Shannon is miserable at Curt's optimism, but Jack Fairy reminds her where glamour originally came from. With a Flaming Creature's cameo, set after Baby's on Fire.
Tam Lin is my favourite Child ballad.
There was a live band playing at the club that night and it was filled, everyone crowded around, standing—this little corner of London where no one was looking, crouched in the shadows, beckoning in the way that cigarette smoke was. A curling tendril that's out to hook you, and all it does it make you sick. But lifting her hand groggily and placing the lipstick soiled tip into her mouth, taking a drag, she thought, "C'est la vie, isn't it?"
It was Micki who had gotten her into this horrible habit; Jerry who had gotten her into the other horrible habit, of creeping into clubs at this time of night and staying there until dawn. God, and you never thought the choking would die down…but you finished the cigarette anyway.
Never thought the choking would stop, could've sworn you'd be asphyxiated, but when the morning came you were still there, threading your clawing fingernails through your ratted hair, one of the only people still sitting at the damn bar, everyone else off fucking and dancing and drinking and doing things in their own little universes. Blowing smoke out of her mouth with a shudder of her shoulders, something like crying, she considered.
Well, things could have been worse. She coughed, it turning into a sob. She couldn't think of anything, but things were still always possible. What was it Curt had said?
Curt Wild, propped up against a cabinet he had just kicked a large dent into, dark and brooding, eyemakeup smudged in a manner that looked like he'd put it on, shagged with it on, slept with it on, and then cried with it on.
Oh, Curt, she had thought silently, no one's going to give a shit when they think it's all part of the show. But she was still miss Small, Dark and Silent; no one could help but see her now. And her language had begun to resemble Curt's slightly, whenever she was thinking, at least.
She couldn't help it if her mind was so mechanical, if she thought like a businesswoman. She was one. Pity, too.
Curt in her mind's eye, the memory holding up a hand to his face, black fingernails digging into platinum strands against his skull. Looking confused, battered. Room empty. Just her, standing there in a blue business suit, her head tilted to the side.
"Don't mind me," he'd said, staring off at the floor. An American-sounding mumble before he looked back at her, and smiled, or tried to, bitterly. "I'm still the eternal fucking optimist."
She had given a snort that would have been a giggle if not so inarticulate.
"S'true," he muttered, now laughing in a low voice. "If you put sunshine into wires and sent it through heavy distortion, that's what you'd get. My music." A pause, and then a titter as he threw the cigarette onto the floor of the office, putting it out with the toe of the platform boot, the tight shining trousers clinging to his legs, the only intimate contact Curt could afford at the moment.
Then, gazing nowhere and at the floor, in a soft voice: "Even in the darkest of times, when you think things could get no worse…Anything's possible." A chuckle, maybe a sob. "God, that takes optimism. To fucking believe anything is possible."
Curt lifted his face. Eyes so, so bright. Her eyes staring back, so distant, so aware, unable to do anything. She could have let him tumble into her arms, crumpled to the floor and felt his face against her shoulder. She could have given him that, and demanded nothing of him. But she had walked forward, her eyes tired, almost wary, and she had gently picked up the cigarette butt, holding it cupped in her hand, and then tossed it into the trash bin.
Voice low as usual, she'd said, "You know you're not supposed to smoke in the building, Curt."
The ludicrous statement made him give a snort of laughter, helpless. Everyone had seen Jerry.
"Yeah. Yeah, I know."
Tossed it into the trash bin. Curt had stared at the bin, and his eyes had been hazy. Her eyes had a magical quality for a moment; she could see through anything, and she saw that his arm beneath the shirt was bruised from the needle, that the heart beneath the skin was broken, and that the eyes…well, the image on the retina wasn't a trash bin.
She put out her cigarette slowly, not even looking at the ashtray as she dropped her head into her hands, shoulders shaking.
It takes optimism, to believe anything's possible.
Curt's face was tear-streaked in the memory, but she wasn't Angel. She hadn't had a handkerchief for him. Sniffing, she fumbled about the pocket of the pea coat, but there wasn't anything of interest there. She had thrown the handkerchief at Angel, crying, along with the rose and her entire heart. Such a burden to have a person thrown at them. Surprised little shrug, red fingernail brushing cherry hair out of pretty, frowning eyes; she'd left the room.
She wished she'd kept the handkerchief, if nothing else.
'The usual, sir?'
The person who had sat next to her seemed to give no reply, but the bartender turned away anyway. She assumed that the tall slim figure had nodded, and she wiped her face self-consciously with the back of her hand, bowing her head.
'Scuse me,' she said, sniffling, hazarding a look, and falling silent. It never occurred to her to be self-conscious about staring at him, not when everyone's gaze upon him was soft. Except the critics, of course; but then they were not people who really saw him.
His eyes slid over towards her, and his lips, thin, smiled. Such a strange quality of the bizarre, his face; an aching for something else spread through her like warmth, and yet it was only its ghost, the lingering desire that made a sob well up inside her lamenting body.
His voice was always quite soft, his accent undeniably sophisticated, languid; certainly not the voice of a mute. 'Shannon Hazelbourne.'
Her name seemed like that of a child's on those lips, and yet as the mascara'd eyelashes batted, it was as though the eyes were what had spoken. In the dark lighting she could see her own reflection in them, which was really what everyone saw when they saw him; which was why some people sneered, some people shivered, and some people sobbed. Shannon was not quite sure why, but she wanted to force him back and place her hands on his face, and stare, stare, stare, till the shuddering went away.
She managed a small smile in return as the bartender came back, sliding a glass (round and shining and clear like a fortune teller's ball) across the table to him. The liquid was as emerauld as the pin she had seen Brian wear. For a split second her surgeon eyes transplanted the image onto Jack's collar, a horrid pasting job; then she lowered her haggard gaze as the performer lifted the glass to his lips. Wormwood across his tongue, divine.
The band was doing a slow song now; she could see, reflected in the glass, the fair pixie damsel of a lead singer shut his eyes, clinging to the microphone and ignoring the way the wistful black strands of hair fell onto his face, like hanging wisteria.
'I'm really confused, Jack,' she said, after the bartender had walked away. 'I don't think I can make it here. This isn't for me. This is for beautiful people, like you, like Brian, like…'
The glass was resting on the table now; the waxy reddish stains from his lips remained, and he slid the glass over to her. She only glanced at it; then she lifted it, hesitantly, and adjusted it so that when she took a drink, her lips were in the same place. The taste was bitter; she set it down in front of him again and shook her head.
He wasn't looking at her now, really just staring ahead. Then he glanced back towards her. There was silver and lavender all up his browbone, a gorgeous curved line above that in brown eyeliner. So expressive, and so fake. But there was nothing false about Jack. He didn't exist as anything else. And she couldn't do that. When she transformed into that other realm, she was a goblin of sorts. Nothing more.
'Janet,' he said softly, as though addressing her. She paused, frowning at him. Though time had passed since he had spoken, it didn't seem as though he had ceased. But then she understood, and turned her face away.
"And pleasant is the faery land," said she, in an almost choked voice, as though she had been crying, but was telling people she was fine now. Was telling Mandy that, and things were better—it wasn't as though her heart was breaking, wasn't as though her arm too had want of the needle, wasn't as though Brian was beautiful, beautiful.
''And pleasant is the faery land," rejoined Jack, tone of voice still quite soft, quite graceful, "but an eerie tale to tell.''
Shannon dropped her head again. And then, shoulders still shaking, she really did start to cry. She felt then a voice in her ear, a soft "Shannon" from her glamoured companion, long arms holding her against a slender frame, strands of hair the colour of a dark pumpkin falling onto her face; it was his power to make you feel those things even when he was sitting there, taking another sip of his drink, and looking somewhere else.
"Pleasant is the faery land," she mused afterwards, "but an eerie tale to tell." For if that was pleasant even as it was gloomy, then it was true that things could get much, much worse. She didn't have the imagination for finding out what that might be, but she knew, really knew, that it was possible.