Sink or Swim
Betty'd had to take Kate by the shoulders and turn her around three times before they got there. Just a warehouse, abandoned for a few years. Betty watched as Kate was handed something red and pushed behind a curtain. Betty skulked and smoked outside.
"Betty, can you come in here please?" Kate called in an almost desperate voice.
"Do I have to?" Betty asked, with eyes filled with hope and voice filled with fear. She stubbed her cigarette out on the rubber base of her boot.
"Betty, Please!" Kate pleaded and Betty rolled her eyes before half-covering them with one hand as she sidled behind the curtain. "I can't… quite…" Kate said, a little quieter. Betty dropped her hand and any pretence; Kate was facing away from her and the expanse of broken skin on offer to her was heart-wrenching. The way Kate was hunched forward, hands bunched over the material barely covering her ribs. The swimsuit was dangling precariously from her shoulders and when Kate finally looked over her shoulder at Betty, Betty stepped forward and gently pulled the zip from Kate's waist to between her shoulder blades, careful to avoid touching any of the tempting pale skin on display.
"Why does this stupid thing even have a zipper?" "Kate asked, facing forwards again. "It's a swimsuit. Won't it get rusty?"
"It's not the kind of swimsuit that goes in the water. Kate." Betty said, smirking. Kate looked over her shoulder again, brow furrowed, and then suddenly clearing.
"Oh," she said. "Give me a minute?" Betty nodded and sidled backwards out from behind the curtain. She chatted with Chet for a minute, smoked a cigarette and questioned the need for this… arrangement, wondered if there was any other way she could have wrangled this so as to avoid this… indignity. Still, it's nothing she wouldn't do herself, and Chet was the best and when Kate came out…. Well.
Kate did better than Betty thought she would, really. All smiles, mostly aimed at Betty, back carefully out of sight. Although when it was over, her shoulders sank a few inches in relief. Betty followed her back to the curtain, slipping in where Kate held it open behind her. She had to touch Kate to find the zipper tag, and if she let her fingers linger a little too long on the sharp knob of a spinal bone, Kate didn't say anything. Not even a thank you. Just a nod at the curtain. Betty pulled it closed behind her, mentally kicking herself. Of course Kate would hate her for this, for dragging her into the seedy underbelly of big city life, but really, she had no choice. She couldn't pay for it herself. Chet had enough pictures of her already, for various other… favours. Anything but Chet's work wouldn't pass inspection. And Kate needed that security report. But if Kate never spoke to Betty again, she wouldn't blame her. She'd be sad and a little disappointed, but she couldn't blame her.
Kate emerged, hair bundled close to her skull, eyes wide and a little frightened. She reached for Betty's hand, took it and dragged her outside.
It was a full block before Kate pulled Betty to a standstill.
"I did it," she said. "I didn't think I could but I did it." She was serious, a line between her eyes. "Strange that something so sinful could set me free." She said, and then started laughing from the shock of it. Betty freed her hand, put an arm around Kate's shoulder and started shepherding a jubilant Kate to where the streetlights were more frequent, aware of alleys and catwalks that were cut suspiciously silent in the face of Kate's laughter.
Back in Kate's room in the boarding-house Kate was still revelling in her rebellion. She was flushed, and Betty leant against the closed door with a cigarette dangling from her fingers to take in the girl on the bed that seemed so different to the uptight girl she'd met only a few weeks ago. Seems she really did have a reason to want her door to lock.
"How long, do you think, will it take until my clearance is ready?" Kate asked finally.
"Coupla days," Betty said nonchalantly, pulling the ashtray from the far side of the bedside table.
"Hoped it would be sooner." Kate said, calmer now. She breathed out suddenly, all in a gust. "Still can't believe I did that," she said, and looked to Betty for assurance that she really did. Betty just nodded, tapped her cigarette on the ashtray. Seems to her like she's smoking a lot today. "It was for a good reason," Kate added, more to herself than Betty. She shook her head, as if determined not to think about it while Betty was still there and took the cigarette from Betty. She shifted the cigarette to her other hand, and took Betty's in hers for a moment, thumb gliding over Betty's palm, careless of Betty's sharp inhale. Kate's fingers eventually wended their way through Betty's and Betty had to look away. She wasn't used to… this. The casual contact knocked at the barricade of Betty's tough exterior and firm resolve; she had to steel herself not to answer.
"How are your hands so soft? It's only been a few weeks and mine…" Kate trailed off, looked at her hand, then dropped Betty's. Betty knew she shouldn't feel the short sharp shock from the loss of contact, but she did anyway. She screwed her face into some weak smirk.
"It's just Jergen's lotion," Betty told her, feigning a shrug. "Nothing special. C'n go get some now, if you want." Kate nodded and Betty slipped across the hall to her own room. She rested both palms on her bureau and leant forward, rested her head against the wall and breathed out. She looked at a shaking hand that had almost betrayed her.
"Here we go again," she said to the mirror, to no one, to herself. She clenched her hand into a fist and grabbed the tiny bottle with the other hand. On returning to Kate's room she put the bottle on Kate's dresser and stood against the wall, hands resting on the wall behind her as if she could gather strength from the solid structure of the building around her. When Kate stood up and leaned across her for the bottle, Betty had nowhere to go. When Kate turned to face her, she thought…
She thought a lot of things. She thought of a back of broken skin, of bruises still healing. She thought of the wide eyes of a desperate girl. She thought of the so-soft looking lips in front of her, and she knew she was in trouble.
When Kate's eyes met Betty's, Betty felt like she was drowning in those impossible eyes, that unreadable face. Kate's eyes finally flittered away, landed on the wall, the bed, the mirror, the bottle in her hands. She stepped back and uncorked it, rubbing some into her hands and gingerly sniffing it.
"It smells like you," Kate said in wonder. Betty, against all probability, blushed.
"You c'n keep it, I got more." Betty said, looking away and rubbing the back of her neck.
"Truly?" Kate asked. Betty just nodded and tried not to watch a massive grin spread across the face of a formerly broken girl.
"Seems like I owe you a whole bunch of crocheting," Kate said, big, genuine smile on her face. Betty just swallowed and nodded. She'd take that offer any day, even if she would have to go back to the chemist tomorrow for another bottle of Jergen's.
Betty had never seen the ocean, but she figured she better learn how to swim. Because if she didn't learn - fast - to look away first, she was going to sink.
Author's note: I don't know why this happened, but it happened.
Title from The Waif's song "Sink or Swim."