*/*
Hope.
She hadn't had hope, not since Hartigan blew his brains out at North Cross and Lennox, at the place that should have been the beginning of the rest of their lives together but was instead the beginning of nothing. Nothing is what she feels, nothing is what she cares about, nothing is what she has left to hope for.
Nancy didn't have hope - but she had something else, pushing her on. Getting her up, carrying her to work. But even that something else is gone, now that Roark is dead. She was living on revenge – not for it, but on it, like it was food, like it was mother's milk. Not on the hope that it would give her closure – whatever the hell that is - or help her feel even a bit less dead than she did, or that it would make this piss-stained putrid shit-hole town a better place – but because it needed doing, and it was her job – it fell to her, and it was the only thing left that she could do for Hartigan. She couldn't write him any more dumb letters, or kiss him, take his hand and lead him away from this rotten place. All she could do was kill that bastard Senator Ethan Roark Sr.
And now it was done. The only thing she could do is done and now there's even more nothing than there already was.
Hartigan...
*/*
Marv takes her to a guy he knows who's good with bullets and she's doing better by the morning – at least physically. Every siren makes her jump but it's only instinct. If they catch her, so what? But she would never forgive herself if they caught Marv and he went to jail or even the electric chair and it was her fault. She runs for Marv.
She and Marv killed everyone at Roark's mansion but they left behind puddles of their own blood and that asshole BCPD commissioner Liebowitz knows who she is. Knows why she hates Roark and why she might have done something like this. (He's probably not the only one in Roark's inner circle who does.) Her best defense is that he wouldn't think her capable. How could a little piece of ass like her – a dancer at a lousy saloon - take down a goddamn U.S. Senator in his own fortress? Liebowitz and the other brass might let it go but Cardinal Roark wouldn't rest until his brother's killers were behind bars – or feeding fish at the bottom of the river.
Marv checks her into a motel. She tells him not to take her to Mimi's and he doesn't. He says she'll be safer in Old Town anyway and they find an out-of-the-way flophouse at the edge of the district and get her a cheap room under a false name. She doesn't use her old alias Cordelia – it wouldn't be smart – but there's a part of her that wants to. Things were simpler when she was Cordelia. She hated every day Hartigan was in jail but jail is better than dead.
It's better than dead.
*/*
She reaches for a bottle and realizes she doesn't have one. That won't do. So she combs her hair over one eye in case she might be recognized by one of Kadie's patrons (it wouldn't be a surprise to run into any of them down here) and heads for the liquor store she spotted out the window. (There's one on every corner, but you get drunk at your own risk. The girls of Old Town don't have a very high tolerance for shenanigans.)
The cuts on her face didn't just work on Marv – they work on the Old Town girls. It might have been her own doing this time, but it's not like she's never suffered harm at the hands of man. She gets a nice discount on a bottle of vodka and some help finding a new outfit that isn't riddled with holes and doesn't smell like blood. She's got money with her, but not that much. Not money to live on.
"Don't you worry. That guy comes 'round here, we'll make him pay, sweetheart," one of the women says. She gives Nancy an encouraging smile, while a woman next to her slides back her coat to reveal a revolver tucked into her skirt.
"He's paid."
"Glad to hear it. Good for you."
They've all paid. All the ones that hurt her the most. Even Hartigan paid for hurting her. For lying to her. For leaving her. For not believing in her, and not believing when she said she couldn't lose him again. If that whisper in her ear is telling the truth, then he's still paying for it, every day.
She goes back to the motel room. It's dark. Cold. Empty. Quiet. Lonely. There's nothing here but her own thoughts, and they're shitty company. This dive doesn't even have a TV. There's a radio, though. It must be 30 years old but it works. She spins the knob right past all the stations that remind her of Kadie's – that country western music they play when no one's on stage and the rock music she strips to these days. She finds an oldies station that evokes more innocent days but she's not sure Sin City ever saw those. It's a slow song, a song she and Hartigan might have danced to if they had ever had the chance. The song is from before she was born but it was probably a hit when Hartigan was a young man. He probably danced to it on a date – maybe even with his wife, the woman who threw away everything Nancy never got to have.
She lies down on the bed, staring up at a stained ceiling and letting the music and the booze wash over her.
And then she has the idea. It's not a new idea. It's more of a classic.
Dear John Hartigan,
How fucking dare you?
It's not the first letter she has written to him beyond the grave. They all start out angry, they all end wet with tears, ink smearing and words blurred and sentimental. She tells him she didn't grow up strong – because she needs him too much. She tells him she loves him. You're the only man I ever loved. You're the only man I'll ever love. She tells him about what she did to Roark, and that Roark knew what hit him, and who, and why. She tells him she loves him again, and that she'll never be whole without him.
It's all right. I'm coming...
She signs the letter "Your Cordelia", like she always does now. And then she burns it in the garbage can, dispatching it into the unknown. Sometimes she leaves them at his gravestone, but usually she burns them. She likes watching the flames. She likes to think she has sent it somewhere, that it's more than just symbolism.
It's hardly necessary for her to write, when she speaks to him all the time. She speaks to him right now: "This is for the best, Hartigan. Don't be sad."
It's a shame to waste the rest of the vodka, but she's impatient. She takes a swig and then slams the glass bottle into the table, and takes a large shard into the bathroom with her. She climbs into the bathtub, and and the music drifts in from the other room as she slashes up her wrists in a way that says "I mean it".
She hears Hartigan: "Baby, no," he pleads.
But it's too late. And it's all right. "It's all right," she says to him, fading. It's better than all right. The cuts hurt a little but this is the best she has felt in years. She has hope again.
*/*
She heard the glass break, but she thought it was a memory.
They rush her to the hospital. She's in and out of it – mostly out. Hartigan is there, behind the doctor who is asking for a crash cart to be at the ready. Nancy feels the needle for the transfusion. They give her more blood. They save her.
"I'm not worth it," she tells the nurse, weeping. The nurse smiles warmly at her: "You're worth it."
"You're worth everything," Hartigan shouts. "You're worth the whole damn world."
*/*
"You can't do that again. You have to promise me."
She's not able to keep her eyes open for very long, but they flutter for a second and she sees Hartigan standing beside her hospital bed. He's still here. He's angry, but not really. He's sad, like she told him not to be.
"You've got a whole life left to live."
"Sin City doesn't give anyone a whole life," she replies, coughing a little. The ICU is full of other patients but it's too loud for anyone to hear her talking to herself, and she's so out of it, she wouldn't care if they heard.
She's so out of it, she almost believes he's really there.
"It's not too late for you to start out somewhere else, doing whatever you want. You deserve so much better than this place. And you? You can do anything. You're not like the losers here, the ones who can't ever get out. The ones it's too late for. The ones who belong here. You can get out, Nancy."
Can the dead cry? He's crying. Tears run down his face but he keeps talking like he hasn't noticed it's happening.
He doesn't remind her that he sacrificed everything – three times he sacrificed everything – so that she could live. It's what has kept her alive – technically alive – up to this point. He doesn't try to make her feel guilty. But she killed Roark. His sacrifice wasn't in vain. Father and son are dead, and how many people will live because of it? So he didn't die in vain, if she can't hack it without him. They did something good. It's not easy to do something good in Sin City. It wasn't easy on them. But it's a small victory.
"Maybe not. Maybe I do belong here."
"No."
"You didn't belong here. You deserved better than this place," she retorts, shifting feebly in the bed.
"A lot of people do. But I can't care about them. I can't feel sorry for myself. I can only care about you."
"I'm tired. Every day - it's every day. On and on. I'm so tired..." This pain. It's like climbing up a mountain of sand. And there's nothing at the top.
He tries to touch her hair, to brush it off her forehead. But she doesn't feel anything.
*/*
They keep her on suicide watch. They see it in her eyes: nothing has changed. People who are glad to be alive don't look like that. But eventually they have to let her go. No one is looking for her – not the cops, not the cardinal's thugs. She got away with it – or someone let her get away with it. It doesn't matter.
Shellie picks her up at the hospital. Nancy is surprised to see her - they are friendly but not best friends, and not so much recently. Nancy certainly didn't call her to tell her what was going on, but somehow word must have gotten back to Kadie's. The bandages on her wrists don't leave much to the imagination.
"You're in a dark place, honey," Shellie says, pushing her in her wheel chair out to the curb. "I don't know if I can help with that. But I can give you a couch to sleep on." Nancy takes her up on it, and learns the whole story of her deliverance as they take a cab back to Shellie's apartment. The window in her motel room had shattered and rained broken glass down on the street. Someone who noticed told the manager, who found Nancy in the tub, dying fast but not fast enough. Everyone thinks Nancy broke the window – a last minute plea to be saved.
"I didn't break the glass," she tells Shellie. "I wanted to die."
Shellie looks skeptical, but Nancy knows she didn't do it. It could have been a million things...but none of the explanations are very satisfactory.
She spends the day on the couch watching TV. The hospital dried her out and she says no to another drink for now. Maybe later. It's comforting, that thought. Maybe a little later I'll have one.
That night when Shellie comes back from work she's got Marv with her. "Talk some sense into our girl," she says to Marv.
"Don't tell me this is guilt," Marv demands, sitting down next to her on the couch.
Nancy shakes her head. "Not guilt."
"Good. Though I could take care of guilt real easy by reminding you what a piece of work that Roark was, and wasn't no one working there for him that was innocent either."
"I know."
"It's that man, isn't it?" Marv's jealous. He wants her. But he's the only guy who has never given her a hard time for not being interested in him that way. If she feels guilty, it's for using him. For lying to him. It sure as hell isn't for anyone they killed that night.
Nancy had had plenty of questions about Hartigan after she leapt off stage in the middle of a dance to kiss him. She hadn't told anyone who he was, but when she finally came back a few Saturdays later it didn't take a genius to realize something had gone horribly wrong. She told a few people that she had loved someone and he had died. (Shellie was the only one who four years later hadn't yet told her that it was time to move on. And she still didn't say it.)
Nancy doesn't need to confirm Marv's guess. He sighs: "The truest heart in all of Sin City, this one."
Marv asks her about her studies. She used to be pre-law at the university in Sacred Oaks, but that was a long time ago. That was a lifetime ago and a whole other girl. The only reason she was studying so hard was to become a defense attorney and get Hartigan out of jail. A law degree won't do her much good now. She can't save Hartigan, and there's not much else worth saving in Sin City. The court system is about as fair as...well, about as fair as the court system in Sin City. The system is so corrupt...there's no point. There's no point to anything.
"You're smart. Use that big brain of yours," Marv encourages her.
But the encouragements fall on deaf ears.
*/*
It's her mother's birthday. Nancy's parents left Sin City as soon as they could and moved two states over the year Nancy was finishing high school. "And it's not far enough," her father always says. They begged her to go with them but she wasn't ready to leave. They don't know much about what her life is like. They get less details over their phone calls than Hartigan got in his letters. Nancy calls them today and wishes her mother a happy birthday.
"No," Hartigan whispers softly. Nancy is staring at the cupboard where Shellie keeps her booze and thinking about all the sweet relief inside of it. "You don't want that."
"I do."
"No. Not today."
Maybe later.
*/*
Shellie takes all of her beers to Kadie's on the down-low and it's a little easier for Nancy to stay sober with no temptations in the apartment. "You aren't the first person I've had around who's on the wagon," she tells her. It gets easier every day. Nancy hadn't set out to stay dry but she's over a week out from her last drink and she wants to, now.
She gets sick of daytime TV and ventures out to the library for the first time in four years. Basin City doesn't have very many libraries – there aren't a lot of readers, or much money to pay for it either – but there's a small one not too far away. Hartigan called her a bookworm. He mentioned it in the too-brief time they had together. He liked that about her. She used to love to read – all kinds of stories. She checks out 10 books and takes them back to Shellie's and reads all day.
Shellie tells Nancy that she can stay for as long as she wants to. She has an on-again-off-again boyfriend, "But I think we're off-again," she says, blue but not brokenhearted. "So I don't mind having a guest. He'll be back, though, someday. He always comes back."
"You love him?"
Shellie nods. "I can't help it. Me and him... Well, they won't be singing songs about it but I've been around enough to know when something is special, to know when I've found a good one. I'll never own him outright. Dwight's more like a stray cat than a pet dog. But it's okay. That fella of yours, you owned him, I bet. You owned him good."
"He owned me."
"Sounds like maybe it went both ways. Not a lot of guys would do what he did for you." Nancy had told Shellie the whole story – who Hartigan was, and what he had sacrificed to save her life. It was safe now, to talk about it. He had told her 12 years ago to never even say his name. She wanted to say his name to everyone. She wanted everyone to know what he had done, and what kind of man he really was.
"No."
"You think you'll love again?"
"I'll never love again."
"Nancy..." Hartigan shakes his head. She gives him a defiant look.
Nancy goes back to her apartment, but only to retrieve a few of her things. Her treasures aren't many: some photographs, her collection of newspaper clippings of stories about Hartigan, a few of her favorite outfits, an armful of books, and not much else. She has a videotape that she requested from the news station. It's got some footage of Hartigan at the courthouse from 12 years ago. It's not much but it's all she has. Then she ends her lease. She can't stay with Shellie forever but she's not going back there. As she turns the key for the last time, she tries to lock all of nightmares and dread up in that depressing little box.
Hartigan is standing next to her in the hallway. He seems to approve.
*/*
There's another storm.
Shellie is at Kadie's slinging beers and Nancy's alone at the apartment, but she doesn't feel like she's alone. She pulls a chair up to the window and listens to the rain coming down. The power went out, so she has a candle next to her and a book in her lap that she's not reading.
It's a love story. That's not the kind of novel she would pick off the shelf – not anymore – but it hoodwinked her by appearing to be a western. The traditional kind, about an aging lawman, a gang of bloodthirsty robbers, and the town he has to protect from them. They rough up the local brothel and take off with one of the young whores. She has a soft for the sheriff – and he for her. Maybe they'll marry at the end.
...Maybe he'll die.
It has been a while since she properly cried. That sting in her eyes is always one wrong thought away but she usually dams up the flood. Not tonight. It all streams right on out, one ugly sob after another.
There's a flash of lightning – the first one that's in the neighborhood and not on the horizon – and she sees him in the reflection in the window. Hartigan. It's about the millionth time she has felt like he was there, the millionth time she looked into a vacant space and imagined him standing there. But this is visceral. It's palpable. She's sober as a judge and she's seeing him. It's the first time since the hospital that it feels real.
The book falls to the floor as she jumps to her feet and looks behind her. "Hartigan?" she chokes out, trying to get her crying under control. She lifts the candle and blinks back her tears, peering into the darkness.
"I'm here," he replies, after a long silence. She can't see him. But his voice is as substantial as that millisecond sight of him.
She saw him like this, a few nights after he died. She had still been nursing a hope then that he was somehow alive. It took a while, but she finally figured out that she was just crazy. A piece of her died with him and she wasn't quite right without it. She tried to fill the empty space with shadows and whispers. But there was nothing there.
She repeats his name softly, still scanning the room with her eyes. It was only a split-second but she saw him. She knows she saw him.
"Nancy."
"You're here," she cries, fresh tears rolling out of her eyes.
"I'm always here, Nancy."
"I'm losing it." Nancy sets down the candle, afraid she'll accidentally burn the place down. "I'm losing it."
"Sit down, baby." She obeys. "You're not losing it. I told you I would never leave you. I never did. I've been lookin' out for you. Doin' a piss-poor job of it, too."
She shakes her head wildly: "I don't trust myself. This can't be real."
"It's real."
It's not real. But she doesn't care. It feels real. She'll take the delusion - it's better than the alternative. She lights a few more candles, grateful that Shellie has so many. With every lightning strike she can see him better, until his phantom doesn't disappear – doesn't even flicker. "It's the storm," she reasons. "The lightning..."
"It's not the lightning. Not the storm. It's you." He sits on the couch, like anyone might. Like someone who was alive might. "You were getting better. Finally. I told myself I wouldn't..." He hangs his head in his hands. She flies to his side. She reaches out to comfort him but moves right through the apparition like it's a beam of light. "I didn't mean to."
"You didn't mean to what?" She sits down next to him. They can't touch, but she can look him in the eyes. His eyes.
"Show myself to you. I was trying to back off. To let you be. To let you move on." He sighs heavily. "You pulled me back." He gives a bitter little laugh. "Lassoed me."
"Hartigan, I wasn't moving on. I'm never moving on."
"That's not what I want for you, Nancy. What kind of life is that?"
"Well, it's not your choice. I would have gone on loving you forever no matter what. Even if you were still in jail. Even if you had never loved me back the way I loved you. Even if-"
"I love you back."
"I know."
For just about the first time in four years, she smiles.
"The whole block is dark," Shellie says, walking through the door not too long afterward and hanging up a dripping coat. "Power was out at Kadie's too. We closed early so there goes a night of tips. Oh! Hello. Who's this?"
*/*
Shellie already believes in ghosts, so she takes seeing one pretty well, but not nearly as well as Nancy does. Nancy asks her five times: "You really saw him?"
Shellie is uncharacteristically quiet and saucer-eyed after he vanishes right in front of her, but she nods. There is no mistaking that Shellie had seen him too, had seen Hartigan in that room at that moment. Can it really be that this whole time it hasn't just been her imagination? It wasn't just Nancy lying to herself, telling herself he was with her.
"That was him?" Shellie finally manages to ask. "Your dead cop? Hartigan?"
"That was him."
"I think I need to sit down. If I had known things were going to get metaphysical I would have eaten something." Nancy laughs, and Shellie smiles at her: "You're different."
Nancy goes introspective for a moment, and then smiles and nods. "I have hope again..."
*/*
"You broke the window?"
"Yes."
"But how?" How many times had they tried to touch? How many times had they failed?
"I don't know." Maybe love really did conquer something, sometimes.
"And you were there when I killed Roark, too. Weren't you?"
"I'm always there, Nancy." He tells her that he didn't want her to avenge him, but that he was damned proud.
"How many times have you saved my life now? I've lost count."
*/*
When she calls to him, he comes. He stays for a while and goes away for a while. He doesn't know how it works any better than she does. All he knows is that he can hear her when she needs him. I need you all the time. She doesn't care about the science or mechanics or magic of it. She doesn't want to tell anyone, or prove it, or go to the university or the Church to have the phenomenon studied. All she cares about is being with him. All she cares about is that he's not all the way gone.
He still protests: "It's no life for you." That's his favorite phrase.
"This is the only life I want."
"Fine, but you're getting out of here," Hartigan says.
"What?"
"Out of Sin City. Pack your stuff."
"Where am I going?"
"Anywhere. Your parents' place, or Paris, or wherever the first train out of Sacred Oaks is headed. Anywhere but here."
"You're coming with me?"
"I'll never leave you."
*/*