Author's Notes: My darling TrueThinker demanded Azulon and Ilah with a womanizing twist. As I am but her lowly servant, I was happy to oblige. This could be seen as a prelude of sorts to "Play Dead," or a mild deviation from "A Series of Small Errors," which was the beginning of the alternate universe the majority of my fics featuring Azulon and Ilah take place in. Enjoy!
Please be advised: the following may contain mature themes or language that may trigger some readers. Please use your discretion.
What If We Could
Neko Kuroban
Part One
+ one +
The atmosphere in the nightclub is a thick fog of smoke—cigarettes, cloves, and marijuana, bright cherries burning down to nothing—and he cannot quite remember the name of the woman clinging to his arm.
+ two +
Two days later, a girl with piercing golden eyes is eating an apple at the corner of seventy-ninth, so sensual it might be a crime, and when she notices that she has caught his attention, she meets his eyes curiously, boldly, fearlessly...and then, for some reason, she blushes rose-pink.
+ three +
There is a woman submerged to her breasts in the claw-footed tub, separated from him by only a door, and he thinks about what they have done on the tangled sheets. He knows that she will be another careless fling, an easy lay, used and discarded, and he feels—but for a moment—remorseful (but not remorseful enough: they make love again, twice that night alone).
+ four +
He has two long-term affairs before the girl with the golden eyes.
The first ends because he grows bored; he had considered the demise of their romance (such as it was) for days before it happens. The breaking point comes when she asks him to kill a spider she spies creeping along the windowsill of her boudoir in the penthouse apartment furnished by her husband's wealth, and her eyes well with tears with he, working his way to drunk with an expensive vintage of brandy, snarls at her to wait until her husband gets home from visiting his mistress—"Oughtn't that be his duty?"
She slaps him, polite yet firm, and he has to give her credit: she does not weep when he backhands her.
The second ending is far less engineered. This woman is unmarried. (She had been once, she says, and he teases her: there's no time. You can't be more than twenty-three.) This woman is less complicated, less mercurial, less needy. There are no drunken telephone calls in the middle of the night; there is no weeping when he disentangles himself from her long limbs. She does not beg him to spend the night, and she does not seem to mind when he seeks the company of others, men or women.
The end comes, just like it always does, but this is unplanned and sudden rather than calculated or violent. He finds the results of her test—positive—and a bill from the clinic left pinioned beneath a teacup in her kitchen, as if she wanted him to find them, and he grabs her by the pendant (one he bought her) around her slender throat, twisting hard, to demand why she never told him.
+ five +
The girl works at a cafe on the corner. She is light-footed and bubbly, full of chatter, and she moves as if she has no idea that half her male customers watch her as if praying that she drops something.
"Oh, hi," she says breathlessly, looking up from under her fringe when she sees him for the fourth time. Her hair is ruffled from her habit of pulling her hair through it, and it makes him think of a woman rising from a lover's bed. "Just coffee?" she prompts, glossy lips already lifting in her usual unwavering smile. "Or can I actually get you something to eat this time around?" she adds. "I'm starting to think you don't eat at all."
Coffee is fine, he tells her.
"Of course!" And what she does next reminds him of the movie starlets and pin-up girls of ten, fifteen years before: she salutes, winks, and twirls.
+ six +
He flirts with her over coffee—not quite innocent, but he does not feel it is anything more until he sees a youth in a navy uniform drape his arm around her slender waist and pull the loose end of her apron string until it comes undone from its neat bow. She giggles and throws her hands up as if in surrender, as if to say oh, you,and Azulon lifts the glass ashtray, feels its weight in his palm, and wonders how hard it would be to kill a man.
+ seven +
Always, she smells of vanilla. (Later he will know her secret: not perfume, but pure extract from her kitchen cupboard dabbed onto her pulse points and the base of her neck to hide the smells of cooking food and black coffee.) Today, however, she smells of Pall Malls and jasmine tea and sorrow, and she shakes her head no, no, no when he raises an eyebrow.
He feigns concern, pretends to be more invested than he is, leaves his business card with his direct line scribbled on the back, acts as if he gives a damn—and he is as surprised when his telephone rings that afternoon as he is when he realizes he actually does.
+ eight +
It is Thursday, and her hands are on her hips when he comes in but all appearances of anger fade when she sees him. "Hi! What can I do for you, love?" she wants to know, and he thinks she might latch onto his arm, the way so many women have before. Instead, she stops just outside of arm's reach, looking up at him - and smiling at him as if they share a secret.
+ nine +
He does not plan on going out that night; carousing is not something in his agenda. And yet here he is, a pair of anonymous women flanking him in a nightclub's back room with the door closed, listening to a man he might once have considered an equal (and now regards as little more than an annoyance) boast of things these girls know nothing about. The woman who seems to have plastered herself to his arm is pouting up at him, her mouth painted a garish scarlet, and he thinks of cherry lips and golden eyes instead.
Fuck.