green.” There were no football leagues in New Ancora that wore green.
“Three Bushmills.”
The line crackles. “That bad, huh?”
She studies Meghan and let’s the line fall dead.
