A Handful of New Years.
1965.
He didn't notice wet feet anymore, in truth, they were so numb with cold that he couldn't feel them. That made his running clumsy and he barely managed to avoid stumbling, but he ran on, because his only hope was to keep going until the policeman gave up.
"Oi!" shouted the policeman behind him, "Come 'ere you little crook!"
That was a mistake. Rick grinned, knowing better than to waste his breath when running. He put on a burst of speed and got out of sight.
He headed back to the place where he planned to spend the night. A dark figure was under the bridge already. He went in cautiously. He had friends and he had foes, and there were a million strangers whose intentions and attitudes towards intruders could not be known.
He relaxed at the sound of a familiar cough. "Arthur?" he said.
Arthur turned. "'Ello, Ricky. Don't mind if I share your lodgings, do you? This rain's 'orrible."
Rick went to his secret pile and took out a battered old coat. He put it on the ground, giving them two feet of dry ground to sit on. "Be my guest." he said.
They sat down together. Arthur gave Rick a bottle. "'Ave a drop, lad. Warms the bones."
Rick took a drink. Whatever it was tasted vile, but he did feel a little warmer. "I got no food." he said, "Not much of a New Year's Eve bash, is it?"
Arthur laughed and coughed again. "Our last one on the streets, lad. I won't last another winter and you ... you're not staying here."
"Don't talk like that." said Rick.
"And it's good you're not staying, 'cos you're too gentle. You care too much."
"So do you." said Rick.
"You could leave here tonight. Go to a police station. Tell 'em you got no family. They 'ave to find you a place then."
"I got family." said Rick, knowing that Arthur knew he was lying.
"Yeah, your dad's a spy." said Arthur, "But you ain't had new shoes for a while."
"I'm waiting for the sales." said Rick, "I'll steal 'em when they're cheap."
1968.
The crate they had stolen from the embassy kitchens was on the floor and the second bottle from it was disappearing fast. Harry was close to the fire. His made to measure shoes had been kicked off and his bow tie hung untied around his neck. He sipped his champagne and grinned at Daniel. "How did we do?"
Daniel looked up from the pile of stolen jewels. "Conservatively, I'd say there's a little over fifty thousand dollars in this little stash."
"And in real money?" said Harry. He ducked as Daniel threw a cushion at him.
"Dollars are real money!" said Daniel.
"Yank!" said Harry.
"Limey!" said Daniel. He glanced at the clock. "We're about to plunge into 1968."
"Not before I plunge into some more champagne." said Harry.
"If Dora or Estelle saw this, they'd say you're too young."
"It's 1968, nearly. I never thought I'd live to be this old."
Daniel frowned. "It's been a hard life for you, hasn't it?"
"Not since I met you." said Harry.
Daniel refilled both their glasses. "Let's drink to another year of easy living at the expense of the greedy and the gullible. Happy New Year, Harry."
1979.
The party was in full swing and Michael O'Leary was enjoying himself immensely. Felicia, resplendant in gold satin, was charming every male in the place and O'Leary had no objection to watching her dance with them all. He enjoyed their envious glances his way, their understanding that she would leave with him.
As another dance ended, she came over to him. "Glorious, isn't it, darling?"
"Yes, you are." he said.
"I have four invitations to spend the early hours in more intimate surroundings."
"Well done." he said, suppressing a jealous impulse, "Have you accepted any?"
"I'm holding out for a better offer." she said.
"All I can offer is second-rate champagne and a night of shameless carnality with occasional fireworks."
"Sounds a lot like Venice last year." she said, "And, given how that turned out, I'll take it."
"I was hoping you would." he said.
"Would you really have let me go with one of them?"
"Could I really have stopped you? I have no hold on you. No promises, no ties, no obligations ... "
"No jealousy?" she said, arching an elegant eyebrow.
"I didn't say that." he said.
"Good, because if there ever is a time when you can say that, one of these stiletto heels is going to end up buried deep in your groin."
The countdown to the new year began. O'Leary looked at his partner in crime. "Another year, darling. We made it through another one."
"Where will we be at the end of '79?" said Felicia.
There was a loud cheer to welcome its beginning and gold and silver confetti fell on the revellers, glittering in Felicia's perfectly styled hair.
"I don't know." he said, "But wherever we are, we'll raise a glass to each other, eh?"
"And kiss?" she said.
"If we're on the same continent."
They kissed. As their lips parted, she said, "I could ask for a commitment."
"I could promise anything on earth, but you know what my word is worth." he said.
"If you loved me, would you tell me?"
"Good God, no!" he said.
"And if you loved someone else?"
"Then, I would tell you. If you loved me, would you tell me?"
"I have my pride, darling." she said.
1984.
Maybe it was the champagne, or the heat of the crowded hall or the sheer annoyance of being surrounded by people whose most difficult moment had been deciding what colour of Porsche they wanted for their seventeenth birthday, but Steele left the Mayor's reception and went to stand on a balcony looking out over a city full of parties, a hedonistic metropolis full of dreamers and parasites and people like him, who were both.
His heart ached and he couldn't say why. He thought he'd always known what he wanted. His dreams had started out simple, a roof over his head, food in his belly, but now he had the best of both and still he felt unsatisfied, yearning for something he didn't fully understand.
He looked at his identity bracelet. He had a selection of the things. Tonight, he was Remington. It wasn't a name he identified with. Steele was. Steele was a good name. Remington was too wrapped up in Laura's ideals and dreams. Remington had too much to live up to. He could play the detective, but the ideal man stuff, he would leave to the fictional side of Steele.
The truth was, Laura was a bigger dreamer than he was. She believed in Steele. She believed in him. She trusted him when he didn't trust himself and she heard the things he was afraid to say, if not the one big thing that hung in the air between them, the thing he would say in a moment if the fear of losing her didn't grab him by the throat and say, in Daniel's voice, "Never play a game you can't afford to lose!"
He couldn't even say it to himself. When he allowed himself to think in that direction, which he didn't if he could avoid it, he'd shy away from that word. Somewhere in the four, innocuous letters was the most terrifying thing in the world, the loss of control over his life, the vast, insane investment in the wild hope that she would find no better choice and hope for none, the hunger that had lain in his heart for as long as he could remember, the need that nothing could satisfy, the longing that would not let him go.
And yet, it was there, that word. His avoidance of it had not reduced its power, rather, his habit of skirting around it had granted it a large territory in his mind, a region where his thoughts dared not venture. Whenever he kissed her - and why on earth did he do that, when kissing her was so dangerous even when people didn't shoot at them - that word raised another banner and urged him to speak the word aloud, to lay his life at her feet and invite her to dance on it in those painful shoes.
There were footsteps behind him. "I was looking for you." she said.
He turned to look at her. She had the softness of a spring morning and sparkled like a star and he knew that she had no idea that she was the loveliest sight at the party, all the lovelier because no surgeon had ever had a hand in her perfection and no faddish diet had sculpted her pretty figure. Laura Holt was what she appeared to be, and she was the only one here of whom that could be said. Maybe that was why no-one saw who and what she really was. No-one in LA knew real when they saw it.
"Mr Steele?" she said.
"Sorry." he said, "Just needed a moment to get back into character."
"You have them all charmed." she said.
"All of them?" he said, "Just them?"
She smiled.
"There's only one person here I want to charm." he said.
"The brunette by the cakes?" she said, "Nice girl."
"I didn't see her." he said.
"You saw her. I saw you seeing her."
"Were you jealous?"
"I'm human." she said.
"Me too." he said, "As the last two humans left in Los Angeles ... "
She took his arm. "It's nearly midnight, Mr Steele. Let's play our parts as they expect."
"Next year, I want a party with far fewer guests, in my apartment, and not using all of the chairs, if you catch my drift."
She was looking at him oddly. He wondered if she felt he was presuming too much. "Sorry," he said, "This time of year ... "
"You plan to be here next New Year?" she said.
"You don't want me to be?" he said.
"You know I do." she said, "But I won't hold you to something said just before midnight on New Year's Eve. We won't treat it as a promise."
"No," he said, "Let's call it a wish, a very heartfelt wish."
The End.